Annoy a Liberal

Columnist : L. Henry

Work and be happy!

I have a rather large collection of buttons, the political kind. Hundreds of them actually, touting candidates for all sorts of offices. My favorite ones, however are the buttons with in your face slogans. I especially liked the “Speaker Newt – Deal With It” button, and the “Bush Won – Get Over It!” button.

But my favorite button in big bold print screams “Annoy a Liberal – Work and be Happy.” You see, nothing irritates liberals more than people who go out and succeed without government help. They just can’t comprehend such a thing. And the successful people who annoy them the most are conservatives in the media. That’s because if there is one area of our society liberals think they have a greater birthright to than government, it is the media.

Rush Limbaugh drives them nuts. Not only does he intellectually beat them up on a daily basis, but he revived an entire radio genre and made it almost exclusively the domain of conservatives. The lack of a successful nationwide liberal talk radio host has created heartbreak throughout the left. Add to Limbaugh’s success the fact books by conservative writers have been zooming to the top of best seller lists everywhere and, well, it is more than your average quiche eating lefty can stand.

The final straw has been Fox News. By simply being “fair and balanced” it has left its liberal competitors at CNN and the formerly “big three” networks in the dust. To make matters worse, the National Press Foundation has now chosen to honor one of Fox News’ leading lights, Brit Hume with its prestigious Sol Taishoff Award.

This caused the brain of liberal icon Geneva Overholser to go into meltdown. The former Washington Post ombudsman and current head of the University of Missouri’s Washington journalism program resigned from the board of the National Press Foundation in righteous, or leftous, indignation, over a Fox newsie getting such a distinguished honor.

Overholser just couldn’t comprehend how such an ideological journalist as Brit Hume and an agent of the vast right wing conspiracy like Fox News could be put in the same category of past winners like Dan Rather, Barbara Walters, and Nina Totenberg.

Of course, it completely escaped the learned Overholser that Rather and Totenberg are poster children for biased left-leaning reporting. Totenberg hails forth on National Public Radio, the closest thing this country has to state-run broadcasting, and Rather of CBS has long been regarded as the most biased of the national anchors.

But then again, Overholser is of the mindset that liberal is mainstream and conservative is not. Think again Geneva, look at what people are watching, reading, and listening too. Now that the liberal media monopoly has been broken, people have abandoned it more swiftly than they did the USSR.

Brit Hume is an accomplished journalist and, to its credit, the National Press Foundation defended both his credentials and its decision to honor him.

In the meantime it’s been a great day, Hume is successful and happy – and the liberals are duly annoyed. This is more fun than a Howard Dean concession speech.