February 24, 2005

THE NY TIMES is one sustained landslide of selective facts and slanted perceptions from a building full of Democrats and leftists. So where does NY Times Executive Editor Bill Keller get off writing this?:
My anxiety about the blog world is .. that it contributes to an erosion of middle ground, that it accelerates a general polarization of the nation into people, right and left, who are ardently convinced and not very interested in exposing themselves to facts or ideas that contradict their prejudices.
The NY Times regularly -- and for generations -- has black-balled non-leftist writers from its book review ... but why even get started. The paper is the most immense leftist / Democrat polarizing force in nation -- the 800-pound gorilla among those "not very interested in exposing themselves to facts or ideas that contradict their prejudices."

Non-leftist / non-Democrat bloggers constantly expose themselves to the leftist / Democrat talking points generated daily by the NY Times. But the torrent of public policy facts and ideas churned through every day in the non-lefty blogs rarely if ever make their way into the pages of the NY Times. The comparison isn't even close. The NY Times is as good as hermetically sealed from "facts or ideas that contradict its prejudices" if you compare it with the mix-it-up you see every day within the blogs. Gay marriage, outsourcing, Social Security reform, immigration, dollar policy, you name it, the blogosphere offers a wider range of sophisticated analysis than you'll ever see in the NY Times. Let me give just one example of the sophisticated and cross-ideological discussions you can find in the blogosophere -- the debate generated by philosopher Elizabeth Anderson over whether income earners deserve the money they've made. Left, right, center, or off the map libertarian and socialist, bloggers and blog readers mixed it up on Anderson's own blog and on blogs hither and yon.

If truth be told the partisan rantings of a Paul Krugman, a Frank Rich or a Maureen Dowd read like the idiot blatherings found in a DNC newsletter or the Socialist Worker when compared to what you can find in the blogs. Posted by Greg Ransom