Why, oh why, do they hate us so? Such is the question posed by earnest Nick Kristof in “A Slap in the Face,” yesterday’s column for The NYT. The “they” and the “us” are the masses and the media, separated now by a divide even wider than the “God gulf” Kristof diagnosed in early 2004, just in time to reduce the election to an even simpler formula than Red v. Blue. Frankly, we think it’s a phony question. The masses may say they distrust the media, but that doesn’t stop them — us; we’re all masses, right? — from cherry-picking rumor and allegation and fact to prop up stories we like to tell ourselves. So, a) the “distrust” is partly a rhetorical stance; we’ll believe it when people start consuming less media instead of more; b) if the expression of distrust has grown, oughtn’t we inspect the changes in the stuff that’s distrusted? I.e., the mind-boggling consolidation that has left many cities with only one newspaper (that used to be against the law, y’know), or several brands of radio “news” all produced in one studio, and TV — do we really need to explain why people don’t trust television? Earnest Nick has another solution: “We… need more diverse newsrooms. When America was struck by race riots in the late 1960’s, major news organizations realized too late that their failure to hire black reporters had impaired their ability to cover America. In the same way, our failure to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today.” That’s it! Affirmative action for those who’ve fueled the political drive to destroy it. Or else they’ll riot. Because all “they” really ever wanted was a place at the secular humanist table. Right?