Trent Lott Media Mystery...

[HardWorkingDem]

Anyone else out there baffled as I am as to the lack of media coverage over why this man is suddenly resigning? I mean, here a guy gets madder than hell over being forced to step down from his leadership position a couple of years ago, then he scratches to climb back and then decides to resign.

It's sort of like how no one out there really asked why the CIA director suddenly resigned either.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Maybe they don't feel like wasting any more time on a racist

redneck shit head.

[samplegirl]

2. Theres a polecat in the Hen house

He wants to be lobbyist. All Trent Lott cares about is own wallet.

[aquart]

4. I don't believe that for a second.

To go from conferring favors to begging for favors? Nobody volunteers to give up power.

[MonkeyFunk]

3. so far, there's no real story

he resigned, as far as everyone knows, to increase his lobbying revenue. It is what it is.

[Algorem]

5. he quit 2 days before relatives indicted on fed. bribery charges?

Trent Lott's Brother-In-Law,Nephew Indicted On Federal Bribery Charges

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/28/trent-lotts-brotherinl_n_74572.html

November 28, 2007 07:10 PM

Prominent Mississippi trial attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, the brother-in-law of outgoing GOP Sen. Trent Lott, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges that he and four other men tried to bribe a Mississippi state court judge.

According to the 13-page indictment, Scruggs and three other attorneys -- including Lott's nephew Zach -- attempted to bribe Mississippi Third Circuit Court Judge Henry L. Lackey with at least $40,000 in cash.

Lackey was assigned to hear a lawsuit in which Scruggs' firm was named as a defendant in a dispute involving $26.5 million in attorneys' fees stemming from a court settlement with State Farm Insurance over Hurricane Katrina claims...

Lott, the second-highest ranking Republican in the Senate, announced Monday he was resigning his seat after 35 years on Capitol Hill. Lott's decision to leave Congress came one year after he won re-election to his fourt..

[DCKit]

6. Guess y'all missed the indictments of his brother-in-law and nephew...

the day after his resignation. Check out "Scruggs." There are many connections to other hot-button Rethuglicken issues (esp. Abrahamoff and everyone/everything associated with that) that may be coming out in the next few weeks or months.

Then again, Tom Delay, et al are still running around free, so it may be much ado about nothing. Let's just hope his seat is snatched up by a Democrat.

[calimary]

7. Connecting the dots is not something most reporters do well anymore.

They don't have time - they're too busy chasing an easy soundbite or a quick-n-dirty "balanced" presentation (just get two people blabbing on different sides, or get the opposing view on some story you're "covering" and you can simply call it a day. Boom! You've just satisfied the minimum daily requirements. Furthermore, most reporters don't have the time, or the sophistication, or the understanding, to get into this kind of multi-layered digging. And when most of these people came from local where you really only had to cover fires and shoot-em-ups at the local 7/11 and the weather and high school football and movie reviews and Britney Spears and some carjacker nut leading the cops on a high speed chase. Doesn't really take a lot of analytical thinking or reporters' enterprise. And when you merely study "Journalism," you learn to write and maybe write to pictures but I'm not sure how much depth or breadth you get on foreign policy or history or sociology or psychology or economics - the kind of stuff that informs good reporting.

Connecting the dots is difficult and time-consuming, and nobody's spending much money on "I-teams" or longterm investigative reporting anymore. Few air people really understand the inner layers and things that bubble under the surface, nor do they have the time nor the inclination to understand it. That, after all, takes "hard werk." You just have to look good and read TelePrompTer coherently and photograph well, and you're set. I mean, you already put in a shitload of time sitting there getting makeup and hair done before you go on! Isn't that enough of a plate-full, forcryingoutloud?

Not only that, but when you have such ancillary entities as loud and aggressive hate radio, local mad-dog shock jocks trying every day to get in somebody's face and make a federal case out of some local molehill for ratings and notoriety, organized interest groups from the local chamber of commerce to activist political outfits or advocacy groups, that drive the stories that fit their own agenda, you begin to see a slant in the coverage. The Bill Clinton persecutions are a prime example. That was driven by a huge collective of entities across the country and across the wrong-wing, from the big think tanks and the Judicial Watch assholes and the RNC and the freeper contingents (both professional and amateur) and the hate radio machinery and everybody blast-faxing and astroturfing their local newspaper op/ed sections, there was PLENTY of wind at the backs of reporters thinking they might earn an Emmy or a Pulitzer if they could be the new Woodward/Bernstein and bring a president down. There was very little pushing from the other direction. That's why we don't see much traction pushing to probe the new wrinkles in the Plame scandal or much else. We just don't have that length and breadth and depth of machinery pushing at our backs. Most of it is loaded in the other direction.

It sucks, alright.

[DCKit]

8. Worthy of an OP calimary....

And you've already done the bulk of the work.

You'd be preaching to the choir, but we all need to hear this stuff over and over until it sinks in and becomes common sense. You might inspire others to write or remind them of something important they just couldn't put their finger on before.

The bonus would be the reaction of the Freeper lurkers who'd be spitting tacks and flipping out at your insolence - denigrating THEIR MSM! THEIR ICONS! How DARE you?