To follow up on Eric's follow-up to my point about the media's response to Sarah Palin's media criticism: the media's ridicule of Al Gore's 2002 media criticism, and their acquiescence to Palin's, is all the more striking given the media's treatment of Gore from 1997 through 2000 (not that it ended then.)

The media really did “make things up” about Gore -- they made up the claim that Gore had taken credit for discovering Love Canal, they made up a never-ending series of Gore exaggerations that all -- every one of them -- were actual media exaggerations; they made up fantasies about why he wore brown clothes (actual reason: everybody wears brown) and three-button suits (actual reason: everybody in 1999 wore three-button suits.) They made up lies Gore didn't tell, then used those made-up lies to call Gore a liar. They dutifully passed on every RNC attack on Gore, no matter how stupid and false, as fact.

And when Gore called them on it, they ridiculed him.

But when Sarah Palin -- who the media never held as accountable for her actual lies as they held Gore for the lies he didn't tell -- accuses the media of making things up, they can't be bothered to demand an example, and they certainly don't point out that Palin herself raised making things up to an art form during her campaign last year.

Is it any wonder the myth of the liberal media persists, given the way reporters dismiss valid progressive media criticism and obligingly pass along every inane conservative attack on their work?