Red Meat for Red Staters

When the Washington Post added Red America to its stable of blogs this week you would have thought that they’d exhumed publisher Katherine Graham’s body and paraded it through Du Pont Circle on the back of an ox cart.

Red America is a conservative blog, just like White House Briefing by the Post’s Dan Froomkin is a liberal blog, and implicit in the outcry was that the addition of Red America was a knee-jerk reaction to all the criticism the Post gets for Froomkin’s left-of-center blogging.

Maybe so. Maybe not.

I do know that Ben Domenech, who will write Red America, has impeccable conservative credentials: Both he and his father worked in the Bush White House and he’s big into home schooling and creationism. But so what?

Will Bunch, who blogs at Attytood, hits the right note in dismissing the outcry:

Let a hundred Domenech’s bloom . . . It would be one thing if the Washington Post walled off part of its print front page, above the fold, for Red America -- because that space is limited and thus very valuable. The Web is something else entirely. Our point here is that maybe we shouldn't spend some much time wailing about the addition of new voices to the great American political divide, even those on the side we disagree with. The real threat to our national conversation is shutting down and blocking certain viewpoints -- especially when their main offense seems to be criticizing the current government.

Amen, Will. Amen.