Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

The press finally falls out of love with Obama.

In Newsweek, Howard Fineman says it’s over:

The “mainstream media” are losing patience with, and even interest in, their erstwhile hero. President Barack Obama never had a chance with the Ailes-Murdoch crowd, of course, and it didn’t take the president long to offend the fierce left wing of the blogosphere. But now, finally, the MSM, which views itself as ideologically neutral, has found ideologically neutral reasons to lose patience with him: that he may be ineffectual; that he doesn’t know how to play the game; that he can’t get anything done. Exhibit A: the health-care bill. The Times’s Frank Rich, the astute dean of the commentariat, wrote recently that Obama has failed to “communicate a compelling narrative” in office and, as a result, “could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts.”

Leaving aside for the moment the hilarious statement that Frank Rich, the erstwhile “Butcher of Broadway,” showbiz wannabe and non-bestselling author, is now the “astute dean of the commentariart” — wonder what David Broder has to say about that? — this would seem on the surface to be that moment in the movie when the hero realizes he’s been duped all along and now must take charge of the situation and expose the bad guys for who they really are:


But since this is, after all, Howard Fineman, one ought not to take these brave words of independence at face value.  And sure enough, one would be right not to:

And yet this collective falling out of love is great news for Obama. Calling it quits with the MSM is just what he needs. A breakup might even save his presidency.

Now that this deviously clever psywar operation has been revealed, Fineman goes on to explain: (more…)