What liberals cling to

Mickey Kaus spazzes because, it turns out, as a Marxist, it turns out he's condescending like Obama. Being condescending is inherent to being a Marxist because of the belief that the cultural "superstructure" is determined by the economic "base"--i.e., if people had well-paying jobs and no economic anxiety, they wouldn't "cling" to silly beliefs in things like God and religion. His easy test for whether you're a "Vulgar Marxist" in this sense: (1) Do you believe China can remain Communist as it becomes capitalist; (2) Do you believe Islamic fundamentalism will fade when its adherents have better economic conditions. If you tend to think yes to both, then you're likely to think Obama was right that working class folks will think differently about cultural issues once they're better-paid.

Aside from the obvious problem that there isn't much of a correlation between poverty and belief in God and/or guns (you're telling me NRA lobbyists don't have food in their bellies?), this also assumes that the well-off don't have a cultural superstructure of their own. According to the Marxist account, we don't "cling" to anything because we have the enlightenment that comes with privilege! But rich urbanites cling to all kinds of silly things (not least of which is the belief that they know everything.) A short list of them can be found here.

Breaking: Media abdicates responsibility for Iraq War coverage!

The lede is buried in today's NYT scoop on the cozy relationship between media military analysts and the Pentagon:

Some networks publish biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the potential for that work to create conflicts of interest. “None of that ever happened,” said Mr. Allard, an NBC analyst until 2006.

“The worst conflict of interest was no interest.”

Gee, I can't imagine why the Times would ignore the most significant aspect of the story: that the network/cable news channels' handling of the massive misinformation campaign waged by the Pentagon was at best, negligent and at worst, deceptive. Could it be because the liberal media (including the Times itself, which published at least nine op-eds by "military analysts") comes off as either willfully blind or really, really stupid? No doubt the media had an interest in being able to put on "experts" with access to internal Pentagon goings-on; but to not critically examine what those analysts were saying--or even notice that they were all repeating the same Administration talking points--isn't exactly journalism, is it? The self-righteous tone of the article--we should be outraged that the Bushies would try to control messaging about the war??--is sort of hilarious when you think about how the most incompetent presidential administration in history was so easily able to make the media its bitch.