Last week I wrote an article detailing just how far left Time Magazine is. My objection isn't that these media outlets are biased, my objection is their insistence that they are "objective" and "balanced" which they most certainly are not.
American liberals tend to foam at the mouth about the existence of FOX News, a center-right media outlet but are often oblivious or in aggressive denial that MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Newsweek, Time, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, etc. are all as far left as Fox News is right.
Liberals are quick to talk about how you can't get your news from Fox but see nothing wrong with regurgitating quotes from the latest issue of Newsweek or 60 minutes.
This week, I'll walk through Newsweek -- as seen through the eyes of a conservative...
Read on...
Starting with the cover we see scary pictures of Dick Cheney.
Now, to the left, Dick Cheney is a kind of boogeyman. And what did Dick Cheney do to deserve that? Did he institute the draft? Throw people in prison for simply disagreeing with American foreign policy? Send American citizens who happened to have ancestors who came from countries we were at war with? Nope. Oh wait, it was Democratic Presidents who did all those things (Wilson and FDR).
No, Dick Cheney is a villain to the left because...he doesn't think waterboarding is torture and, like most of congress, thinks it is okay if the government listens in on phone conversations of suspected terrorists calling in from overseas. Am I missing something? Maybe something about Iraq where he, like the Demcorats, believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Or maybe because he believed that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing?
I dunno what the left's issue with Cheney is to be honest. American liberals get hysterical at the drop of a hat anyway.
The Editor's Desk...
The lead editorial could be summarized with this interesting and unintentional admission:
To his [Cheney's] fans (a small but devoted bunch) Dick Cheney is a bulwark against the forces of darkness. To his foes (and they are legion), he is darkness.
I am sure if you live your life in a liberal bubble, Cheney is universally loathed with only a few kooks supporting him. But outside that bubble, you will find that most conservatives approve of him just as most liberals disapprove of him.
After all, even Bush, who I certainly don't approve of, still managed to eek out a 30% or so approval rating. And Cheney has consistently had a higher approval rating than Bush.
The problem with Newsweek is again, they are blind to their own bias. They are in such a bubble. It's sort of like when Harry Reid accused Cheney of having an only 9% approval rating when in fact it was much higher -- which is amazing considering how negative the reporting on him has been consistently.
Turning the page...
Newsweek has a lot of pretty vapid coverage compared to the others.
Unlike Time, which tends to have liberal editorial, Newsweek is far far more guilty of liberal assumptions about the world. I.e. liberal beliefs posed as facts.
Page 8, for instance says "Even some Republicans are anticipating a love fest at Clinton's confirmation hearing.."
WOW.
Conventional [liberal] wisdom
When I used to subscribe to Newsweek, one of the first signs that the magazine was turning into a left-wing propaganda outlet was in the Conventional Wisdom area. It's a series of up and down arrows of various items of the week. I kept noticing that no matter what, conservatives were always given down arrows.
I had been a reader of Newsweek since high school when I was not political at all. As Newsweek became increasingly left, I just kept noticing that it its judgments didn't seem to make any rational sense.
This week, for instance, Israel gets a down arrow because of the (their words) "Gaza Invasion".
Moving to page 13...
Moving past various Apple related news, we get to an article titled "Traffic Jam? Blame Bush."
Putting aside the fact that the article isn't newsworthy and is just a petty shot at Bush, the content of it is ridiculous. Basically, the Obama family having to move to the White House is causing traffic jams and this is Bush's fault because he didn't let the Obama family move into the Blair house early because it had already been booked previously. Talk about going to great lengths to blame Bush.
Obama's Cheney Dilemma
I won't bother to nitpick this article. It can be summed up that Cheney increased the power of the executive and will Obama be able to resist the temptation to make use of all these new powers?
The Big Idea: The Enigma in Chief
Jacob Weisberg's article on Bush's legacy strikes the tone for the whole magazine. It makes some typically left-wing assumptions as fact errors such as:
Bush's three most obvious legacies are his decisio to invade Iraq, his framing of a global war on terror after September 11 and a massive financial crisis. Each of these constitutes a separate epic in presidential misjudgment.
Really? I think not.
I think it equally likely that Bush will be remembered for his response to the 9/11 Terrorist Attack by setting up a series of government agencies and programs that resulted in zero new attacks during his administration, toppled a hostile regime in Iraq and replaced it with one friendly to the United States that was relatively painless to the United States. And he led the way in making the American people and congress aware of the financial crisis and pushed through quickly the means for the government to try to solve it.
But the thing is, I'm biased. The difference is, I'll admit it. I am biased. Newsweek plays the game that they're somehow reasonable, objective people offering analysis and they're not.
The article even states:
Among Presidential Historians, it is hardly an eccentric view that 43 ranks as America's worst President ever.
Oh come on. What Presidential Historian? No serious one.
Bush is bad compared to Woodrow Wilson? A man who got us into an unnecessary war, forced hundreds of thousands of Americans into the armed forces where over a hundred thousand died and jailed people for protesting the war?
Bush is as bad as Johnson? A man who got us into the Vietnam war, forcing over a million Americans into the armed forces where 60,000+ Americans died? Created an endless series of entitlement programs that have spent trillions of dollars with almost nothing to show for it except a welfare state with no limit to its appetite?
Worse than Buchanan, whose actions and lack of action helped lead to the Civil War?
And so on where we could add Jimmy Carter, Andrew Johnson, John Tyler?
But in the liberal bubble that is Newsweek, Bush is one of the worst Presidents. I'd expect that kind of provincialism from say the Huffington Post or the DailyKos but from a so-called serious journalistic outlet? No.
Judgment Calls: Obama's Healthy Choices
Now here is an article that is contrary to much of Newsweek, it actually calls into question some of the left-wing assumptions that the rest of Newsweek's editors seem to have.
The article isn't really conservative or liberal, it is just pointing out why our insurance is so expensive and how hard it would be for us to fix it or even to try to be like Canada or Europe because we expect so much more from our health care providers than what people in Europe and Canada expect.
The rest of the issue goes into entertainment and other non-political areas except for...
The Last Word
Which sometimes has a conservative columnist (George Will) but this week has Anna Quindlen whose article is effectively an Obama pep talk. Utterly vapid and unimaginative, it is an open love letter to President Obama with little care whether we, the reader, have any interest in the topic.