Dunno if I like this conclusion, but Atrios' quote of Stanley Crouch does show the reinforcement of a meme whose time has apparently come:

The "he," of course, is Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). In late 1998 and early 1999, when I was writing column after column about him and calling for his resignation because of his connection to the Council of Conservative Citizens, there was no response from the media at large, with the noble exceptions of Frank Rich and Bob Herbert, both of The New York Times.

That proved to me that all the talk about a liberal media bias was bunk - at least when it comes to race.

What's rather funny is that it was at least in part conservative/libertarian bloggers who popularized this thing... and they're absolutely adamant in saying that the media is indeed liberal.

(Oh, and in case anybody brings it up, this isn't to say that the echo chamber has all of a sudden crumpled and that the network effects of ideas online have suddenly ceased to be. Liberservative webloggers may be a lot of things, but racist ain't usually one of them. Probably why they got so pissed off about this whole thing: must suck being reminded of that unsavoury element of your chosen party/social movement. Kinda like that Chomsky name-baiting that the left gets so often, except lots worse.)