Glenn Greenwald unfurls a long screed on media bias and perfidy, citing disapprovingly a section of Maureen Dowd’s column I cited below, which “unintentionally” provides a glimpse into the secret world of supposedly objective journalism:

Dowd is describing here the conversation that took place in her “office”—which happens to be the newsroom of *The New York Times*—between what are undoubtedly very Serious Journalists, including one who covers (said with whispered reverence) “security issues.” And in this one short passage, on vivid, revolting display is every repellent attribute that defines the Standard Modern Political Journalist.

Right. And it defines John Edwards too. And I’ll be perfectly candid: when I heard the news of Hillary’s weeping, I made a joke along the exact same lines. In short, her ploy didn’t work on me, or on most males given the election results slowly being parsed out from New Hampshire—Hillary’s bounce came from vigorous support of older women. That Greenwald finds casual water-cooler sexism repellent and revolting only tells us that Greenwald is more of a feminist than your average male, nothing more.

There’s a further point here worth debating: the particularly American obsession over an impartial press. It’s a debate which goes largely ignored in the rest of the world, where readers recognize that various media outlets represent various interests in their societies. News nevertheless gets reported and people still get their information—democracy functions just fine. The expectations Americans have of their media are wholly puritanical as evidenced by the holy rage of people like Greenwald upon finding evidence that our journalists are biased too.