"Gold Standard" Fnord

I liked this video on MSN. The title is the interesting bit. "Tom Brokaw says that Walter Cronkite was the 'gold standard' of journalism."

I see that surprisingly often. "X was the gold standard of Y" means "X was really good at Y".

Usually, the mainstream media propaganda engine is good at removing references to past evils. It seems that "The gold standard was good!" is a memory that still lingers.

This usage of "gold standard" is a good fnord. Of course, no mainstream media comedian ever explicitly says "The USA has a corrupt monetary system!" It's still interesting to see cracks of the truth show occasionally.