[Walter Russell] Mead could have mentioned Zbigniew Brezinski,

the diplomat turned pundit who is a frequent defender of Barack Obama. Has the irony occurred to Professor Mead that he wrote an entire article about role of the press in Afghanistan while virtually ignoring the Taliban? As Mead knows (or should know) Brzezinski practically invented the Taliban back in the 1970s when he trained and armed the Afghan mujahideen to the hilt in order to give the Soviets a black eye. Of course it would be too much to expect Mead to offer even tepid criticism of Brzezinski; he is, after all, an editorial board member of the "American Interest."

According to commenter wigwag that is one thing Mead could have mentioned in his article Media Gives President a Pass Again published at the American Interest.

Wigwag goes on at length describing more things that W.R. Mead could have mentioned since Mead didn't have a problem mentioning Harold Bloom by name in an earlier piece wigwag knows that it's possible for Mead to do it. So why not? Another notable not mentioned by name would be Tom Friedman who mentioned W.R. Mead benevolently in one of his own pieces so now by not mentioning Friedman by name as one Obama's chief cheerleaders when he could for clarity must be for another reason like not messing up that good thing.

Wigwag postulates co-existential self-hate, oikophobia as another blogger insists, as the unifying reason why media align with progressive liberal politicians and protect them. Wigwag does what liberals do and recommends a book on the subject, the one that helped formulate his opinions. Why is recommending a book a thing that liberals do? Because wigwag recommends two and tells us if we haven't read then we're doing ourselves a disservice.

Read it so we can be smart as he.

Smart in the same way he is smart, along the same lines of thinking so your thoughts are formed as his thoughts are formed on the subjects at hand and we do him a disservice by not catching up.

Wigwag expands on Steel, the author of the first book. Wigwag finds it interesting the same things that informs and biases media principals and glitterati toward Obama policies are the same things that inform their attitude toward Israel because Israel is a product of the West and they harbor ill feeling for the West and its history, for themselves. Then he recommends another book.

Wigwag continues about rejection of American exceptionalism and how there is a clear split between party (with media scrutiny) and party with media support.  These are all subjects we've talked about here but it was odd seeing all splayed out by a random commenter. All of the following comments are supportive of this one by wigwag. One said wigwag's comment is better than the article, which is quite good, but again, material all well covered. Wigwag is right, W.R. Mead's piece really would have been better with names.



Unrelated:

Wigwag delivered a long well-reasoned comment. You have to click "more" to get the longer second half. One of the following comments to his said "this is the most succinct thing on media bias that I ever read."

It is long. It is not succinct.

I've been looking up words all over the place and I've been finding out all kind of new things that I can't wait to spring on people because they're perfect. They're so perfect that once you see them they cannot be forgotten and remain right there at the surface available for immediate use like your body internalized the signal on sight and will reliably recall and perform it by the signal's perfection. Forever. The signal must come to mind instantly due to their perfection so that when you think of the concept of irony, not the English word "irony," rather the concept, then you must think of this, your body automatically performs this because it is so perfect and also because now after this you'll have seen it: Boom. Locked in. Now your body automatically does this with the thought of anything slightly ironic, the double joke-horned crossing of irony.