Art & Creativity Quote by Barbara Olson

Olson’s line is less a lament about press bias than a piece of political jiu-jitsu: it reframes electoral conflict as a culture war in which the referee has already put on the other team’s jersey. “Chosen” is the tell. It casts the media not as a messy ecosystem of outlets and incentives, but as a coherent actor with agency, taste, and a unified agenda. That move collapses disagreement into conspiracy-adjacent certainty, a rhetorical shortcut that turns skepticism into solidarity.

The second sentence does the real work. “They are going to be painted as the bad guys” preloads victimhood, giving Republicans a ready-made explanation for criticism before it arrives. Any unfavorable story becomes evidence of the “painting,” not a prompt to argue facts. It’s a defensive posture that doubles as an attack: by accusing the media of moral caricature, Olson suggests the caricature is the media’s sin, not the party’s problem.

Context matters: Olson was a conservative journalist and commentator in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the GOP’s relationship with major news institutions was hardening into a core identity marker. The quote anticipates a media strategy that would later become standard: delegitimize the storyteller so you don’t have to lose the story. It’s emotionally resonant because it offers clarity in a noisy information environment - and politically potent because it converts accountability into persecution, turning every headline into a rallying cry.