Digby: Week-end Follow-up

I have a couple of fascinating articles to recommend for you today if you're looking for something to think about besides a picture of a burning car. (Don't you think it's a little irresponsible for the press to fail to report all the good news in Glasgow today?)

The first is this great article by Rick Perlstein in the Columbia Journalism Review about the phenomenon of the "average American" which the likes of David Broder and Melinda Henneberger have made into their special professional niches.

In my post about Henneberger's rather dishonest anti-choice op-ed, I discussed this notion of elite reporters making anthropological forays into the exotic heart of middle America and inevitably returning totally reassured that all those good-hearted average Joes and Janes were actually just, like, them.