I just love the liberal media in the United States. It is so liberal that when a conservative dies, they provide blanket hagiographic coverage. But when a liberal dies, it is “both sides now” coverage, “On the liberal side of the political spectrum he was consider a champion of worker rights, but on the conservative side he was hated for not be pro-corporate enough.” I mentioned this when Margaret Thatcher died: we were bound to be deluged with stories about what a great woman she was, even though, you know, she wasn’t. I wonder what the US press would have said if Hitler had managed to maneuver his way past the second World War, “Many criticized his genocide, but even they had to admit that he made the trains run on time”?
As you probably noticed, George Soros did not die on Monday. But Reuters accidentally published their “file obit” that day. Newspapers write obituaries for famous people before they die. This is why they are able to put out 3,000 word obituaries within an hour of someone’s death. For whatever reason, they screwed up and published Soros’ obituary while he was (and is) still alive. For those of you who don’t know, Soros is a billionaire investor who is somewhat liberal. As a result, he is not only reviled by conservatives, he is a notable figure in their conspiracy theories. But Reuters is a mainstream media organization, or as conservatives call it, a part of the liberal media. (Note: in conservative speak, “liberal” means “not as conservative as I am.”)
So what did those liberals have to say about the parting of Soros? Thankfully, Matt Yglesias got a screen capture before they removed it. It started:
Compare this to what Reuters published when Milton Friedman actually died:
Friedman, who died on Thursday of heart failure at a hospital in the San Francisco area at age 94, was regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers that America and the famed Chicago school of economics ever produced.
I don’t have an especially strong hatred of Friedman, but the words “pernicious” and “General Augusto Pinochet” would certainly be in the first paragraph or two if I wrote it. It is certainly true that Friedman’s aggressive prosthelytizing for “free” markets harmed far more people than Soros’ trading ever did.
Regardless, there is absolutely nothing paradoxical about Soros’ work and his political ideas. In the mainstream press, if you are a liberal, you must be a communist. You must not believe in a market economy. You just believe that the state should own everything and give an equal share to everyone in the country. The fact that this idea shines through from our major media outlets says a great deal about our political problems: this is the conservative caricature of liberals—not exactly “objective” or “moderate.”
After all this, Reuters regretted only that they had published the obituary. No mention was made of the fact that they plan to assassinate his character after he dies. But that’s what newspapers do—if you’re a liberal.
