The specter of a liberal media bias sprang forth into popular culture with Spiro Agnew's paranoid alliterative defense of the Vietnam War back in 1969.

(This origin story, of course, skips past the blatant, muckraking primordial ooze from which the entire daily newspaper business emerged in this country back in the early 1900s. So, in that sense, the chicken came first: with the media borne out of bias.)

I've spoken at length in print, online and in person about “media bias,” and how overblown I think that liberal bogeyman is.

For starters, what passes for the media in this country has never been more fragmented, discordant, or for that matter, democratic. Anyone can get online—whether it's behind a keyboard or in front of a webcam—and make their voice heard. The playing field's been so leveled that it's kind of hard to even conceive of this single, monolithic, big brother-type of media entity telling us all how to think and feel anymore.

That's not to say there isn't bias out there. The mainstream media—for lack of a better identifier—certainly hasn't taken to candidate Mitt Romney. Whether it's his wealth, his lack of cool or his stiffness, reporters seem to be attuned to his every stumble. The guy just can't catch a break.

(Anyone remember the primaries? The press seemed to cover everyone but Romney until they no longer a choice).

As a better blogger than me pointed out recently, he's this election cycle's John Kerry. Or Al Gore. The bumbling loser. The wooden cut-out candidate. And now that the narrative is set, the more Romney tries to shake it, the more the press will typecast him to fit that role. And now every little misstep will be overblown.

Did Al Gore really say he invented the Internet? No. And I'm certain Romney knows why airplane windows don't open. It's not fair, but it's where we are in the campaign.

It bears clarifying: The media's biased, but not in the same voice or in the same ways. With this election, I think they're still starry-eyed (if a little disappointed) over Obama and they just don't like Romney as a person, for whatever reason.

And reporting a story is not the same as advocating it. We—at least those of us here—don't have the luxury of reporting just the good news. Or the bad. If the emperor has no clothes, well, that's what we have to tell you. At least when it's a news story.

But in our blogs or columns, we can wonder where the clothes went, what they looked like and why their absence will probably force health care costs up again.

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They&rsquo;re just not that into him

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They’re just not that into him