QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:13 A.M. ET:  We have not been great fans of David Brooks of The New York Times, whose mushy conservatism on the paper's op-ed page can often be more maddening than enlightening.  But today Brooks performs brilliantly, lashing out at his fellow journalists, including, presumably, those on The Times, who have sought to politicize the Arizona tragedy:

We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.

The good news is that there were a few skeptics, even during the height of the mania: Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast, James Fallows of The Atlantic and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic. The other good news is that the mainstream media usually recovers from its hysterias and tries belatedly to get the story right.

COMMENT:  Well said.  We are hoping that there'll be a backlash against the mainstream media, a demand for an accounting for its irresponsible behavior.

That backlash could be part of the silent revulsion against the media that has seen its credibility ratings drop in recent years, and has seen millions of readers and viewers simply look elsewhere.

The New York Times needs a good buyout, and may get one, which would lead to the departure of its hippie publisher, a most welcome development.

January 11, 2011