Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Oh Lord, it's that time of year again, time for the Beltway media villagers' ballroom blitz. I'll let Charles Pierce from Esquire do the honors. The Annual Versailles Cotillion:
There is no clearer example of the uselessness and essential decadence of our courtier press than the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, which will be fouling the reputation of
the craft of journalism this very weekend. Putative journalists pretend
they're Academy Award nominees while squiring around actual Academy
Award nominees, many of whom can't tell one red carpet from another, and
everybody acts as though there's seemingly nothing wrong with
journalism-as-celebrity, and with journalists claiming the same sort of
celebrity as the people they cover. This is a medieval papal court for
whom its Luther never was born. It's Versailles without Robespierre.
* * *
These would be the same "media organizations" that are laying people off
by the carload, slashing the benefits of those they don't lay off, and
making people do more work in less time for smaller salaries. But, that aside, the annual competition in the category of Best
Performance By A Media Outlet In The Role Of A Corporate 'Ho is likely
to be spirited again this year, but The Atlantic's David Bradley is making a strong run at it.
* * *
However, he'll be taxed for the pole position by the owner of Tiger Beat On The Potomac, which I suspect will be particularly Tiger Beatish over the whole thing.
* * *
Every year or so, some high-profile journalist — recently, it has been
Tom Brokaw, The Man Who Discovered World War II — mentions that the
whole thing might be a bit, well, unseemly. Every year it gets worse.
That's because actual journalism and actual journalists don't matter,
and that's the bigger problem.