More on the ABC Debate, our pathetic national media...

This will be a pretty easy Moron post for this week's 'toon:

• Alls ya gotta do is watch the damn thing (or read the transcript), if you haven't already suffered through it. The cartoon mainly came from my longing for a response to these 5th grade-level questions that wasn't softened so it couldn't possibly "offend" someone. Of course, Obama can't come out and say, "well... I DO hate rednecks!" But it would be funny as hell if he could.
  
  After all, it's not like his original comments were actually WRONG in any way, shape, or form... but the amoral halfwits in our national media (in this case, Charles Gibson and George Snuffaluffagus) smelled "controversy" (and ratings) and, predictably, jumped all over it.
  
  Who really gives a shit if rednecks are offended anyway? It's not like they have some kind of national identity established over the course of history as a result of being wronged by the overriding power structure. And, no, I'm not making a generalization about "poor" or "working class" people here... I'm talking about REDNECKS. White Trash. We've been over this before...
  
  Plus, I suppose that, technically, I too could be considered a redneck. So maybe I'm just a self-loathing member of this particular "ethnic group"...
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan:
  

  The loser was ABC News: one of the worst media performances I can remember - petty, shallow, process-obsessed, trivial where substantive, and utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about.
  ...
  
  No questions on the environment, none on terror, none on interrogation, none on torture, none on education, none on spending, none on healthcare, none on Iran ... but four separate questions in the first hour about a lapel-pin, Bitter-gate, Wright-gate and Ayers. I'm all for keeping candidates on their toes. But this was ridiculous.

• Glenn Greenwald:
  

  AMY GOODMAN: George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton aide—President Clinton—said he had asked fair, tough questions, the kind of questions that would be asked later. What is your response to that, Glenn Greenwald?
  
  GLENN GREENWALD: This is the justification that reporters use repeatedly whenever they focus on insipid, substance-free stories. They pretend that if it were strictly up to them, they of course would focus on the serious substantive matters that the country faces, because they’re politically sophisticated observers. The problem, they say, is that Americans, the sort of heartland voter whom they patronizingly look down upon is interested in these sort of personality-based Drudge-like issues, and therefore they have no choice but to report them, since these are the issues that are going to predominate in our political process.
  
  ...
  
  And these journalists believe that they’re sort of spokespeople for the people in the heartland and speak for them and patronizingly say that they’re interested in these insipid issues and that’s why they’re covered. The reality is there’s no connection between the establishment journalistic class and the people whom they claim to represent, and the reason they cover those issues is because they, the journalists, want to cover them, not because the people want to hear them.

• Paul Waldman:
  

  The Washington journalists themselves are as elite as they come, but they know who the good guys are -- they're the residents of the small towns, whose "values" can't possibly be matched by those who live in cities; they're the people whose lowbrow tastes make them "authentic"; they're the earthy, regular Americans defined by their modest tastes in food, drink, and entertainment. The journalists may not actually know too many of these people, but they know they're there, and they know they're better than the rest of us.