We had our principles

Tom Roeser on conventional liberal advice to candidates, according to which :

the way to go is pro-abort, pro-gay rights (preferably gay marriage), hold on to the size of state government that exists now, agree to the “inevitability of income tax increases” and bow obsequies to the gifted leadership of the Madigans.

I will say this: it is definitely the authentic voice of 98% of those reporters in the mass media. You have a couple of beers with most newspaper and TV reporters and you’ll hear the same opinions . . . . Frankly, they’re the same observations reporters expressed to me years ago when I was a press secretary. No change since then.

Yes, yes, and double yes.  We Chi Daily News reporters and editors trooped into the Corona basement for ham off the bone the day after McGovern won the Dem nomination in ’72, grinning to beat all.

“You’re all happy your man won,” the grizzled Italiano basement cafeteria manager said, and he was right, of course. 

And that left-liberal tilting — let no man call it bias — endures to this day, among the very same people, except for the occasional maverick who whispers support for a fallen-away liberal like myself or the veteran police reporter regaling a reunion with tales of murder on the South Side (chuckles and smiles) but (uh-oh) quoting a psychologist he knew who theorized that black people just have shorter fuses.  (Groans and disapproving looks.)

Plus ça change, as Roeser says, though not in so many words.