An Important Message for all Americans

I recommend you read this first, so you will understand what the hell I am talking about. And why I think everyone ought to tell the Boston Globe to stick to covering the World Champion Red Sox and Celtics, and the soon to be World Champion Patriots. Leave the heavy lifting to Bloggers, we might not be able to talk out our ass as well as you, but we aren’t pretentious anal cavities either.

Supporting our reporters

By TSO | September 18, 2008

PERHAPS the most insidious byproduct of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a reflexive sanctification of the Press. To put this in bumper stickerese: Dissent is Patriotic.

Well, I have an ugly confession to make: I don’t support the press – at least not unconditionally. When somebody tells me they serve in the press corps, my first impulse isn’t to say, “Thank you for your service!” like those insufferable jackasses on the left.

My first impulse is to say, “I’m sorry to hear that.” Because I am. I’m sorry to know that the person I’m talking to might someday be subjected to Bush Derangement Syndrome, or might someday unnecessarily malign someone else. Or refuel the hopes of anarchists and anti-war activists that attack recruiters.

I can’t see how anyone who calls himself or herself Christian – or human, for that matter – wouldn’t be sorry.

The fact that we have a press corps, that we need a press corps, is inherently tragic. It’s an admission that our species is still ruled by fear and aggression.

There are, of course, plenty of laudable functions that the press corps serves. But their sworn duty is to apparently tear down the image of the military and our love of this country. They may perform this duty with aplomb. They may feel great love for the Soviet Union or Venezuela. But we don’t pay them simply for their anti-American philosophies and their seditious written orgasms. We also pay them to try to educate people.

And here it’s worth making a point often overlooked. Anyone who is literate in this country “supports the no-talent assclowns.” We’re the ones who subsidize their training and equipment and medical care and education.

I’m happy to do so, as long as I believe those in the press corps are being deployed on a mission that feels morally necessary – targeting congressmen and Senators who steal our funds for pet projects, for instance, or let me know when Tom Brady will be back at the Helm of the New England Patriots.

The problem with the knee-jerk reporting of the past several years is that it has led to an absence of anything resembling thought or moral oversight that is fundamentally undemocratic. Our reporters have become human billy clubs for Anti-war, left wing and anarchist elements in our society.

Consider the obscene amounts that the Boston Globe and others get annually, albeit less than they have in past years. Apparently the responsibility to get the US to lose in Iraq, to capitulate to all terrorists was secretly bid – to one group, the press corps. There was much tough talk in Congress about preventing such sweetheart deals. But five years later, the US government is still pushing the fairness doctrine which wouldn’t really help as much as they had hoped.

No surprise. After all, this was the rallying cry used to silence dissent when the core rationale for invading Iraq was being vindicated by the surge. And it’s still being used to try to muzzle Limbaugh et al..

It remains unthinkable for a politician (or public official of any sort) to say aloud that our reporters are bumbling asshat retards who sometimes commit atrocities, that they are not all worthy of support, that some of them – faced with a terrifying and ethically incoherent mission – are driven to savagery. This grim duty has been left to the reporters themselves.

Americans have often looked to so called peaceful protest and lampooning our great country as a means of spiritual regeneration. Our most powerful national myth is the notion that anyone reporting anything that happens is a hero. I understand why friends and families of our reporters may even feel this way. But for the rest of us, too often “supporting the reporters” isn’t about the reporters at all. It’s about the childish desire to feel morally exempt from the absolute rubbish printed in our reams of newspapers.

TSO is the author of the essay collection “What in the Hell is wrong with you fuggin morans?”

Category: Politics