Bad Media Day

Can someone tell me what the hell is wrong with Newsweek?

Today, in the middle of reading a story about how the neo cons hate John McCain, I was compelled to put the piece down out of disgust. The story started with quotes (obtained by Newsweek) by Ann Coulter and went on to quote Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and other media figures of the extreme right wing of the Republican party.

Why put the article down? Follow me here for a minute.

In the first two pages of this article on John McCain, one of two people who will be competing for the presidency of this country, they quoted a woman who called John Edwards a faggot, a drug-addict hypocrite windbag who is chiefly resonsible for the lowering of political discourse in this country, the premeir irrational screaming talking head among wingnuts and a Moron convert who once promised to broadcast an abortion on his radio talk show, only to play a clip of Al Franken's radio show (who explained the tasteless stunt by comparing himself to Lenny Bruce). In other words, the story was stacked with sources who no serious journalist in their right mind would listen to.

The argument might then be "But these are the neocon powerful. Who else are you going to talk to?" Senators. Representatives. The president or his staff. Joe Liberman. Mitch McConnell. Dan Carlin. Robert Scheer. Harry Reid. William Kristol, if it comes to that (even though no one should take him seriously, either). You don't talk to entertainers, many of whom have IDENTIFIED themselves as entertainers as opposed to serious political pundits and visionaries. By quoting Ann Coulter, you are validating her and I, de facto, am giving her attention. So I put the article down.

I'm totally engrossed in the presidential election right now, but stuff like this takes the wind out of my sails pretty damn quick. But, I had some good news - the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue came today (with my sweetie, Brooklyn Decker getting significant play), so I put down newsweek which was trying to entertain me as oppose to inform me in a subtle way, and picked up something that appealed to my basest elements in a forthright and straightfoward manner. When I need political coverage, I think I'll go on-line in the near future until Newsweek gets their shit together.