by David Morgan

"Many years ago lived an emperor, who thought so much of new clothes that he spent all his money in order to obtain them; his only ambition was to be always well dressed. One day, two swindlers came to his city; they made people believe that they were weavers, and declared they could manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined. Their colors and patterns, they said, were not only exceptionally beautiful, but the clothes made of their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.

"That must be wonderful cloth," thought the emperor. "If I were to be dressed in a suit made of this cloth I should be able to find out which men in my empire were unfit for their places. I must have this cloth woven for me without delay." And he gave a large sum of money to the swindlers, in advance, that they should set to work without any loss of time. They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms."

Later on the emperor sent in one of his ministers to see how things were going. Naturally the minister could see nothing, but didn't want to say so for fear he would be seen as being unfit for his office. Finally, the emperor himself went in to look at the wonderful clothes, but also could see nothing. "What is this?" thought the emperor, "I do not see anything at all. Am I stupid? Am I unfit to be emperor? That would indeed be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me."

"Really," he said, turning to the weavers, "your cloth has our most gracious approval;" and nodding contentedly he looked at the empty loom, for he did not like to say that he saw nothing. All his attendants, who were with him, looked and looked, and although they could not see anything more than the others, they said, like the emperor, "It is very beautiful." And all advised him to wear the new magnificent clothes at a great procession, which was soon to take place.

So the swindlers asked the emperor to undress so that he might try on his new clothes, which he readily did. "How well they look! How well they fit!" said all. "What a beautiful pattern! What fine colors! That is a magnificent suit of clothes!"

And then the procession through the streets began. "The chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stretched their hands to the ground as if they lifted up a train, and pretended to hold something in their hands; they did not like people to know that they could not see anything."  All who saw him in the street and out of the windows exclaimed: "Indeed, the emperor's new suit is incomparable! What a long train he has! How well it fits him!" Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid. Never were the emperor's clothes were more admired.

"But he has nothing on at all," said a little child at last. "Good heavens! Listen to the voice of an innocent child," said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. "But he has nothing on at all," cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, "Now I must bear up to the end."

And now the increasingly irrelevant mass media is determined to "bear up to the end."

After the results of this recent election became final, it became obvious to many that the real loser in the election was the old mass media. The mass media threw everything it could to twist, spin and pontificate against George Bush to try to insure his defeat. Never has any presidential candidate gotten more favorable coverage than John Kerry received. But it didn't work. The media were running around without any pants on, puffed up with their own self-importance, thinking that no one would notice. They became sharply visible while their agendized messages became more and more invisible. And in the process, the Weapons of Mass Media fizzled.

But they are determined to continue on their same course.

Maureen Dowd lashed out in The New York Times on November 4 that "W. ran a jihad in America...drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage."  In the same edition Thomas Friedman spews out, "Is it (America) a country that does not intrude into the marriage unions people want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over their bodies? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science?"  And again in the same paper, Garry Wills writes," Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?"

 Joy Franklin in The Asheville Citizen Times declared that what determined the outcome of this election was, "none of the things that are so incredibly important to our future as a nation - things it seems to me government ought to be focused on..." Chris Matthews of Hardball fame said that the media needs to send "foreign correspondents" out into the red states to see what is going on. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN don't have a clue. They just don't get it. They are all wearing no pants.

They have been PC'd to the point that they are no longer relevant. PC-ness removed their pants. Political correctness is not interested in the truth, only in feelings and in controlling the thoughts of people. The mass media has become a great source of 'lifestyle' information - how to peel an apple so that you don't cut your hand, how to make a prison more comfortable for terrorists - but it can no longer deal honestly with the truth. And that is because it is unable to recognize that truth exists at all. This insidious thought process has slowly evolved over the last century.

What is now clear is that there is a great cultural war going on in the world today. It is a war between the Judeo-Christian culture, the left wing secular Hegelian humanists, and the hard right Islamic terrorists. The left wing secularists now control the old mass media, which is completely submerged in post-modernist thought.

As opposed to modernists who believed that the rational pursuit of truth could reveal new facts that could provide roads to new horizons, post modernists do not believe in truths, certainly not in absolute truths. Everything is relative. Nothing is absolute. In order for harmony to exist, truth needs to be 'generated' by consensus, which is usually helped along by some sort of 'facilitator.' It was the communist communes who developed the techniques that made this thought process effective, and if it didn't work you got shipped off to a 'gulag' for those who disagreed.

Consequently, the very idea of God and Christianity with its beliefs in the Scriptures and the Ten Commandments is pure anathema to the old-style mass media. Humankind is answerable only to humankind and humankind is omnipotent. Men and women are the same, gay marriage is the same as heterosexual marriage, good and evil don't really exist - they are simply relative -, the American military is the same as the terrorists, etc. There is no truth to the connection between the fact that the Supreme Court once was in agreement that a slave was only 3/5th of a person and was a piece of property, and the fact that the Supreme Court now holds that a fetus is not a person at all and is also only a piece of property. A cell is a cell is a cell. And we can do with them as we decide.

Morality is what they say it is. Anyone who thinks anything else is just stupid. The old mass media's hostility to the idea of God, Scriptures or any sort of absolute values dominates their thoughts and actions.

And for a long time, "Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid. Never were the emperor's clothes were more admired."  But thanks to the new media - the internet, a few weekly newspapers, Fox News, some AM talk show hosts, and the bloggers- the whole people was able to cry out, "But he has nothing on at all!"

David Morgan is Editor-at-large of The Tribune Papers