Exposing the lack of compassion by conservatives and
debunking right wing hypocrisy at every opportunity.
by shep
Ever since Super Tuesday, The Village Gasbags have been so gleeful their faces looked like they might split open over their narrative that moderate, Straightalker McCain, the all-but coronated Republican nominee, was going start his campaign against the silly, confused Democrats who were going undecided all the way to a *gasp* brokered convention where Howard Dean and the Super Delegates would retire to a “smoke-filled backroom” (every idiot in the asylum used the same stupid cliché) where some sort of secret process involving a dead chicken and the severed head of a frog was going to thwart the will of Democratic voters and cause Democrats to lose the election.
Trouble is, nobody bothered to tell Barak Obama, Mike Huckabee and the churlish American voter. Huckabee inexplicably refused to be properly ignored and bow out gracefully and went on to big primary wins over McCain. Obama practically slaughtered Clinton in every region and every imaginable demographic in the Party and continues to build momentum and disgrace the gasbags’ conventional wisdom in places like Washington State and Maine with nothing but clear skies ahead of him for nearly a month.
So once again we see the media gasbags telling the public what the media gasbags want to hear, picking the candidates, writing the history and telling the public what to do in hilarious contrast to what the public actually thinks and does. Perhaps they simply got too full of themselves with their success at trashing Al Gore and John Kerry and thinking they had ignored John Edwards’ populist campaign into oblivion.
But, just like rightwing nutjobs Limbaugh, Hannity and Ingram, who told their listeners to vote for Mit Romney and not to vote for McCain or Huckabee, their audiences basically told them to go Cheney themselves. It may be too much to hope that the public has finally come to fully reject the elitist, self-serving, immature and simple-minded nature of our national press commentators but it is clear that each has never had greater disdain for the other. The public, certainly, has very good reason.
[E Pluribus Unum]
2/10/08
The Media and Public: You’re Dead to Me
By: shep
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2 Comments:
Shep, I think you've nailed it. The internecine media media narrative is either barely registering on the public who -- unlike us political junkies -- treat MSNBC, FOX and CNN as those channels that blur by flipping between Bravo and ESPN; or are being completely rejected by those of us who pay attention and make up our own minds.
But like exhibition season in sports, the primaries are just practice both for the players/candidates and those who cover them for the MSM.
By the time the real show starts this fall, flaks like Schuster will be replaced for those who prove they can tell the story the way the Village wants it told, and their act will be polished and ready when the average fan/voter starts paying attention.
And that's the thing, the MSM hires the best story tellers.
The really good sports commentators do more than call the balls and strikes. They make a transition to greater things. Before he became a homicidal maniac, O.J. transformed his charm, good looks and animated passion into a movie career.
Keith Olbermann was such a gripping story teller he could bring the most boring game to life, hours after it was played. He still tells a good yarn.
And to give credit where credit was due, horrible as his politics and governing style were, Ronald Reagan parlayed that kind of talent like no other. I'm sure you heard about how he would recreate baseball and football games for the radio just from the dry stats off the AP wire.
That took a special kind of story telling gift.
What you might not have known is that bringing a game alive for radio listeners was how Dan Rather got his start too.
Schuster was telling the story the way the Village wants it told, at least, the Village thinks it's not up to anyone else to say they are full of shit. They resent the hell out of apologies that Mathews or Schuster have to give for their adolescent stupidity. Who the hell has the right to tell them that they suck at their jobs, especially their customers. That's why the media is broken, because they have so catastrophically failed their responsibility to their customers, they've stopped giving a shit about their what their customers think. We've only now begun to reciprocate adequately.
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