The strategic dodge is "hardly alone." @elianayjohnson intervened to upend the illusions of anyone who thought big donor demonization was a creature never seen on the left. Having accomplished that, she left intact the illusion of rough equality. That's the propaganda payoff. 1/
The results are a museum quality specimen of @NormOrnstein's maxim, "a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality." But it's a distortion designed to slip past the journalists on set, because it is packaged as "sidelessness." Who wants to oppose that? 2/
If @elianayjohnson wanted to insert her "hardly alone" gem AND do her job as an analyst, she would have said donor demonization happens on both sides, but the role it's playing in the mobilization of Republican voters is not comparable to what happens in the Democratic party. 3/
That would have been the journalistic thing to do. Instead, she delivered her little propaganda package, and left it to others on CNN's set to bring proportion and analysis to bear. @brianstelter let it slide. Not good. And there's another insidious element in this episode... 4/
As it stood after @elianayjohnson's performance we had a billionaire Jew being demonized by the left (Sheldon Adelson) and a billionaire Jew being demonized by the right (George Soros.) So are there really any grounds to worry about anti-semitism in the Soros conspiracy wave? 5/
