Correcting the ignorance

Gwen, With their May 21st hit piece, (I refuse to link to their piece and drive traffic to their dying brand), the Baltimore Sun continues to spew misinformation and invective at Conservative and Libertarian voices in Maryland.    I responded to them by submitting an opinion piece that I wanted to share with you.   Here it is: The Baltimore Sun editorial "Weakened Tea," May 21, helps everyone understand why dinosaur media outlets that refuse to change are circling the drain toward oblivion. In the view of some, every political issue fits into file folders - Fox News Channel or MSNBC, the Wall Street Journalor the New York Times, the Tea Party or Establishment, Republican or Democrat, Red or Blue. The Baltimore Sun derides me for filling in as a guest host on Conservative talk radio. Yet, it is not Conservative talk radio or Fox News that declared bankruptcy or sees its audience decline year after year. That is the Baltimore Sun and its parent company. The print press and its stubborn adherence to left-wing orthodoxy is assisting the rise of talk radio, online media and the Fox News Channel because informed voters now understand what they've been missing since print reporting peaked in the early 70's during Watergate.  Then of course there are the "Fox News" issues that apparently matter to only to those who run the top-rated news outlet in the country and perhaps a few others in western Maryland or the Eastern Shore. The Fox News Channel has ratings that are higher than CNN and MSNBC combined. They enjoy high ratings because nowhere else is government authority or incompetence questioned on the issues of our time ranging from the IRS targeting of Conservative groups to the terror attacks in Benghazi. The editorial voice of the Baltimore Sun should be more than distorted carnival mirrors reflecting their already slanted news coverage. Why does the Baltimore Sun editorial on the Dept. of Veterans Affairs say the scandal should not be "treated as a problem unique to the current administration?" Who is accountable for this mess if not the two-term commander-in-chief?    Where is the Baltimore Sun editorial on the U.S. House of Representatives' vote this week defining curbs on the National Security Agency's mass-data collection? The NSA is 20 minutes away from theBaltimore Sun's headquarters. Instead, the Sun gives Marylanders a "lesson" about a Senate race in Kentucky. It is interesting that liberals are always giving lessons about free health care, common core and climate change. Missing in this expensive tutelage are policies that actually work for the vast majority of people they are supposed to help. We can do without additional lessons about Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and how that somehow affects Marylanders. Maryland is not a distant blue planet removed from Earth as the Sunwould have its readers believe. The voters I talk to care very deeply about where this country is headed - the debt, Obamacare, underemployment, unemployment and preserving personal freedoms and liberties. Presumably, the Baltimore Sun feels that we should all just give up and follow one-party orthodoxy or the so-called "establishment." Of course, that's why the newspaper cannot resist mentioning the 2012 U.S. Senate race against Ben Cardin, the ultimate establishment figure in Maryland politics. That is part of the lesson. Challengers should not take on powerful Democrat incumbents who have held political positions since the 1960's, according to the Sun. Here is a lesson for the Baltimore Suneditorial writers: it is not the critic who counts. It is the person who gets in the arena and is not afraid of unchecked monopoly power. In that Senate race, I was outspent 14 to 1, yet garnered more total votes than the last GOP Senate nominee in 2010. Thank you, Baltimore Sun, for creating an analog political labeling system for file cabinets, but we live in an era of smart phones and cloud computing. The Sun's slogan "light for all" does not mean "distorted light for Marylanders who are different than everyone else." Please live up to your ideals.            Dan Bongino