A couple of recent incidents have driven home the point that our journalistic class has become so unfamiliar with actual physical labor, or any form of real work that they simply can no longer even recognize common tools.
During the recent riots in Ferguson, MO a reporter breathlessly described finding what he thought were rubber bullets. He sent out a picture of what he found which were obviously just common foam earplugs. Similarly we have been treated to reports of the break-in at the White House that include the fact that the intruder had a 3.5″ foldable knife on his person. This is what most people would call a pocket knife. That is just something I always assumed everyone would carry, but apparently journalists gnaw their way through things that more advanced people use a knife to cut. I guess it helps keep their tiny, rat-like teeth shiny. Just don’t tell them about cigarette lighters or we will get regaled with tales of someone having a butane fueled bomb in his pocket.
As egregious as it is, I believe their ignorance in both of these cases to be genuine. The people who become reporters simply do not have any life experience and they live in such bubbles that they have difficulty understanding things outside of their normal, everyday experience. But other times their ignorance is willful, as in their insistence on calling every gun they find a semi-automatic as if that is somehow an odd and scary thing.
In either case, I guess it is hard to recognize a tool when you make your living being one.
Hat tip to Instapundit