By Danny Laub, Saint Louis University
It's that time, when top
news agencies, TV stations and your friendly neighborhood bloggers start
putting together their lists of the top ten policy-related events of 2009. What will make the list? Will it be the
economy? The handling of swine flu or the Obama's inauguration? There are certainly some things that should
make these lists, but will probably be omitted.
On top of these famed top ten lists, where will the tea
parties rank? Will any of the major
networks or newspapers list them on the top of their lists? After all, tea parties have been one of the
biggest stories of the year and arguably the biggest policy-related story outside
the beltway. Will they list Climategate and the heightened level of skepticism
about global warming, whose end of the year bombshell this year was heard
internationally? I'm sure they'll cover Obama’s inauguration, but will they
accurately portray his big government initiatives?
The most culturally representative and significant
policy-related event would probably be Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashing the state
house dinner and the Obama's administration almost unwarranted willingness to
throw the Secret Service under the bus for White House staffer's mistakes.
Maybe they can touch on Obama's type of 'kind' diplomacy,
which consists of being of being nice to our harshest enemies and the world's
worst dictators, which so far have achieved little results other than laughs.
When Iran makes these lists, if it does, will it be
focused on America's missteps or will they be ignored? The squandered
opportunity to support the revolution when Obama, instead, distanced himself
from their breathe of freedom.
Will these news outlets
properly portray their own decline? With
the mainstream media falling out of fashion, newspapers making cuts and TV
viewership dropping, one would think that this would be a significant event of
2009.
Will Obama be ridiculed and reported for his blaming Bush
at every turn for all these problems that he claims to have “inherited” as the
deficit continues to skyrocket and unemployment increases in massive amounts?
