Media

Yeah, Krugman's on the Newsweek cover. Nice, good for him.

It's not his fault, of course, but this will work out well for no one. John Cole sums it up perfectly:

CNN’s “Your Money” segment earlier today featured them reading two paragraphs of Krugman trashing the bank plan and then spent the next five minutes letting wingnut WSJ economist Stephen Moore trash the plan. This is working out well.

It's not that the "left" should just support Obama no matter what, because following around "Dear Leader" is both a sucker's game and what the GOP does.

But don't be naive and think that the set up is like the 1930s and that criticism from the left will necessarily pull the President in that direction, because the media-filter of the modern era doesn't care about such "distinctions", it all becomes one mass contest of critics vs. President. Ironically, the personality cult is reinforced by the media to facilitate it all. It's all about conflict and all conflict is the same. Is that fair, no. Is that how it should be, no. Is that how it is? Sadly, yes. It doesn't help that "the left", despite being responsible for virtually all social and economic progress in this country, has been made synonymous with goofy and frivolous in the broadcast media. While all those folks who want to bomb the brown people until the color bounces are never off the boob tube.

Hell, Pat Buchanan gets to defend Hitler and Germany for WWII and nothing happens, Ward Churchill wasn't even on television and he was drumbeaten into infamy.

The lesson learned via cable television is this. Paul Krugman criticizes Obama and it becomes transformed into Steven Moore's libertarian world of magic ponies, non-fattenting brownies, and lithe pixies with oral-fixations.