Holding Them in Contempt

One is tempted to wonder why the main stream press is so clueless concerning liberal and lefty bloggers' attitude towards the Bush Administration. They seem to assume, without any concern for the reality surrounding them (not least the recent election), that the Executive is entitled to deference simply because it is the Executive. They thus treat the words and actions of the President and his officials as worhty of comment and consideration whether or not any one in the country gives a fig. The disconnect between the press and the public was once, during the impeachment of President Clinton, a matter of some commentary among the press, although then it tended to come down to how little the public understood the weight of the mattes under consideration. Rather than think that, perhaps, the public was wiser than their media and Congressional representatives, they held the public in contempt for their support for President Clinton and disdain for the Congressional Republican witchhunt.

Fast forward eight years and the disconnect between press and administration on one side and the public on the other is not even noted. Indeed, the press doesn't even bother to note, except in passing, the polls that show the public does not support the President, the Republican Party, or the President's latest trial balloon of increasing troop strength in Iraq. They just report and report and report, and we just shake our heads in disgust. As an example, I heard Cokie Roberts on NPR this morning (why in the world is this vaccuous woman wasting electricity?) and she is the perfect example of the empty-headed, small-minded Washington press corps. Her "analysis" was lacking substance, understanding, or even consideration of policy and the impact of public policy. It sounded much more like a gossip columnist in some monarchy, discussing who is in favor, who is out of favor, and how dare the Democrats actually assume they can govern when the wise ones of Washington have declared them incapable of doing so. It was nonsensical and devoid of any appreciation for what is happening in the nation; it was inside-the-beltway crap at its worst.

I believe what Scarecrow at Fire Dog Lake said about the Administration in this piece applies to the main stream press as well:

[They do] not beieve in America. They don't accept the principle that the authority of government flows from the consent of the people. They don't believe in America's core ideas of democracy, or the rule of law, checks and balances, the Bill of Rights, individual human dignity, or such quaint notions as pursuing negotiations instead of war.

These are the reasons I hold the vast majority of the main stream press in contempt. They reflect the worst of the Administration and its habits of malignity. They do so because they are reflexive in their insistence that the President and the Administration deserve some amount of deference and respect, rather than the strange democratic idea that support and respect flow both ways; since the President does not respect the wishes of the people, why should we accord any deference to him or his policies, especially those that go against the express wishes of the American people? The press are as bad as the government they cover.