Brooks uses a sensational title and focuses in on a narrow enough slice of this issue to hit his mark. However, the man who insults "little Johnny" American use

Brooks uses a sensational title and focuses in on a narrow enough slice of this issue to hit his mark. However, the man who insults "little Johnny" American uses the same dumbed down tactics in his own article. I hope that there is room between a complete lack of faith in government and an adolecent expectation that government solve all our problems. If the media situation were healthy, I'd expect to see articles charting the recent political movements and citizen trends in America. * Which movements are gaining mainstream traction quickly and are they shedding their more radical fringes to do it? * Are politics or economics driving these trends? To what extent? * When "Change We Can Believe In", TARP and Tea Parties collide, what happens? * Are trends like increased deposits in local banks, increased handgun ownership, strong rural land prices and upticks in silver/gold signs of individuals taking responsibility, hedging until the government gets it together or a vote of no confidence in the government and by extension, all of us? Articles like this are written because they are effective within our system. So long as the incentive exists, so will the articles. You've all heard that "we get the government and media that we deserve". Corny, but I don't deserve DropBox or etherpad or any of the other wonderful tools coming off YC. The structure of this place allows me to use tools above my computer literacy pay grade. I wonder if that could ever apply to government or media and the systems behind them? Unlike app development, government iteration is slow, painful and messy. This makes us stick to what works well enough and that's the fundamental issue.