It happened again Tuesday morning. I work out in the morning, just after rolling out of bed, and I do it watching TV so I can focus on something other than how very fucking much I don't want to be working out. Usually I'll watch a local news show just long enough to see what the weather's going to be like and if the traffic sucks (it's Chicago, so yes, yes, it does), then put on something I've Tivoed. Since we're in a pretty dry period for TV right now (come swiftly, O thou men who are mad, and also thou chefs who are top) (and yeah, I'm watching Top Chef Masters, but it's just not the same, you know; they're just too fucking nice to each other), I wound up watching the local news for most of an hour workout Tuesday. And it happened.

            It's happened before: the channel I'm currently watching the news on while working out does a story that is so rightwing-fucktarded that I can no longer watch that channel's news show. I've now had to make my way through most of the local morning news shows. Tuesday morning I bade a not-the-least-bit-fond farewell to CBS2 Chicago; they've had a good run, actually: over a year, I believe. They were reporting--and really, that word has become so devalued as to be worthless--on the Birther thing; what they reported on was the so-called Kenyan birth certificate being waved about by the ever-fucknuts Alan Keyes (who has hated Obama since Obama handed Keyes's ass to him in the 2004 Illinois Senate race), noting at the end, lamely, that "Hawaiian officials insist that Obama's birth certificate from that state is real." Um, yeah, they do, because of how it, you know, is.

In other words, they did that oh-so-fair thing where they report "both sides of the issue," not bothering to mention that one side of the issue is batshit crazy and the other side is what we on this planet like to refer to as "reality." What actual reporter would take one look at that stupid sorry excuse for a forgery and not roll his eyes at its obvious falsity? What self-respecting journalist wouldn't be painfully ashamed to report this nonsense as fact? I can't watch a news show that reports this horseshit as other than horseshit. It makes me question even the weather--hey, if Alan Keyes says it's raining frogs, are you fuckwits going to report that as a fact too? Because on any given day, Alan Keyes may very well be saying it's raining frogs. Then leap around like one, making ribbit! noises.

            How can people who identify themselves as journalists, people in the tradition of Murrow and Cronkite, do this? Report nonsense as fact, devalue indisputable fact as opinion? The worst of this idiocy came during the Bush Administration, of course, when Stephen Colbert rightly suggested to the Washington Press Corps that they were little more than stenographers for the Bushies, and when so-called journalists like the late Tim Russert tossed softball questions at Bush officials in the biggest circle-jerk since Circle Jerk VI: The Masturbationing. (It's classic cinema, if you haven't seen it.) But clearly it's still going on, and the reason is simple: journalists have sold their souls to Satan. Well, or Rupert Murdoch. There's a difference?

            Hey, let's say you're a local anchorthing or "news"writer; congratulations on that, because in this dreadful recession you have a nice gig, pulling down a six-figure salary, so when your Corporate Overlords tell you, "Let's report this Birther stuff fairly; I want to give the Birthers an even break," you don't ask, "Um, even though they are racist loons and their so-called 'proof' is a forgery so obvious my retarded budgie wouldn't shit on it?" You instead reply, "Yes, sire. May I fluff the cloth-of-gold pillow beneath thy feet, or remove thy piss-bucket?" Viacom, which became CBS Corp, owns the local station I watched until Tuesday morning; Sumner Redstone, noted Bush-supporter and general asshole, is the very active chairman of the board of CBS Corp. Huh. Go Figure. Back in '04, Redstone claimed he was a Democrat but was supporting Bush anyway, because Bush was "good for business." How's that working out for you, Sumner?

            (You'd think it'd be working out okay--lay off a few butlers, and Sumner's good to go--but actually Redstone's net worth is down to a billion or two from $9 billion a few years ago, and he owes various creditors close to $1.5 billion. I feel you, man.)

            I read Salon. I know that the Kenyan birth certificate is an obvious forgery. But what about those who don't? Sure, it's tempting to just dismiss them--if they're that incurious and stupid, fuck 'em. Except that we can't. We need them. Many of them are not stupid; they're just ignorant, and there is real economic incentive to keep them that way. They are marks, the people whom con men put one over on. If you are a rich corporation and can convince these people to vote against their own interests, to rave passionately about shit they not only don't understand but actually understand incorrectly, you win, and you get to keep doing what you do best, coining money. It is, as they say, just business.

There's not a lot of difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to anal osculation of business interests, but in business, it's the margin that matters, the tiny extra bit of profit that you can squeeze out of any group of marks (whence the word "market," a collection of marks), and the Republicans give them that little bit of lagniappe, so by and large they lean in that direction. But understand that the companies that own the news are not pro-Birther or even pro-Republican; they're pro-profit, and more specifically, they're pro-their-own-profit, the truth be damned. Confronted in a thoughtful mood, they'd probably ask you Pontius Pilate's question: "What is truth?" To which I reply, Erm…how about, and just for starters, not that Birther shit?

            The idea that the press has a liberal bias is completely anachronistic, a holdover from a time when newsmen had snap-brim hats with cards that said "Press" in the ribbon, when they pounded out copy on a manual Remington--when a newsman actually wrote his own copy--and when they could shout "Stop the presses!" and real presses would stop. The modern press has no liberal bias; it has a keeping-its-lucrative-job bias, and its bosses have a profit bias. With remarkably few exceptions, press outlets are owned by corporations that have no commitment to truth or accuracy, only to profit. And as Jon Stewart rebuked a different group of pompous windbags, they are hurting the country. If it used to be different, if journalists once aspired to keep politicians honest, those days are done. Journalism maybe used to be the fourth estate, "more important than them all," as Burke said, but it's not any more; it's the 4000th channel in the cable listings, and it had better make some scratch in one big fucking hurry, or we're putting on another fucking reality show.

            So I'll switch news channels for my workout, but it won't do any good. (Yeah, I could--and often do--watch something other than the news, but there isn't that much on at 6AM, and much of it--yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Food Network and your early-morning infomercials--pisses me off even more than the news.) Sooner or later, I know, the new channel will "report" something just like the Birther story. Frankly, I'm running out of stations. And patience. And country.