Our Elite Media Are Freaking Stupid, Charles Pierce Edition

No, Charles is not stupid. But Nicholas Kristof is trying his damnedest to be.

Nicholas Kristof discovers he doesn't know what
he's talking about. Let's listen to him more!

I thought this only happened to David Brooks and Ross Douthat. I was wrong.

Kristof:

We failed to take Trump seriously because of a third media failing: We were largely oblivious to the pain among working-class Americans and thus didn't appreciate how much his message resonated. "The media has been out of touch with these Americans," Curry notes. Media elites rightly talk about our insufficient racial, ethnic and gender diversity, but we also lack economic diversity. We inhabit a middle-class world and don't adequately cover the part of America that is struggling and seething. We spend too much time talking to senators, not enough to the jobless.

Pierce:

This is all my bollocks on a number of levels. First, there are people covering the plight of the disappearing middle class all over the place—in local papers, in academic studies, on the electric teevee machine, and even in Kristof's own newspaper. There is a Democratic candidate for president whose entire damn campaign is based on the premise that the American middle class is going the way of the Anasazi. It's a little late for the elite political media that boomed "free trade" and the miracles of the "globalized economy" in a "flat" world to suddenly look up and discover that a 55-year old steelworker in Indiana likely will not be getting a job writing code for the Next New Thing. It's a little late for the elite political media to discover that de-unionization has not been altogether a boon in those few sectors of the industrial economy that haven't been cored out or sent to Vietnam.

Read the rest and weep. We are guided by idiots.