Biased newspaper

I didn't read my local San Jose Mercury News for a week, and now I wonder why I even subcribe. On the editorial page today, it has two op-ed articles under the heading "Ferociously divided nation". I naively expect one pro-Republican article, and one pro-Democrat. Instead, both were pro-Democrat polemics complaining about John Kerry is being attacked by his enemies!

The newspapers, TV, bookstores, and even movie theaters are filled with slanderous Bush-hating diatribes. By contrast, attacks on Kerry have been muted, and limited to political issues that Kerry himself has raised.

Nobody talks about Kerry's bitter first wife, or anything like that. Kerry cites his Vietnam record as his main qualification for office, so it only seems fair for people to point out lies in his record.

George writes:

The second article was a Democrat smear piece, but the first article
was even-handed. It said:

At this level of anxiety, democracy itself is difficult. From the right, there's a tendency to equate dissent with disloyalty. From the left, there's an instinct to see Bush's decisions as goose steps in a march toward authoritarianism.

No, that is not even-handed. Right-wingers welcome dissent. Eg, many right-wingers opposed the Iraq War. The main point of the article is to say that political ads should not attack Kerry's war record.

I disagree. Kerry's war record shows what a phony he is. Eg, for years he has been telling people about how Nixon secretly ordered him into Cambodia at Christmas 1968. But Kerry was never in Cambodia, and Nixon was not even president then, as this article explains.

The new unreleased expose of Kerry's Vietnam record is now ranked first on the Amazon top seller list.