Northbound

Rob Walker — you know him from The New York Times Magazine — lays bare the philosophy behind liberal media bias:

Bullshit trend stories can be a force for good.

What I mean is, it has occurred to me that it’s possible that the bullshit trend stories about consumers fleeing bottled water could, eventually, if they achieve critical mass, actually cause consumers to flee bottled water — or at least to recycle their empties.

For years, activists have made the case against bottled water. Lately, that case has also been made in some pretty good articles. But that hasn’t been enough to make any particularly noticeable impact on consumer behavior. So maybe dubious trend stories will do the trick. If enough people keep writing them, then some day, they will actually start to be true.

It’s the childlike faith that gets to me.  If we write enough nonsense, maybe one day it will all come true.  (Of course, it works both ways; there were all those stories on the Opinion Journal website about all the good news coming out of Iraq.)