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June 27, 2003 I almost feel bad for the Liberals (caps intended – you know, the ones who like to identify everyone with capital letters). They keep trying to sell a tired bill of goods that has been repudiated by most of America and repackage it as something different. Their latest attempt at self-immolation is better known as “ The Gore-ing of America”- coming soon to a major media outlet near you. The New York Times reported recently that Al Gore is soliciting financial backers for a liberal media outlet to counter what he considers the right wing “dominance” of the major media in this country. The fact that this was reported in the liberal beacon of the United States was ironic enough let alone the fact that Mr. Gore and the liberal cadre of pundits that have since chimed in with their full-throated support were given full coverage throughout the week. This past week Bill Press threw in with a full slate of the usual liberal delusions about the major media and its purveyors. Mr. Press spelled out, among other juicy revelations that MSNBC is “ right of center “ and CNN is “ middle of the road”. I needn’t mention what he had spelled out for Fox News. I believe a lot of the tit for tat arguments that have flown back and forth in the last week about who’s biased in the media and who controls what have been made irrelevant largely by the medium we all share- the Internet. It’s probably time that conservatives stop complaining about liberal dominance of the media but the liberal griping about conservative control of certain sectors completely misses the point. But since Mr. Gore and friends have stirred the debate, game on! Mr. Gore, et al, believe that right-wingers control the major media for two major reasons. One is that “evil” corporations, especially News Corp, own them. The other is that no liberal medium has succeeded. The latter reason fits neatly into the liberal zero sum worldview, which dictates that if a liberal doesn’t have something, then a conservative must have stolen it or lied about it. It jibes with the same questionable logic that dictates that since we haven’t found any WMD in Iraq yet, President Bush must have lied about them. The former reason needs no explanation. In order to believe what Mr. Gore believes, you would need to believe that Rupert Murdoch and the other CEO’s of the other corporations that own the major news outlets have time to call each of their managing editors every day and tell them what to report. Either that, or they’ve all drunk the corporate Kool-Aid, so to speak, and know how to tow the company line. Neither explanation takes into account what has really taken place and what liberals consistently deny – that there’s no marketplace for these ideas. You see, more than anything else, these corporate media barons are risk averse. They give the people what we want. Contrary to popular belief, liberal media personalities have been trotted out and have (mostly) failed in the cruel, competitive marketplace of ideas that is the American media. For liberals to complain about conservative bias on television is seriously delusional, but they also complain about Rush Limbaugh’s dominance on the radio. There are two simple reasons for that: Liberals have no new ideas. Quick, when the last great liberal policy initiative? If you said sometime in the Johnson Administration, you would be close. I’m not even talking about good ideas- just any ideas at all that didn’t constitute a response to a Republican initiative. How can any liberal expect to talk 10-15 hours a week about…………….what? How mean Republicans are? How Republicans are stealing from the poor and giving to the rich? Even if you believe that, would you listen to that for more than five minutes? It sound like a constant loop of a John Kerry/ Michael Dukakakis/ Walter Mondale stump speech-, which is kind of the point. For all of the talk of the Democrats being the progressive party, they haven’t had a new idea in years. Even some Democratic pollsters are starting to acknowledge this. School choice, voucher programs, welfare reform, and tax cuts- these are all Republican grass roots ideas that are generally accepted now. The Democrats have been forced into me-tooism and complaining as policy. It’s a bit difficult to compete in the marketplace of ideas if you don’t have any. The other problem is most liberals take themselves too seriously. That has been Limbaugh’s greatest success is educating half of a generation of listeners while making them laugh. Does Ralph Nader elicit any chortles from you? How about Howard Dean? Michael Moore and Al Franken are smarmy bullies who insult in lieu of legitimate debate. A liberal version of Bill O’Reilly might gain some ground but Phil Donahue tried that recently and got eaten alive. The major reason liberals have forgotten how to develop a message over the last twenty five years is that they’ve spent that time buying off different interest groups with disparate, often singular, issues at the expense of a unifying theme. A party that stands for everything and anything stands for nothing. Until the Democrats bolster their grass roots organizations and leave behind the politics of pandering to every divisive interest group under the sun they will have to live with controlling the largest newspaper in the world, Hollywood, most metropolitan dailies’ editorial pages, most of academia, most of the federal bureaucracy, the teacher’s unions, and the entire state of California. I almost feel sorry for them. ------------ Email Jamie Moulthrop: jmoulthrop@comcast.net Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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