Friday, May 07, 2010

WASHINGTON POST shifts leftward online. Er, Politico left out a word: ‘more’, between ‘shifts’ and ‘leftward’. What follows is a long - and sometimes convoluted - discussion of marketing strategy, and hidden deeply is this little nugget:

[The Post’s Ezra] Klein ... who argues that while the market for news and opinion is saturated, demand for ... “analysis and explanation” remains high.
I think he’s wrong. The market for opinion, analysis, and explanation is saturated; the market for news is not. In fact, at present the ‘news’ is so saturated with opinion, analysis, and explanation that there’s hardly any news left.

I’m reminded of the old (Texas) joke about the man who was so full of sh*t that when he died, they gave him an enema and buried him in a matchbox. The same could be said of the media: if all the ‘opinion, analysis, and explanation’ were wrung out, the Washington Post could be printed on a single sheet.

Read it all.
NEW YORK TIMES, seizing on fear, pushes civil rights restrictions.

But not their civil rights.
“POLITICS IS A RELIGION, never more so than in the case of Obama. And true believers always prefer the saintly explanation rather than the most logical.”

Or, as I would put it in the converse, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

There’s more; read it all.
LUCKY IN NEW YORK. And according to our current counter-terrorism policy, when New York is finally nuked, the police will catch the terrorists – if there are any police left. They will be prosecuted - if there are any courts left. They will be convicted - if there are any jurors left to convict them. And they will be jailed – if any jails remain to hold them.

And we will be happy that our democratic ideals remained intact.
WASHINGTON POST: Tea Party battles perception of racism.
In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most Americans see the movement as motivated by distrust of government, opposition to the policies of Obama and the Democratic Party, and broad concern about the economy. But nearly three in 10 see racial prejudice as underlying the tea party.
Oh, wow! Three in 10. That’s a significant ..., uh, significant ... uh, minority?

Follow the embedded links. And there’s more at Instapundit.
FLACCID BRAINS: my only complaint is that the term ‘flaccid brain’ presumes there’s a brain to begin with.
SARAH PALIN MAKES SENSE. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart agrees with Sarah Palin that offshore drilling for oil must continue.

Occasionally the Post’s editorialists can afford to buy a clue.
THEY’RE NOT RACISTS; THEY’RE NOT VIOLENT: Tea Partiers are “aloof elitists, out of touch with America’s common man.”

My, my ....