The recent brouhaha about the comedian Michelle Wolf who spoke at the big Washington Correspondents Dinner is yet another example of how off track the world has become. The news media has been co-opted by the nefarious Trump both as his lackeys and as his villains de jour in the ongoing scandal we currently refer to as American democracy. We elected a "Great Communicator" who it turns out has nothing to say, nothing that's not divisive or hateful or both. He has pitted himself against the truth, the media, the Republicans, the Democrats, and even the European Union in an never ending tirade meant only to momentarily soothe his savage breast. And the news has been there all along helping him, by first rendering him unlimited access to the public airwaves because his hate speech brought eyes to the screen and clicks to the bait, then after attempting to put him down, preaching endlessly about the evils which will befall us all if he's not stopped. There's no doubt that Trump is a threat to common decency and to practical democracy, but it's also quite evident that the news media are not able to rise to the occasion to knock down the wannabe dictator.
Michelle Wolf was roundly criticized by the scolds on both the right and the left for doing what she was hired to do, make jokes about government, government officials, and the news media. She delivered a pretty funny near twenty minute routine that knocked more than a few blocks off before the return fire began. She was criticized for making fun of Sarah Sanders and her looks (which she didn't do). She attacked the loathsome character of Sanders and her cohorts in the White House who do the bidding of the odious Trump. That's allowed, they have bad character. Lying might have become normal business practice in Pennsylvania Avenue, but that doesn't make it moral, only more commonplace and regrettable.
It's yet again another example of shooting the messenger. The news media scolds cannot bare to be told that they are the ones who helped usher in the age of Trump. They hate it, because they hate themselves for it, but know that they are stranded on a beach of their own making. There's a robust news machine in America, but as Woolf quite correctly pointed out, it usually only covers three stories and bloviates ceaselessly not about what has happened, but what might happen maybe in the future. Reporting has become fruitless fortune telling with all the accuracy of that former profession.
The "Newsies" can still save themselves, by doing what the best of them (usually the ones you don't see on TV every night) are doing. Digging in the manure pile of Washington and beyond and finding the crap that's about to hit the fan tell us in simple factual terms what it is. Quit telling us what we should be feeling, or what we should be thinking, and do the simple journalistic job of telling us what we need to know in order to think and feel with a fuller knowledge of the universe around us. You report and we'll respond.
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