Monopoly has Consequences

The press and the movies are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party. Consider West Wing, a liberal-wet dream with scripts suspiciously like DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe's talking points. The latest gossip says this might be the last year for the show. If a single Republican worked in LA, they'd know that it would be excellent drama--as well as just deserts--to script an election that Sheen loses. But Hollywood types "believe seven impossible things before breakfast" as Shakespeare said. So on West Wing (and Michael Moore movies and Al Franken talk shows), fiction is stranger than truth--and thus mistaken for it.

Take the LA Times. On September 23rd, the newspaper called California "locked down" because of Senator Kerry's 15 point lead. Yet only a week before, the same paper said Arizona was "in play"--because Kerry was behind by only 16 points! (via Best of the Web, via Patrick Frey) Who knew liberals can't count?

Since the LA Times' biased math, John Kerry conceded Arizona. This neatly illustrates an important lesson: wishing doesn't make it so. No volume of insane cheerleading drowns out actual voters. See, e.g., Florida. Or the myth that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq solely because of the danger of WMDs--there were other reasons as well.

So the liberal media actually helps Republican conservatives. Because the NY Times, the LA Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (motto: "dumb as a post!"), and the WaPo are no more than an echo chamber. All they print is the conversation at Georgetown (or upper west-side, or Hollywood hills, etc.) cocktail parties. They don't care about, much less print articles about, people who live between Pittsburgh and Denver. So they miss the real news (e.g., Kerry's false memory syndrome regarding Cambodia, or two tiny scratches, admittedly self-inflicted, metamorphosing into medals). But, surprise surprise: them hicks in Nebraska all have high-speed Internet!

If you don't print the facts, your audience can't get the truth. If you abandon objectivity to become the house organ for liberal causes, what you want crowds out reality. And that means readers of big-city newspapers--lefties all--never see the blow coming. Most famously, the late film critic Pauline Kael expressed astonishment at the Republicans' 49-state landslide victory in 1972. "How could that be?" she demanded. "I don't know a single person who voted for Nixon."

I'm sure she didn't. Just like I'm sure Dan Rather doesn't know a single Bush voter ('cept his network's owner). (Even the New York Times is starting to remember past Republican landslides). Call it another inefficiency caused by a monopoly.

Here's hoping Dan remains inefficient--but that CBS discovers that Bush voters don't watch Dan. So watch Bush's re-election on FOX. It's efficient.

More:

Tom McGuire at Just One Minute makes the same point (and praises the WaPo):

[F]olks who rely exclusively on the NY Times for their news may not know just how far the Kerry campaign side has pushed the boundaries of what we suppose they consider to be responsible dissent.

First, the Times has zero coverage of Joe Lockhart's infamous quote describing Allawi as a Bush puppet. For comparison, we find 1, 2, 3 Lockhart citings in the Washington Post.

Secondly, the Times has zero coverage of Diana Kerry's appalling comments in Australia, made as a representative of Americans Overseas for Kerry.

Advantage: blogs.

Still More:

Reader DirtCrashr corrects the quote I attributed to Shakesphere--it's actually Lewis Carroll. It's from Chapter V of Through the Looking Glass, spoken by the White Queen, and one number off:

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

That will teach me never to post from an Internet cafe away from my trusty Annotated Alice (M. Gardner ed. 1960).