The media are even more insufferable than usual today, thanks to their #FreePress editorials and lectures, lectures like this one from S.E. Cupp:
The press is not the enemy of the people. The press is the enemy of the powerful, unaccountable and corrupt. The unjust, unethical, and dishonest. The bully, the blowhard. The cover up, run around and false pretense. Let’s be clear: that’s made the press the enemy of one person.
— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) August 16, 2018
Maybe if our media betters could stop shrieking about how repressed and oppressed they are for five damn minutes, they’d realize how utterly ridiculous they sound. “Up in the Air” and “Blood Will Out” author Walter Kirn, for one, is pretty fed-up with their hysterics:
Let’s get real. The mainstream corporate press has never been freer. It floridly excoriates the president every day, w/unprecedented vehemence & unity. Meanwhile that same multibillion $ press crusades against fringe media & pushes for it to be silenced
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
Nailed it.
I agree, but your common sense will be lost on a still self-aggrandizing mainstream corporate media, even as the sheer number of employees drop. It's no coincidence movies about journalism are being made more often. It's nostalgia.
— Russ Smith (@MUGGER1955) August 16, 2018
I don’t care who’s convinced by the argument, it happens to be true. The big press is acting like a chef censor these days, perhaps to prevent any challenge to its narratives, some of which are the best money can buy. It’s a bully.
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
Well said.
It always has been, but today without double-digit profit margins.
— Russ Smith (@MUGGER1955) August 16, 2018
You don’t need big profit margins when you’re part of mammoth conglomerates where news is a sideline
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
With few exceptions, professional “journalists” have forgotten what journalism is.
Recommended
Mark Twain, former newspaperman, angling to be banned from Twitter. Personally, I liked it better when the press joked about itself and didn’t act like a touchy, established state church just because it has the same rights to express itself that you and I do pic.twitter.com/zUcpmFtjkC
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
What is the joke you think the press is failing to laugh at? Press deserves criticism for many things, eg elevating Trump, CNN's ridiculous cast of "experts" and pundits, for being dull, etc. But I don't see humor in "enemies of the people" or of a newsroom in MD being shot up.
— todd pitock (@toddpitock) August 16, 2018
That shooting had nothing to do with any of this and that you as a fellow journalist are pushing the idea it did is evidence that truth-telling is not your specialty
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
Ouch.
Why do you give Trump so much credit and benefit of the doubt? He doesn’t deserve it. You’re obviously trying to empathetically understand modern American life but he’s a bad faith actor. I feel your “Can’t always get what you want” theory is wishful thinking.
— Keith Shapiro (@keithwshapiro) August 16, 2018
Show me all the credit I’m giving Trump. I’ll be right here.
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
I feel like your scrutinous eye always turns towards what’s wrong w media/investigations and rarely towards Trump. I’m just not willing to give him that benefit of the doubt even if it’s always wise to be wary of gov agencies.
— Keith Shapiro (@keithwshapiro) August 16, 2018
I don’t like crowds. You think there’s any shortage of Trump criticism out there? Come on. That beach has no more room left to lay down a towel. But communication, tech, and media are real, abiding powers & few observe them with any rigor or detachment
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
Fair enough, like the man says “we’ll see what happens” Thanks for the thoughtful discourse
— Keith Shapiro (@keithwshapiro) August 16, 2018
Likewise, Keith. Really. You’re a sport.
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018
And speaking of sport, how about this bonus dunk on the press’ free-speech hero-du-jour, John Brennan?
This week’s martyr to freedom is a former top spy who droned people with Hellfire missiles for a living and surveilled congress & says his right to free speech is being ‘suppressed’ for losing access to state secrets he can’t legally discuss anyway. Sigh…
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) August 16, 2018