When The Levee Breaks...Christy, You Got To Move

GoinDown,GoinDownNow
WhileDroppinThoseGeesVille



Have you too been wondering why members of the Lotuslandian ProMedia are suddenly going after our current Premier when they wouldn't touch her predecessor?

This is a question Bigger E. kinda/sorta asked me the other day while we were hurtling north, in the car, somewhere between Crescent City and Coos Bay on the way to NASCAR-In-The-Sands (i.e. the Oregon Dunes).

It is also something Charlie Smith mused about recently in the GStraight:

...As someone who has paid attention to media coverage of Clark, I have detected a double standard in how she is treated in the mainstream media in comparison to her predecessor, Gordon Campbell.

Campbell was consistently given the benefit of the doubt by CKNW broadcasters and Palmer, whereas Clark rarely receives a break.

Clark herself happened to be one of the broadcasters who consistently boosted Campbell's political career. Now, she is probably taken aback that her former friends aren't doing the same for her.

No matter who she appoints as her press secretary, this situation isn't improving...

Now, I'm pretty sure there are myriad hard-pol, message-massage, blow-by-blowbackian reasons for this, not least of which is the 'fear factor'.

Or, to be more precise, the lack of fear of being whacked-up the side of the head, repeatedly, by an iron fist wrapped in think-tag rags that used to scare the bejeebus out of the puffed-up proMedia punditry who always fell back on their ability to masterfully play the rope-a-dope game when they were worried that the surrogates of a powerful leader would be around long enough to hand the insider-access breakfast of champions to the guy down the hall if they were brave and/or stupid enough to try and lay a real glove on the mug of the boss.

But, in addition to all that, there just may be another factor at work here that neither the pols nor the pundits can control.

A factor that has grown in importance between, say, 2009 and now.

And that is the blogs.

****

Now.

I know there has been a lot of gnashing of teeth about how the rope-a-dopers with the ink smeared across their gloves like to make fun of the amateur bloggers 'round here.

Heckfire, remember when they called us 'cultists' for recognizing RailGate for what it really was way back when the entire thing was supposed to be irrelevant (ie. when the trial was still on before the really, really big bribe went down that shut everybody up, pronto)?

And then there is that nagging feeling that the amateurs and independents are always ignored, even when they dig up up evidence that actually matters.

This was once described to me by someone in the know as the 'How dare they!' factor.

And, truth be told, that nagging feeling was something I myself started to succumb to a few weeks ago before we went on holidays.

But now we're back.

And, personally, I'm tanned, rested, and ready to have another go.

So.

What turned me around (besides a good rest, a different small town newspaper everyday and a whole lot of guitar playing) you may (or may not) be asking yourself?

Well, it wasn't the fact that Alex Tsakumis had the Beans 'N Jeans BS nailed to the wall before the proMedia backlash began (although that did help a little).

Instead, what really changed things is a development from a south of the border that started way down in the lowest of the lowly amateur ranks, moved up to the middle-rungs of proMedia commentating, and is now starting to ruffle the skirts of the Grey Lady herself.

The amateur who started it all is a guy named Driftglass who has been shining a small, bright light on the top journalistic quislings of the resurrected Guilded Age for quite awhile now.

By writing stuff like this:

...Some days it is so clear that American political journalism is almost entirely driven by a secret wager made between David Brooks and Tom Friedman over who can write the column that most closely approximates standing on a pile of money throwing poo at passers-by while laughing at them and not get fired by the "New York Times"...


And now, given that quislings like Bobo and the Moustache, and those who want to be just like them, have been proven wrong over and over and over again for at least 22 straight Friedman units, the middle-rungers have started to notice.

One of which is Esquire's Charles Pierce, who wrote this last week:

...The primary job of an elite political reporter — Joe Klein of Time, say, or David Brooks of The New York Times — is to entertain and to comfort the real owners of the country and its politics, to assure them from time to time that they are really doing the right thing in their stewardship of what was supposed to be a fractious, unruly self-governing republic. It is the elite political reporter's job, upon request, to sing to the real owners of the country a pleasant tune in a charming soprano voice. In return, they become very important players in the increasingly worthless puppet show that the real owners of the country are making out of the politics of the country.

Except that, occasionally, the bill for all the dinners, and conferences, and Aspen Ideas Festivals comes due again, and they have to sing for their supper, and to anyone looking from outside the closed system of their own artificial eminence, they look and sound toweringly ridiculous — buffoonish castrati, singing for their suppers....


OK?



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Actually, E really asked me about the derisive descriptors I have used when writing of a number of Ms. Clark's more Pat Burnsian attempts to govern by Talkshow....It was a question that got me to thinking a little, which primed me for Mr. Smith's piece...
There is another way to think about this, I reckon, which is....If  Gordon Campbell flew in today (and Mr. Smith were to publish this tomorrow) would they send a limousine anyway?
Re: the header to this one....You can of course go with Zeppelin, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, but me I like this one even more...


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