Herald-Leader
By Via TAPPED, the Lexington Herald-Leader appears to be returning a grant designed to support investigation of Senator Mitch McConnell after McConnell’s office called the paper and accused the center giving the grant of having a liberal bias. Fortunately, the four part story appears to be running in any case.
Three observations:
1. The Herald-Leader is a lovely newspaper, so lovely, in fact, that I’ll be giving a webchat under its auspices tomorrow afternoon at 1pm.
2. I forget now where I read it, but someone had a wonderful little post about how accusations of “bias” have almost completely replaced any factual analysis on the part of the right. In response to the Lancet study, any media report critical of Republicans, or anything at all about global warming, the rhetorical strategy of the right has been to shriek “BIAS!!!” rather than to confront the data. I wonder how long that will keep working…
3. On a related topic, I wonder how well the “sure, it’s a scandal, but what about the timing of the report?” trope is playing. We’ve seen this in response to Lancet (how could they possibly release before an election?), Foley (although I don’t have any evidence that the Dems were sitting on it, I’m sure that they were), and Curt Weldon’s financial indiscretions (the FBI clearly wants me to lose). The argument is absurd on its face; knowing about our leaders before rather than after an election should be a good thing, after all. Nevertheless, I wonder whether folks are buying.