To Borrow One Of Hillary's Riffs

Unlike say, President Reagan with “Win one for the Gipper”, or her own husband’s “I feel your pain”, Hillary Clinton does not yet have a universally-known catch phrase associated with her, yet. But one of Hillary Clinton’s better-known lines was this:

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

That seems to be how the media is operating this decade. In the early days of the Blogosphere, the mantra was that while Big Media would do the reporting, you’d go the Blogosphere for opinion. But increasingly, it’s been the Blogosphere that’s been doing the heavy lifting:

The pro-regime change views on Iraq of the media and their party in the 1990s before flip-flopping in 2003 and 2004. (And more recently, their flip-flopping on a troop build-up).

John Kerry’s Winter Soldier past, and the Swift Vet’s ads and story.

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ adventures in typography and falsification.

Cindy Sheehan’s original meeting with the president.

The truth behind the media’s original lurid Katrina stories, and “Mayor Nagin’s Motorpool“.

The actual Mohammed cartoons.

The details of the Duke non-rape case.

All of these were given wide dissemination into the public consciousness by the Blogosphere first, since they didn’t fit into the media’s style guide. And no doubt, there are numerous additional examples that could be plugged in here.

This week, there were two stories whose background the media seemed to work furiously to airbrush: the anti-religious bigotry and colorful language of John Edwards’ would be professional bloggers, and the background of the Salt Lake City Sniper.

Of the former, Newsbusters writes, “Print Editions of Time, Newsweek Covered Edwards Without Vulgar Anti-Christian Specifics”. Because running them would violate the media’s delicate Victorian sensibilities and/or anger the magazine’s subscriber base.

Regarding the latter, Charles Johnson writes: