Couldn't have said it better myself.

"Warbloggers" like Andrew Sullivan and Little Green Footballs are actually using the newly-discovered Bin Laden tape to argue that he is insolidarity with Saddam. What Bin Laden actually said was that he was in solidarity with Iraq, not Saddam. In fact, the media hasn't been playing the part of the tape where Bin Laden calls on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam's secular regime. Looks like Bush and Bin Laden are on the same side now. Justin Raimondo knows all about it.

Blogging for Dummies

Tapped, the American Prospect's blog, provides a good example today of how to smear your opponents in the blogosphere. They're hyping Erica Alterman's new book, What Liberal Media?, which argues that there is no liberal bias in the media. This book was written as a response to several books that have made that charge, most notably Bernard Goldberg's Bias. Tapped refers to Bias as a "thoroughly discredited book", and provides three links to substantiate this charge. Obviously they wanted their readers, who have probably never read the book, to simply take their word for it. I actually read the articles they linked to. Two of them dealt with the same topic - how the media labels politicians. That's one topic out of about 50 or so the book covers. The third article was a critique that made a couple of good points and a few easily refutable points. None of this adds up to anything close to discrediting Bias.

This kind of smearing annoys the hell out of me. It's a sign of weak arguments and a weak mind. Conservatives do it, too, but this is definitely more a tactic of the left.

And while I'm on the point, I think this whole Conservative/Liberal controversy about the media reveals more about conservatives and liberals than it does about the media. There is no conservative or liberal bias. There's a distinct pro-government bias, though. Anti-state ideas almost never get mentioned in the major media. It's a conspiracy, I'm telling you!

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