The Reflector Opinion Editor Matt Watson claims that he has never endorsed a political candidate for office. He said in his Oct. 28 article, “I have never endorsed a candidate in any of my opinion articles, and I never plan on doing it.”
While this is technically true as he has never used the words “I endorse,” it seems like an awfully big loophole. Throughout the past year, many of the articles written by Watson were about politics, and all had a slant.
Watson claims he couldn’t endorse a candidate because he was still undecided, so why do his articles show such partiality? Out of eight articles written in the last year, only one was mildly conservative. I’m not sure if you could even call it that. “Bad priorities shine in argument on McCain’s age,” from April 25, basically said that the personal lives of politicians shouldn’t affect our vote. So it was not really a conservative article, so much as it used John McCain as an example to get Watson’s point across.
The other seven articles all but name the candidates Watson likely voted for. The article from Oct. 14, entitled “Obama wins both debates before finale,” clearly showed favoritism toward Barack Obama. And how does one actually win a debate anyway? Isn’t it customary for both parties to claim victory?
Watson himself said, “I realize my critique of the debates are biased and based on my own political opinions. That’s how I decide the winners and losers of debates.”
And yet in his Oct. 28 article, he contradicts that with another statement when he says he couldn’t endorse any candidate, writing “in fact, I wouldn’t even be able to do so if I wanted, as I am still undecided.” His other pieces don’t sound very undecided to me.
And that’s only the beginning. He again claimed a victor of the vice presidential debate in his article “Conservatives’ distrust of Ifill has little basis.” He said, without even seeing the debate, that he predicted, “Sarah Palin lost big time and doesn’t know anything about the world.”
In the same article he elaborated on his headline, saying that Republicans shouldn’t worry about the fact that Gwen Ifill of PBS is writing a book on Obama and other black political figures.
However, doesn’t the writing of the book imply that she has some political bias? And isn’t the moderator of political debates supposed to be as neutral as possible? They didn’t ask Paul Alexander, who wrote “Man of the People: The Life of John McCain,” or another similar author to mediate a debate, so why pick Ifill? Why was it unsound for Republicans to worry about Ifill’s partiality, which appears to be much like Watson’s – “non-existent” but in actuality, everywhere?
I think by far my favorite article of Watson’s is one from April 1 (how appropriate) with the headline “Hillary Clinton displays wealth of experience.” Nevermind that the entire article is very satirical, beneath all the over-the-top praise of Clinton, it is obvious that the real candidate being praised is Obama.
If the article wasn’t clear in its point on the first read through, it becomes clearer the second time. That, in addition to Watson’s “Clinton begins sore loser talk,” from Feb. 15, shows his true feelings about Hillary. He says in the opening paragraph, “I have no doubt that she has a drive that outshines all the other candidates. I’m speaking of the drive to win, and I do not at all intend for this to be taken as a compliment.”
I haven’t even begun to discuss Watson’s degradation of McCain, Palin and Wicker in his articles “Candidates for Senate seat evade reality” and “Another ad by Wicker makes absurd point.” I could go on for days with quotes alone to show to the loyal readers of our paper the bias in Watson’s pieces. I am not condemning Watson for sharing his political views, nor am I claiming to hate Obama and Democrats. I am simply pointing out the obvious penchant in the paper. So, while Watson did not “endorse” any candidate specifically, I think all readers can infer exactly who he would endorse if stated. I just wish writers would be more careful of the bold statements they make and ensure that they can be backed up. In this case, Watson’s “non-endorsement” falls a bit short of the truth.
Hannah Kaase is a sophomore majoring in animal and dairy science. She can be contacted at [email protected].