As a former print and broadcast journalist and now a professional stand-up comedian with a Libertarian bent, I watched the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner with keen interest until that curiosity turned to horror at how such an event unabashedly puts the government-media complex on display. Watching the Washington press corps cozy up to our elected "leaders" is enough to make you vomit.
If you thought the government-media complex was a secret just watch this dinner and you will immediately realize the conspiracy is out in the open. The façade of emotional and intellectual distance between journalists and politicians crumbles within the opening moments.
While it is fun watching politicians struggling to perform like stand-up comedians and comedians struggling to get the Washington press corps to lighten up about itself, and spectators taking nervous sips of booze, it is disheartening to see the fourth estate so chummy with bureaucrats. Our media, the so-called "watchdog" of the people is a lapdog. Hard-hitting reporters bent on seeking truth, holding government accountable, and ferreting out political secrets designed to harm the American public, sit back, down a few drinks, and plaster on fake smiles.
Observing Dick Cheney delivering a joke about the media's sanctimonious attitude is like watching the Penguin from the vintage TV show Batman threaten to do in the caped crusaders. I kept expecting "Bam" or "Pow" or "Zowie" to appear above the Vice President's noggin. I would have preferred to see Cheney read the Constitution publicly just once so he could see what he and his cronies have stepped all over.
If insincerity, nervousness, and phoniness of reporters and politicians alike were energy sources we could have tapped enough last night to wean ourselves off Middle Eastern oil by 2010. If you look at journalists and politicians in the same room you quickly realize they are flip sides of the same coin. They function as subordinates of the state.
The country's journalistic community is in shambles as a result of decades of media consolidation, weaker academic standards, ignorance of American history, and the mash up of news and entertainment into pure, unadulterated spin.
And the used car salesmen, nattering nabobs of negativity, and aesthetically-challenged actors who pass for TV news anchors, pundits, and politicians feed off each other like parasites ultimately sucking the life out of the country along with any semblance of informed opinion, open and honest dialogue about the future course of America, and true condition of our representative republic now perched precariously atop its formerly strong Constitutional foundation.
As a stand-up comedian I laughed at the jokes delivered at this dinner but I cringed at the celebration of the government-media complex. As former New York Times Chief of Staff, John Swinton, said in a speech at the New York Press Club, in 1953: ” There is no such thing as an independent press. You know, and I know, there is not one of you who dares write your honest opinions. We are paid not to print our opinions or we would be put out on the streets looking for another job. The business of a journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright, to prevent, to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for our daily bread. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scene. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
April 19, 2008
