Another New York Liberal

I'm very exercised about the upcoming election, and for a while I was thrilled to make plans to register to vote. But then it struck me that, as a moderate-to-liberal Democrat, this is one place in the nation where my vote is guaranteed not to matter. There are a million proxies in the naked city. I'm registering anyway, but it'll be more like going to jury duty.

Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day when, in the wake of Hugo Chavez's diss of Bush at the UN, I noticed not only how many tabloid papers we have, but how surprisingly conservative they are. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the New York Times is actually liberal (it sure ain't Mother Jones, is my thinking), there are still a surprisingly large number of genuinely conservative papers in New York: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun (great crosswords!), and at least three major tabloids: The New York Post, The New York Daily, and a.m. New York.

That last one I would normally consider only marginally conservative (more like lazy and reactionary and easily distracted), but then, in the wake of the U.N. visit, not only did they get angry at Chavez, but they ran the following article about Bill Clinton's global initiative. Quick quiz: Bill Clinton just announced a global initiative in your city! Whose picture do you put in the article?



(Oh, sure, there are a number of other reasons to avoid putting Clinton's face in the article, but it sure looks weird, doesn't it?)