I'm sure you've all noticed what I've been seeing - i.e. - All of a sudden the media is calling out the McCain/Palin campaign for it's lies and they're even starting to call them out on their policies and I'm sure you've all been thinking the same thing I've been thinking, which is:
Why now? Why at all when you've never shown any interest in telling the truth about republicans before?
I think the answer might be that the combination of the McCain campaign's blatant lies and the economic meltdown is simply leaving them no choice but to do the job they should have been doing all along.
I think that Palin was so terrible in the Gibson interview and so clearly out of her league that the media simply had no choice but to rip into her, because it was so fucking bad that if they tried papering it over they'd be in danger of losing their own credibility.
Frankly I also think there was a little bit of a shock factor with the immediate reactions after the interview too... I think they all knew Charlie Gibson and were expecting softballs, which was of course exactly what he delivered, but Palin didn't hold up to her end of the expectations game and it threw them all off.
All of a sudden their carefully prepared talking points of how well she comported herself during such a "tough" interview were rendered useless and so they were all left making it up on the fly for their live 2 hour long analysis after the Gibson interview... and the only thing they could think to say was how terrible she was, how many gaffes she made and how she didn't seem to understand some of the questions even AFTER Gibson had to take the time to explain the questions to her...
During that interview she became the proverbial pig that no amount of lipstick was going to disguise.
(Which is the ONLY interview anyone's ever seen with her and the Hannity bullshit isn't going to be taken as seriously as the Gibson interview, just because it's friggin' Hannity and that the McCain camp wouldn't even trust her to Hume tells you how much faith they have in her abilities.)
That's what I see happening right now with the media... McCain and Palin are just so fucking goddamned bad that they've left the media absolutely no choice but to go after them... Even though some of them clearly don't want to go after McCain and Palin, they've simply got no choice now if they want to survive this campaign with even a shred of credibility intact.
The blatant lies and the repeating of them LONG after they've been debunked by every major media organization in the entire friggin' world... They can't paper over the lies once everybody knows they're lies and if they do, then THEY'RE the liars, THEY'RE the ones the public doesn't trust and the media simply can't have that...
No matter how much they might like to carry McCain's water here, they simply can't afford to do it, because this campaign will be over in less than 2 months and they've got to think about their corporation's reputations and the talking heads have got to think about their careers - both of which will go on long after this election is through.
A news corporation and a talking head/writer at those news corporations live or die by their reputation... and this election, what goes on during it, how the media reports it and what happens after it is all over with is going to have lasting results.
This really IS the election of lifetime.
Our country's in two wars we can't afford, people don't have health care, our public education system is in the shitter, our higher education system is unaffordable to most Americans now, everyone's in debt up to their eyeballs, millions of people are losing their homes, with even more than that losing their jobs and we might be heading into a full-on depression of epic proportion... and if the wars get worse or we get into another war/wars, or we really DO end up in a depression...
Well people are going to look back at how the 4th estate comported themselves during this election and it isn't 10 years ago where people would have to rely on their faulty memories or trek down to the local library and spend a year searching through microfiche to find out how the media sold this election...
All they've got to do is walk across a room in their own house, get on their computers, do a google search and have the information in 3 seconds flat.
Look at what happened after the bullshit of the 2004 election... I know some of you are thinking? What? What happened after the 2004 election that was so important?
The answer is simple and it's staring you in the face right now.... WE happened.
Millions of people saw what has happened since the '04 election, looked back at how we got into this shitstorm and who sold it to us, and they stopped believing the media and took to the internet.
Blogs may have existed before the 2004 elections, but they've taken off since then and the reason they've taken off is because people looked at the situation our country is currently in, looked back at how this situation was sold to us and they stopped believing that the media is telling them the truth.
We stopped trusting the media after that, there are millions of us now and there will be a hell of a lot more of us if the media does it to us again... That hurts their bottom line and they can't afford to be gambling with their economic futures in this economy.
I think we have forced their hands, because now they've got some competition... It might only be tiny and insignificant competition right this second, but no matter how much they like to mock us and attack us; deep down they know that THEY are the ones that created us and they know that only their actions and not ours can make us grow in size and influence.
They know that if they would have been doing their damned jobs in the first place, we would have never felt the need to try to do it for them.
Their hubris turned a tiny insignificant cult into a nationwide phenomena that is millions strong and now they've got to watch their backs.
I think the McCain campaign's fatal flaw was ignoring the new technological world that the media is now forced to live in.
They went to the old tried and true republican well of attacking the media, because "What the hell, it forces them to cave and has always worked in the past for us?"... but they forgot about us.
They forgot that they're no longer the only ones attacking the media anymore. They forgot that the media can no longer act the way they used to act, because they were the only game in town and who was going to question them about it?
They missed the memo that while we might not have been attacking the media for as long as they have, but like everything having to do with the internet... We've done it better, more effectively and there's more of us than there are of them and so the media is more afraid of us than they are of the republicans.
We've stolen the republican's former seat of glory as the media bullies, we're better at it then they ever dreamed of being... Because the republicans never really had it out for the media. They needed it to do their bidding and the media always knew the arrangement and reciprocated in kind.
It was comfortable, familiar and they were like opposite sides of the same coin. Without one, the other wouldn't exist.
So when the republicans attacked the media, the media never worried about it, because there was never any real threat... but things are different now, because WE started attacking the media and we're not doing it with a wink and nod just to pressure the network into giving the candidate we're being paid to represent an extra minute and half during his next interview to spew talking points out into the atmosphere... We're doing it because we want to reform their entire existence.
We're the threat the republicans liked to play at, but never had an true intentions of ever being.
I even have a little anecdotal evidence to bolster my hypothesis... During the course of my canvassing this election season I've met 22 people that have told me they read Daily Kos. Yeah 22 people isn't a huge number... but there's less than 10,000 people in my entire town and I've only knocked on about 3,100 doors, so there could be more kossacks in my town for all I know.
I also don't go around asking people if they post on dkos either. These were 22 people who asked ME if I'd ever heard of dkos during the course of our conversation about politics while I was standing on their front porch. It just blows me away... I live in a little backwater town in Northern Michigan and I've meet random people that recommend dkos to ME and I've had a few others recommend various other blogs and websites to me.
That just blows my mind and it tells me that people really don't trust the traditional media in this country... and if I'm meeting 22 people on doorsteps in a little redneck hellhole in Northern Michigan... The media HAS to know that they're hemorrhaging credibility and I think that's why we've been seeing a tougher stance with the McCain campaign.
They're fighting for their lives here and with every election they're losing a couple of quarts of blood.
They know that every time they don't do their job we'll be there to do it for them and we'll be the ones sucking up their former credibility like a vacuum and picking up the trust of the American people that they so carelessly left laying on the cutting room floor.
I think things are changing and I believe we're the reason why.
We're getting too big to ignore and if they keep it up it won't be long before we're too dangerous for them to laugh at.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
~ Mahatma Gandhi
I believe that's true of our fight with the media, because while they might think we want to take them over and they enjoy laughing at us because of their misconception about our goals... We all know that all we've ever really wanted was for them to do their damned jobs and if we can force them to do it...
Well then, we've won haven't we?