quote:Originally posted by the G-man: You need to remember, Dave, that, to whomod, any deviation from his own extreme leftism seems conservative by comparison.
That's actually what Bernard Goldberg's Bias book explains: that in New York city, where the major news networks are based, and the New York Times, the area is a Mecca of liberalism. They believe that anyone who supports pro-life, or opposes gun control, or any restraint to gay rights doesn't just have an opposing view, but is an ignorant, mentally deficient neanderthal. And that they are the Great Enlighteners who force the "primatives" outside the East Coast to accept their self-proclaimed version of "modernity" and "enlightenment".
Goldberg explains that it's not even consciously that the news media elite do this. To them, their liberal/leftist views are "the mainstream", because everyone in their urban/metropolitan cultural bubble believes the same thing they believe. And anyone even slightly to the right of that self-proclaimed "center of America" is regarded as "right wing extremist". But despite the liberal media believing that their left-leaning views are "the mainstream", most of the vast region between New York City and L.A. is considerably to the right of that news media "center". THAT's the real "center of America".
There was a Republican map of the U.S. right after the 2000 election with the caption: "BUSH COUNTRY !", that showed voting results by county across the entire United States, the Bush areas in red and the Gore areas in blue, and the nation was overwhelmingly red (i.e., voted for Bush) Except for a few heavily populated urban centers that voted for Gore. And that's what the electoral college was set up for: to allow proportionate representation of all the states, instead of just a few key population centers across the country.
Much of what Goldberg says is what I half consciously already knew. Like the way Republican and conservative pundits are always labelled as such, to clearly mark their separation from the mainstream. While extreme liberals like Senator Ted Kennedy or Tom Daschle or celebrities like Barbara Streisand are simply identified as Senators, law professors, university scholars and actors, as if their views are objective and credible, instead of the partisan opposite extreme of the political spectrum. The net effect is that liberals are insideously presented as representing the mainstream. Whereas portrayal of conservatives quietly projects their views as outside the mainstream, as opposed to the status quo that conservatives clearly are: the very definition of the mainstream, a mainstream that conservatives are struggling to preserve.
