Who’s More Biased? Conservatives Or Liberals?

My boss this past summer Mike Tomasky has a fascinating post up based on an interview of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia:

On its site today the Wash Post has a video interview with Jimmy Wales, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia. He is asked by the Post’s interviewer: The people who started “Conservapedia” did so because they say Wikipedia has a liberal bias. What say you to that, Brother Wales? He says:

I think maybe for some people not having a bias is the same as having a liberal bias.

As my friend Mary B. likes to say: Egggggg-xactly. This is possibly the greatest con the modern right has pulled. Let’s go into it.

The right’s viewpoint is just as Wales describes it: If you fail in your exegesis of Topic X to feature a conservative perspective, then by definition you are anti-conservative and thus liberal. Thus they have neatly divided the world into two strict camps: conservative and everyone else, and “everyone else” is liberal if not conservative.

Reading this actually made me wonder about how the right and the left would regard President Obama’s surge decision. It really is a conservative one that has liberals cringing and Republicans not exactly embracing but not criticizing either. I’m sure Tomasky and Wales’ would consider that support.

–Daniel Strauss

(Crossposted)