Stupid is as Stupid Does

Who decides who's smart anyway? Apparently the media does. The same media decided that Obama, who can only speak from a teleprompter, was a genius, and Sarah Palin, was a dunce. The same media decided that Bush was a moron, and Al Gore, who recently informed us that the pole would be gone in 5 years, was and is a misunderstood prophet of our time.

This power of the press to anoint some as geniuses and others as fools, would be slightly more credibile if the media itself didn't constantly show off its own stupidity for all to see.

It's only natural that many anchormen would confuse Obama's ability to get fashionably dressed and read stuff off a teleprompter, with intelligence. After all it's pretty much what they do for a living.

And embracing deficit spending is natural enough for news corporations like the New York Times, which were busy spending themselves into bankruptcy. No wonder the Times loves the idea of "shovel ready" infrastructure projects, having built a white elephant of a headquarters that they're now being forced to unload on anyone who will take it.

You can't expect media organizations which match Obama's worst habits to criticize his own faults, which are after all their own faults as well. The problem of course is that the New York Times can declare bankruptcy and sell its headquarters, but who exactly can the United States sell its infrastructure too?

Thanks to the endless parade of bailouts, bad corporate behavior has now morphed into bad government policy, and Obama's national socialism allows him to promote the worst in both capitalism and socialism. But corporations can go bankrupt, America can't.

The media that refused to question the same bad Wall Street behavior that they're now busy condemning, still doesn't have a clue. Not even when it comes to their own future.

Network newscast viewership is down. Major newspapers are folding, others are scrambling to avoid oblivion. Online viewership and ad revenues are not compensating for the losses in circulation. The writing isn't on the front page anymore, it's on the wall. And what it all means is that the "smartest people in the room" can't even save their own medium, but continue to presume that they're smarter than the rest of us, and can tell us how to save America.

The media hydra's manifold pundits and editorial writers, talking heads, anchormen and assorted smug know-it-alls, insist that they have all the answers for us-- but as it turns out they don't even have the answers for themselves.

Ask a New York Times columnist on what America needs to do in foreign policy, economic policy, national health care or just about anything, and he'll be happy to give you a detailed answer. Ask him what the major print media papers need to do to survive another decade, and you're likely to get a frustrated glare and some mumbled comments about the importance of the internet.

In the 20th century, the fourth estate became a serious proposition booming their message across a collection of mediums, radio, newspapers and television. Their paternalistic and later matriarchal voices told Americans what was best for them, which by the latter half of the 20th century, was inevitably what liberals felt was best. It was less Father Knows Best, than Anchorman Knows Best.

Obama is at once their great triumph and their failure. His careful management and control of the press is a reminder that the revolution eats its own, and that a tyrant is most paranoid about those who helped him reach power.

The 2008 election may be the last time that anyone seriously listens to the press anymore. With major newspapers going out of business or switching to online only editions, the twilight of the press is here. The picture isn't that much better for network news. CBS's Katie Couric gamble blew up in their faces, a gamble symptomatic of a once prestigious newscast desperate to salvage something from the looming spectre of its own irrelevance.

As network news viewership falls and age demographics rise, CBS, NBC and ABC newscasts are to be marked by the same tombstones currently rising over major newspapers. And newsmagazines aren't far behind either. Especially since Time Warner continues to be in big trouble.

When 2012 rolls around, it's unclear how many of the present day media mega-corporations will even be around. Stupid is as stupid does, and the same media giants which helped bring down America into this disaster, will at the very least achieve some measure of justice by pulling themselves down as well.