Earlier today, MSNBC's Pat Buchanan and Andrea Mitchell had an exchange that nicely illustrates much of the media's fundamental misunderstanding of what the word “authentic” means:

BUCHANAN: When I went into New Hampshire, I went down to a basement store, and they said “Get rid of the Florsheim shoes and the blue suits and the red ties. We're gonna go get you what we call North Country Clothes: brand-new sweaters that look very old and all that stuff.” You saw me up there, Andrea.

MITCHELL: I know, you were authentic, Pat.

Old sweaters are not more “authentic” than Florsheim shoes and blue suits. Nor are they less “authentic.” They're both just clothes. Yet Andrea Mitchell thinks that Pat Buchanan wandering into a New Hampshire store and, on the advise of some unspecified “they,” discarding his typical outfit in favor of new sweaters that are designed to look old was a mark of authenticity.

(It goes without saying that if Al Gore told precisely the same story Buchanan told, he would not be praised as having been “authentic.”)

And just a few minutes ago, Politico's Andy Barr was on MSNBC, talking about the AP fact-checking Sarah Palin's new book:

This fight with the AP she's got going on is kind of funny ... It seems like they really took that slam from her personally, and in that fact-check they're really maliciously going after her, kind of point by point.

“Maliciously”? This is the state of modern political journalism: When a news organization fact-checks false claims by prominent Republicans, a reporter calls it “malicious.”

Me? I'd call it “journalism.”