On the one hand, e.g., the Washington Post is one of the Empire's Publications of Record, and yet is regularly attacked by the Empire's right wing media foot soldiers as being part of the Liberal Media.

I think the Washington Post in particular has become a kind of Kabuki theater of bias versus non-bias. There are so many really extreme right wing columnists writing for their opinion section now it's absurd, and yet from comments by the readers and by the ombudsman and others you get the idea that many still think it's the epitome of the "liberal media".

The absurdity of this can be seen by a glance at their roster, which includes William Kristol, Robert Kagan, George Will, Charles Krauthammer-- and those are only the most glaring extreme right wing examples, added to which are the more straight ahead Republican pundits Richard Cohen, Kathleen Parker, and others.

Just taking someone like William Kristol, who is not only an ideolgue of the extreme right but one of the main voices in an entire political momvement of the extreme right in terms of foreign policy-- the WAPO would have to publish Noam Chomsky, weekly, to even come close to having some claim of "balance" to that. Yet the very idea that they'd publish Chomsky is seen as absurd.

I count a tiny handful of columnists that could even be called moderate, or liberal, or Democratic-leaning, against this long roster of right-wing and conservative writers.

Yet the game goes on: the commenters and the letter-writers (we hear from the ombudsman) are constantly complaining about the left-wing liberal viewpoint of the columnists and opinion writers.

This is emblematic of what happened to the entire country. The small but loud group of Rush Limbaugh listeners complains, the media swings to the right to placate them-- and no matter how many right wing voices they add, the voices never stop complaining that it's still liberal out there. The ombudsman is still getting lots of mail saying that they're too liberal, he makes clear, so they add another right wing voice, until that's nearly all they have.

That's partly how we ended up where we are.

Citing wisdom from the uber-right-wing "lady" Amity Shlaes or from the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel songs, yes how could anyone argue with those sources.

Oy.

I think that pretty much all of these with the exception of 3) is what you can hear espoused on right wing talk radio and Fox cable any day of the week.

That's largely because the one thing on the list that conservatives can relate to, enjoy, and celebrate is drinking alcohol.

It fits my theory that conservatives end up matching liberal views about any given issue (slavery, racism, prohibition of alchohol, wearing your hair long) eventually, it just takes a long time.

I'm not entirely serious here, but almost. People are accused of being Communists for just wanting to put the most rudimentary regulations of the Reagan era back in place, and the religious right (which includes a large percentage of the Republican party right now) are often saying that we need laws restricting gay rights because any given person would "indulge" in gay "behavior" given any encouragement to do so. It's the most bizarre viewpoint imaginable I've always thought, as if every straight man or woman is just being that way out of obedience.

Most straight men I know are like me, obedience has very little to do with my interest in women, thank you very much.

D'oh.

And I'm truly sorry about what's happened to your comments section.

Ditto.

I third that.

I'd love to see Glenn Greenwald move to anywhere but Salon. The number of people who write "I only come here for Greenwald" is impressively large.

@Bill E Pilgrim

That's largely because the one thing on the list that conservatives can relate to, enjoy, and celebrate is drinking alcohol.

Could it also be because it's been tried as a constitutional amendment, and the proof that it leads to a far bigger wave of anti-social behavior is there for all to see?

I'm assuming here by "it" you mean prohibition, not drinking alcohol?

Yes of course. It's part of the notion that it's been around for a while and that they're comfortable with it, have tried doing without it, failed, and so on.

That's sort of my point, like the way that really blatant segregation was openly practiced, now it's not. It caused more trouble for them than it was worth, so they finally adjusted.

They like number 2) because it's an old, traditional, accepted thing now, and no one accuses each other of being a drunk just for wanting to allow the most basic access to it.

(Not sure what action to take, however.)

I think it's something systemic at Salon, unfortunately.

There's no real identity, I mean in the sense of reputation and so on. I've seen the most astonishingly racist, violence-espousing, or just rude, like yesterdays string of people calling each other "idiot" and so on -- comments here, and no one seems to care. I imagine the most vile ones are stricken, but I would have no way of knowing except for a hint or two that this has happened.

Then there's the fact that Salon publishes Camille Paglia, which is a whole other kettle of fish, I won't even try to list the ways that contributes.