What Would Durkheim Do?

Over at The Poor Man Institute, they have a concise analysis of the media love for McSame:

Why do the media idiots love him? Because he’s one of them. Why do they give him a pass on his totally fraudulent references to elitism? Because they do that shit all the time. Why do they love his insanity-based foreign policy? Because he says all the absurd, superficially strong-sounding stuff that makes good TV. They love him like Chris Matthews loved Tim Russert. They love him like David Brooks loves Tom Friedman loves Richard Cohen loves Fred Hiatt. They love him like the Slate editorial board loves any idiot with a contrary position. They would go to bat for him because it’s tribal, because they get him, on a fundamental level. He’s good TV people. He’s one of them.

No wonder our political system is broken. But what did you expect? This is how advanced capitalism works.

All social institutions get co-opted by ruling class interests. Those institutions, such as the mass media or public higher education, that regard themselves as independent of the state for the purposes of critical analysis of it have already been taken over by the same managerial functionaries who control the state itself.

That members of the media or the academy think of themselves as independent in any real sense is either self-delusion or propaganda. (Well, that's a little harsh, I realize. There are journalists and professors who are, in fact, critical voices, but they are ignored by the institutions they inhabit and society in general to the extent that they resist co-optation. More so for the media, perhaps. The academy is probably the last battleground for capitalist control.)