It's election season. (Did you know that?) And what I hate most about it is how certain candidates throw around terms like "liberal elite media" and "lamestream media," and insist that journalists are full of lies and hate America and so on. How do we know this is what the candidates think? Because they come and tell us this via phone call, personal visit and email, of course. They would not be so hypocritical as to actually use the media to disseminate their anti-media rhetoric.

But maybe I'm just sensitive, as a member of the elite media myself. I wanted to see how my colleagues really feel about their role as members of the lameslime bleatleat schmedia. I hope you find the following survey enlightening: These are actual responses provided to me by actual writers from Chicago magazine, the New Yorker, Jezebel.com and, yes, even Fox News.
 

This week, my editor told me that my assignment was to destroy the good name and reputation of  ______.

• Weird Al Yankovic (it's a slow week)
• Ronald Reagan
• Anyone challenging the sanctity of Mitt Romney
• Michele Bachmann's sons' future boyfriends
  
   

I receive my orders directly from ______ in the Obama administration.

• the Secretary of Agriculture
• the painting of Jimmy Carter that hangs in the White House
• Michelle, obviously
• the sentient tip of Rahm Emanuel's severed finger

The biggest secret about Barack Hussein Obama that we aren't telling you in order to protect him is that he _____.

• is a perfectly reasonable fellow. (If we have you believing he's an evil socialist, you'll dream up all sorts of crazy stuff and not have time to form reasonable, cogent arguments against his policies which would prevent him from getting a second term.)
• is just who he seems to be: a hard-working man with ideas and flaws. If people found that out, they might judge him fairly, which might mean denying him re-election. It would be close. But in a world of moronically inflated rhetoric, it's just as easy to deny responsibility as it is to lob accusations
• is terrible at basketball. No, really-- that's why you never see him playing on camera
• is a super-advanced drone piloted by Paul Wellstone and Ron Brown, both of whom received extensive plastic surgery and are currently living in California as Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi

The malicious lie I am currently working on spreading is that ______.

• Weird Al is responsible for Newt Gingrich's failed marriage(s)
• Sean Hannity is in fact a Maoist robot plant. His specialties are "tennis and family." That's what the Maoists wanted
• Singing Senators are reuniting if Ashcroft can work out his schedule
• Newt Gingrich's space colony will be for nudists

The reason I am spreading it is to distract the public from the truth that _____.

• Weird Al is a perfectly reasonable fellow
• Michelle Obama has quietly bought up stock in orange juice and lettuce distilleries. Is lettuce distilled? It must be. It tastes like it
• Ron Paul is a viable candidate
• there really is a gay agenda, and item one is socialized Vajazzaling

My favorite "gotcha" tactic is ______.

• running up behind someone and yelling "gotcha!"
• walking up to an unsuspecting Republican senator, snap his or her suspenders and then accuse him or her of hating the poor
• clipping the mic of anyone making a cogent point challenging my anchor's
  made-up feminist jargon

When I hear my colleagues and myself referred to as the "elite media," I feel annoyed, because the technical name for what we are is the ______ media.

• All-powerful Creative Omniscient Reactive News (ACORN) media. (That brand kinda got tarnished.)
• vanishing
• bridge and tunnel
• Jewish

The thing I hate most about ordinary hardworking Americans is how they _____.

• drink crappy beer
• care
• just don't appreciate how much we know and can teach them about how to vote
• stop black transgender lesbians from taking all their guns

I am currently high on the following narcotics: _____.

• booze and the new Katy Perry album
• organic meth (it's shark's bile cooked with large amounts of rosemary)
• catnip and caffeine
• marijuana, but I balance it with a steady nose diet of daily cocaine

I currently make ____ million dollars a year as a journalist.

• a ka-
• Romney
• 1 (as issued by the Confederate States of America)
• 2

What I love most about my job is _____.

• the people. And the booze
• being able to tell the truth in anonymous surveys like this and pass it off as humor
• the power, obviously
• all the virgins I get to deflower