We now consider sports part of the entertainment industry and a big business, so we do not begrudge athletes their exorbitant salaries even if it means paying $75 for a ticket to a baseball game and shelling out $100/month for sports cable channels. "Let them get what the market allows," goes the argument.

Writers don't get that same consideration because this country sees physicality as rarer than intellect and creativity. People read and write every day. We write notes to teachers, fill out complaint forms, post to blogs, read blogs, magazines, books.

Because we do a bit of it, a lot of people believe writing is easy. Writing a note is easy. Writing well is difficult.

It is attention, emotion and time consuming work. It is good work, sometimes fulfilling work, work that doesn't involve physical labor, but it's hard work. The difference between writing and writing well is the difference between first aid and medicine. It is the difference between me taking cello lessons and Yo Yo Ma practicing. It is the difference between Matt Drudge and Edward.R. Murrow.

No one imagines becoming an architect, a steel worker or a contractor without training and for compensation. The structure of a plot or a character depends upon the skill of a writer or writers. Writing is an occupation that requires particular, relatively rare skills.

Somehow we've been coerced into believing that market value represents our choices rather than our acceptance of what we've been offered. Market value is not social value or moral value. Market value doesn't indicate anything more than how the topmost tier distributes attention.

It's easy to target the writers of popular shows as being greedy because people imagine they make enough to live well in Manhattan or LA. In fact, most writers write live on less than teachers' wages (and we know how little that is) and write in hope of striking it big just once doing what they love. Isn't this what most of us want? To be conpensated well for doing something we enjoy rather than spending 75% of our lives doing something we hate so our boss can make a bonus equal to our entire year's salary?

The hosts of popular shows, like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, do a make good money, but not on the scale of executives who control the production of those shows. Those executives are compensated well beyond the wildest dreams of Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant or Derek Jeter or any of us. Writers, the people who make the product the rest of the the entertaiment industry relies upon for generating income, are at the bottom of the pay scale and do not share in the revenue made off their work.

Workers, like writers, are not an afterthought to economic process. They are the foundation of all economies and should be treated as the vital elements they are.

Once the media decided the narrative of the Democratic Party campaigns was race versus gender, Edwards was reduced to just another rich, white guy. The media created the story line, then sandbagged Edwards because he didn't fit in it

Last weekend, my sister and I had a party for people to talk about politics. Everyone wanted to learn about how the ideas of each candidate were supposed to come to fruition. We may want to get out of Iraq, but how can we leave without making matters worse or leaving lots of suffering people? What changes in taxation will fund universal health care? How long will it take to make that happen and who will help? Who will you consider for all those vital staff positions at FEMA, the EPA, the Supreme Court? Will anyone come out and say waterboarding is torture and torture doesn't increase our safety but diminishes our country?

Despite Edwards' attempts to steer the "debates" and the story lines toward issues, pundits and reporters hyped silly stuff and didn't fact check, investigate or ask pointed questions about plans. The media may thrive on discord and love a well-constructed narrative regardless of genuineness or accuracy, but voters prefer conversation.

We don’t live in sound bites. We plan, we consider and we discuss what to do. Our lives progress the way conversations move, mostly meandering in a general direction with moments of intense focus plus loads of questions, opinions and emotion. Our lives are built of details like budgeting, cleaning up after ourselves and preparing for the future.

Besides, it's the function of the so-called Fourth Estate to explain difficult processes, to challenge power and those seeking it. Edwards tried to steer the public discussion toward real issues, but he didn't fit our picture of what change looks like. I'm afraid we've settled for the image, not substance.

This is an apology?

Shuster puts the Clinton family at fault for complaining about unfair coverage. Would Shuster blame the McCain family for complaining about media covering the false issue of extramarital affairs and little black bastard babies? The media floats lies while it gives itself credit for being straightforward - as if insinuating a female candidate is involved in prostitution is anything but insulting, then gets upset when they're called on it.

In a show of shallowness, Shuster then says the public is at fault for paying attention to language not issues. Journalism not only uses but is about language. It is impossible to separate issues from the way they are presented. It as if Shuster thinks that diagnosing illness is separate from medicine.

Schuster has learned nothing. Instead, he's entrenched in ego. His credibility is shot. Shuster shot himself in the foot as he was putting it into his mouth.