SO WHY HASN'T THE RIGHT-WING MEDIA COVERED KERMIT GOSNELL UNTIL NOW?

The right is complaining that there's been a "liberal media" blackout of the Kermit Gosnell case -- but while big national media outlets may have missed the story, it's been widely covered by the feminist journalists since Gosnell's arrest in 2011, as Salon's Irin Carmon has documented. Meanwhile, as her colleague Alex Seitz-Wald points out, the right-wing media ignored the story until now. Ignored it at the time of Gosnell's arrest. Ignored it since the arrest. Ignored it at the beginning of trial a few weeks ago.

You'd think this would have been a perfect right-wing story from Day One. Evil abortion doctor! Dead babies! Blue-state government looking the other way!

But I'm not so sure. The right-wing media template is one of villains and victims -- but they have to be the right villains and (especially) the right victims. Most of the victims here were poor, inner-city non-whites. The suburban/exurban/gated community dwellers who make up the audience for Fox news and talk radio and righty blogs doesn't give a crap about bad things happening to those people.

Kermit Gosnell is an African-American doctor charged with preying on a mostly non-white clientele. The right-wing media does sometimes focus on crimes black people commit against other black people -- Matt Drudge is especially fond of posting such stories -- but the subtext of these reports is that the real victim is (or eventually will be) you, Mr. and Mrs. White Exurban America. "Urban flash mobs" are coming for you. Riots are taking place so President Obama will give "reparations" to the rioters with your money. Chicago blacks are shooting other blacks because of gun control laws that will eventually worsen until the feds come for your guns.

But wouldn't the right-wing media have wanted to cover this as a "war on Judeo-Christian morality" story? Yes, there's endless talk in the right-wing press about a "war on Christmas" and other alleged threats to religion and morals -- but the subtext of all that seems to be that overeducated atheists, Muslims, Wiccans, and people who celebrate Kwanzaa want to take away your God-given constitutional right to have a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas rather than a "Happy Holiday." The contraceptive mandate in the Obama health law is coming for your Irish-American parish priest. This story had nothing to do with any of that. It was just a bunch of dark-skinned moochers preying on other dark-skinned moochers.

Until now. Now it's a story about the evil liberal media. You never set foot in a big city if you can help it, and you certainly never go to that part of town -- but this is now a story about people on your huge flat-screen TV! This affects you now!

So that's why the right never talked about this until this week.