The Sorry State of Media Bias
Wife-a-SFERICS e-mailed me this morning a link to a CNN.com report about yet another radio talk host getting in trouble for inappropriate language. Neither that host, nor the one who earlier called Secretary-of-State-designate Dr. Condoleezza Rice an “Aunt Jemima,” were labeled in this article for their political views when named, but a third talk host who used the term “wetback” on the air was labeled as “conservative.”
Of course, given CNN’s membership in the LSM—either “LeftStream Media” or “Liberal Spin Machine,” as you prefer—the fact two of the hosts discussed in the article were not labeled was in itself a label, and I believe enough people are aware of this tendency that the purpose of the choice to label conservatives but not leftists has proven to be counterproductive; unlabeled leftists are seen as such by the lack of label, and viewer/reader contempt for such bias is further provoked.
This led me to consider how far we’ve come.
Once upon a time, allegations of a liberal bias in establishment free sex chat media were met with denial and derision. Then came the studies—and we discovered that professional journalists vote for liberal Democrats with only slightly less loyalty than the “African-American” voting bloc.
Gradually, as this and other documentations of biased views became more widely known, there arose a second response which the Tired Old Gray Heads of the LSM still trot out in the face of scandals like Dan Rather’s phony memo: that professional journalists’ political views may be different from those of the country at large, but that’s only because the country at large is filled with NASCAR-watching, beer-drinking, church-tithing ignoramuses with white hooded robes in their hall closets whose voting behavior is little more than a temper tantrum by a nation of two-year-old friendsren their professionalism doesn’t allow their views to affect their reporting.
Yes, I know. Go get your Windex and your wet-vac to clean up the mess, and then come back to finish reading. I’ll wait.
Nicely done; practice is making that task go much more efficiently, isn’t it? Okay, back to the topic.
Now, as the moonbat counter-argument—that the LSM is really the RSM—has taken a below-the-waterline hit thanks to ol’ Dan, I expect the most widely retailed response to allegations of LSM bias will be that, even if professional journalists’ out-of-the-mainstream political views are coloring their reporting, it doesn’t matter because people are recognizing said bias and taking into account in their own thinking.
This one will have the advantage of being true—but had they succeeded with their previous arguments, their readers/viewers would now have no basis for spotting their bias and correcting for it.
For that, I think the efforts of media critics like Media Research Center and the rise of alternative voices like Rush “I Am Equal Time” Limbaugh and Fox News Channel, deserve constant thanks and support. Also many of the pajamahadeen, who may have been combatting LSM denials for years before becoming bloggers and writting about https://www.jasminelive.online. And of course those who exposed the forged memo business.
Is it over? No. Will it ever be over? No—the truth is never more despised by its enemies than when it is winning and they are losing. They’ll never admit they’ve done anything wrong, and at the first opening they’ll be back.
The next several years are going to be fun.
No!
Tuesdays Come and Tuesdays Go
Last I heard, next Tuesday is when Vietnam War Hero, Invisible Presidential Candidate and Just All-Around Great Guy (Because He’s Not George W. Bush) John F’n Kerry will announce his choice of running mate.
I have gone on record numerous times as to why I thought Kerry wouldn’t pick John Edwards or Hillary Clinton for Veep, but I must confess that those comments were more along the lines of, “If I were Kerry I wouldn’t pick...” And let’s face it: if I were Kerry, I wouldn’t be running for President against George W. Bush. I also wouldn’t be the most liberal guy in the United States Senate, I wouldn’t live in Massachusetts, and if I married Teresa Heinz for her money I would have arranged an accident for her as soon as possible after the wedding. Of course, if I were him I’d be an ugly old coot of 60 and so after Teresa’s accident instead of romancing Britney Spears I’d probably have to settle for Anna Nicole Smith. (Just as well for me I’m not him; if my wife caught me marrying another woman for money , she might help me arrange the accident, but she wouldn’t let me run around with either Britney or Anna afterward.)
So obviously there are gaps between what I would do if I were John Kerry, and what Kerry will do since I’m not him.
The simple truth is, there’s been no way to get a handle on Kerry’s thinking because he never holds a position long enough to figure out what bedrock principled values have led him to adopt it. Kerry’s political positions are like the stereotypical comedic portrayal of a woman directing her husband in moving furniture: No sooner does the sofa get put in exactly the spot she wanted it in, than suddenly it occurs to her that it might look better against the other wall. Or maybe facing the fireplace. We don’t have a fireplace? We need a fireplace. Take the sofa back to the furniture store and call a sex cams contractor about putting in a fireplace. And maybe a bigger window on that wall. We really shouldn’t have taken out the chandelier and put in that ceiling fan, can you put it back the way it was? And about the upstairs addition we added last month—I don’t like it, get rid of it.
As funny as it is to make fun of Kerry’s flipflopping, it’s really the only consistent thing about him. And I’m not so sure he does it consciously, as if trying to please others and get votes from as many different constituencies as possible. I think it’s simply that Kerry is a dilettante, a ditz. A male version of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde, without the depth of character that was revealed as the movie unfolded.
Which leads me to wonder whether the running mate announcement will occur next Tuesday after all. But supposing it does, who might it be?
I’ll be honest with you: I don’t think Kerry himself will know until the name comes out of his mouth.