More on Fineman's piece

Howard Fineman's otherwise honorable admission that the AMMP (American Mainstream Media Party) is toast is marred by its subtext. He can't resist a bunch of digs at George W. Bush, and he seems to be nostalgic when the presidents felt that they had no choice but to endure press conferences that were nothing but sniping. Note little dig:

Now the AMMP is reeling, and not just from the humiliation of CBS News. We have a president who feels it's almost a point of honor not to hold more press conferences � he's held far fewer than any modern predecessor � and doesn't seem to agree that the media has any "right" to know what's really going in inside his administration.

I'd like Fineman to show me where in the Constitution it gives the press a "right" to have the president come out and play the duck in the shooting gallery. People watching these things have to be impressed with the overt hostility toward George Bush from the White House Press Corps. When he gives them a press conference, they waste the whole thing demanding that he apologize for the fact that no stockpiles of WMD were found in Iraq. That isn't what serious Americans want to know. If they had shown a scintilla of respect and real interest in serious questions, he probably wouldn't be so reluctant to give them time, but why should he waste his time letting them practice Gotcha on him. He's got more important things to do with his time than play games with a bunch of spoiled hecklers. Fineman seems to have realized how obnoxious these reporters sound to fair-minded people, and he even seems to realize that the media are themselves responsible for it. But he still doesn't get the fact that George Bush has an integrity that shines through to ordinary Americans despite the best efforts of the AMMP to torpedo him. They really should get out more and get in touch with real people instead of cocooning themselves inside the Beltway and listening to CNN and NPR all day.

He starts out his piece by invoking the "us vs. them" attitude that put them on the wrong side of the last elections, talking about George Bush's Republican Party which he writes, is, with its "opposition, (or worse, [its] casual disdain)" is destroying the "mainstream media." That is just hogwash. The mainstream media is imploding. It's own arrogance and elitism brought it to this pass, not Bush or Karl Rove or Roger Ailes. The market for liberal spin and snarky attacks on the president is shrinking. The market for conservative alternatives has been discovered and it is being served, but the people themselves now have the means to talk back to the media, and that's what has really changed things.