Today’s Albuquerque Journal reminds me of a problem that arises in our body politic and is reflected in our news mediums.
The Journal runs David Broder, the "liberal" Washington Post columnist on one page and Cal Thomas, the "conservative" whose work is syndicated by Tribune Media Services.
This kind of Op Ed positioning is common and I presume the Journal folks and most readers would consider it to be "balance." But it isn’t.
Thomas would not be unhappy, I think, with this description: committed rightist, seriously ideological and morally certain.
Broder, who I have read and watched on TV for years, thinks of himself as a reporter, mostly, but might concede that he has a liberal bent. Of what does that bent consist? He dislikes partisanship and hates ideological extremism. He seeks the middle. And exhibits nostalgia sometimes for New Deal-Fair Deal solutions.
You see where I am going? Thomas and Broder do not occupy parallel places on the political spectrum. It’s not even a close question. Noam Chomsky might be a leftist equivalent of Thomas.
(Not that I want to read Chomsky, who writes with all the vivacity of a 20th century German philosopher. Not to mention his ideological bent which leaves reality miles behind.)
Now this is not the fault of newspaper editors. The reason the Broders and Thomases are paired is that the American left wing is thin. But were the editors to think a bit harder, they might come up with a variety of lefties.
I would direct them to the American Prospect, the Progressive, the New York Review of Books and Harper’s for starters.
Or we could clone Molly Ivins.