Christ.  At this rate, Jimmy Hoffa‘s bound to pop-up here soon—no doubt sporting dreads and a Kerry/Edwards sweatshirt. 

Seems a perfect time to link these thoughts, from NRO’s Stanley Kurtz: “From Biased to Partisan”:

Something important seems to be happening to the media — something those of us who complain about liberal media bias may have missed up to now. Although there is a major and ever growing alternative media composed of talk radio, opinion journals, Internet news sites, blogs, and Fox News, the “mainstream media” still dominates. In terms of sheer numbers, the network newscasts still out-pull cable news channels by considerable margins. And Internet sites and blogs still attract a relatively small (if growing and disproportionately influential) audience. Because of its prestige — and because it’s just plain bigger — the mainstream media is, well, “mainstream,” while the rest are just “alternative.”

Although all of this is still true, we may well be seeing the initial signs of a profound realignment of the media along more strictly and openly partisan lines. The mainstream media as a whole may be larger than the alternative outlets, but the mainstream audience itself is segmented. Looking at the CBS News audience alone, we are probably talking about the most self-consciously liberal part of the network audience pie. True, nowadays all the network newscasts are liberal. But CBS has had that reputation longer than the rest. Gradually, with the exit of moderates and conservatives to other networks and the alternative media, CBS’s audience is probably now composed largely of liberal Democrats. In the middle of the most divisive presidential election in years, we have to assume that the CBS audience itself is far more interested in helping John Kerry than in getting to the bottom of the forgery issue. So as the country increasingly divides into two media camps, the “mainstream media” is becoming more openly partisan. And it’s the audience that’s driving this — not only, or even primarily, the journalists, liberal though journalists may be.

No matter how much the media scene has changed, many of us carry an image in our minds of the old CBS News. In the days when the country had only three network newscasts to watch, CBS was the most prestigious of all. Back then, CBS News would certainly have repudiated the forgeries (in the unlikely event that they would have fallen for them in the first place). Had they not repudiated the documents, CBS News would have risked the loss, along with its reputation for fairness, of half or more of its audience. But nowadays, toughing it out on behalf of John Kerry is only likely to reinforce audience loyalty among CBS’s partisan viewers. The CBS audience might find its enthusiasm for Dan Rather dampened considerably if an admission from Rather ended up bringing down their candidate.

We conservatives can talk all we want about CBS putting its credibility at risk. But the truth is, we ceased to take the word of Dan Rather or CBS a long time ago. What’s more, CBS knows this. And that is why they’re sticking with their story. In other words, the exit of increasing numbers of conservatives and moderates from the mainstream-media audience is pushing mainstream outlets to the left.

I, for one, am a disappointed old-time loyalist of CBS News and the New York Times. Somewhere deep in my trusting heart, I want to believe that some journalistically responsible “grown up” at the old media bastions is going to read all these revelations of bias and set things right. In my dreams, chastened by their betrayal of journalistic standards, mainstream outlets would start hiring young reporters who cut their teeth at conservative, and not just liberal, publications, and will thus gradually recreate the balanced, fair-minded, and trustworthy news institutions of old.

And in my dreams, unicorns are kindly and wise and crap Snickers bars.

I’ll give 2-to-1 my dream comes true first, Stanley…

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update: See? You can buy anything on eBay (via reader Lars).