Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio put media bias on the front burner at CNBC’s Republican presidential debate, but conservatives and liberals differed sharply on whether what was in the pot smelled appetizing. Several lefty bloggers turned up their noses at the idea that in last night’s event and in general, the media favor Democrats.

Among the insights: Fiorina "has a notable facility for delivering answers that thrill conservatives but fall apart under close examination"; a discussion of childhood vaccines showed that the party is "fervid, claustrophobic, recklessly insinuating, and, at the same time, utterly timid when it comes to extremism in its own ranks”; and the GOP as a whole is "wedded to the tenets of [George W.] Bushism — rabid, debt-financed, regressive tax-cutting, reflexive hostility to regulation, and a pervasive anti-intellectualism."

The Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor famously and emphatically rejected the idea that the host used in the Communion rite is a mere symbol. Gun owners might have a similarly negative response to Adam Gopnik’s claim that guns “have an almost entirely symbolic function.”

“No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled [by the use of guns]; the dense and hysterical mythology of gun love has been refuted again and again,” declared Gopnik in a Friday post dealing in part with this week’s murder of two TV journalists near Roanoke, Va. “The few useful social functions that guns do have—in hunting or in killing varmints, as a rural man such as my father has to do—can be preserved even with tight regulations, as in Canada.”

Only on PBS would it be considered part of a Fourth of July celebration to have the editor of The New Yorker gush over Barack Obama’s most “progressive” accomplishments. It’s also quite like PBS to have this journalist conclude that he feels about Obama just like you would feel about  “your favorite ball team.”

The program was the late-night talk show Charlie Rose, and the gushiest moment from both Rose and New Yorker editor David Remnick came in celebrating Obama’s eulogy in Charleston for the late Clementa Pinckney, shot dead by a racist. They agreed this was an emotional pinnacle for the president, with Rose even saying it was “one of the great moments anyone has ever seen.” PBS, they suggest, is the channel for emotional restraint?

Racial issues, not gun issues, understandably have been at the forefront of most media coverage of the Charleston massacre, but Adam Gopnik suggests that in any such mass shooting, the firearm is the salient factor.

“Mental health, the enduring structures of racism—these are issues that we have to deal with, too,” wrote Gopnik in a Tuesday column. “But they are not at the heart of the tragedy. Gun massacres happen for no reason at all, as well as for crazy reasons. Every country has people who come into the grip of delusions...Most countries keep lethal weapons out of their hands. After a mass killing, grief is supported by wisdom; laws change, and killings stop.”