A Conservative Cocoon?
Mickey Kaus commented months ago on the liberal cocoon. His thesis was that liberals get their news from liberal sources like the New York Times and CBS News, and that while this helps keep them happy and confident, it gives them a distorted picture of the world--that Democrats are on the verge of taking over Congress, for example. Then the election comes along and spoils their fantasy.
I see the potential of that developing on the conservative side. It's true we don't have control of the major media like the liberals, but we have developed our own alternative sources of media--talk radio, Fox News, conservative weblogs, sites like
Drudge and
Lucianne. I have been a long-time member of Lucianne and I absolutely love the site. It's one of my two or three most visited sites daily, and the first one I fire up in the morning.
But (you knew there had to be a but) I wonder if there isn't a danger here of developing complacency based on continual reinforcement of conservative opinion. The issue that brings this up is Richard Clarke and his testimony before the 9-11 commission. Those in the conservative cocoon
know that he has been thoroughly debunked (see for example two posts below). And that is fine. But we can't assume that the rest of the country knows this; in fact they do not.
Rich Lowry wrote a
fine article for the NY Post about Clarke's testimony. But it starts like this:
DEAN Acheson famously titled his memoir of his years as secretary of state after World War II "Present at the Creation." Anyone close to Richard Clarke these last few days could write a memoir called "Present at the Self-Immolation." Rarely has a former public servant with such a sterling reputation shot it all away so quickly.
The
comments on the article at Lucianne were along the lines of the following:
This maniac, Clarke, is TOAST.
The whole spectacle turned out to be another useless attempt by the DNC (and Klintoon) and their shills at CBS to discredit GW and his administration.
This hearing was foisted upon us by partisans and it's goal was to indict the Bush administration for clintoon blunders...it has failed miserably,
Sorry if I don't buy the notion that he's been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the American people. In the eyes of those who pay attention and surf the web looking for information, yes. Unfortunately, we're still a small minority of the country.
