Turn on a television news station at any given time of the day and you are likely to be treated to the repetitive inanity of a creature I call a "panel parrot".
"Panel Parrots" can be found perched wherever there is a gathering of "pundits", "journalists", "news anchors" or "cohosts" and may even hold one of these positions on the panel. For example, Mika Brzezinski is a cohost of MSNBC'S Morning Joe and a self-proclaimed "journalist". However, MIKA is really a "panel parrot" because lacking any semblance of critical thought or the ability to understand the news she reports, she is able only to repeat---as if it is fact---every idiotic line of BS that issues forth from whatever fool occupies the seat next to her on any given day.
Just this morning, her guest was Jim Cramer, a self-proclaimed investment expert of no particular record of accomplishment, who claimed that President Obama said "Now is not the time for profits." And sure enough Mika and her fellow parrots echoed the line as if it was gospel, because, after all, it came from the mouth of Jim Cramer.
Not one parrot on the panel even questioned the legitimacy of what Cramer said. And here is Mika, news anchor and journalist extraordinaire, sitting there, chirping away about what a foolish statement Obama made when in fact had she merely looked back at her previous reportage from last week (probably too far back for her brain to recall) and discovered what President Obama actually said was "Now is not the time for bonuses."
But in the world of the Panel Parrot, the words "profits" and "bonuses" are obviously interchangeable.
Mika is far from the only Panel Parrot out there. In fact, some of
the greatest myths owe their existence to these birds. How else would we learn that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet? Or that Clinton staffers wreaked havoc on the keyboards of computers during the transition to Bush by removing all the "W"s? The fact that neither of these "truths" is true (a quick trip to Snopes.com, or FactCheck.org anyone?) hasn't stopped such a diversity of "journalists" like Andrea Mitchell, Joe Scarborough, Barbara Walters, etc. from repeating them as such even recently.
Funnier still, however, is one of the Queens of the Panel Parrots, Elisabeth Hasselback from The View. Just this morning, Hasselbeck went on one of her daily rants about morality and values by harping on Michael Phelps' getting caught taking a hit of marijuana from a bong. "People look up to him", she whined, "He should know better!" In the next breath, when the subject had changed to Rush Limbaugh as spokeman for the Republican Party, Hypocritic-in-Chief Hasselback nearly twisted herself into a knot defending her Hillbilly Heroin hero Rush--stating that millions of people listen to him because he represents Conservative values. I guess a 23-year-old star swimmer who smokes marijuana is a far bigger threat to family values than a thrice divorced, Oxycontin addict (who uses his maid as his drug mule)and is the "voice" of the Conservative movement. But then Hasselbeck relies solely on FOX NEWS for her information, and FOX is the natural habitat of the Panel Parrot.
Then there is the variety of panel parrot like Contessa Brewer who went on a mini-tirade of righteousness over Tom Daschle's not paying "$140,000" in taxes (a figure she repeated at least a dozen times), all the while having her rant appear above the caption reading that Daschle owed and paid "$128,000" in back taxes. I guess for Contessa, 140K is an easier figure to remember than 128,000.
I admit it can be amusing to watch these parrots squawk away over whatever latest affront ruffles their feathers, but it is also very frustrating that no one seems to take the time to point out to them that they are repeating as "fact" such total BS and that unfortunately their version of the truth may eventually find its way into the "Common Wisdom".
And even when they try, like John Podesta tried on Morning Joe to correct Pat Buchanan's characterization that Obama wants to give tax rebates to people who don't work or pay taxes, telling him that it was tax relief for the poorest workers who pay payroll taxes but do not make enough to pay income taxes, Pat and his perch-mates totally squawked over Podesta's statement, because their sound bite played better. Facts be damned!
I now understand why more Democrats don't appear before this "liberal media"; what's the point? They don't listen and they can't read because as we know, parrots have only one use for newspapers.