The Washington Press Correspondents Dinner and the Mediacracy

One of my favorite old movies is High Society starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly.  This musical version of The Philadelphia Story blends the voices of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby’s in fine style.  The story returns over and over again to the idea of class stereotyping.  There is a line repeated in both movies that says a lot about the recent Washington Press Correspondents Dinner: The time to make up your mind about people is never!

            The word, “plutocracy” means a government by or under the control of the wealthy.  Actually I don’t think that is such a bad idea, the more you’ve got to lose the more careful you will be, but I realize that is waaaaaay too politically incorrect for most people.  There is not, as far as I know, a word for government by or under the control of the media.  I believe I will coin such a word.  I will call it the mediacracy.   Instead of the rule of steely eyed industrialists or shrewd faced entrepreneurs, we are well nigh approaching the rule of snooty, narrow minded little Napoleons.  They are in love with themselves and see politicians as a means to their own ends.  Obama is a President of their own making and they will protect and lionize him like Dr. Frankenstein did with his own creature.  The Washington Press Correspondents Dinner is their sacrament of communion. 

            I don’t think that all news people are shallow, thinly educated fools.  The ever reduced numbers who came out of the 50’s print media are pretty good.  I genuinely like Thomas Friedman and a few other columnists.  Those journalists willing to venture into the killing fields of war impress me with their courage and dedication.  But that doesn’t cover the vast majority of these news reading, simple minded Mediacrats.  They don’t come close to living up to their own image, let alone my meager evaluation of them. 

I am not the only person who feels this way.   New York Times writer Mark Leibovich has written a book, This Town, about the pampered poodle of politics and the press.  He eschews the “self-congratulatory” parties which cement the popularly engrained idea that these people don’t have (or, worse still, don’t want) a clue of what life is like out of the rarified air of the Beltway.  This Town, is said to expose those members of the permanent political and media class who see themselves as celebrities.   He points out that Washington, D.C. has seven of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country surrounding it.  They live in a bubble of wealth, power and self importance that prevents them from knowing, or wanting to know, what reality is.  Morality, judgment, ethics, even religious veracity becomes only what they deem it to be.  The Mediacracy is wrong about so much.  Instead of holding up a mirror of truth to themselves, they see only what they want and walk only with like-minded, “yes” men. 

            To Leibovich’s credit, he did not attend the Washington Press Correspondents Dinner.  In fact, the New York Times stopped sending its reporters there in 2007.  Other, but not many, A-list journalists have also pointed out the odious sweetheart deal that is this dinner.

            The buffoons of the Mediacracy have already made up their minds about me.  They would look at a white, 66 year old retired teacher, a Christian and Republican living in Texas and would be sure they knew everything about me and dismiss me just as fast.  They would be so very wrong. 

            Surprise people, but keep the faith.