Hiatt wrote in his editorializing against ElBaradei:

...Mr. ElBaradei made headlines by denouncing one secondary piece of evidence, about an alleged Iraqi attempt to obtain fissile material from Niger, as a forgery. But the allegation is not central to the case against Saddam Hussein...

Wow. Tell that one to Dan Rather. The disputed memo in his expose of Bush's going AWOL was also not central to his case against Bush, but Oh, how that crowd howled about it!

"Around here we look for someone who dominates his or her sport,..."

Check. Favre has done this. It's been more than a "nice" season. Brady arguably has been better, but no one expected this of Favre and his very young team.

"...and sports that Americans watch carry more weight than those we ignore

Check.

"... If that dominant performer also separates from the pack, becomes a hot topic around the water cooler, so much the better."

Check. Again, Brady is arguably better, but again, the Patriots have a great offensive line and guys like Randy Moss. Favre has separated himself from the pack, standing only with two or three others; at 38, this is quite an accomplishment. As for the water cooler, I hear no baseball talk at all around our figurative water cooler. I do hear about Favre, and Adrian Peterson, and some others.

So, what's the problem?

Since this is a purely subjective award, I feel fine making purely subjective arguments. That doesn't make me any more of a nerd than you are. The reason I'd argue that Brady isn't a lock for the best QB this season (or ever) is that this is a team sport. Brady simply plays on a much better team. Some of Brady's success must be attributed to a great offensive line, a great receiving corps, a good running game, and possibly the best coach ever to ply his trade in the NFL (and to a ruthlessness and lack of sportsmanship that has provoked a great deal of comment and record fines). What I am arguing is that S.I. can defend their choice. Favre has done very well on a no-name, very young team led by a 2nd year coaching staff. That to me shows his quality, and I doubt any other QB around could have done as well in his place. That he has had a fantastic career certainly doesn't hurt in an award of this sort: it serves to confirm that his great year is no fluke.

Noam Chomski long ago said that our press would be the envy of any totalitarian regime because, unlike Pravda, it could plausibly pretend to be free and objective. Guys like Kurtz and Klein may well be doing us a favour by making the true nature of our press plain as day.

Scorning their own base is how Democrats get their head-pat from the Beltway Establishment, which is, far and away, what they crave most.

El Cid's argument (which Glenn summarizes above, from Update II) is interesting, but it bears pointing out that they didn't get a head pat. They instead got all of those disparaging headlines excerpted in the main post. If that is indeed their motive they are pathetically sad.

For any Republicans out there who still believe the media is liberal or favors the left, this case starkly illustrates why they are wrong.

In 1988, all G. H. W. Bush had to do is mention Willie Horton in a speech, and the media went on a feeding frenzy that lasted weeks. Willie Horton didn't have his sentence commuted by Dukakis. He was participating in a prison furlough program that Dukakis did not start. Dukakis likely had never even heard of Willie Horton!

Now, in 2007, we have a darling of the Republicans and the Religious Right, Huckabee, personally interceding not once, or twice, but many times to release convicted rapists and killers, apparently because they claimed to have embraced Jesus Christ as their saviour (and because they knew the right pastor). The DuMond case is bad enough, but Glen Green? Wow!

Lets see if, in the coming weeks, the "liberal" media goes on a feeding frenzy the way they did with the hapless Dukakis. I'm not holding my breath. Huckabee, unlike Dukakis, is personally responsible for either dereliction of duty or appalling judgement in these cases. But he is a Republican, a Good Christian Man, an Nice Guy, etc. I don't think we'll hear much from them on this matter.

The rest of us, even shooter242, are irrelevant second class citizens. In fact, we are discouraged at every turn from behaving as citizens. We are to be consumers and do as we are told. If we object, we are to be terrified by the Terrorist bogeyman, just like naughty little children. Hence Dubya's post-9/11 exhortation that in these tough times we should sacrifice and--go shopping!

This state exists for the well-being of our corporate class. The bulk of our taxes go to the Military-Industrial complex, to enrich them and to make the world safe for their depredations. When our bridges collapse, our schools run out of funds, and our health care system fails us, we're told: tough; money is tight. Meanwhile, Haliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater et. al. get billions of our money for mismanaging the Iraq "reconstruction." And our telcos are paid hundreds of millions of our dollars to help the corporate class keep the second class citizens in line. All for our own good, of course.

The sad thing is that so many of us naively believe that this is what "Freedom" is.