Karl Klockars

Since I’m stuck on the inside of the Conservative Radio Behemoth, I’ve spent my day listening to hour after hour of back-patting for thousands of people showing up in Washington DC for a Tea Party protest that you probably didn’t hear anything about.

Naturally, because of this I’ve been listening to more hours of “liberal media” this and “coverup” that and “bias bias bias bias bias.”  Now, I don’t know what really went on, and I don’t know exactly how many people went to this national roundup of Birthers and Teabaggers and so on.  Nobody else does, either, since every other story online is all about the numbers and they’re all completely different.*

I’m willing to entertain the thought that there’s a decent amount of media bias in the news and journalism world.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that journalism attracts people with liberal tendencies (hell, just look at me) the same way that the military attracts people with conservative tendencies.  But why doesn’t anyone take into account that whereas a liberal bias might have been accidental in years past, that now it might just be on purpose?

Throughout about as long as I’ve been paying attention, I’ve heard hollering about a liberal media bias.  If you poked around hard enough, you could probably trace it back to the authors of the Bible writing up Jesus as too much of a new-age hippie and not enough of the smiting and cursing god of the old testament.  Damned liberal deities!  So is it too much to imagine that the press collectively has thrown up their hands and sighed “fuck it, you want media bias, we’ll give you media bias.”

I wouldn’t blame them.  Sometimes, if you’re accused of something for long enough, eventually your shoulders can crack under the weight and you do what they say you do anyways.  As the eminent sage and noted philosopher Eminem has stated, “I am whatever you say I am – if I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?”  Indeed, Em.  Indeed.

So barely anyone covered it.  You want a liberal media, you’ve got it – and you get next to zero coverage anywhere.  Your little shindig has gotten the internet a-whirlin’, but barely any cable or network news showed up, did they?  C-SPAN is going to replay some of your gathering this evening.  If that’s all you get, then you’ve reaped exactly what has been sown.  Oh, and Fox was there.  Duh.

There’s no massive left-wing conspiracy to shut up the protest wing of conservatives.  It’s just the left-wingers that are in there saying “If that’s how you want it, then this is how you get it.”  Deal with it.  If you don’t like it, then you have no one but yourself to blame.  In an alternate universe, I see reason and logic and calm pundits stating “You know, there might be some unintentional bias towards one side, but I don’t believe it’s all-encompassing and I’m sure that reporters don’t do it on purpose.”  In that universe, maybe their press wouldn’t turn their backs on this gathering this weekend.

And if you want a beautiful example of unity among right-wingers and Republicans, count how many times the name “Glenn Beck” is uttered when conservative radio discusses the protest rally.  I’ll give you the short answer – not once, as much as I’ve heard.  Why?

Because no matter how successful the rally was or wasn’t, no matter what results come from the gathering of like-minded people, not a single person will acknowledge the seed that Beck planted.  Because when it all comes down to those brass tacks, their image, their brand, their market share and their ego is more important than giving credit where credit is due.

*How hard is it to count?  Don’t we have crowd estimates down to a little more of a science now?  Leftists want to say that there are only a few thousand there, and others on the right are claiming that there were more people there for this than were there for the actual inauguration.  You’d have to be stupid to believe either one, but you also have to be stupid to think it’s more towards the right-wing exaggeration than to the left-wing one.