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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (680825)	4/27/2005 9:04:14 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 769670

I may have followed other lemmings off a cliff (Joe Scarborough) I spend a good bit of time railing against the mainstream media for blindly following the currents of conventional wisdom in places like Manhattan and Georgetown. Unfortunately, a new poll shows that on at least one recent story, I may have followed the other lemmings off a cliff. After the death of Pope John Paul II, news outlets provided exhaustive coverage of John Paul's life and legacy. The coverage had an amber glow to it, and even the most hard-bitten outlets used the week to heap praise on the deceased pontiff. But minutes after he was buried, we all started analyzing the coming election of John Paul's successor. The conventional wisdom was as follows: Pope John Paul was too conservative for the 21st Catholic Church. His papacy had divided American Catholics into two camps. The next pope would therefore need to be more progressive. The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger a week later was met with a chorus of gasps for the media elite. Their unanimous conclusion was that American Catholics would now be split into embittered factions and that the church would dissolve into a theological civil war. At the time, I made sure each program had voices from the center-left of the Catholic Church so Americans could hear the loud chorus of protests coming from those who believed the new pope was too strident to unite American Catholics. The noise from the left was overwhelming. And members of the media who believed Pope Benedict was a perfect fit for the Church were almost nonexistent. Pat Buchanan was the noticeable exception. Meet the Press's Tim Russert, whose job description does not include giving opinions or running a televised op-ed page, provided excellent broadcast coverage. But in the opinion world, the commentary was remarkably tilted against Pope Benedict. That's why I was understandably surprised by a new ABC poll released earlier today that showed how over 80% of American Catholics were pleased by the selection of their new pontiff. I proved once again that the disconnect between the mainstream press and Middle America is wide. I learned my lesson. Did they?