Dionne, Rush, et. al., Take 2

So the WaPo’s Dionne and TMV’s Stickings agree that “the right wing’s rants get wall-to-wall airtime,” while the most progressive voices are too-often ignored — and thus “the range of acceptable opinion” for American media “runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.”

One potential translation of this Dionne-Stickings premise would be that — if the media only paid as much attention to the farthest-left, most-progressive voices as they do to the farthest-right, most-conservative voices — we’d have a better-balanced debate (and presumably better-balanced policies).

Maybe.

But it also seems — if we accept a certain law of averaging here — we’d get to the same point if the media ignored the farthest-left and farthest-right voices, and only gave “airtime” to the moderate left and moderate right.

Of course, that won’t happen.

“Extremism” sells. And as long it sells, and sells better than moderation, extremism will get the most attention, the most airtime, the biggest headlines.

Granted, that doesn’t explain why Limbaugh might currently be receiving more attention than, say, Michael Moore. Perhaps it’s because out-of-power extremists are more interesting. Think about it: Moore was all the rage during the Bush years, partly because he was audacious and often preposterous, but also because he was a member of the dissenting faction. In turn, at the outset of the Obama years, Limbaugh is all the rage, partly because he is audacious and often (always?) preposterous, but also because he is now a member of the dissenting faction.

Such is life.