Just read this blog post by Michael Medved in which he discusses the Ted Haggard story. He says what I was trying to say better than I did:
The cherished theme – that Republicans and conservatives only pretend to honor morality, but actually behave horribly in their private lives – gets big time re-enforcement from Haggard’s heinousness. Just as the Foley Fiasco managed to stop Republican momentum a month ago, so the tawdry Ted-stuff is supposed to stop the current surge toward the GOP in key races across the country?
It may work, alas, even though the media bias emerges as ugly and undeniable.
The idea that evangelicals are hypocrites is an old but beloved canard of MSM and liberals alike. Just go to KOS or Liberal Avenger and you'll see plenty of it. Not unlike their treatment of the President, they consider Christians to either be stupid or evil liars.
Medved's blog post gives several examples of media distortion: rising minority enrollment rates reported as declines and declines in mainline Protestant rolls reported as increases. And he goes on:
What, precisely, is the agenda here? It’s the same point of view that leads to the heavy Haggard focus: anything to make Evangelicals and religious conservatives look hypocritical or irrelevant. And the headline over “lagging” minority enrollment when that enrollment actually surged, goes along with the basic script that injustice has only gotten worse under Bush, and that America remains a bigoted, unfair nation that needs sweeping new government programs to help us achieve equality.
That pretty much sums up their view of conservatives and Christians. And has anyone else noticed the gay theme of this year's attack-the-Republicans meme? I guess all those traditional marriage amendments must have hit some people where they live.
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