I was invited very recently to appear on a cable-news show to talk about Sarah Palin. The booker very nicely said, ‘I understand you’ve written about the pros and cons. We were hoping you could come on and talk about the cons.’ I demurred, and the booker called back saying that I could talk both pros and cons. We’ll see how it goes. All that by way of saying that sometimes the story of how conservatives get into the mainstream media really is a right-wing parodists’ idea of that story.
On the other hand, I’ve also had television appearances politely canceled when, based on “pre-interviews,” bookers have decided that I would not take as tough a conservative line as most conservatives were taking, and therefore would not do enough to generate conflict.