Right so Tim Russert is to blame for TMZ and the rise of TV magazine shows like Access Hollywood, and for soft news. The zeitgeist of the era when supposed hard hitting news journalism was all the rage, newspapers and magazines were considered a lesser form of journalism because they were secondary, books and scholarly journals usually contained original research as opposed to derivative work. So are we to say that Charles Dickens was less of a writer because during his era he was considered a hack writing serials to sell newspapers?

I know a lot of people decry the fact that there is so much so-called soft news. However it is also no surprise that a lot of the tabloid journalism is aimed at women or a female demographic, like soap operas. Entertainment news, however, does not bother most frat boys as long as it knows its place and stays in the confines of the check out aisle and has lots of tit and ass. What people get confused about is the gray area where news and entertainment meet or cross over. But it would be better to blame it on Tivo, the way we like to skip commercials or the very foundation of the TV and advertising relationship than on Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, no matter how easy they are as targets.

When people cry for Woodward and Bernstein, are they crying for themselves, do they feel that men can't be men today? Are they even referring to Woodward and Bernstein or rather to the news media classes they had in college mixed together with their impressions from their memories of the movie counterparts of Redford and Hoffman? We look at the present through the prism of the past, but the past is only relative to the particular zeitgeist of that era. Do you have an image of a guy with a press card in his hat talking tough? Did you watch Murrow growing up or are you talking about Clooney's version?

To be honest I don't really get the hatred of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, but I can kind of sort of understand the disconnect a lot of men feel today and I can see how it is wrongly associated with things like soft news (this isn't to say that women can't hate Lindsay and Paris and soft news) but not in a visceral, really emotive way. I also don't get Ultimate fighting (and I do think there is a connection). OK, so you can question my manhood, whatever. But to look back and long for another era you didn't experience is downright silly. You are longing for someone else's memories, someone else's version of the past.

If anyone understand what I'm talking about here, I'd really love for them to explain to me how Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" is soft news. Please, clarify. What I was really offended by was the context of this whole thing. If a bunch of guys were sitting around bullshitting in the proverbial frat house and we'd all gotten drunk the night before and there was cold pizza and everyone was hung over and waking up, and one spiffy young lad was up early and had on the news and instead of the news they happened to have on a tribute to a guy he hated, and he starts spouting shite about the decline of western civilization and news journalism and how this fucker wasn't even a journalist and blah blah blah, eh, I'd shrug it off and probably chime in. To me, that was what this board was the equivalent of. But this is an open forum viewable by anyone on the web. It would be more like you're making these jokes at his funeral where his family could hear. Just very bad taste.

The only thing that really gets my goat is that an ass like Dave cries about the news and yet doesn't understand he is part of the process of creating the situation he's crying about. You can't turn back the time on the move from print media to tv and cable anymore than you can turn back the tide from new media webcontent to old media tv radio print. Can I have some more, sir? You'd as easily go back to a Dickensian world of paupers and nobility. Fine a jack ass like he would say, at least with the web we have a form of print media. But it was the very rise of the internet that contributed to the likes of Tim Russert's rise to fame, and if anything he was the one fighting the tide, trying to hold back the future of entertainment news. I just think it is a lot of misplaced aggression better served by watching some Kimbo Slice earbiting and complaining about why white guys can't get laid anymore. Dave is so white you can't tell when he has on his tighty whiteys and so anal retentive he is now referring to himself in the third person.

Good riddance.