Washington Post conservative columnist, Kathleen Parker is one of those rare righties who's stepped away from the dance of death of the conservative movement, and has been trashed by same for doing so.
(Embarrassed as a conservative, Parker dared publicly ask that the laughably unprepared Sarah Palin step down as vice presidential candidate after the series of devastating interviews that made her the butt of national jokes).
Movement conservatives emasculated Parker, and it's about to happen again.
We on the left can be happy that Rush has filled (with the gleeful aid of the Democrats) the vacuum at the top of the GOP, but Parker writes Sunday that Rush and talk radio has done their damage, but it's more than mere existential politics, it's structural to the Republic.
She writes that the "driveby punditry" by non-journalists like Limbaugh and others "... have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and ... blame the current news crisis on bias."
They have convinced dittoheads that there is no need for newspapers, and therefore: news gathering. It's the audacious idea that somehow hearing political POV they agree with hilariously delivered is a substitute for daily "boots-on-the-ground grub work that produces the news stories and performs the government watchdog role so crucial to a democratic republic."
That anyone would stop reading the newspaper and take up instead the pompous trumpetry of a fully-inflated, political whoopee cushion like Rush Limbaugh has always amazed us, but you can hear such proud folks dittoing Sean Hannity and Limbaugh every day.
Constant criticism of the "elite media" is comical to most reporters, whose paychecks wouldn't cover Limbaugh's annual dry cleaning bill. The truly elite media are the people most Americans have never heard of -- the daily-grind reporters who turn out for city council and school board meetings. Or the investigative teams who chase leads for months to expose abuse or corruption.
These are the champions of the industry, not the food-fighters on TV or the grenade throwers on radio. Or the bloggers (with a few exceptions), who may be excellent critics and fact-checkers, but who rely on newspapers to provide their material.
Sure, there's more to the problems of the news industry than the ignorance encouraged by talk radio...
There is surely room for media criticism, and a few bad actors in recent years have badly frayed public trust. And, yes, some newspapers are more liberal than their readership and do a lousy job of concealing it.
The internets will fill this void, but it'll take some time. What can come in between is more demagoguery pawned off as news, and perhaps a permanent back-fill of the newshole with partisan bullshit and infotaining blanc mange.
As others have noted, the Internet can't quickly enough fill the void created by lost newspapers. In time, some markets simply won't have a town crier -- and then who will go to all those meetings where news is made? What will people not know? In such a vacuum, gossip rules the mob.
What Limbaugh and his many Dori's and Lars, and Seans and Michaels (Savage, and Medved) have cynically done to the national discourse, the trust in the principle of journalism in a free country, which has help shrive the fact-seeking business may be irreparable.
We hope they choke on the fat sandwich their self-aggrandizing irresponsible corner of show business has afforded them.
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