Censorship and advertising.

Early last month, this blog ran a post called General Betray-us. A couple days later, moveon.org ran an ad in the NYTimes with a similar headline. Since then, there has been radical-right outrage over the disparagement of Petraeus and the NYTimes' complicity in "smearing" the general as evidence of the so-called left's lack of patriotism, honesty and fair-play.

Today, Chevron had a series of small space ads in the same newspaper culminating in a spread. Their advertising (which sucks) is meant to put a pangloss on Chevron, much as BP's advertising has helped accentuate their positive--and ignore the reality that BP and Chevron and ExxonMobile (who conveniently has a "double-cross" in their very name) are, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt "malefactors of great wealth". We're not a rapacious oil company. No, we care about the environment, global warming, people, we pay our taxes and eschew drilling on public lands.

Here's my point. Let's admit that there is a bias in moveon.org's ad. They've slanted the world as they see it to make their point. Exactly the same as Chevron has. Right or wrong, that's often what advertising does.

The outrage over moveon's ad is nothing more than the radical right's belief that there are rules that don't apply to them. They can Swift Boat candidates, but people other than they can't.