Twilight of the Press Gods ( Will Swift Vets Story Bring Down Lib Media, As Well As Kerry...?)

The genie is out of the bottle. The best efforts of the mainstream media to blockade the story of Kerry’s lies about Cambodia, and the charges by the vast majority of men who served with him in the Swift Boat operations, have failed. Glenn Reynolds prints a telling letter from a reader who requests anonymity. Read the entire entry, but here are the key sentences:

...last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies - the NYT, NPR, and CNN - and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn't preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They've abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they'd reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn't there, but they can't make blogs go away.

...they're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it.Just so. Credibility, once lost, is difficult to re-establish. Ask Bill Clinton.

In April, I used the metaphor of a driver stuck in snow, who presses the accelerator, and finds the spinning wheels only melting more snow, making traction all the more difficult. The current efforts of the press to define Kerry’s lies as a non-event are destroying their own traction. The media eruption over far less serious charges about Bush’s National Guard service is too fresh in the recesses of most peoples’ minds. And, of course, Bush didn’t choose to run for re-election on the basis of his honorable, even brave service as a jet jockey, a highly dangerous occupation.

But it is summer now. So let me switch metaphors. The establishment press is facing its Gottedamerung – the twilight of the gods. For decades, god-like figures handed down their version of the truth from corporate Valhallas like the New York Times and CBS News. The public credulously accepted their writ on what is important and what is not important.

But god-like pretensions are dangerous, indeed, often fatal. Especially when combined with mono-maniacal convictions on the need for their point of view to prevail. Post-modernity, a concept beloved of the bien pensants, cuts two ways. The public is skeptical of anyone who pretends to be an authoritative gatekeeper of knowledge. Kerry, who has never cut much of a figure as a genuine, warm, empathetic human being, is an ideal target for citizen skepticism.

The establishment press is coming across as every bit as pompous and conniving as the man who married two centi-millionaire heiresses.

They are, in fact, destroying themselves. Their industry is in serious trouble. Circulation scandals have hit major newspaper publishers, while the scandal-free press can take little comfort in their declining readership. Network TV news is a shadow of its former self, and its future is very limited. CNN’s monopoly is shattered, and it boasts a poor fraction of the viewership of Fox News, the only cable news outlet fully covering Kerrygate with the same seriousness accorded Bush’s National Guard service questions.

The blogosphere is the camel whose nose, and now a good part of its neck, is under the tent. Leadership in coverage of the self-destruction of the Kerry Campaign is in the hands of Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt (guru to many of us), Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Just One Minute, and many other bloggers.

Nobody had ever heard of Bob Woodward until Watergate. Afterward, he became a powerful brand name, and his and Bernstein's work inspired generations of new journalists. The same phenomenon is taking place today, and journalism will never be the same again. The big difference is that this time around, there is a technological revolution compounding the destructive force operating on the old media. Hurricane Charley has nothing on the winds of change now blowing away the old media practices and economics.

Future historians are going to find this election deeply significant for not just War on Terror policy reasons. This is a transformative election for the structure of political information.

Social Darwinism.

The "left" is unfamiliar with the entire concept of social Darwinism. They don't know it. They can't apply it.

In contrast, the "right" is under such constant media assault that we've culled our own herd. The left has made us stronger by attacking us from every angle. Our weaker candidates are killed off early on, and only our strongest have survived.

The biased news media hurts us in the short term, of course (I'd guess 10 to 15% in the polls), but over the long term it has made us stronger. Vas mich nicht umbrincht, mass mich starker, and all of that. Our weaker politicians like Newt Gingrinch, who had far more vulnerabilities than strengths, are drummed out. Our Packwoods are gone. Our Lott's are no longer in charge of the Senate (for giving a compliment at a freakin' birthday party!).

What remains in our Party are the strongest. President Bush and VP Cheney are so strong that the left has to now manufacture from whole cloth entire "scandals" such as NY Times' columnist Maureen Dowd deliberately misquoting the President in order to smear him.

Quote Senator Kerry verbatim on his "I voted for the $87 Billion before I voted against it," however, and we get tagged as being "mean-spirited," "negative," etc.

So the same process that makes our side stronger (we've now taken the House, the Senate, the Presidency, most state governorships including all of the large states, most state legislatures, etc.) makes our opponent weaker.

Because the news media protects instead of culls its own liberal herd, that herd has grown progressively (heh, or regressively if you must) weaker. An Arkansas governor with a long track record of failing his own state's schools, womanizing, and questionable (that's being charitable) business deals gets such sweet press that he wins the Presidency, only to be so out of his league in the White House that he fails to enact any of his ideological legislation, for instance. A corrupt California governor is so protected by his liberal news media that citizens have to recall him to stop his statewide fiscal disaster, instead of being compelled to resign by non-stop news attacks. The LA Times put 27 more reporters covering allege "groping" claims from unemployed actresses against Davis' Republican challenger than they sent to uncover Bustamante's questionable La Raza affiliations, or on various scandals involving state "grants" to liberal "charities," much less to cover such news as the bribes taken by a French President that could explain his ardent opposition to a war on Iraq.

A Democrat can sexually harass a staffer in New Jersey and be called "noble" for admitting that he's gay instead of a cad for hitting on his staff, betraying his wife, or even called a crook for misusing state funds to entice new lovers. But let a Republican Senator kiss a staffer on the lips, or a conservative Supreme Court nominee give a staffer a can of Coke, and suddenly they are misogynistic sexual harassers in the eyes of the news media.

Can you imagine the news media's collective reaction if a Republican had instead made Senator Kerry's comments about Britain, Italy, Japan, Spain, and Poland being a "coalition of the bribed"?!

It is beyond question that there is a double standard in the media. In the short term, this double standard does indeed work against us by giving several percentage points of popular support over to the Democrats.

In the long term, however, Social Darwinism kicks in. Our leaders are stronger, have better political armor, and maintain more easily defensible political positions. Our weaker politicians are gone. Their weaker politicians, however, are cultivated.

This is epitomized in their selection of Senator Kerry, the most liberal voter in the entire Senate, whose most significant acts of his life were made in the four months that he served in his first job out of college some 3+ decades ago...a man who has taken either both sides of every issue or the most liberal side of every issue, bar none.

Senator Kerry can get away, at least in the press of course, with voting for the Iraq War but then against its funding, but can you imagine what the press would have done if President Bush had been for our National Missile Defense but against its funding?!

So at every turn, the Left gets a free pass for its waffling inconsistency, whereas the Right has to get it correct the first time and stick with that view no matter what.

But Social Darwinism has caused unintended consequences. By coddling the Left via forgiving most every gaffe, the press has cultivated a weaker liberal side. And by attacking the Right from every possible angle at all possible times, the liberal press has made the Right stronger.

It's Social Darwinism. The herd that has been more pampered has grown soft. The herd that has had to fight has grown stronger.

The left is now stuck with mediocre candidates. The right, however, is finally raising up a crop of Titans.

Here's a person who avoids the news, but who had heard about Kerry's Vietnam lies.

I have another excellent personnel story that happened last night. I was over at my sisters house talking with my brother in-law, who has NEVER once voted in any election in all 50 years of his life. This guy is the walking definition of apolitical. He is also a union member, now and for most of his life. I never discuss politics with extended family because I choose not to argue with them.

So last night I am talking to him about a video game I just picked up, "Battlefield 1942" and I'm describing the game to him. And at one point, during trying to vouch for the games quasi-realizism I say, "it's not like you're John Kerrey in Vietnam or something." His eyes got real big and he smiles and says "you can't kill everyone while running around in the open without dying?". I said, "you're not rambo or John Kerrey in this game, it's like real life."

Even he knew Kerrey is a fraud. Frankly I was amazed that the story had reached him. A great sign none the less. I sense continued the-sky-is-falling hysteria from the chicken-little mainstream media. Let the implosion continue.

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