madfly, I'm sure you're aware the press is only "muzzled" with regard to challenges to progressive orthodoxies; the rest of the time it's making a huge amount of noise constantly promoting them.
The other morning driving to work I had the Imus show on. He featured Tom Oliphant and Anna Quindlen. (And seemed to me to have disgracefully "sucked up" to them both.)
Yegads! It was sickening; I finally had to turn the radio off. I can only stand so much smarmy, pseudo-sophisticated, smug, self-absorbed, disdainful, arrogant, mean-spirited, and utterly dishonest verbal spew from these two....
Both, of course, detest President Bush and everything he represents; and they are having a field day over the Lott debacle -- which is a story that should have petered out a week ago. Except for the fact that these are the very people who keep on waving the bloody shirt to keep the ravening hounds all worked up....
And these people are supposed to be icons of American culture? Good grief, if these are our cultural heroes, then are we warranted to say that we are a civilized people?
Not with any credibility. Not hard to see how easily American Bashing occurs.