Blog Watch: Is MoDo Liberal?

With all the changes going on with the Jericho blasting of Times Select, the powers that be at the New York Times have been spinning it as best they could. The Times of course always get pillared for being THE Liberal Media and the stable of columnists is always trotted out as Exhibit A.

In an NYT interview Andrew Rosenthal, the dynastic scion of the late Abe "I'm Writing as Bad as I can" Rosenthal, claims not to be able to detect bias in Maureen Dowd’s writing:

I would defy anyone to label Maureen Dowd by party affiliation or ideology. I've known her and worked closely with her for 20 years and I can't tell you the answer to either one.

This eye-rollingly oblivious assessment has been seized upon by those to the right of the dittoheads as further proof of the inherent pinko-ness of the Times.

Mark Finkelstein of Newsbusters (self-described as “Exposing and Combatting Liberal Media Bias” as if it were an IED on the Information Superhighway) calls Rosenthal a drooling idiot in so many words:

What would be worse: that when Times editorial page editor Rosenthal claims not to know Maureen Dowd's politics he's not being honest -- or that he is?

Hoystory picks up on that kernel of a talking point and runs with it:

Is he serious? Maureen Dowd is a left wing liberal who hasn’t voted for a Republican for any elected office, from dog catcher on up, for her entire adult life.

I defy Maureen Dowd to prove me wrong. I’ve read, shudder, her columns for a handful of years and can tell you that.

Who does Rosenthal thinks buys that — on the left or the right?

Talk about treating your readers like complete morons. And some people wonder why the business is going in the tank.

If we can get one more blogger in the echo chamber, Rush Limbaugh might pick up on this groaner.

To put this tempest in a teabag to rest, let’s go to the Liberal Media itself. A study of North Carolina newspapers revealed that they ran more conservative editorials than liberal or progressive ones. Chad Killebrew, the executive editor of The Dispatch (a member of the New York Times Regional Media Group), examines the results and observes:

While some readers might disagree into which camp a certain columnist falls, I think for most writers it's rather obvious. No one will accuse Cal Thomas, for example, of being liberal or Maureen Dowd of being conservative.

Not only does he feel MoDo is liberal, he singles her out as the breed standard.

She is many other things such as wickedly funny, sharply sarcastic, and bitterly vicious, but she is also clearly liberal. Now that we have solved that conundrum I can move on to other important issues of the day like establishing ursine scatological habits and determining papal religious affiliations.