Thanks Mike. (Nice to hear from you again!) You're absolutely right. What a well reasoned comment on your part. The old media was dreaming, if they imagined that they could continue to insult the intelligence of the public without consequence. As Bernard Goldberg rightly states ("Bias" & "Arrogance"), they all live in the same hermitically-sealed "elite" bubble - coctail and dinner parties on the upper east side in NYC, in D.C. and out on the left coast.
They ignored the "fly-over" folks, and now that appalling insult has come back to bite them. You can tell by the way they are now scratching their collective wooden heads, trying to "reach out" to small town America. I'd say they're more than a day late and many dollars short in their new campaign to win over hearts and minds. "Fly-over" people are into the 21st century and have long since figured out "old media's" agendas.
You've seen the story on Animal Planet:
How the old king of beasts get driven off by the new king of beasts -- but that generation doesn't want to give up power and status long past their primes -- so you see the Helen Thomases, Dan Rathers, Art Rooneys, Jimmy Carters being carried out in body bags -- still insisting they're our appointed leaders to the Promised Land.
This kind of reluctant turnover is unprecedented -- because those people usually died of heart attacks at age 50. Thanks to modern medicine, we witness them degrading before our eyes -- while they're insisting they're still coming into their prime. I think Betty Davis did a couple of movies about this sad demise and resulting delusions of continued relevance and glory.
The chief perpetrator is the valuing of seniority over merit -- that is killing all those established institutions. The talent of a whole generation is being shut out -- so that the merely entrenched can hang on for forty or fifty years on sheer inertia and unchallenged tradition -- instead of their maturing and moving on to the next level of maturity and wisdom. Instead, they buy a few nips and tucks and think they're as good as new -- instead of showing their age in their antiquated thoughts and world view. They think being liberal is remaining eternally youthful, recapturing and reliving their own naivete and idealism. Now they just pretend to be so -- but their lips and faces are no longer moving.