SELLING THE "CURE" FOR THE CONDITION THEY'VE DIAGNOSED

We all know that the right has "worked the refs" for a generation, persistently decrying "liberal media bias" so a guilt-ridden press will feel compelled to give Republicans a break and slam Democrats.

But the right does more than that. Like a sleazy fortune teller who not only "discovers" that a bad spell has been placed on the customer but (for the right price) knows just how to lift it, the right diagnoses liberal bias and provides the remedy.

Thus, we had George Stephanopoulos, a day before the debate, appearing on Sean Hannity's radio show -- hoping, no dopubt, that Hannity would absolve him of bias. And what do you know? In fact, Sean had the cure:

Hannity, who for months has been aggressively pushing a story about Barack Obama's connections to a former member of a radical anti-Vietnam 1970s organization called the Weather Underground, interviewed Stephanopoulos on his radio show on Tuesday, where he pressed the ABC host to ask Obama about this:

HANNITY: There are two questions that I don't think anybody has asked Barack Obama, and I don't know if this is going to be on your list tomorrow. One is -- the only time he's ever been asked about his association with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist from the Weather Underground who on 9/11 of all days in the New York Times was saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I don't think we did enough." When asked about it by the Politico, David Axelrod said that they have a friendly relationship, and that they had done a number of speeches together and that they sat on a board together. Is that a question you might ask?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, I'm taking notes right now....

Meanwhile, Charlie Gibson struggles to compensate for the frou-frou Northeast Corridor elitism he's surely been told by right-wingers is his fatal flaw, so he goes out to hear the voice of "the people" -- and what "the people" are saying is what they're picking up from the right-wing media:

MR. GIBSON: Just to add to that, I noticed you put [an American flag pin] on yesterday. But -- you've talked about this before, but it comes up again and again when we talk to voters. And as you may know, it is all over the Internet.

This is how it works -- the right says the mainstream press is out of touch with ordinary Americans, while feeding the press and ordinary Americans a steady diet of phony talking points that it then portrays as genuine populist concerns. It's a great scam.