THERE IS NO BIAS IN MAINSTREAM JOURNALISM - AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  Keep repeating that phrase as you read the opening paragraph of a book review by By Michiko Kakutani, published in The New York Times:

The Iraq war in David Finkel’s heart-stopping new book is not the Bush administration’s misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and ideological fervor meticulously chronicled by Thomas Ricks in his benchmark 2006 study, “Fiasco.” It isn’t the bungled occupation run out of the Green Zone bubble, depicted with such acuity by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his 2006 book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” And it isn’t the foreign-policy imbroglio debated year after year by neoconservatives and liberals, by politicians, Pentagon officials and pundits.

COMMENT:  Yes, I know, I know, it's a book review.  But the sheer arrogance of that paragraph, its sureness about being right, is the attitude that dominates American journalism, the arrogance that allowed the press to openly side with Barack Obama in 2008, and never believe there was anything wrong with its obscenely slanted journalism.

And now that Obama is proving to be the small-time Chicago politician, with a silver voice, that he is, the same press explains away his failures and warns that much of the opposition is "racist."

If you want to know the origins of that arrogance and narrowness, you must examine the schools and universities that produce it.  May I recommend a superb piece published by American Thinker.  It's by Professor Ron Lipsman about his experience in teaching at a major state university.  This is one of the best articles I've read reporting on what goes on in America's halls of "higher learning."  Must reading.  It's here.

October 6, 2009