Everything That is Wrong With Journalism
If you could take everything that is wrong with “journalism” today, the vindictive liberal bias, the vapidity, the lock-step narrative, the in-the-tank-for-Obama-ness, roll it up into a sticky tar ball and form it into a single person, you’d have E.J. Dionne.
In this column, Mr. Dionne beclowns himself (again), stating as fact notions that are so fundamentally wrongheaded as to be absurd. Let’s begin yet another installment of “what’s wrong with E.J.’s column today.”
1. The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that “fairness” requires treating extremist rants as “one side of the story.”
Seriously, Mr. Dionne? The media is cowering before a resurgent vast right wing media conspiracy? OK, ‘Puter, calm down. Let’s be rational here. FoxNews, Drudge and Breitbart have successfully conspired to bend The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The Nation and every other liberal media outlet to their will. And Mr. Dionne’s evidence for this is the Obama Administration wetting itself when it’s becoming apparent that Americans are no longer buying the liberal media’s Obama hero worship?
Mr. Dionne, this is projection, plain and simple. ‘Puter has one word and one question for you. First, the word: JournoList. Second, the question: Were you ever a member of the JournoList? ‘Puter assumes that you were, as this is the only explanation for your crackpot “conservatives run the media” theorem. It jibes well with the unhinged logic so very prevalent on that liberal listserv.
2. Al Gore never actually said he “invented the Internet,” but you could be forgiven for not knowing this because the mainstream media kept reporting he had.
Well, Mr. Dionne, maybe not. But it was the liberal media that failed to correct that notion. But Since you brought up former Vice President Al Gore, ‘Puter wonders when the liberal media is going to investigate the following ongoing Gore scandals: (a) three alleged sexual assaults; (b) an Oscar and Nobel Prize garnered through a premeditated pattern of lies; and (c) Gore’s “do as I say, not as I do” massive carbon footprint environmentalism. ‘Puter expects to be waiting a good, long time.
3. There were no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills.
The death panels to which Mr. Dionne alludes were a liberal media spin of a serious conservative talking point, nothing more. The reality is the natural outgrowth of ObamaCare would result in health care rationing to contain costs. Rationing would necessarily lead to denial of certain beneficial treatments in certain instances (e.g., a new hip for a 90 year old). And the denial of treatments would shorten lives. Since ObamaCare has passed, and since ‘Puter’s certain Mr. Dionne, like all good liberals, will be an early adopter, ‘Puter looks forward to Mr. Dionne’s thoughts on the quality of his care and his choices as he enters his golden years. ‘Puter’s betting Mr. Dionne will have to eat his words, unless, of course, ObamaCare is repealed prior to that time.
4. The traditional media are so petrified of being called “liberal” that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors.
Nope. Traditional media is terrified that it will be scooped (or embarrassed) again by others willing to cover stories that don’t hew to the liberal world view. That’s why it reacts with terror to conservative media stories. Traditional media’s been bested too many times, and now it’s gun shy. Traditional media is watching its ivory towers crumble and its relevance fade. Traditional media blames the new media for its suddenly precarious position. In reality, new media is only partly to blame. Traditional media has done the heavy lifting by destroying its credibility over a decades-long span. The recent conservative pushback is not primarily to blame despite Mr. Dionne’s protestations otherwise.
And, as an aside, it wasn’t conservatives who made liberal a dirty word. It was liberals. When confronted with the polling evidence that a large majority of Americans don’t like liberal notions of governance, liberals went and hid. They changed their name to “progressive,” as if the shiny new packaging would mask the stench of their failed ideas. Americans are wise to the charade now, and they’re pissed off.
5. Thus did Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander ask this month why the paper had been slow to report on “the Justice Department’s decision to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.” Never mind that this is a story about a tiny group of crackpots who stopped no one from voting. It was aimed at doing what the doctored video Breitbart posted set out to do: convince Americans that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites.
Americans aren’t fooled. The video tells the tale. There was a black man with a club outside a polling place with the clear intent to intimidate white voters. Americans know that if the races had been reversed, the perpetrator would be in jail right now. The Obama Administration and its media sycophants have been reduced to the hackneyed “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes” defense. Despite Mr. Dionne’s snotty denial, Americans’ lurking suspicion that “the Obama administration favors blacks over whites” is confirmed by this incident. And no amount of bitchy denials can change this.
If this is the best defense of the liberal (“traditional”) media and the foundering Obama Administration that E.J. Dionne can muster, then conservative victory cannot be too distant.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.