Majority Punditry In Midst of Identity Crisis

This is an objective observation about the slow demise of objective news.

Liberal punditry has scored some big time victories this decade. Not only has their voice been made legitimate, but they have taken once-straight-news organizations,most notably MSNBC, and made them their own. Conservatives are left with talk-radio and FoxNews, which has never sought to be objective, and therefore has always lacked a degree of credibility, as far as most are concerned.

The Fairness Doctrine, once ballyhooed by the Left as necessary to counter the formerly dominating Conservative punditry on the radio, with the likes of Limbaugh, especially, has been aptly dropped; They've staked their claim on television and blogs, as blogs are typically driven by a younger crowd and younger crowds often lean leftward.

But in order for these people to establish a reign, they're going to have to appeal to a minority they soundly oppose. Which is of course nonsense.

Watching Hardball last night was anything but Hardball.

The openly biased Chris Matthews, whose contract was extended past the next presidential election, tossed softballs up to fellow Democrats about the salvation of Obama's budget, in between talking about how happy and glowing he is all of the time these days (not kidding, he said that).

My favorite line: "The economy. Republicans don't have a plan. Democrats have one. Back after this."

Well, that's newsworthy.

If it were really hardball political analysis, he might be more concerned with how this Democratic majority will handle the budget and all of its ambitions agenda points and not how the Republicans will be powerless to stop it. The bit about the GOP isn't news; It's olds.

Olbermann has been particularly hackable. Bush and his cronies remain in the headlines, showing you how pointless Olbermann's headlines are. "BREAKING NEWS" isn't a question of whether or not Bush was the worst President ever. I'm not even sure breaking news should be a question to begin with. Sure, George W. Bush was terrible. But there's nothing else to be done about it. He's out. Obama's in. Obama's in the White House. Bush doesn't even have a house, he lives in a Dallas condo.

Same goes for Maddow and the rest. Lamenting over the past is not news. In fact, the news isn't even their business anymore.

And therein lies their deal with the devil. By abandoning objectivity, they have sought to merely be weapons of the minority plight, which is all well and good, until you become the majority.

Want to know why O'Reilly is all over Olbermann's 'Worst People in the World'? Because he's thrashing Olbermann in the ratings. The conservative voice, while not necessarily missed just yet, merely a few months out of the Bush era, will continue to grow.

You heard nary a peep out of Rush Limbaugh during the Republican dominance of the early century. These days he's being labeled as the face of the whole franchise, which only helps his cause.

I started this as some kind of vocal plea for these "news" anchors to get over Bush and start being real journalists about the current President. But that won't work. I think it's the ebb and flow. They'll be down again, just like they were during the Clinton years, while conservative radio surged.

Then they were back up during their Minority Glory. I suspect the cycle will roll on.