It's hangar, not hanger.

Most journalists get into the biz because they believe they can fix the world, and that they have all the talent, strength of character and moral righteousness that is required. Most leave the business fairly early.
Do you recall what the Grateful Dead fan said after he ran out of weed?
"Say, this music sucks!"
The insight for most reporters is the same. When they grow up a little, they realize the pay and the required pandering suck. Only the truly egotistical can hang in there (think Geraldo. think Anderson Cooper. Now think this guy).

I hope you'll bring some of your reasonableness to Breitbart.com. You probably don't recall, but at least one jackass writer here went after census workers, claiming they were Nazis spying for Obama on ordinary Americans.

Lovely. Some of us took the job because it was a job -- period! -- and Breitbart and company were trying to get us shot by some mental defective. There are a great many real issues for conservatives to deal with. Paranoid rants will, as you suggest, run off those who are simply philosophically opposed to big government.

There's no such word as alright. It's all right.
But on the other hand, he's only 23 and this is a sound, insightful article.

The Republicans have gone along with the nonsense that cutting the amount that budgets are scheduled to grow constitutes "cuts" in spending. Nonsense. Cut spending. Cut programs. Or get out of the way.

Toto, you're making the same mistake virtually everyone in Hollywood makes, confusing seriousness with serious. That's why every year they hand out oscars to the most pretentious, "serious" movies. This isn't just a Hollywood phenomenon, of course. Pretentious people do it all the time. Steinbeck thought "Grapes of Wrath" was a failure. Compared to his comic novels (Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat), it is. Academics love the second book of Don Quixote because it is a "serious" look at human cruelty. The first book is better, BECAUSE it is the funniest book ever written. "Much Ado About Nothing" is a spectacular piece of work -- not, perhaps in the league with Shakespeare's best tragedies, but infinitely better than most modern stage pieces, because it is sweet and funny and unapologetically (and un-ironically) so.

"For man is ... a giddy thing."

The Breakfast Club is an entertaining movie. But for sheer imaginative bravura -- for astounding confidence and good humor -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a classic.

There are 35 black conservatives running for the Congress this year.

Rosehips: why don't you just say, "I hate people who don't live and think like I do" ? Might be better than your current indulgent temper tantrum.

Pogria,

Thanks for the comments. I found Baird's article snooty, and therefore surprising. You don't often hear snooty comments from down under. In fact I think the responses from other readers here were altogether too reflexive.
Ross asks, "Oz has two-thirds the population of California, and is only slightly larger than the Greater New York metropolitan area, so who really cares what they think?"

I do. We share a common heritage, and have both grown up similarly. Australia was a penal colony. As to who we are, I'll just quote Bill Murray in Stripes: "We're Americans. That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world."

Now we are two of the very few nations whose people celebrate independence in thought, and we neither of us give a damn about those who believe they have the right, or the superior expertise, to tell us how we should live. That means some people will think we're weird.

Of course, you won't meet many such elites (read: condescending jackasses) in the U.S., though you can find the exceptions, particularly on the east and west coasts. Our media folks -- particularly those that populate Newsweek, Time, and the networks -- love to believe themselves particularly cerebral.

By the way, democracy certainly can be ugly, and mad at times. That's why Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Most of us have no problems with being a little weird. That beats the hell out of being conventional, which is usually attended by conventional wisdom.

AreaMan, you may not be familiar with this great old quote (a favorite of Buckley's):

"Everything changes ... except the avant garde."
Paul Valéry