At the end of my post on Betsy McCaughey yesterday, I wrote, "McCaughey is simply lying, much as she did in 1990s. And, like in the 1990s, her lies are convenient, and they're being amplified by opportunistic rightwing outlets. But this isn't the 90s. And the thing about nostalgia tours is they never last very long, and they're never as effective as the original." One of the ways in which this isn't the 90s is that the media has changed. There are blogs, for one thing. Blogs like this one, and the Wonk Room, Political Animal, and this time, TNR's The Treatment. But a couple blogs don't mean that much. After all, they're not even on TV! But this time, too, there are televised pundits with a progressive sensibility. A lot of liberals love Olbermann and Maddow because watching them is satisfying and doesn't make you want to throw sharp things at your shiny new television. But the existence of this sort of stuff is important:
Will Olbermann's segment on McCaughey end her relevance? Probably not. But it -- along with the blog posts, and inevitable columns -- will be part of what any CNN producer sees if he wants to run a segment on McCaughey the next morning. It will be part of what an NPR editor reads when she's researching a show. None of this progressive infrastructure existed in 1994. She published her smearjob in an influential journal of putatively liberal opinion that was being edited by a self-professed conservative and it quickly become the conventional wisdom. This time, such arguments will not go unchallenged. That doesn't mean they will disappear. McCaughey's arguments are already taking root in the fertile swamp of talk radio. But it will be much harder for such bits of disingenuous nonsense to cement themselves in the center. And by the same token, it will be much easier for liberals to make, and disseminate, their own arguments.
