Now here is one of those matches that seems to have been made in new media heaven. The New York Daily News notes:
Air America announced last week that it is forming a syndication division, which will distribute programs like "Newsweek on Air."
Of course, conservative news sources are having quite a bit of fun with this journalistic marriage.
This is, after all, coming along right after that nonNewsweek cover that sank its fair, accurate and balanced teeth into Rush Limbaugh, who, last time I heard, was a radio talk show host of some note who competes in every possible way with Air America. The cover story is, of course, by conservative David Frum, but the key is that the essay is another work of pure opinion writing, in keeping with the magazine's current strategy for its future.
Thus, the conservative media crew at Newsbusters opined, about that cover story connection:
Couldn't they have at least waited a week to make this announcement? Liberal radio uber-failure Air America is branching out, expanding their tremendously successful business model to include syndication of outside programming. And with whom are they beginning this new venture?
Why, Newsweek magazine, and their program Newsweek On Air. ...
Thereby hiding its new business interests, and one might say their old ideological ones, behind the battered veneer of their journalistic integrity. And so it goes in the Brave New Media World. And one additional thought: Where does Newsweek stand on the new "Fairness" Doctrine, the Durbin Censorship Doctrine?
But, hey, let's cut nonNewsweek some slack. I mean, now is the time to pile on when it comes to taking shots at Limbaugh. I mean, check out this wire-service feature that comes just short of calling the man some kind of LIBERAL, for pete's sake.
After all, what are moral conservatives supposed to think about those three divorces and all those headlines about Viagra and mysterious bottles of painkillers.
"Of course, Rush does have his faithful listeners," said philosopher John Mark Reynolds, head of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, an evangelical campus near Los Angeles. "But the people at your local Baptist church are not the people that Rush hangs out with. When they go out to play, they don't do what Rush does when he goes out to play. ... Still, it seems that his base doesn't care. What else could he do to offend them that he hasn't already done?"
The key, for this Reynolds character, is that famous Limbaugh speech to his congregation at CPAC:
Reynolds noted that the speech was built on the "dubious notion that 'the people' are always good and that they will always do what's right, if the state will just get out of their way. This is completely different than the conservative belief that we must maintain checks and balances because we live in a sinful, fallen world and it's wrong to trust either the people or the state -- or the church, for that matter -- with total power."
Limbaugh's vision of unfettered human potential and his complete trust in corporate America is especially jarring, noted Reynolds, in light of the economic crisis unfolding on Wall Street and in communities nationwide.
The bottom line: Limbaugh seems to have little or no sense of sin, which is a vital component in classic conservatism.
Don't you just love the mainstream press?