Every time I hear about how unfair the media is to conservatives I recall the slam bang job it did of questioning George W. Bush's justifications for going to war with Iraq. I remember reading statistics that say that for every person on CNN or FOX questioning going to war, there were at least nine in favor of it.

And of course, don't forget what a great job the main stream media did of investigating Bush's presidency.

I don't think that the media is conservative or liberal. I think it consists of a bunch of gutless wonders who are pro whoever is in power at the time.

I would however like to start out by saying I think this is a good idea in theory. If for no other reason then because I could never see a conservative site or pulbication doing the same. At least we end up looking like the grown ups by attempting to bridge the divide. Now to the downside. The William Aires incident. Whether the writer realizes it or not, he is confirming a left wing stereotype with this statement:

"But put yourself in our shoes. Let's say a Republican presidential candidate had attended an event at the home of an activist who, 20 or 30 years prior, had led a group involved in bombing abortion clinics or black churches in the American South. Do you think for one minute the relationship between the candidate and host would not have been investigated to the nth degree? Can you blame us for being a little upset?"

So what your saying is the only reason you went after a connection that, by your own admission, may have been weak at best, was to get some backhanded revenge for the media going after supposed right wing politicians connections. This is exactly the way we suspected you people thought. Trying to link two people you already know have no connection for the sake of political gain. In the real world we call that corruption. Yes, when you pull stunts like that, we can blame you.

If you feel like the media doesn't give you guys a fair shake I suppose that's fine but trying to link two people who you know have nothing in common except some obscure board membership is not the way to fix it. Just because they refuse to go after a connection that doesn't exist is not some personal slight against you. You should have thought of that before you tried to blow it up. As for the rest of your complaints, I find them weak.

The right wing has all of talk radio and your own news network to get your message out. Most of which goes unchallenged by the rest of the media. Know which network called Florida for Bush in 2000 first? Yep, Fox. And the rest followed thier lead. Bill O'Rielly gets regular spots on the TODAY SHOW and THE VIEW. Ditto Coulter. Despite what you may want to beleive, MSNBC doesn't have nearly as much influence over the larger political narrative in this country that Fox does. Real investigative journalism is dead in America. That is largely because of the fear of a liberal bias label. And of course the way all of the media just rolled over for the Iraq war. If anything, we on the left see the media as inept and cowardly.

So to summerize your article correctly, you are basically admitting that the GOP knows they are lying when they blame the media for their failures. This is exactly why I don't think this series will work out in the long run. If all you are going to do is admit that, yes, conservatives really are as corrupt as we think they are.

It's not enough that you have Camille Paglia spreading conservative doctrine under the cover of being a Democrat. You now have an admitted conservative spreading conservative doctrine.

And, surprise surprise, he cherry-picks a few things that make it seem as if the "MSM" is slanted towards liberals. I am certain it would be possible to ignore the overwhelming pro-conservative evidence of the last eight (or is it thirty?) years and make it seem like the media is pro-Socialist, or pro-Marxist, or even pro-Nazi, if you just pick the right stories.

Let's get Limbaugh and Hannity to write for Salon too. That'll teach them there 'Publicans.

A couple of things, conservative. First, the idea that the media is left leaning is far from a settled question. On certain issues you can certainly claim that the media tends to be to the left: the level of bigoted homophobia, for example, tends to be lower amongst members of the media than the population in general. Conversely, there are issues on which that the media tends to be skewed to the right: free trade, labor relations, and just about anything to do with establishment power earns the unquestioning support of media figures.

Second, your umbrage about the lack of attention given to Ayers would be much easier to sympathize with if you weren't totally, totally wrong. Ayers got far more coverage than McCain's much closer and more recent association with Gordon Liddy, a man just as much a "terrorist" as William Ayers.

You also leave out the massive number of concessions given to John McCain. No examination of his wife's drug problem. No examination of his messy first marriage. No examination of how lunatic many of his positions were. No examination of his staggering ignorance of the history of the war in Iraq (the surge caused the Anbar awakening? Really?). Total forgiveness of the many, many lapses in judgment in McCain's carrer. No examination of Hagee, which is particularly galling given how much attention was paid to the ultimately less offensive Wright.

This is, of course, ignoring how relatively easy Palin had it. Do you really think that the media would've refrained from passing judgment on Barack if he and Michelle Obama had had an unmarried, pregnant 17 year old daughter (leaving out the inevitable tut-tutting over the Levi equivalent)? Would the media have ignored totally the bullying and comically unprofessional way Palin conducted herself had she been a Democrat? I mean, we heard more than a little whispering about Obama's connections to the Chicago establishment; how can his relatively innocent actions as a state senator merit more attention than the (charitably) borderline illegality that Palin perpetrated in her reign?

The Republicans have, as you say, themselves to blame for 2006 and 2008. Despite this, it is taken on faith by many that the media is in the tank for the Democrats. This is wrong. The media has many, many failings, but to claim that it is systemically friendlier to Democrats, end of story, just flies in the face of the larger picture painted in the last 10 to 15 years.