Orange Juice: Is It Possible for the Entire Traditional Media to Jump the Shark?

You might have read about the latest conclusive proof that Democrats are the party of out-of-touch elitists: Senator Obama ordered orange juice instead of coffee. While many see this as an attempt to manufacture controversy, I think the hypothesis that the press corps is so stupid as to border on mental disability is operative here. Hunter writes:

I can understand why a presidential candidate doing badly at bowling would be a fun, two-minute diversion from weightier matters. And I can understand why a presidential candidate speaking imprecisely about a difficult political issue would become political news. The orange juice thing, where we're trying to pin an "elitist" label on someone because they asked for orange juice instead of coffee?

No. That was the point where the wires crossed, and shorted. There is a point in which a triviality becomes less than trivial, less than banal, and becomes, to use the most technical term for it, deeply and abrasively stupid. There is no spin possible that turns "asking for orange juice" into an issue of elitism or snobbery: there is, in an infinite sea of alternate realities, not one in which asking for orange juice demonstrates an important negative aspect of character. It is stupid. It is aggressively stupid; it is soul-burrowingly stupid; it is mind-fuckingly stupid. It is the kind of stupid that seeps into the rug so that the entire building stinks of stupid for the next ten years whenever the air conditioning comes on. It is the kind of stupid that wounds all those who come into contact with it. It is a stupid that has been rendered physical: it leaves a scar.

....There is a profound lesson to be taken from Orangejuicegate, or Bowlinggate, or Bittergate, and that lesson is that the guardians of our discourse are, at heart, idiots. There is no other explanation or redemption. Anyone attempting to draw out character definition from a glass of orange juice is, at heart, someone who has entirely run out of insightful things to say. Anyone attempting to make the case that a bowling score represents the measure of a man deserves to be basted, roasted, and served to whatever imbecile of a president does manage to rise to the top of their addled internal scoresheet.

And Hunter's solution is dead on target:

At the same time, I think the appropriate response to this is not to get too angry and pretend to seriously rebut any of this, but to simply recognize it as a function of a deeply embarrassing and inept media environment, and, well... make fun of them. Repeatedly. That is what passes for analysis, as the world decays around us?

Because it should be nothing short of hilarious that, just as usual, orange juice and bowling are stories that titillate our "experts", but torture approved at the highest levels of government is not.

I think Hunter is right: this is a level of stupidity that rivals creationism, and, as such, is worthy only of contempt. It should not be taken seriously, and those who purvey this bilge should heckled as the addled fools that they are. And media analysts wonder why newspapers and TV news is losing audience share....