The Anchoress links to an essay by CBS's Dick Meyer titled "Land Of The Fake" and adds:

Why are we so willing to endure fakery that has become so commonplace it is predictable? Why do we reward politicians for it? (Did anyone really believe Pelosi when she said “Impeachment is off the table?” Then why do so many pretend to?) Why do we embrace it within ourselves, body and soul? What is the root cause of our willingness to surround ourselves with it? Some will say “it began with the first cult which became the first religion - that fakery doomed us to this day.” Others might suggest that the “damn the truth, print this headline” Pravda mindset that has impacted the whole world in one way or another has set the stage for our current acquiescence into the land of make-believe and spin. Some, of course, will blame the Clintons. Everyone else will blame Bush, who, standing atop a pile of rubble or holding the shield of a fallen cop before a joint session of congress - may have (along with Rudy Giuliani) managed the last authentic moments in our political memory.

A year and a half ago, I explored very similar territory in a piece for The New Partisan titled "M For Fake", inspired by a review DVD of Orson Welles' last movie, F For Fake. In the late 1930s, Welles was a man who began his ascension to superstardom when he gave America the first fake radio news broadcast that many believed to be accurate. Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, even before Meyer's former CBS colleagues descent into their own fakery, Blogospheric debunking of the mainstream media's excesses has become a 24 hour activity.

Television news rooms in particular love fakes: I noticed last week while clicking channels in my South Jersey hotel room that CNN trotted out Al Sharpton to comment on Michael Richards' on-stage meltdown--despite the fact that Sharpton is staggeringly damaged goods himself on the issue of racial taunting. The legacy media had a complete case of amnesia when John Kerry ran for the White House of his early '70s Winter Soldier radical chic past. Cindy Sheehan's lie that President Bush never met with her after her son was killed was ignored by virtually all journalists once she began camping out in Crawford in August of 2005, because it would damage her claim to Absolute Moral Authority, to borrow Maureen Dowd's now infamous phrase. And, as The Anchoress herself notes, journalists tossed Bill Clinton's attacks on Saddam Hussein (and their own as well) right down the Memory Hole even before Saddam was captured hiding in a hole of his own.

Perhaps the ultimate example of media fakery leading to media accolades is Michael Moore. Moore's chicanery in the editing room--widely documented at the start of his career--is completely ignored by today's left. As Mark Steyn reminds us in the introduction to his reprint of his 2002 review of Bowling For Columbine, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Moore along with Oliver Stone, were dubbed "well-known cranks, regarded with considerable distaste even on the Left" by Slate's Jacob Weisberg.

Less than three years later, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) told The New York Times "There might be half the Democratic Senate here,'' at the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11. Shortly thereafter, Moore was sitting next to Jimmy Carter in Carter's luxury box at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. (And incidentally, Stone's reputation--at least amongst the left in Hollywood boardrooms--was itself sufficiently revived a year later: Paramount's brass pegged him to helm World Trade Center and its $63 million production budget).

I don't think he knowingly intended to do so, but seven decades ago, Welles set a pattern for obtaining media stardom: pull a stunt so outrageous in its fakery that it captures the media's attention--and then do everything you can to stay in the media's eye. Because they'll forget (or ignore) how you got yourself onto the map long before the general public does.