From
Ace of Spades HQ:
Okay, they don't quite go that far -- they say for the moment they're "suspending" discussions about NBC's scheduled debate in February -- but they are taking the sorts of actions that precede a full firing.
Michael Walsh has some general thoughts on media bias.
Wednesday night's CNBC Republican debate turned out to be a tussle between the three left-leaning "moderators" and the candidates on the main stage, most of whom can safely be described as center-right. And finally -- thanks largely to the huge ratings bonanza that is Donald Trump -- the American people got a chance to see the true, ugly, partisan, smug, self-righteous face of what we used to call journalism, but now is simply political advocacy employing computers and television cameras under the shield of the First Amendment.
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Which is why the morning-after headlines were not so much about who "won" but how CNBC -- and by extension the entire MSM -- disgraced itself. Bashing the media may not be a policy platform, but it's nourishment and sustenance to a long-suffering conservative constituency which doesn’t much care whom or what is being bashed so long as somebody or something is being bashed.
All this makes a lot of sense, but the rest of the post, Ace goes on am epic rant.
Let me disagree with the premise that bashing the media is not a "policy platform." Okay, it's not technically policy -- but it is imperative, and it's more important than any particular policy initiative.
I might be biased here myself, because this is what obsesses me, and this is what angers me. I could care less, to be honest, about the GOP or its programs.
What keeps me interested in politics at all is my loathing for the self-appointed Preistly Class of the media.
The media doesn't just argue with conservatives, nor does it just demean them.
Rather, the media serve as the shamans and witch-doctors of an enemy Tribe, and the purpose of those shamans is to relentlessly disgrace outsiders to the Tribe, which is pleasing to those within the Tribe, while also keeping the shamans in power (because they have no other skills which would earn them money or sex, except the denigration of those considered Unclean).
Their mission is not mere delegitimization of those who do not worship their strange gods. Certainly they do that, endlessly. But it's more than that -- their mission is the full denigration, humiliation, and ultimately dehumanization of the outsiders to the Tribe.
I'll say this three times because it's important:
Cultural Power is Political Power.
Cultural Power is Political Power.
Cultural Power is Political Power.
Having been promoted to a position from which they can exert their Cultural Power to thereby exert Political Power, they do so, and they are less and less concerned with pretending they don't do so.
The very rich have developed codes over the years to not be quite-so-obvious about the tremendous power they actually have, in order to keep the mobs from hanging them in the streets, and they get quite angry at those (such as Trump, actually) who do not abide by these codes, and who flaunt their wealth and power. Partly they get angry because they have internalized the code of not exhibiting their wealth (except among the other wealthy), and partly it's because they realize Trump's flamboyance is actually a threat to them -- what if people start noticing how very rich they are?
For a time, I think the media attempted to hide how much Unearned political power they had.
I always think it's absurd that the media has political power. Consider: Your doctor is one of the most important professionals you know. He is well-educated and knows, literally, the pathways of life and death.
And yet does he use his position to propagandize politics to you when you go in for a check-up? Does he tell you that the Benghazi Committee was a partisan witch-hunt as he depresses your tongue with a strap of wood?
Now, some doctors do get into the political game -- scolding parents about this or that. Guns in the house, for example.
And people quickly fire them.
The media is a weird thing because the media is not made up of experts in politics. Your family doctor is an expert in health, and if he propagandizes you about health, well, at least that's in his balliwick.
The media are not historians nor political scientists. They are literally, and I say this with all intended denigration of myself, merely fucking people who write sentences, and, increasingly, who don't even write sentences -- they just talk words on the Television.
How on earth did people whose skill-set used to consist chiefly of shorthand notation and fucking typing elevate themselves into "experts" on politics, history, economics, and foreign policy?
They are fucking morons. They have no skills nor special knowledge.
Most of them are among the dumbest "professionals" of any "professional" class, except for teachers.
Lawyers are generally acknowledged as a smart class, as a profession. Not as smart as doctors, but smart.
Reporters?
Idiots.
But Cultural Power is Political Power, and the fact that these imbeciles populate our Idiot Boxes and speak words to us at night puts them in a position where they can serve as the witch-doctors of a heathen, ugly, wicked tribe, if they choose to.
Not that they're qualified to do so -- not that they're entitled to do so -- but that they can do so, simply because they're on the Television, the Morality-Play Theater of the masses.
Delegitimizing the media -- questioning how, exactly, shorthand elevates your opinions any higher than the next asshole sitting on the next barstool -- is absolutely critical.
Read the rest, it's a total take down of Media types.
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