The Crowbar

NRO’s Mark Steyn covers a WaPo editorial by Dino-Defender Michael Gerson:

Michael Gerson has lousy timing. In The Washington Post, in one of those now familiar elegies for old media, he writes:

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don’t produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain.

That’s laughably untrue in the Warmergate story. If you rely on the lavishly remunerated “climate correspondents” of the big newspapers and networks, you’ll know nothing about the Climate Research Unit scandals – just the business-as-usual drivel about Boston being underwater by 2011

Steyn’s point is that Climategate and stories like it prove the legacy media is not the basis for the entire media food chain.

I would add that Gerson is being an arrogant elitist snob. The truth the legacy media doesn’t want to face is that ANYBODY can be a journalist. The reign of the legacy media is coming to an end because they’ve compromised their journalistic principles. The moment the legacy media decided to stifle debate and convey only the liberal point of view is the moment they lost their legitimacy.

Then there’s another story on Patterico about the LA Times’ James Rainey’s weird assertion that the ACORN stings by O’Keefe and Giles were not journalism: 

The duo certainly has caused a stir — and raised questions about an organization that in the past had received substantial government funding — but, sorry folks, please don’t call this journalism.

AND

So what sort of creature does this make O’Keefe? I don’t disagree with his observation in a previous interview with The Times that he follows the mold of filmmaker Michael Moore, using confrontation to get at his version of the truth.

Can you believe this guy? If a non-media liberal had gone undercover with camera to expose illegal advice-giving at Catholic Charities, who received at least $17.8 Million in taxpayer money in 2003, would Rainey likewise condemn the individual as un-journalistic? Please.

The legacy media has clearly betrayed any pretense of objectivity in favor pro-liberal activist journalism. Embracing your bias and using your position to further your agenda is the signature maneuver of Postmodernism, which metastasized in journalistic circles in the 1990′s: From Philip Gold’s 1996 article Postmodern journalism offers the wrong end of the shtick:

Postmodernism” is a wondrous word. Everybody uses it; nobody’s sure what it means. Still, we know it when we see it. Academia’s gone postmodern. So have politics and culture. And now, journalism’s heading down the same dreary road.

Gold goes on:

The postmodernist shtick has four elements.

First, it denies the existence of objective reality, as opposed to saying that reality’s out there but we never can get fully at it. To the postmodernist, everything in the universe, from comic books to galaxies, is “text” to be “interpreted” by the “self-referent,” that is, people whose only frame of reference — dare we say, only reality — is themselves.

Second, postmodernism denies the existence of firm boundaries. Everything flows into, affects and becomes everything else. (“The personal is political”; “The planetary is personal”; “Insanity is just another lifestyle”; etc.)

Third, postmodernism denies the validity of standards — of truth, morality, excellence, competence. All are arbitrary at best and tyrannical at worst.

Finary, postmodernism views all human relationships as power struggles. Words are weapons, not carriers of truth or meaning.

Sounds a lot like our friends in the legacy media, no? Gold predicted the outcome we’re seeing today:

So what’s the answer? Thy tighter editorial control and the prompt stockading of any senior executive who claims that serious journalism inevitably must go the way of Hard Copy and pompous-pundit screamathons. Still, the ultimate fix must rest with the larger society. In the end, our civilization will junk postmodernism. Neither truth, boundaries nor standards can be denied forever, and life is more than power games. There already are signs that it’s happening, especially in the schools and universities where it began. So, in the short term, perhaps the interesting question is not “How will journalism escape from postmodernism?” but, “How will it cover the demise?”

Thirteen years later we know that the legacy media still desperately holds on to it’s postmodernist worldview and derides all others as non-journalists. The new media has provided the outlet for the anti-postmodernism backlash and the legacy media thusly treats the new media with extreme contempt. 

Journalism will survive the postmodernist legacy media because journalism is not dependent on any institution. Journalism belongs to those who are willing to seek the truth, find it, and tell it to those who want to hear it. And, nearly everyone wants to hear it.

Here ya go Technorati:

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Ultra-hardcore liberals like former Jimmy Carter speechwriter James Fallows are on the defensive as of late. On his Atlantic blog, Fallows submits to his readers some screen-captured headlines as proof-positive that the “dominant narrative” about Obama’s failed Asian trip is wrong because he wants it to be wrong. 

For example, there’s this screen capture:

However, Fallows implication that this somehow indicates success on Obama’s part is embarrassingly easy to debunk.

Firstly, the article changed significantly since Fallows’ screen capture. This is what it says now:

BEIJING — The Chinese government announced Thursday that it had set a target to slow the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, a day after the Obama administration set a provisional target for reducing United States emissions.

The Chinese offer, which focuses on energy efficiency, contrasts with the strategy of the United States and most other nations to reduce total emissions. China has resisted demands from American and European negotiators to adopt binding limits on its emissions, arguing that environmental concerns must be balanced with economic growth and that developed countries must first demonstrate a significant commitment to reducing their own emissions. [bold mine]

BEIJING — The Chinese government announced Thursday that it had set a target to slow the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, a day after the Obama administration set a provisional target for reducing United States emissions.

The Chinese offer, which focuses on energy efficiency, contrasts with the strategy of the United States and most other nations to reduce total emissions. China has resisted demands from American and European negotiators to adopt binding limits on its emissions, arguing that environmental concerns must be balanced with economic growth and that developed countries must first demonstrate a significant commitment to reducing their own emissions.

LOL. Yeah, that’s REAL success for ya! China hasn’t jumped on the green bandwagon, it’s just promised to increase it’s efficiency which happens to coincide with reducing emissions. But, then there’s this:

It was unclear whether the timing of China’s announcement was coincidental, though the Chinese have been preparing an opening position ahead of international talks on climate change in Copenhagen next month. In the past, Beijing has tried to avoid looking as if it has been directly influenced by American decisions.

LOL again. So China was going to do this anyway and it had little or nothing to do with Obama’s useless trip. 

But, we’re not done yet. The Atlantic Wire box on Fallow’s blog had a link to this report: Environmentalists Fume Over China Emissions Pledge which says that while it’s technically a tactical “win” for Obama, it’s pathetic compared to what the commie-environmentalists want:

Treehugger’s Daniel Kessler laments the odd strategy. “[I]ts emissions will actually increase over time because its economy is expanding so rapidly. As the world’s Number 1 Polluter (but far down when it comes to per capita emissions), China’s goal is not enough,” he writes. “It should be noted, however, that China is making massive investments in renewable energy and increasing its standards for efficiency.”

The Chinese pseudo-communists see right through the commie-environmentalists. The communist Chinese will never murder their economy in the name of environmentalism, they will only reduce emissions when it’s to their advantage. How foolish our government must appear to them.

The other screen-captured headlines Fallows submits are of a similar nature. I guess even a Rhodes Scholar can’t eek out a good defense of Obama’s Asian Flop.

I actually laughed out loud when I read this:

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it – and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided – is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

My God, the pot smoking/gay sex seeking Andew Sullivan went SILENT!  OMG - gasp! -  Stop the presses!

It’s just so…. shockingly childish. True to his narcissistic nature, Sullivan waxes dramatic that he is the Heroic (!) Stalwart against the Big Bad Evil Sarah Palin as though she’s some kind of grave threat to humanity’s existence. Though, I suppose many liberals do view her that way – they don’t cope well with the fact that she exists. She threatens their dark worldview.

Anyway, how amazing is it that Sullivan can say “we want to be fair to her, and to her family” and call her a “delusional fantasist” in the same paragraph? Excuse me for not believing Sullivan, he’s consistently been pretty horrible to Palin. 

I have no doubt who is suffering from mental instability.

Politico reports disturbing news from the financial front:

The Federal Reserve stands to gain substantial new authority under financial reform legislation, despite increasing skepticism from lawmakers in both parties over the central bank’s unchecked powers over the U.S. economy.

What nifty new powerz does the Fed get?

Under the final piece of the House reform package being assembled by Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the Fed would join seven other regulators to form an oversight council to police financial firms that threaten the stability of the banking system.

But the Fed is the only member that would be empowered to carry out the restrictions the council imposed on risky big companies — giving it more power than the other regulators, some policy experts say.

The Fed would also have the authority to perform on-site examinations of the targeted financial firms — able to barge into any of the “risky” firms and demand answers and documents, the most powerful tool at any regulator’s disposal.

Why is Barney slobbering more than usual over this piece of legislation?

Under the bill, those systemically risky firms could include entities the Fed doesn’t oversee under current law, including hedge funds, private equity firms and asset managers.

The real target is those dastardly rich people who ruined the economy with their evil profits. Of course, social crusaders Barney Frank & Co don’t want you to know that their dumb regulations designed to manipulate society (aka YOU) are the root cause of the financial crisis.