There are days when we look around at the business we are in - the business of media and communications - and we are sickened by nearly everything we see.
What happens when our media and communications structure is filled with bright, talented individuals who would rather slack off, do sloppy work, and simply ride the latest trash gossip all the way until the next tabloid non-story comes along? You get nearly two weeks worth of penis jokes aimed towards a guy named Weiner, all started by a media parasite who is finally partly right about something for probably the first time in his sad, pathetic little life.
In case you've been hiding out in the mythical cave Osama Bin Laden was alleged to have occupied, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard about the troubles of New York Congressman Anthony Weiner.
The story began when the propaganda hack Andrew Breitbart - who seems to have a personal vendetta against Congressman Weiner - began pushing a new story. Breitbart claimed he'd discovered Weiner had sent a lewd picture to a young woman, using Twitter. Most ethical media types should have blown off Breitbart's story. After all, Breibart was wrong about Shirley Sherrod, wrong about ACORN, wrong when he teamed up with known right-wing smear artist James O'Keefe, and wrong in a whole host of other incidents.
Still, much of the media is lazy and bored. "Looking at the budget realties or the effects of climate change is hard work," they whine. So they took the weak, easy path, and followed Breitbart's half-truths.
Initially, the Congressman lied. He claimed his Twitter account had been hacked - which is so easy to do that even not-so tech-saavy people can do it. The bored media machine, spurred on by Breitbart, wouldn't let the story go, though.
So yesterday the Congressman came clean, admitting he'd sent a lewd picture of his crotch to a young woman on his Twitter account as part of a joke. The Congressman then went further, and admitted he'd taken other questionable pictures of himself over the years, and sent them to a few select women during that time.
In the media frenzy to focus on the fact that - SHOCK - a Congressperson LIED, the media also forgot to perform their due diligence.
To cover that professional oversight, we'll do it for them, in rapid fashion.
The Congressman admitted to sending explicit - but not pornographic - pictures to women over the last few years. Until July 11, 2010, the Congressman was technically single - so there wasn't even an ethical problem there, let alone a legal one. Wouldn't it be great if all the elected officials we have, who choose to be more sexually adventurous, would be single, trying to connect with other single people, using generally private methods? We'd much prefer that to Congressmen who have their parents pay their lover's husband to cover up their extramarital affair; or have a toe-tapping Congressman trying to find a quickie sexual liason in an airport bathroom; or even a Presidential candidate having donors bribe his videographer to cover up his affair.
We could even go further. For example, we could ask how Mr. Breitbart got the other photos he's now passing around, claiming they're also images of Congressman Weiner. The first photo was on a public Twitter feed, but the others appear to have been private. No one is asking yet how the piece of human trash that is Breitbart got his hands on those pictures.
The point of our trying to shame some of our fellows in the media, by pointing out their failures to do their jobs well, is simple.
When a press conference with a member of Congress, of either party, regardless of the tawdry topic, ends with some joker in the back yelling, "Were you fully erect" - and the media STILL doesn't understand why their consumers don't take them seriously any more, the problem isn't just the propaganda masters at Fox News. The whole so-called "News Media" now shares the blame for the sick, sad thing they've become.
