The casual assumption that state-funded broadcasting in America would be devoted to adoration of the head of state would be exactly wrong, at least during Republican presidencies. Instead, on Monday, National Public Radio’s program Day to Day (co-produced with the liberal website Slate) awarded five minutes to leftist author Naomi Wolf and her thesis that the Bush administration is orchestrating "the end of America," and President Bush is comparable to Adolf Hitler. The headline was very frank on the NPR web site: "Naomi Wolf Likens Bush to Hitler."

If a conservative compared President Clinton to a communist dictator, there is no chance that NPR would devote a serious five-minute interview to his "Clinton hater" thesis – and they should not. But NPR tilts so far to the left that extreme cartooning of the Bush presidency, comparing it to mass-murdering dictatorships, is presented as a harsh, but respectable subject of debate. A few minutes into the unspooling of this crackpot thesis, anchor Alex Cohen (a female) made an attempt to challenge Wolf that maybe she was overstating things a bit: