Duh big news

Yessiree, people! Big news! Dick Gephardt endorsed John Kerry John Kerry for president!

Or was it Joe Lieberman?.... Nope. It was Kerry.

Whoobloodypee! Or, as everybody under 60 says these days, “Duh!”

The fact that one old-style pol, who always has depended on big money to stay in office, endorsed the only other old-style, big-money-dependent candidate who still has a shot at the Democratic nomination must be big news. It got major air play for most of two days, and it hit the top of most front pages around the country.

Never mind that as “news” it is about equal to a report of someone winning $100 in a lottery. The fact had to be reported for the record, but it didn’t deserve the placement, the time or a tenth of the space most newspapers and television news outfits accorded it.

The extreme over-play of the Gephardt endorsement is just one more pebble on the mountain of evidence of how badly we are served by the country’s news agencies. It shows again the lousy judgement of the people running those agencies, the cowardice that leads them always to do what all the others are doing, and the pandering to those who are seen as “middle of the road” and powerful.

As that good Texan, Jim Hightower, said in an interview published in the November, 2003 issue of The Progressive, “The media is asleep. The media is also corporate.”