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Diogenes, put down that lantern.
Thomas Edsall spent 25 years at the Washington Post, retiring this year from his post as senior political correspondent. He has affiliated with The New Republic and Columbia School of Journalism, and now has a new book out, Building Red America. He joined me for the second hour of today's program, and he provided extraordinarily candid answers to a range of questions about his politics and biases, as well as those of MSM generally. The audio will be posted here. The transcript is already posted here. Som excerpts of interest:
HH: Have you ever voted for a GOP presidential candidate?
TE: I don't think so, no.
HH: Okay. Are you pro-choice?
TE: Yes.
HH: Even as to partial birth abortion, late term abortions?
TE: If the life of the mother is threatened, or if the child is going to be severely disabled, I would give it serious consideration.
HH: Do you own a gun?
TE: No, but I'm not against guns, and...well, in any rate, but you can ask gun questions.
HH: Do you favor same sex marriage?
TE: Not particularly.
HH: Do you think that liberal judges who decree that it's in the Constitution have erred?
TE: Probably.
And:
HH: Now on this program some time ago, Terry Moran, one of the Beltway correspondents, ABC senior correspondent...
TE: Yeah.
HH: ...said that in the media, there is a deep suspicion, even hostility of the military. Do you agree with him that the media is really very suspicious of the military?
TE: A little less than it used to be, but there is a suspicion.
And:
HH: Yeah, but I'm talking about Ned...do you think Jane Hamsher's one of the nut cases on the web?
TE: I think if...I'm not familiar with her stuff, but if she put a blackface of...
HH: Joe Lieberman.
TE: Joe Lieberman on the web, that's pretty fruitball.I don't know what you want to call it.
HH: And what about Ned Lamont who campaigns with her?
TE: Does he actually campaign with her?
HH: She has appeared with him at a number of places. She has traveled with him. She is not on his staff. She's just a very visible supporter.
TE: Has he been asked to renounce that?
HH: Yes. He did not...to my knowledge, he never renounced it, never answered the question. She dropped out of sight until after the primary. She's back, you know, blogging for Lamont again.
TE: Well, I would think that he should be asked what his views are towards that. And if he does not, it was totally inappropriate, and that he does not want it associated with his campaign. But that's a mark against him.
And:
TE: And I agree that whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it, many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left.
And:
HH: Is there any big name political reporter, and you know them all, Thomas Edsall. That’s why your book, Building Red America, is getting read left and right. Are there any of them who are conservative?
TE: Big name political reporter?
HH: Right.
TE: Jim Vandehei of the Washington Post.
HH: Think he’s voted for Republicans for president?
TE: Yes, I think he has. I don’t know, because he’s never told me. But I would think he has.
HH: And so, of those sorts…and he’s a very fine reporter.
TE: He is.
HH: He probably is a Republican. But given that number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?
TE: It’s probably in the range of 15-25:1 Democrat.
And:
HH: One of the interesting passages, and very candid ones in Building Red America is where you recognize the security gap between Democrats and Republicans. And you write about the fact that the Pelosi Democrats, the Ned Lamont Democrats, the Harry Reid and Howard Dean Democrats have really lost the confidence of America on national security issues. Do you think it’s fair for Americans to judge them less serious about security than Republicans?
TE: Yeah, I think they come out of an anti-war tradition, anti…their voting records of Democrats on the whole is much more anti-defense weapons systems. And there is, as I’ve said at the beginning of this interview, an underlying hostility to people in the military among many on the left.
HH: And is there also an underlying hostility to faith on the left?
TE: Among a segment of the left, and not insubstantial segment.
And:
HH: You quote an acquaintance of mine, Archbishop Charles Chaput in Denver, Colorado, as saying he told Catholics that a vote for Kerry was a sin. I know for a fact he did not say that. He wrote instead, if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil, he asked rhetorically. And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. But the question he was posed was not about John Kerry. It was about a generic class of politicians who really pushed forward on abortion, in which you made the decision to read John Kerry. He didn’t say John Kerry. Was that fair?
TE: It may not be. I, in all honesty, lifted that out of news stories, and if the news stories were inaccurate, then I am inaccurate, and it is unfair.
What is unusual about this interview is that Edsall, having closed his career as the WaPo's top dog political reporter is finally free to admit just how far to the left he and his colleagues are. And though he is that far from the center, he still sees the fever swamp of the left side of the blogosphere as "pretty fruitball."
My favorite exchange:
HH: A proposition. The reason talk radio exploded, followed by Fox News, followed by the center-right blogosphere, is that because folks like you have been the dominant voice in American media for a long time, and you’re a pretty thoroughgoing, Democratic favoring, agenda journalist for the left, and you’ve been the senior political reporter of the Washington Post for a very long time. And people didn’t trust your news product…not you, personally, but the accumulation of you, throughout the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and they got sick and tired of being spoon fed liberal dross, and they went to the radio when an alternative product came along.
TE: To a certain degree, I agree with that.
Honesty from a MSM reporter: Who'd have ever imagined it?
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