I have a book review on the homepage today:

Eric Boehlert would freak out if you were to point out to him how much his book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush reads like a mirror image of the conservative press criticism he despises. According to Boehlert, the “fear of conservative press critics”—or “The Press Haters” as he calls them (us) in a chapter by that name—is one of the factors that brought about the mainstream media’s transformation from the snarling, merciless pit bulls of the Clinton years to the cowardly, right-leaning lapdogs of today. If Boehlert’s book itself could be considered an argument, it would be that the Left must emulate these critics so that the media will stop being “[a]fraid of the facts and the consequences of reporting them.”

One thing that struck me but that I didn’t include in the review is how, when liberals criticize the media, it sounds a lot like their criticism of the Democratic Party. They don’t really accuse the journalists in the media of being conservative — in his book, Boehlert concedes that most surveys of their personal politics show that journalists lean to the left. They accuse them of being “Lapdogs” — wimps who refuse to stand up to the big bad right on the wrongness of the war, tax cuts, etc. And if you read liberal blogs, you find this same criticism applied to the Democrats: They wring their hands over polls and consultants, they roll over when Republicans question their patriotism, they back down on judicial nominees. Liberals see the media and the Democratic Party in similar ways — as left-leaning institutions that, in recent years, have refused to stand up to the Republicans.