The once mainstream media is increasingly despondent as its power to shape opinions and influence this election diminishes.  My favorite of the moaning journalist cries was that of Walter Shapiro:  

"This is worse than normal, a lot less fun, and it feels impossible for us to change the conversation," Walter Shapiro, who has covered nine presidential campaigns and now writes for Yahoo News and Columbia Journalism Review, told POLITICO.

The conversation is changing, but a entirely new crowd has a voice.  Nothing better illustrates this than the emergence of a devastatingly new campaign symbol as an enduring meme, the empty chair -- the icon Clint Eastwood used at the RNC to signify our vacuous president.

The chair came to Eastwood in a moment of inspiration, just before he was about to go onstage at the RNC.  

...he was taken to a Green Room, where Archbishop Dolan of New York sought him out to say hello. Then he was taken backstage to wait for his cue. And that was when inspiration struck.

"There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down," Eastwood said. "When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I'll just put the stool out there and I'll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn't keep all of the promises he made to everybody."

He asked a stagehand to take it out to the lectern while he was being announced.

"The guy said, 'You mean you want it at the podium?' and I said, 'No, just put it right there next to it.'"

Then, with the theme song from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as a musical introduction, and a huge picture of him as Josey Wales as the backdrop, Eastwood walked out to tremendous applause.

Eastwood could have granted an interview to any publication he wished, but chose to share the story behind his historic speech with the Carmel Pine Cone, where he lives and once served as mayor.

Following the speech, almost on cue a handful of my online friends at Just One Minute took an empty chair, and turned it into a  nationwide campaign theme.  Sandy Daze submitted a picture of the empty chair in front of his house to Legal Insurrection; Sara twittered the theme; Mattsuggested that since there was no work we should make Labor Day Empty Chair Day.  Others , like Janet, sent in their  photos of the chairs on their lawns, put the shout out on Facebook and emailed their friends. 

In no time alternate media around the country were buzzing with the thought and people from around the country were sending in pictures of empty chairs in front of their houses. In twenty four hours the campaign was a proven success, Jane reporting back:  " 

There were 103 million hits on Google. We were headlined in Drudge, mentioned on Fox and Friends, the Five and Special Report. The WSJ did a story on us. We should not cower from making our voices heard."

I don't mean to suggest we can easily overtake all the prevailing leftward blowing  cultural winds, but we are making the present style setters luff their sails and disrupt their  forward movement.  Sometimes we do it just by not showing up, something Hollywood, or at least, its financiers, might take notice of.  Maybe not. The entertainment industry might just be impossible to save from a fed up public. After all Dan Savage is going to get a  Governors Award at the Prime Time Emmys for his anti-bullying campaign, although as Newsbusters has so thoroughly revealed he is an out of control, over the top potty mouthed bully, who has among other things aggressively attacked Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, wished Republicans were all dead, and cursed Christian high school students.  It's our choice, and their money is at stake.

Well, let them go broke. And if they keep this up they certainly will.  In 2008 the media diminished itself trying to prop up a guy whose chief accomplishment was that as a community organizer in Chicago he almost got the asbestos out of  Altgeld Gardens, and the media haven't been able to acknowledge what they've done, much less change course.  The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto discussed the preposterous new media  pose, "fact checking", and found it wanting credibility, in the course of which he offered a broader  read of the media's present situation: 

You see the progression. Journalists claiming to be engaged in "fact checking" make tendentious arguments against Republicans.  Left-wing partisans rely on the authority of the "fact checkers" to call their opponents liars or even Nazis.

One gets a sense of desperation from both the Democrats, who are trying to re-elect a president with a lousy record, and the MSM, who are trying to restore the authority they enjoyed when they aspired to objectivity, or at least pretended convincingly to do so.

Obama may yet eke out an ugly victory, but the decline of the MSM's authority seems inexorable.

 So we laugh at the journalists ' earnest attempts to make unreality real, we ignore the movies and turn off the television, and in that atmosphere we can see even more clearly that Obama and his inner circle -- his wife and Valerie Jarrett -- in Rick Ballard's words "march to a different ukulele backed by a vuvuzela ensemble.  It's all in Chapter XII - 'Beyond the Precipice' of the ACME Political Strategery Manual."

Depending which day you read Politico, the semi-official White House blog organ, Obama  either did or did not approve the wording of the Democratic party platform  which this year altered the old formula  crediting God for our national favors and declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

Out went God and Jerusalem.  But there was a lot of unhappiness when the word got out, and it's clear Obama said ix-nay on the surgical excision of the Deity and Jerusalem.  Mayor Villaraigosa was directed to get the convention to amend those planks and his teleprompter announced before the votes that the changes had passed, but they hadn't as this video shows. He called for the votes three times and it was apparent that on none of them did the voice vote indicate he had the necessary 2/3 vote to amend the proffered planks.  So he just announced the vote had carried and a cry of boos went up.  Someone likened it to the way Obamacare was enacted. They asked if we wanted it; we said no; they declared it passed.

There's only so far even CNN is willing to go though:

[quote] CNN White House correspondent Brianna Keilar, on the floor of the convention with Wasserman Schultz, asked about the process of changing the platform, the three voice votes, and the "discord."

Wasserman Schultz amazingly replied, "There wasn't any discord."

Keilar responded that it seemed like people on the floor didn't feel it was a two-thirds vote.

Wasserman Schultz again amazingly replied, "It absolutely was two-thirds."

Continuing to press, Keilar noted that this seemed to be a change in policy from yesterday by the Obama campaign because they made it clear Tuesday that they stood by the platform with the controversial language regarding Jerusalem and the word "God" left out.

"No, no, it's not actually," Wasserman Schultz again amazingly replied.

At the end of the interview, the segment switched back to CNN's booth at the convention where Anderson Cooper said, "I just got to go to the panel with this. I mean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz said it wasn't a change of language, there was no discord that we saw, and it was a two-thirds vote.

"And it was a technical oversight," added David Gergen.

"I mean, that's an alternate universe," replied Cooper.

"That's why people I think, one reason people are so tired of politicians frankly in both parties," observed Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.

"But let me just again point out that this is the same person who last week or two weeks ago was attacking the Romney campaign saying that it is the candidate who sets the platform, who designs and writes the platform," interjected Cooper. "It wasn't true what she was saying two weeks ago, but now isn't it fair if she claimed that about the Republican platform to claim that about the Democratic platform?"

Cooper added a few moments later, "I just think from a reality standpoint, you can defend it as the head of the DNC, but to say flat out there was no discord is just not true."

Tom Maguire was certainly not buying any defense of this clown show:

God Is Back! (After Only Three Tries And A Disputed Ruling...)

I may have been wrong about the Democratic Convention - you could pay me to watch this entertainment.

Politico uses the word "debacle", and even Pravda Print provided coverage. The NY Times led with the strong leadership of President Empty Chair:

Pushed by Obama, Democrats Alter Platform Over Jerusalem

By MARK LANDLER

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - President Obama, seeking to quell a storm of criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel groups, directed the Democratic Party on Wednesday to amend its platform to restore language declaring Jerusalem the Israeli capital.

The change, approved in a voice vote that had to be taken three times because of a chorus of noes in the arena, reinstated the line "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel" in a section that describes Mr. Obama's policy toward the country. That sentence was in the 2008 platform, but the Democrats removed it this year, saying that they wanted to spotlight other elements of Mr. Obama's policy and that the platform should reflect a sitting president rather than a candidate for office.

After a day of protests, however, and the prospect of an onslaught of Republican attack ads, the president and the Democrats abruptly reversed course. The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, said in a statement that the change was made to "maintain consistency with the personal views expressed by the president and in the Democratic Party platform in 2008."[/blockquote]

So Obama, devout politician and stalwart friend of Israel that he is only became bothered by the Jerusalem and 'God' issues when Republican read the platform and mocked it. And this is the leadership the Dems have on offer for the next four years? Is there any reason this wasn't taken care of weeks or months ago, or was Team Obama too busy comparing golf scores?

Still , the White House insisted the Administration has not changed its policy that the decision about the capital of Israel is for Israel and her neighbors to decide, and the amended platform only conforms to Obama's "personal views," whatever that means.

The convention had other highlights, of course.  There was Bill Clinton praising himself while lying through his teeth; he was followed by  Monica Lewinsky's rabbi (seriously), there were oodles of praise for Ted Kennedy,  who as one wag said had the only confirmed kill on the war on women, and there was Caroline Kennedy supporting unrestricted abortion "as a Catholic woman."   There was the usual inconsistent dated feminist blather and appeals to various tranches of the cobbled together party of gimmes, and the wind up was a  speech by a president who must run on a record of failure so substantial he could offer up nothing to justify his time in office, and who is so mendacious he dare not state his plans for the next four years should he win them.

I cannot find a single journalist, left or right, who praised it.

In the end the only victory was Cardinal Dolan.  You may recall he  spoke at the Republican convention, but initially was excluded from the Democratic convention -- no doubt because of his rebellion against the demands  from HHS that Catholics comply with Obamacare by providing contraceptive and abortifacient coverage for their employees.  As Obama  surely  feared Dolan would, he began by praising God and life.  The Convention which was thematically designed around contraception (Fluke) and abortion- -- it adopted the most aggressively pro abortion platform ever -- ended with words like these:

Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected. Strengthen our sick and our elders waiting to see your holy face at life's end, that they may be accompanied by true compassion and cherished with the dignity due those who are infirm and fragile. [snip]

Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature's God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community