It's not bias; it's a disease!

Orson Scott Card offers a primer on media bias, and the term "bulldog journalism: Once you get hold of a story, you never loosen your grip until your victim dies." It's also what James Taranto called the press's "porno addiction" for continuously mentioning the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in every story as something that wasn't mentioned by this or that speaker. I'd prefer a different term, because I like bulldogs and persistence is generally a positive trait. How about obsessive-compulsive journalism or tinfoil helmet journalism? It truly resembles a mental illness when one considers it news that Donald Rumsfeld didn't mention the Abu Ghraib scandal in his commencement address at West Point. At least Chevy Chase's weekly report that Generalissimo Franciso Franco was still dead was an attempt at humor, as was Rush Limbaugh's counting the days that America had been held hostage to the Clinton administration.

I once had a client who had assaulted a police officer who came to investigate a complaint because she was sure that he was in league with the Post Office in its plot against her. When I was appointed to assist her, she was clear-headed thanks to anti-psychotic medication, but she remembered how obvious it seemed to her at the time. Imagine what it would have been like if all of her work associates and bosses had been sharing the same delusion. It's kind of scary to see half the country in thrall to such a compulsive hatred and fixation on a man they think is too dumb to be president, a brazen liar, and yet an evil mastermind who has somehow managed to derail the Constitution. It seems like mass hysteria, and you'd think that they'd snap out of it as soon as someone realizes how crazy he sounds. Maybe it can only be cured by a defeat in November, but if they're this gonzo now, what will it be like if they lose another election? Probably like watching the wreck of the Hindenberg in slow-motion.