The Old Media and The New Sheriffs
Once again, we’ve reached a government shutdown over irresponsible
government spending. Once more, the media are proclaiming the world is
coming to an end and blaming conservative Republicans for everything.
They are working hand in glove with the Never Enough Government lobby
that dominates Washington, without a shred of shame.
Anchors and editors continue to insist that if the GOP were smart, it
would bow to “conventional wisdom” and put its foot on the fiscal
accelerator. That’s what this is about. The elites fully expected
Republicans “led” by McConnell and Boehner to fold, and are stunned –
furious, really – that they are being disobeyed.
There
are new sheriffs in Washington who won’t be intimidated and are willing
to fight this Wild West of government excess. Their names include Ted
Cruz, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul.
In politics, there are four levels of response to political insurgency:
Ignore, ridicule, savage, accept. We are at Stage Two, moving toward
Stage Three. TV reporters treat them as comic figures. ABC’s Jon Karl
took the marathon Cruz speech and fast-forwarded it in mockery,
declaring "The absurdities were on display when Tea Party hero Ted Cruz
gave his 20 hour-plus speech demanding an end to ObamaCare in exchange
for funding the government. Bedtime story included." This because Cruz
read a Dr. Seuss story to his children over the TV since he wasn’t
coming home.
Then Karl showed a mocking clip from liberal comedian Jon Stewart,
reading from a fake book called “The Bore-ax” that Cruz was the
“showboatiest blab” in the “Senate of snooze.”
Ridicule, however, won’t suffice on the budget battles. This is where
distortions and negative attacks come in. Seven months ago, reporters
reflexively launched into complete Panic Mode to push Obama’s theme on
the sequester. ABC morning anchor Josh Elliott warned “massive
government cuts go into effect that could impact every American: jobs
vaporizing, flights delayed, even criminals walking free.” ABC reporter
David Kerley said “It sounds like a disaster movie!”
None of that happened. None of it. Who is the fool now? ABC reporters
really deserve to be put in fast-forward video, followed by a Jon
Stewart joke about blabby showboating.
Reporters’ respect for the viewers of TV news is so low that they
simply ignore disturbing little facts like the enormous size of our
deficits, or even the size of the annual federal budget in trillions.
That is immaterial, somehow. They are allergic to words like “trillion.”
ABC saves it for stories like this: “Beer is a $100 billion industry in
this country, selling over six trillion gallons per year.”
We are going broke. So how is that being covered? On ABC over the last
three months, the word “deficit” came up exactly once on their morning
and evening newscasts, with George Stephanopoulos simply saying on a
Sunday edition of “Good Morning America” that Obama planned on a
“deficit deal” in the fall. These same shows addressed “attention
deficit disorder” three times. But they have their journalistic
priorities. ABC “News” did address the word “twerking” 15 times over the
last month after the Miley Cyrus dancing debacle at the MTV Video Music
Awards.
