I already had one response to Lisa's comment that I added as a comment on the previous post, but I had another thought about what she said and it's better as a separate entry than another overlong comment.

Lisa pointed out her lack of tolerance for conservatives who overvalue their own importance, and while I can certainly agree with that point, I tend to think the problem is perhaps not so much with those (probably relatively few) who have the opinions. The problem is the journalism that leads us to believe such opinions are valid, common, and worth discussing.

At least for me, the problem with journalism isn't that there's so much "bad news" out there or that I don't find them credible. The problem to me is the horserace. It's conflict. Journalism is built around conflict to some extent, sure, but most issues (especially the opening of a movie for crying out loud) are nowhere near as divisive as media coverage would have us believe.

Any lazy journalist knows he can reliably get a spicy quote from an extremist on either side of an issue. It's an easy story, but it's lazy journalism. It's writing about issues like horseraces (who wins and who loses) rather than like actual issues with subtexts and complexities and consequences that have nothing to do with "who wins."

It's pretty inexcusable that our elections and wars are reported in this way, but it's an especially sad commentary that even entertainment news now gets the horserace treatment.

Bearing that in mind is how I have managed to stay sane over the past few years. Is it miserabe to have to hear over and over again about Cindy Sheehan? God yes it is. And is it awful to have to hear unending griping from "the Christian right" about the decaying values of Halloywood? Indeed so. But those who make the loudest noise are generally furthest from the actual crowd. That doesn't excuse the incompetence of those people, but remembering that has kept me from pulling my hair out over the past couple of years.