The conservative media

The Washington Post, one of the nation's three leading papers, now employs as regular editorial columnists the following people:

Charles Krauthammer

Bill Kristol

Michael Gerson

George Will

Since the other two leading newspapers are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, this means that two of our big national papers now lean solidly to the right. Why is this happening, in the age of Obama and the liberal resurgence?

I am guessing that the culprit is the Internet (and cable). When media sources proliferate, liberals tend to scatter and conservatives tend to clump.

Liberalism, by its nature, is a more diverse ideology, less invested in groupthink. We liberals feel less need to huddle together for warmth, murmuring semi-logical reassurances to each other like catechisms. "Government never created a single job," a conservative whispers, and the other conservatives nod in agreement without stopping to think what that means. "Gays threaten traditional marriage," a voice proclaims, and a thousand throats softly answer "Amen," without stopping to think if this is actually true. Comfort is taken from these code phrases, these half-understood prayers to an ancient ideology. A sense of community, of togetherness, is conferred.

Liberals, on the other had, tend to splinter into a million little ideological shards. This group wants to boost economic growth to help the poor; that group thinks growth threatens the environment. This group celebrates the assimilation of new immigrants; that group tries to preserve diversity with multiculturalism. You can find liberals who love science and liberals who fear it, liberals who want solar power fighting against liberals who want to preserve open space. If conservatives are the Catholics of the political realm, liberals are the Protestants. Hence, we scatter to a million different media outlets - blogs, different cable channels, Google News. The thing is, very few among that swarm of splinter-churches can make money. Even if there are more of us, we're to hard to catch.

(I am obviously exaggerating with these caricatures, for descriptive purposes. Maybe I've been reading too much science fiction lately. So sue me.)

In an age of ballooning media choice and shrinking media profits, what money remains to be had will go to whichever outlet becomes the Central Church of Conservatism. Fox News. Country music. And just maybe the Washington Post.