BUT AN ASSUMED SENSE OF SUPERIORITY IS WHAT THEY HAVE INSTEAD OF INTELLIGENT ARGUMENTS AND SELF-RESPECT: Journalists would do themselves a huge favor if they stopped treating Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas as a right-wing nut job and consider the possibility that he is actually smarter and more reasonable than his critics say.

This is getting to be an embarrassing habit for the press, reflexively attacking Cotton for holding positions they end up conceding or even embracing.

When Cotton suggested in 2020 that COVID-19 might have escaped a lab in Wuhan, China, members of the press scoffed, writing him off as a tinfoil right-winger.

Then, after it became increasingly likely the lab leak theory is indeed the true explanation for how the pandemic started, media simply backpedaled, pretending as if they took the theory seriously all along and never mocked or criticized Cotton. It was an embarrassing and shameful about-face.

To be fair, they’re capable of neither shame nor embarrassment.