Posted 11:48 AM by Robert

Herr Doktorprofessor Tells The Truth!

Today, Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Von Krugman tells the truth!

Of course, it's not the whole truth or nothing but the truth - so, if he had said it under oath it would technically be perjury - but, still, it's a start! The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!

And it is both an important truth that Herr Doktorprofessor is telling and one that has been noted by the Man Without Qualities in a prior post. In fact, for the first time it is possible to summarize the worthwhile portion of one of Herr Doktorprofessor's columns by quoting from a Man Without Qualities post:

The current state of mainstream liberal media political coverage is substantively Gonzo, written by people who (by the Pew poll) increasingly admit their orientation but (by the Carroll speech) still cling to the fiction of their professional and institutional accuracy. The next step, of course, is full-fledged, overt, out-of-the-closet liberal Gonzo journalism in the currently accepted meaning (not the Thompson original meaning) of that term: inaccurate, crazy, essentially a license for liberal journalists to write anything they want.

Herr Doktorprofessor says it his own way. First comes the admission that current mainstream liberal coverage has already gone Gonzo:

But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The [New York] Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush. People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness. But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable.

So very true. That's just what the mainstream media have been doing recently. One may not be one of his fans, but one has to admit that when Herr Doktorprofessor is right he's right. And he's also dead-on when he notes that mainstream media is in the process of overtly casting off what he terms the "tyranny of evenhandedness." How else to achieve true Gonzo bliss?

Of course, it is not necessary to tarry for more than a moment over the rest of his spin and explanations. His suggestion that the Times or mainstream liberal media ever broadly presented Mr. Bush as a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness is just delusional in the standard-issue Herr Doktorprofessor fashion. Yes, it is a little peculiar (even for him) to suggest that the New York Times has presented Mr. Bush as a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness with respect to what Herr Doktorprofessor terms the President's "budget arithmetic," or that the Times has not been "willing to check his budget arithmetic." And, of course, the Times and the rest of the liberal media were very hostile to Mr. Bush's decisions to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, and indulged in quite a bit of challenge to the President's bona fides at the time. For example, before the Afghan war there was the looming Afghan "quagmire," and that deadly Afghan winter that would exacerbate it, whose risk the President the mainstream media repeatedly reminded us was not admitting. Herr Doktorprofessor tells us we're just imagining that - and so much more.

His argument that reporters on the Times and other liberal media have been silenced by "intimidation" is mostly a bizarre insult to such reporters. How many Times reporters, for example, would be willing to accept this characterization of their intestinal fortitude:

After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers.

Herr Doktorprofessor writes so well! One can practically hear the Times reporters whining to each other in the powder room off the newsroom floor: "O-O-O, I can't report something negative about the President - or Sean Hannity might disagree with me on television, maybe mention my name! Or I might get a nasty e-mail! ... By the way, am I getting a pimple here?" Who knew that Herr Doktorprofessor considered the Times reporters to be such gutless wonders? And it would be hilarious to survey the Times reporters to determine how many of them are in agreement with Herr Doktorprofessor's charge that they censored their reporting out of what Herr Doktorprofessor calls "misplaced patriotism," or will admit that they "reach[ed] a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief" or that the Bush administration played them "like a fiddle."

But, relative to Herr Doktorprofessor's overall precarious mental condition, such evidence of further marginal deterioration is but detail! The important thing is that Herr Doktorprofessor understands and has come to tell us all that (1) mainstream liberal media reporting has now gone Gonzo ("A new Pew survey finds 55 percent of journalists in the national media believing that the press has not been critical enough of Mr. Bush, compared with only 8 percent who believe that it has been too critical. More important, journalists seem to be acting on that belief."), and (2) they're casting off that old tyranny of evenhandedness fig leaf - unafraid to let the world at large see what they've got and what they're made of!

This is important stuff. As Alcoholics Anonymous has long counseled: Recovery often can only begin after the dipsomaniac has hit bottom and admitted what he has become. That may now be happening for the liberal media. As with so many of "his" academic economic insights, Herr Doktorprofessor may not have been the first to see what is happening, but he has now popularized the observation.

And that matters.

Of course, one problem for what Herr Doktorprofessor hopes to gain from all of this is that there are now other places for consumers of news to obtain quite a different spin and explanation for the truths to which he admits here - including those dreaded right-wing pundits and publications before whom he thinks liberal reporters cower. In other words, the public is very likely now to figure out what the liberal media are up to - thereby depriving them of the credibility and influence that the modest, discarded tyranny of evenhandedness provided. Indeed, even Herr Doktorprofessor's own truthful admissions on the subject help to advance that process of public education. And for that we truly owe him our thanks.

Odd, though, that he misses the economic point that it's cheaper for the media companies to have reporters just write their biases than actually go out and find news. Isn't he supposed to be an economist or something?

POSTSCRIPT: Curiously, the Times' own analysis of what it now says were deficiencies in some of its Iraq coverage specifically rejects attempts by "some critics" (apparently including of Herr Doktorprofessor, in advance) to place the blame on individual reporters acting under any incentives - which would seem to include "intimidation" of individual reporters, or "misplaced patriotism" of individual reporters, or any of the rest of Herr Doktorprofessor's silly litany:

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

Gee. Editors "intent on rushing scoops" without incurring the costs of fact-checking and follow-up? That's another way of saying that the problem was mostly caused by editors trying to increase production while minimizing costs: the very economic incentive approach Herr Doktorprofessor leaves lying untouched. The Times note to its readers was written by Executive Editor Bill Keller and Managing Editor Jill Abramson. Those worthies would do well to ponder that their own economic instincts and insights here are considerably more acute than those of Herr Doktorprofessor, especially when they proceed to the next logical step of their analysis: exactly why did the Times have policies and procedures in place that encouraged its editors to cut such corners? Profit maximization, anyone? Or was it "agency costs," perhaps? Any parallel here with the Jayson Blair fiasco? (Howell Raines, who was Times executive editor during that period [from October 2001 through May 2003], objected to the editors' note, calling it "vague and incomplete" and saying a broader examination was warranted. In a statement on www.poynter.org, the journalism Web site, he wrote that faulty reporting did not result from a desire for scoops: "No editor did this kind of reckless rushing while I was executive editor." Amazing.) Neither the Times nor anyone else gets the useful answer without asking the correctly focused questions. No help there from Herr Doktorprofessor.

And given his paucity of insight, they would also do well to ponder exactly why they think the Times needs Herr Doktorprofessor on its staff.

Posted 5:12 PM by Robert

Pathetic ... And Bound To Lose XLIV: Bar-B-Q Poll

Yes, the pornographers posing as concerned editors continue to flog the Abu Ghraib story, and, yes, the unrelenting assault has taken a minor ding out of the President's lead over John Kerry. But all that will mean essentially nothing much in November.

What will mean something, especially for the large number of voters who aren't now paying any particular attention to politics, and won't until much closer to election day, is that John Kerry, personally, is personally a loathsome jerk. This is not my personal opinion. This is an objective fact. His hateful, self-destructive comment "did the training wheels fall off" is just the most recent bit of evidence in an already overwhelming case.

And voters eventually understand all that. As people get to know John Kerry, they almost always tend to dislike him personally with greater and greater intensity, and the idea of actually spending time at a barbecue with the man is something only the most devoted Democratic partisan could stomach:

Voters would rather flip burgers and drink beer at a backyard barbecue with President Bush than Sen. John Kerry, according to a national poll that found Bush leading Kerry on "regular guy" qualities. Half of the registered voters surveyed said they would rather have a barbecue with Bush, while 39 percent chose Kerry and 11 percent either didn't know or would not answer the question posed by Quinnipiac University pollsters. More voters also would trust Bush, 46-41, to run the family business.

Of course, that John Kerry is personally a loathsome jerk does not by itself guaranty that George Bush will be returned to the White House. But it stacks the deck pretty well. And, as far as quality barbecue time, have I got the guy for you.

Posted 1:10 PM by Robert

Potentially Key Facts

E-mailed today from a friend:

1. The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma. [MWQ Note: In an eerie coincidence, my 5-year old son only last night said that a mosquito sucking blood from his arm was like his sucking the liquid inside young coconuts through a straw!]

2. No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times.

3. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.

4. You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

5. Oak trees* do not produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age or older.

6. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

7. The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.

8. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class.

9. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

10. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.

11. The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. So did the first "Marlboro Man."

12. Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

13. Pearls melt in vinegar.

14. The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser, in that order [UPDATE: - or maybe Coca-Cola, Microsoft and IBM, in that order.]

15. It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

16. A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

17. Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least six (6) feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. (I keep my toothbrush in the living room now!)

18. Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first U.S. president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second? William Jefferson Clinton.

And the best for last.....

19. Turtles can breathe through their butts.

______________________________
* Fact (5) may be intended to refer just to the familiar red and white oaks. I am informed by a reader - apparently an oak cognoscente - that burr oaks are acorn prodigious prodigies. More generally, I have not personally verified any of these facts.

UPDATE: Some fact checking links have been added. But I don't vouch for anything!

Posted 1:10 PM by Robert

Nancyboys III: Poor L'il Dewey

Female moral hegemony? Worse and worse.

Yet the women and feminist writers remain silent!

Posted 9:03 AM by Robert

Moore v. Clarke

Richard Clarke is a hero, right? A whistle-blower of the sort sainted by Michael Moore, right?

Well,

In an interview with The Hill yesterday, Richard Clarke claimed sole responsibility for authorizing the post-9/11 flight that allowed many of Osama bin Laden's relatives to leave the country.

The mystery of who authorized the flight has been a staple of the Michael Moore left for some time now, especially since 9/11 Commission Chairman Lee Hamilton mentioned publicly that the commissioners had asked the question at least "50 times" but had never gotten an answer. They have one now. Or do they?

In the interview Clarke said:

“I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again...”

"It [authorization of the flight] didn’t get any higher than me. On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”

But Clarke's response seems to contradict his public testimony before the 9/11 Commission:

“The request came to me, and I refused to approve it,” Clarke testified. “I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the — at the time — No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved … the flight.”

“That’s a little different than saying, ‘I claim sole responsibility for it now,’” Roemer said yesterday.

However, the FBI has denied approving the flight.

FBI spokeswoman Donna Spiser said, “We haven’t had anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights.”

“We did know who was on the flights and interviewed anyone we thought we needed to,” she said. “We didn’t interview 100 percent of the [passengers on the] flight. We didn’t think anyone on the flight was of investigative interest.”

When Roemer asked Clarke during the commission’s March hearing, “Who gave the final approval, then, to say, ‘Yes, you’re clear to go, it’s all right with the United States government,’” Clarke seemed to suggest it came from the White House.

“I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference,” Clarke testified. “I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don’t know. The two — since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff’s office.”

Instead of putting the issue to rest, Clarke’s testimony fueled speculation among Democrats that someone higher up in the administration, perhaps White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, approved the flights.

“It couldn’t have come from Clarke. It should have come from someone further up the chain,” said a Democratic Senate aide who watched Clarke’s testimony.

Clarke’s testimony did not settle the issue for Roemer, either.

“It doesn’t seem that Richard Clarke had enough information to clear it,” Roemer said Monday.

“I just don’t think that the questions are resolved, and we need to dig deeper,” Roemer added. “Clarke sure didn’t seem to say that he was the final decisionmaker. I believe we need to continue to look for some more answers.”

There's more ... and Moore. Ah, ya' gotta love those Mooreian shadowy connections!

Posted 8:11 AM by Robert

Jobs, Anyone?

Gregg Easterbrook advances the hoary notion that more national gasoline taxes create all kinds of benefits (and Andrew Sullivan is happy, too). Mr. Easterbrook argues in part:

Had federal gas taxes gone up 50 cents a gallon 10 years ago, several things might not have happened or would have had far less impact. The S.U.V. and pickup-truck crazes would not have occurred, or at least these vehicles would be much less popular; highway deaths would have been fewer; and gasoline demands would be lower as would oil imports. ....

The consequences of using the tax system to create the supposed "benefits" Mr. Easterbrook posits are far more complex than he admits. His column is a virtual tour-de-force of omitted important considerations and disingenuous reasoning. Some of these implicit errors and omissions are the focus of Caroline Baum's wonderful article (although it is not a response to the Kerry-Easterbrook-Sullivan proposal as such). As she notes just by way of example, a gasoline tax does not create incentive for increased exploration or supply - unlike the demand-driven price rise we are seeing now. But Mr. Easterbrook counts as a "benefit" of his tax proposal that the chance of this kind of demand-driven price rise would be suppressed by his proposal. As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for ... And Mr. Easterbrook's approach gets worse ... a lot worse ... mostly in ways he is careful to avoid even mentioning. [Baum link from Luskin.]

I don't want to generally attack the prospect of a rise in the gasoline tax, or even to argue that such a rise is an absolute negative under all conditions. Indeed, perhaps such a rise could be a positive if coupled with a decrease in other taxes, as proposed in 1999 by N. Gregory Mankiw, now chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, a proposal disingenuously cited by Mr. Easterbrook are support for his own quite different proposal. Professor Mankiw's argument proceeded from a set of beliefs regarding the virtue of increasing overall national economic efficiency and reduction of wasteful economic "externalities," not to advance economic redistributionism or some vague environmental imperative. Mr. Easterbrook's past writings certainly show no sign of embracing an approach like Prof. Mankiw's - and Mr. Easterbrook signals no change of heart here. And Mr. Easterbrook's approach gets worse ... a lot worse ...

But what of Mr. Easterbrook's argument taken on it's own terms, setting aside its omissions, implicit dishonesty and outright incoherence? What, for example, is one to make of his naive, unexplained citing as a "benefit" from his (and Senator Kerry's) proposed tax that the S.U.V. and pickup-truck crazes would not have occurred, or at least these vehicles would be much less popular? Senator Kerry and many other Democrats have made a big stink of the "loss" of American jobs, especially American manufacturing jobs, to overseas companies. One of the main reasons more American jobs have not been "lost" is that American auto manufacturers have been relatively good at turning out those S.U.V.'s and pickup-trucks that "crazed" (Mr. Easterbrook's term) American consumers have been buying instead of foreign cars. Those S.U.V.'s and pickup-trucks have been made in this country by American companies employing American manufacturing workers.

Is it a clear benefit that those manufacturing jobs would have been forfeit? Or is the job loss to be considered a loss but a loss obviously worth the cost - so much so that this particular manufacturing job loss doesn't even warrant a mention in a column defending Democrat Kerry's endorsement of a loopy gas-tax increase?

Posted 10:46 AM by Robert

Nancyboys II: Barbara At Barnard

A prior post included this note about high female involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal:

Significant time has passed and we have seen no ruminations from Big Mo or even Ms. Noonan on these latest exemplars of the "female" moral hegemony - including the facts that it was investigations by macho organizations (the SEC, the DoJ, the Army) that rooted out the irregularities and, to the extent there were whistleblowers, they were all men. Will these two scribbling worthies hold Army Pfc. Lynndie England, Spc. Sabrina Harman or Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski responsible for their respective acts or failures to act? Or will we see some reversion to the assumption that women are not responsible for their own acts while around men - especially macho men: the Hillary Clinton "pink-suit-interview" approach. Will the gender aspect be discussed by these two scribbling worthies, and other women commenters, at all - or will we see it all put down to some genderless "these-guards-were-just-untrained-losers" dismissal? Or will one or more of them come up with something containing a bit more ingenuity and integrity?

I haven't seen anything yet.

Well, I still haven't seen much - and nothing at all from Msses. Dowd or Noonan. But feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich had this to say in her commencement address at Barnard College on May 18:

"[In] these photos from Abu Ghraib, you have every Islamic fundamentalist stereotype of Western culture, all nicely arranged in one hideous image: imperial arrogance, sexual depravity -- and gender equality.... Maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked. Gender equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and peaceful world. What I have finally come to understand, sadly and irreversibly, is that the kind of feminism based on an assumption of moral superiority on the part of women is a lazy and self-indulgent form of feminism" -- .

That's a nice start. Of course, much of Ms. Ehrenreich's talk is predicatably deranged: "Well, it turns out they were just operating under different management. We didn't displace Saddam Hussein; we replaced him." But at least it's something. In a culture in which almost every "first woman this-or-that" rates a national media annotation, where is the outpouring of feminist musings on the many "women's historic firsts" coming out of Abu Ghraib? For example, surely "first American woman likely to be court martialed for torture and sexual humiliation of a man" is worth a witty Maureen Dowd column with all kinds of fancy word play. And now that Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the woman in charge of Abu Ghraib prison at the time of the offenses largely committed by other women then under her command, has been suspended while pleading "scapegoat," surely many, many column inches are being written by Ms. Dowd and the many, many of her ilk to document this particular chapter of feminist progress and female moral hegemony! I must just have overlooked them.

But Ms. Dowd has her BUSHWORLD! book coming out. She won't leave out that chapter!

Will she?

MORE:

Apparently, the deaths of some female soldiers warrant a consideration separate from the consideration given to the deaths of male soldiers by the national media. But for some reason the immoral acts of some female soldiers don't warrant such separate consideration - even though a big deal was made of gender by the same media in the corporate scandal context.

Posted 9:20 AM by Robert

Kobe Chatter: Playing The Race Card II

In prior posts the Man Without Qualities has pointed out that while the media is almost obsessively attempting to ignore the racial aspect of this case, it can't and shouldn't be ignored and will eventually be raised pointedly by Mr. Bryant.

Mr. Bryant is now doing exactly that:

A defense lawyer asked a judge Monday to approve expert witnesses he said will show that the investigation of rape charges against Kobe Bryant was shoddy enough to suggest bias against the NBA star.

Bryant attorney Hal Haddon said in court papers he wants to call two experts to testify that the work of sheriff's detectives Doug Winters and Dan Loya was incomplete.

Haddon said the men "closed their eyes" to potential physical evidence at the site of the alleged crime that might have confirmed Bryant's innocence.

"The failure to conduct the most 'regular' police procedure — investigation of a crime scene and collection of physical evidence — suggests both a bias against Mr. Bryant and a willful or reckless unwillingness to consider the possibility that Mr. Bryant committed no crime and that the accuser was lying about the sexual encounter for ulterior motives," Haddon wrote.

It isn't as good as having a God-send like Mark Furman's racial slurs to exploit, but Mr. Bryant's defense team is giving the race play all they've got.

Posted 8:10 PM by Robert

World War II Memorial


Amazing.

I actually agree with almost every word Timothy Noah writes about the World War II Memorial.

I was all suited up to loathe it ... until I saw it.

And I also agree with his dissing of all the copycat "death list" momuments that have followed the Vietnam War Memorial like a dumb cortege, including the New York Times' dreadful, kitschy "Portraits of Grief" for Sept. 11.

Posted 1:46 PM by Robert

Oozing Charm From Every Pore,...

... He oiled his way around the floor.

That may have been true of that rudapest from Budapest Zoltan Karpathy, but Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Von Krugman has big problems understanding the production of both charm and oil.

Don Luskin does the fisk.

Posted 1:46 PM by Robert

Not So Hot Air

The Scotsman reports that wind power is probably just as much of an illusion as any clear headed Scott already thought.

Nuclear power, on the other hand ...

Posted 9:03 AM by Robert

More Overt?

"Moderate" is a much-abused term. For example, many commenters - led, I believe, by James Taranto - have noted that for most of the liberal media there are no surviving "liberal" Republicans. To the liberal media there are only "conservative" (sometime "arch-conservative" or "ultra-conservative") and "moderate" Republicans. Even such worthies as Arlen Spector (left-wing Republican senator from Pennsylvania) and other such Republicans furthest to the left, even Republicans with voting records comparable to liberal Democrats, and even Republicans who launch crusades against conservative Republicans and their causes, are "moderate." The most aggressive RINO (meaning "Republican in name only," of course) is a "moderate" in the bizarre quasi-Newspeak of the mainstream liberal media.

And the generally liberal functionaries of such media employ its quasi-Newspeak to christen themselves "moderates" when responding to the Pew poll and the like, as a kind of extreme example of the tendency noted by this Washington Post item:

Hans Noel, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, is the author of a paper called "The Road to Red and Blue America." In an interview, he said, "Most people say they are 'moderate,' but in fact the country is polarized around strong conservative and liberal positions." For the first time in generations, he said, those philosophical lines correspond to party lines. The once-hardy species of conservative Democrats -- so numerous in the 1980s they had a name, "Reagan Democrats" -- is now on the endangered list, along with the liberal "Rockefeller Republicans."

Professor Noel overstates the case with respect to the public (in my opinion), but he is deadly accurate in identifying the tendency of liberal media representatives to hide behind the term "moderate."

The media trade paper Editor and Publisher runs this article concerning a Pew Research poll again confirming that the nations reporters and media staff are far to the left of the American people (link from DRUDGE). That much is not news - except, perhaps, to the more intellectually dishonest denialists on the left such as Eric Alterman and his ilk.

But there is another development noted by the poll that is interesting:

While it's important to remember that most journalists in this survey continue to call themselves moderate, the ranks of self-described liberals have grown in recent years, according to Pew. For example, since 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have only inched up from 5% to 7%.

The number of actual liberals in the media is almost certainly not increasing, at least not this rapidly. What is probably increasing is the number of media representatives who are willing to admit their actual political orientation. In other words, the Per Research poll suggests that media liberals are fast becoming more overt. That would be consistent with the tendency observed by some brighter commenters (such as Mickey Kaus) that the skewing of mainstream liberal media campaign coverage has fast become much more overtly skewed liberal and much more overtly hostile to George Bush and Republicans generally.

The effects of the increasingly obvious mainstream leftward skew is sometimes bizarre. Just by way of example, the Los Angeles Times assured its readers almost up to Recall Day that Governor Davis had a good chance of survival. That such media representatives are increasingly shameless can be seen, for example, in the fact that the man who presided over that particular Times journalistic travesty, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll, went on to deliver an unintentionally hilarious and ironic speech claiming that the media industry has been "infested" by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's "long tradition to serve the public with accurate information." Catherine Seipp delivered a brilliant fisking of Mr. Carroll's pretensions and evasions.

Taken together, Mr. Carroll's speech and the Pew poll give an interesting snapshot: Media operatives are increasingly willing to admit to their own relatively extreme personal political orientation, but insist on retaining the fig leaf of the unbiased accuracy of their own media institution, while simultaneously slamming the few less liberally biased media outlets for "pseudo-journalism" (Fox News, in particular, which is clearly hitting a nerve).

The current state of mainstream liberal media political coverage is substantively Gonzo, written by people who (by the Pew poll) increasingly admit their orientation but (by the Carroll speech) still cling to the fiction of their professional and institutional accuracy. The next step, of course, is full-fledged, overt, out-of-the-closet liberal Gonzo journalism in the currently accepted meaning (not the Thompson original meaning) of that term: inaccurate, crazy, essentially a license for liberal journalists to write anything they want. Already some of the more self-satisfied media representatives on the left, especially those who feel secure and are closer to retirement, like Dan Rather, have begun to hint at more. A full scale outbreak seems imminent.

It is also inexpensive for a media outlet to fill time or space with the outpourings of a reporter's personal political biases - at least compared to actually gathering and editing real news. Maybe that has something to do with another development in journalism:

Many journalists believe that increased financial pressure is "seriously hurting" the quality of news coverage -- 66% of national newspeople and 57% of local journalists see it this way. That percentage is climbing when compared to past surveys. In 1995, for example, 41% of national and 33% of local journalists expressed this view. Not surprisingly, those national and local journalists -- about 75% -- who have witnessed newsroom cuts firsthand are among the most worried about the effects of bottom-line pressures, the study said.

Of course, at some point people may just stop watching, reading and listening.