Purple Rain

William Raspberry from the Washington Post admits that divisive politics makes for better copy:

Scores of public controversies are reported as to-the-mat battles between unyielding opposites -- in part because our journalistic habits send us looking for these irreconcilables.

But Raspberry doesn't go far enough. By exaggerating these political conflicts the media rubs salt in the wound, and soon enough the extreme groups on both sides of an issue feel more justified in portraying each other as grotesque caricatures, worthy of contempt.

Then both sides keep amplifying the rhetoric, and 'purples' get to hear them repeat the latest bombast from Fox, or Franken, or Limbaugh, or those velveteen socialists at NPR, as if we simply never had the pleasure of being assaulted with a "reasonable position" before.