The casual contempt for Obama--an unheard of phenomena for the press eight years ago when Bush arrived in the Beltway--has already become impossible for many within the media industry to hide. Specifically the WaPo Lisa de Moraes and her unnamed television industry "suits" quoted her news article, "Obama's Preemptive Strike."

The premise is pretty simple: Obama may address the nation three times in primetime during the month of February. The Post's television writer treats this as a really big deal and inserts a how-dare-he attitude, as she wrings her hands wondering how many millions of dollars the networks might "lose" by, you know, handing over the public airwaves for relatively small blocks of time to the POTUS so he can address a national crisis.

"President Obama's desire to talk -- and talk, and talk -- to the American public could cost broadcast networks millions, and millions, and millions of prime-time TV dollars," wrote de Moraes. And yeah, good luck uncovering that kind of contempt when Bush addressed the nation in 2001 on network TV, even before the 9/11 attacks. The idea that it's newsworthy or unusual or a crisis for the TV networks when a president uses the public airwaves to address the nation is just absurd.

That's from Eric Boehlert. More at the link.

These people are living in denial. Perhaps they don't think the economic crisis is as sexy as when they got to dress up like GI Joe and play war, but this is a hell of a lot more relevant to their actual lives than the fantasy that Saddam was sending drone planes to kill us all in our beds.

We are still living in bizarroworld. The entire media became hysterical, nearly speaking in tongues, at the prospect of going to war against someone who hadn't even attacked us. Now that we have a real crisis on our hands, they are so,very, very booored with it all. It's infuriating.

There's an underlying reason for this particular kvetching, however. Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the nation weekly during the depression and it helped him keep the country on his side as the administration tried everything it could think of to bring the country back from the brink. I think it's pretty clear that the last thing the elites want is for Obama to maintain the kind of connection to the people that could undermine their control of the political dialog. It can only hurt their ball team.

Along those lines, if you didn't get a chance to see Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald discussing this very topic on Moyers last night, check it out. Very good stuff. And Boehlert actually got to discuss this topic on CNN yesterday, which I think may be a first.

baby steps ...

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