I’ve still got some smoke coming out of my ears on this whole media thing.  If this is true for you and you haven’t been following Glenn Greenwald on Salon, you’ve been missing some good stuff.

Here, he recounts an exchange between Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw regarding Tiresia’s error in predicting Oedipus would  claw his eyes out the polls’ error in proclaiming Clinton’s loss.

MATTHEWS: Tom, we’re going to have to go back and figure out the methodology, I think, on some of these [polls].

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.

But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.

As Greenwald points out:

But Matthews’ response to Brokaw is perfect in several ways.  The very idea of discussing issues, examining the candidates’ positions, or even analyzing voter preferences does not and cannot even occur to Chris Matthews. That — the most elementary nuts and bolts of standard, healthy journalism — is way, way beyond the scope of what our media stars are able to do or want to do.

Here, Greenwald writes about the role of political reporters.  This one hits me in the gut because it speaks directly to the unreported Edwards bounce nationally.

[According to the Rasumussen daily tracking poll] Edwards — who, just one week ago, was 10 points behind Obama nationally among Democrats — is now only two points behind him. Less than a month ago, he trailed Clinton by 29 points. Now it’s 13 points. He is, by far, at his high point of support nationwide. Apparently, the more exposure Democratic voters get to Edwards and his campaign positions — and that exposure has been at its high point during his surge — the more they like him. By contrast, Obama is more or less at the same level of support nationally, even having decreased some since his Iowa win (for most of mid-Decemeber, he was at 27-28 points).

Yet to listen to media reports, Edwards doesn’t even exist. His campaign is dead. He has no chance. They hate Edwards, hate his message, and thus rendered him invisible long ago, only now to declare him dead — after he came in second place in the first caucus of the campaign.

There are certainly horse-race counterarguments to all of this. This is only one poll. Obama is ahead in New Hampshire, where his support has increased, etc. etc.

But I’m not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored. Their predictions (i.e., preferences and love affairs) so plainly drive their press coverage — the candidates they love are lauded as likely winners while the ones they hate are ignored or depicted as collapsing — which in turn influences the election in the direction they want, making their predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Why the hell do we let the media do this to us? 

Because we’ve let the major news media and all of their celebrity pundits, anchors, journalists, etc. become experts and we are nothing if not a nation obsessed with abnegating our responsibilities to consider, choose, and act in making decisions, instead allowing, nay, thirsting for “experts” to tell us what to do.   

Mary Milan and I were actually talking about this very subject last night.  It was in the context of Dr. Phil being called in by the Spears family to consult on the Britney. 

You have a family in deep, deep trouble and of all the fuckers you call, you call a TV psychologist?  That’s the craziest damn thing I ever heard.   

It has now caused a Spears-McGraw family feud.

But Dr. Phil is ”an expert” in this field.  Is your kid acting crazy?  Dr. Phil knows what to do and he will not only cure the kid on TV, he will cure your family too. 

You don’t know what to get for Christmas?  Wait for the annual Oprah Christmas list.

Don’t know what to eat?  Here’s a meal replacement bar with all your essential vitamins and minerals.

It’s sad.  We’re a confused nation because we’ve let experts obfuscate our essential, inborn, precious, guiding light - our common sense. 

And it makes me mad.  These fuckers depend on us to be confused and scared.  We’re better than that.     
 
The next time someone says to me, “Well, Oprah says…” without a trace of irony, I’m going to slap that fucker in the face because it’s time for tough love.  

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