An homage to a dying network...

As I started to read this article, I thought, I've heard some people say Newsday is biased. So far, what I've read has been good. Let's see what this says.

Ah, well, I was wrong, they were right. First...

Despite its opposite agenda, Air America finds it useful to copy conservative talk radio's emphasis on "heat" over "light." Though less blustery and more concerned with the perception of balance, demogoguery has found yet another outlet.

Here's their idea of "less blustery" and "more concerned with the perception of balance":

In the "name-calling" category, actress/comedienne Janeane Garofalo may be Air America's most gifted, as evidenced by her description of talk-show host Jay Severin, who recently got into trouble for making a comment about killing Muslims, as "nothing more than a racist, bigot, cracker, anti-intellectual, loudmouth who embarrasses this country."

And, in case we might have any doubts as to the author's biases:

Before Air America's launch in late March, some pundits wondered whether liberals could even be demagogues since liberals can never simplify issues while demagogues must oversimplify them.

Oh Please! You slay me with laughter! Is Newsday doing satire too? Didn't we just read Janeane's name-calling? The author speaks as though calling Bush "chimp", calling conservatives "racists", and mindlessly repeating "Anybody But Bush" was some sort of nuanced approach.

My question isn't whether liberals can simplify issues -- from my direct experience, the question is whether many or most liberals can fail to simplify them so far that crucial distinctions are lost.

Now we get to the meat of the matter:

On the other hand, Air America could be a godsend to a liberal presidential candidate trying to rally his core supporters. No, not Sen. John Kerry, who still has trouble embracing the "L-word." Ralph Nader, the man many Democrats blame for Al Gore's loss just four years ago, is the candidate whose stated mission is to pull the Democratic Party away from its centrist leadership and back to its more liberal roots. Will he and his supporters be treated as allies or adversaries on this liberal network? Will they even receive a reasonable chance to be heard?

The heigth of cluelessness! Did the author pay any attention to Air America's debut in which they rudely and endlessly berated Nader for trying to offer an alternative to the Democratic Party?

Of course, this would be more convincing to me if Ralph Nader believed his own purported ideals, which he clealry doesn't.

Gotta be tough to be a liberal. Even the candidates you support don't actually believe in the ideas they run on.

UPDATE: Sorry, didn't realize this was an opinion piece. It wasn't readily visible from Newsday's presentation. The title that came up in Google was different than the current "title" tag, the latter which contained the world "Opinion". Other points made still hold.