This sudden collapse of the media giants is part of a culture-wide trend. As Victor Davis Hanson noted recently, a vast chasm of sense has been opened between teachers and taught, preachers and preached-at, people who make the films and people who see them, people who write books and people who read them, those who produce news and those who consume it. This calls into question a guiding belief of the culture: that power resides in the mouth of the bullhorn, if not in the barrels of guns. It is possible that people are not, after all, very malleable. It is possible that in the past, when "opinion leaders" tracked more closely with public opinion, that they were reflecting the public's ideas, and not leading it.

I agree completely. Thanks to the war in Iraq, all the idiots who think they know better then you have just gotten a royal kick in the ass from reality. Read the whole thing.