Hold Your Fire!

Using Maureen Dowd’s Wednesday column as my bellweather along with the general liberal chatter, I surmise that this is the (all too predictable) day when the left jumps ship and declares that the bloom is off the rose of the Obama administration. Afterall, it’s so much easier to give up than break a sweat. Once again the ‘brave left’ surrenders unconfronted. But the media-left aren’t the ones who got Obama elected.

Barack Obama got himself elected by beating the candidate of the media-left in the primaries and appealing to people who pay no attention to the media at all. Which brings me to another point.

It is the fact that so few people are paying attention to the media that has them in such a frenzied state of micro-analysis of any political pin that drops. The truth is that each employee, from the top down at every newspaper and cable-news outlet in America fears for their job. And for good reason, they’ve been on the wrong side of the financial viability stick since long before the current economic crisis bloomed.

Newspapers are dying because of the internet and 24-7 cable news outlets were never financially viable except during hot wars, natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Cable news needs bombs (real or emotional) going off to make ends meet ratings-wise and that is just a fact. If OJ Simpson escaped prison and was hiding out in Argentina nobody in the Obama administration would be able to find a hot mic’ for a year.

The same media that never saw this financial crisis coming because they were too busy counting their money as the stock market levitated, the same media that never even noticed as our entire manufacturing base exited our borders leaving good people with bad jobs that can’t pay the rent/mortgage, the same media that drooled us into the Iraq war spending more time reminding us of how cool the ‘video missles’ from the first gulf war looked than they spent investigating the real need for a war in Iraq, this same selfish, senseless media is now declaring the Obama presidency a catastrophe, because they need a catastrophe to keep their jobs.

None of the Obama administration nominees who have withdrawn over tax problems are in any legal trouble at all. There is nothing criminal about dickering over your taxes with the IRS and paying a late fee. And yes ‘regular people’ do have the same rights and do deal with similar tax situations by the thousands on a daily basis. This is all much ado about process by a desperate media that is deathly afraid of having to leave their elite world and take a real job.

This rose has not yet begun to bloom, the stimulus bill is not written yet (and yes you do call it ‘stimulus’ even when it is only meant to keep the heart from stopping, one must first live to then walk and run). The Obama-FDR rallying speech is yet to be given. It is better that Barack lets the Republicans join in on the effort by removing the pork themselves and taking credit for it than if he had bogged himself down in those details only to have them grouse just as loudly over what’s left that they don’t like.

Mark my words media mavens, this bill will pass with bi-partisan support, fairly soon and our economy will begin to recover over the next year, but tragically, that may not be enough to keep you rich and famous.