Instapundit quoted SECDEF Rumsfeld on media bias. He pointed out two different ways of indicating that Mosques were involved in the hostilities in Iraq. First, a headline might say "Terrorists Attack Coalition Forces From Mosques" - which is indeed what happened, and why the minaret was knocked down. And then, a headline might say "Mosques Targeted in Fallujah", as was done by the LA Times. In the first, the apparent wrongdoers were the terrorists using the Mosques to attack our troops. In the second, the important thing was that we targeted those Mosques. My feelings are obviously in line with Mr. Rumsfeld. If they use Mosques to attack us, they can expect to have them destroyed.
That said, this brings me to a, hopefully, bigger point. My father is supposedly a middle of the road Republican. But he takes his news from the dominant media. He watches McNeil / Leher every night. He reads the local (Denver) papers. He takes the WSJ, but, I suspect, doesn't read the editorials. I get most of my news online, esp. from such as Drudge, Instapundit, Washington Times, etc. I do look to the left a bit. But I don't get my news from where he does.
His latest thing is that Justice Scalia should be judicially disciplined (by whom?) for refusing to recuse himself from deliberations on the Cheney task force issue currently before the High Court, all because he went hunting with Cheney. My view is that this is an obvious attempt to stack the Court against an expected 5-4 outcome. No different really to me than the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary committee delaying Bush appeals court nominees until the U. Michigan racial quota cases had cleared that appeals court. (Ok, I say Racial Quotas, you say Affirmative Action - no different than Pro-Choice versus Pro-Life). This issue has been hashed out by legal scholars who know much more about this than I do. I seem to remember something on the Volokh Conspiracy, for example. But if you listened to McNeil / Lehrer (as my father did), you would think that this is slam-dunk unethical.
This is a symptom of what I see as two different Americas. Two different realities. One formed through listening to the (liberally biased) dominant media. The other formed by viewing alternative media, such as the Internet and Talk Radio. The scary thing is that we have so little in common.
Another example. John Kerry has indicated that he will go the the U.N. and around Europe to build a "real" coalition, if elected President. I constantly hear from my liberal friends and those, like my father, listening to the dominant media, that Bush should have gone again to the U.N. and should have gotten the French, etc. aboard before invading Iraq. But they are almost totally ignorant about the Oil for Bribes (officially, Oil for Food) program run for the supposed benefit of the Iraqi people by the U.N. What is ignored is that Saddam Hussein was massively bribing the U.N., the French, and in particular, the Russians. Even ignoring the massive bribes, our invasion has moved Iraq from the French and Russian spheres of influence into ours. Why should we expect that either of these countries would have done the "right thing" as to Iraq, if we had just waited a little longer? There is no evidence in favor of this, and much in opposition.
What is scary is that I can pretty well anticipate my father's position on most subjects by looking at what the dominant media were saying shortly before. If they said that Iraq is taking our efforts away from the War on Terror (Huh?), then I will hear that from him, and many of my liberal friends, shortly thereafter. Never mind the proven ties. Never mind that many of those we are fighting these days are terrorists from abroad, including Al Quida.
