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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Contempt for the audience

Contempt for the audience

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I still haven’t recovered from the one-two punch of the David Brooks hippie-punching manifesto on the dignity of the tea baggers and Time magazine’s Glenn Beck-fluffing cover piece.

What bothers me most about both pieces is the contempt that the authors have for their audience. Everyone knows that print media is dying and that it will end not with a bang but with a 3000 word whine about how much we’re going to miss it. I wonder this, though: has an industry ever thrived while having as much contempt for its customers as national print media does?

Here’s the author of the Beck piece on his comparison between Olbermann and Beck:

“I haven’t seen Keith Olbermann for at least a year and a half,” the Time writer said. “And I’ve never seen Rachel Maddow. I have four children and a wife. I don’t sit around watching cable TV. I don’t understand why anybody watches any of these shows. I know what these opinions are based on: they’re based on nothing.”

In other words, fuck you, you’re a loser for ever having watched these show, important people like me have better things to do, just keep buying my magazine.

And with Brooks…where do you even start? His stock-in-trade is shitting on “progressive elites”, but who does he think reads his books and columns? Who does he think watches him and E. J. jerk each other off on the Snooze Hour? Who does he think, in effect, pays his salary?

Reader Interactions

111Comments

  2. 2.

    JK

    The thing that was doubly bad about David Brooks on the NewsHour last night was Ruth Marcus acting as his sock puppet and agreeing with virtually everything he said.

  3. 3.

    The Saff

    Yeah, I was irritated when I got the mail today and saw that scumbag Beck on the cover of my issue of Time. Don’t know if I’ll be able to read it though.

  4. 4.

    asiangrrlMN

    Because it doesn’t fucking matter. No matter what kind of shit they write, they will get paid. Even the liberal NYT…I can’t say that, even in jest.

    I’m tired of waiting for print media to die. How can we help?

  6. 6.

    Incertus

    Man, how do I get a gig like that? Look, I love teaching and all, but I suspect these folks are making considerably more than I am for pumping out this sort of crap. I can sell out too! Just make me a fucking offer!

  7. 7.

    eemom

    tiny correction: it is Mark Shields, not EJ Dionne, that Bobo jerks off with on NewsHour. And I take issue with calling Dionne a jerk off — he’s one of three remaining intelligent life forms on the WaPo op ed page, the other two being Eugene Robinson and Harold Myerson.

    That said, I totally agree. Particularly about that simpering twit Ruth Marcus.

  8. 8.

    D0n Camillo

    Well once Time Magazine goes belly up he’ll have plenty of time to spend with his kids and catch up with Olbermann and Maddow.

  10. 10.

    El Cruzado

    has an industry ever thrived while having as much contempt for its customers as national print media does?

    You mean, other than health insurance?

  12. 12.

    licensed to kill time

    “I haven’t seen Keith Olbermann for at least a year and a half,” the Time writer said. “And I’ve never seen Rachel Maddow. I have four children and a wife. I don’t sit around watching cable TV. I don’t understand why anybody watches any of these shows. I know what these opinions are based on: they’re based on nothing.”

    Well, I guess I know what the Time writers’ opinion is based on, too.

  14. 14.

    dr. luba

    @The Saff:

    Yeah, I was irritated when I got the mail today and saw that scumbag Beck on the cover of my issue of Time. Don’t know if I’ll be able to read it though.

    I used to have a similar problem until Time produced the Ann Coulter issue. I called up an cancelled. Life has been oh so much sweeter since. Newsweek fills my need to read a newsweekly (to keep up with da kulture without having to read People or such dreck), and, since CSM went to a weekly format, I now have intelligent coverage and commentary on the news of the world.

    P.S. Preview? You folks have preview? I still only have submit…… (Ooops–it appears only after submission.)

  15. 15.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Who does he think watches him and E. J. jerk each other off on the Snooze Hour?

    I take it this is a bash on The News Hour and Dionne, again.

    It is not warranted for either, The News Hour is about the last venue to get some in depth straight news, and Dionne is liked almost universally by liberals and you are wrong to persistently smear him on the front page of this fine blog, IMO/

    That is all.

  17. 17.

    Darius

    Honestly, I’m just surprised how Brooks can get away with writing an article lambasting black celebrities for being uppity “immodest” and then follow that up with an article arguing that the teabaggers aren’t racist because they bought food from black food stands.

    “Moderate”, my ass.

  18. 18.

    Glen Tomkins

    Pure BS

    Grave philosphers now distinguish between BS and mere lies. A lie is a falsehood told with intent to deceive the hearer, while with BS, a more complicated dance is going on. The BSer will tell you something that he knows to be untrue, which is similar to what the liar does, but he’s different in that he doesn’t really expect you to believe the BS. The motivation to lie, some benefit the liar gains through a successful deception, is fairly straightforward, but what’s going on with BS can be maddeningly elusive.

    That maddening elusiveness is a feature, not a bug, since one common use of BS is simply to madden the victim in a way that denies any satifying outlet by denying any effective response. You can’t get at the BSer who wrote the Beck piece in the simple, honest and direct way you would respond to someone who had put Olbermann and Beck in the same boat out of ignorance, or as part of a deliberate lie. You respond to either of those two cases by bringing up facts, and making arguments that refute the similarity. Confront a BSer, like this author, and you’re told that the facts of the case don’t matter, that you couldn’t seriously expect that someone of the author’s standing would spend any of his time wallowing in the facts pertinent to this case, and actually watching any of the TV programs of Beck or Olbermann. Our author is too meta for that, and shouldn’t you feel appropriately put in your place as one of the great unwashed for being familiar with, or caring about, this sort of phenomenon.

  20. 20.

    asiangrrlMN

    @JK: I’m worried about you. I think it’s time for you to step back from traditional media before you explode into a thousand pieces. Watch a game or something!

  21. 21.

    DougJ

    The News Hour is about the last venue to get some in depth straight news, and Dionne is liked almost universally by liberals and you are wrong to persistently smear him on the front page of this fine blog, IMO/

    You may be right. I don’t have any very good reasons for saying what I said about either.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    Who does he think, in effect, pays his salary?

    In effect? “The Barony”. Defined as the HR office of any one of a small, like-minded cadre of Serious Media Corporations, supplemented by Serious Political Cadres, that keep Brooks’ card in their Serious Pundit rolodexes. (And, yes, Bobo still thinks of their CV-search facilities as a rolodex.) Brooks conceives himself as a liar for hire professional whose job is to reassure those powerful enough to pay for his services that they are making all the best and wisest choices, not least in their decision to pay David Brooks to tell them how wise, realistic and insightful they are.

    What, you think Brooks has ever had some concept of a “responsibility” towards his “readers” not to lie about everything? What are you, some kind of DFH? ! ?

  24. 24.

    cleek

    Who does he think watches him and E. J. jerk each other off on the Snooze Hour? Who does he think, in effect, pays his salary?

    self-hating libtards! duh!

    oh, look at me, editing my comments! i’m dead sexy! ooouugh!

  25. 25.

    Leelee for Obama

    I rarely read Time, unless Tumulty has an article someone mentions. I don’t like the way the MSM has been going for so long, it gets me down just wondering where to get someinformation. It’s a blessing to be able to filter the BS, but I’ve been doing that most of my life, with fairly good results. The sad thing is that it’s necessary to have that attachment, the BS filter. It is too bad that the print-media have decided to hasten their demise by being such tools. But, if their demise is inevitable, maybe that’s a kindness. One wonders if we’ll have much left to work from, though.

  26. 26.

    Mr Furious

    “I haven’t seen Keith Olbermann for at least a year and a half,” the Time writer said. “And I’ve never seen Rachel Maddow.

    Then why the fuck did you get this assignment?

  27. 27.

    jm

    “I wonder this, though: has an industry ever thrived while having as much contempt for its customers as national print media does?’

    Seriously? The readers of David Brooks are decidedly not The Times’ customers. They are the product sold by The Times to its actual customers, the businesses purchasing advertising space on its pages and website.

    The sooner one recognizes this simple reality, the more sense The Times makes.

  28. 28.

    JK

    @DougJ:

    You’re welcome. Once upon a time, Alexander Cockburn and Christopher Hitchens used to be two of my favorite political commentators. I have major disagreements with both of them now, but I still respect their intellect and admire their prose styles.

  29. 29.

    r€nato

    Then why the fuck did you get this assignment?

    Joe Klein was busy covering national security issues about which he can’t be bothered to do the research before forming an opinion?

  30. 30.

    Shell

    I don’t understand. He says he doesn’t watch Olbermann and had never watched Maddow. Does he admit to taking the time out of his precious schedule to watch Beck, the guy he’s doing this piece on?

    Is this some journalistic belief that if you assign a writer to a topic/person that he has contempt for, it makes for a more honest piece?

  32. 32.

    Mike P

    @eemom: That was a good column, but, of course, Herbert doesn’t coin “witty” terms like “bobo’s” so nobody takes him seriously. That and the fact that his opinion on this topic will be deemed invalid since he’s black.

  33. 33.

    Warren Terra

    @ JK, #1
    I didn’t follow your link, but you’ll perhaps pardon me if I find it ironic that in response to a post about writers who abuse their readers you recommend a piece by the execrable Cockburn.

  34. 34.

    gil mann

    Dionne is liked almost universally by liberals

    Oh, I like the guy, but he sucks at his job. If a haberdasher were to sit there nodding while Brooks does his “extremists on both sides” routine, no big deal, because he’s a haberdasher, not a guy who expresses liberal opinions for a living.

  35. 35.

    JK

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Overexposure to the MSM is the very least of my problems right now, but I appreciate your comments. I have my outlets: love movies, BookTV, certain tv series, baseball, football, and music too.

    When you have time you should explore the TED website. It’s full of great lectures.

  36. 36.

    licensed to kill time

    @r€nato:

    When you hit submit, there are two colored buttons that appear at the bottom to either edit or delete your comment, with a line counting down the time you have left to do so. (Are you on a mobile device? maybe it doesn’t work on those?)

  37. 37.

    tc125231

    Who pays his salary? The rich and powerful. Everybody needs somebody to sincerely justify the inexcusable.

  38. 38.

    vg

    In other words, fuck you, you’re a loser for ever having watched these show …

    Well, actually, you are a loser for ever having watched those shows. The man’s just tellin’ it like it is.

  39. 39.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @DougJ:

    I didn’t mean to imply that Dionne is an angel because like every pundit and blog commenter like moi, says stupid things from time to time and deserve criticism in kind.

    He does live in the “conventional wisdom” village media bubble, but all things being equal has mostly kept his mind right is all, as compared to too many other intellectually lazy liberal pundits who suck daily on the shallow sound bite tit.

  40. 40.

    JK

    @Warren Terra:

    I have major disagreements with Alexander Cockburn, but there are times when I think he hits the nail on the head. I believe that particular column is one such example.

  41. 41.

    demimondian

    @asiangrrlMN: Do you really want an answer to that? If so, here it is.

    Advertise on the Web.

    If you’re running display ads, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all have programs which will help you reach your target audience with high penetration and low expense. For obvious reasons, Google’s is the best (the fact that I was one of the original engineers on Ad Planner having *nothing* to do with that, of course) When vendors run effectiveness studies, they find that Google has an ROI of between five and fifty times that of print media in the display space.

    If you’re running text ads, use Google or Microsoft or a third party server. Direct response ads are much more effective than newspaper classifieds or other print advertisements. They are also effective at establishing and/or maintaining a brand.

    Finally, if you’re running a classified, use Craig’s List. They own the space now, and they, more than anything else, are the reason the papers are all dying.

    Meanwhile, please — help print find its level.

  42. 42.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @JK:

    I have my outlets: love movies, BookTV, certain tv series, baseball, football, and music too.

    I hear ya. But when all else fails I just Fire the Clown Cannon till everything makes sense again. If you need the link, just say. I’d post it now, but there are clown cannon addicts around and I don’t want to feed their habit.

  43. 43.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I’m tired of waiting for print media to die. How can we help?

    Nuke them from orbit, shoot any survivors that make it out of ground zero, and sow the fields with salt when the radioactivity levels decay to semi-tolerable levels.

    It is the only way to be sure.

    Personally, I’d rather do the TV folks first, then wait and see how the print media react after sending them the message “you’re next”.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @eemom:

    He also has something to say about Carter which I never knew, and was disappointed to learn.

    Well, yeah, but he said it over 30 years ago. I’ve never heard that Habitat for Humanity insists on only building houses in segregated neighborhoods.

  52. 52.

    JK

    @eemom:

    As ususal, Bob Herbert’s column is great. I wish he’d get half the face time on tv that David Brooks currently receives.

  55. 55.

    Nutella

    “I haven’t seen Keith Olbermann for at least a year and a half,” the Time writer said. “And I’ve never seen Rachel Maddow.”

    This reminds me of another Time writer:

    I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who’s right.

    Willful ignorance must be required to get hired at Time.

  56. 56.

    BerkeleyMom

    I’m tired of waiting for the print media to die too. How can we help?? I say convene a death panel. Many of these papers/magazines have been brain dead for far too long.

    Glenn Beck sticking his tongue out at all of us while inside the mag he complains about the decline of America? Really?

  57. 57.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    If I’m taking a dump and all I have on hand in the stall are the National Enquirer and Time mags, I’ll wipe with Time. Every time. :)

    The only print media I subscribe to are Car Craft and Hot Rod.

  58. 58.

    Mark S.

    [Beck] is a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies — if he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn’t, necessarily; he’s just asking questions. He’s just sayin’.

    Does Von Drehle molest children when he’s not watching MSNBC? I don’t believe that, necessarily; I’m just asking questions. I’m just sayin’.

  59. 59.

    Joshua Norton

    I have yet to feel insulted by the term “liberal elitist”. Does everybody else? Am I missing something?

    If I’m supposed to feel shame for knowing I’m better than those brain dead fart sacks and wingnuts then toss another coin in the wishing well, ’cause it ain’t working.

  67. 67.

    JenJen

    I can’t get over that Time Magazine blowjob for Glenn Beck. I mean, really. It’s shameless!

    One thing I’ve noticed DougJ, is that you and I tend to get hung up on exactly the same things. I’m glad I’m not alone. I think.

  68. 68.

    demimondian

    @Mnemosyne: Since HfH built a set of houses just down the hill from me, and since Redmond is definitely *not* segregated, I’d say that any such requirement has been long removed.

    update: Oh, look! I’m editing in Chrome on Mac!

  69. 69.

    Janet Strange

    @jm:

    The readers of David Brooks are decidedly not The Times’ customers. They are the product sold by The Times to its actual customers, the businesses purchasing advertising space on its pages and website.

    Thanks for the reminder. It’s interesting how easy it is to forget this, even when you know it. Every once in a while I have to shake myself and say a few times:

    I am not the customer, I am the product.

    My attention is what they are selling.

    They are not selling “news,” or entertainment, or – heaven knows – not reliable information.

    They are selling me to advertisers.

  72. 72.

    Cat Lady

    @JK:

    Shorter MSM – Black people are racist for saying that what they see and hear from whites is racist, but white people are not racist for saying racist things because other white people say that the racist things whites say are not racist.

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    And also this please.

  74. 74.

    Laura W

    @JenJen:

    One thing I’ve noticed DougJ, is that you and I tend to get hung up on exactly the same things. I’m glad I’m not alone. I think.

    In the event you missed this comment of mine to DougJ last night, JenJen, mayhaps the two of you could work something out?

  75. 75.

    M. Bouffant

    If I’m taking a dump and all I have on hand in the stall are the National Enquirer and Time mags, I’ll wipe with Time. Every time. :)

    I beg to differ, while getting your point, of course, but TIME, being so slick & glossy, is not even useful as TP. The National Inquirer, while imparting information more important & factual than TIME, is also more useful as ass-wipe.

    TIME gets a zero in every category.

  76. 76.

    J. Michael Neal

    I have to disagree with the consensus. Olbermann is just like Beck. I agree with him more often, but his approach to the news is every bit as poisonous to rational discussion. Ditto Maddow. If we have to have cable news filled with destructive blather, I guess I’d rather that there be more liberals on the tube, but I’d really prefer that all of them disappear.

  77. 77.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    I have spent the better part of my life around folks with serious mental issues. Both my mother and my brother have been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and borderline personality….which are not pretty.

    Having watched Glenn Beck a few times, I’ve got to say that he exhibits very similar behaviors….the entire world is against him…there are conspiracy theories whereever he looks, the histrionics, and on and on. I am concerned for his mental state….also concerned that a (cough) reputable media outlet would have this obviously unstable person on each night. I am also at a loss as to why a magazine of the calibre of Time would do a puff piece on this man. I know they’ve been around a long time. Did they do a puff piece on Father Coughlin in the 30s?

    Well, no matter. I expect to pick up the paper some morning to find that Glenn imploded on his show the night before in a messy frightening froth.

  78. 78.

    M. Bouffant

    Also: Think of Brooks, et al., as squirming icky worms on hooks, used by media owners to attract us, the fish, who, once we’ve bitten good & hard on the squirming hook, are reeled in & sold to the advertisers.

  81. 81.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    I have to disagree with the consensus. Olbermann is just like Beck. I agree with him more often, but his approach to the news is every bit as poisonous to rational discussion. Ditto Maddow. If we have to have cable news filled with destructive blather, I guess I’d rather that there be more liberals on the tube, but I’d really prefer that all of them disappear.

    There are times when I think Keith is over the line and times when it would be nice to have someone come on his show and disagree with him on something. Both would help his credibility. However, I will always be grateful to one of the first news people to call Bush out over the war. That took guts when few were willing to show any.

    However, I don’t agree with you about Rachel Maddow at all. This is a woman who is so much brighter than most of the news personalities on today that there isn’t even a way to lump her in with others. She knows her stuff, does lots of background research and is willing to bring on those with different views and treat them and their views with respect.

  82. 82.

    M. Bouffant

    Destructive blather? Beck lives in a fantasy world of imaginary conspiracy. Olbermann & Maddow are obviously partisan, but half of their shtick is just pointing out how loony the right is, & mocking crazies like Beck. They aren’t accusing the murals at Rockefeller Center of being communists, or making every possible effort to de-legitimize the gov’t., w/ the desired result being, well, what, exactly?

    Salon has an article on Beck’s inspiration. Tell me Olbermann & Maddow are that wacky or destructive.

  83. 83.

    Mayken

    @eemom: Not terribly surprising that Carter would say those things at that time. He’s since apologized and done a lot of good in the world since.

    The commentators make me much sadder. I don’t know which is worse, that so many white people felt the need to log in and tell a black man there is no more racism in America anymore or the many, many more who actually recommended these comments.

    No, actually the worst ones were the people who say “well, I disagree but since you are black I know you’ve had different experiences so I will try to understand why you see this as racism.” At least the denial can be laughed at. The supposed “reasonable” people need to go spend a few weeks with my mother’s side of the family in backwoods Idaho – teabaggers to a one – and get a good look at the mundane evil of modern day racism.

  84. 84.

    JenJen

    @Laura W: Hmmm. Well, to be honest, I always ended each of my old blog posts with a song lyric, and I had this little system I’d use to choose exactly the right one.

    Interesting…

  85. 85.

    DougJ

    I have to disagree with the consensus. Olbermann is just like Beck.

    Beck is in a category of his own. I don’t think it’s fair to compare Limbaugh and Hannity to Beck. I’m not exaggerating when I say that if you Beck is at 1 and Olbermann is at 10, Limbaugh is at 7. Beck’s views are so far outside the world of reality that he shouldn’t be compared with anyone else on the radio or on tv.

  86. 86.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @M. Bouffant:

    While Time is glossy, all that means is that you have to use the whole mag to get the job done!

    My kid came home from work with a flyer for a teaparty event that was held today down at the harbor. I am going to scan it later and I will post a link, it’s a work of art. Someone was leaving them with the store advertising but the problem is that they put them out today for the event today. Nobody I know here has heard about it being held.

    Great organizing! She was kind enough to throw all the flyers away for them. Store policy!

    Dumbfucks.

  87. 87.

    Blue Martian

    However, I don’t agree with you about Rachel Maddow at all. This is a woman who is so much brighter than most of the news personalities on today that there isn’t even a way to lump her in with others. She knows her stuff, does lots of background research and is willing to bring on those with different views and treat them and their views with respect.

    Indeed.

    Rachel Maddow hosts the most intelligent hour of TV found on any of the cable news networks. She doesn’t ask her guests leading questions (Olbermann), doesn’t interrupt them or talk over them (Matthews) and doesn’t feign neutrality with regards to her position on the political spectrum (O’Reilly).

    And her dismantling of Ridge was epic.

  89. 89.

    bellatrys

    One thing that may delay the death of print media is that they lie like rugs about the number of “eyeballs” they can provide to their advertisers, which has undoubtedly kept them afloat longer than they would otherwise have been able to continue maintaining their star pundits in the style to which they have become accustomed.

    Not all, I suppose (probably) but even taking into account the loose way that circ figures were estimated by the news media auditing outfits means that the best weren’t very good – but plenty of publishers will not count returns off from their distribution numbers, which means that if they’re running around giving away free copies, and those get trashed unread, they’re still counting them as “readers” to their advertisers.

    Then there are ones that are subsidized even when they lose money, like Murdoch’s NY Post iirc.

  90. 90.

    Laura W

    I am watching Project Runway from last Thursday as we speak and they are making the designers use the LA Times as their “fabric” for the challenge.
    I think this has a certain amount of potential.

  91. 91.

    bellatrys

    @Mayken:

    Unfortunately I’m in a position where I don’t dare go into the details, even in a guarded way, so long as I work where I work (sending out the resumes every day) but I saw the most bizarre example of completely unselfconscious wingnut racism-in-denial-of-itself at work this week it blew my mind – it was right up there with the Teabaggers complaining about the Metro not laying on extra trains for them and that TX congresscritter who voted against funding the Metro jumping right on it…

  93. 93.

    Libby

    I stopped reading Brooks and just about everyone on the op-ed side of NYT a long time ago. Didn’t get past page one of the Beck fluffer.

    Don’t read winger blogs anymore either. Just come here and get the snark worthy stuff. My blood pressure has been much better since I quit so I appreciate the people who can read that stuff so I don’t have to.

  94. 94.

    matoko_chan

    Well……Brooks and the rest of the teabagger apologia posse really believe in a sort of fairness….equal time for both sets of memes.
    Unfortunately fairness shouldn’t apply to crazypants.

    But DougJ is right….the Teabagger Demographic is not only uneducated…but sub-literate….they can’t actually read, and they certainly don’t read Brooks…..or anything but Levin and Malkin hystrionics.
    Or they would know that Andy Jackson would have gut shot Beck on sight for a dirty seccessionist, and Thomas Jefferson would have voted for Barack Obama, natural aristoi.

  96. 96.

    bago

    Maddow always lets her guests finish their sentences, thanks everyone profusely, and generally corrects her mistakes.

    Also does not cry.

    Like Beck?

  98. 98.

    chiggins

    I wonder this, though: has an industry ever thrived while having as much contempt for its customers as national print media does?

    The Recording Industry?

  99. 99.

    bellatrys

    @Mayken:

    Thanks, I appreciate the moral support. I don’t exactly live in a “small town” but it often feels like the whole of my small state is one big damn small town. And while there are loads of non-wingnuts here, the industry I’m trapped in has turned out to be just packed full of them due to whatever accident of history and demographics I know not – and they all frigging know each other, which makes the job hunting even more…challenging, shall we say?

    @Libby:

    –Bobo, of course, is both an example of Contempt For The Audience in his own right (and writings) what with his Making Shit Up To Validate My Own Narratives habit, and an example of Contempt For The Audience on the part of his editors, who keep foisting this Maker-Up Of Shit on the world… I’m sure there’s some sort of clever Scholastic-era Latin term that describes such a simultaneous-actor/object-of-action, if only I were a real academic and not a dilettante playing one on the internets!

  100. 100.

    Bob In Pacifica

    I haven’t seen the News Hour in twenty years. And the only Sunday morning talking heads I watch are former football players and coaches talking to current players and coaches.

  101. 101.

    grumpy realist

    The inevitable idiocy of US print media (and Time went down the vacuous hole back in the 70s) has made me appreciate even more the intelligence of the FT and the Economist. I may not agree with all their positions, but at least they’re not insulting my brains on a daily basis.

    Sometimes I think that the entire US print media (and 99% of what’s on TV) has dumbed itself down to a political version of See Spot Run:

    Oh Look!
    See ACORN!
    ACORN very bad.
    Bad, bad ACORN!
    Government defund ACORN.
    Naughty, naughty ACORN.
    We are happy now.

  103. 103.

    tess

    A few years ago, I subscribed to Salon and received a free subscription to Rolling Stone. I’m debating renewing Salon, but I have kept renewing Rolling Stone. It’s one of the last print orgs willing to pay for long investigative news pieces and take a critical look at government. (Taibbi is the cathartic icing on the cake.)

  104. 104.

    Jay C

    @bellatrys:

    While I agree with you 100% about David Brooks and the Contempt For The Audience bit, I don’t think observations like his column on the 9/12 rally would quite fall into the Making-Shit-Up category. Vapid and cliche-ridden, yes. Written with a sneery superior tone, certainly. Misguided and probably incorrect, but not totally the product of Brooks’ imagination.

    Which, of course, isn’t much of an improvement (not much about David Brooks’ columns ever is, really) Making Shit Up, in some cases, might be an improvement over merely applying shopworn platitudes and simpleminded tropes to contemporary movements. But then, in that case, he might have to actually think about and seriously analyze what he’s observing, and condense it down to 800 words. Too much work, obviously.

  105. 105.

    Jason

    I wonder this, though: has an industry ever thrived while having as much contempt for its customers as national print media does?

    Have you ever tried opening a CD or DVD? All that anti-theft shit, the stupid PSAs that open every DVD movie, and they still sue people?

  106. 106.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    Writers such as David Brooks, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and personalities such as the Fox News lineup would want to take a shower after being in the same room with all the “little people” they report on. They’ve all been in the New York/Washington scene so long that they have no idea what these folks are so pissed off about. So, they do what baffled people usually do…they make it up as they go along. Can you see Ann Coulter sitting around having a frosty one with some of the tea-party folks you saw last weekend? I would doubt it, which is a masterpiece of understatement.

    They consider these folks dumb, easily manipulated and beneath them. All these Walmart patrons are fine to scare up, but amusing, at best. There’s where the real contempt is.

  109. 109.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog

    I see how it’s done now, so when I write a lickspittle piece comparing the writings of Rush Limbaugh with the Tipitaka, in the original Pali, of course — and then admit without a particle of shame that I have never read the Tipitaka even in translation — I will finally be given a high-paying job that barely requires me to show up breathing, and medical benefits, instead of having to work so hard for what’s left of my life for so little.

    Thank god for Time.

  110. 110.

    LanceThruster

    I used to get subscriptions to several news magazines regularly but eventually realized their week old stories were no more factual or analytical than the extra lead time might suggest. I got just as much (or as little) picking up a 3 or 4 month old issue in the dentist’s office.

    Depending on what your agenda is, the megaphone is either broken or works just fine. If the standard is truth accuracy and fairness, it should be clear that what is desired by the MSM is merely to give the impression of such. Actually having to deliver it would defeat the whole purpose media control.

  111. 111.

    We Need New Gov't

    “Who does he think reads his books and columns?
    Who does he think watches him and E. J. jerk each other off on the Snooze Hour?”

    National Journal’s panel of Congressional and Political INSIDERS ranked, one-through-five, those columnists, bloggers, and television or radio commentators who Most Help To Shape Their Own Opinion Or Worldview.

    – Thomas “Suck on THIS” Friedman tops the list: w/Over TWICE as many Democrats paying strict attn. to what that hack has to say than Repugs…

    – At #2, AS MANY DEMOCRATS AS RETHUGLICANS SAY David Freakin’ BROOKS “most help(s) to shape their own opinion or worldview”!
    That’s absolutely sickening!

    – Almost TWICE as many Democrats as Repugs praise the rambling idiocies of senile DAVID BRODER!

    God Help Us…

    tinyurl.com/mp94lu

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