Blogoland

Let's unpack this, shall we?

The Manhattan-Beltway media elite are very similar to the lords of the Confederacy in terms of reverence for a code of honor they simply refuse to believe has enormous flaws in it, flaws which are glaring and obvious to outsiders but which are at best unspoken of in politce company and at worst so deeply inculcated in MSM-lifers that they cannot begin to imagine the absurdity of their claims to such things as objectivity.It goes without saying that the self-esteem that journalist feel for themselves has nothing of the moral depravity that slavery burdened the South's aristocracy with, but when the audience clapped for [NBC News President Steve] Capus' defense of Katrina coverage when it was at best parasitical and at worst a hysteria-inducing mini-series that left almost wholly unexamined its own pre-storm failures in reporting on the lack of preparation of the local, state and federal governments as well as the excesses of the coverage, the obviousness of their obliviousness to the rapidly accelerating eclipse of their authority was keen.

That's real nice of Hugh, first comparing the news media to the Confederacy, then pointing out (it goes without saying... I guess...heh-heh) that people like Keith Olbermann and Brit Hume are not quite as morally depraved as, say, slaveholders. To even conjure the idea that the media are somewhow comparable to the Confederacy is grotesque. But then, that's ole Hugh for you.

Second, that Hewitt is criticizing anyone regarding pre-Katrina coverage is almost gut-bustingly hilarious. To wit, here's Hugh on his radio show talking to NYU's Jay Rosen, in Sept. 2005:

Again, I've got a proposition for you, because they [reporters] did not do their homework, because they did not understand the levees were the threat, they ended up killing hundreds of Americans. I'm not going to say thousands, because I don't know the number. But I know hundreds are dead, that they did not communicate the severity of this storm.

An assertion which, as we detailed here, was so laughably stupid and wrong -- and, frankly, crazy -- it defies description. It was wrong then and it's wrong now, no matter how many times Mr. Hewitt declares it otherwise.

See, there's a reason media types don't take you seriously, Mr. Hewitt: You are an unreliable, feces-slinging kook. That certain groups even have you on their panels is clear enough indication that they don't really read you.

P.S. When you can manage to spell the words "Capus" (not with a "K") and "Trippi" (not with three "I's"and one "P") properly in the course of a missive excoriating the news media for its unreliability, then maybe we'll talk.