Dylan Ratigan: Hates Newspapers, Claims Not to be a Common Leftist

by: warner todd huston | published: 07 19, 2011

Well, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan has been saying some interesting things these days, hasn't he? Most particularly, two amusing things scream out in a recent interview with The Atlantic. One was that he refuses to read newspapers and the other is that he wants people to think he isn't the doctrinaire liberal everyone assumes he is. Neither claim will endear him to his lefty pals at NBC, but which one is more likely true?

First of all, it is pretty amusing to see a denizen of MSNBC diss the newspapers like Ratigan did. When asked how he takes his daily news he said, "I wouldn't read a newspaper now unless you put a gun to my head and even then I would really try to negotiate with you. It's not that I reject the content, it's that I reject the format."

Ouch. Of course, at some point one wonders what he's reading if not at least some coverage of the newspapers even if only on the net. Still, it must hurt to have one on their own side saying that newspapers don't fit in his world.

It is the other thing he said that seems to ring hollow.

One of my great frustrations with working in cable news is that the entire cable news infrastructure has been branded through partisan political lenses and so people assume that if you're on MSNBC you're left and if you're on Fox News you're right. There's no question that I'm painted as left because of the network I'm on.

Just "painted" as left? Really?

He went on to say that the parties are exactly the same, both "bought by six industries: energy, banking, health care, defense, agribusiness and communications."

Is Ratigan really trying to get us to believe that he isn't just a regular old, doctrinaire liberal like all the other MSNBC staffers? Does he think any of us believe that he's in any way upset that people assume he's a lefty merely because he works for the farthest left of all the lefty "news" outlets in the country?

So, how do we assess Mr. Dylan Ratigan's point of view?

Well, on The Colbert Report, Ratigan said that America's Bankers are somehow "just like" the Mexican drug cartels.

Yeah. That old hate the rich, hate the banks meme isn't very liberal… right?

Let's look at a few more of his opinions that he wants us to believe isn't just normal leftism, shall we?

• Ratigan has called for a new nation-wide Internet tax
• He seems to have called for a violent revolution
• He takes the standard hate-the-tea-party, liberal view
• He thinks China is better than the U.S.
• He likes to call conservative commentators scumbags and liars
• He speaks against our armed forces and our defense establishment
• He indulges the ages old liberal attack that conservatives want to kill Americans
• He is against enforcing our immigration laws
• ...

Well, there are a lot more than just these few instances. In fact, on a daily basis Ratigan spouts one left-wing trope after another. Yet from all this common, everyday leftist sentiment, we are expected to believe that Dylan Ratigan is not just a common, everyday leftist?

Does he think we are that stupid?

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