middleman

I think most corporate media pundits do a pretty good job.

Of course, you have to keep in mind that their job is to blow smoke up our butts and confuse us, attempting to keep as much truth at bay as possible. It's right there in the job description, along with "Keep them distracted with irrelevant details and/or frivolity."

My favorites at the moment are David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, both of whom labor in the increasingly irrelevant and frivolous New York Times. They share a passion for centrism -- you know, the idea that the two major parties represent ideological extremes that force voters to choose between unacceptable alternatives, and that the solution is to find a spot exactly in the middle of the two extremes, and to value compromise above all else.

That sounds awfully much like the Obama administration, but nevermind...

Now the purpose of compromise is to end the gridlock, so as to get stuff done. What kind of stuff? Well, you know, stuff.

This tragic misreading of the political landscape extends beyond well-oiled Times scribes toting that barge and lifting that bale for their pals among corporate elites. It has hypnotized some of those elites themselves, leading to the founding two years ago of a plutocratic pipe dream called "Americans Elect."

They spent $9 millon on a website where ordinary people could log on and nominate what Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other deluded fat cats hoped would be the perfect centrist candidate -- the "MiddleMan" who's going to come and save us from all that nasty partisan bickering. Then they watched in horror as their beloved fellow citizens proceeded to nominate Ron Paul.

The Huffington Post distills press reports and says: "Last week, the Washington Post's Ned Martel reported that Americans Elect had to postpone their first week of online voting. The reason? Extreme lack of interest."

Fortunately, the political reality of a society divided between a tyrannical aristocracy of wealth and the 99.9 percent who are the rest of us is in the process of blowing up, and the long-term job prospects for smokescreen artists isn't all that great.