Why I won't watch the Inauguration

Today is Inauguration Day, and as Barrack Obama is officially sworn in as our 44th President, I will not be watching a single moment of the event. The initial response to such a declaration is obviously going to be that I am suffering from a case of Sour Grapes, but that would not be true.

Aside from the souring of the Republican brand, an unpopular incumbent Republican President and John McCain's stark brilliance in running an absolutely lousy campaign, Barrack Obama must be given credit for rising to the occasion and soundly beating his opponents. Running a successful campaign takes guts and raw stamina, and he demonstrated both.

As Inauguration Day approached, I began to reflect on my observations of past Presidential campaigns and events. I remember all the way back to Ronald Reagan's inauguration back in 1981, and I have been fortunate to see the celebration and coverage of every successful campaign since then. After careful consideration and reflection on how I felt about this past year in politics, it dawned on me that my negative reaction has nothing to do with Obama's election, Nanzi Pelozi, Harry Reid or even the democrat party as a whole.

After struggling for the past couple of months to coalesce my thoughts and feelings into a focused thread, I have come to realize that my sense of anger and absolute disgust is entirely the product of - and focused on - what we have come to call the "Mainstream Media".

The entire point of the Founder's reasoning behind the establishment of a free Press was to act as a watchdog of the government on behalf of the citizenry. The idea was that a fully informed citizenry would be educated on political issues of the day, thereby holding bad politicians accountable by them having to suffer the wrath of disillusioned voters who would subsequently remove them from power.

The Founders were brilliant men, but even their brilliance overlooked the worst possibility they could have envisioned: What would happen to the integrity of the checks and balances of government if the Press chose sides? Well, for at least the next four years, we're about to find out.

The coverage of this past election cycle has been the single largest case of journalistic malpractice ever foisted on a free society. I am not painting with a broad brush or stating it to be funny. I am dead serious. So serious, that I submit to you that if this malpractice was ever punishable by capital statute, the first order of business would be to send Oprah Winfrey, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and the rest of the liberal spam-monkeys at MSNBC, The New York Times, Time and Newsweek straight to the gas chambers. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200 dollars.

Let's take the Inauguration itself as a recent example. In the early part of his second term, President Bush celebrated with his second Inaugural party. The price tag: $40 Million dollars. The result? Numerous op-eds and opinion pieces criticizing the President for spending so much money on an Inauguration when we had troops fighting overseas. The cost of Barrack Obama's Inauguration? $170 Million dollars. The result? No "mainstream" media complaints, no calls for a reduction because of the troops being overseas or because our country is in dire economic times. No, we're told that now is the time when you want to display such celebration because it is so historical and raises the spirits of the country. Journalistic double-standard? Why, not at all!

The media has put Barrack Obama on such a high pedestal and has hung on his every word and action to such an extent that Moses' parting of the Red Sea would look like an amateur card trick in comparison to the advertised abilities of our next President. He was able to run a campaign on vague concepts such as Hope and Change, and instead of asking for - no, demanding specifics, he was lauded by the Press for running a campaign that captured the hearts of the American people by concerning himself and appealing to their needs, all while not getting mired in specifics. Whenever John McCain started highlighting or stated specific differences between their campaign or experiences, the press labeled McCain as erratic, desperate, grouchy, angry and unstable, while Barrack Obama was characterized as already "acting Presidential", calm, cool and collected. With that kind of positive coverage, why shouldn't he have acted cool? Obama himself said that at the moment when he accepted the nomination, it was the time when people would look back at that point and say "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Forget that such a claim demonstrates a line of thinking that is downright megalomaniacal and scary as hell in it's nature. It was far scarier that no one in the "mainstream" media saw fit to laugh him out of town for making such a ridiculous statement.

Today, Chris Mathews (who has been suffering from a near-terminal Man-Crush on our next President) will have to leave the Inauguration at least two times to change his shorts as a result of the "tingle" Obama gives him running too far up his legs. (Hey Chris, make sure you axe Obama if it was good for him, too.)

Regardless of how I feel about the media that helped get him there, Barrack Obama deserves his Inauguration and time in the sun, because he has rightfully earned it, and it would be wrong of me to deny or begrudge him his due as the result of his victory. What I will not do, however, is watch the media's coverage of the event. They have broken their Constitutional and journalistic duty to inform the American citizenry by taking their blatant bias to a never-before-seen level. As far as I am concerned, American journalism has less integrity and credibility than the BBC, Al Jazeera and Pravda.