Likelihood of Success

At least they got the “spinning” part right

Jun 22, 2008 Medialites, Sisyphus

The Associated Press is getting the vapors, and says it’s all “spinning out of control”:

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

Wow, is that what it is? Dour powerlessness? Not merely power dowerlessness?

I can certainly understand why certain things seem to the AP to be “spinning out of control” and why the AP, in particular, feels increasingly “powerless.”

On the other hand, maybe here I am making a mistake similar to the one being made by the AP. That obsolescing fossil is unable to understand a changing world. It is experiencing discomfort over an unprecedented amount of “noise” about that world in the form of the information explosion that it historically has managed. AP describes this vertigo as American “powerlessness,” even though more Americans have more control over their personal material circumstances today than ever before — despite the constant drumbeat of left-wing wags to the contrary.

But my mistake would be to assume that the AP is confused, when it could merely be the case that it publishing incoherent, poorly-reasoned, jejune high-school-yearbook-essay ramblings as “journalism.” It could just be that just as the AP is erroneously calling “the new powerlessness” what is merely just more information, and more dimestore analysis, being available about that big bad world of ours than ever, I am erroneously describing as MSM culture shock what is just really dumb writing. (Hat tip to Jane Coleman.)

Cross-posted on Right Wing News.

UPDATE: Disasters: Foe or menace?  (Hat tip Glenn Reynolds.)