It’s quite dispiriting to write a blog, particularly about things that matter, when the available media is so maniacally obsessed with things that, well, don’t.  So successful have the Republicans been in creating their post-reality “empire” that even those few in the media who know better are constantly reduced to anointing, say, Newt Gingrich, as a potential nominee, that is when they’re not worrying about whether Christmas is in some sort of danger, fretting that the Muppets might be Commies, and allowing that Teddy Roosevelt was maybe a little like Hitler.  Nothing uttered by a Republican, no matter how preposterous, is felt to be undeserving of Equal Time,  whether it’s Gingrich promising to appoint JOHN BOLTON as his Secretary of State, Rick Santorum claiming to know something about sex, or Rick Perry, well, opening his mouth.

I’m getting progressively more annoyed by this dreadful reality each day.  It’s one thing that our media stars are dumb and/or craven enough to sit respectfully nodding at such perfect nonsense passing for political discourse, but it’s quite another to think anyone watching with two brain cells to rub together is playing along.  It’s insulting, frankly, that every day we are forced to listen to the ravings of utter lunatics competing to out-crazy each other, knowing full well that today’s top clown will fall out of the car just as clumsily as yesterday’s, and for the same entirely predictable reasons.  The fact that a substantial portion of Americans have been rendered dumber than posts by decades of increasingly febrile Republican propaganda campaigns does not make their addled beliefs somehow worthy of discussion; the real, more interesting story is how this was allowed to happen, and it’s told each time we open a newspaper or turn on the TV.

It’s a bit different situation for Democrats, though, especially on those rare occasions that they actually act like Democrats.  When the President points out the previously undisputed fact that job growth was worse under the Bush tax rates than under Clinton’s, he gets a sneering “3 Pinnochios” from the WaPoo’s ironically named “fact-checkers,” despite, well, the numbers.   Another ironically named outfit, Politifact, called Democrat’s claims that Paul Ryan’s health plan would end Medicare “the lie of the year,” which in itself seems rather grandiose given the competition, but Ryan’s Plan does end Medicare.  Kind of a big fail if you ask me, unless they intend their name to be ironic.  Maybe they do; kind of like Herman Cain calling himself a “Presidential Candidate.”  Whatever the rubes believe…

Meanwhile, in the increasingly unpleasant Real World, the big money Republicans hardly have anything to be so fraudulently worked up about.  Despite Obama’s recent, substance-free nods to something the credulous call “populism,” there is nothing to be gained, and a lot to be lost, by handing the reins of government over to any of the nincompoops running as Republicans in 2012.  They’re doing a fine job of giving Obama cover to govern to the right of Reagan, and he hasn’t disappointed.  Whereas, the crazy stuff coming out of the Republican Clown Car is so wantonly destructive that it could start to affect the portfolio, even as it’s already direly exacerbated the Servant Problem in Arizona and Alabama.

Republicans have been, it seems, a little too successful in encouraging Americans to believe utter horseshit.  Too successful to realistically mount a Presidential campaign, anyway.   Nonetheless, President Obama’s ironically named Secretary of Health just today defied the FDA and banned girls younger than 17 from getting emergency contraception without a prescription.   With “enemies” like these, the Right has found, to its everlasting delight, it longer needs friends; think of the money they’ll save not bothering to elect one.

Worse, just like lackluster turncoats in other minority communities, guys like Sullivan, if they played their cards right, could parley their demented but nonetheless outspoken opposition to their own claims to full citizenship into lucrative and influential spots in the burgeoning Wingnut Welfare industry, at think tanks, the Supreme Court, or somewhat less glamorously, as editors of formerly respectable magazines.  Out of nowhere, a fresh-faced upstart like Sullivan could be the toast of the town, or rather, Village, because even though he was as power-fellating and contemptuously dismissive of the concerns of ordinary people as the Washington Post editorial page, he was, well, gay. My sister and I used to joke about how cynically, say, Clarence Thomas was initially marketed to to the neoconfederate Republicans who so love him today; “a darky with a difference,” we called it, and it seems to have reached its comic apogee with Herman Cain today.

In Sullivan’s case, though, he was never very different at all.  Like most queens minted in the late 70′s or early 80′s, he was smitten by Reagan and Thatcher, dripping in elitism, and reflexively opposed to the hippies who, through their (by him) unappreciated earlier efforts, had done a whole lot to make his charmed, improbable life even possible, despite what he continues to decry as their unfortunate fashion choices.  In that sense, he’s just another bitchy queen making fun of somebody’s outfit.  Yawn.

But, unlike Clarence Thomas, he does occasionally have to look out the window, and grudgingly admit error a times when it  becomes too unseemly and discrediting not to.  There are no lifetime appointments, after all, in our increasingly pathetic and ultra-consolidated media, so Andrew (full name; so unusual for a gay man…) has had to recant his support, always much too late, for everything from George W. Bush to the Iraq war.   But now, for what I think is the first time, he had to recant his contempt for something quite central to who he is, by his own admission.  In a Daily Beast posting over the weekend, he left me gobsmacked when he wrote:

The trouble is that the wealthy don’t fit the stereotypes: They aren’t all pampered CEOs, hotshot investment bankers, pop stars and athletes. Many own small and medium-sized companies. Half the wealth of the richest 1 percent consists of stakes in these firms. That’s double their holdings of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, according to figures compiled by economist Edward Wolff of New York University. Reid would pay for Obama’s jobs plan by taxing the people who are supposed to create jobs. Does that make sense?

Oops.  Turned out to be a gutter ball, and worse, one that looks suspiciously like John Boehner’s orange head.  Of course, the statistics reek of bogusness, but guys like Samuelson aren’t really trying all that hard anymore.  They write columns straight off the wingnut ticker tape, where “job creators” are the answer, whatever the question. Less than 3% of actual “small businesses” are taxed at the top rate, and Samuelson knows this, but what the hell?  It’s worked so far….

The backlash against the rich is the start of debate, not the end. Are the rich to be punished for succeeding or merely asked to pay their “fair” share? Who is wealthy or who’s just well-off? Is $250,000 a reasonable cutoff for couples, as Obama once indicated, or has that been repudiated? If taxes do rise, what approach would best preserve incentives for hard work, investment and risk-taking? Are Obama’s assaults on wealthy business leaders just deserts (sic) or political cheap shots? However measured, the rich are besieged; the attacks almost certainly will intensify.

Ah, before there were “job creators,” there were the “successful” being “punished.” And my, how this punishment seems to have taken its toll on the poor dears. Ensconced in one or the other of their several gated compounds, these shrinking violets feel “besieged,” as Samuelson so sympathetically puts it, and worse, they’re threatening, for the umpteenth time, to go Galt on us if we don’t leave them alone.  These are the things that keep Samuelson awake at night. They should.

Having had a somewhat longer commute than usual the past few weeks, I have once again become a daily New York Times reader, often to my considerable chagrin.  For the last 15 years or so, as my local newspaper, the Oregonian, got thinner and thinner, I readily coughed up the extra cash for something that would last longer than a cup of coffee and a trip to the bathroom.  My choices were the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Grey Lady, so I picked her.  It was, despite Maureen Dowd, Ben Stein, Tom Friedman, Judy Miller, Deborah Solomon, Elizabeth Bumiller, Frank Bruni, Jodi Wilgoren, and William Safire, not the worst choice I could have made.  After all, Paul Krugman’s lonely opposition to Bush’s onslaught on America will forever be remembered, if only for its singularity at the time, as a balm to many worried mornings of “smoke ‘em out” and whatnot.  Then, there was Frank Rich, whose fame (and astuteness) as a theater critic warranted him a reverent mention by the cynical playwright/murderer in Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap,” (a play I produced here in 1987), but he by then had blossomed into a searingly perceptive analyst of America’s Right (as well as the craven and compromised media that love it), which he continued to be until a couple of weeks ago, when he left to join New York Magazine.

It was a fitting move; New York Magazine, to which I subscribed for many years, was born out of the ashes of the New York Herald Tribune, whose Sunday magazine arose in the late 60′s, offering a haven for talent and journalism that the New York Times didn’t think was “fit to print.”  Seriously, a Sunday New York Times for SIX BUCKS without Frank Rich?  And a (hilariously inept) paywall, to boot?  Something, I thought, must be seriously wrong on 42nd street, and today, more evidence piles up.  Bob Herbert, it turns out, is bailing out as well.  Though Herbert was never my favorite columnist, his dogged focus on racial and economic injustice sometimes led him away from more stark and timely outrages and his earnest and plain-spoken style lacked the rapier wit of Krugman and Rich, in a paper laden with ads for furs, jewels and expensive watches, it was nice to read somebody who recognized, and compellingly wrote about, the very existence of poverty and injustice in America.  And now he’s gone, too.

This leaves an op/ed page feebly dotted with such glittering journalistic jewels as Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman the only “liberals,” aside from Krugman (who has a day job at Princeton, thankfully), on a page so degraded that it unashamedly prints the execrable, adolescent caterwauling of Ross Douthat (!), who replaced the also pre-disgraced, but nonetheless hired, Bill Kristol in the right wing slot.   Pre-disgraced William Safire preceded them, so I guess there’s a pattern here…  At the New York Times, IOKIYAR rules.

The question, then, is who will replace them?  Unlike, say, The WaPoo, which is now primarily a Graham family enrichment scheme solely dedicated to promoting the Village values of war-making abroad and austerity at home, the NYT does depend on millions of Americans ponying up the cash to read it, and virtually none of these people do so because they like Ross Douthat and nuclear power.  No conservative would be caught dead spending two bucks daily, six bucks Sunday, for the “far left” New York Times, so it might be a good idea not to cater to them quite so much, at the expense of those who actually read and support the paper.

Newspapers are, by their nature, conservative institutions, in the true sense of the word, and that is why columnists like David Broder and Mike Royko, to name just a couple, continued writing until the grim reaper got them: readers develop relationships with columnists no wise publisher would ever want to sever.  Once, this arrangement was born of competitive pressures; in today’s monopolistic environment it survived, until recently, as tradition.  Those days are clearly over in this age when even big, once-powerful papers like the NYT struggle for survival, and let go the voices that personified them.

I don’t know who will replace Rich and Herbert, but if history is any guide, they will be disappointing, indeed.

UPDATE:  Well, it looks like Joe Nocera, one of a precious few good reporters in the business section, will be moving to the op/ed page, which is good, I guess, but it weakens the business section while not bringing any new voices to the paper as a whole.  On the bright side, such a move will surely save money…  Will they pass the savings on to their readers?

One way out of the mess surrounding the Jan. 27 arrest in Lahore of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, say senior U.S. and Pakistani officials, is a Muslim ritual for resolving disputes known as “blood money.”

Murder, despite its obvious charms, can sometimes be a “mess,” and Ignatius is ready to send in a servant with a mop and bucket, stat.  Clearly, he has spent a lot of time on the toilet reading Pamela Geller’s literature on the subject, and is delighted to have found a neat way to turn those sneaky Habib’s barbaric code of honor on its head, while not coincidentally helping to salvage the vanished credibility of warmongering halfwits like himself.  The keyboard brigadier continues, warming to his little idea like a hooker to Fleet Week:

This approach would require a prominent Islamic intermediary – perhaps from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates – who would invite relatives of the two men Davis killed to the Gulf. Payment to the victims’ families could then be negotiated quietly. Once the next of kin had agreed to this settlement, the legal case against Davis for murder might be moot in a Pakistani court.

No mention of the third Pakistani killed by Davis’ reckless escape driving from the scene of the double murder, nor the subsequent suicide of the fiance of one of the initial shooting, but in Ignatius’ world, the US government operates a busy pay window for atrocity victims, and what’s two more, when Ignatius is feverishly dragging the lake for the rotted corpse of his own reputation?  By this logic, anybody, anywhere, can kill anybody they want to and get away with it, as long as generous Uncle Sam has the checkbook open, which seems a bit odd in this era of Shared Sacrifice.  My guess is that Ignatius doesn’t want to make this curious and potentially costly adaptation of the rather universal laws against murder available to just any murderers, but he doesn’t think he has to spell that out for his long-suffering readers, who have long been taught that White Makes Right.

Of course, what WaPoo article would be complete without an anonymous government spokesman to back it up….

Asked about such a third-party mediation to free Davis, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday: “The United States is open to exploring any and all options that could resolve this matter. . . . It’s in our mutual interest to move beyond the Davis issue, and we believe the Pakistanis understand the stakes involved.”

Anything short of an honest trial, which of course isn’t the American Way.  You see, we prefer crooked dealings with other dictatorships to be secret, and involve sacks of unaccounted taxpayer cash…  Says so in the WaPoo.  Naturally, Ignatius also has equally anonymous sources in Pakistani intelligence to back up his dingbattery further:

The Pakistani desire for a resolution was highlighted in an e-mail sent to me Tuesday by a senior ISI official in Islamabad. “Things are on the mend and in the larger interests of peace and stability in the region, there has been an agreement to continue to work together,” the official said.

Or, as Nixon put it toward the end, “You have to save the plan!”  Not wanting to sound too much like a pampered imperialist, Ignatius mines his little heart for a bit of empathy for the Pakistanis who were flagrantly lied to by both his newspaper and his government:

The Pakistanis feel they were initially misled about the case. Immediately after the arrest, an embassy official in Washington contacted the CIA and asked if Davis worked for the agency; he apparently was told no. The official asked again on Feb. 2 and again, the agency is said to have denied involvement.

They “feel” misled?  Initially?  The embarrassing sight of neocons apologizing, not for their actions, but for the runaway emotions of their victims, never ceases to amaze, but this whopper is something to behold.  But he goes on, assuming that the reader is either as stupid as he is, or only reads the dubious and fawning reporting on the subject in his own paper:

The paperwork for Davis’s visa and work assignment is fuzzy, at best. He was carrying three different ID cards when he was arrested. He wasn’t included on a Jan. 25 U.S. list of people needing to be registered with the Foreign Office; his name is said to have been added within a day or two after his arrest. It’s still not clear just what he was doing in Lahore, or whether he may have worked as a Defense Department contractor before shifting to the CIA.

Literate Americans know he was a mercenary formerly employed by Blackwater, no less, and then carried his murderous “talents” to the CIA, where he could suckle at the taxpayer teat and be a “diplomat,” to boot.  This is only complicated if you work at (or worse, read) America’s Worst Newspaper.  As if understandably worried that his contemptible, ridiculous idea might be seen as the pathetic Hail Mary it is, Ignatius decides to party like it’s 2002 and toss in a Mushroom Cloud:

For now, the one certainty is that the CIA and ISI would like to resolve this issue quietly, with outside help, if necessary – before it gets any worse. If mediation fails and the case goes to court, says one Pakistani, it will be an “atomic bomb.”

Well, if you add in the WaPoo, Ignatius, and the rest of them, there are those who would regard a fair trial as an event like Hiroshima; the rest of us know the fallout in that unlikely case will blow the other way; that’s why Ignatius, and probably the Obama Administration, would prefer to go the “Blood Money” route.  It’s only money, after all.  The blood is from the little people.

Is the juvenile cluelessness and stupidity of HBGary’s Aaron Barr’s IM exchange with an unnamed (but clearly smarter) coder, with his poorly spelled assertions that despite the math, he was still right, any different than G. Gordon Liddy’s elaborate charts with plans to hire hookers and blow up the Brookings Institution?  Only in scale; both were flagrantly illegal and potentially disastrous if exposed, but they both served the purpose of further empowering the powerful at the expense of everyone else, so they were, shall we say, “on the table.”  Both were immediately showered in a hail of non-denial denials from the faux-horrified higher-ups, and scapegoats were duly chosen and dispatched.

Unfortunately, 2011 is not 1974, and today one could drop a bomb on Washington and not injure anyone who is even surprised, much less outraged, at such chilling, multimillion dollar hijinks against ordinary citizens and journalists.  After all, planting fake documents with their adversaries and then loudly “discovering” they were forgeries worked pretty damn well in the more capable hands of Karl Rove when he needed to get rid of Dan Rather, so why not try it again?  Smearing progressive groups with guilt by association and doctored “evidence” was a great success in killing ACORN, so why not get the SEIU and all the rest of them next?  We can make fun of the childish bravado of Mr. Barr and and the absurd melange of venom and pearl-clutching pouring out of the Chamber of Commerce, but who laughs last?

As Glenn Greenwald, one of the operation’s chief targets, points out, the only thing unusual about this story is that we actually found out about it before the damage was done.  That generally isn’t so, as careers are ruined, punitive lawsuits are filed, and voices of dissent are routinely crushed as the comfortable, well, get comfortable-er, and the media gazes on approvingly.  After all, if it’s good for the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, only a dirty America-hating hippie could possibly be against it…   The Obama DOJ even recommended the ridiculously well-connected (scoff) law firm, Hunton and Williams, who assembled Barr’s team of Merry Pranksters, to BofA to aid in its preemptive attack on WikiLeaks, and is currently arresting hackers faster than HBGary was ever able to find them.

While it’s heartwarming to see the other firms involved in this skulduggery, like Palantir and Berico, denounce such behavior in the scathing terms their lawyers undoubtedly concocted for them, anyone who believes for a moment that they are chastened by this little episode ought to consider that this is the new normal, and nobody involved is going to jail, or even go help Jimmy Carter build houses or something.  ”Security,” devoted to squelching public opinion when it conflicts with, or worse, impedes however slightly, the aims of the elite, is the only growth industry left in post-Bush America, gobbling up the budgets of governments and corporations alike, and as everyone but the rich continue to be squeezed it will only become more “necessary.”

For a moment, the whores have been dragged into church, and as you’d expect, they’re a little nervous there.  But Saturday night is always just around the corner, and there are plenty more customers waiting.

Mitt Romney can’t win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

As governor of Massachusetts, he signed health-care legislation that has considerable similarities to the proposal President Obama championed – the one Republicans have fought tooth and nail.

That’s an emerging bit of conventional wisdom about the slow-forming GOP race. And it’s right – except that it omits one very important fact: All – that’s A-L-L – of the Republicans considering runs for the nomination carry at least one major flaw that could keep them from victory.

The fact that Romney is the worst sort of crony capitalist, a transparent fake, and belongs to one of America’s creepier religions matters not a whit in the Village, where they read tea leaves and goat entrails to divine what trailer park America wants.  The problem is that he once did something conservative that now, with the right having leapt aboard the Crazy Train, might be considered “liberal.”  Compared to whom?

“So far, the Republican field looks conventional and flawed,” said Mark McKinnon, who was an adviser to President George W. Bush. “To beat Obama, the GOP is going to have to come up with a ticket that is fresh, exciting, unconventional and free of major flaws.”

This guy, who worked for George Bush, must know all about conventionality and flaws, but our intrepid reporter neither laughed nor did a follow up, despite the rather hilarious vacuity of his comment.

Let’s take a look at the Achilles’ heel of some of the best-known candidates:

Oh, lets.  Where did this guy learn to write?  Watching Mr. Rogers?

Haley Barbour: The Mississippi governor virtually invented lobbying – not exactly the ideal background in a very anti-Washington Republican electorate. And his Southern roots – and the gaffe he committed late last year when he seemed to suggest that the civil rights movement wasn’t a big deal where he grew up – might not play well in the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, the first two nominating contests of 2012.

Yeah, but Southern Roots go over like Sarah Palin in a Confederate flag bikini with the base, a fact of which Cillizza seems curiously unaware in his one endeavor to bring up real flaws.

Mitch Daniels: The Indiana governor drew widespread criticism among the party base when he suggested that the next president would need to call a “truce” on social issues until the country moved beyond its current economic woes. Social conservatives dominate the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary – and they won’t forget Daniels’s truce talk anytime soon.

Always give a sermon before taking people’s money; it’s just like church over at the Republican party, and Cillizza makes sure everyone genuflects.

John Thune: The senator from South Dakota – like many of his Republican Senate colleagues – voted for the Troubled Assets Relief Program in late 2008. Many conservatives view the vote as a sort of scarlet letter, a massive government bailout that is anathema to their limited-government philosophy.

Really?  I don’t see Bush or any other Republicans wearing anything but flag pins, and it was their bailout.  Here Cillizza takes yet another opportunity to show how every fact needs a delusion thrown in to make it “balanced.”

Newt Gingrich: The former House speaker’s appeals to social conservatives in places such as Iowa and South Carolina could be complicated by his very public personal life: He has been married three times.

Notwithstanding the embarrassing understatement involved here, Gingrich is, more importantly, widely loathed for many good reasons, by everyone except the Village, and this particular idiot.

Sarah Palin: The former Alaska governor has done next to nothing to build a national political organization or demonstate the ability – or willingness – to grow beyond her committed social conservative base.

The fact that she’s one of the dumber humans on the face of the earth, and getting scarier all the time, is left out as though unimportant.  All she lacks organizational ability.  More unintentional humor in the WaPoo.

Jon Huntsman: His serving in the Obama administration – albeit as the ambassador to China – won’t go down well with many Republican primary voters who detest the current occupant of the White House. And Huntsman’s public endorsement of cap-and-trade legislation puts him out of step with most in his party.

Acceptance of reality never goes over well with this crowd, Chris.  Haven’t you noticed a pattern yet?

Tim Pawlenty: The former Minnesota governor’s biggest problem is a lack of pizazz. Can a candidate who is relatively unknown outside his home state of Minnesota and whose best trait is his “niceness” rise to the top of such a crowded field?

His more significant lack of accomplishments and lack of popularity at home would be more significant, but as usual, to Cillizza this whole thing is like casting a high school play, and Pawlenty isn’t lead material.

Mike Huckabee: Huckabee’s record as governor of Arkansas – particularly his decision to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, who went on to murder four police offers in Washington state – is ripe for a deep opposition-research dive. And Huckabee’s record on taxes as governor isn’t likely to look much better in the eyes of many Republicans.

Ah, not quite authoritarian enough, and worse, he tried to balance budgets?

Curt Anderson, a GOP consultant who worked with Romney in 2008 but is now unaligned, argued that the candidates’ pasts won’t win or lose them the nomination.

“The answer to the riddle lies in the future, not the past,” he said. “Who can capture the imagination of Republican primary voters? That is the question.”

As we’ve seen, these voters have unusually big imaginations, making it a pretty tall order to capture them, but clearly, Chris misses this rather important point, and ends, Beck-like, with a question, of course from a Republican hack.  Enlightening.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth; Senior fellow, Hudson Institute :

The most productive aspect of this lame duck session has been President Obama’s intellectual growth.

Of course, since her intellectual ideal is in this case George W. Bush, this phenomenon could more accurately be described as shrinkage, but she does have a point, albeit an infuriating one:

He convincingly argued in favor of extending the current Bush-era tax rates so as not to choke off economic growth. And he declared at a press conference on Wednesday that “we celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products. We expect that person to be rich, and that’s a good thing. We want that incentive. That’s part of the free market. “

You see, even that Kenyan socialist finally caught on to the fact that God created America to serve the rich, although he’s still kind of a dummy:

(No matter that Jobs has created not two or three, but dozens of revolutionary products.)

And now that Obama has finally Seen the Light, this otherwise unemployable flack gazes into her Koch-funded crystal ball and sees a bright future indeed…..

Will we see a simpler tax system with lower rates voted out by the 112th Congress and signed into law by the president?

Hmmm.  You mean like Ireland tried?

I don’t begrudge people believing  utter horseshit, especially when they are well paid to do so, but I do wish that they could show a little humility and not think that they alone have access to some higher knowledge that has somehow escaped centuries of economists, historians, and ordinary people.  It’s an insulting and repellent trait they evidently picked up from their sometime political allies, the Religious Right, who similarly dismiss mountains of evidence that what they hold most dear is contemptible hogwash.  Both endlessly predict dire consequences for nonbelievers, and no matter how often proven wrong, they still think they’re the Chosen Ones, battling a benighted world.

If it takes “intellectual growth” to believe in what George H.W. Bush correctly called “Voodoo Economics,”  then I suppose it’s possible that, say, Sean Hannity is some sort of genius, like Einstein.  Possible, yes, but unlikely.

Thomas Jefferson, who was constantly and viciously hounded by his opponents in the press, once declared that, given the choice, he’d still rather have newspapers and no government than government and no newspapers.  Fortunately, television had not yet been invented, so that Sally Hemings story took a couple of hundred years to take off; maybe he’d feel differently today.  Nonetheless, now we find ourselves in 2010, muddling along with the latter system Jefferson decidedly didn’t want, whether or not we’d ever been asked to choose, and the “newspapers” themselves created it.

Paradoxically, the death of the Fourth Estate began with Watergate, which though it’s often considered to be a triumph of a free press over an increasingly lawless and secretive government, turned out, in the end, to be the opposite.  As a lifelong scholar of that particular scandal, my three shelves of Watergate books (not a few written in jail…) told the story we all know today: time and again, the Nixon administration used every legal tool and many illegal ones to bring a truth-telling press to heel, and they failed.  Later, though, I expanded my research into magazines of the era, and they told a different story: throughout Watergate, Nixon and his henchmen coasted to reelection, and nearly survived, by successfully stopping any number of unflattering stories, typically by going over the heads of news divisions to publishers and network executives, and this created a palpable chill in newsrooms that has reached its apotheosis today: no one today’s overpaid and heavily concentrated media even remembers what real journalism actually looked like, and those who do are too busy with the plastic surgeons to care.

The July 8, 1974 cover of Time pictured above, dated exactly one month before Nixon’s historic resignation, graphically demonstrates that even in that heady time for the power of the free press, corporate boots were already starting to stomp on journalistic heads for their failure to sufficiently “support” the government by not being so darned critical all the time.  A disturbing number of letter writers, then as now, agreed that the media had gotten out of hand, and that was all the increasingly corporatized media needed to hear; every merger (the first wave of which were spawned by Nixon’s ironically named “Newspaper Preservation Act), made the growing media monopolies less and less comfortable speaking truth to power, a tendency which has culminated in the embarrassing media uproar over Wikileaks.  Now the media have, practically unanimously, come out firmly against the very practice of journalism epitomized by Wikileaks, in favor of whatever it is they do these days to draw their unprecedentedly hefty paychecks.   Katharine Graham, who was willing to go to jail to defend her paper’s right to challenge the government, must be rolling over in her grave.

Therein lies the rub…  The most fanatical denunciations of Wikileaks come not just from the usual suspects, i.e. right-wing politicians who depend on media indulgence of lying, but from the media itself, which in recent years has been caught more times with its pants down than Bill Clinton could ever hope to.   They are, clearly, more invested in the lies they’ve been telling that the politicians (and donors) who benefitted from them, and they’d sooner piss on an electric (border?)  fence than admit how they’ve actively helped to fuck up the country by relentlessly doing the exact opposite of what the First Amendment presumes is their job.

The story is depressingly familiar; the truth wafts into the room like a bad smell, and the media rushes in to open the windows, and breathlessly spray lies around as though they were a can of air freshener, and the “story” becomes a parable about how everyone should just shut up and, say, give up their Social Security, cut taxes on the heiresses, and support a new war, while ostentatiously plugging their noses to the palpable stench.  Heck, it’s worked before, and it pays the hairdresser bills.

Sadly, after all these years a lot of people, numbed as they inescapably are by the steady drip of this brain-destroying anesthesia pumped into their eyes and ears, are just as reluctant to accept the truth as the pancaked boobs who have avoided it like the plague for all this time, and by the time you read this, Wikileaks may already have been extinguished, to cheers from all around.

Nice work if you can get it.

Koppel targeted Fox News and MSNBC, comparing them to bling-addled boxers in the big media ring, glaring at each other from their respective neutral corners, and then raining rhetorical spitballs, as they move, night after night, to the center of the big canvas:  American cable television.

Typically, there’s been a lot of reaction.

Sssssnnnnnnorrrrrrrre !!!

Koppel furrowed mightily about the underlying threat to the Republic if trends (in place and quite profitable for a helluva long time, thanks) continued, led by O’Reilly/Olbermann, Beck/Maher, Limbaugh/Stewart food fights.

BUT !!!!

It may be The Big Media Story is way ahead of Ted and all these other clowns, at least in terms of the dire state of cable itself.

From the Financial Times, 11/18/10:

“The number of people subscribing to US cable television services has suffered its biggest decline in 30 years as younger, tech-savvy viewers lead an exodus to web-based operations, such as Hulu and Netflix.” *

• Total number of subscribers to cable and satellite in the third quarter:  down by 119,000
• Compared to gain of 346,000 in the third quarter of 2009
• Net falloff in subscribers in the third quarter of 2010:  741,000

“The figures suggest that ‘cord-cutting’ – one of the pay-TV industry’s biggest fears – is becoming a reality as viewers drift to web-based platforms.”

• Online subscription services now priced at $7.99 per month (Hulu and Netlfix)
• Hulu’s revenue up over $130 million this year compared to last (Hulu owned jointly by News Corp., Disney, and NBC Universal)

“Research from The Diffusion Group, a technology research company, found that more than a third of iPad users were likely to cancel their pay-TV subscriptions in the next six months.”

* Source:  SNL Kagan