The media meltdown we are gobbling popcorn to right now is the result of two key phenomena – we normals have grown tired of the media elite’s lies, and today’s technology allows us to ignore the people who would presume to tell us what we can and cannot know. As the walls collapse around the few remaining information gates and we barbarians bypass them, gatekeeper gigs are becoming as rare as jobs for millennials with masters degrees in Feminist Interpretive Dance.
Now you media creeps are finding yourself ignored and irrelevant as America proceeds to do whatever the hell it pleases whether you like it or not. We don’t need you; we can and will get our information by ourselves. How I yearn to fill a hot tub with the salty, sweet tears of a thousand so-called journalists who decided to put their money down on progressive ideology instead on objectivity and public service. You just crapped out. That’s what you get when you always bet on hack.
Let’s savor their pain. Imagine yourself coming out of some university where you were reliably liberal and sucked-up to your pinko professors. You nodded eagerly whenever anyone said “global warming,” and you shook your head in horror whenever someone said “Men can’t have babies.” You got a job at some prominent newspaper or mainstream network, dutifully parroting the party line with perfect precision, awaiting the day when you would finally reach a level of power where you could not merely lie about and distort the news, but to actually control the news.
Then, just when you thought you were going to become a Lord of the Fourth Estate, you idiots completely overplayed your hand right when technology gave people an alternative to your old school media monopoly. You pushed us past the point of toleration just as the web created other places for us to go. And now, look at you. You’re nothing. Just a bunch of pompous, boring, nobodies without reputations, without respect, without futures.
We’re laughing at you.
Then Donald Trump comes along and outrages you, but not for what he says or does. Hell, you haven’t seen so many eyeballs turned your way since that unpleasantness with the pumpkin-infused craft ale and trans lifestyle editor at last year’s winter solstice office party. No, Trump outrages you because he thinks you’re a clod and a joke and he mocks you, and no matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter how much futile fussiness you manage to muster in that concave chest of yours, you can’t dent his popularity.
You’ve dumped everything you have on Donald Trump and he’s still tied with your ancient, crusty crone candidate Hillary. And you realize that you don’t have the power you were promised. You don’t have the influence you sought. You have nothing.
No one cares anymore.
No one listens to you anymore.
We’re laughing at you.
So of course you double down. Now, back in the day, long ago, before I could ignore you by going on Twitter and getting my news unfiltered, you had some pretensions of being worthy of respect. You were journalists, the guardians of public integrity, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Except you sold out, and now you comfort the comfortable – “Gosh, Ms. Clinton, your energy and robust health are an inspiration to women everywhere. Does your courage make it hard to be the example of feminine perfection you indisputably are, except to racists?”
And you afflict the afflicted, bullying and slandering good people whose unforgiveable sins include believing in God, loving our country, and not having wasted $400,000 of Daddy’s hedge fund loot partying at some Ivy League resort with thousands of other layabout parasites who despise the better men who built the country your presence degrades.
You’ve tossed away your pretense of objectivity because Donald Trump is different. Yeah, now it’s hard to be objective, because you really, really, really want Youthfulia McVigor to be president, so you openly dispensed with objectivity. Apparently, objectivity was only a thing when it is easy, when you didn’t actually have to risk your preferred outcome by giving the complete and balanced story without putting your puny thumb on the scale. Yeah, you’ve moved beyond the “he said/she said” model which tragically prevented you from overtly packing the story with your preferences and prejudices – oh, we know you always slipped in your biases, but now you don’t even pretend. You’re all in, charter members of the Democrats’ Team Take-A-Memo.
If you ever had a shred of credibility, it’s long gone, like your monopoly on the free flow of information. Technology made you superfluous. Hey, I’m right here in my pad writing a column just like you, with three key differences: I’m not pretending to be unbiased, I don’t have to wear pants, and this time next year I’m not going to be looking for a new job at some place where the term “Frappuccino®” is a thing.
Gatekeepers are falling everywhere, not just in the news game. Look at publishing. My last book was traditional. I had to get someone’s approval to put it out, then I had to wait for the publisher to publish it. But I put out my new book People’s Republic this week and within 72 hours it was in the Amazon Top 500 and ahead of a whole bunch of traditionally published books. Keep manning those gates, chumps – we’re going around the collapsing walls that you once used to control the narrative.
We don’t need you.
We don’t want you.
And we’re laughing at you.