Think you might be a liberaltarian? The Locust Fork has a list of ten beliefs that might mean you are. We direct your attention to number eight: “you believe there should be more bars than churches in the world.”
Given reporters’ propensity for heading out to the nearest watering hole after deadline, perhaps Brent Bozell should start calling it the liberaltarian media.
Speaking of said media, Pew once again reminds us that Americans think they suck. “Perceptions of political bias also have risen over the past two years,” says Pew. On the one hand, “[g]rowing numbers of people question the news media’s patriotism and fairness” and think the press is “too critical of America.” On the other hand, the survey found a sharp increase in Democrats and independents alike who told Pew that reporters were too soft on the Bush administration.
Michael Totten writes that the fact that we now have so many sources of information partially explains the poll results:
Daily newspapers have all sorts of problems that can and ought to be fixed. But even if every one of them were fixed I don’t think they would poll a lot better than they do now. They would still be only one source of information among many. With the explosion of information technologies, daily newspapers — along with every other possible source of information — will remain more easily fact-checked than they ever have been in history. That isn’t the fault of newspapers or journalists. That’s history’s “fault” and technology’s “fault.”
Capitol Buzz notes an op-ed for Catholic Online by Rick Santorum in which he writes of the Catholic priest scandal, “When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”
This Red Sox fan has a question: Did Santorum just suggest that it’s Boston itself that causes all those randy priests to chase little boys?
Hmm. I wonder how the Pennsylvania senator explains this.
Gregory Djerejian notes a Brian Leiter post about “reverse philosophy brain drain.” He writes, “many of America’s best and brightest philosophers are decamping to the saner climes of Canada and the U.K. — leaving these boorish, quasi-fascist Bushian shores behind!” He also goes after a professor named Bryan Frances, who is working on a book on skepticism, and who commented at Leiter’s blog that “[a]fter Bush was reelected, several of my UK colleagues as well as non-academic friends expressed amazement at the stupidity of Americans. I could not offer any defense!”
Here’s Djerejian: “You’d think someone so very clever and versed in all varieties of skepticism might deign to stop for a brief moment and seriously consider why a majority of Americans might have voted for Bush. After all, must it be simply because the pro-Bush voters are all so outrageously bovine and stupid? I had offered some reasons here, for instance, and I don’t think they were constitutive of the rantings of a simpleton, or a crypto-fascist, or some rank imbecile. But in the serried ranks of Leiter and ilk’s world, there is a seeming Hitlerization afoot in these United States …”
Finally, Gawker goes after CNN.com, which led this morning with a story headlined, “Internet transforms modern life.” Why would they lead with such an evergreen? Gawker explains: “Because on a day when 38 people were killed in Iraq, Rumsfeld acknowledged the insurgency there could go on for another 12 years, oil topped $60 a barrel for the first time ever, the administration wants to start making enriched plutonium again for the first time since the end of the Cold War, and the Supreme Court is likely to announce whether it will hear an appeal from two reporters who might have to go to prison for not revealing a confidential source, it’s tough to figure out what to lead with.”
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.