Friday, August 1, 2008

Quit minimizing Obama's Elitist label, MSNBC. Then? You might get it.

For those of you who truly believe you're doing a bang up job there at what you do, don't read any farther. It'll just make you mad and I'd like to have you back some time.

Here's the problem as I see it
You're idolizing not analyzing. You're drowning in the wake of Obamania to the point that it is painful to watch you grasp for a life ring of reality. You're instead trying to grab onto something unreal.

Someone has to slap you out of it. Guess I'll give it a try.

Maybe you should think about your roles as journalists, not act like sycophants.

Think of your roles as public servants because as journalists that is what you are.

Think of your roles as truth tellers no matter where the truth leads you. Whether it is to the painful end or to the glorious heights, it is none of your concern because you are journalists, not results oriented individuals. It is by choice you have become journalists regardless of what it says on your business card, for most of you, anyway.

It is not in your best interest to decide how you feel about how anyone sees John McCain or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or andrea hall from your point of view.

It is only in the best of interest of this democracy that you take the full observatory and objective (interesting words) from their point of view and then tell this democracy's people about it.

That is not happening and it's killing us. You are telling us from your point of view everything that is occurring in the world.

Why are you doing this?
Why are you consciously avoiding that which you know in your hearts is at the center of The Fourth Estate?

Have some of you been taken up by the emotion, by a repressed anger, by a sense of powerlessness that will soon be unfurled and thus ameliorated? Have you lost all of your center?

Is it about money and the industry's golden handcuffs? Do some of you have more dang money than you've ever seen in your life and you just don't want it to stop? Or your spouses won't let you? You're compromised?

Are some of you scared of what your friends will think if you don't tow the company line? Or are some of you just too damned lazy to do the work?

Or are some of you in over your head because your really don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm seeing lots of historical error and data screw ups. Sorry, guys. I'm too old to miss them. (By the way, I've seen you old guys let them go by the wayside uncorrected. Stop that. You owe the country the correction. Journalism is also about instruction.)

Maybe some of you "pros" need to dive under and come up alongside and tread water awhile. Catch your breath. You've been riding in that wake a long, long time now, and it gets pretty bouncy especially when Obama tacks; some of you are turning blue.

Some of you have forgotten your roots. And you feel kinda guilty every time you cash that huge paycheck because you come from people who are not college educated most likely. I say that because statistics tell me you do. You're from blue collar families, you're very self conscious about that. You act guilty about having money.

Some of you don't handle that well. You make fools of yourselves over it, in fact and it's time you got over it. You overcompensate or miss the point or do something to show that you aren't ready for prime time. So what!

You're just so star struck and in love. With yourselves, where you are, where you want to be someday. Most of that comes from not being used to being where you are. It's fun being rich and on TV, getting face time and it's probably pretty easy to get used to it. Gosh, a person could become, well, an elitist, especially if she/he married well and moved in the right circles or had the right job.

Most of that comes from not remembering who you are.

What do I want?
Real analysis. Not your hopes and dreams. Leave those with your pals at the bar after hours. Use your youth, brains and energy to get into the scene to hear what the candidates are really saying and the people are really saying then report it without your hopes and dreams.

Here's the type of question you could be asking yourselves instead of what you can do to get people to understand how to like Obama better:

Why Berlin?

What was the pull? Was it the past? Who's past? Obama's or America's? Don't glorify him based on the melodrama of someone's idology?

I'm still pressing for that answer. Without a psychological profile in addition to a complete personal investigation of the man's past we can guess why Obama would choose such an odd venue. I don't get it. What is the attachment? There's so much news to cover with Obama.

There are overtired, retired and tired working men and women who vote right here in America. There's another story.

What's going on with this huge shift in African-American demographics vis a vie post race politics? That's a huge story you at MSNBC are actually afraid to discuss, it seems, openly. Dismissing Jesse Jackson's remarks so quickly was a mistake, especially when you had children talking about it.

Better pay attention. It's a long way and time until November. Seriously.

Hardball?

Why don't you analyze not idolize?

Thanks for the read.

No comments: