Chris Matthews' unrepentant hypocrisy, the latest example in a long list of offenses by the traditional media, has finally sent me over the edge. So I subjected Kathleen Parker's
recent "critique" of bloggers to a heavy rewrite and turned it back on the chattering classes:
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Of all the stories leading America's annual greatest hits list, the one that subsumes the rest is the continuing de-evolution of information in the Age of Pundits.
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More after the flip.
Not since the birth of the printing press have so many lives been so dramatically affected by the way we create and consume information -- to the pundits' fame and the Corporate Media's enormous profit.
What is disquieting and disturbing about the national media needs little elaboration. We all marvel at the ease with which it can twist and distort information -- whether sitting on news of national import at the behest of an Administration that wants to keep it available only to a few, or richly rewarding old friends and slandering with unsubstantiated misrepresentation those they define as new enemies, like say, bloggers.
It is this latter -- the most visible, insidious challenge to an informed electorate and a stable democracy -- the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification. And yes, I do mean Bill O'Reilly, although he's only one example.
There's something frankly hypnotic about the ongoing backslapping we now call the Punditosphere -- the big-bang "network and cableverse" where freshly blowdried bloviators set up new camps each day. As I write, the number of "talk show hosts" (professional hissy-fit throwers) "authorities" (paid shills for right wing think tanks) and "columnists" (those who toss their cookies in print between martini lunches and bathroom breaks) is estimated at... well, just take my word for it -- there are far too many of them.
Although I've been following such paragons of journalistic integrity as Rush Limbaugh and Mike Savage since the beginning, and have learned about the true values of the mainstream media as typefied by unending stories about missing and/or comatose white women, Parker and her ilk are also a toadies to a power untempered by restraint and accountability, as typefied by large media conglomerates.
The bosses of these spoiled and pampered hacks have grabbed the presses and seized the airwaves, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of deep pockets and access to power, and will be damned if they accede to those who crave truthful journalism over entertainment and propaganda. Where's the power, prestige or profit in that?
Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to reap profit from its product, and police and relegate to page A15 those few who report accurately and truthfully, the better to serve its corporate and political masters. Newspapers may be filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right, but Parker sure as hell isn't one of them. She's a nationally syndicated columnist who doesn't need to get it right -- she just has to spew provocative and unsubstantiated comments in between bathroom breaks, as one of those filthy and childish "bloggies" once said.
That a Jayson Blair of the New York Times or a Jack Kelley of USA Today is outed with increasing frequency by skeptical internet users with no apparent impact on the conduct and standards of the national media is ultimately a testament to how well the system polices itself. The infamous Blair and Kelley may be gone, unlike the rich bosses who enabled and then made excuses for them, but there's plenty more where they came from. If freelance plaigarists and hacks like Jeff Gannon had been working as a paid whores for GE or Fox, things might have been different. You won't see David Brooks' or Sean Hannity's ass getting fired anytime soon for making shit up, after all.
These empty suits hold a better, more expensive megaphone than actual working journalists and enjoy membership in the rarified and exclusive world of corporate broadcast media celebrity, which of course automatically makes them more credible in their own eyes than the underpaid or unpaid grunts slaving away in the weeklies and online publications. These all-knowing and often smug "Tweeties" are rich in column inches, air time and expensive studios, but bereft of real editing and fact-checking. Like they care -- at least, till some nervy "bloggers" point this out, throwing them into sudden attacks of the vapors.
Pundits persist no matter their contributions or quality -- which is a good thing, considering that Parker would have to hit the streets tomorrow and look for a new way to support her sorry butt -- though most would have little to occupy their time should reporters for the smaller, less flashy papers disappear tomorrow. Some pundits do their own reporting -- the majority laugh at them during corporate parties and avoid them in the washroom -- but in the main they rely on talking points spoon-fed to them by the Administration or their aforementioned corporate masters, while uncredited aforementioned carpal-tunnel overworked and underpaid wretches do the the real reporting. Some pundits also offer superb commentary (and are exiled to late night or the Comedy Channel), while most babble, buzz and blurt like drunken and self-indulgent adolescents competing for the Chris Matthew Club's inevitable senior superlative: Most Self-Important.
Bloggers may be plenty smart, but they lack that magical, omnipotence-imbuing quality called "access." While they possess the power of a forum -- for now, anyway, until the Bush Administration has its way--they have neither the connections nor hubris that years of rubbing shoulders and other body parts with those in the seat of power gives the MSM. Although bloggers point out their "misstatements" or "oversights" with hyperlinks to primary documents and actual facts, these same bubble-headed bleach blondes are still able to smear anyone that they or their bosses want to destroy. Ask Howard Dean or Cindy Sheehan.
Each time I wander into punditdom, I'm reminded of the pathetic toady Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984. Cowed by Big Brother, he works unceasingly to distort, lie and misrepresent truth for the corporate/governmental powers that be, occasionally making pathetic noises about integrity, convinced of his own importance, and eventually becoming an even more pathetic whiner drunk on gin once he is evicted from the inner circle. Yes, that includes you, Christopher Hitchens.
What Orwell demonstrated -- and what we're witnessing as the corporate media's power is threatened -- is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many pundits seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a public or private citizens alike have the nerve to speak truth to power, they pile on like so many savages, calling them "extreme," "shrill," "unhinged," "traitors," "unpatriotic," "enemies of the state" and advocating all kinds of eliminationist measures, from censure to torture and death by poison or worse. And yes, I mean you, Ann Coulter.
Preemptive lies have become the new barbarity on an island called Pundit. When someone calls them on their BS, pundits become whiny-assed titty-babies moaning about about how wronged they are and how those eeevil bloggers are uncivil and therefore all humanity is the victim. Oh, clutch the pearls, Kathleen!
There are many brilliant journalists out there -- Seymour Hersh, Keith Olbermann -- and it's telling that I can't think of more than that off the top of my head -- who have kept their integrity and courage despite writing for major newspapers or their increasingly infrequent appearances on national radio or television. The Traditional Media bosses hopes that if they're smart, that minimal exposure will be enough for them. But we're supposed to kiss the slimy, overfed butts of the rest of the ego-fed blow-dried hacks who contribute only innuendo, lies and destruction. It's the American Way!
We can't silence them -- but for civilization's sake -- and the integrity of our democracy -- we can and should continue to slap them down when they call for it, which is most of the time.
And columns like Ms. Kathleen Parker's are proof that it's the right thing to do.