The Anchoress Would Like To Think

...and doesn't realize it's beyond her limited capabilities.

Here is the Red Nun, on the occasion of Walter Cronkite's passing, linking to things she just can't understand:

I'm sure Cronkite would have loved President Obama, just like the rest of the media hordes. But I would like to think that he would not have countenanced this sort of news-manipulation on his watch – that he would not have ignored those grassroots movements that did not fit his ideology, or enabled startling doublestandards, but who knows? Perhaps he’d have jumped into Free-American-Press-into-Pravda Devolution with both feet, if it made him feel like he was part of something "too big to fail."

The "news-manipulation" link goes to another blog which bitches about how the New York Times didn't put the CBO health care reform numbers on page one, above the fold, while the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal did.

The "ignored" and "grassroots movement" links go to Instacracker, who in turn links to teabaggers who self-report that groups of 30, 150 and 250+ 'baggers managed to find their way to various home state Congressional offices.

The "startling doublestandards [sic]" link makes no sense whatsoever in the context in which it's placed, but it leads to this, which is a lovely example of disinglennuousness at its finest and features a cameo from a former unemployed blogger turned unemployed creepy cartoon enthusiast to boot.

One gets the impression that the Red Nun collected a bunch of links, decided it would be a sin to delete them without using them, and then shoved them into the Cronkite post to avoid confession.

The Red Nun ends her funeral oration thusly:

So, RIP, Mr. Cronkite. I will not blame you for the media excesses we will have to endure for the next week to ten days.

I recall hoping that Tim Russert's sad death would inspire some self-reflection within the ranks of the press, but that did not happen, so I doubt Cronkite's death will wake them from their self-destructive sleep, either.

Say what the fuck? How or why Pumpkinhead's death would cause self-reflection in the press is a mystery, since his death had nothing to do the way the press operated. The way Russert conducted himself in life might cause those in the press with a sense of self-awareness to question the ethics of acting as combination answering service, father confessor and megaphone for the G.O.P. (although it surely didn't in Howard Kurtz's case), but his death provides no particular illumination on how a free press should do its job.