Damn that elitist New York Times! (A continuing series)

We've seen this before, but we've again reached the point in the campaign season where anything said or reported by the New York Times is treated by the right as an attack on the right. Even if it probably isn't.

The latest example: John Podhoretz's umbrage at Saturday's front-page article about Sarah Palin's faith.

From the Times:

Ms. Palin’s religious life — what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska — has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain’s running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown — she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church — and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God’s servant.

Seems straightforward enough to me. Not to Podhoretz:

Today, the New York Times published an article that, should it receive wide circulation (and it might, on the web), will do a great deal to harden evangelical attitudes against the supposed leftward swing — because it is an act of secular aggression against a believing Christian.

While I suppose, if by "secular aggression" he meant "secular attempt to understand a politician who is Christian."

Go read the quotes Podhoretz quotes from the article. And go read the article. If there's any sneering by the Times here, I missed it. I'll admit it: The Times reporters and readership are probably, on the whole, more secular than the American populace. There is a certain anthropological quality to the Times' reporting on this and other faith-based topics, no doubt.

But aggression?

Something I've learned over the years is that liberals can be every bit as closed-minded or cloistered as anybody else. When Richard Nixon won election in 1972, Pauline Kael supposedly expressed surprise: Nobody she knew had voted for the man. When George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, many of my Lawrence friends were similarly baffled: Who the hell was voting for the man? I wasn't a Bush fan, but I was peeved at my friends for their inability to understand or imagine how people might believe differently from them.

So I welcome the Times' reporting.

Podhoretz -- assuming, generously, that he is not just cynically attempting Times-bashing to once again rally the base -- thus seems to be an aggravation that there is a secular America for whom Palin's faith and practices require some explanation. By trying to assist its readers, the Times thus stands guilty of liberal hackery. And so it goes.