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Our first great April Fool’s gag was an announcement that TheLiberalOC had been acquired by OCBlog (now the heart fo the RedCounty blog). The tag line on the new “Blue Minority” blog template was “even liberals should get the chance to speak.” The story was so convincing, that a Register political reporter — who didn’t note the date on the calendar — thought it was a real news story and ran a post on the “acquisition.”
Now, OC Register.com seems poised to “allow liberals the chance to speak.” According to sources at the Register, a new feature on OCRegister.com is a new section “From the Left” in the Register’s online Opinion section which goes into a live today. This will be a home for lefty columns, opinion pieces and letters to the editor.
From the Left is the result on multiple internal conversations with eidtors and columnists at the Register and may also spawn a “Turn Right or Turn Left?†feature on FreedomPolitics.com where readers are presented two competing viewpoints on the same issues.
It seems the Register is finally acknowledging the half-million plus registered Democrats in its circulation area. There are still no plans to add a single liberal columnists on the paper’s editorial pages, but you have to take a first step and this is a step in the “left direction” for the paper’s libertarian viewpoints that represent a small fraction of registered voters (only 80,000 registered libertarians in California). Currently, the only option for liberals in the Register is a Reader Rebuttal and Letters to the Editor seciton which many progressives, liberals and Democrats have simply given up with bothering to submit.
“Freedom” seems to only constitute those with a center-right point-of-view. Shouldn’t “freedom” be a big enough concept to encourage debate from the left, center and right viewpoints too? And freedom is also a bigger concept than how much or how little you pay in taxes (just ask any same-sex couple who’d like to get married).
My only fear is “From the Left” won’t include the very strong liberal voices we have in Orange County, and will turn into the online equivelent of Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” with a strong and masculine conservative right viewpoint and a not-so-strong liberal voice. And while Colmes regularly kicked Hannity’s butt, imagine the show if it were “Hannity and Maddow,” with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, or “Hannity and Schultz,” with Ed Schultz, or Hannity and Olberman,” and you can see where I’m going here.
So I’m going to put this out there to progressives (Guy Ayer, are you listening?); write letters to the editor about this new direction. Show the Register that progressives, liberals and Democrats are alive and well in Orange County and that our cause has merit. And demand better and more equal treatment in the Register’s opinion pages.  Â
And maybe, just maybe, they’ll add Paul Krugman’s column to their opinion pages. Or Maureen Dowd. One can dream.
So we are working in the direction you are suggesting…though at the end of the day our paper, and myself include, will continue to advance free marketing policies and support free market candidates to the best of our ability. At the end of the day I am at the Register for one reason and that reason is to help make people freer; more economic freedom and more personal freedom. By that very definition we (myself included) will more often than not be at odds with the left except on civil liberty issues and some others.
“The greatest threat to America is a Liberal Media Bias” – Rep. Lamar Smith (R)
That is a hoot Dan – my wife sat with Lamar’s wife during the innauguration of GWB in 2001. I was in the back with Max Baer Jr.
Elly May: I hear they got smog.
Daisy Mae ‘Granny’ Moses: What’s a smog?
[pause]
Jethro: I reckon it’s a small hog.