Canadians want Fox News Now!

blatham, I've not noticed Salon heralding anything other than the Librul Line - admittedly, I don't follow it closely, but I'm relatively familiar with it over the years. Both Town Hall and NewsMax point out in their mastheads that they are forums for conservative viewpoint. Where does Salon make similar open declaration of its editorial bent?

I want to say something that may not be congenial to every reader of Salon. But it's something that, I think, needs to be said after the last week or so. I am relieved that George W. Bush is president of the United States. I am more than ever proud of endorsing him last fall. Far from flunking the test of presidential leadership, as columnist Mary McGrory opined the day after the catastrophe, Bush has risen to this occasion with a variety of qualities that are distinct to him and not to everyone's taste, but qualities that I believe can greatly help us win this terrible war launched by evil men for evil reasons.

First, the caveats. It's clear by now that Bush's style is to put the executive into the executive branch. He tends to manage, not explain. He clearly feels that his first responsibility is to get the job done -- even if it means he is out of the public eye too much, or not insistent enough on explaining the reasons for his actions. When faced with a massive propaganda campaign, as the media directed after the inevitable withdrawal from the unworkable Kyoto Protocol, he has often failed to fight back coherently or eloquently enough. Sept. 11 showed the disadvantage of this impulse. Bush was placed in a uniquely confusing and destabilizing situation. Coded warnings were delivered to Air Force One that the president's plane and the White House were targets. We have no evidence to undermine this statement, and much evidence to believe it's true.

The security agencies decided to scramble the president's itinerary to foil any attacks. Maybe Bush should have returned directly to Washington. But at the time, it seems to me that the most important priority was to ensure that the president was in a secure place to direct whatever needed to be done. Instead of carping that he was not in Washington immediately, we should perhaps credit him with taking a political hit in order to fulfill his ultimate responsibilities as president. Congressman Martin Meehan opined that this explanation was "spin." On the contrary, it was the opposite of spin. It was a politically damaging act of civic responsibility. It says something of our priorities that we damn a president for this, rather than praise him.

Bush was back in Washington by evening to make his first, critical speech. It was barely adequate. It was designed merely to show that he was back, and that a war was underway. But from the beginning, Bush understood exactly what had happened and in his terse way, communicated the essentials. This was a war; and it was not only a war against terrorists but the regimes who harbor and protect them. On the day of the attack, he quietly framed the conflict. His subsequent statements and actions seem to me to be a paragon of what presidential leadership is about. He didn't lash out with a self-defeating and politically expedient strike, as other less resolute presidents have done. He gathered his experienced aides and directed a diplomatic, military and domestic strategy that already shows some signs of success. Frankly, we cannot know yet whether this war will be won quickly or how it will be handled. There will be time yet for such analysis. But Bush has started a process calmly, effectively and professionally.

And his emotions have been perfectly in tune with the mass of the country. Some have criticized him for tearing up in the Oval Office while recalling the tragedy. Personally, I found it deeply moving. It was real emotion -- not fake. It undergirded his resolve to fight back. In this, he is the antithesis of Clinton -- a man who used emotion for effect and idled while our national security weakened. And unlike Clinton, Bush didn't organize his schedule for photo-op political purposes. He went to New York not right away, when the media would have lapped it up. He let Rudy Giuliani perform miracles alone in a limelight that was more than rightly his. Bush doesn't need to elbow in on others' responsibilities or achievements.

I'm not at all sure you guys deserve or will gain much from the expenditure of my time. Your reading habits, in the main and with a partial exception for timber, are abysmal.

That townhall or newsmax are 'repositories of' or 'dissemination points for' conservative opinion ONLY doesn't bother you.

The relationship between that policy and the unquestioning dogmatism that the policy entails seems quite lost on you. The relationship to propaganda is equally lost on you. To use such resources to the extent that a number of you do is not to learn, but to comfort yourself with notions that will not upset you.

That townhall or newsmax are 'repositories of' or 'dissemination points for' conservative opinion ONLY doesn't bother you

Nor does Blatham, no matter how elitist he presumes to be, know anything of my reading habits. He presumes because I read something other than Salon or that ilk, I must be deficient in my education.

He writes:

Quote:

That townhall or newsmax are 'repositories of' or 'dissemination points for' conservative opinion ONLY doesn't bother you

Why should it? The Wall Street Journal, Money, Businessweek is a respository of business and financial news. That's what it was designed for. "Christianity Today" is a respository for modern Christian news and essays, That's what it was designed for. USA Today is a repository of national news, the NY Times features national, state, and local (NY) news.
Salon, so much as I've read it, caters exclusively to the liberal point of view. Many many news and other U.S. magazines contain an eclectic range of subject matter.

I wonder why it bother Blatham so much that there are collectors of conservative writing such as Townhall? How does that in any way dilute the store of knowledge out there?

To me, it is the height of arrogance to assume that anybody who WOULD read from an admittedly conservative source would read ONLY that source. Of course there are some who refuse to educate themselves in any other way than what supports the narrow, limited, point of view they have adopted.

Absolutely Steppenwolf. Anyone who doesn't fully inform himself/herself of the point of view of the 'opposition' is whistling into the wind. I would guess that 90% of the conservatives on this thread are so well informed of both liberal and conservative points of view, they could argue both easily and convincingly without casting a single insult. I would guess that 75% of the liberals could not do so. I have no way to test that; therefore I put that out there as opinion only.

My response was mostly reactionary to arrogant assumptions from the utterly ignorant.

Lol. I'm guessing that some of that 75% would switch your numbers around

"The more successful papers are able to shift, however imperceptibly, the center of debate to the right. It makes conservative views more respectable."

... Your reading habits, in the main and with a partial exception for timber, are abysmal ...

And perhaps we can come to an agreement that Fox News is perceived as 'conservative' only because it does not bash the president or GOP in every news story either overtly or almost subliminally as most of the other news sources do. Further it proudly displays the American flag as a symbol of freedom and great Americans and refuses to relegate it to a political statement as many liberals seem to wish to do. And maybe we can agree that pretty much all the news is getting reported by Fox. It is their upbeat, optimism that is appealing to conservatives--not so much their slant.

It is simply one more News Source.

Blatham said he posted an example and he did, unsourced and unsigned and unlinked. It was I thought a rather accurate--honest--protrayal of an American president but unless it can be linked to Salon, it doesn't yet qualify as an example. Is honesty a conservative trait? Not necessarily as thoughtful liberals are also capable of being honest.