When you're right, you're right.

As has been recently commented on here at TPM, the MSM has it in for Obama. On Cable, (Fox, of course), CNN (Fox lite), and even MSNBC (aside from Keith and Rachael) have become uniformly critical. Obama has been president only TWO effing months. It's not factual criticism that bothers me. It's the lack of context and perspective left missing from the presentation of those facts.

The MSM entities seem to have one of two objectives. Either attack Obama for partisan propaganda purposes (Fox, the WSJ, basically, Newscorp), or attack Obama in an attempt to increase ratings by sensationalising every story (pretty much everyone else). Of those two, I feel that the partisan propaganda motivated attacks are actually the LEAST dishonorable.

Sure, the MSM sucks and they're pathetic on economic / financial issues.

But why can't we criticize Obama? This is much worse than the FISA situation, and no one's really throwing a fit from the left. That's a mistake. I criticize Obama for caving on this, and it's complete BS. He won't lose my support, b/c I know it's complex, but he's acting like an a$$.

If we can't inflict pain on a small segment of the biggest culprits (AIGFP-London), how the hell can we expect him to dislodge the culture of corruption rampant on Wall Street? Wall Street is not scared of him or anybody right now. They need to be.

Lock them up, and stop paying them!

Seems to me that the political "MSM" are merely giving the blogosphere what they want. They watch the blogosphere, and what's popular there is what they assign resources to. The A.I.G. topic has consumed much of the air on this site alone the last couple of days and I didn't see you complain about it until the "MSM" jumped on the train.

I pay no attention to mainstream media. But it is my opinion that Obama is failing miserably and deserves to be vilified.

How can anyone have any confidence in the Obama administration, based on its performance so far?

Don't overlook that so many of us are mad at insurance companies anyway. I have been paying those extravagant rates to AIG for years. I meet canadians who laugh and tell me how low their rates are and are going down. I'd like to see them all walk the plank but I currently have car coverage through AIG.

"But now they (MSM) are GENUINELY outraged at a Democratic President who is trying to fix a mess that occurred in part because they refused to challenge the big scarey Republicans."

M.J, I agree with everything you say about the media. But Obama and his party, along with the MSM, refused to challenge the big scarey Republicans during Barack's Senate years. And even now, as President, Obama is refusing to challenge them. He deserves to get skewered and grilled to a crisp.

Nobody likes the MSM anymore, but I still want a good explanation from the administration and lawmakers about why they didn't protect the taxpayers' stake. I realize that this disaster in the banking industry was beyond anyone's comprehension at first -- remember the lawmakers basically admitting they had no f'in clue what to do as they were writing the bailout legislation? But I don't want to hear rationalizations. Just admit and explain what happened, where you made a mistake, and what you learned from it so we can prevent the same crap happening going forward. It's too important for dancing around the truth.

Also, I hope this opens up a serious public conversation about distribution of wealth. There is no way that some hedge fund manager's work is worth a gajillion more dollars than my work.

Those who point out that the bonuses, recently divulged to the public, being paid out by the megamillions -- by a company that has now received as much in bailout money as the dollars spent in a year in the Iraq fiasco -- are outrageous to the public (including but not limited to "the blogosphere") are spot on. The notion that the 'MSM' should STFU really is besides the point. The MSM is problematic in all the ways MJ Rosenberg has noted, and others noted over the years quite brilliantly by Noam Chomsky, and more. But this really IS outrageous.

Is it MORE outrageous than the Downing St memo? Or other issues like Votergate 2004 (and 2005) that were slighted by the MSM? No, it isn't. But the public is outraged, as this is a marker of the literal TRILLIONS being poured down what Ralph Nader characterized on this morning's Democracy Now as a 'rathole'. The bonus brouhaha is the visible tip of an iceberg (in this way something like the role of Abu Ghraib), a visible and outrageous example of the KIND of abuses that are widespread in a whole policy gone awry. I hear now that many other bailout money recipients are looking for ways to protect the financial well-being of THEIR OWN top employees in light of the AIG flap. In other words, they're looking for ways to skim off the cream for themselves no matter what.

I say this about the bailout even as I generally support what Obama is doing overall. But I would agree that the whole (still confusing) Geithnerian approach is not working, and many (most) knowledgeable progressives suggest that it must be wholly transformed.

What is really needed is perhaps a PROGRESSIVE economics expert summit or some kind of collective outline of at least the broad principles of a progressive alternative. Some look to the RFC of the 30s for a better model.
This is what I'd like to hear about more, in DETAIL from progressives (ideas like the STET stitched together into a coherent program that progressives in Congress can unite around as a demand).

Don't hate the messenger, focus on the messages whether as text or subtext.

The medium is not the message.

I look at these squabbles as tests of maturity for Obama, rites of passage perhaps. They are a chance for him to show, or develop, his stuff. We can look at them similarly for other folks, like ... us.