Chris Matthews and the dumbing down of television journalism

He didn’t start the trend, of course. It goes back at least as far as old pinko Cronkite. But at least Uncle Joe Walter and his employer had the Machiavellian good sense to maintain the pretense of objectivity; in that way, Cronkite and his ilk were able to peddle liberal narcotics to the masses under the guise of handing out slices of good old American apple pie. The deception was undiscovered, the treachery successfully masked, for many years.

That all changed with the shift to open advocacy. News organizations – most notoriously MSNBC – ditched even the appearance of fairness in order to corner the market on rabid lefty viewers (a not extraordinarily large demographic; perhaps, someday, the geniuses in the executive suite will see how this is connected to the network’s abysmal ratings). Thus, in place of the solid-looking, “trustworthy” Cronkite (and other, similar specimens of faux professionalism),we now have Chris Matthews, Obama’s altar boy and one of the leading castrati in the Democratic choir. In the struggle for supremacy among moronic ideologues, people like Matthews and Keith Olbermann keep digging deeper and deeper holes for themselves. With this effort – in which Matthews wonders openly whether Sarah Palin can read - the spastic-legged opinion monger will soon be swimming in molten rock.

And the truth is, I prefer Chris Matthews and advocacy journalism to the concealed political and cultural machinations of the legacy media. The prejudice and the extremism and the pathological hatred are right out front, for everyone to see - but, mercifully, there are few who will actually watch, and even fewer who will believe.

Update - John W in the comments

I am glad to see that someone else had gotten wise to "the most trusted" Cronkite. I was living in Denver in 1964. Goldwater came to Denver to make a campaign speech. From the airport it was planned that he go down 32nd street to downtown. I with hundreds others lined both sides of 32nd from the airport to about downtown. Just as he landed a guy standing up in an open car with a loud speaker drove up 32nd telling us that the route has been changed. He is now going down Quebec to Colfax to downtown. We all rushed over to Quebec and Colfax.

That night on CBS Cronkite with his bushy eyebrows botting up and down and with a muck on his face showed us pictures of Goldwater going down 32nd and no one greeting him. Then he showed pictures of Johnson two weeks before going down 32nd and the street was lined with people greeting him.

Did Cronkite know what happened? Of course, he did.