Tide of Tea Party Money Bewilders MSM

This ABC News report linked to by Drudge is an interesting sight to behold. On the surface it is a typical pre-election "get to know the candidates" type segment, but underneath lie two powerful ironies: 1) the MSM is essentially reporting on their own declining influence, and 2) the media personalities are oblivious to their own display of the typical cluelessness that has contributed to that decline. Diane Sawyer and Jonathan Karl are brimming with disbelief that Sharon Angle has raised such a stunnning amount of money and that some little known gal in South Dakota has also raised big money. You can almost hear them say, "Both of these women have certainly gotten no attention from us, the national media, (except in Angle's case maybe a few snide put downs), where possibly could this fundraising prowess have come from?" Of course, what they seem not to understand is the massive anger and disillusionment that has crested the banks of our national politics and that technology has enabled this anger to coalesce and organize and that new voices from the blogosphere are informing the electorate and driving people to engage. This is typical - it is posts like that from a well-respected and widely read blog, multiplied by the thousands, that is driving the fundraising prowess of these candidates that have the MSM scratching their heads. But they won't be scratching their heads much longer. MSM biggies are on the phones with their political party establishment friends asking how this could happen, and the establishment has to let them in on the secret - blogs and alternative media have replaced them, it's "open-field" politics as Michael Barone has labelled it, and how the game is played is changing before their very eyes. Sawyer's and Karl's bewildered curiosity is actually touching to behold, it is exactly what I get from my nine year old when she discovers something eminently new and odd.

UPDATE: More MSM outing of its own bewilderment and irrelevancy live on TV!