Hearne: KC Star vs. AZ Star

Think tale of two cities…

In one corner we have the Kansas City Star, ostensibly the defender of “actual news” in what passes for “our” area. In my new, little corner of the globe, lies the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson’s fast fading bulwark of liberal-leaning, “flavored” news.

So even as I managed to escape the dreary daily drumbeat of angry editorials and “fake news” in KC a year ago, unexpectedly I crash-landed in a similarly far left spin zone out west.

Can you believe it?

This from a dude who not that long ago voted twice for Obama and considered MSNBC my cable news channel of choice.

It’s interesting dissecting the two Stars and their similar efforts at trying to micromanage the way folks think. As opposed to merely informing them what’s going on.

I digress.

There’s little doubt both of – what we once called “newspapers” are pursuing the similar “truths” these days.

Meaning just about anybody that passes for woke or liberal is good and correct,  while anyone that skews conservative is pretty much dead wrong, or as Dwight Sutherland likes to say, “evil.”.

Ah, but the difference between Tucson’s Star and the one I wrote for for 16 years is largely in “tone.”

The angry inmates that overran the asylum in KC enjoy berating and bashing the likes of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall. So while Dr. Fauci recently called Marshall a “moron” (off mic, of course), KC’S Star long ago pegged him and Hawley as cretins. They love nothing more than the opportunity to use WWE-like moves to pull out the hair or deliver a thumb to the eye, when the journalistic referees (editors?) are not looking.

Arizona’s Star loves few things more than posting letters and cartoons sticking it to Kyrsten Sinema for not going along a couple of President Joe Biden‘s loonier policies.

Out here, they can’t bring themselves to full-out bash fellow Dems like Sinema and Joe Manchin. Instead they rely on over-the-top fan mail and heinous, reader donated cartoons to rub their news noses in doo-doo.

Whereas, KC’s journalistas pride themselves in fighting dirty.

Brisbane

Tucson’s “finest:” take a more measured approach to the art of brainwashing, publishing Associated Press stories and columns that make Republicans appear wildly misguided, misinformed or just plain out of it.

Missing in action on both news fronts: 

Anything resembling the even keeled approach editors like Art Brisbane and Joe McGuff rode herd over, up until the mid-late 2000s.

Check out the Arizona Star‘s understated take on Biden’s nightmarish first year:

“It’s been a year of lofty ambitions grounded by the unrelenting pandemic, a tough hand in congress, a harrowing end to a foreign war and rising fears for the future of democracy itself.”

Hey, who could anybody for that?

“There’s something to be said about the White House and not going from one fire to the next,” one Biden backer added.

Hold it right there…

Biden’s entire first year was a cascading chain of fire, after fire, after fire.

But that’s how the once, mostly straight down the line news does it now.

And that’s how locals here are being spoon fed their political propaganda.

The Arizona Star’s few surviving journalists are not nearly as caustic as the KC Star‘s at serving up tripe, long gone are the good old days when Fox News was considered the most over-the-top news spinner.

For example, the new editorial board head honcho in Tucson – which just saw a historic rise in violent crime and murders the past year – wrote an editorial telling locals they need to look past the negatives of an open border to the more humane aspects of it.

That is, if you’re not too busy looking past headlines like, “A reading assignment for white conservatives” and “GOP celebration of COVID ignorance an invite to death.”

Reminds me of what that Russian comic Yakoff Smirnoff  -used to say; “America, what a country!”