What Digby Said

On Breitbart and the Village:

But it's a mistake to only focus on Breitbart. As Perlstein writes, this journalistic convention is one of the things that's killing us. They are legitimizing anti-social political behavior to the point where the depraved Ann Coulter -- featured in a cover story in TIME magazine just a few years back --- is still considered an acceptable guest on a staid political round table hosted by Fareed Zakaria. Indeed, there's an entire generation of these hideous right wing destroyers of any and all rules of engagement who are treated as perfectly normal political players by the mainstream press. 

Worse, these non-rational actors are held up as the ultimate defense in the "Earth is flat, views differ" argument.  If anyone to the left of these nutbars says "Hey, you shouldn't be justifying this nonsense by giving them a legitimate platform" then it's "But they are no different from you, both sides do it" and the argument immediately ends.

Attacking the Village on its lack of objectivity only makes them cleave more tightly to the conservative side because in a post 2008 election world, being a liberal is the kiss of death.  Even more than politicians (who accept freely that not everyone's going to like them) the Villagers can't comprehend how anyone would be angry at them, so all the sturm und drang from the Right about bias and victimization is their weak point as the Villagers know it.

And so it goes.  Meanwhile, the Villagers and Congress play softball together for good causes, so why would our press be adversarial or even objective with people they see as friends with benefits?