Originally Posted by roachboy

the stupidity of this is kinda awesome in it's own special way.

what i'm curious about, though, is the effects that the amount of press coverage this sort of thing is getting has not in discrediting it, but rather in legitimating it.
it seems that the illusion of "objectivity" has come to serve some really strange causes.
remember the "objectivity" of the press during the protests against the way in iraq? the 10 conservative counterdemonstrators would get their positions outlined with almost the same amount of column-space as the positions of the 200,000 people who were out against the war. so "objectivity" now consists of presenting more than one position as if they were all operating on the same level in terms of coherence. by doing that, the press is basically creating an impression of coherence rather than reflecting one.

these actions are about gaining and holding periods of time within news cycles. built into them, then, is an assumption that the coverage is part of the action.
maybe after years and years of well-financed far right populist talking heads repeating the "liberal press" mantra, the press itself, heroes that they are, have come to see their hands as being collectively tied. or maybe because the press is private and so an advertising medium, business logic dictates that "news" coverage not be critical of actions which originate from the right. or maybe, as is the case with fox for example, the corporation is itself explicitly a conservative political machine.

no matter the explanation, we are really not being well served by the press here.
no matter the explanation, the press bears considerable responsibility for legitimating lunacy like "protect your child from the evil obama speech, full of pinko sentiments like education is important, stay in school."