Today’s video of the day shows the now legendary battle between Cassidy and Freeway. As you can see, this was a straight knock out!

Yesterday, it was announced that NBC will be paying $1 million for an exclusive post-prison interview with Paris Hilton. In doing so, the network managed to beat out ABC, which was banking on a Barbara Walters exclusive due to her relationship with Paris’ mother.

Of course, NBC will swear that it stands by its strict policy of not paying for interviews. While this is technically true, modern networks sidestep this rule by offering sweetheart licensing and production deals to interview participants like Princes Harry and William, Michael Jackson, and the widow of Steve Irwin. In doing so, they effectively exchange money for interview time.
The idea that a news network would pay for an interview only underscores the declining legitimacy of the American media. While the American media has always been an extension of the State and its various interests, the current trend toward tabloid journalism has stripped the news of any semblance of respectability. Rather than devoting time and resources to investigating real social problems, American media outlets continue to throw money at the latest media train wrecks. In doing so, the networks ultimately obstruct everyday people’s access to significant events that occur throughout the globe.

If any good comes from this situation, it will be that Americans finally get fed up with the major networks and begin looking to foreign and independent media for information. While these outlets are far from perfect, they will at least expose us to different issues, conversations, and perspectives.

The netroots have sparked a revolution and the rest of the nation should join the party, said the blogger known as Digby, accepting the Wellstone Citizenship Award at the Take Back America Conference.

Bloggers Are Part of a Revolutionary Participatory Democracy
By Digby 

Those of you who know my blog, know that it is nearly impossible draw me from my secure bunker in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. But when I was approached by my friend Rick Perlstein about accepting this award on behalf of the progressive blogosphere, I knew that it was an honor I could not refuse, not for myself, although I’m grateful, but for my fellow bloggers.

We are proud to be a part of the great progressive liberal tradition of Paul Wellstone and are grateful for your kind acknowledgment. Thank you. As there has been a lot said recently about the netroots and our influence on the Democratic party, this is especially rewarding.

And let’s just say we seem to have ruffled some feathers.

We’ve been called everything from witless to “some guy named Vinnie in a bathrobe and an efficiency apartment” to “blogofascists.” Some critics dismiss us as useless elites — the Metropolitan Opera crowd — or a “noisy Upper West Side cocktail party for the college-graduate class.” Still others take us to task for our “vitriolic, unhinged tone.”

The other day Tim Russert agreed “absolutely” with his gracious host, concerned centrist Sean Hannity, that the Democratic party was being unduly influenced by bloggers who were dragging the party kicking and screaming to the left.

Then there is the criticism that we are fascists or Stalinists demanding that everyone march in lockstep to the edicts of our leadership — generally assumed to be Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos — who apparently directs us with secret signals deeply embedded in the code of the Daily Kos web site while we carry on an elaborate ruse of spirited political debate and disagreement in public.

We are, in short, something of an enigma.

For the rest of the story, click here. 

Will the Progressive Majority Emerge?
By Rick Perlstein 

For as long as I can remember, there’s been a generally accepted story about the recent history of Democratic Party fortunes, a neat little morality tale that goes something like this: The New Deal majority fell apart when the party was taken over by forces outside the mainstream of American life. Getting blindsided by Reaganism was the party’s just deserts. And if Democrats wanted the country back, they would just have to learn to become mainstream again.

For as long as I can remember, liberals have been complaining about awkward, self-conscious attempts to recover this “mainstream” sensibility and how they have paradoxically weakened the party. They forced Democratic politicians to become obsessed with polls. That, in turn, boxed Democrats into an identity the public–the mainstream–found the most off-putting of all: Democrats became timid. They couldn’t pursue a bold public agenda because they were too hemmed in by polls. Very recently, among progressives, a new dictum has emerged: Hug close to the polls, worship the polls, be the polls.

Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007, a massive twenty-year roundup of public opinion from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, tells the story. Is it the responsibility of government to care for those who can’t take care of themselves? In 1994, the year conservative Republicans captured Congress, 57 percent of those polled thought so. Now, says Pew, it’s 69 percent. (Even 58 percent of Republicans agree. Would that some of them were in Congress.) The proportion of Americans who believe government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep is 69 percent, too–the highest since 1991. Even 69 percent of self-identified Republicans–and 75 percent of small-business owners!–favor raising the minimum wage by more than $2.

For the rest of the story, click here.