Earth to E.J....
Any regular reader of op-ed pages has learned to expect a healthy dose of nonsense from E. J. Dionne, but this morning's Washington Post piece ("Time to Stand Up to the Right Wing") is just, as P.G. Wodehouse would say, pure drivel from the padded cell. The money quote:
The mainstream media and the Obama administration alike must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its own propaganda to be accepted as news....
Where does one begin? "Cowering"??? Would this be the same Obama who spent much of his first year in office indulging in a massively undignified trash-talk campaign against Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and Republicans in general? Whose own rush to judgment in the Henry Louis Gates case was every bit as precipitous as anyone's has been with Shirley Sherrod? And would this be the same "mainstream media" whose coverage of the 2008 campaign was mocked even by SNL for its fawning obsequiousness toward Obama? Cowering before the right wing?? What planet has this guy been living on?
The whole article reads as though it were written by someone just a bit unhinged -- like something you'd find at the Daily Kos, not at the Washington Post. I've always liked and respected the Post's opinion page; I've felt that, despite a clear liberal bias, they made a good effort to present a wide variety of opinions, and that, left, right, or center, the columnists they ran were usually among the best at their craft. But if they can't find a better, more thoughtful liberal writer than Dionne as one of their mainstays, then either the Post isn't what it once was or the Left has simply run out of reasonable things to say.
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May '10
Re: Earth to E.J....
Far as Dionne is concerned, SNL is probably right-wing. Everything's west if you're standing at the furthest eastern precipice... which is why so many "mainstream" media folks think Dubya is a far right loon and Ezra Klein is a lovable everyman. Herd mentality is tough to overcome, even if your job is to rise above it.
Heck, Tom Friedman regularly describes President Obama as a centrist and openly wishes we could be more like communist China. I rest my case, such as it is.
May '10
Re: Earth to E.J....
First of all, the very headline gave me a heart attack. But after I recovered...
Look, the left had its moment in 2008. When Barack Obama was elected they assumed that the right would fall into the same trance of messianic revelry that they were in and we would all march lockstep into the promised land. And since it obviously didn't work out that way, somebody has to be blamed.
So go ahead. Blame me.
Re: Earth to E.J....
"[E]ither the Post isn't what it once was or the Left has simply run out of reasonable things to say."
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
May '10
Re: Earth to E.J....
It hasn't been all that terribly long since Dionne had a reputation as a thoughtful establishment liberal. I personally always though that reputation wasn't entirely deserved, but Dionne could always count on making the "but he at least makes an effort to be polite about it and listen to the other side" lists.
Goodbye to all that, I think; he's devolved into something close to utter hackery over the past decade or so. If Dionne is a good indicator of how nutty even the "calm" Left is going to get amidst the collapse of The One (and I suspect he is), we're in for some crazy days.