The online chat sessions with Washington Post reporters Monday at washingtonpost.com had a few revealing answers. In the daily politics chat, reporter Shailagh Murray seemed to disappoint the Post's natural audience by suggesting Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold was too liberal to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. This spurred Murray to turn around and find today's GOP is way beyond Ronald Reagan's conservatism:
Ames, ia: Re: Feingold. You may be right, but I recall when Ronald Reagan was universally considered "too conservative."
Shailagh Murray: That just shows you how polarized politics has become. Reagan would practically be a moderate today.
And then:
Anonymous: Shailagh Murray: That just shows you how polarized politics has become. Reagan would practically be a moderate today.
Actually, doesn't this show how far the Republicans have shifted to the extreme right?
Shailagh Murray: Ummm, that's the point I was making, in case others of you are confused.
In his weekly chat on critiquing the press, Howard Kurtz agreed with a conservative critic that the Ben Cardin story over the weekend was underplayed by the Post:
Point of Rocks, Md.: Any comment on how The Post -- ever-pushing the "macaca" story in almost every George Allen story, often on the front page, didn't put much prominence in Maryland candidate Ben Cardin dropping a racist/anti-Semitic blogger from his staff? Democratic race gaffes are buried in the B-section? Isn't that obvious bias in the last weeks of a campaign?
Howard Kurtz: The Post's story yesterday on a junior staffer for Senate candidate Ben Cardin being dropped for using racial and ethnic slurs in a blog ran on Page C-6. I think it was underplayed. Obviously, the actions of a junior staffer are not comparable to the actions of the candidate himself, when it is George Allen using a word (the infamous macaca) for an Indian-American, something for which the senator has repeatedly apologized. Allen also had the misfortune of having his slur captured on tape and posted on YouTube by the campaign of his Democratic opponent. So while the two stories are hardly comparable, the Cardin story deserved a little more exposure.
UPDATE: I really meant to include this exchange from Shailagh, which came right underneath the "Reagan looks like a moderate next to today's far-righties" comment:
Rochester, N.Y.: How are you doing? I used to drop by your chats all the time, but I haven't in a while.
My question is this and I feel that you're the only reporter here who will give me an honest answer...I find it hard to stop using White House rhetoric in everyday conversation. For example, I might say "we may be headed in the wrong direction, but we must stay the course" or "how come we never talk about all the parts of my car that are working properly -- seems like liberal media bias to me" or "I'm more convinced than ever that having that drunken shouting match with my uncle last Christmas was the right thing to do." Do any of the reporters at The Post find themselves doing this? Be honest.
Shailagh Murray: Hi Rochester, welcome back. My mom is a Mercy High grad.
I hear your struggle up there, and my advice is, get a dog. Seriously, there's heavy stuff happening in this country right now, and people who shut it out entirely ought to be ashamed of themselves. But, the trick is to focus on reality, and not the political version of reality. We all find ourselves getting sucked into the rhetorical wind tunnel, but it leads nowhere. Here's how you can detox: stop reading blogs, watching cable news, listening to talk radio, or relying on any other filtration device. Anything that splices every debate into us vs. them. Read newspapers or watch TV just to find out what's happening, and ignore all the second-hand chatter. Then go throw the ball to the dog, or turn the channel to ESPN, or help your kids with their homework -- and you'll find those voices will start to disappear.
Oh yes, the newspapers and the TV networks! They never resemble a rhetorical wind tunnel! These people really believe they are the paragons of fair and balanced and sophisticated reportage.
