Post-Journalism

"In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again."
- Victor Davis Hanson

In the 3rd book of his history, Thucydides has some insightful thoughts about destroying institutions in times of zealotry—and then regretting their absence when there is a need for refuge for them. The mainstream press should have learned that lesson, once they blew up their credibility in the past election by morphing into the Team Obama press agency.

There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama's unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won't work. And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?

Not much—since they will have one of two non-choices: (1) either they will begin scrambling to offer supposed disinterested criticism, which will be met with the public's, "Why should we begin believing you now?" or "Why didn't you tell this before?", or (2), They can continue as state-sanctioned megaphones of the Obama administration in the manner that they did during the campaign. They will lose either way and remain without credibility.

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In truth, they don't care to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. That isn't their purpose.

Newspapers lost their credibility decades ago. Like the Disney Discorporation trading on the Disney name and flaunting teenage skanks, the joy is getting away with the outrage. One of the favored tools of the Left has always been to appropriate an image or ideal and then ride the wave as long as it served a purpose. But there's no going back for another crest because there's no talent left to achieve or create. That's why Pixar makes the Disney movies. Because Disney is incapable of producing anything but rot.

And it's why newspapers will never again serve as a balance in a democracy. There's no talent or creativity. Just a will to dominate and subjugate. They will, of course, tell themselves that the subjugation part is wrong, but no freedom long survives such a crush.

An industry that found no particular fault in Stalin, championed Fidel Castro's fanatacism and bloody revolutions thoughout South America, and think of despots and terrorists are "Romantic Revolutionaries" are not enamored of freedom. Why would anyone in their right minds expect otherwise? Freedom is an anathema to those whose existence would be voted away in a free marketplace of ideas.

That's what cancelling your subscription to the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times meant. And having cast your vote for honesty and fairness, you're now Enemy Number One.

Don't expect to be given another chance to veto them. You won't hear of Obama's gaffes or be able to link to that list of pardons Bill Clinton dispensed before leaving office. And you'll no longer be able to fact check the casualty count of 800,000 dead in Rwanda. Anymore than you will be given a fair and accurate assessment of the world under Joe Biden's laughably clueless hand.

Their next step will be to remove collective memory. Once they have restocked the courts with their political allies, legal terrorism will remove any freedom on the Internet. And you won't be able to preserve history either. You can take that prediction to the bank.