Tony Blair gets it right and media folks hate it

I have to say that the news media are the archetypal bullies. They love pushing people around. But they whine like little babies when they get called on the carpet for it.

Blair Likens News Media to 'Ferral Beast'

Tony Blair is exactly right. The major problem in the last 6 years or so is a news media that has figured out that it has power and has been abusing it for as long as they can get away with it.

It's the dark side of DeToqueville's truism about the media. 200 years ago, Alexis DeToqueville observed that the beauty of democracy in the new world of the United States was how people came together in voluntary organizations, like the news media, to engage important questions of life and governance. And journalists, among all of such citizens, were the most influential on the public morality of the day. It was a terribly accurate observation, and we are seeing the ugly side of how an aggressive media abuses that trust and power in the last few years.

From Walter Reed to Alberto Gonzalez to Don Imus to the war in Iraq, the media, forever convinced of their unassailable wisdom about anything and everything have done exactly what Tony Blair has argued in his speech: they use their ability to scandalize and rip people to shreds to get their way on any particular news item of the day. It's political bullying, pure and simple, and it is the ugliest display of a failure of journalistic integrity in any era that I have seriously followed the media.

The folks at the Guardian and others who have commented on Blair's comments of course hate them. Because the media love to criticize, attack, take down, and otherwise tear apart anyone in public life, except for themselves. And Tony Blair does not offer an attack, a take down or a tearing apart in these comments. He offers honest, legitimate, and accurate criticism.

And the folks who responded hate it because like every bully that has ever hit the block, they are as thin-skinned as they are determined to get their way. It's an ugly display. And unworthy of an international liberal democratic culture.

And good for Tony Blair for calling this feral beast on its bullshit. E.J. Dionne, Bill O'Reilly, and so many people in between who love to bathe in their power to tear others apart and who carry the thinnest skin possible when criticized for even legitimate mistakes on their part.

Jesus' approbation was better aphorism. We tend to pluck the splinters from the eyes of others and to ignore our own beams because it is much more difficult to look at yourself than it is to judge someone else.

It's an ugly, ugly display.

And it has completely drained my trust in the media, in politicians, and in everyone who is engaged in this ugly, aggressive, forceful, meanspirited charade, right now.

I have no heroes in the media. Because how could I, really. Noone seems to be able to rise above this ugliness masquerading as righteousness. It's fundamentalism of another stripe. Bowing before the shrine of Woodward and Bernstein, and seeing how many of the bums you can take down before you can call yourself a journalistic prophet.

And it is exactly what folks in liberal democracies should expect when they treat politics like professional wrestling rather than engaged thought and discussion. You decide you want to use politics to vent every ugly impulse you have. Then you get this cynical, ugly, meanspirited mess that you create with that mentality. The media is pandering to it, right now, because it satisfies their most cynical and power-craving urges. And because, as Tony suggests, they suspect that it was their less critical public demands. And they will continue to engage this bullshit until people like Tony, me and whomever else cares to lend a voice to this discussion expects better of them.

The truth is that such nastiness is worthy of noone's ear. I have lost interest and trust in the people who do it. And I, for one, expect better of them.

Love,
Ben