AFF's Doublethink

mojo — August 3, 2009 at 2:57 pm

The only thing missing is the sense of humor and a little proportion.

Don’t like it? Tough. Real tough.

JB — August 3, 2009 at 3:53 pm

Leftists are like their hero Stalin: no sense of humor.

Though I don’t know about off-point.

Pair the image with this famous chart:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/

Al Queda couldn’t do this much damage in their wildest dreams. I don’t know what others have gotten out of his first 6 months, but to me he sure comes across as a madman bent on destroying America.

Quartermaster — August 3, 2009 at 6:37 pm

Poor babies. Just can’t what they dish out.

JB — August 3, 2009 at 7:20 pm

What part of “socialism” don’t they understand?

Ah, they don’t WANT TO understand. Gotcha.

Jack Smith — August 3, 2009 at 10:10 pm

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMR_enUS333US333&um=1&sa=1&q=blackface&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g8

deadpan227 — August 3, 2009 at 10:15 pm

Hope, Change, but still no sense of humor, eh?

It’s not the double standard that’s funny as much as the failure to get the joke in the first place.

Sonny Bunch — August 3, 2009 at 10:30 pm

Don’t be obtuse, Jack. As I wrote, I don’t think the comparison between Obama and the Joker makes much sense. Indeed, I think it makes exactly as much sense as comparing Bush to the Joker. But to call it racist because he’s wearing the same makeup as Heath Ledger is weaksauce. This is just as racist as the asinine Vanity Fair portrait, which is to say, not at all.

Dave C — August 3, 2009 at 10:52 pm

Try this one Jack Smith.

It suits you better.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMR_enUS333US333&um=1&sa=1&q=blackface+ted+danson&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0

Someone else pointed this out to me..

Notice how Obama-Joker is off center to the left? Nice. Subtle.

Mikeybackwards — August 3, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Perhaps a more intellectually honest comparison would be to find what conservative bloggers were saying about the Bush as Joker poster and compare that to the LAWEEKLY piece. Or compare what conservative commenters have said about each poster. But don’t let anything like the fact that hyperbole and polemic are endemic on both sides of the political divide get in the way of your high drudgeon.

Jim Treacher — August 4, 2009 at 12:43 am

Why so spurious?

AK — August 4, 2009 at 1:08 am

Mikeybackwards:

How would that be a more intellectually honest comparison?

dmac — August 4, 2009 at 1:31 am

Mikeybackwards, your suggested exercise is spot on. Problem is, I can’t find any contemporary commentary on the Bush rendering from conservatives in google results. Most references are from lefties who comment that Bush was too dumb to be the Joker. I even did a search of National Review Online archives (NRO is how I navigated to this page) and couldn’t find any reference to the existence of the Bush/Joker at that time, much less objections to it.

Comrade-ski — August 4, 2009 at 2:54 am

All true. Of course it’s racist and fascist. I’m polishing my jack boots now, as I savor our socialist victory in November. Open the camps. Then we will not be besmirched by this capitalist roader fascio-racist bilge. Uncle Ho, where are you now, a lonely nation turns its eyes to you.

Jack Bauer — August 4, 2009 at 4:33 am

Actually Sonny

the Obama Joker from the 2008 movie is TOTALLY on point given Obama’s chaotic behavior via the Alinsky playbook.

The Dark Knight/2008

The Joker: Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos.

StewartIII — August 4, 2009 at 5:36 am

Obama Joker Poster Stirs Outrage, Bush Joker Poster Not So Much
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/08/03/obama-joker-poster-starts-outrage-bush-joker-poster-not-so-much

LA Weekly wets itself over Obama/Joker poster: “The only thing missing is a noose”
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/03/la-weekly-wets-itself-over-obamajoker-poster-the-only-thing-missing-is-a-noose/

heinricho — August 4, 2009 at 6:38 am

http://www.newsweek.com/id/183663
why is everyone pooping themselves over Bammy being called a socialist? Surely the media can put on their kneepads and spin in a positive light somehow, or you know… lie

Sonny Bunch — August 4, 2009 at 8:34 am

Our spam filters are working overtime, so please excuse a delay in getting comments approved.

Jack Bauer: The problem with the comparison is that socialism is the opposite of anarchy. Obama may be upsetting the established order (and even that, I think, is a little bit of a stretch), but he’s not trying to introduce anarchy. He’s trying to introduce a state where the government is heavily involved with every key decision one makes in life. That’s diametrically opposed to an anarchic state of affairs.

Sonny Bunch — August 4, 2009 at 8:35 am

Mikeybackwards: I remember some conservatives being annoyed by the Bush caricature; I remember no conservatives comparing it to a hate crime or a race-related murder. I also don’t remember any conservative politicians calling for investigations into where the art came from. That’s the difference here.

shevrae — August 4, 2009 at 9:26 am

What I really find fascinating is that no matter what you say or do, someone can pull out an example of why it’s racist. Like during the election, people kept saying Obama was a Socialist and then some article or blog came out with – “we all know Socialist is code-word for black.” Huh? And we’re supposed to take these people seriously?

Jack Bauer — August 4, 2009 at 12:21 pm

“The problem with the comparison is that socialism is the opposite of anarchy. Obama may be upsetting the established order (and even that, I think, is a little bit of a stretch), but he’s not trying to introduce anarchy. He’s trying to introduce a state where the government is heavily involved with every key decision one makes in life. That’s diametrically opposed to an anarchic state of affairs”

Come on Sonny. Surely you jest my little Joker. This is basic leftoid agit-prop here. Didn’t the commie vanguard try to recruit you in college to lead the revolution?

Before the commies can “build” socialism/Marxism/or any loony lefty “ism”, THEY THINK you have to create a chaotic state so that the folks will more meekly accept government control.

As a good little Marxist agitator who learned at the two left feet of Saul Alinsky, Obama believes this with all his tiny cold heart:

But don’t take my word, take Alinsky’s. From a 1992 Playboy interview. Hey, I get it for the porn

“They’re the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

The despair is there; now it’s up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change.”

It’s easy when you have the decoder ring.

LeeAnn — August 4, 2009 at 12:33 pm

I think Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, and anyone else who played the part would be appalled at the desecration of the Joker’s good name by dragging his image into politics.

Sonny Bunch — August 4, 2009 at 12:58 pm

Jack Bauer: I guess I missed the part where the Joker declares his intent to provide the masses with free health care and free car upgrades in the name of equality…

Jack Bauer — August 4, 2009 at 1:22 pm

Sonny. Now you’re just being tedious and literal.

F- for desultory effort.

Sonny Bunch — August 4, 2009 at 1:26 pm

That’s fair. I have been annoyingly literal as of late.

31Bravo — August 4, 2009 at 4:19 pm

When I read the guy who said he was going to punch anyone he saw wearing this image I said “alrighty then….” and got straight to work.

http://www.cafepress.com/4therepublic

Don’t mind that popping noise, it’s just liberals craniums exploding.

Texas Tom — August 4, 2009 at 5:38 pm

The Joker: You and your kind, all you care about is money. This city deserves a better class of criminal. And I’m gonna give it to them!

Do you see the connection now?

Mikeybackwards — August 4, 2009 at 5:53 pm

Sonny,

Neither the link from which you took the quote about lynching, nor any of the two sites that blogger links to have any calls for investigation of the source of this image. Indeed, as the blogger notes Tammy Bruce and American Thinker are in “throes of political orgasm”.

I haven’t seen a great deal of outrage from the left or on the part of Obama supporters in response to this image. Is it racist? Meh. Maybe so, maybe no. But I think you have definitely presented this in a manner that is intellectually dishonest, both in your original comparison and then your defense of that false equivalancy.

AK – it would be more intellectually honest because one would be comparing what conservative writers and media were saying about the Bush image compared to Mikulan’s response to the Obama image. An equivalent comparison would be compare what commenters and bloggers from conservative outlets are saying (see the Tammy Bruce and American Thinker links above) to what liberal bloggers and commenters said about the Bush image. Either of these would be comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. Such comparisons show that conservatives were upset about the Bush image like liberals are upset when it is their ox that is being gored by a similar image. Likewise, just as liberals were gleeful and read broad import from the Bush image, conservatives are gleeful and drawing broad conclusions from the Obama image.

Both images are examples of propaganda and polemical discourse, which is all too common on both sides of the political divide today. I highly recommend the book The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline. Until both sides learn to speak to each other rather than at each other (and to one’s base), we will not resolve the intractable cycle of attack and counter-attack (using the perceived excesses of one’s opponents as justification and rationalization for one’s own excesses) that prevent us from working together toward the shared goal of strengthening and protecting our country and our society.

infinitely, ltd — August 4, 2009 at 7:40 pm

Frankly, I’m appalled at this “transparent” and “racist” smear. It’s obvious, “without any facts whatsoever”, someone “behaved stupidly” I “hope” you people “change” your ways. “I have consistently said”, “that there are those who say”, to anyone willing to listen, that it’s not good for anyone’s “health”, and if you “cared” about the blue pill, or, or even the red pill…you’d just remove your own damned tonsils…

Anyways, i really object to this “socialism” poster. It should have said,”Joker”…cause you know, some of us dont get nuance.

Sonny Bunch — August 4, 2009 at 8:46 pm

Mikey: My mistake; I thought Earl Ofari Hutchinson had an official role with the LA city government. I didn’t realize the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable is a private pressure group. That was from a KTLA story, not the LA Weekly link.

Either way, I’m not sure I understand your overriding point. You say that I’m creating a “false equivalency” between the Bush-as-Joker painting and the Obama-as-Joker painting. How? I mean, I am drawing an equivalency between the two: I think they’re both relatively crude and off-topic, and I don’t think either really adds anything to the discussion. I just find it amusing that at least one outlet on the left (and the LA Weekly certainly counts as an organ of the left) considers the Obama painting a hate crime while simultaneously celebrating far uglier depictions of George W. Bush. Like I said, I vaguely remember conservatives being annoyed by the painting (largely because it came at a time when conservatives were championing The Dark Knight in a way that obviously made liberals uncomfortable), but I’m not going out on a limb when I say that no one called it a hate crime (which, in today’s political scene is about the worst thing you can say about someone else).

Mikeybackwards — August 4, 2009 at 10:01 pm

Sonny –

You mischaracterized the editorial context of both the Vanity Fair image and Mikulan’s response to the poster graffiti image. Do you perhaps not understand that Mikulan did not say that the image was akin to a lynching but rather enumerated numerous aspects of the image that he found to be racist and that in his opinion the only thing that could have make the racism more explicit would have been a noose in the image?. Do you also perhaps not understand that no one from either the right or the left has posited a racist motive for the Bush/Joker image? By inferring that liberals are hypocrites because they don’t see similar racist intent in an image that neither left nor right saw as racist is the false equivalency. Unless you can counter the Mikulan’s view regarding certain aspects of Obama/Joker image, the images are not equivalent, neither is the intended message of the images, and therefore there can be no equivalence in response to the images.

I’m a white guy who doesn’t pack around a lot of white guilt or hyper-sensitivity to racial imagery (having not been subjected to it) nor am I a racist who freights in such imagery in an attempt to cow others. So except for the most blatant images (nooses, burning crosses, etc.) I don’t see or look for some imagery. Having stated that, I don’t see the same intent or racial overtones Mikulan sees.

So, if the images are roughly equivalent (intended to project the view of both Bush and Obama as malefic characters that are attacking the underpinnings of society), yes I (as noted above) see a disparity of response by liberals. However, by not providing the context of how conservatives have responded to each image, you are creating a false sense that only the liberals engage in such hypocrisy of response.

Finally, in your most recent comment you act as if Mikulan both considers the Obama image a hate crime (which I have deconstructed above) while also making the false assertion that Mikulan and/or LA Weekly celebrated the Bush image, something that does not appear to be true.

Lastly, you say there is no worse charge than a hate crime in today’s political discourse to defend your false characterization’s of Vanity Fair’s and LA Weekly’s positions. However you fail consider that those who criticized Bush were accused of wanting American civilians to die, of refusing to support our troops, of wanting America to lose a war, of being traitors and supporters of America’s enemies. Personally, I think being called a traitor to one’s nation is worse than being called a racist.

So riddle me this: How exactly are liberal and conservative reactions to criticisms of their leaders not equivalent?

(I hope you appreciate the invocation of another Batman villain.)

Earlofthercs — August 5, 2009 at 6:49 pm

I hope everyone on the internet reads Mikeybackwards’s comments here before posting on this `issue’ elsewhere, so they can count to ten, calm the frag down and get on with their lives.

Sonny Bunch — August 5, 2009 at 11:00 pm

Mikey: You write “Unless you can counter the Mikulan’s view regarding certain aspects of Obama/Joker image, the images are not equivalent, neither is the intended message of the images, and therefore there can be no equivalence in response to the images.” Here’s the problem: Obama is not in “white face,” as Mikulan says. He’s been made up to look like the Joker. It’s a subtle difference, I guess. The Obama-as-Joker poster is not intended to be taken in a racial context, and I simply don’t understand how you can make it an issue about race. This is why I think Mikulan’s reaction is both overwrought and kind of funny. It’s an inflammatory accusation of racism — made moreso by the noose comment — that adds nothing to the discourse. It’s a comment intended to shut debate down.

Anyway, I feel kind of like we’re talking past each other. I simply think it’s funny that the LA Weekly is more than comfortable running paintings on its cover of George W. Bush being some sort of vampire nazi (andthe Village Voice hires Alex Ross to paint him as a vampire sucking the life out of the Statue of Liberty) while Vanity Fair paints him up as the Joker and hey, that’s perfectly fine amongst the mainstream left. But some random guy paints Obama up as the Joker and people on the left freak out. If you can’t appreciate the irony in that, then fine. The point of this post wasn’t to examine every possible reaction from supporters and opponents of both presidents. That would’ve been kind of tough to do in a post with fewer than fifty words.

(Oh, and I remember when those on the right who suggested it was inappropriate to try and undermine the war while troops were in harms way were designated enemies of free speech. “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!” was the phrase, if I remember correctly. It seems to me that’s all out the window now…paint one socialist president up as the Joker and watch the stuff hit the fan…*)

*Joking.

Mikeybackwards — August 5, 2009 at 11:40 pm

Sonny –

Point one – The Bush/Joker image is from Vanity Fair, not LA Weekly. So your meme of “high art vs. akin to lynching” fails because it is two different publications, two different messages.

Point two – As I noted above, I tend to agree with you that Obama/Joker image is not racist, as I have noted above.

Point three – I agree that this is a frustrating conversation for both sides to have because other than agreeing that both sides have used over-the-top and absurd reductionism in their visual demonization of the other side, there really can’t be any true conversation.

Which brings me back to a point I have made above as well. We seem trapped in this cycle of polemical speech (granting the visual images as a form of speech). To me, we need (left, right, and middle) need to relearn the art of rhetoric which truly is the ability to frame one’s position in a way that is not only intelligible to one’s base, but also intelligible to those with whom one disagrees. That is why I recommended the book above which makes what I believe to be the most persuasive argument that we are heading down the path of a latter day Athens where professional speakers (including Obama in that group) win arguments in the forum not through strength of ideas, but how they can craft the absence of ideas as a substance.

My problem with your post is not that I think the Bush image is acceptable or that the Obama image is unacceptable. Rather it is the implied message that somehow the left is being egregious and hypocritical with the concommitant idea that the right is not. The equal level of reactionary behavior and false outrage/contrived controversy has become a hallmark of both sides of the political discourse of this country and until that is recognized and resolved, I don’t either side will either reach their aims or be able to engage in true bi-partisanship.

I am arguing in favor of a third way, which is for both sides to refuse to laud the inflammatory tactics of one’s one ’side’ while simultaneously refuse to be baited by the inflammatory tactics of the one’s ‘opposition’.

We are all Americans. The left is not traitorous or immoral, and the right is not racist or immoral. Instead there are real disagreement about the policy prescriptions necessary to resolve the very real challenges this country and the world face which are only exacerbated by the constant sniping and offense-taking of both sides.

Mikeybackwards — August 5, 2009 at 11:46 pm

Some edits as I was typing faster than I was thinking in a couple of places:

Paragraph 5, last sentence should read: . . . don’t think either side . .

Paragraph 6 I am arguing in favor of a third way, which is for both sides to refuse to laud the inflammatory tactics of one’s own ’side’ while simultaneously refuse to be baited by the inflammatory tactics of the one’s ‘opposition’.

Sonny Bunch — August 6, 2009 at 8:28 am

While the image may have come from Vanity Fair, I haven’t been able to find any hyperventilating posts in the LA Weekly denouncing it. Plus, it’s not like the LA Weekly was a stranger to demonizing Bush:

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/08/03/obama-as-joker-selective-outrage-from-la-weekly/

Again: The point of this post wasn’t that the left responds differently to criticism than the right (as I mentioned, the fact that partisans on the left and right respond exactly as hypocritically during debates like this is pretty much self-evident). It was a quick post pointing out one specific instance of hypocrisy formulated in a particularly ugly way. A third way would be great to have, but I don’t see it coming any time soon.

Mikeybackwards — August 6, 2009 at 1:59 pm

I can accept that rationale if one adequately qualifies one’s criticisms. But simply because one doesn’t publish outrage in case of the Bush image does not equate one with celebrating that image as ‘high art’.

That is the entire point of my original argument of intellectual dishonesty on your part in this thread. You compounded that error by explicit mischaracterizations in response to my criticisms of your original flawed premise. Further, you say you think a third way would be great, but by engaging in this sort of tit-for-tat accusations you are perpetuating the status quo. One can criticize Mikulan’s over-the-top response to the Obama image without engaging in such excessive over-generalizations that frankly, I find at least as objectionable as Mikulan’s attempt to stifle expressions of disagreement with Obama and his policies.

Sonny Bunch — August 6, 2009 at 9:22 pm

I think I see where some of the crosstalk was coming from: the OP was never meant to suggest a one-to-one correlation from the LA Weekly in particular. Rather it was a critique of the mindset of the left in general (that mindset being years and years of demonizing Bush in the ugliest way possible is fine; one marginally off topic poster employing the same exact rhetoric used against Bush is awful).

Did you happen to catch Philip Kennicott’s piece in the WaPo today about the Obama-as-Joker poster? It’s a classic in the aforementioned genre:

“Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can’t be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he’s black.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080503876.html

The whole thing is almost as absurd. Reactions like this from respected members of the Left are why people on the Right get annoyed.

uniondad — August 6, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Mikey-
I don’t believe I have ever read a more valiant attempt to validate the obvious “double standard” of the liberal media’s reaction to these similar pictures. Attempting to discredit an observation of the obvious difference in the immediate and predictable response by the main stream press, by maligning the observer is ignominious at best.

You state earlier that: “I haven’t seen a great deal of outrage from the left or on the part of Obama supporters in response to this image” Well here’s another example in today’s, Aug 6, washingtonpost.com by Phillip Kennicott:
“So why the anonymity? Perhaps because the poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the “urban” makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can’t openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and ’70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling crime rates……..
. Urban blacks — the thinking goes — don’t just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence………
Superimpose that idea, through the Joker’s makeup, onto Obama’s face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life. It is another effort to establish what failed to jell in the debate about Obama’s association with Chicago radical William Ayers and the controversy over the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”

I shortened this article for space not to mischaracterize his outrage and the direct accusations of racism in the Obama poster.

Sonny was absolutely spot on with his statement that there is nothing worse than being accused of being a racist in America today. The liberal press will excoriate a person on the slightest suggestion of anything racial. See Sgt James Crowley. While you state you “don’t pack around a lot of white guilt” the same certainly isn’t true in the white liberal media. That may be one of the reasons they worked so hard to elect our current president. It is certainly why they wouldn’t scrutinize Obama’s time in Rev Wright’s congregation. To be part of history appears to have been much more important to them than just reporting actual facts. But I digress. It would seem that to assuage their guilt they see racism everywhere and overreact to it accordingly.

They have no difficulty with people you say were “accused of wanting American civilians to die, of refusing to support our troops, of wanting America to lose a war, of being traitors and supporters of America’s enemies.” The press reported this, it seemed at the time, to denigrate the people/politicians that were making the comparisons. The press believe in not supporting the war by whatever means necessary. Publishing secrets that put our military and allies at risk is considered a feather in their hat. The majority of the main stream press holds that practice in high esteem. See articles exposing cell phone jammers that prevented IED explosions in Iraq.
There’s an old country saying that goes if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it’s pretty damn likely to be a duck, no matter what media matters wants to call it.

Mikeybackwards — August 7, 2009 at 5:15 am

Sonny -

Not only did you make a one-to-one correlation in the original post, but when challenged on the intellectual honesty of such a tactic, you doubled down and defended that tactic even to the point of explicitly saying LA Weekly had celebrated the Bush image. You can attempt to redact those statements now if you wish, but my point is made all the more glaring by such belated denials.

Even if your original intent was to demonstrate hypocrisy on the part of the left, I have already conceded that, but you continue to act as if this is a peculiarly liberal province. Do I really need to enumerate all of the idiocies of the so-called right such as the Birthers, the claims that Obama is some sort of Muslim Terrorist Manchurian candidate, the frothings of such Republican paragons as Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Savage, Boortz, Coulter, Malkin, etc.?

I have refrained from doing so because that is exactly what I have been criticizing here. The senseless accumulation and litany of offenses that are then used to enact the same type of offenses (by both the left and the right) is a self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling cycle that gets us nowhere closer to addressing the challenges we all face (whether liberal, conservative, or unaligned).

If you merely want to steep in your own spleen, I think I will leave you to it. However, I had hoped that you were actually interested in a dialogue instead of diatribe.

Sonny Bunch — August 7, 2009 at 7:40 am

Again, I was never making a one-to-one comparison re: the LA Weekly in particular. When I wrote in a comment that “I just find it amusing that at least one outlet on the left (and the LA Weekly certainly counts as an organ of the left) considers the Obama painting a hate crime while simultaneously celebrating far uglier depictions of George W. Bush” I didn’t mean the Vanity Fair image particularly; rather, I meant they had their own history of printing absurd demonizations of Bush (http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/08/03/obama-as-joker-selective-outrage-from-la-weekly/) that were just as ugly. It was a more general statement than you took it to mean. My fault for communicating that poorly, I guess, though no one else really missed the point.

Mikeybackwards — August 8, 2009 at 2:24 am

Sonny –

I am willing to accept that I read the last reference to LA Weekly in an overly narrow fashion. However, within the context of your attempts to redefine and shift the terms of the discussion in order to substantiate what has grown into a wholesale endorsement of the meme that MSM is wholly owned and acts as a mouthpiece (or gatekeeper) of ‘mainstream’ liberalism.

To me this is as pernicious as those who tout various variants of creationism and anti-evolutionary pseudo-science. The goal is to attack the trust in the Fourth Estate, just as the creationists and anti-evolutionists are attempting to erode confidence in science and scientific method.

What makes this laughable is that those who are typically doing this are those who you dismiss as being the fringe of the conservative movement who wish to replace ideology above facts, and even though they have an audience that reaches into the tens of millions per day, try to maintain a fiction that they themselves are not part of the mainstream media.

Because you see, while individual media outlets (MSNBC, NYT, Huffington Post, perhaps even LA Weekly, to name a few, but not intended to be a comprehensive list) may have a liberal bias; individual media outlets (talk radio in general – Rush, Boortz, Savage, Coulter, Clear Channel in specific, Fox News, Newscorp, to name a few, but not intended to be a comprehensive list) have a conservative bias.

I find it supremely ironic that you, in attempting to present a discussion on standards in the media, acting as a media outlet are doing exactly that of which you are accusing LA Weekly and other media outlets.

mehh — September 2, 2009 at 10:13 pm

jesus, every time anyone makes a negative remark about a black man its “racist”

stupid. that poster would work with bush or any other whiteman. it just so happens we have a black socialist president. socialist is socialist. doesn’t matter what your skincolor is