Conventional Wisdom aka Whores Unite

Jon Stewart's recently had a segment titled Conventional Wisdom which discussed how certain themes develop traction in the media. At the time this theme was about how "liberal" and "out of the mainstream" Keryy and Edwards are. He proceeded to show clips of maybe 15 pundits using these talking points in almost exactly the same language. Over and over you hear "most liberal" and "out of the mainstream" as one pundit after another repeats these talking points. You should take a look at it if you have not seen it.

Well our friend Atrios woke up feeling his oats and has hit the ground running, and this time the conventional wisdom is that "Kerry only served 4 months" a transparently shameless lie at the very least. At its worst, perfidy, prevarication, and propaganda. Atrios has nearly 30 examples of this type of "Sure will Karl, straight from the fax machine and into my edititorial agitprop" media behavior. It starts here, and continues finally ending here. Here are two examples, go on over and read the rest.

AJC, the Vent, 08/05:

John Kerry spent four months fighting communism and then spent the next 30 years fighting capitalism.

Linda Chavez, 08/05/2004:

But Mr. Kerry's insistence on making his four-month tour of duty in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign could backfire as Americans learn more about what he did in that country and, more important, what he did when he returned home.

Of course this is a lie. Kerry served a tour of duty on a ship in Tomkin Gulf, then volunteered for a tour with the "brown water Navy" commanding the now famous swift boats. During active combat duty, he was injured three times and was awarded medals for heroism under fire. Why the pernicious, pundiocratic pileup? Because they can get away with it. It is almost like these guys are spinning yarn as fast as possible to replace the quickly evaporating, threadbare, presidential wardrobe. Simply shameless.