koshergrl
Diamond Member
- Aug 4, 2011
- 81,129
- 14,025
"...the media have underplayed the Gosnell story because its details might undermine support for the abortion status quo, or at least cause people to ask what exactly that status quo is these days. Rather than risk that, the Gosnell story was demoted.
In response, some have said the conservative bloggers are wrongly seeing a conspiracy of silence where there is only a difference over news judgment. By now, this response is implausible. It is hardly a revelation anymore that the media play the news in subtle but tilted ways to protect what they think is a settled social good, such as access to abortion, no matter what.
Another question raised by the trial of this abortion doctor is the matter of reactionaries clinging to the past.
"Mr. Obama's remark about rural Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion is the coin of the realm in his crowd. But let's put their shared consensus another way: Somehow it became a conventional view in contemporary American politics that it is non-urban conservatives who in every case have to accommodate their beliefs to a national culture created by people who live somewhere else. "They" must adjust on abortion, guns, school prayer, sexual mores and all the rest of it. Liberals, meanwhile, not only feel no need to concede anything but use the commanding heights of the press and academia to define anyone who dissents from their ever-evolving national culture as a political fringe obsessed with people, one might say, who aren't like them."
"But what about Kermit Gosnell? This story suggests something Neanderthal-like may have developed around the fringe of abortion practice in the 40 years since Roe v. Wade. But rather than re-examine and even reform those practices, the curtain will be pulled on the Gosnell case. They'll cling to Roe, no matter how unseemly its status quo."
Henninger: Clinging to Guns?and Abortion - WSJ.com
In response, some have said the conservative bloggers are wrongly seeing a conspiracy of silence where there is only a difference over news judgment. By now, this response is implausible. It is hardly a revelation anymore that the media play the news in subtle but tilted ways to protect what they think is a settled social good, such as access to abortion, no matter what.
Another question raised by the trial of this abortion doctor is the matter of reactionaries clinging to the past.
"Mr. Obama's remark about rural Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion is the coin of the realm in his crowd. But let's put their shared consensus another way: Somehow it became a conventional view in contemporary American politics that it is non-urban conservatives who in every case have to accommodate their beliefs to a national culture created by people who live somewhere else. "They" must adjust on abortion, guns, school prayer, sexual mores and all the rest of it. Liberals, meanwhile, not only feel no need to concede anything but use the commanding heights of the press and academia to define anyone who dissents from their ever-evolving national culture as a political fringe obsessed with people, one might say, who aren't like them."
"But what about Kermit Gosnell? This story suggests something Neanderthal-like may have developed around the fringe of abortion practice in the 40 years since Roe v. Wade. But rather than re-examine and even reform those practices, the curtain will be pulled on the Gosnell case. They'll cling to Roe, no matter how unseemly its status quo."
Henninger: Clinging to Guns?and Abortion - WSJ.com
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