Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon, opines that, In the Wake of 9-11, the American Press Has Embraced a ‘Demented Caesarism’:

Just after 9/11, I was one of those who thought, and said out loud, that the catastrophe might knock some sense into the gibbering “culture” of the US media. Now there would be no more prime-time seminars about the likely cruising style of Gary Condit, no more shark watches, and quite a lot more coverage of, and talk about, the wider world. (The term “Afghanistan” had long been used inside the TV news biz as a handy term for all those faraway and over-complicated stories that the advertisers didn’t want to see.) And I believed that there would be a lot less dumbbell irony, a lot less potty comedy, and a lot less homicidal stand-up from the right. In short, I thought that Adam Sandler was all through, and that Ann Coulter would soon be forgotten, if not gone, and that the news would finally try to tell us some things that a free and democratic people needs to know.

Boy, was I wrong. Everywhere you look, Ann Coulter’s up there on her broomstick, cracking manic jokes about mass murder, and Adam Sandler’s said to be involved in seven movies soon to flood the multiplexes. Now I am old and wise enough to know that such bad acts are always with us, so I’m only disappointed – and, on cool reflection, not surprised – that there isn’t more stuff out there like “The Simpsons,” “The Sopranos,” “Lovely & Amazing,” Wilco. On the other hand, I find that I am absolutely flabbergasted at the many jumbo helpings of outright crapola that our “free press” has been laying out for us day after day since 9/11. While foreign journalists routinely tell their readers and/or viewers what’s going on – inside Afghanistan, Iraq, DC and all throughout this land of ours – our journalists don’t tell us anything. democrats.com [via Walker]

[Oh my God, another Wilco reference! (see “Shoddy Bookkeeping”

below) — FmH]