I am a freethinker. As such, I am an equal-opportunity offender: on this blog, anyone who threatens or tramples on the Enlightenment values which are the foundation of our way of life is fair game. I call ‘em as I see ‘em.

This site is intended to stimulate thought and reasoned debate.

It is not a hate site.

When I see a comment that threatens to shut down debate, I delete it.

Just so you know.

Howard Kurtz signaled last Sunday that the media will soon get more critical (and combative) in covering the Democrats, and he explained it as a matter of the media being drawn to conflict for narrative purposes—it’s much easier to draw in an audience when you have ready-made hot, high-stakes conflicts between known protagonists and antagonists.

William Powers takes his explanation for the phenomenon one step further:

The hive is buzzing because a Democratic Congress is better for journalism. What!?? you say. Journalists really prefer Democrats? Yes, but not for the reasons you’ve heard — covert pinkoism and so on.

Obviously, a divided government is full of the tensions that produce headlines. But a Democratic Congress is also anthropologically different from a Republican Congress — messier, louder, looser-lipped, more colorful, newsier, and, for the media class’s purposes, more fun.

Here’s his rundown of why (quotes are snipped by me) the media will be following the stories and why we’ll be watching:

Running Congress brings out the best (creative chaos) and the worst (destructive chaos) in Democrats.

infighting: To get ahead, [the Democrats] didn’t need to beat the GOP so much as beat one another within the institutions they dominated. Even today, they often seem more interested in warring among themselves than against the other party.

While Republicans seem to know basically who they are and what their purpose is, modern Democrats are filled with doubt. They are the Hamlets of politics, unsure whether to act — or how. Even what to call themselves is an issue.

When Democrats are in power, there’s a huge incentive for reporters not to appear too sympathetic and thereby confirm the old liberal-bias charge. Thus, despite the friendly coverage we’re seeing in this honeymoon period, the Democratic restoration will eventually produce tougher coverage than we saw of the GOP Congress, as media outlets strive to prove that they aren’t soft on the Democrats.***

Democrats are always on the edge of comedy. There’s a madcap, Marx Brothers quality to this party. Remember the Dean Scream? Kerry’s goof about education and the war was another classic flub, a pratfall tinged with darkness.

Let the party begin!

hear, hear.

———
*** I think he’s right about this when it comes to the MSM, but it will not be true of the left blogosphere.

This is rich.

Margaret Hodge, a British cabinet minister who claims to have disagreed with Tony Blair’s foreign policy since 1998, has accused him of following a policy of “moral imperialism”—i.e., “exporting British attitudes and ideas to other countries,” according to The Times (London), which also reports that she later denied having made this remark.

Whether or not she actually said this is, frankly, irrelevant. It’s what Blair has been challenging, in speech after speech, as stubborn and bizarre Western “opinion.” Implicit in Hodge’s controversial remark is her perspective—that the West’s values are alien and unwelcome in the rest of the world and that we’re bullying people and trying to shove these things down “their” throat.

I was going to write a high-toned, morally outraged post, with links to Tony Blair’s most recent speech in defense of Western values and Shelby Steele’s Essay “White Guilt and the Western Past.” Oops—I guess I just did.

Perhaps I can make amends by offering up an example of what I consider to be moral imperialism: MSNBC’s breathless Special on Scientology, featuring TomKat, the Camera-ready Castle at Bracciano, fashions by Giorgio Armani, guest list by [insert name of Cruise's PRopaganda (TM) Team here: they have just earned themselves a gigantic bonus, 'cause The Glamorous Scientology Wedding of TomKat has totally hijacked the airwaves], with stupendously reverent questions by anchor Alex Witt and soothing responses from the Rev. John Carmichael (”Church of Scientology”)