There’s a scene in Platoon – a crappy movie, by the way – where Willem Defoe’s character is running from the pursuing communists and we see him take hit after hit, stumbling, getting up, stumbling some more, and then finally, inevitably, and despite the best efforts of his comrades, dropping dead. Except for the communists doing the pursuing, it’s not unlike the mainstream media’s current predicament – enduring failure after humiliating failure, it’s only a matter of time before it expires. And this week, the new conservative media tossed a couple more shovelfuls of dirt into its open grave.
Her bus tour, whether the prelude to a campaign for the presidency or merely as way to take over the conversation from our embattled president, was straight out of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu counseled his students to know their enemies as they know themselves, and to take advantage of their enemies’ weaknesses and laziness. And that’s just what Sarah has done.
Two huge weaknesses of the MSM are its boundless self-regard and the lack of residual goodwill among the American people, a consequence of decades of shameless shilling for every pinko with social program and a “D” behind his name. Sarah’s bus tour – as did her conversion of her Facebook page into a kind of unassailable right-wing Olympus from which she issues pronouncements – went straight at those weaknesses. She’s like a new media Patton in heels, applying her strengths to their vulnerabilities.
She talked to the fair and respectful Greta Van Susteren of Fox News but simply ignored the MSM.
Naturally, the MSM has reacted by going into full Glenn Close bunny-boiling mode with spasms of hilarious whining about how it won’t be ignored!
Sarah has simply disintermediated the media – she’s cut them out and cut them off. She won’t play their game. She won’t cater to them, she won’t help them, and she won’t give them the weapons they yearn to use to beat on her. And it’s killing them. They have no clue what to do. And no one cares. No one feels the least bit sorry for the poor, ignored MSM, no one except the MSM’s cadres of liberal fellow travelers who are in a tizzy because the narrative has spun completely out of control.
And speaking of out of control narratives, the second load of dirt on the MSM coffin was delivered by the right-wing blogosphere as it leapt up to do the job the MSM would have done had Rep. Anthony Weiner been a Republican (which is really the main point of the exercise). When the mysterious pup-tent tweet ignited Weinergate over the weekend, the MSM mandarins and their fifth column flunkies did everything they could to kill the story – first they ignored it, then they lied about it, then – when all else failed – they downplayed it. But there was no shoving this weenie back in the bottle.
The conservative new media, like the fearless honey badger, simply didn’t care. It ignored the scorn of the self-appointed arbiters of what is and isn’t news and what can and cannot be discussed and went after its prey. Slowly, surely, and as reluctantly as possible, the MSM reacted. Except now it’s days behind the conservative new media army of bloggers and tweeters who are doing the job the MSM is too lazy and too partisan to do.
The MSM isn’t quite dead, but like with Sergeant Elias in Platoon, we can all see where this is going to end.
One day, it’s going to stumble and it just won’t be able to get up again. And if anyone besides its members and the drones of the liberal establishment it caters to notice, chances are they won’t care.
Big Journalism
