Lehrer Dodges Hewittian Bullet … This Time

Before last night's surprisingly entertaining back-and-forth over the five-or-six-party North Korea talks, Red State champeen Hugh Hewitt issued this pre-emptive Weekly Standard Online warning over the scalp of PBS' rat-eyed moderator:

Jim Lehrer and the rest of the old media should know that they have to play it straight tonight.

Or else what?

in this era of new media, any detectable bias on Lehrer's part will result in a cyber-tsunami headed towards PBS affiliates across the country.

The key is "detectable," and the arbitrators of that … will be the viewers themselves, working through the blogosphere, posting on FreeRepublic.com, calling into talk radio, and canceling their pledges to local PBS affiliates if their verdict on Lehrer's performance is negative. If Lehrer goes in the tank for Kerry, expect an enormous blowback–as predictable as the one which followed CBS's foisting of forgeries on the public.

Judging by the lack of Lehrerocide on Hewitt's website this morning, Robot Jim successfully avoided Rather's cruel fate (perhaps it has something to do with the fact it's rare for debate moderators to present fraudulent documents as fact). For an earnest, multi-party discussion of Lehrer's performance, try Jay Rosen's site. And for some unintentional comedy, go back to Hewitt's Weekly Standard piece and see what he's really miffed about—that's right, it's that the mainstream media "refused to acknowledge a genuine, though bizarre, story that is actually having an impact on the race–because they collectively don't think it should be having an impact on the race." That story? "Ooompa-Loompagate."