Jane is right. The jokes will write themselves.
In fact they already have. In his first post, Ben Domenech proposes that he is swimming against the current:
“Yet even in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist – an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.”
That’s quite a statement coming from the Washington Post’s newest cub reporter. In his wide eyed manner, Domenech claims to wander the streets of America like Jimmy Olsen, in search of an honest correspondent, when really all he needs to do is spend an hour or so in front of the tube, to find his “Red America” comrades. Fortunately for Domenech, this also happens to coincide with this week’s RNC talking points. Corporate ownership of the media has virtually insured the editorial slant of how news is delivered. For Domenech to pretend that it’s the other way around indicates that either he’s insulated himself from media consumption, or he’s reaching to justify his new position at the Washington Post. My guess is, it’s the latter.
Considering what we’ve recently witnessed with Deborah Howell, it comes as no great shock to me that the Post would undertake such an action as hiring Domenech. The paper has spent much of the last 5 years buffering George W. Bush, and this is a logical step towards solidifying both its relationship to more conservative readers, and appeasing the administration. What’s more surprising is their lack of judgment in their choice. Consider the following paragraph:
“While the mainstream media has been slow to recognize the growth in conservative America, smart Democrats have not. Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton are not alone in recognizing that the unhinged elements of their base, motivated by partisan rage, Michael Moore conspiracies and a pronounced feeling of victimhood have dragged down the Democratic Party for far too long. It’s a political anchor apotheosized by the founders of leftist websites Daily Kos and MyDD, whose recently published book on political strategy and the Internet (an odd publication when one considers that DKos endorsed candidates are 0-19 in elections) opens with the sentence “Five years ago, the Republicans took over the government through nondemocratic means.” Smart Democrats read this kind of rhetoric and recognize that if they continue to be the party of Howard Dean, the floor may be nonexistent.”
If we take the media’s support for the president, it’s hard to find support for an argument that the media failed to recognize the growth of conservative America when, in fact, one just has to look back to the 2000 campaign to see how the networks folded under the ruse of Fox News on election night. In the wake of that close contest, the enthusiastic bias on the part of corporate owned media was hard to miss. Add to this the fact that less than one half of the eligible population bothers to go to the polls, disenfranchised voters, and you have the makings of a country that might be less inclined to agree with the right wing. But even if the numbers don’t add up accordingly, all Domenech needs to do is consider Bush’s recent poll numbers to see how conservative America feels about his competence. In the wake of Katrina, Iraq, federal deficits, and cuts in services, true conservative America may actually be more interested in solving problems than tossing cliches and stereotypes into the wind.
All signs indicate that Domenech represents the religious and moral core of the Republican right, rather than the broader blanket of conservatives. His work for Cornyn certainly reinforces this view. Appropriately, his presence at the Post will only serve to further define that paper as the Crime Blotter/Church Bulletin that it has become. “Red America” somehow seems an apt tool by which to protect and defend the right wing’s agenda. After all, they love anything that hints at blood.
