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Look! It's The Weekly Standard's style guide! choice bits include:

People say to me, “Ellis, we’re tired of earning an honest living. How can we get cushy sinecures writing shameless crap for brand-name Republican propaganda mills like National Review Online, the American Enterprise Institute, or The Weekly Standard?

Good news: It’s easy, it’s fun, and the liars of the right need all the help they can get.

Here’s how: Take the latest newsworthy example of Republican hypocrisy. “Which one? There are so many!” True. I mean today’s report about Senator (and, predictably, “family values” conservative) David Ritter (R. LA), whose name has been found in the records of “DC Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey. (”A right-wing moralist found availing himself of the services of prostitutes?” a breathless nation cries. “We love this! Will there be more?”) Patience.

Skip a bit...

You’ve turned the situation inside out, like a sock, and then declared, “Here. Put this on. This is how you wear a sock.” It isn’t. You’ve turned it inside out. You’ve suffocated a story’s real meaning and, in an act of supreme intellectual dishonesty, used it as the basis for yet another bit of propaganda.

The above presents, as I say, a hypothetical “conservative” column. Assuming, though, that somewhere on Powerline or at The Corner someone — your Jonah Goldbergs, your John Hinderakers, your Michael Medveds — is tapping out something much like this as we speak, then for the record:

This scandal does not consist in liberals being “hypocrites” because they condemn a man for using an escort service. The hypocrite is the Senator, whose use of an escort service is a direct contradiction of his public avowal of “family values” and his assertions, either open or implicit, that no one should use or tolerate escort services.

But what do you care? You’re a right-wing columnist! You’ve made the world just a little more stupid by disseminating half-truths, outright lies, and boilerplate nonsense. Proofread, check for manuscript form, email to Bill Kristol, and wait for your check. Good job!

Wanna see what was in between? Follow your nose to the genius!

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Wow, Rupert Murdoch almost had a moment of honesty. Let's hope that never happens to Fox.

Spake the Muckraker:

"CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It's not what they say. It's what they highlight." (CNN, which is also owned by Time Warner, hotly disputes this charge.) Then he mumbles conspiratorially, "And if you look at our general news, do we put on things which favor the right rather than the left? I don't know." Has Murdoch just said what I think he said? Has he flirted with an admission that Fox News skews right? If so, he quickly backs away. "We don't think we do. We've always insisted we don't. I don't think we do. Aw, it's subjective. Neither side admits it."

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