Red Meat for Limbaugh and Beck - Courtesy of the <i>New York Times</i>

Underplaying the story of this weekend's "Taypayer March on Washington" feeds into the Obama-haters' belief that the elite print media are seriously biased against the right of center.
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In their Sunday editions, the New York Times and other major dailies (my hometown Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, for example) gave Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Shawn Hannity huge hunks of red meat for their Monday shows.

Expect to hear repeatedly about how the New York Times in its national edition (which is the edition available in Chicago) stuck the story about Saturday's "Taypayer March on Washington," not on the front page and not even on the front page of the second ("National") section, but way back on page 33. In the Tribune it landed on page 41 under the headline, "Conservatives vent at Obama." (The Tribune's web site carried the head, "Massive crowd marches against Obama's Agenda." The story didn't make the print Sun-Times at all.

As the Washington Post reported -- on the front page of the print edition -- the rally outside the U.S. Capitol, mostly against "Obamacare," "appeared to number in the many tens of thousands."

The fact that so many people gathered from so many states deserved to be reported. And so did the fact that so many of the chants -- "Liar! Liar!" and so many of the placards -- Obama's likeness defaced with a Hitler mustache, "Liar in Chief," "Bury Universal Health Care -- Along with Senator Kennedy" -- were so extreme, so mean, so scary, also deserved to be reported. And yes, some of the marchers were still asking for the President's birth certificate.

Underplaying the story feeds into the Obama-haters' belief that the elite print media are seriously biased against the right of center, and that the story might have received better play had the crowds been sparser.

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