{"id":78,"date":"2014-01-05T15:18:15","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T19:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2014-01-05T15:52:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T19:52:13","slug":"virginia-political-blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Political Blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Bearing Drift<\/a><\/i> a few weeks ago Shaun Kenney said this<\/a> about MSNBC:<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

“Let\u2019s be very honest about it. \u00a0MSNBC<\/i> caters to probably the most hateful, unintelligent, mean-spirited, and closed minded of the American left. \u00a0The smugness and arrogance of the blathering idiots are perhaps only punctuated by the occasional bright light offered by Rachel Maddow, but beyond this are nothing but the vapid darkness of a fanatic who won\u2019t change their mind and rarely changes the subject.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThey really do<\/b> hate us,\u201d says Mr. Kenney (emphasis in the original), and it\u2019s this hate that irks conservatives.\u00a0 This makes MSNBC<\/i> a \u201cperfect caricature of what liberals\u00a0think<\/b><\/em>\u00a0Fox News<\/a><\/i> must be\u201d (emphasis again from the original).<\/p>\n

Mr. Kenney goes on to quote Paul Spiliakos<\/a> of First Things<\/i><\/a> to make a case that Keith Olberman created the demagoguery at the network, and Charles C. W. Cooke<\/a> at National Review Online<\/a><\/i> to argue that MSNBC<\/i> reflects \u201ccurrent events in parallel America II \u2014 a rather silly place in which the political center of gravity and all things Good are defined by the preferences of the faculty at Berkeley and the comments section of the Daily Kos<\/i><\/em><\/a> and in which anyone who dissents from this position is believed to possess two heads, a black heart, and a pocket copy of Mein Kampf.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Now I watch a lot of cable news, and there can be no doubt that MSNBC leans left.\u00a0 It should surprise no one that at least one of the three major cable news networks tried to capture the left end of the political news market after Fox grabbed the right.\u00a0 But MSNBC<\/i> broadcasts Morning Joe\u2019s<\/a><\/i> beltway insiderism, and while discussions there are certainly vapid enough, they don\u2019t express hate for conservatives.\u00a0 There is no equivalent program at FNC<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I would also suggest that liberal viewers watching FNC <\/i>get their share of vitriol and hate, but of course your mileage may vary.<\/p>\n

And while Ed Shultz and Al Sharpton can demagogue right along with the best Sean Hannity and Bill O\u2019Reilly have to offer, MSNBC <\/i>hosts like Steve Kornacki, Chris Hayes, and Melissa Harris-Perry manage to present very insightful public policy discussions.\u00a0 They certainly approach this from a liberal perspective, but they invite genuine alternative viewpoints to the roundtables on their shows, something Fox<\/i> hosts rarely, if ever, do.\u00a0 In any event, I would invite readers to watch video from both MSNBC<\/a><\/i> and Fox News<\/i><\/a> and then come to their own conclusions.<\/p>\n

More interesting for my purposes here is that Mr. Kenney goes on to ask:<\/p>\n

“\u2026whether or not American public discourse deserves better. \u00a0Even more than that, where would we even find this sort of intellectual give-and-take on the mainstream left nowadays when everything outside of the pale of acceptable nee<\/em> leftist opinion is considered either reactionary or borderline fascism?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The he suggests we \u201cLook around the Virginia blogosphere\u201d and wonders \u201cWhere is the left-wing equivalent of Bearing Drift?\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems to me that Blue Virginia<\/a><\/i> provides an intellectual counterpart for Bearing Drift<\/i>.\u00a0 Both offer an interesting mix of Virginia political analysis and strident partisan attacks, as a quick look at each home page right now shows.\u00a0 Mr. Kenney might also want to take a look at The Richmonder<\/a><\/i> and Not Larry Sabato<\/a><\/i> (the latter especially for some very solid electoral analysis from a Democratic Party perspective).<\/p>\n

And if Mr. Kenney is worried about the state of public discourse he may want to take a look at some of the blogs on the conservative side.\u00a0 I met with more hate and vitriol in two comment<\/a> threads<\/a> at novatownhall<\/a> <\/i>in recent days than MSNBC <\/i>produces.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I plan to see if I can supply some of the \u201cintellectual give and take\u201d Mr. Kenney seeks.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see if the folks at Bearing Drift<\/i> and other conservative blogs in Virginia can respond in kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Bearing Drift a few weeks ago Shaun Kenney said this about MSNBC: “Let\u2019s be very honest about it. \u00a0MSNBC caters to probably the most hateful, unintelligent, mean-spirited, and closed minded of the American left. \u00a0The smugness and arrogance of the blathering idiots are perhaps only punctuated by the occasional bright light offered by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,18,2,17],"tags":[46,20,45],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cable-news","category-discourse","category-fbl","category-virginia-political-blogs","tag-cable-news","tag-discourse-and-rhetoric","tag-virginia-political-blogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}