It's no secret that the media hates George W. Bush - that's why it came as no surprise to me when virtually every media outlet in the country picked up on last week's story about a woman selling (presumably) anti-George Bush "Count me Blue" bracelets. What did the woman do to warrant this nationwide publicity, you ask? Nothing, except for insult the President.

After all, her idea wasn't ground-breaking or orginal, being one of hundreds of variations on the popular Lance Armstrong Foundation bracelet idea. And it's not like these bracelets had become some sort of national obsession, either, because at the time these articles were written she had sold less than 1,000 of them. No, this woman got millions of dollars worth of free advertising solely because the media wanted the bracelets to become a national obsession. In short, they wanted to make the news rather than report the news.

In fact, this story on Madison's own Channel 3's website has links to THREE different vendors of the "anti-Bush" bracelets. They also thought to throw in a link to a single "pro-Bush" bracelet vendor - maybe they did this in the interest of appearing objective, or maybe it was an actual attempt at being objective, I don't know. In any event, I was surprised to see the link.

On this, the day before George Bush's second inauguration, Channel 3 makes no such attempt to appear objective. On the Channel 3 website, you'll find no mention of the upcoming inauguration, no mention of the various celebrations planned around the city, state or nation. All you will find is this single story about an "Anti-Bush" protest taking place almost 70 miles away from Madison in a town of less than 8,000 people. In my opinion, hardly a newsworthy event.

Nevertheless, this is the one and only story even related to the inauguration, on this, the day before the inauguration. (To be fair, Channel 3 did run a story a few days ago about a busload of protesters travelling from Wisconsin to DC, in an attempt to "shut down" the city. I think that they even included helpful information as to how one could secure a seat on the bus...)

The story at hand comes complete with an ever-so-helpful link to help the would-be looneys express their individual opinion with pre-printed signs:

"For more information or to print out signs, go to SaveWisconsin.org,"

And an ever-so-objective survey question:

"Are the Bush inaugural plans too ostentatious?"

Like I said, it's no secret that the media hates George W. Bush. It's obvious from their biased coverage of issues and events, from their selective coverage of news stories, and from their attempts to "manufacture" news stories that they want to see happen through product placement and ridiculous "survey" questions.

Why can't they just admit it?