Marathon Pundit: Chapter 11,313 on why the mainstream media is dying

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg is about my age, lives about 10 miles from me, but I guess the similarities end there.

I quote from his Monday column. To be fair, Steinberg may have not written the subhead, but it fits the tone of his column:

Cities make you smarter

God bless Chicago. Having just driven across the country and back, I can tell you that most places are bumps in the road, and it's chilling to see the kind of undiluted reactionary opinion they marinate in. Every roadside diner's TV is tuned to Fox News, every radio station serves some right-wing nut grimly insisting on the reality of utter fantasy. It was out West that I saw a bumper sticker reading, ''Where's the birth certificate?'' referring to the mad claim that Obama was born in Kenya and thus was not eligible to be elected president.

I was sitting in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Mesquite, Nev., when I turned on the radio and heard someone -- it may have been Michael Savage -- explain how the entire birth certificate controversy was -- ready? -- fabricated by the White House in order to distract the public from the president's health care reform.

Most conservatives, including this one, believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. I've posted a couple of times on the birth certificate issue--I'll get back to Steinberg in a moment--but the intriguing thing about the "birther" issue is that in encapsulates the essence of Obama. He's hiding things from us.

Here are a few examples:

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Then-Sen. Obama kept on assuring us that his pastor for twenty years wasn't a radical...until we found out that his critics were right. "God d*mn America."

Bi-partisanship: Candidate Obama kept assuring us that he was a bi-partisan, if not post-partisan politician. As president, he's reigned as the most liberal president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he might be the most liberal president ever. No House Republicans voted for his $787 economic stimulus bill.

Single payer health care: For months Obama has been telling us that he opposes single payer health care, i.e., socialized medicine. "It you like your health care plan, you can keep it." Obama assures us that his health reform plan is not a Trojan horse designed to put private insurers out of business. Then a video is discovered from 2003 that clearly shows Obama favors single payer, and in that video he goes on to explain that it will take 20 years to force out private insurers. Trojan horse. The White House issues a statement that his comments were taken out of context, then the full video is released. The White House lied.

There is a credibility gap with this president.

Back to Steinberg: City people are not smarter than rural folks. Let's take this statement from yesterday's column: "God bless Chicago." In January, the Illinois state Senate, finally woke up and realized that Governor Rod Blagojevich was corrupt and removed the hair-brained one from office.

Not only is the ex-governor from Chicago, where do you think Blago polled the best in 2002 and 2006? That's right, "Smart Chicago."

Since 1973, thirty Chicago aldermen have been convicted of crimes, roughly one a year.

Who elected these cads? Smart Chicagoans. Is there another city that has such a shameful record?

As for Michael Savage, not only can you listen to his show in rural Nevada, you can tune in to his show every weekday afternoon in Chicago on WIND-AM 560.

You don't need to drive to Nevada, Steinberg.

UPDATE 2:15pm: Via a Twitter message, I was reminded that Steinberg is a columnist, not a reporter. Okay, then where are the conservative columnists at the Sun-Times? Maybe I missed one, but Carol Marin, Mary Mitchell, Steinberg, Mark Brown, Lynn Sweet...all libs.

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