It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of billionaire CEOs, it was the age of the struggling middle class, it was the epoch of think tank chickenhawks, it was the epoch of dead and wounded soldiers, it was was the season of wealthy pundits applauding a disastrous war, it was the season of small town newspaper editors daring to speak the truth...
I've been struck by the difference between what we hear from Joe Dunning, the managing editor of the solidly Republican Corning Leader and what we hear from the ostensibly nonpartisan opinion writers at the Washington Post (and elsewhere). Mr. Dunning speaks the plain commonsense truth:
The Maliki government has failed to meet most of its benchmarks, the civil war is raging on, our British allies are pulling up stakes...It's obvious to everyone but Bush and his supporters that it is past time to pull out.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post editorial page writes that
the military results of the past few months have been in some respects undeniably positive...there has been improvement in the Iraqi army and security forces, and more progress can be expected if U.S. training programs continue.
and David Broder praises John McCain because McCain
chided Romney for hedging his bets by saying that the surge "apparently" is meeting its military objectives. "It is working," McCain told the former Massachusetts governor. "Not 'apparently'; it's working."
How did this happen? How did our national media drift so far from reality that they fail to see what is obvious to even the most conservative observers out here in flyover country?
We probably cannot answer these questions and even if we could, it would not matter: we are faced with the reality that the would be opinion-makers at the national level have lost all touch with the world around them. While we may criticize the local media for many things, we must grant them this: they don't see blossoms where there is really only turd.
Via RochesterTurning...