Not only is the half-billion dollar boondoggle known as the Newseum closing permanently in January, the whole idea of a monument to the discredited and disgusting institution of modern-day journalism has been so rejected by the public, this boondoggle cannot even find another home for its stupid exhibits.
What’s striking is that back in 2000, when the first $100 million was plopped down to turn the Newseum into something that rivaled the Smithsonian in the heart of downtown Washington, DC, at least 50 percent of the public already had zero respect for the media.
Once the doors opened in 2008, much of this disrespect had turned to outright hostility, especially after eight years of the media’s hideously biased coverage of President George W. Bush. Good grief, did everyone forget that in 2004, the very cornerstone of capital “J” journalism, 60 Minutes, attempted to rig the 2004 presidential election against Bush using Dan Rather’s forged documents?
But no matter how much the media is despised by We the People, their self-regard remains bottomless, and so, in 2008, the Newseum actually believed 1,000,000 Americans per year would plunk down $25 per person to spend the day in the media’s monument to themselves.
And then, to the surprise of no one, the media were wrong yet again. Only about 800,000 people showed up, and the Pharaoh’s Pyramid to Fake News would go on to suffer a deserved decade of crippling financial losses.
So now the Newseum is not only closing, it is dead, doornail dead. Since this inevitability became inevitable, the hope had been to find another location, a smaller location like the original one that opened in 1997 — or at least another museum that would be interested in displaying the exhibits.
Nope.
The public rejection is complete.
The whole thing will be dead and buried on January 1, and good riddance to all this rubbish.
My God, I’d rather spend money to visit a Mafia Museum. At least the mafia never pretended to be something it wasn’t. As far as which institution has done more damage to the country — the mafia or the media… I’m thinking, I’m thinking.
On top of the Newseum coming down, thousands of media jobs were lost this year, and there’s no question that something else permanently lost was whatever residual credibility the media might have had left with the inspector general report that proved the media spent years knowingly lying to us about President Trump colluding with Russia.
You couldn’t pay most Americans to visit this failed and corrupt institution’s mammoth shrine to itself.
The only good the Newseum ever did was the pleasure millions of Americans felt as they watched it fail.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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