Stacy McCain's Moment Of Mental Retardation

I can't believe Stacy McCain wrote this about Melissa Clouthier. And that he wrote it for the American Spectator is got damned insulting, not to mention how off the mark he is. Full disclosure, Melissa is a good friend and one of the few people I make it a point to call up regularly to discuss media and the movement because I so value her insight, perspective, contribution and maturity.

"A journalist is a wild animal with an appetite for conservative meat and should be interacted with that way -- always." -- Melissa Clouthier, Liberty Pundits

RS McCain: Thus does one conservative blogger express a sentiment that bids fair to destroy the movement she desires to advance.

That Melissa and her partners built Liberty Pundits from scratch on their own, and this is the kind of crap Beltway publications like the American Spectator apparently squander their money on is more indicative of at least one problem in conservative media, as is Stacy's self-centered rumination. In reality, I suspect what this is is a passive-aggressive, back door move to distract from Klein and McCain's friend David Wiegel from another angle.

Forget that the sniveling upstart had the nerve to insult Byron York, who runs circles around him everyday when it comes to actual journalism - let's blame conservatives for the media problem! FTR - on York's worst day, his stuff is far better than anything Wiegel has ever produced.

Having been told for so long that "the media" are the enemy, conservatives have become hostile to journalism as a profession. One of the reasons why there are so few conservatives in America's newsrooms is because the profession of journalism is relentlessly derided by those who claim to speak for the conservative cause.

While a brilliant, informed writer when he focuses seriously on hard news and politics, as he should do more often, frankly, Stacy has the cart so far in front of the horse here, he can't help but back into a huge load of pure horse shit.

Leftists and their aligned institutions have valued media as propaganda and worked at co-opting it since at least the 1920s. I suppose Pravda in Russia and Goebbels in socialist Germany happened by accident?

The movement in the US went at a relatively slow pace until the 1960s when a young extremely politically active class found itself hating a president and a war - Nixon and Vietnam. And what brought both down? The media, most especially Watergate as regards Nixon. The press began to pivot away from simply reporting news, to recruiting would be stars who deep down see themselves as social and political activists, as much as they do journalists. And it has been fully supported by the Left's Gramscian inspired "march through the institutions."

I know, as I opted out of journalism after majoring in it and editing my college paper, only to confront the liberal establishment in media and the faculty in my last year, finding out how ideologically intolerant and twisted they actually are. Deciding I wanted nothing to do with that nonsense, I opted for corporate America, instead. And that was before I saw myself as conservative, or ever heard of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, or Melissa Cloutheir.

In any event, Watergate was the critical moment in American journalism, not Limbaugh going national, as it inspired both a young generation and a host of Leftist organizations to ramp up their efforts to dominate American media. College kids stopped entering journalism for a career and began entering it to save the world. 

There has been no similarly large move through education, foundations, scholarships and endowments on the Right because GOP-aligned money is mostly corporatist and it doesn't give a damn about genuine conservatism. It would rather try and rig the game to meet its own goals with lobbyists for more corporate welfare. And it likes open borders because it suppresses wages.

And you won't find our welfare-supported inside the Beltway rags hit those issues all that hard, or repeatedly, for fear that the corporate-aligned donations that prop them up might go away.

But, noooo, according to Stacy McCain and AmSpec, it's a loyal member of the conservative movement who will destroy the movement by speaking out against media bias. What a retarded load of horse shit, as I said. And as for this, which seems another part of Stacy's real agenda here:

Well, there are indeed such things as conservative journalists, but it is a corollary of the anti-journalism worldview of Republicans that conservative journalists are judged not by their skill -- the accuracy of their reporting, the readability of their prose, etc. -- but by how useful they are in the service of advancing GOP political objectives. Republicans treat conservative journalists with a special disdain, as mere errand boys or stenographers whose job it is to spread the GOP message.

I have GOP sources in the establishment and the conservative movement and they never clam up, or treat me with disdain because they know what they're getting. When we're off the record, it's off the record, and also not for blabbing about at this or that event, or to some other journalist. If someone is running into that problem, the question they might ask of self is, do they have a pattern of seemingly reckless behavior, or an inability to engage their brain before running thier mouth on too many occasions, it ultimately causes people to not trust them with the real 411?

That's not to cast asperisons on Stacy you understand, I mean, we're just axin' questions here, right?

Comments

[Joe]

If journalists are trained wild animals, what are they? Most are not white bengal tigers. How about inbred weasels?

[Joe]

"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds."

Frank Zappa

[Mike A]

So, why the hard-on over Stacy?? He is a good man and a good journalist. are you ragging on him because of his job title? or that he is/was friends with Weigel?? just seems like you were over-the-top on your attack on Stacy. you have heard of STFU? Well, i think we should all CTFD (Calm The F Down).

[Dan Riehl]

Calm is not the nature of my blogging, never has been. But calm inside I am. We're all adults. People can take criticsm in stride, or not.

[Wondering Jew]

This is true, but if Stacy McCain is the enemy (in any way shape or form) then we are in big trouble. I think there are much better targets out there.

I do agree though of tis characterization of Stacy "While a brilliant, informed writer when he focuses seriously on hard news and politics, as he should do more often. . ."

[Sam]

I know what you're talking about with loose-lips McCain. He gets giddy and tells secrets on his sources, even as he chants his mantra about not burning sources. Seen him do it with Lynne Vincent and an "off-the-record" conversation with Dick Armey.

[Gary Ogletree]

Stacy gets a pass from me once in a while. He is otherwise a great contributor to the discussion and funny as hell.