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# Posted 2:12 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

"LIBERAL" MEDIA GOES GA-GA FOR BUSH: I was going to do a post about how almost every major print media outlet has run the same formulaic round-up of recent events in the Middle East. Even though I was pretty rough on some liberal bloggers for seeing events in Lebanon through a partisan prism, recent coverage has been so kind to the President that it raises questions about whether journalists' critical instincts have begun to malfunction.

As I said, I was going to a post about that subject until I saw this quote from Jon Stewart (in the WaPo's formulaic round-up of recent events in the Middle East):

"This is the most difficult thing for me, because I don't care for the tactics," he said, "but I've got to say I've never seen results like this ever in that region."

If someone as charmingly vicious as Jon Stewart has lost his critical edge, then what hope is there for the average journalist? The moral of the story here is that the media's short-term mindset and susceptibility to euphoria sometimes overpowers every other influence on its coverage, although I'm not sure we've seen anything like this since 1989.

Anyhow, there's no need to worry. Things will eventually take a turn for the worse in the Middle East, at least for a little while, and the media will go back to being its old cynical. Of course, it is precisely the low expectations of that old cynical self that are responsible for the euphoria that emerges when world events take a surprising turn for the better.

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