I have to confess to feeling a positively unholy degree of amusement, watching the Establishment Mainstream Media publicly coming to grips with Joe Biden’s senility … this after pretty much papering over his decaying mental condition over the past three years. That President Biden’s remaining brain cells have been melting into a slightly greenish and glowing puddle of goo has been screamingly obvious to everyone on the center-to-right quadrant of the blogosphere with any sense and worldly knowledge since his installation in the Oval Office. That the major national media minions are now having to wrap their tiny minds around that realization, and not just acknowledge but explain how it is now urgent that he be replaced on the Dem party ticket this year, as well as how they managed to escape noticing the freaking obvious for the past two or three years … well, all sorts of fun for those of us with a freakish sense of humor. It’s like watching a hapless stage magician try and gingerly handle a turd by the clean end.
The National Establishment Media – the public affairs branch of the Democrat Party – just spent the last three years trying to cover up his mental incapacity, not to mention his corruption, mendacity, and nasty tendency to perve on any attractive female of any age within reach, even on public occasions. The jig is up. The party’s over. Credibility is shot … not just shot but bleeding messily out in the center of the dusty street, while the large crowd of onlookers who perhaps held Tea Party sympathies, willingly served in our nation’s armed forces in the past, believed that our votes – and our protests counted for something – point and jeer.
Yes, indeed – learn to code. Or wait tables, dig ditches, sling packages at Amazon or drive for Uber. If it’s good enough for former millworkers, coal heavers and truck drivers in the industrial heartland … it’s good enough for those who have called themselves news reporters for years, people who have lied to us by commission and omission. There are too many Taylor Lorenzes, and not enough Salena Zitos, it seems to be all too important for the top-ranked national news outlets to have a seat in the farcical White House press conference room, and thus, the national news industry is a fading one. It’s fading for a number of reasons, but one of the major ones is that a large proportion of consumers of news are tired of the lies and are fleeing to other sources than the mainstream purveyors of the government party line.
As an aside, there once were two daily newspapers in my home town of San Antonio – the Express News and the San Antonio Light. The Light was bought out years ago by their rival, but the Express News has shrunk from a once-substantial newspaper which everyone read, to something the size of a small tabloid and mostly running content gleaned from AP, UPI and other syndicated materiel. The editorial columns were usually by nationally syndicated personalities – and why bother? Eventually I dropped subscribing, and evidently, so did most everyone else. I used to see the paper in the driveway of practically every home in the neighborhood in the early mornings when I used to run before dawn. Now, I don’t think it’s delivered to more than a handful of houses.
Comment as you wish.
I used to have a subscription to the Houston Cranko (they were essentially giving it away for free), but cancelled when Wendy Whatsherface ran for governor. I called to cancel, the woman asked me why. I told her I couldn’t stand anymore of ‘the wonderfulness of Wendy’. She laughed and said “you and everybody else”. And then they kept throwing the paper til I called them again.
And they wonder why the biz is dying.
You can be sure though, that no matter how bad the economics of the news business gets; that the organs of State propaganda will continue to be subsidized and their spokes-critters well paid.
Subotai Bahadur
It seems that even billionaires finally come to the conclusion that a measly $100million a year adds up when there’s no prospect that it will ever end. Imagine how much bigger Bezos’ Folly could be if he wasn’t subsidizing the propagandists at the Washington POO. Maybe big enough he could land his jet instead of just the Mrs.’ helo. The first privately owned aircraft carrier. That’d be something to brag about at Davos.
As is, he’s already avoided enough taxes just by moving from California to nearly pay for it. California might be running out of suckers.
Ah, Wonderful Wendy Whatserface … yeah, I can’t remember her last name, either. Made a splash wearing pink sneakers to filibuster in the state lege against a bill limiting abortion. Reminded women of their worst female boss, and men of their awful ex-wife. Got a lot of out-of-state monetary contributions, then crashed and burned when it came out that she had filed to divorce her own husband the very month that he finished paying off her student loans for her law degree.
I think local newspapers are rather like local politicians – perhaps better to concentrate on the local issues. Once they begin nattering about peace in the middle east and national environmental issues, it signals that they have lost all interest in strictly local concerns… which they really could do something about, but prefer to bloviate about larger issues.
“I think local newspapers are rather like local politicians – perhaps better to concentrate on the local issues”
Someone suggested recently that with higher mortgage rates and the consequent difficulties in moving, a lot of people will have more feeling that they will be in one place for the longer term, and hence will have a much higher interest level in local politics.
yes abortion barbie and bobbie O’rourke, maybe they were separated at birth, if an alien came across our local gannett paper,
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/
I would defy them to come to any other conclusion than vaporize Central Florida, just to be sure,
Detroit used to have two papers- the conservative Detroit News and the leftist Free Press. Alas, the leftist rag was going bankrupt, in the early 90s. So the usual suspects came up with a plan, because it would be a travesty if there was only one newspaper for such a large metro area, they claimed.
They created a so-called joint operating agreement, such that there would essentially be the infrastructure for one newspaper- I presume one printing plant and the like- but two editorial boards, thereby maintaining essentially two newspapers. The goal was to save enough money to keep both going, of course.
I recall this as being a big deal- and I suppose it was, at the time. I remember that many people at my work bought the paper every day and occasionally I bought it too.
This situation continued for a few years. At some point I noticed that the conservative-leaning editorial page of the News was appearing buried deep in the ad section of the Sunday paper and the Free Press was getting top billing at the end of the news section. At some point after this the News editorial page was abolished and the editor fired. The people in charge of the paper claimed he quit. The problem was that he also had a column running in the Wall Street Journal at the time and he stated bluntly that he had been fired.
Well. More time passed and I noticed that I never saw the paper around much anymore. The last time I recall seeing it I noticed how thin it had become and that most of the content was cribbed from other sources, such as the WSJ. The last few years at that job I never saw the paper at all.
But it was worse. The Free Press apparently rebranded itself as the “Freep” at some point, to be cool or whatever. I only remember this now because for a long time the “Freep” would have what I assume was the ad section of their paper thrown onto my driveway, without my consent. I had to repeatedly dig up their phone number, call them, wait on hold, etc, to stop them from littering at my address.
I can only presume that they were reduced to this expedient because their subscription numbers had fallen so low that they had no better option to maintain ad rates. That is, if they told their advertisers how many people actually paid to get the paper their advertisers wouldn’t be willing to pay them enough money to remain in business.
But that’s just a guess. Bottom line, not enough people are willing to pay for lying propaganda to keep newspapers viable, especially when what they do print is simply shinola sourced from outfits based in DC or NY.
“Bottom line, not enough people are willing to pay for lying propaganda to keep newspapers viable, especially when what they do print is simply shinola sourced from outfits based in DC or NY.”
I rather suspect this is what has happened with the SA Express-News – that not enough people were willing to pay for reprinted shinola. I think they were drawing on the NY Times for materiel.
I bailed after a particularly offensive editorial cartoon, denigrating the military. This, in a town full of military and military retirees. I recall swapping emails with the local reporter who specialized in military coverage – nice guy, apologetic as all heck over the cartoon, which he said he had advised against … but ce la guerre. (I think he has gone on as a freelancer, or perhaps he was of retirement age.) The current SA Express-News is a sad, sad, shrunken thing. It’s barely the thickness now of the Stars & Stripes.
I rather suspect this is what has happened with the SA Express-News…
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this particular newsrag but I have absolutely no doubt that this is what happened to it. The left is pathologically incapable of realizing that their problem isn’t that they haven’t been able to shoehorn enough propaganda into every facet of human existence but that their preferred policies bring disaster and too many people know all about that.
Anyway, I’ve also got a particular point at which I lost my willingness to pay for nonsense. Long ago, I stopped at a gas station and bought a paper the morning after an election. I don’t even recall the year- perhaps 2002 or 2004- but I do recall that the paper had page after page of empty columns for election results not yet tabulated. Hence, I figured that the results simply weren’t in when the paper had been printed. So I stopped again the next morning and bought another paper. There were no results printed then either.
For a long time I thought this was mere incompetence before events made conclude it was cover for vote fraud- but regardless my willingness to pay money for that newspaper ended right then and there.
Funny thing. Back in 2008 we canceled our subscription to the S.A. Express after they canceled an op/ed writer who was a former colonel (cannot remember branch). Also funny, before moving to the hill country we had our own run in with the Houston Chronicle. Canceled them (long before Wendy) and then subjected to never ending phone calls nearly demanding we resubscribe. They totally lost all credibility after driving the Houston Post into the ground.
Our local paper runs AP stories, complete with AP headlines. I wrote in to complain that a headline had bad references to Trump, but zero in the story to address it. I was told that they were given the headlines. I reluctantly subscribe to get local news.
Stopped reading a daily newspaper sometime in the ’90s. For a while in the ’00s and ’10s, bought the Sunday paper almost exclusively for the coupons and comics. Wouldn’t line a bird cage with a paper now, even if I had a bird.
Schools used to teach kids to read and local papers catered to the desire to ‘know things.’ Both schools and papers stopped doing both at the same time. Sad really, I like my comics on one or two pages.
Gannett started buying small town papers in the 70s, changing the editorial viewpoint overnight. The two papers in San Antonio were great rivals and that allowed spirited civic debate which actually affected events. Then came the era when corporations are each other up. In the name of competition….ha!
My “local” newspaper, rarely has local news.
Case in point; my small town had a multiple agency response to an assault->shooting/stabbing, with one fatality. News coverage,? Word zero.
Another multiple agency, streets-closed (presumed) drug raid. News coverage? Word zero.
So, why would I spend a dime, much less a dollar, on their shinola (nice non-swear turn of phrase, by the way!)
I carried the Light 50 years ago. The Express News was the devils tool and we were inspired to get out there and get starts before the express News could get to the potential customers.
They’re all the devils tool now.
I get the online version of the Corpus Christi Caller Times, I am old and check the obits and comics. late last year they took away some of my favorite comics. One down.
They are a USA Today paper and the news is always the same old progressive line, even for the local stuff. It’s a shame.
Why aren’t more people talking about what Biden did than about his age and senility? He was supposed of sound mind when he took the classified materials. Also supposedly sane when he plagiarized. He has always be a dirty, greedy man.