At Home On Piety Hill

Well, it looks as if Helen Thomas’ off the cuff remarks set off a flurry of filings by Republican exploratory committees across the country, seeking to gauge what kind of support they might find for a Dick Cheney presidential bid in 2008.

Albert Eisele in a column he wrote for The Hill: The Newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress, quoted Thomas:

Calling him “the most powerful vice president in recent times, perhaps in U.S. history,” she said that Cheney “certainly could campaign on the theme that he has had experience in running the White House.”

“The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I’ll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.” She says I shouldn’t have quoted her “because we all say stuff we don’t want printed.”

Thomas has the reputation among the cloistered and incestuous Washington press as the dean of the White House press corps. The rest of us find her antics at White House press briefings irritating, sophomoric and rude. She and those other self-important windbags, Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr, should consider aging gracefully out of the public eye, rather than flailing around in a panic, as they watch their ideological achievements being systematically dismantled by a new, better informed generation of news consumers. The 6 O’clock News, broadcasting the same borscht over three networks, has lost its monopoly. Their glory days are over.

While I think it is an important feature of a civilized society to render respect to elderly ladies and gentlemen, cranky old coots, who continually inject themselves into the public discourse via the media, push news and opinion seekers beyond the breaking point and open themselves up to ridicule. After Thomas labeled Condoleeza Rice a “monster” and a “… g–damn liar,” Ann Coulter derisively referred to her as “that old Arab” and now thousands are hoping Helen will make good on her “campaign promise” in 2008.

I remember the day when older folks, like my grandmother, would correct angry teenagers and undisciplined children for that kind of talk or behavior. Now, it seems that the elderly among us are the sullen, foul-mouthed hotheads, seeking validation and significance.

I was scanning the AM radio the other day and heard what I thought was Lisa Douglas, of Green Acres fame, talking about a blog she was launching with the help of some of her Hollywood friends. After a few moments, waiting to hear how Lisa lined up so many luminaries to address such topics as “life in Hootersville,” “cosmeteticals” and “hotscakes,” the host of the AM radio show broke in to give out the URL to Arianna Huffington’s new blog, Arianna Online!

Boy, did I feel like a dope. I could have sworn it was Eva Gabor in character as Lisa. Well, I went on to listen to Arianna bubbling on about her vision for a progressive blog to rival Drudge (which I never thought of as a blog), featuring Walter Cronkite, Warren Beatty, Gwyneth Paltrow and other policy experts. I have visited her blog a couple of times now… It is nicely laid out, but as far as I can see, it is a collection of her old columns… perhaps the other voices are buried somewhere, but I can’t find them for the life of me.

Arianna Online has been roundly panned and I am left to wonder who concocted the idea of putting Arianna, Walter Cronkite or Gary Hart forward as the “new face” of progressive populism. I’m guessing it was the same saavy political strategist who came up with the idea of “getting out the youth vote” in 2004 by touring John Kerry around the country with the “big-hair 80’s” crooner Bon Jovi and fellow Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen; hardly the kind of guys to appeal to twenty-something voters listening to drum-n-bass, hard trance, hip-hop or even the Killers.

Well, we’ll have to see how it pans out. For now, I’ll spend my time reading Sadico Junction for society and women’s issues, culturezoo for (what else) opinions on culture, average joe for business news and, of course, NC Media Watch for Russ’ wonderful in-depth examination of local politics.

New Survey Finds Huge Gap Between Press and Public on Many Issues
By Joe Strupp
Published: May 15, 2005 9:30 PM ET

NEW YORK A new survey to be released Monday reveals a wide gap on many media issues between a group of journalists and the general public.

I was surprised to learn that only…

Six in ten among the public feel the media show bias in reporting the news…

Those of us who are in recovery as members of VOICES (Victims Of Inferior California Education System) know that polls can be skewed by the way questions are asked, so we go to the hard statistics to find out just how biased journalists really are:

Asked who they voted for in the past election, the journalists reported picking Kerry over Bush by 68% to 25%. In this sample of 300 journalists, from both newspapers and TV, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 3 to 1–but about half claim to be Independent. As in previous polls, a majority (53%) called their political orientation “moderate,” versus 28% liberal and 10% conservative.”

These professional prevaricators can’t even admit they are Bush-loathing progressives.

The results of this major poll, conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy, were released the same day that we learned that a sensational piece in the tabloid, Newsweek, was the cause of deadly riots in Afghanistan. I’ve got a new bumper-sticker designed for my truck. It’s not very original, I admit, but at least it’s closer to the facts than that other bumper-sticker we see around town on Subaru Outbacks, Volvos or vehicles manufactured by similarly altruistic, globally-conscious corporations, which place social/economic justice over profits.

Is it any wonder the public feels disconnected from the media? But, let’s get serious for a moment. It would be one thing if these poll numbers represented just another story about the hapless, closeted, archaic press and their certain demise. But, the data suggests that they are dragging the First Amendment into oblivion along with them, with their arrogant, irresponsible and incompetent betrayal of the public trust.

Look at these disturbing statistics from the same poll:

• 43% of the public says the press has too much freedom
• just 14% of the public can name “freedom of the press” as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
• 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press
• half of the young people [high schoolers] said they thought newspapers should not be able to publish stories without government approval
• newspaper relevance in the average American’s news diet appears to have slipped, with 61% of non-journalists using television as their main new source, and only 20% citing newspapers

Perhaps the greatest indicator of the failure of the press to understand what’s happening to them, is the fact that:

8 in 10 journalists said they read blogs, while less than 1 in 10 others do so. Still, a majority of the news pros do not believe bloggers deserve to be called journalists…

And:

…even though 85% believe bloggers should enjoy First Amendment protections, 75% say bloggers are not real journalists because they don’t adhere to “commonly held ethical standards.”

Would those be the same “ethical standards” that the editors at Newsweek employed in their publication of the Q’uran desecration fable? And, does this mean that the 15% who don’t believe bloggers should “enjoy First Amendment protections” think bloggers should somehow be silenced? Oh, wait a minute… that extremist 15% must be made up of the 10% who identified themselves as “conservative” and the other 5% are probably libertarians, who lied and said they were “independents.” After all, we know progressives or liberals wouldn’t try to limit anyone’s speech.