Be Offended

Lets consider four words and how the media presents them. The words are: liberal, conservative, moderate, and extremist.

Liberal and Conservative are political philosophies. Moderate and Extremist describe intensity and degree and may be adjectives to describe either liberals or conservatives.

In its rush for ratings, television likes to present extremist liberals and extremist conservatives in debate and call it balanced. That is as balanced as standing with one foot in boiling water and the other foot in ice water. In this formulation; the calm reasonable voices of moderates are not heard at all.

Bush does this for political reasons. Fox does it to fire up the conservative base. CNN does it for ratings. They all polarize the national conversation and, in the process, insult us.