I have been waiting for an opening like this for some time.
I have many friends. Mostly liberal and progressive. A few conservative and republican ... and a very few acquaintances (and family members) who are blind arch-neo-conniving supporters.
God knows I try to embody my spiritual beliefs while still getting the message out, and this leaves me in a position where I am uncomfortable demanding others see things the way I do. I try to get them to see my way gently, with compassion, and without pushing their panic buttons which make them go on the defensive and no longer able to listen.
The simple fact that the so-called main-stream media has refused to cover Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner utterly and entirely destroys any remote possibility that there is a "Liberal Media."
I totally understand that there are other factors. The "journalists" do not want to upset their corporate masters, and the WH press corp wants to maintain access (although why anyone would want to listen to the endless lies is beyond me), among other reasons.
So why am I writing this? ...
I have long been trying to enlighten my business partner to the lies he has taken for truth. He is one of my best friends, a very bright guy, a moderate conservative (fiscally conservative, socially liberal) and he'd fallen, en-mass, for the "liberal is bad" and "democrats are immoral," (among other) lines of propaganda coming out of the neo-con noise machine these last 30 years.
He voted for Bush in 2000 (because Republicans are 'all that is good',) and then refused to vote in 2004 because he was starting to see the light ... but he has always scoffed when I brought up either "republican voting fraud syndrome", or the myth of the liberal media. And believe me he does NOT just sit quietly while I try to make my point.
While he now despises Bush he has long argued that because "the media is liberal" that if there were any voting irregularities at all it would be ALL OVER THE LIBERAL MEDIA, which means, to him, that no one has tried to steal a vote since Chicago in 1960.
So, what's my fucking point ... well, I'll tell you ...
If the media were so liberal and so eager to take down a (so-called) conservative president would not every last one of them have shouted from the rooftops, and above the fold, Every Single Point Stephen Colbert scored on at the WHCD?
Right.
Exactly.
And this is what I told my business partner:
"If the media is so liberal, why are none of them reporting on Stephen Colbert's speech?"
For the first time, ever, he had not a word to say.
So, even for those folks who are truly rational republicans and conservatives, some of whom are now entirely fed up with BushCo, there are still many misconceptions to be banished.
I realize that this is just one tiny crack in a huge bulwark of neo-con defenses, but it makes an excellent point that I was having trouble making on my own ... and god knows I like to have something with which to BASH THEM OVER THE DAMN HEAD!
oops ...
I guess I still have a little more Zen to find.