I am, of course, as is well-known, a Totally Serious Pundit Thinker Gravely Concerned over the Sad Decline of Our National Discourse, a Discourse which is, like, currently right now, totally in The Shitter. I think I speak for Serious Pundit Thinkers everywhere when I say this.

Like the Atlantic’s Michael Hirschorn, I place the blame for this Lamentable State of Affairs squarely on the nerdy shoulders of the Digital Social Media. Here I follow a recent trenchant article of Hirschorn’s I just read, a totally trenchant article that is totally different from everything else he’s written for the past fucking forever. This totally trenchant article totally proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that what totally ails the print media is totally not that it employs a lot of lazy-ass pundits who keep on recycling totally lightweight gibberish about Digital Social Media and the Sad Decline of Our National Discourse. Like, totally!

In a time when mainstream news organizations have already ceded a substantial chunk of their opinion-shaping influence to Web-based partisans on the left and right, does each side now feel entitled to its own facts as well? And thanks to the emergence of social media as the increasingly dominant mode of information dissemination, are we nearing a time when truth itself will become just another commodity to be bought and sold on the social-media markets? Or, to cast it in Twitter-speak: @glennbeck fact = or > @nytimes fact? More far-reachingly, how does society function (as it has since the Enlightenment gave primacy to the link between reason and provable fact) when there is no commonly accepted set of facts and assumptions to drive discourse?

Deep, dude.

It has not excaped the sallow-eyed, resentful attention of Vicious Leftist Partisans (cough, ahem) that there’s a certain problem here with the lazy depiction of Left and Right by positing a smug Twitterish equation of Glenn Beck and the New York Times. I mean, I’m sure Herschorn was making an attempt at something along the lines of a “joke” — but come on, really?

There is after all a problem with the New York Times, and it’s been a canker for years now. And that un-ointmented canker is that the paper has chronically shown itself all too willing to pass on ludicrous right-wing horseshit, as in, say, oh, Judith Miller.

The burden of the evidence that Herschorn himself presents is that the major problem with our National Discourse is that the right gets a pass for talking crap. The comical “rebuttal” to Herschorn coming from Brent Bozell’s Monkey House makes the point admirably.

The problem is not “social media.” The problem is not even that of Yeats’ fretting about the “center” being able to hold.

The problem is, precisely, that the center is full of shit.

I’d illustrate just how bad things are, chapter and verse, but, well…. Here here is a thought experiment.

Here is Chuck Norris talking about what is wrong with the economy.

Here is Paul Krugman talking about what is wrong with the economy.

Which is closer to the Conventional Received Wisdom of policymakers in both parties?

I rest my fucking case.

(Video unrelated, I just like it.)

Sources have conveyed to FDL News that Elizabeth Warren, assistant to the President and counselor to the Treasury Secretary for consumer financial protection, will head to Columbus, Ohio tomorrow for her first outside-the-Beltway trip, to speak with consumer and housing groups about the credit markets and the new role of the CFPB.

The trip in and of itself doesn’t seem like much. But I’m certainly intrigued by “housing” and “Ohio.” Attorney General Richard Cordray issued the first lawsuit against a mortgage servicer for fraud and violation of consumer protection laws. In addition, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was instrumental in getting the White House to veto a bill that may have made it more difficult for borrowers and their attorneys to challenge foreclosure documents in court (by the way, Robert Gibbs mentioned at the time that Warren had a meeting with the President the day before he vetoed that bill). Those offices are both based in Columbus, the state capital. The event won’t be public, but some local press will attend.

Warren has only been part of the Administration for about a month, yet she has been a ubiquitous presence on television and in print, arguing for her vision of consumer financial protection. We’re now on the precipice of another major crisis affecting the credit markets, where corporate interests clearly are taking advantage of consumers (as well as investors), often through outright fraud. So Warren goes… right to the belly of the beast to gather more information in discussion with consumer credit and housing non-profits?

Could be nothing. Could be a sign of the Administration looking more deeply into the matter…

UPDATE: The official release:

ELIZABETH WARREN TO ADDRESS CONSUMER ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION THURSDAY IN COLUMBUS, OHIO

WASHINGTON – Thursday, October 14, Elizabeth Warren will travel to Columbus, OH, as part of her early outreach efforts to American families, the financial services industry and consumer advocates to listen and learn from their experiences on the ground as she leads the effort to stand up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren will join a roundtable discussion of consumer advocates hosted by COHHIO, Americans for Financial Reform, and Policy Matters on the challenges facing American families navigating a broken consumer credit market and solicit ideas for using the CFPB to level the playing field in consumer credit.

Warren will be available to members of the media for a 15 minute question and answer session. Her opening remarks to the roundtable will be open to the press. The remainder of the event is closed press and the event is closed to the public.

I hopped on a conference call with Nancy Pelosi a little late today, and didn’t find much to report. She was focused on the election and the choice voters have to face, and didn’t want to hear much about dissension within the Democratic ranks. Someone asked a question about members running away from the health care bill, and she insisted that “the plural of anecdote is not data,” that “at least 200 members are out there boasting the HC bill,” and that everybody is running their own race in their own district, and some issues work in those districts better than others.

But I have to think Pelosi is none too happy about Democratic candidates, receiving money from Democratic campaign sources, touting their intentions to vote against her for Speaker:

Or this one from Jim Marshall, which opens with the kind of lame parody of hippie San Franciscans you’d expect out of a Sarah Palin fever dream:

(h/t Digby)

The Speaker can talk all she wants about how this doesn’t bother her, but regardless of that, it has a lasting impact in the country. You have a very loud segment of a national political party going out of their way to denigrate the leaders of that party. Some people think this makes the Democratic tent bigger and more able to gain majorities, but last I checked, Republicans held Congress for 12 years and are poised to return to that majority after just a four-year respite. The only difference in 2006 and 2008 was awful performance from George W. Bush and a leader of the DNC who actually stood for something. This strategy of self-flagellation only seems to show up when Democrats are sure to lose. In fact, you could see the two circumstances as intimately connected.

Marshall, keep in mind, is proudly accepting funding from the Chamber of Commerce, the organization at the top of the news over using the same account for campaign spending that they use to collect money from foreign companies. So he’s undermining Democratic themes in addition to its leaders.

I guess I just don’t know what Marshall or Bright gets out of the exchange. They don’t vote very often with Democrats, they don’t seem too happy about being associated with Democrats. They have to tell their district every two years that they can’t stand themselves for being Democrats.

Why are they Democrats?