In an enthralling article on “The Media’s Ancient Regime,” Hugh Hewitt pays a visit to Columbia School of Journalism (“the highest temple of a religion in decline”) and finds a cadre of aspiring members of the mainstream media . They don’t look a lot like the rest of America:
“The ‘blue’ nature of the student body is further confirmed by my polling of the class I attended, done with the permission of Shapiro. Six of the 16 were English majors, two studied history, and the balance spread across the humanities. No one had a background in the physical sciences. No one owned a gun. All supported same-sex marriage. Three had been in a house of worship the previous week. Six read blogs. None of them recognized the phrase ‘Christmas Eve in Cambodia’–though Shapiro not only got the allusion but knew the date of the John Kerry Senate speech in which he made the false claim about his Vietnam war experience. Three quarters of them hope to make more than $100,000 as a journalist, 11 had voted for John Kerry, and one for George Bush (three are from abroad and not eligible, and one didn’t vote for either candidate). I concluded by asking them if they ‘think George Bush is something of a dolt.’ There was unanimous agreement with this proposition, one of the widely shared views within elite media and elsewhere on the left. The president’s Harvard MBA and four consecutive victories over Democrats judged ‘smarter’ than him haven’t made even a dent in that prejudice.