TigerHawk Doesn't Get It

TigerHawk led with his chin in an interesting way this morning, as he chortled over the fact that the New York Times chose to beat up on Charles Rangel for endorsing conscription (link).

He just doesn’t get it, does he? He’s been suckered by his own press releases. He really does believe (or did believe) that the Times is just a house organ for the dreaded Pelosi mafia.

Indeed, there’s a basic fact here that Republicans never seem to get: the Times is nobody’s house organ but their own. I’m not accusing the Times of anything so sordid as independence or integrity. I’m just making the point that the Times is far more interested in making its own points than anybody else’s, and in the nature of the things, those points are bound to beat up on the ins. Or at least they’d better be, or their audience will die of boredom (recall how Rush slumped after George 41 gave him a night in the Lincoln bedroom).

It’s really extraordinary how constantly, completely and sincerely Republicans miss this point. Heaven only knows why, but perhaps it has something to do with team spirit—the stand-up-and-salute mentality that makes them unable to conceive of a press that is disposed not to be bound to anybody—not just on principle, but for fun and profit.

Addendum: TH stumbles into a twofer here, as he raises an issue on which conservatives are most likely to betray moral and intellectual confusion: the volunteer army. Rangel knows perfectly well that nobody is ever going to buy his argument, and I’m not at all sure he really wants them to. He’s just interested in exposing the incoherence of a posture that depends on social glue, and that then undertakes to make it work on the model of a joint stock company. To his credit, TH booted the ball way down past the line of scrimmage in his next post, reprinting in full a fascinating and provocative discussion of the issue in a rip-and-read from Stratfor (link). The comments to both posts betray the generally sophomoric level of the discussion, but it’s a start.