Cass Sunstein claims that Fox News and Air America are analogous. This is true up to a point, but that point is a very important one. Air America never claimed to be anything other than an outlet for opinion. Fox News insists on posing as a news outlet, and its major spokespeople in fact *don't* admit that there is a conservative bias to their coverage. They merely claim that they are a "fair and balanced" news channel that is just giving rich, white male conservatives a fair shake for once.

If you get all your news from Air America, I pity you. But no one--including Air America itself--ever said you should. Fox News is a different matter entirely.

The Internet is regulated heavily, by the way: The equivalent of trespass is forbidden. You can't libel people on the Internet.

But you can repeatedly and vehemently claim a person spent $200,000 on full body cosmetic surgery without having a single original verifiable source for the story.

On the Internet, having a "verifiable source" for a story like that just means the rumor was printed on someone else's web page.

You link to that page and voila! You've verified the story.

We now have thousands of pseudo-journalists in our country who have never taken a course on journalistic ethics and probably never will.

I have found that a fairly good antidote against polarization is to socialize with people that are different from me.

I guess I'm different enough that I have been able to do this. In liking and caring for all these different friends, neighbors, family members, coworkers, school parents, etc., I am less able to demonize groups of people.

However, I have also found those who rather don't interact with me at all. And that has been also educational, about me and about them.

In short, when you count among those you care about gays, lesbians, christians, muslims, jews, people born in different continents, cultures, speaking different languages, any statement of hate, gives you pause, as it should. And you grow skeptical of generalizations, as you must.

My advise? Go on and befriend those different from you and you shall be a radical, yet not a extremist!

"In contrast, in 2000 I had high hopes for President Bush. I thought he could be a very good president."

Right there, his credibility is shot. Does he explain on what basis, other than possibly the "I'd like to have a beer with him" phenomenon, he formed this opinion? Aren't academics supposed to provide concrete arguments for their theories?

This guy claims he supports Obama because he eschews the echo chamber, yet Bush, throughout his political life, has surrounded himself with nothing but Kool-Aid drinkers -- and named the biggest of them all as his vice presidential nominee. He rails against the Karl Rove factor, but Rove was there from the beginning, and had already proven himself to be a pernicious, even criminal element in politics by the time Bush's first election rolled around.

It must be nice to be able to view all of politics as a humongous poli-sci experiment, and to gloss over and ignore all of your own misjudgments. Unfortunately, it's the less fortunate who have to live with the consequences of your smug, insular little games.

In the UK the press has a long and glorious history of each paper being the one great truth to its readership. You have the Times, and you have the Guardian. And right up there on the Guardian's masthead is a long diatribe about socialism, the worker's rights blah blah blah. I doubt they even consider themselves a news organ anymore and self label themselves as a vanguard of opinion. You know when you open the Times or the Guardian or the Independent what you're going to get. Same thing in France or Italy with their famous Communist newspapers. There is no news anymore there hasn't been for a very long time. There are only certain fact-like attributes spun in such a way to support wholeheartedly the official line, whatever it is. And the readership is thrilled with it.

I think the big hole in Sunstein's assertion is not that it's real or apparent but that by implication the Internet was going to erase this hardcore self reinforcing narrowminded bias. Do we imagine that the collective readership of Salon would materially change were there no Salon? They'd still hold the same beliefs. What the internet does is allow everyone to grouse about it to a bunch of people who all feel the same way. It's like a 12-Step program without the happiness or hope.

So he has a soft spot for O'Rielly & thought Bush would be a very good president? That's quite a resume. No need to waste my time with this book. Maybe I'll just reread Groupthink instead. As Gore said the other day, some ideas do not deserve equal time. Guess Salon hasn't learned that yet.

This article is written as if objective events have no role in 'polarization.' War, economic disasters and inequalities, the environment, health care, etc. are all objective things that have nothing to do with the media.

Now people are anlayzing the objective situation without the filter of the MS Media. What this guy is bemoaning is the collapse of the 'center' which has controlled the MS media for years. Well, the MS media has gone to the right. And the internet has appeared. So if you are on the 'left' based on objective events, what are you supposed to do? Start watching the middle of the road media again and believing it (which by the way has a political position too...)? Vote for Mr. Nice Guy?

Polarization is good, as it clarifies politics. There has been a class 'war' going on for many years now. Centrist lawyers like Sunstein don't want real democracy, which involves polarization. They represent a middle-class sector that is neither 'rich' nor poor or working class. So of course they equate democracy with being middle of the road, against the 'polarizing' effects of these two opposed class groups.

The Democratic party, for instance, while dominated now by corporate neo-liberals, lost it's southern Dixiecrat wing, which has made ideology more important in the party. The Republicans picked up the DixieRep wing now, which does the same for them. So the main parties, through objective processes, have become more ideological. It's history, not the breakdown of 'democracy.'

Democracy is being destroyed because neither party really represents the majority of the people anymore. The internet is actually promoting democracy by giving those on the outs some kind of organizing power and a voice. Get used to the rabble...