MSM - We're Not The Story: You Are!!

So, yesterday was a big day around here: thanks to everyone who called and said "You were right." It means a lot. Now make a donation.



I followed yesterday's events closely; watched John Edwards on ABC (good job Bob Woodruff) and had a chance to sleep on it, and here's what I think today:

The MSM is hopeless.

Everyone knows their coverage of the John Edwards affair is done to get rid of the story. (I know it, anyway.) Released on a Friday, first day of the Olympics, blah, blah, blah.

Um, I'm standing right here, guys. I can see you.

"They lied in a way that made the people who were telling the truth look like the real liars. They lied in a way that turned their supporters into attack dogs."

-- Lee Stranahan, commenting on both John and Elizabeth Edwards - but just as easily on the big news media's lie of omission - for The Huffington Post

Slate's Mickey Kaus wrote five reasons why the MSM should've ran with this story a long time ago. While I respect the work Mickey Kaus has done, I most humbly disagree. There are many more reasons to pursue this story than I can count because it's got all the elements necessary to tell the story of our time - the story that identifies and unravels exactly what ails this country: the sway of NewAge beliefs.

"I believed deeply in the Elizabeth-John love story, even as I distrusted Edwards as a politician (shifty trial lawyer that he seemed to be). When the Enquirer story broke, I shot back at others' knee-jerk judgments, choosing to believe that a couple staring down a bleak future, wrestling with a grim prognosis (a couple who knows the agony of losing a son, no less), might make an unconventional sexual arrangement. And yet, what strikes me about today's revelation is how conventional it seems to be: just another hotel bump-and-grind, another thirsty ego desperate to be slaked. The ugliest part for me is Edwards' defensive claim that it all happened while Elizabeth's cancer was in remission.

Honestly, having watched the "Nightline" segment, I feel nothing but sadness -- for everyone, including me, for having watched it so salaciously. Yuck."

-- Sarah Hepola, a Broadsheet contributor, commenting on Salon.com

"Even as I distrusted Edwards as a politician,...I shot back at others' knee-jerk judgments." Defending the sordid private lives of politicians is a trope of the media - that's why The Enquirer beat them. Come on, this is about much more than John Edwards getting some, and Sarah's comment proves it. People John Edwards doesn't even know are having arguments, choosing sides, telling lies, and getting hurt.

"Back in September 2007, we reported that the videos, which Hunter had been paid to produce for Edwards' One America Committee, had gone mysteriously missing. Perhaps even more curious: no one seemed to claim ownership. Staffers for Edwards, who by then was in the throes of the primary, said they had no access to the film: four shorts on the Senator's efforts to promote the eradication of poverty. Meanwhile, the film company, Midline Groove Productions, said the videos were the product of the campaign. Not only that, they were for some reason prohibited from even discussing the content."

Sam Stein, on what at first appeared to be a mystery, for The Huffington Post

In comparison to what's surrounding this event, John Edwards is the most insignificant thing about this story. Why? Because with knick-names like "Silkypony," and "The Breck Girl," he was apparently the last person to notice his narcissism.

"Their initial interaction occurred outside the hotel, when Hunter approached the former Senator on the sidewalk and showered him with flattery."

-- Sam Stein

But how was John Edwards allowed, in the mediasphere, to dismiss his critics so easily? The Cult of Obama? Anybody heard of it? We've seen the phenomena, where's the investigation? Or is everyone working too feverishly to tell another story - a lie - and appear to be be "open-minded"? It took you over ten months to start covering John Edwards-with-a-fruitcake, how long must we wait for The Obama Cult story? What did we just see? Could you tell it? Or would it be too much like an amateur artist trying to hold a mirror and paint a self-portrait for the first time?

"As for you, Miss Hunter? Even if all your dreams one day come true, life as the second Mrs. de Winter is going to look pleasant by comparison."

-- Melinda Henneberger, with "a couple more questions," on Slate.com

Stretch your journalistic/commentator wings a little bit more and - since it takes two to tango - focus on Lisa Druck a little bit, the "former yoga instructor who had become actively involved in somewhat fringy spiritual escapades." As news people, you should be going where the action is anyway, and lets face it: all the action is on her side of the aisle. That's where the NewAge is most pronounced (Bob McGovern, Margaret Sweet, Jerome Armstrong) the already-complicated life of "crazy" Lisa Druck's baby begins - born to one of two politically-powerful married men - all this notoriety the result of NewAge beliefs many in the "news" business share.

That's why the media's excuses for not covering the story ring so hollow to me. This struck a nerve no one's mentioning. Everyone involved in this story is a media figure. Even Lisa Druck is that most vocal of entities today, an actress. And while Elizabeth Edwards may have been called smart, and John Edwards may have been called brilliant, Lisa Druck was allowed the luxury to call herself enlightened. And who can blame her? I don't know about you, but it sure seems to me the media's been pointing us down the road to self-appointed enlightenment for a while now! Anybody care to do an expose' on that phenomena and it's many possible consequences for American journalism?

What's up with that black NewAge talk show host backing Obama without serious questions from the media? And the fawning over the both of them? Do you think that makes me trust you? Is the news business better? Is the newspaper business better? Screw the internet's influence, what about you? Are you feeling the love? Are you getting my money? I used to subscribe to five papers, you idiots! Now I laugh as you suffer. That's how NewAge works: everything's backwards.

"In the three national campaigns he has run - two for the Democratic presidential nomination and one as the party's vice presidential nominee - John Edwards won a grand total of one contest -- the South Carolina primary in 2004. But amazingly, he managed to emerge from each losing effort with his political standing not only unharmed, but actually enhanced."

-- Steve Kornacki, looking through the right lens, while writing for the New York Observer

Getting to the point: are you doing your job? The National Inquirer beat you. [Big up to the National Inquirer] Do you even know what your job is anymore? You say you didn't print their scoop because The National Inquirer prints a lot of things that aren't true. Are they alone in that? Here's a story, about a psychic for rich NewAger's dogs, that I got from the New York Times. How credible are they after running that? About as credible as John Edwards - because the article is pure Lisa Druck. The dog-psychic story even starts with a yoga student. Then it's on her way to fame and fortune being "actively involved in somewhat fringy spiritual escapades" and a puff piece in the NYT. My, my. How far does the stupidity go?

"11/06/2004: Original sources notes reported that an anonymous source obtained the time of 7:02 AM from an anonymous Edwards staffer. In addition Leslie Astar Walker wrote via e-mail to PT dated 1/30/2004: "I just met his mother tonight and she said (in no uncertain terms) that it's 7:02 AM." On November 4, 2004, PT talked with Sat Siri Khalsa who says that she attended a political rally in which she was able to slip a note to Elizabeth Edwards asking for the candidates’ birth times. Sat Siri says Elizabeth Edwards smiled, walked over to the candidates and came back with the note on which Mrs. Edwards had written that John Kerry was born between midnight and 1 AM and that John Edwards was born at 7:23 AM."

-- From Lois Rodden's AstroDatabank

MoveOn.org has an astrologer, Jerome Armstrong (who also runs My Direct Democracy, where Lisa Druck dropped her first denials of an affair with Edwards.) Do you think it would be good journalism to let the netroots know their ambitions are being fueled by silly occult beliefs - like astrology - and George Soros's money? I guess not, since you haven't done it, and what am I to make of Andrew Sullivan's comment, wondering if he's the only one not surprised that Barack Obama "is a Leo"? Is it any surprise that I read such things and ask myself the same question ("Who are these people?") so many are asking after discovering the NewAge Lisa Druck and the equally-narcissistic John Edwards slept around on his cancer-stricken wife? I don't think so. Andrew Sullivan is a part of the whole. The idiocy of regularly subjecting NewAge thinking on the rest of us without challenge.

The media has helped create a world of lies that they refuse to back away from. They strive for balance when there's no call for it, and (as the outlandish Obama coverage attests) they openly promote their own NewAge pet causes, to the exclusion of common sense. Policy questions have been turned into moral crusades, without serious debate or investigation, and their champions - losers one and all - crowned as kings. Unlike the rest of us - who are the mere viewers or victims of John, Lisa, Andrew, Barack, Oprah, Rosie, The New York Times, and the rest of the mediasphere's dalliances - you don't see you live in Alice In Wonderland, chasing logic from place to place.

John Edwards and Lisa Druck? Ha! That's nothing - here's your story in crisis:

Why doesn't anyone believe a word you're saying?