Irreverence

Jack Shafer is the media critic for Slate.com. Here's what he had to say, in a recent article headlined "Countdown to the Obama Rapture," about some of the recent coverage of the Nov. 4 election:

Reporters do their least self-conscious work when they're startled by a story they hadn't prepared to write. Think of the astonishing coverage of the 9/11 attack, natural disasters, and the 2000 election-that-would-not-end. But giving a reporter (or a pundit) too much time to think about a historic event such as VE Day, the moon landing, the fall of Communism, or the release of Nelson Mandela is like entering him into a grandiosity competition to see who can squeeze the most poetry out of his keyboard. Suddenly, everybody with a notepad and a word processor thinks he's Norman Mailer.

Shafer adds,

Every new president gets a honeymoon, of course, but not like the one we're likely to witness. As the countdown to the Obama rapture accelerates this week, say a prayer for the press corps skeptics, naysayers, cynics, pragmatists, faultfinders, and scoffers who'd rather not dance at Obama's magisterial ball. And if they write something noteworthy, send it my way.

And he provides a link.

Here's what another media critic, Mark Twain, said about newspapers:

Our papers have one peculiarity--it is American--their irreverence . . . They are irreverent toward pretty much everything, but where they laugh one good king to death, they laugh a thousand cruel and infamous shams and superstitions into the grave, and the account is squared. Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense. -- Mark Twain's Notebook