Time for a Media Colonic

We are hearing gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs about how the Republican party might reconstitute itself and even come back to power. I'm somewhat interested in this, but can we PLEASE give it a rest for a while?

My theory is that many excellent reporters did their job well over the last eight years. And their job was to carefully develop sources in power and connected to power. In the last eight years, power was strongly centralized in the White House. This power was usually unaffected and unchanged by new facts, data or circumstances--wherever they came from. If the media reported information contradicting a White House statement or policy, it meant nothing. So reporters were rewarded for sticking to the company line.

The result was a dysfunctional dependency on dribblings from the White House and those connected to the White House, such as neoconservative commentators (who had an Oval Office IV) and very conservative think tanks. Over the last eight years, the more ravenously you ate the scraps, the more successful you were as a reporter.

These reporters are still showing up to be fed at the same places a week after the election, and they're hearing all kinds of stuff. But the scraps don't mean what they used to.

So it's time for the media to stop feeding and have a colonic. Then they need to start over, diligently and creatively reporting what's happening from a wide variety of sources never heard from before.

Please.