The New Yorker this week: the article on Hewitt and the article by Gladwell.

Hugh Hewitt's profile in this week's New Yorker by Nicholas Lemann, is a very interesting deconstruction of Hewitt: the article is clearly written with a right-of-center slant; never really calling into question Hewitt's fundamental position on the media, which is, to wit: there can only be opinionated media.

Look, I'll admit that this blog is more opinionated than it would be if it were purely journalistic, but the purpose of this blog, in addition to recording facts and my own state of mind in relation to them is to be a bit propagandistic.

Hewitt seems to think there's nothing but propagandistic journalism.

That, in the definition below, is nothing but bullshit journalism, and it's most often seen from well, folks like Hewitt.

Recording facts as they exist, and attempting to be censorious of one's opinions is indeed a position: it is the position that in taking that orientation one can best arrive at a view of things free from one's prejudices. Hewitt just doesn't care about prejudices.

Also worth reading: the article by Gladwell on health insurance, which pretty much implies one obvious truth: if "moral hazard" principle insurance actually worked, insurance costs in the US would be going down, not up.

Single payer.