Brummett Longs for the Good Old Days

In today's Brummett column he writes, "I hereby declare myself disgusted with the modern media of which I am a dinosaur."

The problem seems to be that people simply have other sources of news. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, there are now more gates than the establishment has gate keepers. And what is leaking through those gates is forcing the old media to take notice.

Brummett longs for the days when hulking carnivorous liberal newsmen could sink their six-inch long teeth into the quivering bodies of helpless conservative candidates for office without the slightest fear that the nest of liberal candidate eggs that they were protecting would be raided.

Imagine their surprise when they returned to the nest to find that pesky little rat-like mammals had appeared. They called them bloggers and AM radio talk show hosts and candidate e-mail newsletters. They tried to stomp them, but these rodents were too nimble. They tried to ignore them, but their raids were too effective.

Brummett muses if it is futile to invoke "news judgement" anymore. If by "News Judgement" he means the liberal media's decisions to sit on relavent stories that could hurt liberals (like the NY Times example he cited) while giving front page coverage with nostrils flaring when the shoe is on the other foot, then I sure hope so. About time.

Yes, it is a new day. There will be and have been excesses. It does empower more people and that means more people will need to learn to respect common decency. There will be some things to sort out. I am for decency myself. Sometimes right-wing bloggers go too far (but that Democrats-want-homosexual-marriage commercial Brummett cites is NOT an example of that. If Beebe, Halter, et al don't want to be tagged with that then they need to loudly and forthrightly repudiate their party's efforts. What they are doing instead is hushing up and hoping nobody notices their mixed messages.).

Maybe we all need to rebuke one another when we go too far. I would be for that. I don't want intellectual debate to degenerate into an exchange of nasty grams. But let me tell you who has the LEAST right to complain about the lack of restraint and civility of the new media, that would be ole T-Rex himself, who racked up quite a string of killin's before those pesky little mammals showed up.