LARRY BURRIS, Special to the Courier
Sunday, November 14, 2010 6:32 am

Well, it’s all over but the shouting, and just about everywhere you look conservative politicians have taken over everything from local government to the U.S. Congress.

And you know, I’m kind of curious about how they did it.

To hear some people tell it, the liberal, supposedly left-wing media are controlling what people see, hear and read, and, more importantly, are producing a nation of political zombies who simply vote the way the liberal media want them to.

So to hear Michael “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” Savage tell it, the electorate finally got fed up with the liberal bias and rebelled against big government, big spending, and, more importantly, big media.

Now, my question is, if the media are giving us this one-sided picture, where did the conservative voters get their information from?

Surely they didn’t get it from political advertising and commercials.

By common agreement, this was the most personalized and antagonistic election campaign season in recent memory, and the voters got precious little real information through that medium.

So if conservative outlets are so few and far between, then how in the world could they have influenced so many voters?

And if the voters are being so influenced by this supposed bias, then how in the world did all of those winning conservatives get elected in the first place?

No, the voters weren’t responding to a liberal or conservative viewpoint in the news pages or on the news programs.

They were responding, instead, to the information they received from news stories about what the politicians everywhere from the local to the federal government were doing.

So now the liberals are saying the media has a right-wing bias, and distorted what was going on in Washington.

Plus, many of the liberal pundits are saying the people weren’t reacting against President Obama’s programs, they were responding to how those programs were packaged.

But you know, except for the “packaging” theory, conservatives are saying the same kinds of things: The media has a liberal bias and the people saw right through it.

What the media aren’t telling us is what to think, what to believe and how to act. They are telling us what is important, and then allowing us to make up our minds as to what we want to do about it.

The news media gave us our options, and will do so again.

And if the people don’t like what’s going on, they’ll let their voice be heard again in two years.

That’s how the system is supposed to work.