Brookfield Basics

Few things amuse me more than when the icons and talking heads of our mainstream media (MSM) bemoan the fact that most of America no longer views them as being honest or objective. Oh how they twist in self-righteous angst over this matter. It is inconceivable to these lofy-minded nabobs, who only have our best interests at heart, that they are now viewed largely with mistrust and suspicion.

Well the reason so many of us view them in this light is because they have given us so much reason to do so. And I think there is a recent news event that PROVES this.

Three weeks ago Sandy Berger stood up in Federal Court and said these three words: "Guilty your Honor". Sandy Berger was President Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor. Now please understand that I am not a Republican, nor is this about bashing Bill Clinton or his legacy. It is about the actions and behavior of our media.

Here is what Mr. Berger, by his own admission, did. One is compelled to believe him if for no other reason than no one would possibly make this up!

While serving as NSA to President Clinton, he used his security clearance to gain entrance to the National Archives with the intended purpose of stealing classified documents. Berger's motivation was that these documents contained information damaging to him relative to the 9-11 terrorist attacks. He smuggled the papers out of the building by stuffing them in his socks!! Then, with all of the officious and smug airs that only a rotund Washington DC power broker can muster, he indignantly denied this charge for years.

So let's recap. A man who sat at the innermost circles of power and decision making admits to stealing classified Federal documents by smuggling them off of government property in his socks!! Now after years of perjury, he admits to not only the theft, but to the fact that he subsequently destroyed the documents, thus destroying evidence of his own performance in a matter now seared into our national consciousness.

Now let's think for a moment. Can you imagine, can you possibly imagine the bonfire of outrage that would be erupting across the pages of our metropolitan newspapers and the desks of our network TV-anchors if this had happened in a Republican Administration, or in the board room of a major American Corporation??!! I can visualize Katie Couric swooning on set, the victim of a self-imposed tsunami of indignation. Walter Cronkite would peer languidly out from his ivory-towered enclave at the New York Yacht Club, and point to this as another sign of "right wing conspiracy and despotism". Giant Gum-Ball (ah sorry - I meant Bryant Gumble) would rail on about American corruption and decadence. And that great bastion of American muckraking, The New York Times, would look to hire Mr. Berger, as his real-life story is even better than what their long defrauded Pulitzer Prize winning reporters have now admitted to "making up".

Do I exaggerate? The imagery may be over-heated but the substance of this is true, and I believe we all KNOW it's true. It is no longer reasonable in my view to debate whether the MSM is biased. It is only reasonable to debate the impact of this betrayal of their once proud profession.

So the next time you hear someone from the MSM bemoaning the growth of "alternative news sources", tell them they have no one but themselves to blame. What they really bemoan of course is the fact that they no longer control the "message", and that they are no longer the arbiters and purveyors of thought in America.

And that is certainly something to be grateful for in this new year of 2007.