THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE YOU MAY EVER READ ABOUT HOW MAINSTREAM MEDIA GOT SCREWED UP:  Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi continue to be the last few remaining honest (read “classical”) liberals left. Taibbi’s piece today, titled “The Echo Chamber Era” outlines what conservative and libertarian First Amendment lawyers have said for years, only to be ignored, ridiculed, and (in my case) occasionally blacklisted.

“Media critics who work in the corporate press, like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, seem determined to look everywhere but inward for solutions. The dominant legend in our business is that if Republicans believe in fairy tales like Q and “Stop the Steal,” the traditional press can do nothing but stand its ground. Sullivan’s reaction to at-times “embarrassing” Inauguration Day coverage was an injunction to reporters to resist the temptation to try to appear more balanced by showing “toughness” with regard to the incoming Biden regime. If anything, Sullivan said, the press should stand even taller in its opposition to red-state lie merchants like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, “without fearing that they’d be called partisan.”

The coverage of Biden’s inauguration was […] a monument to groveling sycophancy. John Heileman at MSNBC compared Biden’s speech to Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural, and suggested that the sight of “the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas” gathered for the event was like “the Marvel superheroes all back in one place” (this was not the first post-election Avengers comparison to be heard on cable). Rachel Maddow talked about going through “half a box of Kleenex” as she watched the proceedings. Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s lumbering speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,” John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech included. The joyful tone was set the night before by CNN’s David Challen, who said lights along the Washington Mall were like “extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.”

As the Good Professor says: “Read the whole thing.”™