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"Yesterday, Larry Meade, human hot air machine and husband of UW-Madison law professor and pundit Ann Althouse (the Midwest's Michelle Malkin)..."

"... posted a video in which he accused the police department of a conspiracy and lambasted the current media organization landscape. In the video (which, in bizarro world, is shown every hour on Fox News), Meade gets in the face of the police and demands entry, claiming he isn't media: 'I'm private media.'"

Writes The Awl. I think he said "new media." And no one calls him "Larry." You'd get a better response with "Lore." Which I don't call him either. Frankly, I'm not sure what to call him. Except "Meade" ? "New Media Meade."

The irony of denying Althouse's husband access to the capitol without official media credentials is that the credentialed media has done a pathetic job of covering the events. Outside Wisconsin's own official news organs, the nationals' approach to covering the protests borders on malpractice. When Paul Krugman is bothered to get into the Times CMS to post "a blog" comparing the job you've done in Wisconsin to the one you did in the buildup to the Iraq War, well, you've done a pretty bad job.

If the events in Wisconsin prove one thing, it is that the mainstream media has become journalistically irrelevant when it comes to national issues and coverage. Broadcast media is incapable of explaining anything outside a macropatriotic framework and has proven allergic to anything that puts off even the slightest whiff of the class warfare that scares away big-market advertorial. Meanwhile, the other side is cable news' partisan echo chamber of regurgitated self-assurance, where no blow is too low and no fact needs sourcing before being leveraged to make a prearranged point.

But, hey, guess what? Governor Scott Walker is about to give his budget address, and Meade is there, seated in the chamber as I write this. I could have been there too, but I've got a class at 4:30, and we need to talk about the Commerce Clause.

ADDED: Here's the video referred to above. And in the comments, JAL says, "Woo hoo! Reminds me of a book some guy from Knoxville wrote ... uummm ... It had a militaristic tone to it ... (you know those "conservative" right wing blogger gun nuts ...) ... uhmmm ... An Army of Meades!" Oh, yes. They'd look like this. You know they came from a place called Media.

Full post as published by Althouse on March 01, 2011 (boomark / email).