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Thursday, December 11, 2008
Unnamed
Scandal Update:
Their Finest Hour
WE TRIED TO WARN THEM. You have to admire the selfless heroism on display here. NBC is going down in financial flames, Newsweek and NPR are laying off employees right and left, and even The New York Times is faced with mortgaging Punch's Palace to keep creditors at bay, while the rest of the newspaper industry is confronting plunging ad and subscription revenues that threaten to wipe them out across the board. Yet what is their response when a juicy scandal falls into their laps even earlier in the Obama era than it did in the recordbreaking Clinton era? They are moved to explain away the scandal completely and assure all us curious American dumbshits that there's nothing to see here, really, so move on. One mentally disturbed government official with a foul-mouthed slut of a wife went completely nuts for no reason, and we shouldn't even be interested in pursuing our natural but ill-founded questions about how this might reflect on the president-elect and his closest advisers on the transition team.
Wow. Double wow. Dare I say it? Triple wow. That's quite a stand to take when your whole industry, and the livelihoods of everyone in that industry, depends on public curiosity about the rich, powerful people who presume to lead us. Curious about Chicago politics? Forget it. The governor is just some accidental loon. Are, or were, Obama and the governor of Illinois close colleagues and have they spoken recently? Waste of time to even ask. No point. Unthinkable. Did you hear the kind of language the slut-wife used? Well, then. There you go. Barack and Michelle would never associate with that kind of trash for a moment. All of this is just a big misunderstanding, you'll see. Jesse Jackson, Jr? Didn't you hear the thrill of emotion in his voice when he denied knowing that some anonymous idiot -- also obviously crazy as a bedbug -- offered Buggevitch a bunch of money for Obama's senate seat? There you go.
And don't think this is partisan. Fox News is standing shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the MSM. You should have seen the disgusted look on Steve Doocy's face yesterday when Chicago DJ Mancow reported that in Chicago at least, where political corruption is the very air they breathe, people were speculating that Candidate 5 -- the one bidding a half-mill for Obama's legacy black senate seat -- was Jesse Jackson, Jr. He was icy in his declaration that there was no evidence of that whatsoever. And today, when the Jackson rumor was confirmed as fact, Doocy was absolute in his assertion that none of the wiretaps involved principals, only unnamed whoevers. So there.
With this kind of evident, patriotic integrity, it's harder than ever to understand why people just aren't buying newspapers and news magazines anymore. Why the mass media have an approval rating approaching the catastrophic levels of the U.S. Congress. Why people are gradually tuning out on the cable news networks. Why journalism as a supposed profession is widely seen as dead as a doornail.
Consider the irony. How many years -- how many decades? -- have people complained that the press brings us only the bad news and never the good. Now, when they've made it clear that the news about Obama will be forever, absolutely and incontrovertibly good, they stillwant to kill the messenger. So much the unfairness of things.
I'd leave it there for all of you to stew about in the rank landfills of your degraded consciences, but there's one more point that has to be made. When you circle the wagons around the tents of those who must be protected at all costs, who are you protecting them against? In this case, I guess, it would be the U.S. Cavalry, the constitutionally authorized forces of law and order whom the MSM have long known to be the true ogres on the American scene. That's a formidable enemy to be sure, and it explains more than anything else ever could why the members of the fourth estate are apparently willing to cut the throats of their own businesses, and themselves, to save the One from harm, in advance of the facts they have no interest in reporting.
If The New York Times should somehow survive for another thousand years days, people will always say of them, "Truly, this was their finest hour."
That sure beats doing their damn job. Don't it?
P.S. [A Notation in the "InstaPunk is always right" file] Here's what I said back in July:
All of which makes me wonder big-time
if the MSM understands how huge a
catastrophe for themselves all the salaaming before the Obamessiah is
bringing down on their own thoughtless heads...
Continue being the same adoring cheerleaders you've been so far -- through the inevitable crises and missteps and blunders and failures -- and the already tottering structure of the MSM will collapse in cataclysmic ruin. You will bore your dwindling audience absolutely to death, and they will begin seeking honest news reporting elsewhere. (As they have been, btw, for some time now; how's NYT stock doing these days, kemo sabe?)
The nature of your bet thus far is idiotic -- that Obama really is the absolute answer to everyone's prayers you so want him to be. He isn't. He's a flesh-and-blood man who will stumble and err and make some truly awful decisions. When that happens, your extravagantly uncritical support for his rise to power will make you accountable to many Americans before you cover the first act of his administration. And when he does take office, the fact that you have let him rewrite all the rules of what is and is not fair coverage in political reporting will do you in no matter what course you choose. Criticize him and be branded with some of the worst labels available in these United States. (The New Yorker is anti-muslim? Anyone? Please.) Suck up to him and go rapidly out of business -- not to mention lose all the power you have so jealously acquired and used so self-righteously in the last hundred years.
Take your pick.
Continue being the same adoring cheerleaders you've been so far -- through the inevitable crises and missteps and blunders and failures -- and the already tottering structure of the MSM will collapse in cataclysmic ruin. You will bore your dwindling audience absolutely to death, and they will begin seeking honest news reporting elsewhere. (As they have been, btw, for some time now; how's NYT stock doing these days, kemo sabe?)
The nature of your bet thus far is idiotic -- that Obama really is the absolute answer to everyone's prayers you so want him to be. He isn't. He's a flesh-and-blood man who will stumble and err and make some truly awful decisions. When that happens, your extravagantly uncritical support for his rise to power will make you accountable to many Americans before you cover the first act of his administration. And when he does take office, the fact that you have let him rewrite all the rules of what is and is not fair coverage in political reporting will do you in no matter what course you choose. Criticize him and be branded with some of the worst labels available in these United States. (The New Yorker is anti-muslim? Anyone? Please.) Suck up to him and go rapidly out of business -- not to mention lose all the power you have so jealously acquired and used so self-righteously in the last hundred years.
Take your pick.
Or, in the current environment, pick your poison. Who was it who said something about "chickens coming home to roost"? I forget. How about you?
