The Facts are Biased

When things don’t go well for right-wing extremists, they whine about the supposedly liberal media. By chance, I caught Glenn Beck gesticulating wildly on CNN about the DOJ scandal. It’s not important, he sniveled. With all the HUGE problems we have (as he looks up, waving his arms), why is this non-issue getting any attention? (I ask: What huge problems? If the rule of Bush and Cheney is so swell, we can’t really have such problems, right?) Then the kicker: the problem is, of course, that the media is OVERWHELMINGLY liberal!!

That this ass-clown has his own show is the final refutation of any claim to journalistic legitimacy on the part of CNN. But leaving that aside, it’s painfully evident that the ranks of wingnut punditry have unlimited contempt for the American people. In their eyes, the citizenry is so stupid that they couldn’t possibly care about anything more complicated than a 4-second soundbite. And if polls say that they do (a Gallup poll showed people favoring subpoenas of White House aides by a 3-1 margin), it couldn’t be because people actually think independently—it’s the liberal media that causes them to think that way.

The view of Americans held by Beck and the rest of the talk-radio bed-wetters is that they have no opinions that can be taken seriously unless those opinions have been hatched and inculcated by either them or the “liberal” media. They pretend to value “ordinary” Americans, the real citizens from the heartland, blah blah blah--what Nixon used to call “the silent majority.” But the personal interest news stories they choose to highlight are always about some nasty horrifying crime, designed to make us look down at other people with disgust. They exploit the very worst tendencies in human nature, and glory in them. That people could actually care about the corruption of the Justice Dept., that the majority of Americans have rejected Bush and his policies for years and by big margins, is inconceivable to them. The “huge” problems we have are always attributable to somebody else—to liberal female gay flag-burners, not to the conservative Republicans who are actually in power, not to the wingnuts themselves, who can never be wrong and never make mistakes. When all else fails, blame the media, even though the media has been kissing their asses for two decades, even though nutjobs like Pat Buchanan, Beck, and the Fox Zoo have regular high-paying gigs in the media. Because the important thing to remember if you’re a conservative is, be a baby. Never grow up. And don’t ever admit responsibility for ANYTHING. For you know, as Stephen Colbert says, the facts are biased.