Obama's useful idiots are worried now that they're no longer useful

The media sycophants that got Obama elected after spending eight years undermining the last President are now worried--and angry--because Obama is bypassing them and going directly to the people, according to a recent Daily Beast article.

This article, which is lengthy enough that I won't reprint it all here, begins with an explanation of how Obama is bypassing (and disrespecting) the mainstream media tools who were his staunchest allies and supporters right up until the point when he no longer needed them and they began to question his policies and direction. Obama is now shutting them out and going around them, and they don't like it.

First, they worry that they may wind up on the scrap heap of obsolescence (and have to go out and get real jobs) now that they're finding themselves supplanted by the young college kids that Obama is hiring to reach out on Twitter and facebook and all of the other "idiot" networks. But then they make the claim that America will somehow be worse off without them because they provide an essential serviced by "filtering" the news--deciding what you and I get to se and hear--and that without them to make those decisions, we'll all somehow become poorer and stupider.

CBS senior White House correspondent Bill Plante isn't shy about his belief that they're smart enough (and trustworthy enough) to decide what information reaches you and I. “In the end, who gets the decent information? The people who rely on trusted filters, whether they’re online or on the air,” Plante replied. “If you do it all yourself, you’re gonna get a load of crap!”

Because you and I...we're not smart enough to figure out what's crap and what's not. We need the media talking heads to tell us, specifically the media talking heads who have consistently demonstrated an open bias towards all things Democrat and against anything conservative or Republican. Yeah...we need that, because we're stupid, right? we need to be told what and how to think and have our information flow restricted to just that which reinforces what the Bill Plantes and the Chris Matthewses want us to think.

The redoubtable (and undeniably leftist) Helen Thomas—who started at the White House covering JFK for United Press International, and still has a front-row seat in the briefing room—is worried that all the downsizing at media outlets will result in less-reliable coverage of the president.

“It’s a tragedy in my book—it means less accountability,” Thomas said. “We certainly haven’t had any news conferences in a long time, which reminds me of Watergate in the sense of a long time of not having press conferences. Obama has given a lot of interviews, but that doesn’t reveal the whole picture at all.”

Thomas, at 89, might have slowed down a bit since her wire-service days, but she’s still combat-ready with a sharply honed question. “The difference between a news conference and interviews is that the questions from the ‘rabble’ will come from left field,” she said, “and they will ask something that will really startle him” and push the president off his talking points.

And that would have been fine if people like Thomas had ever tried to really grill Obama with tough, probing question and throw him off his message. But they didn't, because they were his fans and supporters. In fact, Chris Matthews of MSNBC, one of President Bush's most vitriolic critics, openly admitted that his job was to make the Obama Presidency a success.

That's the kind of "filtering" that we need? I don't think so.

BUt we get still more elitism from Thomas, who decries the fact that people are now directly disseminating information without going through her and her comrades.

“There’s no accountability for a blogger,” she scoffed. “They can ruin lives, reputations, and once you send something into the air, it’s going to land, and there’s nothing that can curb them from saying anything they want. Everybody with a laptop thinks they’re a journalist, and everybody with a cellphone thinks they’re a photographer.”

But what of the media's long history of ruining lives and reputations? Dan Quayle come to mind? Sarah Palin? President Bush and Vice-President Cheney? Was there anything too salacious to refrain from printing about any of these people, or countless others on the political right? I suspect that what she means is that now it'll be that much harder to protect those wrongdoers on the left--like the media tried so hard to do in the case of John "who's-you-daddy?" Edwards. Remember how the media collectively refused to report on that one until the National Enquirer and the bloggers broke it wide open? That kind of selective filtering we can all do well without, thank you very much.

You media folks used to be objective and you scrutinized government with a probing eye on behalf of the public without regard for partisanship. In that regard, you provided America with a valuable service. But then you decided to cash it all in and started using your hard-won credibility to affect and shape public opinion instead of just reporting fairly. The result: Now one side has no use for you, and the team that you chose to support now treats you like a shopworn hooker. The public doesn't trust you any more and there's no way to unring the bell and get your reputation back. Obama will be gone eventually but you'll still stained and mistrusted. So bring on the death of the mainstream media, or at least it's demise as an agenda-driven combine. It can't come too soon in my books.