Stanley Kurtz has a nice column on the liberal misperception of conservatism, which ends with these observations and anecdotes:
The belief in conservative bigotry is more than a misunderstanding. It is liberalism’s indispensable drug — the opium of the elites. Are there some bigoted conservatives? Sure. But conservative bias can’t hold a candle to the thunderous bigotry of the Left toward conservatives. From the shameful attempts to portray Judge Pickering as a racist, to David Brock’s misrepresentations about the supposed anti-gay bigotry of David Horowitz, to the press’s refusal to treat Pim Fortuyn as anything other than a neo-Nazi, the goal of the Left is to somehow shove all conservatives into the same bigoted and dismissible little box. Yet isn’t it funny how even those conservatives most opposed to Pim Fortuyn’s views on homosexuality have rushed to defend him from the Left’s misrepresentation of his political character.
The reason why these ceaseless defamations of conservatives will not go away (as I explained in ‘The Church of the Left‘) is that liberals can’t feel good about themselves unless they are fighting someone else’s bigotry. Liberalism has stopped being a mere set of political principles for managing conflict and has turned instead into the religion of the secular elites. That religion can supply a purpose to life, only if it is felt to be a crusade against radical evil. However clever all these accusations of conservative bigotry are as a political tactic, they are not mere manipulation, but are sincerely felt.
Last year, liberal political theorist Cass Sunstein put out a ridiculous little book about the dangers of the Internet called Republic.com. His argument was that the web is allowing people to isolate themselves from contrary opinions. The places Sunstein held up as dangerous examples were all conservative sites like townhall.com and Free Republic. If Professor Sunstein had actually read the conservative web, he’d have seen that conservative sites are preoccupied — even obsessed — with the liberal media, a media they know intimately.
Sunstein’s absurd and tyrannical solution to the nonexistent problem of conservatives who’ve never encountered a liberal opinion was to have the government force websites from one political side of the fence to link to sites on the other. NRO readers, in other words, would be provided by government fiat with copious links to The Nation and The American Prospect. Actually, I go to The Nation and The American Prospect myself, and often write about the liberal press for NRO.
Can you imagine the nightmare of a government bureaucracy dedicated to forcing political balance on websites? Who would make the decisions? Who would be in charge of the political classifications, and on what basis could it all be decided? We’d have another civil war on our hands in short order if Professor Sunstein were running things. In any case, the truth is exactly the reverse of Sunstein’s thesis. Denizens of the conservative web know exactly how both sides think. It’s the folks at the New York Times op-ed page who haven’t got a clue.
I get called “conservative” quite often — usually by people who spit the word in out in adjectival disgust, following it up with vivid nouns, like “asshole” or “ballsucker.” And yet as I’ve mentioned before, I subscribe to both The Nation and The American Prospect.
How many liberals outside of the blogosphere have ever even read The National Review or The Weekly Standard, I wonder…?
But if you already <b>know</b> what they’re going to say, why in the world would you waste time, just to confirm it?
I suspect that that is a huge part of the thinking. It’s why it’s okay to host a conference and not invite folks from the conservative side of the spectrum—we already <b>know</b> what they’re going to say.
And, besides, one wouldn’t want to ledn that side support. After all, they already control the press. They have a network of think-tanks, funders, sponsors, etc., all working hand-in-glove. Not at all like our side.
Sigh. Actually, you can see (and hear) this line from both sides, both at FreeRepublic <b>and</b> at DemocraticUnderground.
You can read anything you like just don’t tell me that we have a liberal media in this country. The media are owned by huge conglomerates and they are hardly interested in liberal tenants. PC is not liberal, at least not in my book. If you want to talk about “ceaseless defamation’ how about the right’s treatment of Clinton which started when he began talking about national health care (a liberal tenant). There has been none of the personal muckraking going on with respect to the new president. Why do you think that is? I could begin to answer that but I’ll leave it rhetorical.
SAY IT AIN’T SO! </B></bold></strong></B></bold></strong></B></bold></strong></B></bold></strong>
First Matt Welch, now Jeff G….
Where will it end?
Somebody stop the insanity!
That “ownership of the press” line to disprove liberal bias has always struck me as kind of silly, in that is supposes a kind of hands-on control of ownership in media that isn’t applicable. Far better to look at editorships (or producers) to find the source of potential slant.
Businessmen would know, for instance, that an “objective” product like news reporting would lose its value if it were perceived to be biased toward the views of its ownership. So they have a vested, monetary interest in keeping it “neutral.”
The irony is, in attempting to do so, they’ve handed over the reins to grads from the Columbia School of Journalism, who’ve been taught to honor proportionalism over empiricism.
And I think PC is indeed a liberal movement, sorry to say—perhaps at its worst on college campuses, where I happen to work these days.
As for the whole Clinton-baiting debacle: I was living in Italy when that all went down, and I can assure you I was (and still am) appalled at the vigor with which some on the right went after Slick Willy and his mini-Slick Willyness. (Of course, at the time, I considered myself far more liberal than conservative—though I was anti-affirmative action, was troubled by the multiculturalist Balkanization of America, and found such things as “hate crime legislation” particularly distasteful, even then).
Still attacking Clinton and dismissing an entire point of view out of hand are two different animals. I was simply pointing out with this post (and it continues to be the case, even among some very good friends of mine on the left, whom I otherwise greatly respect) that, when it comes to reading about a particular issue (national healthcare, say, or global warming), every time I forward along a piece from the WS or NRO or Cato or Tech Central, I’m greeted with “yes, but those are ‘right-wing’ corporate apologists,”—the implication being that any info contained in essays from those venues is tainted by some special interest or other.
This post is highly anecdotal, too—though I didn’t finish writing it up that way. For the record, though, before 9/11 ( my knee-jerk response on that day was to throw on CNN and ABC, if that tells you anything), I myself never would’ve read NRO or <i>The Weekly Standard</i>. I was content to villify conservatives as rich, corporate-lovin’ bigots who shrouded themselves in piety while trying to rape the little guy so that they could afford to put TIVO in their Range Rovers.
But when CNN and ABC insisted on remaining “neutral” and looking for “root causes” all day—I watched constantly—I became disgruntled with them, and began looking around elsewhere for my news. And I found that I agreed more with the Standard than with the Nation, more with Victor Hanson and Mark Steyn than Arundhati Roy or Susan Sontag.
I never would’ve known that had I not read those periodicals online and been impressed enough by them to subscribe.
”…ballsucker…” You get called ‘ballsucker’? Wow.
Remember that great scene in the movie “Talk Radio” when Bogosian has a listener at his station doing live comments and he realizes that his audience is composed of people who ride the short bus to work and school?
Strike a chord?
;^)
Funny you should bring up <i>Talk Radio,</i> Don. I was talking about it just yesterday with regards to Pim Fortuyn’s assassination. That last scene always gets me.
Kent, the guy’s name was. “‘Cause-I-real-ly-dig-your-show-Bare.”
Well, Jeff, I have called you an asshole, but certainly not a ballsucker.
I think being an asshole is one duty that a writer(or critic) must take seriously. After all, criticism is a tough pill to swallow for a vast majority of the unconscious civilization. Voltaire, who defined most of the virtues of this sick art that we practice, called offending others one of the tenants of good criticism.
Whether I agree with you or not, I very much respect your (and my) right to be as big an asshole as is required to change minds, one way or the other. Plus, you always make me laugh even when your views are making me mad.
And I am still stewing over that Superman reference the other day, you dirty ballsucker. :=P
Oh, the life of those on the left. Between our stoned hackey-sack sessions, endless nights going to Phish cover bands, and of course our almost daily Noam Chomsky bible study sessions, how could we possibly have time to read the insightful prose of John Derbyshire containing his latest meditations on the history of oral sex and the moral justifications for the destruction of the Clinton genetic line.
I know it is heretical to say here in Blogistan, where every reference to African-American incarceration rates in the New York Times or arch of Dan Rather’s eyebrow is thought to be evidence of Marxist media control, but I submit that for casual perusers of radio, television, and print (or online) media, whether of left or right persuasion, are given far more exposure to syndicated right wing columnists than left wing.
Just check out the op-ed pages of most local newspapers, from which most True Americans outside the decadent elite get their daily dose of news.
Wow. Have put-upon and defensive libs taken to cartooning themselves, now? Hackey-sackin’ stoners? Bitchin’! (Though I think it’s kinda cool to blow a few bong hits and rail about the evils of racialism, myself).
By the way—I’d forgotten that the <i>The National Review</i> had changed it’s name to <i>The National Derbyshire’s Narrow-Minded Opinion Only Review.</i> Or was that just a pot shot?
‘Cause it’s always easier to pick out one right winger and invoke “right-wing” talk radio than it is to have to consider other reasoned opinions. Why not just demonize the whole lot of ‘em, “right”?
Congrats, Atrios. You’ve pulled off a virtual performative of the points I was hoping to illustrate. Now go impress your friends with your mastery of Jameson’s “colonialist” hegemon narratives.
The usual suspects just don’t get it, as usual.
Leftbanker–your Chomskyesque denunciation of large media corporations is off-base. Media groups can be corporate and liberal; how else could one explain the support given to various and sundry leftist groups (environmental, social, political) by major corporations? The entertainment industry (all big media conglomerates) is a huge source of cash for the Democratic Party, yet to hear you tell it, because it’s corporate it must be monolithically conservative.
Atrios–the problem most conservatives have with the media is not the commentators. The problem is the bias in the NEWS reports, which are supposed to be free of commentary. However, coverage of conservative views (opposition to abortion, right to own guns, reduced taxes, school choice) is often marred by negative ideological labels applied (often subconsciously) by the reporter. The fact that both the writer and the editor are likely to have liberal views means that inadvertant biases slip in.
While it is nice that there are a lot of commentators out there with a conservative viewpoint, their partisan views are open; the bias of newsrooms (which is usually denied) is more pernicious because it is subtle. Nobody is going to mistake a Limbaugh broadside against Daschle as fair and balanced coverage, but few realize that Pim Fortuyn was not a far-right ideologue, because the press has by and large failed to report his views, other than “anti-immigrant, pro-business far-right”. Conservative and libertarian blog readers know the real score, but they are a far smaller group than those who rely on traditional media for news.
Hey, I thought you’d appreciate the attempt at humor. I was being an equal opportunity offender – self-deprecation for free.
sheesh, touchy around here.
This serious part of the post was the last bit. Aside from political junkes on both sides, who digest the spectrum, casual newsreaders get a lot of exposure to right wing opinion analysis.
Sorry for the double post, but…
As for liberal bias in the straight news, there was a time when I thought a reasonable case could be made for that. But, I think things have changed a lot in the past 15 years, and especially in the past 5.
Hey, Bill Kristol agrees with me.
Not touchy at all, Atrios. I appreciated the sense of humor, believe it or not. Just firing back, is all.
Cause why the hell not?
haha, okay maybe it’s us libs with no sense of humor.
In any case, I’m sure within Jameson’s impenetrable prose there exists some meaning but after falling asleep on page 3 the book accidentally got lost under my bed.
You might want to get that thing out from under there. I left a copy of <i>The Prison-House of Language</i> under my bed a few years backs, and it took root. Come early summer of the next year, I had fifty bookish grad students living under the bed.
Oh, that smell.