Just when you might think our public intercourse couldn't get any more ridiculous, just when you think we've sunk to the lowest possible levels of sanity in our political discourse, word comes that the New York Times and the Washington Post are recruiting readers to help them pore through Sarah Palin's emails from her tenure as Governor of Alaska.
Apparently, these media titans can't wait to find something, anything, that'll make Palin look bad and they're willing to conscript hundreds of citizens to help them do it. The Washington Post is offering "micro-updates" as the revelations unfold. AOL offers viewers the chance to follow a "live email blog" as the damning documents become available. It's absolutely ludicrous, especially since the media has shown no interest whatsoever in learning anything at all about the man whom we have elected to the most powerful office in the world.
When some were asking for proof not so long ago that Mr. Obama was actually born in the U.S. the media was interested only to the extent they could deride those who were curious about the presidential provenience. When Mr. Obama refused to unseal his college transcripts the media said that that was just fine with them. When evidence mounted that Mr. Obama had in the past associated with some pretty unsavory characters the media just yawned and said "so what?", but when Sarah Palin's emails became available they're pushing and elbowing each other to be the first to discover some juicy tidbit they can hold up as proof that she's a whacko or a fraud.
Meanwhile, a complete unknown sits in the Oval Office with his hand on the tiller of the ship of state and the media couldn't care less. Is it a lack of common sense, a lack of intelligence, or a lack of maturity among American journalists that causes their priorities to be so absurdly inverted? Or is it that they're so psychologically blinkered by their emotional investment in the "first black president" that they've abandoned any pretense of journalistic objectivity and are simply unwilling to hold him to the same standards of scrutiny they apply to everyone else?