The MSM at its stupid worst

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This, by TNR's Jon Chait at The Plank, is a must-read:

Wealthy Idiots Meet Idiot Reporter

Chait responds to an ABC News story that gets the entire concept of progressive taxation wrong and ignorantly regurgitates, while giving a platform to, the usual right-wing anti-tax propaganda.

It's also hilarious. Here's the passage Chait quotes:

President Barack Obama's tax proposal – which promises to increase taxes for those families with incomes of $250,000 or more -- has some Americans brainstorming ways to decrease their pay, even if it's just by a dollar.

A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law. ...

"We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00," she said.

"We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan," she added. "Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?"

The attorney says that in order to decrease her income she'll have to let go of clients, some of whom she's been counseling for more than a decade.

"This means I'll have to tell some of my clients we can't help them and being more selective in general about who we help," she said. "I hate to do it." ...

Dr. Sharon Poczatek, who runs her own dental practice in Boulder, Colo., said that she too is trying to figure out ways to get out of paying the taxes proposed in Obama's plan.

"I've put thought into how to get under $250,000," said Poczatek. "It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off."

The ABC News reporter is stupid, and willfully so. Chait: "Pretty clearly the reporter started off on her mistaken premise, found some subjects who shared her ignorance, and then came across a financial advisor who gently corrected her. But, instead of nixing the collosally uninformed article, or writing a different kind of article ('Rich Morons Decreasing Own Income Due To Lack of Tax Code Knowledge') she instead plowed ahead with her initial premise."

But so are these "wealthy" Americans -- who are presented as representative of wealthy Americans generally. Do they really not understand how the tax system works? Are they really so ignorant as to think that reducing their income below $250,000 will solve what they mistakenly perceive to be their impending tax problems? And what's with the self-pity? Are we supposed to feel sorry for them? (Perhaps we should feel sorry for their clients, whom they will dump so as to cut down their income.) Seriously, it's like they think they're fucked because they make too much money. What a bunch of morons.

And expect much more of it: "This article is obviously an outlier, but it is an extreme manifestation of a broader phenomenon... Sadly, I think the next few months are going to bring us a massive surge of sympathetic and/or uninformed coverage of the tax debate from the perspective of the wealthiest segment of America." Right-wing spin dominates the news, as does the perspective of the wealthy, as if the real victims of the economic crisis are not those who are losing their jobs and their homes and having trouble paying the bills and putting food on the table, and certainly not the poor and indigent, who are neglected entirely, but wealthy professionals who don't give a shit about anything but themselves, brought to you by a media establishment that says just what the right wants it to say and is all too stupid to know any better.