A READER REMINDS ME that I promised a longer post on Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media? quite a while ago, and never delivered. True enough.

I don’t think I’m in the right frame of mind to do it justice, though, with war looming and my mind elsewhere. [Hey, you were in the right frame of mind to blog about margarine labels, and those don’t have to do with the war — Ed. Yeah, I’m in the right frame of mind to do justice to margarine labels, too. Not books. And don’t you belong on Kaus’s page? Yeah, but that damn animated ad with searchlights and disco music is starting to bug me, and I needed a break — Ed. Hey, that’s better than the one that made it look like mold was growing across your computer screen! Amen to that, brother — Ed.]

Anyway, here’s the short version. Alterman says that there’s no such thing as a liberal media. And under his definition of liberalism — what we might call Walter Reuther liberalism — he’s right. But Alterman admits quite clearly that journalists do share the values of the academic upper middle class. It’s social liberalism, not economic liberalism, and although there’s a class-based element to it, the class in question isn’t the working class.

But the kind of liberalism that Alterman invokes is obsolete. By that standard, the Democratic party isn’t liberal, either (“exactly!” some people shout). But when most people talk about “liberal media,” they mean precisely the constellation of views that are associated with the academic upper middle class: Volvo/Brie liberalism. Or maybe John Zisk liberalism.

It’s okay for Alterman to use the definition he chooses, of course: all definitions are permitted to the definer, so long as they are clear. But given that most people define liberalism differently, even if Alterman convinces them that his kind of liberalism is rare in the media, it’s not likely to persuade many that the media aren’t liberal according to the Volvo/Brie/Zisk definition.

In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of an anti-corporatist slant in the media: not Walter Reuther liberalism, perhaps, but one that recognizes that the political/governmental axis is way, way too tight these days. In fact, I wrote something on that a while back. But I don’t think that’s what Alterman has in mind.