I’m not going to link to them, but this week the Mighty Wurlitzer has decided to take a few shots at Al Gore’s eco-credibility by snarking his heavy travel and “investigating” the fact that he owns two large homes. John Tierny was up first, working the story on the op-ed page of the Times on Tuesday; now USAToday is in on the act pushing a snotty hit piece by a Hoover Institute researcher with a book on “moral hypocrisy.”
I expected this earlier, frankly, but now that it’s afoot, it’s a wearying reminder of the willfully stupid, archly insipid approach that a lot of purportedly “objective” journalists take toward politicians on the left. Not that some people don’t deserve it, or that there isn’t insipid commentary going both directions. But let’s face it: from Coulter/Savage to Russert/Matthews on the credibility scale, this treatment is institutionally geared to undermine Democrats, particularly when they’re getting traction with the public on issues that might inconvenience the corporate lifeforms from which the media icons sustain themselves.
It’ll be a dark dose of schadenfreude when these water carriers are bailing out their beachfront property. (In real life, of course, they’ll have long since sold off and moved to higher ground; that would be the physical higher ground, not the moral.)
The real problem is that this attack-fluff clogs the channels we should be using to distribute real information and conduct real debate. Making hay out of Al Gore’s supposed hypocrisy (which I’d welcome if they were to do it honestly, but that ain’t happening) is truly hilarious considering the routine culture of free passes handed out by corporate media to all kinds of conservative bad actors, from regular snakes to outright criminals. When you see this kind of thing, it’s nothing more than evidence of the Right working the refs and throwing stink bombs. And it shows pretty clearly that when they can’t win an argument for real (or lose one with dignity), the only thing they can do is lie and call people names. It’s high time for some adults to stand up and send these cry-babies to bed.
Stink Bombs
I’m not going to link to them, but this week the Mighty Wurlitzer has decided to take a few shots at Al Gore’s eco-credibility by snarking his heavy travel and “investigating” the fact that he owns two large homes. John Tierny was up first, working the story on the op-ed page of the Times on Tuesday; now USAToday is in on the act pushing a snotty hit piece by a Hoover Institute researcher with a book on “moral hypocrisy.”
I expected this earlier, frankly, but now that it’s afoot, it’s a wearying reminder of the willfully stupid, archly insipid approach that a lot of purportedly “objective” journalists take toward politicians on the left. Not that some people don’t deserve it, or that there isn’t insipid commentary going both directions. But let’s face it: from Coulter/Savage to Russert/Matthews on the credibility scale, this treatment is institutionally geared to undermine Democrats, particularly when they’re getting traction with the public on issues that might inconvenience the corporate lifeforms from which the media icons sustain themselves.
It’ll be a dark dose of schadenfreude when these water carriers are bailing out their beachfront property. (In real life, of course, they’ll have long since sold off and moved to higher ground; that would be the physical higher ground, not the moral.)
The real problem is that this attack-fluff clogs the channels we should be using to distribute real information and conduct real debate. Making hay out of Al Gore’s supposed hypocrisy (which I’d welcome if they were to do it honestly, but that ain’t happening) is truly hilarious considering the routine culture of free passes handed out by corporate media to all kinds of conservative bad actors, from regular snakes to outright criminals. When you see this kind of thing, it’s nothing more than evidence of the Right working the refs and throwing stink bombs. And it shows pretty clearly that when they can’t win an argument for real (or lose one with dignity), the only thing they can do is lie and call people names. It’s high time for some adults to stand up and send these cry-babies to bed.
This entry was posted on August 10, 2006 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Color Commentary, Kabuki, Misdirection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.