When Sen. Tom Daschle went off last week like an angry old loser who had just discovered that his house was toilet-papered by Rush Limbaugh, he accidentally raised a good question: Why are liberals on talk radio as scarce as Baptists at an ACLU meeting?

Ann Coulter has an answer in her book Slander.

The conservative pundit sees the media as a coalmine, where mediacrat miners wade through dead canaries up to their kneecaps just to get to their keyboards. There's something wrong with the air - but everyone pretends it's just fine, as another canary customer takes a header off his perch, poisoned by liberal bias.

She has a point. Newspaper circulation is anemic nationwide. Ratings for the network news shows are dropping like dead parakeets. The New York Times prints press releases from the Democratic Party and pretends they are editorials, then prints editorials and pretends they are news.

`Eat your spinach'

The conservative half of the country is sick of a steady media diet of steamed liberal spinach. They want an occasional slice of center-cut chops or prime rib from the right. But liberals run the restaurant and they say, "Shut up and eat your spinach.''

Ms. Coulter's book will not be a must-read in most newsrooms. Most journalists would rather jump in Lake Limbaugh wearing cement water wings.

But Ms. Coulter makes a strong case. Her target is the liberal-leaning "monopoly media'' - newspapers, networks and Irrational Public Radio.

"Despite the fact that liberals strongly disapprove of conservative speech,'' she writes, "wherever there is consumer choice, the public keeps choosing conservatives.''

Anti-Rush rockets

And that takes us to talk radio and Sen. Daschle's nemesis. The airwaves are littered with the space-junk of the "anti-Limbaugh'' rockets who were launched with great expectations, only to wind up like Major Tom, out of touch with ground control.

The liberal losers list from Ms. Coulter: Alan Dershowitz, Gary Hart, Lowell Weicker, Mario Cuomo, Jim Hightower, Jerry Brown, Ed Koch and Douglas Wilder. Add Phil Donahue, the O'Reilly-repellant who has an audience smaller than a Weight Watchers meeting on Thanksgiving.

Why do they crash and burn? Do liberals need remedial training to tune a radio? Or is it because radio, unlike the monopoly media, is more fiercely competitive and responsive to public demand?

For all the talk about ratings, the three major TV networks have been like three brands of margarine in different tubs. They never had a real challenge until Fox News came along, and now viewers are flocking to Fox.

In his rant against talk radio last week, Sen. Daschle said he felt personally threatened by the lunatics who are incited by Rush Limbaugh. Unlike, say, the lunatics who are incited by the flammable invective from Mr. Daschle and other Democrats.

What's eating Sen. Daschle is that his side no longer has a monopoly.

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.