When the mainstream media talks about “average” voters and “what they think”, journalists are actually, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald correctly writes, simply reinforcing their ignorance of life beyond the insulated bubble:
As always, it’s not [the New York Times’] David Brooks and his childish colleagues in journalism who are interested in insipid, Drudge-like storylines. No, not at all. They so wish they could be covering weightier matters. But they can’t, because those stunted, unsophisticated Americans out there — the ones Brooks is able simultaneously to look down upon and understand and speak for — don’t want to hear about any weighty matters. They are capable only of thinking about whether Obama can bowl and whether Edwards likes his hair too much (and, of course, it’s the very same media stars who spout this condescension about the Regular Folk who have decreed that Barack Obama — and Al Gore, John Kerry, Mike Dukakis, etc. etc. — are elitists because they look down on Regular Americans).