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November 19, 2004
Slate, Ammo, and Dogs
Slate is quickly becoming my favorite source for liberal slated news. Sure it has a regular line up of liberal pieces, but it tries harder than most other liberal news sources to have balance and at least try to understand groups that liberals often do not try to understand. This week they had this article about someone learning to shoot guns for who started out almost too afraid to touch ammo and by the end realized guns are simply machines. Their article on the marine shooting an unarmed Iraqi was well written and thoughtful, even if I did not agree with some of it. They also have articles that do not seem very politically related at all like today’s article on what to do about dangerous dogs by Jon Katz. I have read two of Katz’s dog books so far and I am always impressed that he sees how important dogs are to human society, but still understands they are not people no matter how much we treat them that way. Slate also hosts writers like Mickey Kaus who while liberal, is not afraid to go his own way on issues like welfare reform or how terrible a candidate Kerry was.
Compare this to liberal magazine Salon, which is pretty much one “Bush is the worst president ever” / ”we are better and smarter than red state voters” article after another. They used to have at least token dissenting authors, but not anymore. Why bother reading these stories when you already know what they will say? Plus Salon makes you sit through adds or pay to watch. A good thoughtful online political oriented magazine (or good blog) should have content that advances a point of view, but also allows for some dissent and has some content that is not very political, but still thoughtful. I think for conservatives National Review Online meets this description well, as do many conservative blogs.
Posted by Pete at November 19, 2004 02:34 PM
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