[If you’d like to hear the audio snippets I refer to here, listen to the post as a podcast.]

Two or three years ago, you could read a lot of anxious harrumphing in news magazines, newspapers and news shows about the looming threat of the blogs, where people spoke freely and widely, reporting information without standards of diligence or care. The bloggers, it was said, would just ruin everything to do with the news business.

Have you noticed that the harrumphing has stopped? Why? Because the corporations behind the harrumphers are no longer threatened by the Internet and its ability to erode traditional media’s market share, which is really what all the harrumphing of journalists was about (come on, budding etymologists, can you guess where the word “journalist” came from?). No, they’ve moved on from tearing their hair and beating their chests, moved on to an attempt to capture market share in the new market. And capture it they have. Politico.com? Owned by the Capitol News Limited Liability Corporation. The Hotline? A wholly owned subsidiary of the Atlantic Media corporation. The Fix? A Washington Post subsidiary. Huffington Post? An corporation with a Chief Revenue Officer, a Vice President for Sales and an Account Executive. Even DailyKos is a limited liability corporation that rakes in the cash from Chevron advertisements and dismisses people who have a problem with that as “purity trolls”. The corporate-owned, corporate-controlled political sites on the internet are now dominant. So of course they aren’t complaining about the evil, evil Internet any more.

Here’s the kicker: for all the complaining and whining from corporate media a few years ago about the threat of hideous political news from the Internet, the political analysis offered up by corporate news media isn’t necessarily any good. Let’s take the example of Slate, a website owned by the Washington Post Newsweek Interactive corporation. Slate was one of the first corporate efforts to seize the niche for political talk on the internet. For about eight months now, I’ve been listening to the Slate Political Gabfest, featuring John Dickerson, Emily Bazelon, and David Plotz talking about politics on a weekly basis. I find the podcast to be entertaining, mostly because the people who are talking are such scamps on the air. They giggle, guffaw, tease each other, and get campy. But the substantive politics of it drifts into the Inane Zone pretty frequently.

Take the discussion of presidential debates that the discussants haven’t actually seen, a practice that went on through the fall of last year. Take November 30’s Gabfest:

John Dickerson: On the Republican side there was a YouTube debate, and on the Democratic side there’s just been more tumult and excitement in Iowa, where polls show a back-and-forth between Obama and Clinton and Obama and Clinton with John Edwards still sort of clinging on a little bit. Did either of you watch the debate?

David Plotz: No.

Emily Bazelon: Would you stop saying that? I mean, I even went down to watch it last night because I wanted to be able say “yes” to that question, but it was over by the time I made it.

Dickerson: You couldn’t… it was, you know, it was these YouTube questions, which topics not discussed include Iran, health care, education, the energy problems of our country, and so huge chunks of this election not discussed. There was talk of guns and abortion and a lot of sort of hot button issues.

Bazelon: I just want to make it clear that you watched the whole debate and listened to it, to all our listeners who think that none of us know what we’re talking about. At least one of us does.

Plotz: I read a huge amount about the debate.

Bazelon: Yeah, I read about it too.

Dickerson: So what struck you in what you read about it? Uh, because that’s how most people will intersect with this event, because very few people are like me and actually watched it. I mean, not very few, but, you know. So what came to you through the papers that you apparently didn’t actually read?

In the latest Gabfest, after Emily Bazelon and David Plotz did actually watch the debate, what was their response?

John Dickerson: David you watched the debate. Emily, you watched the debate as well. What was your reaction, David?

David Plotz: Uh…

Dickerson: We’re talking about the Democratic debate.

Plotz: Right, the Democratic debate. It was pretty boring. I just, I wasn’t gripped by it. Mostly I was gripped by the kind of Academy Award aspect of it where they kept showing the cutaways of sort-of second rate Hollywood celebrities.

Bazelon: And some first rate ones too.

Plotz: Really? Maybe I was…

Dickerson: I missed the first rate ones, yeah.

Plotz: What first rate ones?

Bazelon: Rob Reiner was in the audience, you know?

Plotz: That is total second rate. Oh my God.

Dickerson: I feel that he’s kind of a saggy sack.

Bazelon: Seinfeld actors? You guys have really high standards.

Dickerson: Jason Alexander in there, yeah.

Plotz: Yeah, that’s second rate. That’s like TV glamour.

Bazelon: You didn’t see Mel Gibson there.

Dickerson: To be fair, Britney couldn’t be there because she had 12 police cars and a helicopter taking her to a psychiatric ward.

Bazelon: Otherwise, I’m sure she would have been there.

Plotz: No, but, OK, in all seriousness, because it’s like grave when we get here in Washington, it was really, really not interesting. I mean, I thought Hillary substantively was much stronger than he was. He was fine, and it wasn’t interesting, so I didn’t really pay much attention.

Dickerson: Emily, your reaction?

Bazelon: I thought he missed a couple of moments where he could have been just more jovial and smiley. And she was sort of trying. They had a couple of moments where they were almost doing a little schtick. Like that question about the Obama-Clinton Clinton-Obama ticket went off pretty well. But there were a few other moments where…

Plotz: Although that laugh. She did laugh. And that was horrifying. That was horrifying! Did you guys catch that? I just, I had felt my back shiver, and…

Bazelon: I don’t find that laugh horrifying. You shivered?

Plotz: I shivered when I heard that laugh.

Plotz and Dickerson went on to audibly yawn and talk about checking their Blackberries and reading leaflets when Bazelon later tried to bring up the FISA Amendments Act in even a cursory fashion.

I have nothing against vapid political entertainment on the internet. I am the man of the Ron Paul Vote Fraud Fart Joke Video, after all. Let’s just not pretend that having corporations dominate the field is going to bring any more depth or seriousness to politics on the internet. Corporations can produce just as much vapidness as unattached individuals, and individual people on the internet often take the time to do much more serious work on a subject than the corporate media will ever bother themselves with.