The fundamental emptiness of right-wing media criticism

Take a look at this Newsbusters entry.

CBS's Rodriguez: 'Young Revolution a la President Obama' Would Boost Conan O'Brien's TBS Show

By Kyle Drennen (Bio | Archive)

Tue, 04/13/2010 - 13:05 ET

Maggie Rodriguez and Dalton Ross, CBS On Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez described how comedian Conan O'Brien could attract viewers to his new late night show on the TBS cable channel: “if he can get this young revolution, you know, a la President Obama, to follow him, that could be huge.”

What, exactly, is Kyle Drennen's complaint? He doesn't say -- never so much as hints at what he thinks is wrong with Rodriguez' comment, and there is no obvious problem with it. My best guess is that he's upset that a reporter would suggest that young people support President Obama, though he doesn't say so. And if that's his complaint, it's an awfully dumb one, considering that just a couple of weeks ago Newsbusters suggested young people are “completely in the tank for Barack Obama and the left” because they “voted for Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2-1 margin.”

And this is the kind of nonsense you get from Newsbusters every day -- nonsensical complaints and unexplained grievances and deliberately obtuse screeds. They may as well be shouting at the clouds about the injustice of Monday following Sunday, for all the sense they make. And this is not some random right-wing blogger nobody has every heard of: This is the work of the Media Research Center, the conservative movement's premiere media critics for the past 20 years.