Dear Digby:
You’re right. Most reporters today are in the tank for either the Bush Thesis or the Clinton Anti-Thesis. Nearly all the media is owned by either Republicans or DLC Democrats. We get it. There’s little use moaning about it.
Except for this. The purpose of complaining about the umpires is to build a narrative, namely that the umpires are inherently unfair, that they will never treat you fairly, that they are in the tank for the other side, and you who disagree with the other side need to ignore them.
This is precisely what the reality was 40 years ago, when Movement Conservatism was rising, and this is precisely what movement conservatives did. They created the myth of the "liberal media." And they kept at it, from that day to this.
As a result, many Fox News viewers think even Fox News is liberal.
Note, dear Digby, that people agree with you and I by a roughly 2-1
margin. About nearly everything. About Iraq, about Bush, about business
practices, about education, about the environment. There are a few
issues, like immigration, where the right has more passion, but even
there the "silent majority" is on our side.
How is this possible, given the total unfairness of the media toward
our side? Could it be that the media does not define reality as
completely as the media thinks? Could it be that money is not as
decisive a factor in making peoples’ decisions for them as those with
money think?
In a time of crisis, like this one, no. In a time of crisis you don’t
want to be seen at the side of any umpire. It smells of inauthenticity.
In fact, what Markos Moulitsas needs to do tomorrow, if he’s smart, is
not go after Harold Ford, but go after Tim Russert. Question the
assumptions behind his questions. Call him out. Ford is irrelevant, and
putting Kos next to Ford is, in terms of public opinion, holding a
debate between Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul.
The real debate should be between Kos, or you, or Steve Soto, or Cliff Schecter, and those hacks who got us into this mess with their sycophantic posturing on behalf of this nonsense. Russert specifically, who never told his viewers, for four years, that he was part of the Valerie Plame story, and that he was carrying water for crooks and liars.
The whole idea I need to get across is that you, and everyone in the
Netroots, are in the process of building a new Thesis, a new set of
political Myths and Values on which policy may be based for a full generation.
This is very
difficult to do. What I’ve noticed many doing — you included dear —
is reaching further back in time for inspiration, to the previous
generation, to Abraham, Martin and John.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this is a mistake
because they’re dead. It’s a bit like if William F. 
Buckley, 40 years
ago, were writing about how cool William Borah was.
It doesn’t matter whether William Borah was cool or not. He’s dead. He
was dead then. Just as Abraham, Martin, John and Bobby are dead now.
The name of the game is to build new movements, out of new
issues, new myths which spin new values for living people. Rejecting the umpire is part
of the task. Rejecting current policy is part of the task.
But building new assumptions, and arguing first principles, is more important right now.
More of that, please.
