Incomparably critical. Bob Somerby's excellent Daily Howler site calls attention to -- and takes issue with -- my recent item on liberal and conservative media bias. Somerby can't believe I said that the liberal media tend to be moderate to conservative on economic issues, and criticizes my "rollover attitude."

Oddly enough, he tries to sic Bill Clinton on me, even though Clinton himself is the very embodiment of modern liberalism, which isn't all that liberal except on cultural issues. Clinton managed the economy like an Eisenhower Republican, and signed a welfare-reform bill that only a conservative could love.

Somerby approvingly quotes Clinton as saying, "They have an increasingly right-wing and bellicose conservative press. And we have an increasingly docile establishment press." Clinton is right. But his successful repositioning of liberalism is one of the prime reasons for that.

Perhaps George W. Bush, by managing the economy like a right-wing extremist rather than an Eisenhower Republican, will help change that. He's starting to make Clinton's cautious centrism look like liberal activism.