Death of Old Media: part 276 (The little trainwreck that could)

Whoever's leaving their Trib behind at the coffee shop must, must stop. Please! Take it away, so I don't keep stumbling into Charlie Madigan's cubicle, where on Tuesday he tenders his musing aboutabout "the big, juicy meal" that is Barack Obama after "one fabulous speech." and how Obama would be Al Gore's ideal running mate, since "Gore has tree-hugging chops, and Democrats can't resist that." Here's more of Madigan's mad mulligatawny of condescension and conventional wizardom, representing all the valor and acuity of TribCo MegaCorp's op-ed faculty: "First, in presidential handicapping, the media know just about as much as the guy in the street." [But get paid more and talk to themselves more, apparently.] "If it were up to us, Howard Dean would have won the Democratic nomination the last time around and surfed into the White House on a tide of Web site-based contributions and blog fluff.... He yee-hawed himself out of it." Like incessant false references to Al Gore claiming to have "invented the internet," Mr. Madigan does not see fit to recall that Mr. Dean's "yell" came from the way the candidate was miked for the media, and how the image was repeated not only by Fox, but most major broadcast media, and not how he came across in the context of that rally. But Madigan is quick to consider himself "elite," which I suppose, despite an admission of cluelessness, as "superior": "My own thought is that reporters made this mistake for the same reason we make most of our mistakes: We aren't like normal people and haven't been for a long time. We are elites given to pronouncements." But "[W]e are about as accurate as anyone you grab out on the street. Go find some good-looking person [I'd guess Madigan means gal but someone caught that one] and conduct your own poll over coffee. What do I think is going to happen? Frankly, there is no wisdom in the office. I might as well be at home in the basement blogging in my underwear." [Is that how this internet thing works? Collating unsavory images to thrust across the breakfast table? Yes, but then you would be giving up your years of pension, Charlie!] " But I can play the game as well as anyone, so here's my scenario. Clinton is dashed on the rocks of reality in New England, where the Democratic voters of New Hampshire... say they would rather rub chowder in their eyes than vote for her. Even backing from the liberated legal hookers and gamblers in Nevada can't help her." [More making with the cliches 'n' stuff at the link. This Charlie Madigan is the Little Trainwreck That Could. Also posted at SharkForum.]