I certainly don’t need a report from the Media Research Center (MRC) to tell me that liberals hate the word “liberal” and hardly ever use it to describe themselves, while they liberally use the word “conservative” or “extremist” to describe us. Known it for years.
It’s simple, really. Mainstream media is dominated by liberals, who really believe they represent ordinary Americans. To them, conservative views are “extreme” or “right wing.” When was the last time you heard Katie Couric describing a Democrat or Hollywood type as “left wing” or a “liberal extremist?”
MRC’s Rich Noyes writes:
“It’s not that network reporters misuse the ‘conservative’ label. Rather, journalists systematically fail to identify those who seek a secular society and a strong, government-controlled, social welfare system as ideologues of the Left. The media’s labeling scheme presents ‘conservatives’ as less mainstream than their ideological adversaries, even as election returns show that it’s liberals who need to start swimming back to the center.”
That’s pretty close to what I think. I’ll go a step further. Although liberals like to use it as a slur, I’m not offended or repelled by the term “right wing.” In fact, the best way to diffuse something intended as an insult is to embrace it. Whenever liberal bloggers call me a right winger, I say, “Yeah, that’s what I am. But you spelled my name wrong and didn’t link to my blog. That hurts.”
Last year I blogged about a Pew study that showed liberals in media call themselves “moderates” instead of liberals. It’s amazing that people who believe in child killing on demand are moderates, yet people who want to protect unborn life are extremists.
While liberal journalists are only moderately annoying, bloggers who blog about me without linking are extremely annoying.
