Maybe it's the result of the paparazzi and this whole new, but persistent culture of gutter reporting. You know the kind I'm talking about: where folks' private body parts keep making public appearances and the most inane, unimportant pieces of info capture headlines. 
 
When did the media become so spineless? I mean, I'm sure this is an age-old question that comes in cycles, but now is a really urgent time the question gets addressed by someone, anyone in position to do something about it.

Because, seriously, this current- phased- cesspool that so-called journalists are wading through has to be drained. 
 
It seems like the media-- production teams, photojournalists, anchors--are being sucked down by the exact factors that they are supposed to guard and check. And this isn't an indictment based solely on my support for Obama or my annoyance with the hit job done on him at the ABC debate.

This is a cry for an elevation in how significant information is reported or handled-- because on an international stage, I believe America's current media standards are an embarrassment. 
 
You have George Stephanopoulos taking cues from Sean Hannity-- that biased, breaker-of- every- ethics- code- for- being-a- decent- human-being. They had a conversation on Hannity's radio show prior to the debate. Hannity has his own vendetta against Obama that is borne of his history with folks like Neo-Nazi Hal Turner. Yes, Turner makes Hannity look like a beacon of all that's good with humanity in comparison. But still, Hannity is a jerk.

And Stephanopoulos deems it necessary to ask Obama during the debate about Bill Ayers, a name Sean Hannity practically gets orgasmic saying. 
 
Bill Ayers is currently a professor at the University of Illinois. He had an interesting past, but the University of Illinois deems him credible enough and not-a-threat-to-the-very fabric-of-America enough to have hired him.

At best, Obama knows the guy, knows of the guy, whatever-- but the way Stephanopoulos asked Obama about him, you would have thought he and Obama were members of sleeper cells plotting to blow up the White House the moment America wasn't looking. 
 
In the way he posed the question about Bill Ayers, Stephanopoulos parroted Sean Hannity exactly. 
 
And because the media-at-large basically ignores the insidious nature of Fox News habitually, now that network's ignorance is bleeding into mainstream, infecting everything it touches. 
 
But the media's coddling of John McCain is even more humiliating. There was a recent report that basically said that media isn't critical of McCain because he would essentially refuse to them access to the inner sanctums of his campaign. When did it become possible that people could gain control over media by way of this sort of blackmail? 
 
One last incredibly, painfully insulting thing happened involving the media recently: the Press Correspondent's Dinner. The Dark Lord himself made his comedic debut. And the press just laughed and laughed. 
 
America, they were not laughing with you, but at you.

The media would rather schmooze with the unethical, irresponsible Dick Cheney than give you useful, truthful information. They enable this administration, and then they laugh. 
 
Obama has already said that he'd consider investigating what possible crimes high-ranking officials in the Bush administration can be charged with. 
 
All of this and more make it profoundly important that whoever we stick into the White House makes sure that we regular Americans get the last laugh.