Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

In the ongoing debate over Iraq, it's natural to trumpet news which supports one's own position, while neglecting news which supports the other view. As many readers of this corner of blogdom know, the MSM has sadly taken sides in this, focusing more often on bad news than good news. (I have to say, I think that's attributable not only to a liberal bias, but also to sensationalism; stories about blown up things sell more than stories about built up things.)

However, there are some people who downright excel at not only ignoring contrary evidence, but exceedingly magnifying other evidence to bolster their own position.

Just a Bump in the Beltway is such a blog. If there's bad news about Iraq -- actually, about any position taken or promoted by President Bush and conservatives in general -- you'll hear about it there. If a news article fails to discuss how Iraq is going to hell in a handbasket, the bloggers at Bump will decry it as shoddy (at best).

The subtitle of Bump is "Politics and culture from the left side of the page," but the only regular discussion of culture is politicized culture. Like so many others (across the political spectrum), Bump's authors apparently view the world through the prism of the purely political. All news is immediately mapped and categorized on a liberal/conservative grid.

I am only too aware of my own politicizing tendencies. But I'd like to think that I'm nowhere near making my politics an all-encompassing ideology as so many have done, including the Bumpers.

I need to note that I'm not picking on Melanie et al, but more offering their blog as an example. I'm sure some of my liberal readers (if there are any left :-) can offer a similar example on the right side of blogdom.

There's more to life than politics, folks. And as some have noted, "politics is downstream from culture." So for most of us, if you want to change the course of our nation, politics cannot be neither you sole nor even your primary focus.