Media: Strong-and-Wrong vs. The Limp Left

Sam Harris is the author of a controversial book from last year, The End of Faith. In the book, he argues that religious faith, which he characterizes as irrational belief, threatens to jeopardize world security, as true believers among many religions seek to smite non-believers with increasingly dangerous weapons. It is essentially a call to action in a WMD world to check our religious beliefs at the door before they kill us. As you may imagine, this point of view is not too popular with the religious right. However, it is interesting to check out from Mr. Harris's website which organs of media power chose to interview him about his book and which didn't. A quick glance provides a dramatic illustration of just how difficult of a case Sam Harris will have to make via the traditional media and what this says about the state of right/left politics today:

- Note the three commercial programs that interviewed him:

1) Scarborough Country on MSNBC, which is a right wing show, substitute hosted by Laura Ingraham who won't let Harris get a word in edge-wise and is almost comically biased as a "moderator". At one point, she claims that stem cell research is a complete hoax and the fact that Harris doesn't know that proves that "he hasn't done his homework." Wow.

2) The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Not much I need to add here, other than the fact that O'Reilly is much more evenhanded with Harris than Ingraham was.

3) Faith Under Fire on PAX. PAX is a "family values" network started by the founder of Paxson Communications. The show title doesn't leave much to discuss.

- Now note who didn't interview him:

1) everybody else.

What does this tell us? That the religious right is only interested in putting this guy on the air as an easy mark who can be shot down without much effort. When he fights back, just cut him off or make an outrageous claim like "stem cell research is an overblown failure." A little meat for the fans to chew on. So where are the secularists and lefties, even the middle-of-the-roaders? Why isn't Harris on Aaron Brown or Chris Matthews? Because they are scared! They are scared pissless to side with this guy! In a nutshell, there you have the state of politics in this country today: the strong-and-wrong religious right vs. the spineless left.

There has got to be another way, a "third way". A silent majority out there is right in the middle with us, but we need a voice, we need to stop being silent. Too many people with good ideas like Harris are being drowned out in the cacophany of left/right noise.