A reader writes:
You're right on just about everything you say about Journo-List, with one glaring, rather obnoxious (to me) misstep. You say, "This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever." While I can't disagree that the media is partisan and lacks any substantive cojones, it's silly to me to call them "liberals." These aren't liberals; these are Democrats.
Those in the media, particularly in print and television, already have proven to be as reactionary as Republican "conservatives." As there is little you find conservative about Republicans, there is little I find liberal about the reactionaries in the media.
Wiktionary has a great definition of the word "liberal" that gels with my understanding of the term: "Free from prejudice or narrow-mindedness; open-minded, open to new ideas, willing to depart from established opinions, conventions etc." What the Journo-List e-mails prove is that the supposed "liberals" were nothing like this. They were prejudiced against the Republican candidate (for good reason, but that's not the job of journalists); they were unwilling to depart from their groupthink; and most egregiously, they were (and obviously are) narrow-minded enough to put a political party and its candidate(s) ahead of their responsibility to the public.
Call them Democrats; call them irresponsible; call them cowards; call them incompetent and fucking impotent hacks. But one thing they aren't are liberals; no real liberal would ever be as opposed to the truth as these assholes were and are.
Maybe that's why they call themselves "progressives." By all means necessary ....