If You Can't See It You're Blind

“While I’ll be the first to admit that Stephanopoulos having a role in a debate in which Hillary Clinton participates is legitimate reason to complain, we can do without the hyperbole. What about the Republican YouTube debate of last fall, during which questions came directly from Democratic opponents’ campaigns? Moreover, what about the plight of Republicans, who have been subjected to numerous interviews and debates with Democratic partisans including Stephanopoulos, Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews? Is there a single Republican partisan on the staff of a major network-news team who enjoys status equal to these three – let alone has had the opportunity to moderate a presidential debate?

Whatever complaints Democrats and lefty bloggers have with any of those broadcasters seem at odds with their silence in years past. Of course, in days gone by, they couldn’t conceive of a situation in which having a liberal partisan operative, such as Stephanopoulos, in a journalistic catbird seat, would hurt their cause. So they raised no objection when he was assigned one of the most covetable posts in the world of political journalism. When Matthews moderated a couple of Republican debates, no one on the left questioned the fairness of a moderator who routinely spouts such plainly tendentious nonsense as “God help us if we had Cheney during the Cuban missile crisis. We’d all be under a parking lot.” Republicans soldier on. Any Republican who sits down on This Week, Meet The Press, or Hardball stares down the barrel of an ideologically loaded gun; Stephanopoulos asks some tough questions of the presumptive Democratic frontrunner and a chorus of complaints about being pistol whipped arises from the masses.”

-- Mark Hemingway, using the recent crowing over the last Democratic debate to expose liberal bias - inside and outside of journalism - while writing for the National Review Online