Charles Davis, an “assistant professor at the Missouri University School of Journalism”, says that newspapers should start a “hate beat” to cover what he characterizes as the “shrill incivility framing what passes for discourse on health care reform seems to have long ago crossed over into territory unrecognized by most rational citizens of the republic.”
I propose that instead we start a “Laughable Leftist Advocates Of Health Care Beat”. In this beat, every day we would collect examples of left-wing thinking that is so laughably unfounded that it stands head-and-shoulders above typical leftist talking points for its tenuous connection to the real world.
Wait! Matt Welch at Hit & Run already started that beat. About Davis and his hate beat, Welch says this:
To draw any kind of equivalence between the official, police-backed bigotry of the United States–a bigotry that waged violence and worse against patriotic American citizens each and every day of each and every week–with the widely condemned hyperbole of talk show hosts and a scattered few non-violent acts of individual citizens, is not just kind of basically obscene, and an insult to the casualties on the often very lonely right side of the Civil Rights struggle, but it also serves to undermine faith in the very project under discussion.
In a significant and noteworthy way, Charles Davis and his colleagues are living in a bubble through whose membrane reality does not pass. He should be ashamed of himself. I’m sure that his students and colleagues already are.
