The Taranto Principle

From Townhall.com:

What is the Taranto Principle? It is a principle laid down by The Wall Street Journal's perceptive editorialist James Taranto. Taranto -- in his column, "Best of the Web Today" -- surveys the media and reports daily on their output with special emphasis on their contradictions, hypocrisies and -- most deliciously -- imbecilities. Like all other thoughtful observers of American media, Taranto recognizes that they are biased heavily toward the Democratic Party and the left in general. Yet while many who hold that this advances the Democratic Party and the left, Taranto believes that it has a harmful effect on left-wing politics, often causing left-wing candidates to lose at the polls.

According to the Taranto Principle, the media's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.

....

The vets' assault on Kerry is called "Swiftboating" now by left-wingers and journalists alike, who insist the vets' charges were "lies," though four years later, it is apparent that the so-called lies comprised an accurate rendering of blowhard Kerry's war record. Had the media treated his initial boasts with some skepticism, he might have been better prepared for the vets' response. The left-leaning media spoiled Kerry and brought out the worst in him to the revulsion of enough voters to lose him the election.

Now the Taranto Principle can be seen in the reporting on Gov. Sarah Palin. As a former mayor and sitting governor, she has about as much experience as former President Jimmy Carter had in 1976. Moreover, she obviously has more executive experience than the Democratic presidential candidate. Yet the media have let her experience become a vexed issue. Worse, at the highest level of media, she has been subjected to unwarranted scurrilities that are without precedent in a presidential election. Just the other night, an idiot comedy show portrayed her daughter and husband in an incestuous affair. The consequence of this is that Gov. Palin is running away with the women's vote and doubtless picking up sympathetic men, also.

According to this variation of the Taranto Principle, the media circulate infamies that encourage leftists to confect greater infamies, thus causing the defamed candidate to cop the sympathy vote. That vote will have consequences in this increasingly bizarre election.