And its vapid comfort food. Saying he has to register this criticism of public figures in private is commonly understood via the initials "STFU."

IMHO, he's both right on and very funny.

We have the quality of news we have, TV and print and radio, because that is the news "we" - the majority of "we" - actually want: either incompetent drivel or malicious hatemongering.

polls have been consistent over the past couple of decades: roughly the same percentage of the population has always wanted, and still wants, the charming, hopelessly quaint real news of old.

real news has always been, and always will be, expensive to gather, analyze, and produce, and fluff has alwways been cheap, quick, and easy to produce. in the days of yore, media outlets, be they newspapers, magazines, radio, tv, newsreels at the movies, whatever, were content reaping outlandish profits from fluff, and using some of those profits to give us real news in return for our buying their fluff. then one bright sunshiny day, some greedy bastard woke up and decided that he could rake in massive profits by producing only fluff 24/7/365 and the media business went from turning a respectable 5% or so profit to 10% and 20% profit margins.

worked for quite a while too, until the tapeworm finished off the host and started eating its own tail.

got any links for those polls?

Here's a study from the mid-90s showing that saturation coverage of the OJ trial by NBC was enough to overwhelm the prior lead in ratings held by ABC where coverage of OJ was less extensive in favor of more substantive news stories. Fluff beat substance.

Here's another, looking at how viewer demand drives political partisanship in news reporting:

Abstract
Much work has shown that the media has the capacity to influence public issue salience and subsequent government policy, however little theory has been tested to explain news content. News firms in the United States operate in a capitalistic environment and rely upon a sizeable consumer base to remain in business. Given this, news firms may cater their news products to appeal to the preferences of audiences. This paper examines the influence of mass partisanship on subsequent issue reporting in the nightly network news over a period of twenty-two years. Time-series regression indicates that changes in macro-partisanship predict subsequent coverage of party-owned issues. This finding suggests that news firms account for mass opinions in their assessments of newsworthiness. This also implies that the media, charged with an important role in democratic governance, may provide citizens with what they want to know, rather than what they need to know.

It is a business, like any other. The networks spend a lot of effort to determine what their target audience wants, and then they try to deliver it. When the most-watched TV shows are exhibition wrestling, a completely fake crime drama and a cartoon, your average viewer will most certainly be pleased with juvenile puns about obscure sex practices rather than substantive policy wonk about the economy.

You and I want better, Dear Heart, but you and I are not the norm - not by a long shot.

1. Suck is suck, even if it's profitable. It sucks, so Somerby says it sucks.
2. The rubes who think it's non-suck, and in fact routinely gush about its awesomeness, ought to be exposed to honest critiques of the suck.

This is the way it is when suck is popular. Part of the problem with Dane Cook is that he's completely unfunny. The other part of the problem is that there's market support for his unfunniness. That doesn't put him, or his easily amused fans, beyond reproach.

The more people reject suck, the more opportunity there is for non-suck to flourish in the market. So, the critique goes on.

I've begun a drinking game where I take a belt each time you rationalize shitty behavior on the part of our elites with "It's a fair cop, but society's to blame."

I liked NYPD Blue in the beginning, in spite of the unlikely eye candy. Pairing Richard Belzer as Munch with Jerry Orbach's Lenny Briscoe was brilliant, the attitudes made L&E plausable. But I can't do NCIS, or any of the CSI family either. The only character of the whole lot of current crime dramas I can feel for is Abby Sciuto, because I too have talked to my laboratory equipment.

I'll confess I'm a fan of Sponge Bob, so I guess we both have our weaknesses. Perhaps I was stretching a bit to make the point, but WWE and Bill-O? That can't mean anything good.