I read the book Bias in two days; I couldn't put it down. Goldberg's argument is that the media skews left not because of some conspiracy but because those in the media don't recognize their worldview as being liberal; they simply see themselves as rational and reasonable. The problem is that a big chunk of America doesn't see the world the way they do.

My husband and I saw a good example of this subtle liberalism in the media on our vacation. We were watching Dateline in the hotel, a segment on gay adoption. The story of two lesbians opened with "It was a fairy tale romance..." My husband guffawed, "I don't know what fairy tales they've been reading!" I personally don't have any problem with homosexuals, and in select cases I don't have a problem with gay adoption, but I do raise my eyebrows at lesbian romance being called "fairy tale". Who wrote that line? And how many people let it slide? Did no one see how odd it sounds? Roughly half of the US population doesn't support gay adoption and probably doesn't consider lesbians to be the stuff of tales and legends. But to the liberals in the media, this statement was unobjectionable.

Yesterday I saw a Law & Order: SVU that made me cringe. The episode, called "Hate", featured the death of two Muslims. Guess who did it? Yep, some crazy white kid. Oh, and not like sleeper-cell Muslims; these two were members of an organization where Muslims and Jews work together in harmony. So this white kid kills two of the most sympathetic Muslims in NYC, and then in his uncontrolable rage he stomps to death another Arab in his holding cell. See how racist white people are?

And then the kicker. The DA's office is discussing whether they should charge this guy under hate crime laws. The police captain says that they should because obviously this man "acted out of hate, that matters." The ADA balked, saying that she hesitates to invoke the hate crime legislation too often because of the slippery slope effect. "What if a black man kills a klansman or a gay man kills a homophobe -- where do we draw the line?"

Come again?

Obviously I'm not as rational and reasonable as the show's liberal writers. I personally subscribe to the South Park school of thought when it comes to hate crime laws, but if we're going to have them, then of course I think a black man killing a klansman or a gay man killing a homophobe should count. The underlying message this ADA was sending was that there's a right and wrong way to hate: if a klansman kills a black man, well that's atrocious, but if the black man kills the klansman, well that's justified. What a bunch of BS.

Things like this are the subtle liberal ideas that pervade our media. It is accepted as a given that lesbians live happily ever after and black men should be given some leeway if they kill a racist. Those are the little digs that make me want to shut the TV off and stand barefoot in the kitchen.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:50 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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