WashPost Contrast: 'Hard Right' Michelle Malkin, Visionary Al Gore

February 18th, 2007 7:18 AM

Ken Shepherd mentioned the Michelle Malkin profile on the front of Friday's Style section in The Washington Post. You have to give credit to Howard Kurtz for being fair-minded enough to give a conservative blogger that much attention. It was tough but fair. Your complaint, then, would be that liberals don't get tough but fair. They get goo.

What stood out to me on Friday were the headlines in Style. Michelle's was "A Hard Right Punch: Michelle Malkin's Conservative Fight Has Others Coming Out Swinging."

But what's right above that on the page, the top story? A story on Al Gore's Chicken Little concerts, with the headline: "'Live Earth' Concerts To Tackle Hot Topic: Al Gore's Musical Call To Action." Notice the lack of labels, no hot "liberal" topic, no musical call to "liberal" action?

The story by Los Angeles-based reporter William Booth used absolutely zero liberal labels the story describing the concerts, "designed as an exercise in 'mass persuasion' about threats of global warming." Instead, Booth unspooled Gore's "vision" of a 24-hour musical extravaganza against enterprise. It relied on the testimony of climate experts -- if you count Cameron Diaz talking about driving a hybrid Prius.

But, wait, the contrast gets funnier: wasn't that story also on the front page of Style on Thursday, before Gore's press conference? Yes, it was. The headline was "Al Gore to Sound Off On Climate Change With Concert Event." Once again, no liberal labels in the headline, or in the piece by hippie love child J. Freedom du Lac. Al Gore gets goo, and a double-dip of public relations.