RUSH: This is hilarious. This is Meet the Press on Sunday. During the roundtable David Gregory spoke with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times about the resignation of Van Jones, and Gregory says, ‘In this information age, you could be a target real fast.’
RUSH: Oh, really? Van Jones, he can run out and talk about all of these horrible, rotten things that Republicans are and it’s just the Internet’s fault, it’s bloggers’ fault, the Internet, you can’t trust what you see out there. These are the people who purposely distorted what Mark Steyn said on this program about a cult-like belief that Obama was setting up the students, said he was employing cult-like policies of Saddam Hussein, when he said just the exact opposite. He said, ‘I’m not saying it’s like –‘ they purposely misreported. There’s so much misreporting, there’s so many errors in mainstream media today, and these guys are worried about the Internet. This all boils down to the fact that one of their guys got caught by us and they don’t like that. They have in their minds, they have the sole proprietorship in destroying people’s careers and lives. Ted Kennedy can do it to Robert Bork, he can try it with Clarence Thomas, but we cannot expose an avowed admitted communist radical like Van Jones. And then of course the dean, the dean of network newscasters, Tom Brokaw, weighed in.
BROKAW: A lot of people will repeat back to me and take it at face value something that they read on the Internet. And my line to them is you have to vet information, you have to test it the same way you do when you buy an automobile, or when you go and buy a new flat-screen television, you read the consumer report, you have an idea of what it’s worth and what the lasting value of it is, you have to do the same thing with information, because there is so much disinformation out there that it’s frightening, frankly, in a free society that depends on information to make informed decisions. And this is across the board, by the way. It’s not just one side of the political spectrum or the other, it is across the board, David. And it’s something that we all have to address, and it requires society and political and cultural leaders to stand up and say this is crazy.
RUSH: Well, the only problem, Tom, is that everything that was uncovered about this guy happened to be true! And you guys ignored it all, Did your best to ignore it, and you only reported on it once he resigned. And, by the way, do you believe this story that Obama had no role in the resignation? I don’t buy it at all. And Tom Friedman, he weighed in to finish up, and this I think typifies the thinking of the Old Media.
FRIEDMAN: The Internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information, left, right, center, up, down, and requires that kind of filtering, by anyone. And I always felt, you know, when modems first came out, when that was how we got connected to the Internet, that every modem sold in America should actually have come with a warning from the Surgeon General that would have said ‘judgment not included.’ That you have to upload the old-fashioned way, church, synagogue, temple, mosque, teachers, schools, you know, and too often now people say and we’ve all heard it, ‘but I read it on the Internet,’ as if that solves the bar bet, and I’m afraid not.
RUSH: So you people are idiots, you don’t have the capacity to understand what you read, whether it’s true or not, you need filters, you need the professionals, you need the experts like Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman and so forth. The Internet is an open sewer of untreated — and every damn one of these guys works for someplace that has a very vivid Internet presence and every damn one of them has bloggers. NBC’s got bloggers; MSNBC’s got bloggers; the New York Times has a big website where they’ve got bloggers. So I guess it’s an open sewer for them, too. They just can’t stand it. Their monopoly is gone, they just can’t stand that they are not the ones anymore to get to determine what’s news and what isn’t.
You’re not supposed to have the opportunity to be this informed, that’s the real problem. You know too much. This is threatening democracy in their arrogant, conceited view. Every modem sold in America should come with a warning from the Surgeon General? Who uses modems anymore, for crying out loud? Do you use a modem, Brian? I’m sure some people do, but every modem should come with a warning from the Surgeon General that says ‘judgment not included’? That’s right, and you’re not capable of making your own judgment. We have to let Tom Friedman and Tom Brokaw make judgments for you. They’re the ones that are qualified; they’re the ones that are highly trained; they’re the professionals. You’re just a rube, an idiot.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, Tom Brokaw, Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman say, ‘Well, the Internet’s a sewer out there. Need to regulate it. We’re the ones to be trusted and so forth.’ You know, I have a joke that I play on people. I’ll tell people that I heard a news story; I’ll just make something up that’s just totally false and wrong. They say, ‘Where you hear that?’ NBC News! I make a joke out of the fact that NBC News has any credibility whatsoever. Brokaw and his ilk are out there saying, ‘You can’t trust it if it’s on the Internet.’ The truth of the matter is you can’t trust it anymore if it’s on NBC. This is what more and more people are learning.