Epic media fail on full display in Iowa

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

To paraphrase an old lawyers joke, "What do you call a thousand media villagers at the bottom of the Potomac River? – A good start."

America would be so much better off if all of the blow-dried pretty boys and girls with empty heads in the corporate news media – particularly the cable TV variety – simply did not exist.

I am not feeling particularly charitable today when the epic failure of our corporate news media is on full display in Iowa.

As I told you the other day, the Ames Iowa Straw Poll is the biggest fraud in American politics. "Iowans have themselves a sweet racket. I don't know why Americans tolerate this." And yet, almost a thousand media villagers and Beltway bloviators are in Ames today for breathless "breaking news" coverage on cable TV channels to report this fraud as if it is "news."

Roger Simon at Politico agrees with me in this stinging post, Ames is the GOP's Grim Reaper – POLITICO.com:

The Ames Straw Poll is a delightful fraud, an amiable hoax, that most people in Iowa don’t care about, but the national media eat up because the event seems so charmingly “Iowan.”

To its credit, there is no man behind the curtain. Its fraudulence is open and above board: It is organized bribery on a grand scale.

Presidential campaigns buy up large blocks of tickets, hand them out, give Iowans free food, free drinks, free fun rides, free music, free T-shirts and free body-painting to show up at the Hilton Coliseum on the campus of Iowa State University.

All that the people are expected to do in return is listen to speeches by Republican presidential candidates. So you can see why people have to be bribed to show up.

* * *

Only the media treat it seriously, and only after writing for weeks and weeks about how meaningless it is.

As The Washington Post put it Tuesday, “The results are not very reliable in predicting who will win the Iowa caucuses, the GOP nomination, or ultimately, the presidency.”

Doubling down on their epic failure, the media villagers and Beltway bloviators are now all following around the idol they created, the Quitta from Wasilla, whose carnival sideshow bus rolled into the Iowa State Fair on Thursday in a desperate bid for her adoring fans (the media villagers) attention. Palin bus tour to roll into Iowa – CNN Political Ticker. The media villagers and Beltway bloviators who created her all paid hommage to to their creation, their false idol who represents the empty-headed idiots that they all are – "she is one of us! She IS us!"

Tripling down on their epic failure, the media villagers and Beltway boviators are all purveying superficial "horse race" coverage of Neo-Confederate secessionist Texas "Governor Goodhair" Rick Perry entering the race today instead of telling you anything relevant about him. They are all behaving like stenographers – or his press aide – reading directly from Perry's press releases.

The media villagers superficially recite Perry's inflated claim that he is a "job creator" without explaining that the jobs "he" allegedly created were mostly minimum wage or below minimum wage jobs or were public employee jobs supported by Obama's federal stimulus package, who are now slated to lose their jobs as part of Texas closing its $28 million deficit by budget cuts. Rick Perry's dishonest jobs claim. The media villagers, once again, are failing to tell people that the governor of Texas is the weakest governor of any weak governor system in the country. All the power resides in the legislature – and they only meet every other year.

The media villagers do not tell you that this Neo-Confederate secessionist governor wants to end social security and Medicare based upon the long-discredited states' rights "Tenther" theory of government. What will all those Tea Party protestors with signs that read "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" have to say when they discover that Governor Goodhair wants to take away their social security and Medicare, and have them fend for themselves in old age? Rick Perry: Social Security and Medicare are Unconstitutional.

And the media villagers are all afraid to tell you the truth about the radical religious right supporters standing in the shadows behind Rick Perry, Texas Observer: Rick Perry's Army of God, even though these very same media villagers have spent years talking about every Rev. Jeremiah Wright and "Obama is a secret Muslim" right-wing conspiracy theory ad nauseum.

Bonus reporting: Top 10 Things Texas Gov. Rick Perry Doesn’t Want You To Know About Him | ThinkProgress.

UPDATE: The Texas Democratic Party has a nice site full of opposition research on Gov. Perry.

I know that all of the media villagers and Beltway bloviators are talking up Rick Perry as a presidential candidate, only because these assholes would find it "entertaining," as they freely admit. Politics is too serious a business for the media's entertainment, as we all should have learned by now. Enough! This Neo-Confederate secessionist has no business being governor, let alone a candidate for president of the United States.

As Alex Koppelman wrote, If Rick Perry is seriously a presidential front-runner there's something wrong with all of us.

It is time to hold the corporate "lamestream media," as their false idol Sarah Palin would call them, accountable for this epic failure. The reason we have such miserable excuses for candidates like these is because of the corporate "lamestream media" that makes them even possible. It is all bread and circuses for the citizens, as our democracy rots from within.