Media Wetting Their Collective Pants Over Stewart's "Rally To Restore Sanity"
I found this to be depressingly illuminating:
Journalists are practically giddy in anticipation of this weekend's Jon Stewart rally on the National Mall. The Rally's staff has recieved more than 1,000 requests for press credentials for the event. Only 400 were given out.
Those statistics underscore just how much the media loves Stewart's leftist message (and it is a leftist message). For some perspective, consider that the September 12, 2010 Tea Party on the Mall received roughly 150 requests for press credentials, according to FreedomWorks, which sponsored the event.
Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally granted 450 such credentials to journalists, but in the brief contact NewsBusters had with Beck's staff there was no indication that any reporter who had requested credentials had been turned down.
The mainstream media are Stewart fans. They have no interest in Glenn Beck, save to savage him personally without having watched him. Of course, in theory their job is to cover the news - and Beck's rally was certainly more newsworthy than a comedian's puerile self-aggrandizing - but as we have seem for some time, the media only covers the news that they like, and either demonize or ignore anything that runs counter to their worldview. Odd behavior for a profession once honored for being doggedly in pursuit of truth, a profession our Founders counted on to keep The Powers at bay...
Well, Beck drew approximately 300,000 to the Mall. Let's see how many folks are equally enamored of Stewart's sneering message of ennui and liberal condescension. When they announce the crowd totals, let's be sure to separate out the media contingent...
The Hyacinth Girl voices best the core philosophical problem with the Rally to Restore Sanity, and with the media's love affair with it, and Jon Stewart:
Good God. What hath MTV wrought? I love that my generation has embraced wholeheartedly the “censorship through ridicule” doctrine so adroitly expressed by The Daily Show and its weirdly rage-filled (and not in a satirical way) spinoff with Colbert, but no matter how funny you find everything when you’re hitting the bong after a long day at the DMV, that crap is no substitute for substantive news and information. When you’re 21 and still reeling from the transition from adolescence to early adulthood (or at least you should be), it’s still charming to use informal language when referring to serious, “grown-up” issues. After 25, you’re on some shaky ground in my book. After 30 . . . well, I’ve probably stopped talking to you at this point....