I'm All Right, Jack, Keep Your Hands Off My Stack

So Murdoch is on the threshold of getting the Journal, here. This is bad news for everyone in the world who is not related to, or a well-paid employee of, Rupert Murdoch. When the Journal news staff turns its attention to a news story, it tends to do a far more intelligent job than any other newspaper. This is in part because it is not as persnickety about allowing reporters to write what they know to be true without having to put it into the mouths of someone else who has been given the authority to say whatever it is that is known to be true. Murdoch papers do this too, but almost always in the service of their boss's business interests or his extreme right-wing ideology. (And yes, he and they do set aside the latter on occasion, but only in the interests of the former.) So Murdoch will destroy the reporting capacities of the Journal over time, and we will lose this invaluable news source.

For liberals, however, the transformation of ownership is actually a mixed bag. While it's important for liberals to have as much truth out there as possible since it tends to support our arguments, it's still a mixed bag due to the power and prestige its very nearly insane right-wing editorial page derives from its relationship to news staff's terrific reporting. In this morning's paper for instance, the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program is termed, I kid you not, "stealthy, slow-motion socialism," here. This too will die with Murdoch, and so we will have one less problem in the world.

Read the whole Altercation here.