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shminux comments on The bias shield - Less Wrong
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You are overthinking it. People are blind to the biases identical to their own, that is all (how many lefties said that it was an unbiased account?).
I don't think so. You don't see moderates behaving that way towards moderates. And most of the commenters (though not all) are well aware that BIll O'Reilly is a conservative. Most of the comments don't say something like, "Bill O'Reilly was correct about his claims about Edwin Stanton". They say "You disagree with Bill O'Reilly; this must be because you are a liberal; I am not even going to consider your claims."
The subject matter here was history about Lincoln, and the facts in contention were not political, but questions such as, When was the Oval Office built? What kind of gun did Booth use? Was there a hole in the wall or in the door? So people are not defending O'Reilly's book because they have a bias that makes them agree with him about the content of the book. (I think I'll add that to the post.)
I don't think that's really true: the few people who do think about politics a lot and self-identify as "moderates" to the exclusion of other labels do seem very apt to explain disagreement by others' fanaticism, ideology, groupthink, extremism, or other ways of not being a moderate.
On the other hand a lefty who disagrees with O'Reilly might very well try to make this disagreement look like it's about something apolitical.
Presumably by a "moderate" you mean someone who agrees that "politics is a mind-killer", not a DNC supporter, because those are not much better.
Of course not, for many of them O'Reilly can do no wrong, so anyone who attacks the book attacks their values. The content of the book is not relevant, only the fact that Bill O'Reilly wrote it is.
Except when it takes one to know one.