Do we (not unlike government) get the news media we deserve?

That question has been on my mind of late, due to an overload of idiocy on the airwaves. But, I had to wonder, is it truly idiocy from the media talking heads, idiocy from the people who decide what stories to air (and what prominence to give them), or could it quite possibly have something to do with the idiocy of those watching as well? It's a hard question to ask, which is why "Do we get the media we deserve?" is so much more polite.

Consider the last few days. The "Boy Who Was Not In A Balloon" story raced like wildfire across television screens at virtually every "news" channel on cable television. Even after the balloon landed -- when responsible news organizations should have realized that there was no story at all -- the cable channels refused to give up on it. The more respected broadcast channels went along for the ride that night. But even after it became obvious that the whole thing was a hoax by an attention-seeking publicity hound, the media refused to give up. The whole thing was like watching a drunk try to push himself away from the bar, or (more politely) like a poker player who has bet too much on a bad hand, and therefore cannot fold because he is "pot committed." The media went for the story in such a big way that to suddenly drop it would have made it obvious to all who were watching that they had been wrong about the whole thing. Since the media rarely likes to admit mistakes, and since they turn vicious when they realize they've been spoon-fed a storyline which proved false, they turned on the sympathetic father with their usual claws out.

The moral of the story is, for the attention-seeking father: when you chum the water for sharks, sometimes the sharks climb up in your boat and eat you alive.

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The Obama Justice Department made news today by codifying a previously-announced policy of ending raids on medical marijuana dispensaries which comply with state laws. Even though medical marijuana is legal in fourteen states -- over one-fourth of the country -- it is still illegal under federal law (the Controlled Substances Act). Since federal law always trumps state law, this has led to continuing raids on dispensaries which state and local governments have explicitly allowed to operate. When President Obama took office, he announced that these raids by the feds would cease, as long as the dispensaries weren't breaking applicable state laws in their operation. A few raids subsequently took place in California, leading to some distrust and skepticism, but today Attorney General Eric Holder sent out guidelines to federal attorneys to halt these raids. This is good news for medical marijuana advocates, but even though this is a historic shift in the War on Drugs, it simply does not go far enough -- because it does not adequately resolve the illogic of the underlying legal issue. At best, it should be seen as only a good first (baby) step on the road towards a rational and cohesive federal medical marijuana policy.

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I have to admit before I begin that I don't watch cable television "news" during the day, because I consider it largely to be a waste of my valuable time.

Which, I have to say, the whole "balloon boy" episode proved beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt.

The cable media apparently went wall-to-wall on the story, breathlessly awaiting a development which would lead into one of their off-the-shelf well-worn storylines. It really didn't matter to them what the outcome was -- "Boy saved! It's a miracle!" or "Boy injured after wild ride" or even "Boy falls to death, we've got the tragic video!" -- the media was prepared for any of these options, which they knew would all drive up their viewership. The only option they weren't ready for was what the story turned into -- "The media got played!"

I mean, seriously, if you call yourself a "journalist," shouldn't you be able to tell when you're being suckered? Here's an enormous hint: if the main character in the story is described as "a former reality-show contestant" then you might just take a few seconds to check your facts before rushing the story on the air, because he might just be an attention-starved publicity hound. Especially when he started the whole media circus in the first place, by calling up the local media and begging them to use their helicopters (oh, and don't forget to take along a cameraman, of course!) to chase this silvery wild goose across Colorado.

So, to honor (and blatantly rip off) Stephen Colbert, I'd like to introduce a new word to the American zeitgeist -- "newsiness." This term (which everyone should start using immediately, of course) is defined as: "An event or subject which the mainstream media determines to be newsworthy by plastering all over national television screens, but which is ultimately proven to be nothing of the kind." Furthermore, I'm going to peg the first story ever covered for its newsiness alone as O.J. Simpson cruising across L.A. in his white Ford Bronco. Since then, of course, there are simply too many stories full of newsiness (but not actual news) to even contemplate counting. Just turn on a cable TV station, and wait awhile -- pretty soon, another one will be along.

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I can't accurately use the Beatles line "It was twenty years ago today..." because the anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake is actually this Saturday. I do not blog on the weekends, though, and Fridays have their own regular feature, so here we are, two days early. Hoping you'll forgive me for the premature anniversary, I would like to relate my own earthquake story. I've included some general quake info as a prelude (mostly for the benefit of people who have never felt an earthquake), so if you'd like, you can just skip to the second section, where I tell my personal story of 1989.

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[The scene: a football lockerroom. Hundreds of Democrats are sitting on benches, to hear Coach's halftime pep talk, in the Healthcare Reform Superbowl. Some appear exhausted, some appear battered. Enter Coach, downstage.]

OK, people, that was a good half. We made some mistakes, we took some hits, but at the end of the half, we put five field goals up on the board. That's good enough for a first half, but we've got to score some touchdowns in the second half, or we're just not going to win this thing.

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While the passage of a healthcare reform bill through Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee is the big news today, the even bigger news is that Republican Senator Olympia Snowe voted for it, the only Republican so far to cross the aisle in support of Democratic efforts to pass a bill this year. While Snowe warned today that just because she's voting "yea" today, she might not do so on the final bill, depending on what it looks like. While this may not even matter in terms of getting a bill through, Snowe will now be known as Senator Bipartisan, since with her vote the claim can be made that it is "bipartisan legislation," but if Democrats lose her they won't be able to make this claim. But while courting Snowe for her vote on the Senate floor is the only way to accomplish this, Democrats should also consider courting Snowe on an even more important front: switching parties.

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The big news today on the healthcare reform front is the health insurance industry attacking such reform by releasing an industry-written report, one day before Senator Max Baucus' committee is (finally) scheduled to vote on their version of a healthcare reform bill. The report, from America's Health Insurance Plans (an industry group), has already been called a "hatchet job" by Democrats, because the industry is threatening to raise the average premium for health insurance by 110 percent -- more than doubling out-of-pocket costs for American families. A spokesman from the AARP shot back: "I really don't think [the AHIP report is] worth the paper it's written on." A spokesman for Senator Baucus fumed: "It's a health insurance company hatchet job, plain and simple."

But Baucus really needs look no further than his own mirror to see who is responsible -- if not for the report itself, then at least for the report's timing. Because Baucus has been almost as obstructionist as the Republicans in getting to the point we are at now. Meaning he is responsible for the dwindling amount of time we have left to get healthcare reform passed this year.

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In a surprising turn of events today, the Nobel committee awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to "Not George W. Bush." The chairman of the committee was quoted saying, "Lordy, Lordy, we were so happy to see the United States run by someone who wasn't George W. Bush -- even for eleven days -- that there simply was no other choice than to award 'Not George W. Bush' the prize unanimously."

OK, seriously, President Obama's new award should be seen as a giant thumb in the eye to Bush -- the third one so far (Gore and Carter being the other two). It's the Nobel committee's money, remember, so it's their right to do whatever they will with it. But talk of Obama refusing the prize (which would doubtlessly make Republicans feel better) is just plain silly. Obama will accept the award, give a nice speech, and donate the money to charity (my tea leaves tell me that ACORN isn't going to see any money out of this one). But until Henry Kissinger (or Woodrow Wilson, for that matter) gives back his award in shame, I don't think Obama's going to turn down his own award.

But while the award is already causing spontaneous rightwing cranial explosions across the land (if you listen close, you can hear them: Foom! Blam!), it's really nothing more than a footnote this week. Because larger things are afoot. I speak, of course, of Playboy putting Marge Simpson on its cover.

No, wait, that can't be it -- let me check my notes. OK, here it is, sorry. Let me start over.

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I should start out by saying that the title I chose for this article (which is meant to be taken literally, more on that in a moment) wasn't the first which suggested itself. Because the image I've got in my mind is a duck screaming: "AfPak! AfPak!" But I felt that was too frivolous a title to use for a very "not-frivolous" subject.

Still, the image remains. The media has apparently discovered that we have troops in Afghanistan. This may come as a shock to some, since the mainstream media (at least on television) have pretty much ignored this fact for around seven years now (so much so that Afghanistan became known as "the forgotten war" for a while). But the reporting on what President Obama is going to do next in Afghanistan has been so over-the-top in the past few weeks, it has astonished me (and I do not astonish easily, especially when it comes to the idiocy of the evening news). More stories have run on Afghanistan, I would be willing to venture, in the past two weeks than have run in the past two years.

Which is why I settled on the much-less-provocative title I did. Because in all this talk of what Obama should do next, the media seems to have a very selective case of amnesia. Or perhaps they are just severely memory-impaired or logically-challenged. With today's media, it's certainly possible. But then, to paraphrase a fired Secretary of Defense, we go to war with the media we have, not with the media we'd like to have.

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There are sins of commission in the way we're taught American history as children -- such as the fable about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree (which never actually happened). Then there are the much more prevalent sins of omission -- which conveniently gloss over the parts of American history which we have to "protect the children" from learning about. The reason I preface this column with such an observation is because a woman -- whose name we all know -- was honored today by the unveiling of her statue in the United States Capitol's Rotunda. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was on hand for this ceremony, as was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But the astonishing thing (to me) was that Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner were also on hand, as well as the Republican governor of the very red state from whence this woman came. This state has honored the woman before, when it selected her to be their representation on their own state quarter. But the truly astonishing thing is that this woman not only helped found the A.C.L.U., but also was a radical and revolutionary Socialist, a fan of the Soviet Union and Lenin, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (the "I.W.W.", or the "Wobblies"), and an ardent foe and critic of capitalism. Not the type of woman usually honored by Republicans, you might think. But, in a glaring sin of omission committed by history teachers across this great land (and repeated by politicians even now), the only story we all know about her is of the daunting odds she overcame in her childhood. We're all familiar with this shared story, but it abruptly ends when she becomes an adult. All the parts about the raging Socialist she later became are conveniently swept under the rug.

Think I'm overstating that bit about being a "raging Socialist" or a "radical"? Judge for yourself. In her own words, from 1929, on the death of Lenin:

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