On Thursday, while looking wistfully back at Obama’s first four years, NBC News accidentally did some actual reporting. In a First Read article that opened with the question, “Is the nation better off than it was four years ago,” senior political director, Mark Murray, did something that neither he, nor NBC News, nor the mainstream media was willing to do during this last presidential campaign: report on Obama’s record.
But there it finally was: The Truth — and from NBC News, no less. Poverty’s up (from 43.6 million to 46.2 million), middle class incomes are down ($50k compared to $52k), the deficit’s exploded (from $10 trillion to $16 trillion), food stamp recipients have skyrocketed (33.5 million to 46.6 million), unemployment hasn’t budged, and the same number of people are without health insurance today as there were in 2009.
Still, NBC News couldn’t even bring itself to report the most damning Obamanomics numbers: a population so despondent by a lack of jobs that enough people have dropped out to shrink the labor market to levels unseen since the 1980s. A chronic long-term unemployment problem unseen in this country since World War II. An unemployment rate disproportionately savaging blacks and Hispanics.
Where was all this news during the 2012 campaign when Obama was applying for a promotion and Romney was applying to replace him?
We know the answer. Rather than report Truth, the media locked arms and circled Obama’s palace in order to protect him from the mindless hordes of racist, sexist Neanderthals who dared criticize The Lightbringer. The media’s weapons of choice were distraction and lies:
Did you hear what this Republican no one ever heard of said about rape? Did you know Mitt Romney’s a Republican?
He said 47%. Buuurn the Bitter Clinger!
This male, rich, white, freaky Mormon LIAR is telling you there’s an al Qaeda problem in Mali and that Jeep’s moving to China.
Alakazam, bippity boo, this economy’s good for you.
Abacadabra, sima sala bim, job growth not keeping with population growth is a win.
Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse, two-percent GDP growth has you aroused.
And on and on like that. In order to pretend Obama’s policies worked and to win him reelection, the media completely rewrote and redefined what a successful economic recovery is. Then, before anyone could notice the sleight of hand, the media would quickly change the subject. In order to ensure Obama was protected from numbers NBC News would only put together after he was safely reelected, anything and everything was hurled at The Narrative
Yes, the media won. It still pains me to say so, but the most dishonest, self-serving, narcissistic, un-American people in the world won. By picking up and running with Obama’s cynically divisive and intellectually dishonest campaign culture weapons, the media successfully pushed a failed president over the second term finish line.
But at what cost?
The cost to America isn’t small, but might work itself out over a couple of generations. The cost to the media, though, might (hopefully) be fatal.
In the long game of history (that will eventually be won by Christ) there are skirmishes, fights, battles, wars, and existential wars. What the media is winning are nothing more than a series of high-profile battles, but it is doing so in a way that represents an existential threat to themselves.
By every measure — economic, credibility — the media is dying a slow death from a poison it must ingest in order to win these battles, but a poison nonetheless. This poison has cost the media almost all of its credibility with the public, a problem that grows by the year. This, naturally, delivers economic consequences.
Recently, The New York Times, Reuters, and Time Magazine reported massive layoffs. CNN is collapsing and its so-called savior has already embraced the network’s most cancerous tumor. The broadcast networks are losing viewers by the day. Newsweek is no more. For years now, major newspapers have been shrinking in staff size while the daily product shrinks to the size of a Dennys’ menu. Everywhere the word “bankruptcy” swirls.
And it is mostly due to the poison of bias the media gulps by the bucket in order to push its agenda — and that amount of poison has only increased with the arrival of Lightbringer. Which means that the media’s unswerving sycophancy for this man is nothing more than a faster form of suicide.
Part of this self-inflicted death spiral is as simple as 2 + 2. It’s not just the media’s sycophancy and subsequent credibility loss that’s speeding up its demise. It’s also Obama’s awful economic policies.
The media successfully fooled enough people into believing Obama’s policies roared us back into a recovery to win Obama the chance to do four more years of damage. But no one’s fooled to the point where they’re buying newspaper subscriptions or advertisements. The result has been a series of high-profile media layoffs announced even before Obama’s second term became official. All due to an economy the media assured us was humming and did not need new management.
And then there’s the issue of the overall economy, stupid.
Since Obama’s reelection, the presidential campaign hasn’t stopped. The president and the media have once again locked arms in the hopes of dividing and permanently clobbering the Republican party. We had a Fiscal Cliff followed by gun control, and now we’re entering debt ceiling negotiations. After that will be immigration and after that anything that damages the GOP and tries to distract from the poor getting poorer and job creation barely treading water.
And yes, once again, Obama and the media are winning this series of bruising, high-profile political battles.
But in the process, deficit spending is only getting more out of control and vital monies required for job creation are being taken out of the private economy — you know, because of “fair share.” And someday — maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not until after Obama’s left office in a media orgasm so intense Chuck Todd and Ben Smith are made permanently glassy-eyed — but someday, people are going to wake up, walk out of their homes in a daze, and realize the “prosperity” the media sold them is nothing of the sort.
You see, permanent campaigns and the waging of divisive cultural issues might increase poll numbers and win a few elections, but they can’t fix the economy. They also can’t distract forever from an economy delivering only suffering to so many.
Until then, take heart in the fact that a dismal economy the media alchemized into something Roaring has already and will only further damage these lying liars. And remember that when people do wake up, that consciousness will only further damage the media’s credibility. All of this, of course, further saps the media’s strength and influence.
The media might think they are partners with Barack Obama, but in reality they’re his cannon fodder. Obama uses, lies to, dismisses, and openly mocks the media. Still, like bug-eating Renfelds diseased by The Master’s influence, they live only to serve. To nudge this metaphor further than I probably should, these media Renfelds also feed off the grotesque: lies, deception, shilling, the use of others, and a total indifference to truth and the suffering of others.
The Master can’t save them, and his open contempt for them means he won’t even try.
It’s all a house of cards built on dishonesty, which only works for so long. Reality and truth will someday intrude, and when the music stops, Obama will be off somewhere surrounded by an entirely new group of international sycophants, while his discarded media is left without a chair.
This will happen. It always does.
My only fear is that when it does, I’m so old that prostrate problems make it difficult to do what needs to be done to the media’s final resting place.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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