Glenn,

You wrote:

Particularly in a case like this -- which, for obvious reasons, has the potential to be quite inflammatory on a number of levels -- having the major media "report" completely false assertions as fact can be quite harmful. It's often the case that perceptions and judgments about stories like this solidify in the first few hours after one hears about it.

News organizations have multiple reasons to want to "get in early" with this mis-information.

1. It allows some news organizations (more on the Right than the Left) to intentionally bias the situation in favor of their world/political view. When information is malleable (when their is confusion), it can be used to mold the situation into a pre-defined world view.

2. By stoking this confusion and mis-information, the networks can add drama and "unknown!" to the crisis...making it all the more appealing to those viewers who watch this like a car accident happening.

3. The networks benefit from doing this. That's really all there is to it.

As long as feminists still perceive at the world as "men's rules", "men's world", etc, etc...you will continue to see yourselves as the victims who are pushed down and put upon.

Society is made up of both men and women (no, really). We are different...in the way we think, act, behave, dress (and undress). Society has made these "rules" you see through a social construct...not some male cabal. The previous actions of every member of both genders has driven society to where it is now...the collection of our individual actions, from the ground up. Not from some top down male heirarchy.

Yes, within the structure of our society and economy there roles/jobs/lifestyles were the genders are not in balance with each other. If we always zero in on these specifics, we will always find examples of how the playing field is tilted one way or the other. Porn happens to be one of them.

But power is based a lot on perspective. Go to any coffee shop, during working hours, and who is relaxing there? It is 90% women. Why? Because the men who support them are off working. See? I can play this game, too.

When I see terms like "men's rules" when refering to society as a whole, it just makes me realize how much your argument is a strawman.

I think it is interestig that the MSM, who you have shown to so obviously to have given the benefit of the doubt to the previous administration regarding every single situation of mis-information or deceit (and said administration that intentionally abused, and propagated, this trust for their own political ends), now completely mistrusts the gov't, and no longer gives the Obama administration the same benefit of the doubt.

It is almost as if the people running/managing a major portion of the MSM are either afraid of, or friends of, the previous administration.

It really could be just that simple.

I can see from the previous posts that the conservative's astroturf movement of changing the debate, throwing out ad hominem attacks, and intentionally using misleading and false information is not limited to town hall meetings.

From a few previous posts, they are also using teams of people to inundate the blogosphere and news sites to try and artifically inflate the internet outrage.

Too bad they don't see that by artifically inflating their narrow point of view through bully tactics and obfuscation, to only benefit a small portion of our society, they are truly the ones who are anti-democratic.

Glenn...

I think you very succinctly articulated a key fundamental problem with the relationship between the view of Beltway journalists approaching every topic as a multi-sided issue with every side being "valid"(and how this leads to sacrificing core constitutional guarantees for "practical considerations"), and how politicians then use this forum to muddy the waters of our principled 'rights' for their own political gain.

But you missed, in my opinion, the driving force behind both these actions...the drive by major corporations for profit. Corporations can make amazing sums of money when the politicians can take a clear case of right/wrong (take global warming as an example, or the Iraq war...both oil and defense companies are making a lot of money on each), and make it sound like there are two valid sides to it. The politicians can benefit, financially, by donations from these corporations. The media itself has >become< a corporation, and is driven by profit/loss...not by turning off customers who would simply turn to another source if they were not hearing what they wanted to hear.

...and that leads us right square into the most basic problem of this country. Our systematic failure of our educational system to create informed, reasonable and educated citizens. Ones who can hear an argument, and see the discernable difference between right and wrong...Rather than believing that all sides can be right, and thus allowing those whose sole motive is profit to direct policy.