If all American news consumers are as dumb as CBS viewers are, there is no hope...

One would think that after the National Guard document scandal with Dan Rather, CBS News would at least attempt to start covering world events in a more even-handed manner, if for no other reason than to try to gain some credibility for their network when it comes to serious news. Now they've hired Katie Couric to read the news and from her listening tour she has "learned" the following...

I borrowed this from Mary Katherine Ham over at Townhall.com...

Viewers told her they want more perspective and "a better understanding of the ramifications of the news," she says. "I got the distinct sense they want us to go a little bit deeper" with historical background and "how is this relevant to their lives.

More perspective? Relevancy to their lives? Freighteningly, this puts Katie in the direct position of telling Americans exactly how they should feel about the story she just gave them. CBS undoubtedly will be not only reporting the news, they'll be advising the dumbed-down, public school graduates who will be watching how to feeeeel about it as well. The Perky One continued...

(And) we heard from many people the news is just too depressing. Obviously, we can't sugar-coat what's going on, but there are cases where we can be more solution-oriented."

Some Americans are just a bunch of sheep, they want to be led, to be taken care of. They don't want to think about what they've heard and come to their own conclusions, they want to be told what is the correct way to think about a particular story.

Have self-reliant Americans become so soft and devoid of self-confidence that we would abdicate to a news organization the responsibility of giving to us the solutions to our problems? How pitifully hopeless, and depressing it will be for those Americans who will sit on the edges of their couches every night, clutching pillows and listening breathlessly to Katie's doom and gloom stories about war in the middle east, the environment, the economy, and the evil Bush administration...and then eagerly look to her for the solutions.

What a bleak, pathetic picture Katie paints of the American news watcher. Then there was this puzzler of a statement...

Some thought the media portrayed a "polarizing of the country that they don't see," thought TV news "abdicated its role, really talking about facts and information rather than points of view," and want "more thinking, less spewing."

Anybody who doesn't see a polarization of the country has been living under a rock and isn't qualified to even make a statement about the political environment in America. Seriously, do these people to whom Katie refers actually want more points of view rather than facts and information? Facts and information is the news! Idiots!

It sounds like Katie's viewers want more thinking, just not done by them. Katie's viewers want her to do the thinking for them and then advise them on the conclusions they should have. I realize Katie's influence is the result of an embarassing cult of personality on the part of her fans, not because she's a stellar journalist, but that people obviously want to be led by the nose, rather than think and decide for themselves, has larger implications for the country.

Ceding responsibility for analytical thought to others and desiring softened, regurgitated, more pleasant versions of information portend a sad decline for American society...a decline leading to intellectual weakness, the deterioration of individualism, the inability to draw conclusions or make hard decisions, and the unwillingness to take actions because of dwindling self confidence.

Make no mistake...this is exactly how liberals want the population to be. An intellectually dependent population is an easily controlled population.