The wife looked at me funny today for fussing about the liberal articles in today’s Washington Post. Well, it shouldn’t be surprising, especially on a Monday, when a newspaper often goes casting around for news, allowing for a little more indulgence of the ideological impulses. Above the fold in nearly every section (save Sports) the Post signals its liberal agenda. I wouldn’t stay these stories aren’t worth reporting (or reading), but they do put the lie to people thinking the Washington Times is the one biased newspaper in town. Scan them quickly with me.
1. On the front page, another story on John Negroponte’s term as the ambassador in Honduras, with the subheadline “Focus Renewed on Intelligence Pick’s Knowledge of Death Squads in 1980s.” Let’s just call that the passive-partisan tense. “Focus renewed,” by whom? Democrats and their friends at the Post.
2. Front and center, in color, on the front page of Business, another episode of Stuck In the Eighties. “The General and His Banker,” the latest installment of the Post’s obsession with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his relationship with the local Riggs Bank.
3. On the front page of Metro, “Antiwar Parent Endures Enlistment, Death” of her son in Iraq. She asked her son, “Why do they want you to join the military and hurt people?” Metro’s top is liberally perfect, actually. On the top left, Georgetown University students go on a hunger strike for the university’s janitors. On the top right, resistance to charter schools remains strong in Maryland.
4. And finally, on the front of the Style section, a huge two-thirds of the page is devoted to “Joe Steffen, the Ehrlich Aide Who Gossiped His Way Out of a Job.” The Post wants Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich to lose, and has already put the gossip-and-firing story on the front page when Steffen was found spreading marital-infidelity rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, one of two Democratic contenders battling to run against Ehrlich. Spread out over a big picture of Ehrlich with his arm around Steffen is a Steffen quote from FreeRepublic.com touting himself with the nicknames “The Prince of Darkness,” “Doctor Death,” and “Doctor Ice.”