Paul Sheehan, the glory of Fox News, hiss boo NYT and Fairfax and the displeasure of white voters

Over at the allegedly new look Sydney Morning Herald sub-badging and revival of the National Times name, it's business as usual for Paul Sheehan.

In Obama adviser victim of his own past, Sheehan manages to recycle all the Republican and shock jock talking points about Van Jones, who recently resigned as environmental adviser to President Obama after a concerted media campaign against him.

Well a scalp's a scalp in these troubled 'you lie' times.

Which got me wondering. Leaving the whys and wherefores of the Van Jones affair aside, the sting is in the tail of Sheehan's piece.

Could Sheehan the grumpy curmudgeon be harboring a desire to become the Glenn Beck of the antipodes?:

... when Jones's past, his vicious rhetoric, his wild conspiracy theories, his Marxist economics and his paucity of managerial experience began to emerge, the same mainstream media, locked into its own political biases, did not want to know about this story, and did not want their audiences to know about the other side of this newly installed green hero.

Prior to Jones's resignation, despite revelation after revelation which made his position untenable, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the major networks, NBC, CBS and ABC, carried not a word. They preferred to be beaten on a big story than to even acknowledge it.

While the Fox News Channel, which drove the Van Jones story, has been one of the biggest media success stories of the past decade, becoming highly profitable and highly influential, during the same decade The New York Times Company has plunged in market value. It is one of numerous once-powerful media companies which would rather die than change an ideological agenda hidden under a false mask of objectivity.

Um, Fox is a media success story and the New York Times a disaster? Never mind the social discord, just look at the bottom line? Never mind that Glenn Beck is as close to a raving ratbag as America has seen since the good old days of Father Charles Coughlin (wiki here)?

The NYT has a hidden ideological agenda hidden under a false mask of objectivity? Does that mean Fox News has no ideological agenda. Or just that it isn't hidden under a false mask of objectivity? So what on earth does 'fair and balanced' mean, if coverage is neither fair nor balanced?

So the way to get ahead is to adopt the Fox model and forget about the NYT? Get with the ever so successful right wing Republican model in America?

So looking at the antipodes, what would be the closest we come to a New York Times in Australia? Well surely The Age, and not so far behind it, The Sydney Morning Herald, adjusted of course to the hedonism of the emerald city which can only stand so much of the black wearing brooding introspection of the southern citizenry. After all, what's the competition? We know the ABC has always tended to favor the Liberal National coalition, and it was really only Fairfax that came up trumps as leftie in a recent academic study.

So the way to get ahead is to forget about Fairfax, go Rupert?

Is this Sheehan's back handed way to pre-announce the demise of Fairfax? Or at least the liberal leaning inclinations of Fairfax under the new National Times badge, which at one time in its old hard copy format was required reading for the latte sipping, chardonnay swallowing inner suburban trendies who loved a good political scandal?

Is Sheehan tipping the wink, nudging the nudge, selling Fairfax off because they refuse to get a right wing reality check? Like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly?

Never mind. If Glenn Beck is Sheehan's idea of how to conduct a McCarthy-ite loony tunes campaign against the world of liberalism, he's welcome to it. Perhaps if he wants to avoid a false mask of objectivity and join an empire which has no ideological hidden agenda, he might even care to go off and write for The Australian. And leave the rest of us to enjoy granny's hidden ideological agenda, working hard to turn the eastern suburbs into a haven for socialists.

Instead of working for a once powerful media company that would rather die than change ...

Oh wait, there's one other little fillup right at the end ...

Not just Van Jones has been exposed and damaged by this story. And President Obama's approval rating with white voters has dropped sharply in recent months.

Yep, in post racial America, it's good to see Sheehan keeping tabs on the interests of white voters. Well we know about black voters, they just voted for Obama because he's black. So yu wouldn't expect his popularity amongst the blacks to drop. So let's just forget about those racially motivated black voters. And concentrate on those poor white voters who thought they'd like to give a black man a go, seeing as how they were so post racial, and what a dud he's been, appointing his black buddies ...

Why am I reminded of Maureen Dowd's column Boy, Oh, Boy in that disreputable rag The New York Times (registration may be required):

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

Careful Dowd, you might upset the white voters.

(Below: Father Charles Couglin, an inspiration to us all).