“Look At Uuuuusssssss!”

When you get any group of insular, echo-chamber-dwelling, chanting-points-motivated people who communicate with each other and almost nobody else, it’s a virtually inevitable trait of human nature that they will develop a worldview that centers on…well, them.   It doesn’t matter if it’s Packers fans, Manhattanites, Kansas sorghum farmers, Ivy Leaguers, bowlers, avant-guard music fans, square dancers…

But our Twin Cities’ “progressive” “alternative”  media are especially funny.

Eric “Big E” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project wrote about the Strib’s coverage of last weekend’s “Netroots Nation”.  Or, he complains, lack of coverage:

I was at Netroots Nation so I wasn’t paying attention to my newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Apparently, the Strib didn’t even send a reporter to Netroots. This time someone else noticed that their coverage of politics is not very thorough:

Pusey links to a piece at Crooks and Liars, a rhetorical dutch oven echoblog.  Astute observers of the regional media scene will get a chuckle:

Now, I expect that local readers will tell me that the Minneapolis paper is a long-established right-wing Republican rag, and gauging from their Sunday editorial-page lineup, that certainly is the impression I came away with.

[Facepalm – Ed.]

And no doubt it is despised by the PowerLines of the world for not being right-wing enough, which then becomes their excuse — “See? Both sides hate us! Therefore, we must be exactly right in the middle!”

This is what passes for logic on their side.

So to be honest, I wasn’t really surprised to see that the Star-Tribune, as I perused it over my coffee and hashbrowns this morning, had actually completely ignored the presence of Netroots Nation in their city and carried not a single word about events there. And indeed, if you check their archives, they couldn’t even be bothered to send a single reporter over to the convention center this week to write about the many luminaries there. Instead, their coverage consisted entirely pieces filed by Associated Press reporters. Oh, wait — there was one piece by a columnist that talked about Netroots and its deeper meaning without any indication he’d ever set foot in the convention.

That’s just embarrassing.

Yes, but not in the way that the writer intended.

Pusey picks up the narrative:

But it’s even worse than that. They spent the weekend lavishing column inches upon the much smaller, conservative Right Online convention which shadows Netroots wherever it goes:

And why might that be?

Netroots Nation – the annual gathering of the lefty echo chamber in some hapless city – was a massive clot of angry leftybloggers and media types, angrily declaiming their anger.

It was nothing but an anger convention.  There was nothing of any news interest there, beyond the lefty “alt”-media’s apparent need to feel noticed.

In news terms, it’s not even dog bites dog.  It’s dog licks dog.

And RightOnline – a smaller event, as Pusey correctly notes – normally isn’t even that much.

Except for the three serious presidential candidates who spoke.

And the omnipresence of Andrew Breitbart, who broke not only the biggest political story of the past few months – Weinergate – and endured weeks of agenda-based hazing from the establishment media and lefty “alternative” crowd (before being proven 100% correct in every way), and James O’Keefe, who has also launched some newsworthy bombshells [and endured months of agenda-driven hazing from the establishment and lefty “alt” medias (before being proven 100% correct in every way ] was a bit newsworthy too.

Now, it’s not entirely true that there was no news at Netroots.  Breitbart’s hysterically hysterical reception by the Sorosphere’s dingos when he sauntered into the Convention, and the frothing anger at Obama provided the only real “news” at Netroots.

But Breitbart’s promenade was unplanned (or at least the dead-tree media weren’t cc’ed on it), and the anger at Obama – well, it undercuts Pusey’s and “Crooks’…” spin, doesn’t it?  If the Strib were a GOP-leaning rag, they’d be happy to show Obama eroding among the True Believers, woudn’t they?

I thought about ending the post there – but the C’nL “writer” lurched from solipsism into delusion next:

But then I nearly blorted my coffee out onto the rag when I came across Bob Von Sternberg’s loving coverage of the Republican luminaries at the Right Online conference, complete with big pictures of Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, which meant that they not only sent a reporter, there was a Star-Trib photographer there as well. (Von Sternberg wrote a second piece, for online readers, about Right Online as well.

Bob Von Sternberg? This Bob Von Sternberg?  “Loving” conservatives?

In the special little world of the lefty “alt” media, apparently covering the news, to say nothing of the odd fitful attempt at balance, is bias.

6 thoughts on ““Look At Uuuuusssssss!”

  1. before being proven 100% correct in every way

    Heh. I assume the small type is the graphic representation of a dog (gone) whistle. Over/under on response length: 375 words.

  2. The STrib didn’t cover “the many luminaries there” at NutRoots? Gee, I wonder why? I’m sure the paper can afford a flashlight.

  3. When you are morally vain, it makes you angry when people don’t notice your preening. The locus of power has shifted since Bush was in office; if you want to know who is important on the Left, look at who on the Left treats the Netroots with contempt — that would be the Obama administration.

  4. Pingback: The 2011 Shootie Awards! | Shot in the Dark

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