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November 25, 2004
Ave Atque Vale, Dan Rather/Giving thanks for a blissful November
Oh, wait a minute. "Ave atque vale" means "hail and farewell." What's the Latin expression for "goodbye and good riddance"?
Lexington's column in the Economist is a charmingly snarky send-off for the live-action Kent Brockman. Here's the opening paragraph:
FOR conservative America, it just keeps on getting better. A mere 20 days after the Republicans' clean sweep of the White House and Congress, the American right celebrated the retirement of one of the hated grandees of liberal journalism, Dan Rather. “It's as if the voters just keep on voting,” says one conservative. “And our side just keeps on winning.”
Oh, God, yes. I've been brushing fluffy bits of Cloud Nine off my shoes since about 2:30 AM on November 3rd. I've actually had to fight off anxious feelings that everything's going so well it's only a matter of time until disaster strikes. Seriously; having been so vigilant and tense for so long has made anxiety a hard habit to shake.
Perhaps some of you are dealing with the same "so when's the brutal payback?" anxieties. I'll tell you how I decided to look at it: This November is the payback. The payback for September 11. The payback for having to listen to "selected, not elected" for four years. The payback for enduring the "anybody but Bush" crowd; the payback for Hillary being my senator; the payback for a liberal-dominated sort of media Tammany Hall that already existed long before I was born; the payback for everything the placard-carriers of the 60s went on to do as "grownups" to screw up our country and our lives.
Heh.TM
Lexington concludes on this note:
Mr Rather's passing does not mean that the liberal orthodoxy is about to give way to a new conservative one. It means that all orthodoxies are being chewed up by a voraciously unpredictable news media, which is surely all to the good.
Yep, nothing but good news. The last thing any conservative should want is a conservative orthodoxy in the media. Liberals still haven't realized that their control of the MSM made conservative samizdat a burning necessity and instilled a sense of urgency in those who managed to find it on AM radio, on cable, or on the internet. Forbidden thoughts are always the most compelling, no?
And the MSM, bless 'em, did something even more potent to destroy the left: they became a giant echo chamber that reflected the political and social echo chamber liberals already tend to live in. So the chattering classes turned on their TVs, heard echoes of echoes, and believed they were listening to the voice of America. And the MSM helped them by piling on any non-left voice that dared to make itself heard. Fox News? Ranting lunatics, controlled by Bush. Talk radio? You mean hate radio. Bloggers? Pajama-clad losers.
So as I give abundant thanks today for this November, my fondest wish for the future is that the media continues to descend into a cacophony. May we never again be held in thrall to a single voice. May we never again be able to completely ignore opposition views. And if there should ever be a monolithic media voice again, let it once more be a liberal one, and make it loud. We don't want them to hear us coming.
"Heh" is a trademark of the Instapundit International Sinister Rightwing Consortium.
Posted by EtherPundit at November 25, 2004 06:12 PM Category: Media