Those Tiny Little Minds Who Bring You The News

 Trying to write eight-ten articles a day makes one something of a news junkie. My days are spent reading one of the five hundred plus feeds input into a feed reader, following up stories on the phone and maneuvering the TV remote between CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and when I can find it, even the BBC. I have gotten so good at switching channels; I am able to see the same news story on all the networks at the same time, just through some agile thumb work.

Watching all of that mostly distorted coverage can drive a blogger crazy; at least it did until this morning. After seeing the press surrounding this weekend's Restoring Honor rally. I had an epiphany. For years my belief was that the mainstream media was biased, however now my tune has changed. The mainstream media is not biased, they are just small minded. The reporters that bring you the news are taught to categorize things into neat little boxes and do not have the capacity to think beyond those categories.

Take a look at the coverage of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally. The press could not comprehend that people would actually travel to Washington DC and attend a rally that was about Honor and Faith, so they had to put it into their little Tea Party or Conservative Box. Despite the fact that the commentator has never been part of the Tea Party movement, and the host's declaration that the rally would not be political:

ABC News: "The Tea Party's grassroots momentum will be on display Saturday as the conservative movement converges in Washington, D.C. for Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, an event that has come under fire from some civil rights leaders for being held on the same day as the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic freedom march."

CBS News:"Al Sharpton Leads Activists Near Tea Partiers…The Rev. Al Sharpton was leading a march Saturday to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington. During the march his group briefly encountered participants from a rally on the National Mall being headlined by Sarah Palin and conservative commentator Glenn Beck."

NY Times: "On the morning after a big Saturday wedding, it is sometimes customary for newly united families to hold a low-key brunch for guests who are still in town. Something like this took place early Sunday – actually it was more of a Tea Party than a brunch. On the morning after Glenn Beck's massive "Restoring Honor" rally drew conservative throngs to the Lincoln Memorial and National Mall, 200 or so rally stragglers gathered on a hardtop between the Capitol and Union Station."

The mainstream had their predisposed notion of what this rally was and their small minds could not think beyond that notion. The strangest part is the mainstream media throws around the term tea party and they don't understand what the Tea Party movement is all about.

The people who bring you the news on a daily basis hear the word PARTY next to the word Tea and have decided to put the movement into their political party box. The Tea Party is not associated with any single organization or political party and in fact is not totally monolithic in its agenda. Big picture, they are for smaller government and fiscal responsibility, but beyond that have diverse opinions. One cannot accuse a press like that of being biased; they just do not have the thought capacity of understanding that the Tea Party movement was named after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. I guarantee If President Obama throws is wife a surprise birthday party those same small thinkers will accuse the President of abandoning the Democrats and starting his own political party.

The limited capacity of the mainstream media is also shown in their foreign policy coverage. How many times have you seen the press call a terrorist attack on a bus in Israel and an Israeli retaliation against a terrorist base "tit for tat?" As if there was a moral equivalence between an attack on civilians and one on the forces that attacked civilians. It's not bias nor a lack of morality, it's just a loss of cerebral power.

The epiphany that the folks that bring us the news are not biased but is just plain dense makes it much easier to watch and/or read the news during the day. It even explains why they seem so arrogant all of the time, over-compensation. No longer do I throw shoes at my TV during Katie Couric, Brian Williams or even the likes of Mr. Tinkle down his pants, Chris Matthews. No longer do I have to ignore Fox at three just because Shepard Smith is on the screen. Now I just feel pity for them and their tunnel-vision.