Chad, writing at Fraters, on the overwhelming presumption of the left:

The biggest driver of liberal media bias is not a grand conspiracy to alter the news–although the Journolist disclosures show there was more coordination and conspiring going on than most would have imagined. The chief reason that the news is more often than not tinged with a leftist perspective is that the vast majority of people in the newsrooms, studios, and offices of the traditional media roughly share the same ideological mindset. And, since the people they work and live with generally have the same views they do, they assume that this mindset is shared by the majority of Americans. Well, at least the majority of reasonable Americans.

You see artifacts of this in the occasional moments when our institutional left talks about society when it thinks its among friends.  “West Wing” – and its predecessor, the really dumb movie The American President – greeted references to abortion, guns, taxes, defense, and spending with the sort of blithe assurance that reql Americans accept the left’s ideas as the norm.

Journolist?  More of the same:

When Avent says that Palin “has terrible positions on things like choice,” everyone on the Journolist knows exactly what he’s talking about and agrees with him. What reasonable person wouldn’t? The use of language is also telling. Now when I read Avent’s words about “choice” I know exactly what he’s talking about. But this isn’t how most people talk about abortion. And if you told the average American that Palin has “terrible positions on choice” they might well ask what the hell you’re talking about. A choice about what?

ABORTION! ABORTION! ABORTION! The semantic games that abortion supporters play betrays that fact that they know how unsettling the word is. If abortion is such a swell “choice,” why not come out and say that you’re pro-abortion. Heck, I’m willing to drop the “pro-life” label (at least when it comes to abortion) if the “pro-choice” crowd would be willing to be honest about what they really support. One side is anti-abortion and one side pro-abortion. Let’s stop playing word games.

In the interest of clarity, I’ve been doing this for years.

I’ve mellowed a bit from when I called choicers “pro-death”.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 7:53 am and is filed under Culture War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.