Bloodless Coup

Ug, the College Republicans at my college did this. It's the whole "fox news" phenomenon... although aren't they about 10 years too late?

"And in order to be independent, DeAnna said the publication would have to avoid funding from the University, but assured the members that funding would likely not be difficult with money from the Leadership Institute, other conservative bodies and proper fundraising procedures."

So, having already completely devalued the phrase "fair and balanced," as evinced by these folks' appropriation of the phrase, the right now moves on to eviscerate all meaning from the term "independent."

{Sigh!}

I'm all for competing viewpoints, and I'm fairly agnostic on whether the better circumstance is a world of competing and transparently opinionated media outlets (with some balls, one hopes) or one trying so hard to be objective that it makes no evaluations of veracity whatsoever (which is, of course, what we've got in the MSM now, by and large), but I can't help but feel that, with the MSM's complicity, partisan rancor has led us to where we are now, when candidates feel no obligation to tell anything resembling the truth anymore. And if we give up on at least the illusion of media objectivity, don't we just end up with an amplification of the same partisan rhetoric, devoid of content, demonstrably false, and utterly destructive of meaningful public dialogue?

I'm reminded of Idiocracy, somehow.

Exactly. For whatever reason the traditional media has decided that their proper role is as a megaphone for certain establishment voices, no matter how ridiculous or deceitful they may be - not to present their viewers and readers with objective information regarding the world around them.

As to why they were so scared by Bernie Goldberg's tirades (errr, books) and Republican News (errr, Fox News), that I do not know.

In the seven years I spent in Morgantown, I recall a number of attempts to create a "conservative" newspaper to compete with the DA. It will be interesting to see whether this one succeeds.

I had several students who wrote for The Musket, which was the conservative newspaper.

My all time favorite was when the College Republicans at the University of Florida created their own paper to counteract the liberal Alligator. Then the fun began when the College Republicans splintered into the CRs and the Young Republicans. On the days when each would release their publication, the other would sneak around to the free newspaper bins and steal the other's publication at like 6am.

As our semi-regular poster Reagan would say: "Strategery!"

The Mountaineer Jeffersonian (just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) has a letter today in today's DA explaining why they have come into existence. They spend a lot of their time on the DA endorsing a political candidate (only 1) and questioning how they made their endorsement (did they poll the students?). This implies they don't get the concept of endorsements or the fact that newspaper endorsements come from, you know, newspaper editorial boards. Either that or they are trying to be funny. And while their wording is funny here and there, I don't think they were aiming for humor.

Wait wait, they are the Jeffersonian?!? I thought Jefferson was a pinko commie race mixing librul?

And oh my goodness the letter to the editor is a mess! Shapeless prose.

Jefferson? The rich boy who quite literally treated other humans as his property? I see the (scary!) race-mixing. Not so sure about the librul.

So I picked up a copy of this week's edition. The lead stories were on Nader & Barr and the race for WV Attorney General. It also features a book review of Corsi's book on Obama, praising it in particular for being so well-sourced. Note to the author of that review - the presence of footnotes and being well-sourced are not necessarily synonomous.