After a decade of being clean and sober (clean of watching the TV “news”, and sober enough to realize it is no longer anything even remotely resembling news coverage), I recently fell off the wagon – well, not so much fell off as jumped off, intrigued by the current temper tantrums that you and your colleagues are engaging in on a nightly basis. Not surprisingly, it is quickly becoming the stuff of legend.

“The media is in the tank for Obama.” Your words – words broadcast on an alleged “news” network that has been so far up Bush’s rear-end for the past eight years, it’s amazing that a single one of your air-headed colleagues has survived the constant state of asphyxiation.

That’s right, Lou – thanks to you and yours, we have now endured almost eight long years of non-stop fawning over the Idiot-in-Chief, lauding his every perceived accomplishment while ignoring the lies, the deception, the blatant criminality, and the incredible damage he and his administration have caused to this nation and its citizenry.

But the reaction among the alleged TV journalists to Barack Obama is so rich with irony, watching the sputtering hairdos carrying on like scalded cats has now become some of the best comedic fare the small screen has offered in decades sans laugh-track.

The coverage of Obama’s current trip to the Middle East is the perfect case in point, invariably described as stagecraft, a continuous series of meaningless photo-ops, and an attempt to “look” presidential.

Come on, Lou – even you can’t help but guffaw along with the rest of us, hearing this kind of commentary from the same “news” media that pissed all over itself when the Chimp-in-Chief landed on an aircraft carrier to declare Mission Accomplished, served a plastic turkey to troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day, and showed up in NOLA in the aftermath of Katrina complete with sets and props which “disappeared” within minutes of his carefully selected (i.e. pliable) media entourage packing up their cameras after receiving a heck of a job slap on the back.

What Obama is engaging in is not stagecraft, but an honest attempt to craft an environment of goodwill, open dialog and honest discussion with world leaders – delivered, as a welcomed change, in coherent sentences and with the dignity once considered appropriate for any American statesman guesting in a foreign land.

The photo-op accusation, while totally expected from people like yourself, is without doubt the roll-in-the-aisles punchline to the mainstream media Bush joke that’s been eight years in the telling.

After two miserable terms of shoring-up a lying, arrogant frat-boy whose entire administration has been a study in the art of smoke-and-mirrors, you have the audacity (or incredible comedic talent) to suggest – completely straight-faced – that Obama’s appeal to the voters of this country, and the people of the world, is based on nothing more than being able to smile for the camera. And the laughs just keep on comin’.

As for attempting to look presidential, Obama isn’t “attempting” to do any such thing. The obvious truth is that the man IS presidential, and that’s because – no matter how much you and your colleagues whine, wail, and gnash your teeth – Barack Obama WILL BE the next President of the United States. Think of it as getting a head-start on looking the part.

While I don’t excuse the current behavior of you and your fellow teleprompter-readers, I do realize how difficult the transition from the present administration to that of President Obama is. There will be no more need to present staged appearances in front of hand-picked groups as spontaneous crowd-pleasers; no requirement to edit garbled, nonsensical speeches into something that vaguely resembles the English language; no necessity for carefully choreographed camera angles to hide the parade of angry protestors every time you show a clip of the president visiting a US city, or a foreign capital.

I expect that once you media types calm down after your hissy-fit, you’ll all realize that having an actual leader in the Oval Office will make your jobs that much easier – at least the jobs that aren’t outsourced to India, where even the most inexperienced talking-head can fill the airwaves with blonde-teenager-gone-missing stories just as easily as you can, and for a lot fewer bucks than you’re pulling down.

And speaking of jobs, Lou, when are you going to attempt to do yours? I assume you’re aware that there are millions of Americans who still believe that WMDs were found in Iraq, and that Saddam was behind the attacks of 9-11 – and who, at the same time, know nothing about illegal wiretapping of US citizens, or the impact of vote-caging or Diebold machines on our voting process.

Your job is to keep people informed – so how do you explain the fact that so many of them are so misinformed? Maybe you and the “Best Political Team on Television” can put together a CNN Special Investigative Report on that phenomenon as part of your network’s never-ending quest to Keep ‘Em Honest.

Anyway, when you and your colleagues do decide to do your jobs, drop me a line. Until then, I’m going back to being clean and sober, lest I fall into the clutches of the drunken idiocy that, thanks to people like you, continues to be passed-off on an unsuspecting audience as an equivalent substitute for legitimate TV journalism.