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Thursdays with Tina: My Birthday Present to You Edition
Back by popular demand: Translating Tina Brown's Thursday column in the Washington Post. We understand it so that you don't have to.
Tina saysTina meansAre the media having a nervous breakdown?I believe I am a member of the media.The broiling partisan heat, the pressure to get out of third place with a scoop, the hot breath of cable news, the race to beat all the hacks and scribes who keep nibbling away at the story (your story, the story you've spent five years trying to get right), the baying of the bloggers, the sick sense of always being news-managed by the White House's black arts, the longing to show the Web charlatans and cable-heads that rumpled-trenchcoat news is still where the action is, the pounding inner soundtrack that asks: Am I a watchdog or a poodle? A journalist or an entertainer? A tough newsman or a mouse with mousse?All the editors have left the building. I am here all by myself. LALALALALALA. I think I'll run naked down the hallway!But he looked as if his psyche had been through Hurricane Ivan.I have a desperate need to be topical, even when the topics are unrelated in any way.Every editor, producer and reporter knows that the warp speed of the news cycle means we are all only one step ahead of some career-ending debacle.Not that I would know anything about career-ending debacles.
Fear of missing the bandwagon is behind all the hype about the brilliance of bloggers who blew the whistle.Hello? Hello? Are there any editors heeeerrre? Ha ha. More running naked down the hallway, mixing metaphors as I go!The way things have unraveled must be Karl Rove's wet dream: a living, breathing example of ostensible liberal media bias with which to bludgeon the rest of the press into an even deeper defensive crouch.A metaphor here, a metaphor there, who cares? Bludgeoning the media with a living breathing wet dream! Lalalalalala!Like O.J. Simpson's infamous "struggle" to squeeze his big hand into the glove, the letter was just a lousy piece of evidence that should never have been produced in court. Now because CBS, like Marcia Clark, screwed up the prosecution, Bush is going to walk.Every thing is like some thing. Sometimes more than one thing! That's why we need so many metaphors. See, it's like the internet start-up bloggers are in slow-motion car chases while Fox breathes down their necks in a trenchcoat with poodles and a mouse and mousse and Karl Rove's wet dream. Yay!A veteran newsman is in the twilight of a long and distinguished career. He just wanted to taste that sweet medicine one more time.I'm lonely. Please come back.