I have a subscription to Newsweek, which I consider a wonderful time-saver. If I want to keep up on liberal orthodoxy, I don't have to read the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. times and all the rest or watch any of the major network newscasts. Newsweek has the distilled essence of liberal thinking, reported and commented on by likeminded people who think they're being dispassionate and objective because they talk only to each other. They exist in a bubble, you might say.
And if i'm really short of time, all I have to do is read Anna Quindlen's column, which runs in the back of the magazine every other issue. She is such a good writer that it almost disguises the fact that she seldom strays outside the liberal echo chamber. Her piece in the current issue, headlined "State of Illusion," is especially good. Because it reacts to President Bush's State-of-the Union speech, it manages to include almost the entire liberal litany.
She begins with the No. 1 screed on the liberal list -- Iraq is a disaster that will end with a whimper instead of a bang, having accomplished nothing but the creation of more terrorists, never mind that terrorists need no excuse. She moves from there to "illegal wiretaps," with no consideration that they might have some connection to the war on terror. From there, we go to Katrina, which proved that Bush and company don't care if American communities get destroyed. She ends by writing about the "profound sense of malaise" felt by "the young, the poor, the outsourced, the uneducated, the overqualified," who all understand that we have "a good life built on sand." George Bush should have made us all feel better about this, but, of course, he could not, because he has "a knack for thinking small."
I don''t know which is more discouraging, the fact there are people who feel this way (that our whole world is on the verge of collapse), or that so many of them think the reasons for current conditions are so simple that we just need a hero to charge in and rescue us.
As I said, the distilled essence of liberal orthodoxy.
