Like Diogenes of Sinope searching for an honest man, Ethics Alarms has been searching for a political progressive, here or anywhere, who will acknowledge the blatant pro-liberal, pro-Obama, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-Tea Party bias of the mainstream media. Obvious examples are routinely explained or rationalized away, even when they are criticized by a media outlet’s own internal ombudsmen and ethicists.

The media’s coverage of the recent toadying remarks of Vice-President Biden to the Chinese, as he gave a pass to China’s  long-time policy of limiting families to one child, has been a particularly vivid and disgraceful case in point. Despite the fact that Biden’s remarks were a shocking diplomatic gaffe and human rights betrayal, they were almost solely criticized by Republicans and conservative pundits, and only fleetingly covered at all by the mainstream media. While the so-called “conservative media” kept Biden’s gaffe in the news, the rest either covered the coverage, as in “Right Wing Critics Attack Biden,” or framed the criticism of Biden as a pro-life vs. pro-choice dust-up, as if anyone but a lunatic could describe a program limiting births by law  as “pro choice.”

By today, right-leaning publications and blogs were virtually the only ones covering the story. Out of more than 2,000 articals, less than 1% were in mainstream or openly progressive media. A notable exception was the Washington Post, which in an editorial not only slammed Biden’s “understanding” acceptance of the one-child per family policy (though foolishly accepting the Obama administration’s “clarification,” which amounted to re-defining the English language), it also called attention to another comment by Biden before the same audience that showed his human rights insensitivity:

“‘Maybe the biggest difference in our respective approaches are our approaches to what we refer to as human rights,” Mr. Biden said.  “I recognize that many of you in this auditorium see our advocacy of human rights as at best an intrusion, and at worst an assault on your sovereignty.'”

“There are a couple of misreadings there. Human rights are universal, enshrined by the United Nations, subscribed to (in theory) by China and every other U.N. member. They’re not something “we refer to as human rights”: They are human rights, and they’re the same rights no matter where you live.

“More important, how does Mr. Biden know that students at Sichuan University view U.S. advocacy as an intrusion or an assault on their sovereignty? That’s what their Communist leaders would have us believe. But the students who were in Mr. Biden’s audience aren’t free to express their views on that subject. People who publicly advocate for human rights in China go to jail. Maybe the majority of his audience wished that Mr. Biden had been more forceful — had spoken out for harassed artist Ai Weiwei, say, or for imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.”

Bravo.

The reason for lack of accountability required of Biden by the mainstream media, besides its well-established reluctance to permit the Obama administration to appear as habitually inept as it is, was explained to me by one sympathetic journalist who said, “Everybody knows Joe is prone to put his foot in his mouth. There’s no point in calling him on it every time.”

This is not just a double standard, but a double double standard. The first double standard is that this was not the media’s rule of thumb when it was covering expression-challenged Republican high officials like the two Bushes and Dan Quayle. Indeed, even comments by these three that were arguably reasonable, if awkwardly expressed, were automatically and sneeringly interpreted as gaffes, blunders, and proof of incompetence. The second double standard is that U.S. representatives speaking on sensitive topics in foreign affairs are and should be subjected to the highest standards, and the most stringent scrutiny and criticism. But when the Obama administration foolishly entrusts such duties to a known boob, the standard magically becomes lower than low. (Biden also made other significant mistakes in his speaking exploits in China.)

The Washington Post, at least, has integrity. Also showing integrity was reliably liberal columnist Kirsten Powers, who must have spoiled Tina Brown’s breakfast with a column slamming Biden in The Daily Beast. Now, to hear the conservative blogs tell it, Powers’ criticism is as significant as if the column had come from E. J. Dionne, which is not quite true. Powers is a Clinton Democrat, which makes her a moderate in this political climate;  this is why she appears so frequently as the token liberal on Fox News. I am still waiting for the genuine partisan progressive pundit to be honest about Biden, and I suspect I will wait forever. This should not take away from Powers’ piece, however, which is eloquent and strong.

Some excerpts:

“…The vice president told an audience at Sichuan University in Chengdu:  “Your policy has been one which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—of one child per family.” This was an appalling statement coming from an American leader. What’s next? Will he say he isn’t “second-guessing” and “fully understands” that women are stoned for adultery in Iran?

“Chai Ling, a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement, told me she was ‘shocked and troubled’ by Biden’s statement. Ling founded the organization All Girls Allowed to fight the one-child policy, which affects most couples and is designed to limit growth in China, which at 1.3 billion people is the world’s most populous country.

“‘On behalf of all the Chinese women and girls,’ she says, Biden’s ‘statements are very hurtful. The one-child policy means the child has to be killed, whether it is forced or coerced through pressure. The women don’t feel like they have a choice. In a culture that is not welcoming to women who get pregnant and keep the baby they will be persecuted, financially and politically by the government.’

“… The media predictably frame this issue as ‘pro-choice vs. pro-life’ when in fact it is a major human-rights issue. In particular, it’s a women’s-rights issue, which makes the silence from feminists and liberals about Biden’s comment particularly disturbing. Reggie Littlejohn, an American attorney who founded Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, told a reporter, ‘China’s one-child policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other policy on earth, than any official policy in the history of the world.’

“The ‘one-child’ policy is a barbaric practice aimed squarely at women and has had the effect of wiping out generations of girls. If this isn’t a top women’s-rights issue in the world, I don’t know what is. And it’s not just limited to China. When Biden says he isn’t ‘second-guessing’ the one-child policy, he is sending a frightening message to other countries, like India, where sex-selective abortions are epidemic in a country that places little value on girls….”

Yes, he is. Biden’s comments were substantively damaging on an international, individual and moral level, but not “news” to most of the American media, because funny old Joe doesn’t mean what he says, and anyway, the most important thing is to make sure those crazy conservatives don’t take over the White House.