Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jubelum 
'box... are you familiar with the GRAVITAS incident? That speaks VOLUMES about who is getting the DNC faxes.
I love that.
The GRAVITAS incident. Do you use that as the password at the secret Death to the Liberal Media meetings?
As far as I can make out, right wing perception of liberal bias is largely a matter of feeling and tone, something that is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. When you assume the person talking secretly hates the president, it's pretty easy to interpret every pause and raised eyebrow as a covert sign of contempt, and to regard any story that puts the admin or any Republican in a bad light as naked partisanship, no matter how reality based.
All of that is a little thin, however, and I think folks who think this way know it. So there have to be a few "incidents" to make the case, beloved little gems that are endlessly circulated amongst the believers.
A lot of right wing indignation seems to work like this: since any fair accounting of actual patterns and frequencies and trends simply don't support the stubborn notion that conservatives are somehow beleaguered and ill used, one must substitute fetishized anecdotes to prop up the world view.
Actual liberals, on the other hand, need merely to turn on their televisions or open their newspapers to note the striking absence of liberal voices in the public sphere. When I say "liberal", mind you, I'm not talking about the person who's job it is to mildly disagree with some savage right wing attack ("Well, I wouldn't go so far to say that Edwards is
actually a woman, although he obviously doesn't fit the Bush mold of rugged outdoorsman.....")
The airwaves and print media are dominated by fire-breathing attack right wing punditry, merely aggressive right wing punditry, what used to be considered mainstream conservatism, centrist conservatism, slightly liberal on a few issues centrism, and a bit of almost apologetic liberalism that is quick to point out that it's not going to go crazy or anything.
And of course it all works out splendidly because "liberalism" can then be defined as "disagrees that Obama's name is going to be a huge problem" and "crazy-oh-my-God-I-think-he-has-a-gun" radical socialist liberalism as what we used to call a Democrat.
None of this is surprising and it's not a secret as to how it came to be. The strategists of the right were very explicit in their plans to paint the left as crazy and out of touch and not normal and extreme, and how that should be backed up by an organized, persistent campaign to bludgeon the media into agreeing with that characterization.
What's also not surprising, but pretty depressing, is all the people who have forgotten that this was all just a political strategy and concluded that, yes, Colmes is quite the liberal and certainly a balance for all the strenuous conservatism that surrounds him.
If actual liberal voices suddenly appeared on America's airwaves in proportionate numbers and in proportionate ferocity to the existing right wing ecology, the right would simply go insane. It would mean
starting with Keith Olberman as a baseline, going left and strident from their, and doing it about a dozen times.
His attitudes and opinions about relationships are really out there too. It's like he's living in the 1950s.
</props>
