Just Plain Sick

If you’re a conservative, especially in a liberal gulag like the Twin Cities, you don’t need to be reminded that…:

  • all too many liberals don’t just disagree with conservatives; they actively, passionately hate them (in a manner that most conservatives, no, do not reciprocate)
  • The mainstream media are biased against conservatives and conservatism in a way that is way too systematic to be either random or a matter of a few journalists and their individual worldviews.

As such, the most interesting question to come out of the “Journolist” flap isn’t so much how biased are the media as it is how many more “Journolists” are there?

Given the absolute lock-step uniformity among most of the Twin Cities media when it comes to politics, I’d be personally amazed if there weren’t some form of back-channel collusion going on.

Oh, yeah – and many of  our “elite” media are a bunch of sick bastards

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

….without a whole lot of regard for their fellow citizen…

When the writer Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article about immigration for National Review, for example, blogger Ed Kilgore didn’t even bother to grapple with Hanson’s arguments. Instead Kilgore dismissed Hanson’s piece out of hand as “the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. It’s very close in spirit to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”

…or democracy…:

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air.

Back when Nick Coleman used to rant “The buh-law-ggers wunt tuh duhstroy thuh mediuh”, I and a lot of conservative bloggers protested “No!  We just want to hold it accountable!”.

Nowadays?  Given the extent to which the craft’s “elite” High Priests of Knowledge seem to have been trying to use their power and position to control the country rather than report the news?  Screw ’em.  The NYTimes, the WaPo, the Big Three, , the Strib, CNN – screw ’em all.  They have all gone way way beyond “bias” to become a de facto political party.

And I don’t mean the kind that runs candidates in elections.

21 thoughts on “Just Plain Sick

  1. What’s the old saying? – Conservatives think Liberals are wrong, Liberals think Conservatives are evil.
    It is not shocking to hear that pack journalism is indeed an organized pack, the messaging is far too consistent and rote (remember ‘gravitas’ from 2000 or more recently ‘racist’ from the past year of tea partays) from the dominant media culture. It is also not a shock that these people who consider themselves so thoughtful and open minded are so loathsome. If you are a public figure and believe you were slandered or libeled by some media type, your law talking guy should subpeona the Journolist archive and do discovery for malice. Fred Barnes or Karl Rove may wind up owning the Washington Post Co (for what it’s worth).

  2. But, funny…their salaries partially come from the advertising dollars of the conservative candidates and conservative leaning companies.

  3. Well, bh, have you seen the recent trajectory of advertising dollars? It’s one of the major reasons the media is tanking with very few exceptions. Heck, without bucks from a Mexican billionaire the NYT would be bankrupt today.

  4. Not “the kind that runs candidates in elections”. The kind that makes the trains run on time.

  5. The Journolist list was a gift. It was a smoking gun of media advocacy we all knew existed but couldn’t prove. Think it will change the hearts of the journalists? Think again. We’re in a culture war. This story, like any news casting shadows on the ruling class, will never reach the eyes and ears of those whose first question of the day is whether Lindsay Lohan will serve her full sentence.

    Re-engaging the average citizen in the constructs of the democracy will require the framework of journalism be re-defined. My old journalism prof, Dr. Soren Munkhopf, is spinning in his grave. None of the current crop of media players would have passed his class.

  6. One of Rush’s best bits is when an “approved” word or catchphrase like “gravitas” magically finds itself in every mainstream account of a story, not even quoting or acknowledging whoever started it, as if they each came up with it on their own. The latest was how the Obama Administration had pulled us “back from the brink” as if this is partial credit for the otherwise moribund economy he actually encourages. These JournoLists truly do just echo each other.

    Oh, but they can quote Rush only they never listen and when pressed can never find the “original” quote. Fake, but accurate.

  7. One of Rush’s best bits is when an “approved” word or catchphrase like “gravitas” magically finds itself in every mainstream account of a story, not even quoting or acknowledging whoever started it, as if they each came up with it on their own.

    Yep. That’s my big point – in fact, as this campaign goes on, it might need to the subject of a Twin Cities conservative blogstorm.

    Because the Twin Cities mainstream and (koff koff) “independent’ liberal “alternative” media exhibit (koff koff) curious synchronicities along those same lines, too.

    So I’d be amazed if there weren’t some kind of “Mini-Journolist” linking lib “journalists” regionally. The chanting points coming from the Strib, the PiPress, and (koff koff) some of the more prominent regional leftyblogs are just too close to be pure coincidence, I think, and for the same reason you see terms like “Gravitas”.

  8. nerdbert;

    Funny! I had totally forgotten about that angle.

    It’s funny how many times the Red Star has attempted to get me to renew my subscription. What’s funnier is that my LIBERAT wife only wants to be sure that she doesn’t miss the Thanksgiving Day edition, that touts all of the sales being held by the evil rich retailers! Go figure!

  9. So much on display here, I don’t know which I like better; the paralyzing right-wing paranoid ragegasms or another (two in one week!) patented Mitch Berg Breathless Expose of the Obvious (JOURNALISTS DON’T LIKE RUSH LIMBAUGH…WOLVERINES!!)

  10. Speaking as the 22nd most hated conservative in the Twin Cities, I don’t begrudge the fever swamp it’s hatred.

    Rather, I gather it around me, and like a favorite old quilt, handed down by gramma, it keeps me warm and comforted.

  11. I don’t know that I’m in the throes of a “ragegasm,” although that sounds like a perfectly delightful condition.

    I have been a bit nonplussed at the total “meh” reaction on the part of most of the established media regarding the ongoing revelations of the JournoList antics and practices, which should frankly have traditional journalists fairly well horrified, as it’s being laid bare for all to see just how currupted and vacant so many of their own have become.

  12. traditional journalists fairly well horrified

    Those died out long ago. It is a direct by-product of the 10th plank in the Communist Manifesto: Free education for all children in public schools.

    Just remember 9 of the 10 planks are in effect or are in the process of being effected. The only one I really don’t think is in effect yet is the first: Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

  13. Wow. “DON’T LIKE” equals “I’d callously watch him die” now?

    The journalist _herself_ recognized her hatred and was quoted doing so above, but Tim in StP can’t manage to do it?

    Why am I not surprised. Is it because of all the “ragegasmic” hate inside _me_? Ha! More likely the relatively low levels of lead inside me as a child, I suspect.

  14. So much on display here,

    Yeah, but not in the way you’re thinking.

    paralyzing right-wing paranoid ragegasms

    Paralyzing? We’re kicking your side’s ass.

    Mitch Berg Breathless Expose of the Obvious

    Wait – the Daytons hid their donations behind two levels of astroturf to make them “obvious”?

    Amazing.

    (JOURNALISTS DON’T LIKE RUSH LIMBAUGH…WOLVERINES!!)

    No, Tim. Journalists don’t like conservatives, or conservatism, and use the remaining power of their medium as a poltical tool to (try to) defeat them.

    That’s different altogether, although I’m under no illusion that you pack the gear to understand it.

  15. I was in Mankato last week and picked up the Mankato paper. A political science professor from MSU had an editorial in there. It was sad. It was a weird disconnected rambling thing about how bad conservatives are. And this guy has a cushy high-paying gov’t university job.

  16. A lot of the stuff on Journolist was adolescent posturing and group-think signaling. “You hate Limbaugh so much you’d like to see him die of a heart attack? Well, I hate Limbaugh so much that I’d like to see him fall into a pool of red hot lava and then die of a heart attack while he’s on fire and everything!”
    I can’t think of a similar phenomenon on the right. Conservatives aren’t obsessed about Michael Moore and the New York Times as much as the left is obsessed about Limbaugh & Fox News.
    “We have only to remove those who oppose us”, said Saruman in Lord of the Rings. When you start thinking like a villain in an epic fantasy it’s time to re-evaluate your position.

  17. I have neighbors who would make Keith Olbermann look like Reagan. What I learned, years ago, is they won’t discuss the issues, they’ll assassinate the messenger. It’s so much easier than thinking.

  18. Swiftee – wear it as a badge of honor. I cannot think of anything higher to aspire to than to be an Olberman worst person.

  19. From what I’ve seen of the Journolist, its postings remind me of what was called a “slam book” in the 7th grade: a notebook passed around the classroom in which the elite took turns writing trash about the weaklings. This was before cyber-bullying on Facebook. I just did a search for “Journolist” at the NYT site, and guess what: only turned up references in Ross Douthat’s blog. Nothing to see here, keep moving!

  20. If the detestable remarks of Sarah Spitz were made by a conservative the lefties would be crying out that it constituted a “hate crime”.

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