Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

This diary on Kos sums it up rather nicely:
BREAKING STORY: DEMOCRATS DIVIDED OVER CHECK[...]"Clearly democrats are divided over basic issues like how much to tip" said another independent witness to the event, Glenn Beckman. "I'm not affiliated with any political organization," Beckman continued, "but the democrats are divided and republicans are united, and if we learned anything from the last election, it's that America is predominately a republican country. Republicans really won that election." Beckman then asked if anyone knew if FoxNews was hiring.
[...]
Early word is Fox News will be preempting all coverage of the Iraq War for the next six months to discuss whether "TipGate" is enough of a scandal to end the democratic reign of Washington, now in it's second week. "This is a matter of vital national importance," said Fox News chief of programming Roger Ailes. "The American people deserve to know why John Murtha only tips 18% and Nancy Pelosi feels she can simply add to his tip to bring it back up to 20%. Why, that means Nancy Pelosi tipped like 22%! This scandal will stain Washington forever."
Today's New York Times Op-Ed page was a great example of this kind of thinking, with Maureen Dowd and Thomas B. Edsall both construing the recent House Democratic vote for the #2 position as some kind of earth-shattering catastrophe for Speaker-elect Polosi. (She backed Murtha, Hoyer was elected.) For more on the psychopathology of the punditocracy, see Digby:
I have long written about the Washington press corps as a bunch of "Mean Girls," "Kewl Kidz" and the like, often drawing criticism from women who think that I am being sexist by using the terms I use. (I even got a thorough rhetorical thrashing from one of the blogosphere's most famous feminist scolds for using the term "Heathers") Mostly I assume we all "get this" on an instinctive level because it's something we've either observed or experienced in our childhoods and so it is a very quick way to understand the phenomenon.and Sarah Robinson on Orcinus:
I've been arguing that "adult supervision" is one of the most important frames for us to be working right now. As long as the MSM continues to behave like a bunch of trivial, self-centered pubescent girls, it won't take too much conscious effort to make our spokespeople look like serious grown-ups by contrast. The victory begins when we start insisting that there are more adult and worthy things to talk about than hair, clothes, parties, who's going with whom, and who's got the better ratings. Queen bees regard anyone with power who'll return a phone call as a "friend" -- so as soon as they see that there are grown-ups in charge exercising authority and setting standards, their natural kiss-up reflex will kick right in, and the eye-rolling should stop forthwith.

Back in the 70s, the GOP coined the phrase "liberal media" to combat what they saw as the mainstream media's queen-bee assault on their values. It's high time we mounted a similar campaign pointing out that junior-high social rules and behavior are beneath the dignity of the national media of a great nation. It's also a grossly immature misuse of power that diminishes the ethical and cultural stature of a great profession. The Kewl Kidz need to either grow up, or go home.