I honestly don’t know if it’s gotten worse or if it’s always been this bad and my perception has changed over the past few years—or a combination of both.

Last night I watched some of the coverage of the Wisconsin recall election on MSNBC—the only cable “news” network covering the story. MSNBC had Ed Schultz there live. Among his diverse guests was the Washington correspondent for The Nation, some representative from a “progressive” advocacy group, a local union leader, a Democratic state senator and a democratic state representative.

It wasn’t news coverage, it was cheerleading. (Not very good cheerleading—the Democrats lost.)

For all the scorn poured on Fox News, I can’t imagine them sending O’Reilly or Hannity to something like this and not having at least one token liberal on the panel. People often complain about “Special Report” having two conservatives to one liberal on their nightly panel, but nothing about ABC, CBS or NBC having 3 or 4 to 1 liberal to conservative on their Sunday morning news shows.

Then there’s Newsweek magazine and their cover photo and story on Michele Bachmann. You can officially move Newsweek into the partisan magazine category with The Nation, Mother Jones and their ilk.

Finally there’s Froma Harrop of the National Conference of Editorial Writers and head of their “Civility Project.” (Scroll to the bottom of the article.)

I’m with Jonah Goldberg on this one. This “unbiased” media pose needs to stop.

The Giffords shooting sent the media elite in this country into a bout of St. Vitus’s dance that would have warranted an army of exorcists in previous ages. Sarah Palin’s Facebook map was an evil totem that forced some guy to go on a shooting spree. The New York Times, the Washington Post, all three broadcast networks — particularly NBC whose senior foreign-affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, devotes, by my rough reckoning, ten times as much air time to whining about Sarah Palin as she does about anything having to do with foreign affairs — flooded the zone with “Have you no shame” finger wagging. A memo went forth demanding that everyone at MSNBC get their dresses over their heads about the evil “tone” from the right. Media Matters went into overdrive working the interns 24/7 to “prove” that Republicans deliberately foment violence with their evil targets on their evil congressional maps.

Everyone “knew” the shooter was a tea partier. Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a conservative. He was a sick, demented, nutball. And it still didn’t matter! More bleating and caterwauling about the “tone” followed. More chin stroking and tut-tutting from Meet the Press roundtables and “very special segments” on the Today Show. More pizzas were ordered for the Media Matters galley slaves.

Finally, president Obama, our national-healer, gives a speech. It was a good speech. Indeed it was one of the first speeches in a long while that got anything like bipartisan support. Civility. New tone. No more martial metaphors. These were the takeaways.

So flashforward to this week. Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the Founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair. Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.

…

And yet you know the next time there’s the slightest, remotely exploitable tragedy or hint of violence, the same reporters, editors, producers, and politicians are going to insist that blood was spilled because of the right wing’s rhetoric.

Well, go to Hell. All of you.

What he said.