Mainstream Media At Work

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose

Today is election day in some parts of the country and the mainstream media is poised to tell us what it all means – unless it doesn’t mean that, in which case they’ll still tell us.

Or they might tell us that just because it looks like the results don’t mean much is the exact reason they do mean a great deal. If fact, the only rock-ribbed certainty about today’s election is that the mainstream media will tell us something – after all, it’s what they’re paid to do.

Hopes that whatever we will be told might have some connection to what actually happened are merely naïve and betray no understanding of the principles that made mainstream media what it is today.

The most sacred of these principles is that no matter what, you gotta fill the space around the ads. If you don’t do that, you’ll lose audience, and losing audience means losing advertisers, which – steady yourselves for the unthinkable – means losing money.

Devotion to the Sacred Principle is what has driven the endless coverage of what amounts to two ho-hum governorships (New Jersey and Virginia) one gay marriage referendum (Maine) and the 23^rd Congressional District of New York, which no one, including many who lived there, had much noticed before.

In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine of the Fat Wallet and Bald Pate is being challenged by Republican Chris Christie, who has hair and carries with him a memento of every donut in his life. An Independent, Christopher J. Daggett, is challenging both. Most popular sentiment seems to favor None of The Above, alas not on the ballot.

In Virginia, Republican Robert F. McDonnell seems to be running comfortably ahead of Democrat R. Creigh Deeds in a race that distinguishes itself in that unlike New Jersey, the winner might actually have the support of a majority of the voters.

And in that New York congressional race, the Republican withdrew to endorse her Democratic opponent after the full-moon madness of the Limbaugh/Palin GOP suggested that policy debates with Democrats would be squeezed out by time spent fighting off the RRR (Rabid Republican Right). To which Rush Limbaugh responded in elevated fashion by allegations of bestiality involving RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).

As for Maine, the legislature had earlier passed a law permitting gay marriage and the question on the ballot seeks to repeal that. Ayup.

All of which wouldn’t amount to much ad-padding, whether in print, on the air or on the web, assuming any of it was important enough to mention in a sane world, or even the mainstream media world.

So if there’s an election in your neck of the woods today, please go vote. Never mind the candidates or the issues. Even the mainstream media can’t tell us what your vote means if you don’t cast one.

Then learn the next day why you did what you did or didn’t do what you did or did what you didn’t because you wouldn’t or couldn’t as only the seers of the mainstream media can tell.

Bet you can hardly wait.

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Mainstream Media Shocked!

Stunner: Obama Is Black!

President Barack Obama is black, a stunned mainstream media discovered last weekend, followed by the equally-shattering news that racism is alive, well and getting elected to Congress.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote in Sunday’s editions that “boy” was the unspoken third word when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson bellowed “You lie!” during the president’s health care address.

In the world of red states and necks, “boy” is the preferred white term of reference for a black male of whatever age. It’s employed by any white with an age higher than they can count and an IQ not challenging that counting limit.

As Dowd and other have reported, Congressman Wilson wanted to keep the Confederate battle flag flying atop South Carolina’s capitol and has been a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Letting the Sons of Confederate Veterans speak for themselves, their website says: “The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution.”

Right -- the 1776 revolution was about “all men are created equal,” while the second revolution was preserving the liberty of some men to deny that equality to others, which showed America’s best qualities.

To mainstream media, this theme from Wilson’s past was a horrible discovery. They didn’t – and don’t – understand Wilson’s constituents, those weren’t sins, they were qualifications. Good ones. As in Good Old Boy.

So last weekend marked the mainstream media discovering that the racism they declared dead in Obama’s ”post-racial” election is alive and well. They also discovered that never mind the stated excuse of birthers, anti-socialists, death-panel alarmists and others, most of the opposition to Obama and his programs springs from the politics of pigmentation.

As in the President of the United States of America is black and some Americans don’t like, can’t like and ain’t ever going to like black people.

Or immigrant people.

Or educated people, rich people, Jewish people, Not My Sect Christian people, or any other poor folk who happen to get slopped by that mental mud.

Well, this has been hard for mainstream media to bear, but they are struggling mightily with their burden and some say they look forward to new challenges as they rush to educate their waiting audience about their newly discovered truths.

Of course one of their new challenges is that the audience they’re rushing to educate is increasingly not there.

And another is that whether there for the media or not, almost all the audience knew those truths since they were old enough walk, talk and hate like grownups.

But please don’t tell the mainstream media about that just yet.

After last weekend’s thunderbolt, they need some time to regroup.

Hell, they were just barely recovering from those disturbing facts about Santa Claus.

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Michael Jackson and

Things of Importance

Things of great importance may have happened Thursday, but few will have been noticed, let alone remembered because Michael Jackson died at 50.

The pop culture creation’s death goaded mainstream media to grab public attention by the throat like a dog killing a squirrel, driving attention away from just about anything else.

Shortly before midnight on Thursday the New York Times website was running nine Jackson stories, slide shows or other links. For MSNBC, the count was seven. The splash page for The Associated Press at hosted.ap.org limited itself to two Michael Jackson stories, but over at CNN.com, there were ten links, as at The Drudge Report. The Washington Post web page also sported ten links. I stopped counting there.

This wasn’t the death of a Gandhi or Churchill or Mother Theresa. Lynn Elber of the AP had the context right: “Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.”

So about a quarter-century ago, this guy was very, very hot. And then he had some troubles, including allegations of molesting boys and financial woes, but he was hoping for a comeback run starting July 13 in London.

So what makes his death from a suspected cardiac arrest at 50 worth all the hyper-attention?

The answer seems pretty clear. The media is in mourning for one of its creations. Jackson had talent, but it was the media following first his every success and then his every bizarre twist and decline that both made Jackson what he became and revealed the mainstream media for what it has become.

For both, good beginnings. For Jackson, a premature end.

For the mainstream media, one more demonstration that its self-congratulatory and studied devotion to news in the public interest can be vanquished at a moment’s notice by news in the service of pandering for profits.

A sad day all around.

There will be others.

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