Celebrating stupidity

Glenn catches the Politico patting itself on the back for their contributions to the dumbing down of the media. Their top ten list of 'political scoops' is worthy of the wingnuttiest of the wingnut blogs. In fact, outside of the one story buried at number seven, I can't imagine that Redstate would create a list that was significantly different. I suspect they might have substituted the Obama birth certificate 'controversy' for the Pentagon's propaganda expose and called it a day.

As Glenn points out, we're so lucky there weren't more important stories to cover.

By contrast, a country that was plagued by actual political problems might focus on such dreary, boring revelations as the choerographing and approving of torture techniques at White House Principals Meetings; or the creation of a massive, likely illegal domestic surveillance system of sprawling data bases built and maintained with no Congressional approval or oversight by the NSA; or the issuance of a memo by the Bush DOJ endlessly expanding the definition of "torture" and declaring the Fourth Amendment inoperative to "domestic military operations" inside the U.S.; or the massive contributions received from the telecom industry by Sen. Jay Rockefeller immediately before he became the key advocate of immunity for that lawbreaking industry; or the flagrant abuse of unchecked NSA eavesdropping powers for purely prurient and invasive ends; or the patently false denials by the U.S. military -- bolstered by an ostensibly first-hand report from Oliver North on Brit Hume's "news" broadcast -- of massive civilian deaths in Afghanistan; or the endless holes in the attempts by the FBI to blame the anthrax attacks on a dead scientist; or so many other similar boring disclosures.

This is of course, hardly a comprehensive list of the trivial matters that merited no more than a passing mention in the news cycle. The looting of the Treasury and the hamfisted handling of the economy prior to the bailouts, the rise of poverty and hunger and the growing numbers of uninsured Americans, the administration's shortchanging of veteran's health care, the ongoing fraud and profiteering in Iraq by private contractors, the gutting of our regulatory agencies, the hackability of voting machines and the myriad revelations about the Bush administration's lies, cover-ups and general malfeasance are nothing compared to the great importance of what Obama ate for breakfast on the campaign trail and the alarming absence of lapel pins. A story that only died when leftie bloggers starting documenting that Republicans didn't wear them either.

In a way, all these abuses of the fourth estate can be traced to the rise of the Corporatocracy. But don't expect the media to report on that. They're the biggest symptom of the problem. [graphic]

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