The Inauguration: the sycophancy is sickening

I've never seen an outpouring of sycophantic claptrap such as that exuded from every pore today by the mainstream media.  We didn't see the inauguration of President Obama's second term;  we saw the embedding of a cult of personality in the journalistic 'hive mind'.  To cite just one example, here's David Rothkopf, writing at CNN.

We had a man from humble beginnings assuming the most powerful role in the world. We had a president demanding equal rights for gay Americans and equal pay for women without fearing he was in so doing veering from the mainstream of American views or values -- and without celebrating the kind of progress we should have made on both fronts long, long ago.

. . .

We also had a speech that devoted real attention to perhaps the greatest challenge the world faces at the moment: climate change.

We could hope, as we listened, that on this great issue, like others demanding answers now -- bringing our fiscal house in order, restoring equality of opportunity to our economy, ending our country's sick obsession with guns -- that future Inaugural addresses would be able to note the kind of material progress that we have seen with regard to combating racism or ending wars.

As such, today's speech did just what we might hope, capturing where we are and where we ought to be going. And it did it in the way our Founding Fathers envisioned, through the words of a man elected by the people of America to lead them.

The great beauty of the speech was not in any particular phrase, but in that the man in question and the country he leads were in so many ways far beyond what the Founders could have imagined. And that, despite our natural tendency to glorify our origins, that this America was in virtually every way better than the one they offered up to us.

There's more at the link - but don't bother reading it.  It's too nauseating.  It's nothing more or less than one-sided, blinkered, touchy-feely partisan claptrap.  It's not even true!  I would say it's not worth the paper it's written on, except that it's not in print at all!

The mainstream media have finally abandoned any and all pretense of impartiality.  They're solidly in President Obama's pocket.  We need not expect the truth from them, or any attempt to inform the American people in a fair and balanced way of the issues confronting us.  They're now the enemy of rational analysis and reasoned discussion.

In an earlier age, William Randolph Hearst would have been proud of them . . . although not of the cause they espouse.  In that, at least, he was wiser than they are.

Peter