E.J. Dionne’s got a completely legitimate claim that traditional media provides Newt and Rush a platform far broader than they deserve:
If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don’t. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.
But he gets to a more important point, I think:
For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media’s discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.
And finally:
Democrats love to think that Limbaugh and Gingrich are weakening the conservative side. But guess what? By dragging the media to the right, Rush and Newt are winning.
This isn’t a new strategy. And it isn’t limited to national politics.
John Doe
You. Are. Insane. The reason Rush gets so much attention is because all the left-leaning liberals are attacking him. When they aren’t ridiculing him.
James Young
I LOVE starting off the day with a good belly laugh!
MB
Nobody gives a shit what you think, John.
~
And James, well, that’s why you prefer to live in an imaginary world. It makes you happy.
John Doe
Be nice, MB, James and I are probably the only people who bother to read your pathetic blog.
MB
I bet you could really hurt my feelings if you cut that audience in half. Try it!
Plin
Am I a terrible person for being amused by your hecklers?
As for the post, well, yeah. That’s been going on for at least a couple of decades, now. I’d have to search for them, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read a couple of academic articles on the topic as well. Or at least seen conference presentations of research.
MB
My own suspicion is that it really got rolling in ’94. But I’d only really started paying attention to politics a few years before, so I might lack a broader perspective.
That said, the whole strategy of “Ha, if we say some *really* crazy shit, everyone will think that the merely crazy shit is a reasonable middle ground.” really came into its own during the Clinton impeachment. I got a front row seat to that, and am ashamed to say that I was sorta suckered by it.
Plin
See, I was going to say that sometimes I consider myself lucky for having been spared a lot of political nastiness while living abroad.
But then you had to go and post that item about Berlusconi (a Nobel Peace Prize? seriously?), and I am reminded of what I did have to put up with. More than once.
So now I’m just back to my default state of being depressed about politics, period.
Amit
the media simply biased. Faux News is biased to the “right” while MSNBC to the “left”, etc. characters like Limbaugh help ratings so they get covered. remember when Michael Moore used to get interviewed about health care?