I have officially given up on the so-called mainstream media (MSM). I used to watch “Meet the Press” and “This Week,” and even CNN and MSNBC, with a faint hope that they were going to come around at some point. That they would realize they were not doing their job and actually start reporting on reality rather than what they are spoon-fed by the conservative noise machine. But that hope is now gone. Luckily, it has been replaced by something else.
Before I get to the future, let me finish off the past. This week I was watching “Meet the Press” (hopefully for the last time) and to paraphrase a bad Britney Spears song, “Oops, they did it again.” They had on Kate O’Beirne, an unapologetic conservative hack who is the Washington Editor for the National Review, and she set the table for every single discussion.
There was no liberal or progressive or even moderate counterview. Just bunch of journalistic yes-men who would nod in agreement to everything she said. Let’s call them the nattering nabobs of mediocrity.
O’Beirne would say John Roberts is a well-qualified candidate for the Supreme Court who will be confirmed easily. The nabobs would bob their head in agreement. O’Beirne would say John Bolton will be appointed to the United Nations by the President because the administration has given the Democrats months to adequately go over his record. The nabobs would bob their head in acquiescence. Yes ma'am, may we have another?
Not a peep about how the White House has not turned over the records on John Bolton that Democrats have been waiting for months. Not a peep about how Bolton brazenly lied to the Senate about a State Department investigation on fixing of intelligence. Not a peep about how John Roberts views on fundamental rights of Americans is completely out of whack with what the average American thinks. This Supreme Court candidate might not even believe in a right to privacy and the nabobs just bob along – oh yeah, he’ll definitely be confirmed.
Don’t you get it? They’re trying to make the confirmation look like a done deal, so that when the Democrats argue against it, they will seem like whiners. This is exactly what they did with the 2000 election. Conservative talking heads come out and say that George Bush won and Al Gore is just being a sore loser. All the mainstream boobs go along and next thing you know Al Gore is pressured to concede in a statistical tie. We find out later that if all of the votes in Florida had been counted, Gore would have been president. And the nabobs bob like a bunch of fools (what would you call someone who is constantly being fooled, but a fool?).
This could be excused in 2000 because the Republican game plan was relatively new. Honestly, I didn’t even know what was going on at the time. But now after five brutal years of the same tricks over and over, and the mainstream media still hasn’t caught on. They still won’t put on any experts, pundits or opinion makers who represent half the country that voted for John Kerry. They believe only the conservative pundits are “legitimate.” And they follow along on every one of their talking points.
And we haven’t even gotten to the Karl Rove leak scandal yet. When they finally get to this story on “Meet the Press,” all the nattering nabobs of mediocrity trot out the same line – we have to wait and see.
Then O’Beirne begins the inevitable attack on the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. Not one word in defense of this impeccable public servant from the nabobs. They agree he has taken too long (because Ken Starr was lightening quick in his investigation, right?). They agree that poor Judy Miller has suffered too long in jail because of Fitzgerald’s decisions. They let O’Beirne throw another shocking piece of misinformation out there -- the White House might have nothing to do with the scandal. No response, as usual.
Karl Rove has already admitted to revealing Valerie Plame’s identity to a reporter! Would anyone like to mention that?! He is indisputably involved in the leak and should be fired immediately based on the President’s earlier pledge and a pledge Rove himself signed when first came to the White House.
It’s like watching the Twilight Zone. I wonder if I’m being punk’d – if they’ve set up cameras inside my apartment to capture my frustration and they will reveal at the end that they were kidding and purposely not mentioning the truth, or anything related to the truth, just to egg me on.
Now, I could give you hundreds of these examples over the last couple of years on dozens of different television shows. This just happens to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Unless we find out Kate O’Beirne is a dominatrix who these MSM journalists are paying for some very public S&M, I’m done with them. They are useless.
Any attempt to win these MSM guys over is hopeless. They are so far buried up conservative Washington’s ass, they can’t see straight. I don’t like to personally insult people; generally, it’s not helpful. But in this case, there’s no way around it – Tim Russert is a tool.
This is literal. He is being used as a tool by the conservative noise machine to validate their message. Hence, his program has become a pitiable exercise in propaganda confirmation. It’s not "Meet the Press" anymore, it’s "Meet the Patsies."
So, what are we to do now that we have given up on the mainstream media? Luckily, the world is changing – and there is a whole new media. Five million people watched the Live 8 concert on AOL -- that’s five times higher than the average daily viewers of Fox News Channel, or in other words, their whole weekday schedule.
I know my demographic is not representative of the whole country. But the number of people I know that use Yahoo are about a hundred times higher than the people who watch the Sunday morning talk shows. Do you know anyone who doesn’t use Google? Ask those same people who the guests were on the cable news shows yesterday. Any chance they know?
My idea is a very simple one. Let’s turn our attention to the new media and fight the battle for tomorrow there, instead of fighting the battle of yesterday on the mainstream media. Let’s build our own infrastructure, as the conservatives did for decades on radio and then on cable television. And when the conservatives and the MSM wake up one day, they will find our entire navy in the Golden Horn.
Let me explain. Many generations ago, one of my great-great-great (etc.) grandparents was the Admiral of the Ottoman Navy when they were trying to conquer Constantinople (I want to make clear that this could be an apocryphal family story, but which is nonetheless fun and apropos).
The ruler of the Ottomans at the time was the great Fatih Sultan Mehmet. He wanted Constantinople and put a lot of pressure on my great-grandpa (let’s call him that for brevity’s sake) to figure out a way to get the job done. Conquering Constantinople would be a cinch if you could get your ships into the Golden Horn, which was the body of water in the middle of the city. But no one could conquer the city because there was a chain across the narrow strait leading into the Golden Horn. No ships could pass.
So my great-grandpa, came up with this novel idea – let’s pass our ships over the land so that we can bypass the chain. This seemed impossible at first, but then they realized that if they greased wooden tracks and slipped the ships over them, they could actually pull it off. And after all their preparations were done, one night they passed the entire Ottoman fleet by land into the middle of the Golden Horn.
The Byzantines woke up and the Ottoman Navy was staring straight at them. Their surrender was immediate. They didn’t know what had hit them.
I am suggesting that the narrow strait is the mainstream media, the greased wooden tracks are the new media, we are the Ottomans and they are the Byzantines. We have always assumed that we have to pass the chain blocking the Golden Horn. But today I propose to you that we don’t. That if we adequately prepare and use the new tools to our advantage, we can pass our ships into position in the middle of night. And when they awaken, our entire fleet will be parked right in the middle of tomorrow … and they won’t know what hit them.
The only thing left to say will be, “The old media is dead, long live the new media!”