Swanky Conservative

Two things I noticed this past week that have me convinced the American Left and the Mainstream Media are still operating in their 2004 Election mode. First was the buffoonish MoveOn ad that featured an image of British troops in an ad about our servicemen suffering. Bill Hobbs writes that in at least one congressional district, MoveOn’s efforts have resulted in no phone calls, emails, or letters from voters.

The second is the blatant lack of attention given to 2000 Democratic vice-presidential candidate and US Senator Joe Lieberman’s report of significant progress being made in Iraq. Instead, we get reports of Democratic Congressman John Murtha’s accusation (unfounded in any sense) that the US Army is living hand to mouth in Iraq. When Steve Lovelady, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review was asked “what he thought of the MSM ignoring Joe Lieberman’s positive report from Iraq,” he responded:

MoveOn can’t move on past the 2000 election campaign and the editor of one of Mainstream Journalism’s flagship institutions brazenly admits his bias and dismisses Senator Lieberman as irrelevant because he penned an positive essay on Iraq in the Wall Street Journal. These aren’t isolated incidents. These are pieces of a disconnect between reality and the alliance of the Left and the Mainstream Media. The American voter saw the disconnect in the 2002 and 2004 elections and voted against the Democrats. The MSM’s audience sees the disconnect and we have shrinking newsrooms and declining sales. Simultaneously (I know, correlation is not causation…) we have a ballooning rise in blogs.

Add to this a third situation where Slate’s Grady Hendrix reviewed a Showtime “Master of Horror” episode that depicted war dead returning to life to vote for anyone who will end the war. Hendrix writes:

While Dante’s film will no doubt raise hackles, my guess is that most members of the military would get a kick out of this flick that praises the troops in Iraq while offering up the politicians and pundits who sent them there as finger food for the undead.

I don’t know if Hendrix knows any actual military personnel. I doubt it because he writes:

Today, zombies are the perfect metaphor for our soldiers in Iraq: They’re shell-shocked, anonymous, and aren’t asked to make very many decisions. Unless you personally know a soldier, the war in Iraq has been a zombie war, fought by an uncomplaining, faceless mass wrapped in desert camo and called “our boys.” We talk about them all the time—supporting them, criticizing them, speaking for them—but we don’t really have a clue as to what’s on their minds.

Hendrix says he has no idea what’s on our minds. And that’s alright for him. As long as he makes no effort to find out, he has the convenience to write his piece. He’s gamed the situation to fit his predetermined outcome. The minute he begins to talk with veterans of the war, his entire worldview falls apart and we can’t have that, can we?

Hendrix, Lovelady and MoveOn represent an influential piece of society that refuses to see any good in the attempt to bring democracy to a region that has never had it. This is unparalleled at any other time in human history. That there are those who go to such lengths as to completely ignore the good taking place, speaks volumes.