I know I shouldn’t be surprised at how awful Thomas Frank’s columns are — I suspect the Wall Street Journal picked him as their token liberal precisely because he’s so laughably bad. But his column yesterday, entitled “Newsrooms Don’t Need More Conservatives,” had an especially hilarious bit. In addition to the usual Bizarro World stuff about “the conservative tilt of the press,” he had this:
Which brings up the problem of Republicans in Name Only. Anyone setting out to appease bias-spotters on the right should know that the conservative movement feels that it is plagued by impostors and fakers, and it won’t be satisfied until these RINOs, too, are chased from the newsrooms of the nation.
What? Has anyone, ever, discussed the issue of RINOs in the context of American newsrooms? With regard to columnists on the editorial pages, maybe, where the lefties who run things think they’ve balanced their lineup by giving space to someone who doesn’t actually worship Lenin. But newsrooms? Now, I’m a big-tent, 80%-friend-not-20%-enemy kind of guy, but even conservatives less willng to overlook deviationism would be ecstatic to see more RINOs in newsrooms. Compared to what we have now, it would be a big improvement.