In the late 1960s, before his movie career launched, Woody Allen made several television specials, including one in which he interviewed Billy Graham. Late last year, when Ann Althouse linked to the YouTube clips of this somewhat surreal moment, "Dirty Harry" of the conservative Libertas film blog wrote:

With all the acrimony and right against left and poisonous debate going on during this election season, I thought I’d pass on this very charming clip of Woody Allen interviewing Billy Graham. They’re both very funny and obviously enjoying each other’s company though they agree on little. (Letterman could learn something from this.)

Such moments in which prominent members of the "Two America" publicly debate in a colligate spirit seem to occur much less often these days; Bob Tyrrell blames it all partially, and I believe somewhat tongue-in-cheek, on William F. Buckley:

What claims the attention of major media today is a phenomenon called Kultursmog. It is the popular culture of the United States, polluted utterly by a weird politics, a politics that is often called liberal but is actually simply leftish and adolescent. It has no fixed values or ideas other than to disturb the peace, which the legally attuned will recognize as a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions of the civilized world. Kultursmog is a culture that mixes rock stars in with fashion models and the ideas of Al Gore. Occasionally the smog actually includes the Hon. Gore, along with those other "rock star" personalities, the Clintons. The Kultursmog is always politically correct, ever sensitive to the whims of the Democratic National Committee, and increasingly anti-intellectual.

What makes it anti-intellectual is that the ideas behind public policy today are almost completely derived from Buckley, Milton Friedman, Irving Kristol, and other less well-known conservatives and neoconservatives. In fact I think I can argue successfully, if ironically, that Buckley is personally responsible for the anti-intellectualism that has spread throughout major media over the past 25 years. There once was a time when the late night television shows, the morning chat shows, and the personality sections of print journalism would occasionally feature the likes of Buckley and his most frequent liberal opponents, John Kenneth Galbraith and Gore Vidal. The time is long past. Buckley finished off his opponents years ago, and no young egghead was up to taking on his wit or erudition.

In any case, it's hard to argue that the gatekeepers of the overculture are infinitely more hostile to conservatives than they were a few decades ago.

Case in point: Mark Finkelstein notices that "Time Puts Horns on the Reverend Billy Graham:"

Just when you thought the MSM couldn't sink any lower . . .

Could there possibly be an American who doesn't admire the Reverend Billy Graham? Apparently, yes. Have a look at the cover of this week's 'Time.' Of all the ways the editors might have positioned the logo, they managed to do so in a manner in which the 'M' in 'TIME' is transformed into horns protruding from the good reverend's head.

Tucker Carlson and Willie Geist took up the matter on Tucker's MSNBC show this afternoon.

MSNBC'S WILLIE GEIST: A guy who has advised presidents, the Reverend Billy Graham on the cover of Time Magazine this week. I know the media is secular, but do they have to rub it in? A nice picture there of the reverend praying, but look at the horns above his head. A not-so-subtle message that maybe he's, well, Satan incarnate.

MSNBC HOST TUCKER CARLSON: That is actually . . .. Have people complained about that? Because that's unbelievable.

GEIST: Yeah, there's some chatter on the internet right now, and there's sure to be more.

Glad to oblige.

Is the juxtaposition purely a strange coincidence? Maybe, but then so was this, which received gallons of ink in 2000. And note how often these strange coincidences seem to occur in the MSM, and whom they frequently involve.

Related: If you can't use 'em, bruise 'em.