There have been a number of discussions on various blogs, this past weekend, about cognative dissonance. Further, the press continues to praise Reagan's popularity while casting Clinton as comparatively unpopular, despite Clinton being more popular, at the end of his term.
In all this, it has struck me that the modern American press is rather Faustian.
The press seems genuinely bored with facts, as if it has discovered and mastered them all. Rather than learn/uncover more facts, it would prefer to manipulate them, itself; to control the news rather than to merely report on it. In effect, the observer and chronicler would rather become the shaper.
Enter our Mephistophiles, the GOP machine, interested in controlling facts for its own ends. Giving the press exactly what it wants, while allowing it to maintain the illusion that it is still in control, it pulls the strings and rewrites reality to fit its own agenda.
Unfortunately, true reality has a way of crashing back through, and the media now seems at least partially aware that it is being manipulated. However, just like Faust, even when confronted with these truths, and given the opportunity to repent, it cannot relinquish control. That it is not the writer of its own little play is too difficult for it to accept.
It is, in my opinion, out of egomania that the press' cognative dissonance is born. Hence we still see Reagan as the saint and Clinton as the scoundrel, with no variation in theme. For there to be a change the media would have to acquiesce that it was wrong in the first place.