…that Air America will teach conservatives who always complain about the liberal bias at CNN what real liberal bias looks — or at least sounds — like?
They’re still working out the rough patches, but lord I hope they prosper. It’s not as bad these days, but there have been points over the past three years when this little piece of public ground I occupy, over here on the left side of things, has been a lonely place indeed. When this cartoon ran, less than a month after The Events Of, asking — very reasonably, I thought — the basic question, why do they hate us? — well, from the email I got in response, you would have thought that I had advocated surrendering to al Qaeda and immediately installing Osama bin Laden as supreme ruler of the United States. One of the more mild correspondents wrote, with apparent sincerity, “I know you live in New York — surely you do not support the terrorists?”
Sigh.
I had dinner with Ted Rall the other night, and we were talking about how people always say to us, “You’ve sure got plenty of material these days.” Rall made a good point, which is that there may be plenty of material, but it’s pretty damned tedious — it’s as if we’re stuck in political Kindergarten, constantly having to restate the obvious: Democrats are NOT traitors!
Well, duh.
Yes, stupidity like that is always grist for the mill. But it can turn on you, and grind you down, when you’re immersed in it from the moment you turn on your computer in the morning til the moment you pack it in at the end of the day. There are a hell of a lot of people saying a hell of a lot of stupid things these days, and unfortunately, well-reasoned and nuanced pieces on even-the-liberal-NPR are simply not an effective counterweight. Especially when NPR is as likely as not to present a conservative commentator’s view of things, because the last thing anyone wants in this day and age is to be tarred as — gasp — liberal.
So it’s a good thing that there’s a loud, rambunctious, feisty (and, yes, mainstream) liberal radio network. I don’t care if I agree with every damn thing every host says or not — I’m just glad they’re out there, helping to nudge the public debate back to some measure of sanity.
With any luck, maybe we can work our way back up to political first grade.
(Editing.)