People used to say that the media weren’t really right wing, but were just sucking up to Bush because they worship power and success. But if that were true, we should be seeing them sucking up to Obama and the Democrats now. They aren’t. Instead, what we’re seeing on TV these days is more of the same: President McCain, and President Boehner, and President Lindsey Graham, and President Snowe, and President Gingrich, and a couple of dozen other Republican Presidents. The slant has scarcely changed at all.
One of the reasons I gave up on America is the feebleness of the Democratic and liberal response to the increasingly conservative slant of the media. We’re long past the time when it made sense to be surprised by anything they do, and we should understand by now that they know what they’re doing and are going to keep on doing it. Squeals of rage about their egregious dishonesty, incompetence, and nastiness just make them laugh.
Coincidently, over at SEK’s place, Rich Puchalsky says something similar about engaging winguts:
What really tires me out about these posts is how strenuously you argue against whatever nonsense you’re writing about. Look, you say, I will painstakingly trace back through the process and show that it is constitutional at every stage! It’s like a rigorous, logical proof, following from simple first principles, that a shit-throwing monkey should not in fact throw shit at people.
John says liberals should stop being surprised at the media being rightwing, Rich says they should stop being surprised about lying wingnuts. Both have a point. The liberal blogosphere has long had a problem with realising that rightwing bias and wingnut lying are not abberations that can be corrected through reasoned debate, that they continue to occur because they’re profitable. Wingnut makes for good copy, while rightwing commentary is rewarded by advertisers where leftwing commentary is not. This is not a new development and those who object to Chomsky teaching them this, should take a look at A. J. Liebling, showing the same influences at work twenty years earlier. Hell, the same dynamics were already at work in the original yellow press.
Both socialists and anarchists have long known that you cannot ask for change, you need to force change on your opponents one way or another. Liberals, unlike rightwingers have failed to internalise this message because they’ve been in charge for so long and had had teh real left to fight their battles for them. Now that they find themselves cast out as well, it’s high time they learned it.