Guest Post by John Emerson, posted by Gary Farber, to cover Gary while traveling, but who was delayed by hotel internet service going out.
(Everything below is expressed in its maximal form, as per my normal modus operandi. Readers may want to trim certain passages in accordance with their own tastes.)
Everyone talks about the media, but no one has been able to do anything about it. I share the common opinion that the disaster of contemporary American politics is in large part the result of the corruption and dishonesty of the media, and I also believe that this corruption is deep-rooted and unlikely to change, and that as a result we are between a rock and a hard place somewhere up shit creek. Eight years ago I thought that the internet would change things, but that hasn’t seemed to have happened. A lot of us are now better-informed than the media want us to be. But there are not enough of us and we remain a powerless minority, even (it has turned out) within the Democratic Party.
I am not trying to replace the libraries of media criticism that already exist, but merely to sum up my understanding of the situation in a few snappy phrases.
AMBIENT OPINION
Ambient opinion is what people think when they’re not paying attention, and outside the universities and some urban neighborhoods, the right wing has firm control of ambient political opinion. If you pick your opinions out of the air (from the free broadcast media), your opinions will be conservative. Since elections are decided by the marginal low-information voter, the consequences for liberals and Democrats are deadly.
ORAL TRADITION
Before recently, the broadcast media had no memory. That’s one thing that the internet was able to partly change, but only for a minority. Most listeners don’t remember on Friday what Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh said on Monday, and Bill and Rush rely on that. They are able to disappear their outrageous statements and mistakes and start over again fresh every morning. And when you catch them on tape lying or being stupid, they get angry and accuse you of stalking them. They think that that should be against the rules.
OVERTON WINDOW
Somewhere far above our heads it has been decided, probably by Cokie Roberts, which topics are OK to talk about and which aren’t, which policies can be questioned and which can’t, and so on. (For example, the war on drugs is off limits.) Whether from opportunism, incuriosity, or sincere conviction, most people in the media accept this frame unquestioningly, and the ones who don’t, however talented, find their careers ended.
AESOPIAN LANGUAGE
Under the Czars and under Communism writers learned to make their points indirectly in order to get past the censors, writing stories whose meaning was evident only to the well-informed. In the same way, media people who are uncomfortable with the Overton Window they find in place figure out veiled, indirect ways of suggesting to the informed reader that the official story is wrong. When criticized, they will justify themselves by pointing to the little reservations and occasional ironic digs they made here and there. However, they will never flatly say that the official story is not merely uncertain or not universally accepted, but flatly wrong and dishonest – even though this is often the case.
Aesopian language fails to communicate the truth to the average reader and is thus bad journalism, but it is flattering to the discerning reader. Those who get the point are able to congratulate themselves on being smarter than the lumpish and ignorant masses, and since a major Democratic demographic is intensely invested in its own intellectual superiority, many Democrats (the lumpen intelligentsia) do not see any problem with Aesopian writing.
RESONANCE / TRACTION / LEGS
Stories which Cokie Roberts have decided are worth covering have traction; other stories don’t. And as she herself has pointed out, the truth of the story is unimportant if “it’s out there”.
ZAMPOLIT
The zampolit was a kind of commissar which the Communist Party placed in organizations of every sort (universities, media, even the army) to make sure that they did not violate the party line. They may be compared to the mobsters who kept an eye on Mafia-controlled unions. While the zampolits were formally mid-level bureaucrats in the organizations they were assigned to, in fact they did not report to their nominal superiors, but to their party bosses.
In the same way, decades of pressure have forced the less conservative media outlets to hire a large number of Republican operatives who, to all appearances, still are functioning as Republicans. George Will, Pat Buchanan, William Safire, David Gergen, Michael Gerson, and others were hired with more experience as political operatives than as journalists. Guys like this can’t be fired.
Yeah, yeah, Chris Matthews, Susan Estrich, George Stephanopolous. What a lame bunch of weenies.
CLEVER HANS
I suspect that most journalists do not begin their careers as cynical, inane, timid, centrist, and incurious as they end up becoming, and that few of them notice their own process of degradation. It’s also highly unlikely that they are given direct orders to become cynical, inane, timid, centrist, and incurious. But by watching the bosses hands – hirings, firings, promotions, awards, and subtler things like words of praise – they figure out what’s wanted. And what’s wanted is what you see.
SUCCESS POSITIVISM
“Can’t argue with success”. Professionalism has been redefined as whatever pleases the boss and whatever advances the career. Anyone who objects just doesn’t understand the business. Things that to unschooled outsiders seem dishonest, inane, and shabby are actually the austere demands of the trade. A layman wouldn’t presume to tell a surgeon how to do his work; why would he think that he has the right to tell journalists how to do theirs? They’re not paid the big bucks for nothing.
INSTRUMENTAL LANGUAGE
One of the problems liberal arts graduates have is that if your skills are primarily verbal, you end up being sucked into professions where language is used purely instrumentally, in order to get certain results out of people, and where artistic considerations and truth are completely subordinated to effectiveness. Law, public relations, electioneering, and advertising are examples. Opinion people in all of the media seem to have joined this category, and to a considerable extent, even the news people. In particular, news people seem completely willing to accept egregiously false official statements instrumentally intended to mislead the public at face value.
PROFESSIONALISM
Professionalism is theoretically a good thing, but one thing it means is that the profession declares the right to set its own standards without outside input. This kind of imperviousness can lead to problems. The kind of stenographic reporting, brain-dead neutrality and mindless balance (“shape of the earth: opinions differ”) we see in contemporary journalism has been justified by Michael Mark Halperin, Chuck Todd, and others as a high-minded kind of professionalism which ignorant, biased laypersons like Brad DeLong and Glenn Greenwald just are not able to understand
OMERTA
Criminal organizations preferentially hire mediocre, compromised people and pay them better than they think they deserve, because that way their loyalty can be assured. That’s the principle of wingnut welfare, and while many and perhaps most successful journalists are proud and ambitious, a certain proportion of them (e.g. Jonah Goldberg and Megan McArdle) have to be fully aware that they are paid for their loyalties rather than for their talent. But they also know that they have muscle behind them, which accounts for their incredible brass whenever they’re caught in egregious order-of-magnitude errors. They’re invulnerable.
WRITE MY STORY FOR ME
There’s a generalist mystique in journalism, so that no attempt is made to get someone who understands economics and finance to cover the finance stories. People in the business are surprised that anyone could be surprised at this. As a result, complicated stories are covered on a “he said, she said” basis, and worse than that, many outlets end up subcontracting their stories to think tanks. Since liberals and Democrats have not bothered to learn the think tank game, this creates a rightward trend in news coverage.
FINANCIALIZATION
They say that newspapers used to be a gentlemanly enterprise and a form of public service, and even the yellow journalists like Hearst and Pulitzer at least had control of their organizations and had ideas of their own. Nowadays most newspapers are public and under the thumb of finance, so that the financial bottom line is the only bottom line. Not only do they have to cut costs in the face of heavy competition for advertising, but they have to make finance happy. And often they’re part of larger organizations with wide interests, so that the editorial page of the newspaper might end up being put at the service of interests unrelated to those of the newspaper itself.
There’s an additional problem with family owned newspapers. As the heirs icrease in number, some of them are going to want to cash out. Furthermore, with every transition of generations the possibility of an inheritance tax pops up, and big newspapers are some of the few family held businesses large enough to make this is a real threat. One effect of the Republican Party’s constant talk about the “death tax” is to make it very tempting for family-owned newspapers to support the Republicans. (The publisher of one Seattle newspaper said as much.)
MARKET TRUTH: THE PRODUCTION OF ERROR
In a pure market media system you get as much truth as you pay for. From the free media you get little and sometimes less than none (disinformation). For the free media (and cheap media such as newspapers) the reader is not the consumer, but the product. The consumers are the advertisers, and what they pay for is the attention of the reader, and what they give the reader is instrumental to selling them stuff. And as for the programming and writing, advertisers want it to draw in the reader, but there are certain kinds of truths that they don’t want to see. (If you want reality, The Financial Times is only $348 /year.)
DOUBT AS GOAL
While one goal of conservative hackery in the media is the transmission of conservative ideas, for them cynicism and doubt are second best. (Different channels are used to nail down the loyalists and to confuse the undecided). “The Democrats are just as bad” is enough; low turnout helps the Republicans. Of course, there’s every reason to be cynical in one sense of the word, but “They’re all crooks” can’t lead to anything, especially when it’s not accompanied by any real political point of view at all. (By now I think that “Question Authority” and knee-jerk suspicion do more harm than good. In order to know what’s happening, you have to have an actual point of view and people who are like yourself and whom you trust.
MANAGEMENT MANAGES
Things are the way because management wants it that way. I’ve had the darnedest time convincing people that the Times and the Post are the way they are (lame, neocon, deficit hawkish) because Donald Graham (recently replaced by Talking Heads niece Weymouth) and Arthur Sulzberger want it that way, and that they are going to stay that. There’s no use complaining about incompetence or lack of professionalism or anything else; the decision has been made and it’s not going to change.
The same is even more true with the rest of the media. From the same people, over and over again, every morning for about eight years now I’ve been seeing expressions of surprise and dismay about the wretched state of the media. Get used to it. We already know that.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
I haven’t got the least godd*mn idea.
Guest Post by John Emerson, posted by Gary Farber, to cover Gary while traveling, but who was delayed by hotel internet service going out.
Michael Halperin ?
maybe Mark Halperin ?
WEll, that’s depressing.
Where do we go from here? Why just continue our imperial decline of course.
Let me just point out the gross ignorance of basic high school civics on the part of the editors of the New York Times in its editorial on DOMA today. For an explanation of what I’m talking about, see this from Noah Kaplan from the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review.
Mark Halperin. But I can’t corret it in the text.
JE: I’ll give it a shot.
True. The completely ignorant believe the earth to be “round” (whatever that means), while the hopelessly stupid believe the Earth to be an oblate ellipsoid. It’s only the marginally intelligent (and above) who are aware that the shape of the Earth is constantly in flux, and therefore not capturable by any kind of static expression.
You’ll notice I haven’t factored in flat-earthers. That’s just to let people have something to argue about.
Your self-referential kung-fu is obviously a winner, here.
That was a great post. Thank you.
This: “Eight years ago I thought the internet would change things. ….”
I never believed this. I think the internet has enabled vast amounts of stupid, except here at OBWI (I half kid) where no one counts.
The dynamic between old media and the internet perplexes me. More informed folks of left and right, but even more just plain stupid ones.
But like John Boehner, who am I (Mr. Elitey Pants) to judge.
But I think porn and Redstate have something to do with it.
Also: “Donald Graham, recently replaced by Talking Heads niece Weymouth,”
Wait, what? Oh, O.K… Talking Heads’ and Tom Tom Club’s Tina Weymouth’s niece, whatever her name is..
Got it. Tina is married to Talking Heads’ and Tom Tom Club’s drummer Chris Frantz, with whom I graduated from the same high school. The last time I saw him, he was decked out in red and white and playing the trombone for the Fox Chapel High School marching band.
Again, great post.
The Internet changed everything.
Now many people have jobs making sure we can all talk to each other all of the time about everything in varying character length length message types.
So now we know that almost no one can type and I can’t spell.
Oh, and we can play Farmville when there is no one to talk to, so we can meet some more people.
If you’re into malicious gossip, Lally Weymouth (Tina’s s-i-l and the present publisher’s mom) is a gold mine.
Since liberals and Democrats have not bothered to learn the think tank game, this creates a rightward trend in news coverage.
Eh, what? What about CAP? Or EPI? Or the Urban Institute? Or the Roosevelt Institute?
Also, I think you’ve missed one vital fact that explains a lot about the media: the newspaper-reading and tv-viewing demographic skews old. Very old. Old people tend to be more conservative than younger people. I believe the age of the median newspaper subscriber is increasing by more than one year every year. The age of the median Bill O’Reilly viewer is over 71. If your audience is old and declining, you’re going to reflect conservative politics because that’s what your audience expects/demands and since it is declining, you’re terrified of losing them.
Turbulence: Fine, that’s four names. Liberals and Democrats have been doing a piss-poor job at the think-tank game, and they’ve been losing overwhelmingly. Those are junior players.
Ambient political opinion isn’t just old people and isn’t just TV and print. It includes AM and FM radio. What you say may be a factor but it wouldn’t have the importance it does if only the old were influenced.
It’s true, though that old people are more likely to vote, and as a rule they have more $$$ so advertisers court them.
Turbulence: Fine, that’s four names. Liberals and Democrats have been doing a piss-poor job at the think-tank game, and they’ve been losing overwhelmingly. Those are junior players.
How do we know that’s true? Is there some metric you have in mind?
I mean, if you want to argue that Cato has a bigger budget than the 4 think tanks I listed combined, that might work, but are you even arguing that?
It doesn’t strike me as controversial. Cato, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute all have a much greater presence than any of those, and probably each of them has more presence than all four put together. Furthermore, conservative think tanks are both research organizations and media organizations spreading the word.
I don’t think that it would be hard to document that, but I’m not going to do it. If you want to think otherwise, go ahead.
Great stuff. However, mentioning Brad DeLong’s name is interesting in this context. My impression is that he’s caught a lot of flak for his political beliefs from the left flank. In fact, there’s several people who often get held up as part of the problem who seem to be unabashedly on the left side. Over at Balloon Juice, they are talking about the Atlantic stable, which is pretty much an Augean stable, but tossing Yglesias in with the usual suspects. Admittedly, the topic is the Iraq war, which can focus disagreements, but still, a thing that the internet is never going to change is the left’s tendency to splinter. On the other hand, one could argue that if you make certain mistakes in judgement, it should bring in to question your judgements like. forever.
A observation that may only be related in my mind, I noticed this CNN piece with Bob Greene’s byline and I thought WTF? Cause Bob Greene could be a poster boy for mistakes in judgement. However, with the skill set and connections he has, there is probably not a lot else he can do.
The piece pivots on the fact that he watched this movie and thought ‘wow, the Jeff Greene character reminds me of Don Meredith’ and, dictu mirabilis, it was written by Don Meredith’s son! But, knowing who the writer is, excuse me for being just a bit skeptical.
At any rate, great post. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go exploring your media empire, though I sadly note that the idiocentrism links are down.
I used to be a regular commenter at DeLong’s, and we developed a respectful relationship, which is something I rarely have with centrists. He has very broad interests for an economist and is somewhat receptive to contrary points of view. I was one of the ones pressuring him from the left (Robert Waldmann and Daniel Davies are / were a more competent critics). However, I don’t know if he’s ever changed his mind much on anything fundamental.
I ended up getting tired of his “Why Oh Why Don’t We Have a Better Media” schtick. There are lots of reasons, and at some point you have to stop being surprised. And this is weighty, because I think that in the present state of affairs we’re doomed.
Yes, I saw you there and at Crooked Timber quite a bit. Then something happened with DeLong’s blog RSS feed or with something over here, and I couldn’t get it and it was out of sight, out of mind. So it was a bit of a surprise to see you cite him in the same phrase with Greenwald (do you view him as a centrist?)
I’ve always thought that the ‘why oh why’ schtick is less DeLong being surprised, and more like a folksonomy, allowing him to tag examples. Perhaps it is meaningless to count those particular grains of sand, but if someone wanders into the discussion, it’s nice to be able to point to specific examples.
I should also add that I find reading DeLong regularly is depressing from a personal viewpoint, because he is often posting things for his classes, which makes me feel like a really lazy slug.
DeLong and Greenwald were just two of many media critics. Greenwald was especially important because of his dispute with Chuck Todd, but DeLong could have been replaced with Bob Somerby or Atrios or Dean Baker or Digby or any of a number other internet media critics. All pretty much unpersons to the media elite, even though they’re smarter, more accurate, and more analytical then much of the elite.
More generally, I think the collapse of “the media” (as opposed to the collapse of the media, who are doing quite well thank you) comes down to the hypercapitalist drive to monetize everything. Rather than having a media who learned from education and professional practice that they had a duty, as journalists, that went beyond dollars- altho individual journalists may keep this feeling, the profession (as represented by those who are successful at it) doesn’t. Nor do the corporations who engage in it.
Once it became all about dollars, there was little hope of having a media that would choose to act as a genuine arbiter of the national debate, that would call lies out or take a principled stand on something. There is no money in that. Or rather, there is less money in that than in shallow sensationalism.
I think the rest follows from that: why struggle to keep the Overton window from being yanked around? Why engage in anything beyond she said-he said? Why not give an op-ed column to a provable dingbat and liar, if this produces more ad sales?
Yeah, over at DeLong’s I used to say from time to time that the information market is not conducive to democracy. Even the nice economists have a weakness for thinking that all human activities should ideally be organized on market principles.
It doesn’t strike me as controversial.
That’s nice. Adorable really.
Since you’re new here, let me explain a bit of the local culture. Lots of crazy things strike people as non-controversial so, the mere fact that something strikes you as plausible isn’t really sufficient to convince me of anything. Especially since I have no idea who you are, whether you believe absurd things, etc. As a result, it is customary on OW for commenters to ask for cites for non-obvious claims and for posters to provide them when asked. If you want to back out of making your original claim, that’s fine too. But just shrugging your shoulders, reiterating the claim, and defiantly refusing to cite any evidence is…in poor taste. It makes you look like someone who is enamored with the sound of your own voice rather than someone who has serious arguments to make.
Cato, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute all have a much greater presence than any of those, and probably each of them has more presence than all four put together.
This might be true. Or it might be garbage. I can’t tell. You’ve supplied no evidence, which makes me suspect that it is just garbage. I don’t know why you’d waste our time by writing stuff for which no evidence exists.
I don’t think that it would be hard to document that, but I’m not going to do it. If you want to think otherwise, go ahead.
I’m not the one making a claim about the world. You are. As such, it is your job to marshal evidence to support that claim. It is not my job. Because I’m not making a claim.
Didn’t Gary explain any of this to you?
More generally, I think the collapse of “the media” (as opposed to the collapse of the media, who are doing quite well thank you) comes down to the hypercapitalist drive to monetize everything. Rather than having a media who learned from education and professional practice that they had a duty, as journalists, that went beyond dollars- altho individual journalists may keep this feeling, the profession (as represented by those who are successful at it) doesn’t. Nor do the corporations who engage in it.
Was there some time in the recent past when the media were not trying to monetize everything? The profit motive isn’t exactly a recent invention….
When the NYT used to just fabricate stories about the Clintons, was that before or after journalists forgot they had a duty? And when the media basically ignored our Central American death squads or when Leslie Stahl covered up the fact that Reagan was senile, was that also due to hyper capitalism?
No, I don’t know the local culture here. You might notice that I made a very, very large number of undocumented bald assertions in my piece, which is a summary of what I’ve figured out over the course of the last eight years. Why you chose to zero in on this particular one, one of the least controversial of them all as far as I am concerned, I have no idea. I was actually hoping for a little argument here, but this point isn’t very interesting thing to argue about.
Apparently you have no knowledge or interest in the point in question and never have thought about it before. It’s something that slaps people interested in the question in the face over and over again.
But since you insist: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2534
Or rather: Link
Apparently you have no knowledge or interest in the point in question and never have thought about it before. It’s something that slaps people interested in the question in the face over and over again.
I don’t think that fabricating statements about me is going to help you here. You don’t actually know what subjects I have knowledge or interest in, so when you pretend that you do, you just look silly. Please.
I don’t see any evidence indicating that conservative “dominance” of think tanks is a significant factor in explaining media behavior. And I definitely don’t see any indication that this belief is universally held by media critics. Despite reading media criticism by Delong, Greenwald, Digby and others for years.
You cannot assume that just because something is obvious to you that it is widely believed. Or necessarily true.
I can’t imagine a context in which this kind of comment might be appropriate, or conducive to further conversation that doesn’t stray far outside the posting rules.
There are other, more effective ways to make your point, Turbulence.
I guess I was making erroneous assumptions about the baseline of knowledge which could be expected at this place.
Ah, thanks for providing a cite.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the cite is relevant. The cite indicates that media tend to cite conservative think tank reports more than centrist or liberal think tank reports. But your original claim was “since liberals and Democrats have not bothered to learn the think tank game, this creates a rightward trend in news coverage” — your cite doesn’t tell us anything about causality. It just tells us that the media is biased towards conservatives when reporting on think tank research.
So, thanks for trying, but your claim is still not supported.
Oh, go f*ck yourself. This is not the place for me.
Slarti, you’re right, it wasn’t very helpful.
John, my apologies.
I guess I was making erroneous assumptions about the baseline of knowledge which could be expected at this place.
You cited a document that was irrelevant to your original claim. I don’t think you are in a position to be commenting on the baseline of knowledge that anyone else has.
We have a really big internet. There are tons of blogs where people spout off whatever random thoughts come into their head, and no one bothers with evidence or other such irritants. Since this ‘evidence’ thing is perhaps too difficult for you, perhaps you’d be happier on one of those blogs?
Yes, Turbulence. You have stunk me out.
Goodbye, all. There may be people in the world able to communicate fruitfully with Turbulence here, but I am not one of them, and apparently he’s in charge of the local culture. It might have been nice.
Jeez, you guys.
I hope John Emerson does not leave.
Ambient opinion is what people think when they’re not paying attention, and outside the universities and some urban neighborhoods, the right wing has firm control of ambient political opinion. If you pick your opinions out of the air (from the free broadcast media), your opinions will be conservative.
IMO this is overstated. Or at least, in my experience this is overstated.
There are lots of areas, and demographics, outside of universities and urban centers where either the predominant, or at least a very significant, political weather is liberal-ish. Not really left, but definitely not conservative.
Regarding free broadcast media, you’re also excluding NPR, which is a strong competitor to right-wing radio. NPR takes a lot of (sometimes deserved) knocks for being “Nice Polite Republicans”, but realistically their perspective is sorta-liberal centrism. They are an effective counter to yahoos like Rush and Hannity.
Also, if I may, and FWIW, if you want to hang, you might want to grow a little thicker skin. Nobody’s picking on you, Turb just asked to see something more than an assertion.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
The Overton Window doesn’t just move in one direction.
They are an effective counter to yahoos like Rush and Hannity.
They are completely ineffective, speaking to a different demographic not tempted by Rush or Hannity.
The Overton Window doesn’t just move in one direction.
That simply restates the problem. In view of the negative factors I’ve given, How do we move the Overton Window?
I guess I was making erroneous assumptions about the baseline of knowledge which could be expected at this place.
You made assumptions about the *culture*. I agree with your position, based on what Ive read, but one of the things that makes this place work (to the extent that it does, in fact, work) as a crossroads for different opinions is IMO that people are often asked to back up what they say. Because people coming from different positions often have not just different opinions, but different sets of facts to back them up or interpretations of facts- and if we can’t get those facts on the table, then we end up really going in circles.
Altho, also IMO, when someone says ‘hey, this is all based on what Ive read over time rather than one particular source I can cite, take it for what it’s worth’ I think Turb ought to just do that, rather than upping the ante. Especially with someone who is a guest, brought in by Gary, and doesn’t have the luxury of observing the interplay here before getting deeply involved in a thread.
They are completely ineffective, speaking to a different demographic not tempted by Rush or Hannity.
And vice versa.
Which is kind of my point. The demographic who gravitates to Rush and Hannity are not the only folks in town.
In view of the negative factors I’ve given, How do we move the Overton Window?
Push harder.
50 years ago, there was no effective coordinated national conservative movement. 40 years ago, they were kooks and weirdos.
30 years ago give or take a couple of weeks, Reagan was inaugurated.
Conservatives worked their asses off to make that happen. They got, and still get, funding from interested parties, but a lot of that was grass roots.
Go thou (plural) and do likewise.
What else are you going to do? Roll over and play dead?
The Overton Window moves in more than one direction.
Russell, that’s still generalities. What specific things should we do?
Not only is NPR weak and increasingly infiltrated by Republicans, it’s quite possible that it will lose its funding. If NPR is the best we have, that’s a reason for horror.
Was there some time in the recent past when the media were not trying to monetize everything? The profit motive isn’t exactly a recent invention….
When the NYT used to just fabricate stories about the Clintons, was that before or after journalists forgot they had a duty? And when the media basically ignored our Central American death squads or when Leslie Stahl covered up the fact that Reagan was senile, was that also due to hyper capitalism?
Id say
1)the ethic of monetizing everything was already a factor in the 80s
2)It’s ludicrous to act as if I suggested that this happened at a single point in time across the industry
3)I didnt claim that this effect caused every piece of journalistic malfeasance in history
4)There is an obvious difference between profit being one of several motives, and profit being the only motive For example, if the teachers at your local high school cared only about money and tried to find the least labor-intensive way to move kids along and keep test scores up, it’d be a pretty awful school. Yet most of those teachers surely wouldn’t work there if they didn’t get paid at all. Not complicated.
But there’s actually a long history of the media not only monetizing the hell out of everything, but doing so for the purpose of shaping public opinion and influencing Washington. Think Hearst and his yellow journalism, which pretty much invented the Spanish-American War and made him a lot of ducky in the process.
What I have hoped has been happening is that it’s all gone in cycles, and we’re in the trough of the cycle where the admen and ideologues are running the show. But what I fear is that the principled journalism that emerged from the early 20th century sludge has been pulled down in the undertow and that nothing’s really come up to replace it.
It’s also good to know that said principled journalism came up when there was a viable left, with teeth, that didn’t run ideological litmus tests with its opposition to see if it was okay to take the stands they did, which what passes for the left these days routinely does.
The right has never been under any quaint pretense to do the same in kind, which is why the Hannitys, the Rushes, the Coulters, the Malkins, the Breitbarts and their ilk get away with what they do unscathed.
I have no data to back me up, so I’m on a limb here – but from my ballpark seat, I think a groundswell of principled journalism can be tied in with a groundswell of principled governance. That’s not to say that such governance necessarily controls it (insert conservative chuckles here), but more often than not I think you may find the mindset of people engaged in progressive activist journalism is tapped into the same waters as the mindset of people engaged in progressive activist politics.
We have little to no principled governance in the U.S. today, so I think it’s more than a coincidence that there is little to no principled media right now. Hearst got away with his lies because no-one opposed him, conspicuously from government; our contemporary equivalents are doubtlessly aware of the same thing.
Well, if NPR and PBS are the best things in the media that liberals can point too, then I would say that’s pretty damning. And with regard to the “conservatives working their asses off” I think it is more accurate to say they spent money, lots of it, hell, they own and operate a cable news network.
The money factor is the thread that ties most of this post together. Whether it is the predominance of conservative think tanks in the media (totally non-controversial IMO) or the bought and paid for media figureheads and gasbags that proliferate on the ‘mainstream’ SCLM. And the situation is only going to get worse, where are the liberal elements of this society going to get that kind of money.
Last Sunday, as noted on many liberal blogs, in all the major opinion shows there were featured eight Republicans, congressman (including McCain of course) and potential Presidential candidates, versus zero Democratic congressman or Administration representatives.
I thought this post was right on and depressing in its accuracy. The current media situation in this country is central to the direction we are headed and I have a hard time seeing how things get turned around.
Thank you, Turbulence; that was well done.
“And with regard to the “conservatives working their asses off” I think it is more accurate to say they spent money, lots of it, hell, they own and operate a cable news network.”
That’s true, but they were working hard long before that, and not just working – they were working together. Liberals, on the other hand (or should I say “progressives,” or should I say “civil libertarians,” or should I say “unaffiliated refuse to be labeled”) don’t work together – they spend most of their intellectual energy criticizing the people they elect. Very NPR-like – trying to be even-handed in the accountability watch. Making false equivalencies. That’s why we’re failing. And we could turn it around but for the fact of the circular firing squad.
For now, at least, we have the Internet as a medium, just as much as Republicans. But rather than forming a coherent political focus and driving it home (like we did briefly in 2008), we aim at the wrong target, again and again.
Turbulence, it comes across like you’re basically picking a fight after something that isn’t even untrue but something you want to pick a fight over. Pointing out the sheer dominance of the right-wing think tank infrastructure of Heritage, Cato, and the AEI and replying yourself with “well what about CAP?” is more of a cry for attention than a well-argued point.
Very NPR-like – trying to be even-handed in the accountability watch. Making false equivalencies.
Liberals pride themselves on being the more reasonable and the most intellectual. Right-wingers have no such personal burdens.
What specific things should we do?
Get involved in political activity. Specifically, get involved in things that are likely to affect the actions of people who are in a position to make or implement policy.
Give money and time to candidates who approximately represent your point of view.
My suggestion is to focus where your effort will have the greatest leverage. Town, city, county, and state government. That’s where the rubber really meets the road, anyway.
At the federal level, bug your House rep. At the executive level, you’re one in 300 million, so you’re noise. Unless you come from a small state, you’re likely also noise to your Senator. Bug your rep. Don’t send email, don’t sign online petitions. Get the number and address of your rep’s nearest local district office. Call up, talk to somebody, get a name, and next time you call ask for that person by name and remind them that you spoke to them before. Be polite but be crystal clear about what your interest is.
Quite often, your rep will have somebody on staff who specializes in whatever your issue is. If you do this enough, you can actually build a relationship with that person. It counts.
House reps have to run every two years, and in most cases it’s a small-bore enough contest that any money or time you can contribute will actually be noticed.
Plus, no money gets allocated or spent without the House saying so. And money is the oxygen of all public activity.
Bug the living hell out of your House rep. That’s what I suggest.
In fact, start today. Call up and say you want NPR funded. NPR is middle of the road, insufferably polite centrist pablum, but it’s still head and shoulders above talk radio, network news, and nearly all cable news.
Call today. Call the local office, get a name, and make your point. Then call again tomorrow, ask for the person by name, and make the same point. Tell them what you want and expect your rep to do, then call back to either say thanks when he or she does it, or to complain and threaten your hands-on opposition when they run again if he or she does not.
As far as countering the big noise machine, you’re not going to make an impact on folks like Rush, Beck, Hannity, et al. What you can do is make an impact on people who hear what they say, assume it’s true, and just walk around parroting it. IMO the best way to do that is to actually engage them in conversation and point out to them that some of the stuff they are saying is not in fact true.
You don’t have to be a jerk about it. Acknowledge their right to think whatever they like, acknowledge that they have cause to be pissed off / frustrated / annoyed / whatever. But also observe that some of the allegedly factual things they are saying are not actually true.
The other thing to also keep in mind is that a lot of people genuinely and sincerely believe stuff that you disagree with. You’re not going to win them all.
Well, if NPR and PBS are the best things in the media that liberals can point too, then I would say that’s pretty damning.
You work with what you got.
And with regard to the “conservatives working their asses off” I think it is more accurate to say they spent money, lots of it, hell, they own and operate a cable news network.
Both things are true. They spent a lot of money, and at a grass roots level they worked their @sses off.
The money factor is the thread that ties most of this post together.
Well then maybe it’s time for liberals and lefties to pony up.
Last Sunday, as noted on many liberal blogs, in all the major opinion shows there were featured eight Republicans, congressman (including McCain of course) and potential Presidential candidates, versus zero Democratic congressman or Administration representatives.
I hear what you’re saying, but outside of political junkies who watches that stuff?
Hell, I’m a semi-political-junkie, and I have never seen one of those shows in my life.
Nobody gives a crap about Meet The Press.
Screw “Big Media”. Use the phone. Call your rep’s local office. Get somebody’s name. Be a PITA. It will help.
russell and Slarti, is there any way we can ban John Emerson until he reads the posting rules? If not, can I assume that “Go f*ck yourself” is now considered appropriate? I wasn’t going to raise the issue on account of his Goodbye Cruel World comment, but since he seems to have completely screwed that up….
Turbulence, it comes across like you’re basically picking a fight after something that isn’t even untrue but something you want to pick a fight over.
Actually, I was trying to do John Emerson a favor. Like he said, he raised a lot of unsupported points. Instead of dealing with all the ones I thought were suspicious, I thought I’d do him a favor and just start with one that I thought would be easy to track down a cite for. I’m not picking a fight; I honestly don’t think there’s any real causation between conservative think tanks and right wing polarization of the media.
Pointing out the sheer dominance of the right-wing think tank infrastructure of Heritage, Cato, and the AEI and replying yourself with “well what about CAP?” is more of a cry for attention than a well-argued point.
First, I don’t know for a fact that right wing think tanks dominate anything — what does that even mean? Second, even if they did, there’s no evidence — none whatsoever — that the dominance causes the news media to behave any differently. Causality claims are hard and correlation evidence won’t suffice.
Did you read this thread? Did you notice how, when Emerson tried to find evidence to support his position, he failed completely? Doesn’t that make you suspect he might be wrong?
Russell, that’s not true. A lot of ordinary people watch the Sunday talk shows and think they’re becoming well-informed by doing so. Same for the evening news.
We can’t screw the big media because the big media is screwing us. If we ignore it, it won’t go away. MSNBC is our only toehold in the broadcast / cable media, and Olbermann just got squeezed out. These are most people’s main sources of information.
I basically agree with your proposal for a labor-intensive, grass-roots movement. That’s all we’ve got, and that’s all most progressive movements of the past. But it will require major life-style changes for large numbers of people.
A second problem is that the demographics that need to be reached (non-voters, the unemployed, the newly bankrupt, the lower middle class) are in general not very much like the liberal demographic, and in fact there’s a lot of mutual hostility and very little communication.
I don’t expect to post again at OW and I doubt that I’ll comment again either, but this discussion has been interesting and except when Turbulence is involved, and I thought I’d continue.
For the record, I find Turbulences’s snotty, heavy-handed sarcasm far more offensive than a nice simple “f*ck you”. But he sets the rules around here.
Turbulence has convinced himself that my link proves nothing. What I see is that the eight think tanks most cited in the media, and 20 of the top 25, are centrist or conservative. To me that counts as influence of the media and progressive weakness.
I introduced my post as the summary of everything I’ve figured out over the last 8 years, and even added this: “(Everything below is expressed in its maximal form, as per my normal modus operandi. Readers may want to trim certain passages in accordance with their own tastes.)” By the nature of the piece, it wasn’t all going to be documented. I came prepared for certain arguments but not for the one Turbulence raised, which still seems to me unimportant and wrong.
There’s a certain kind of skeptical academic analysis that can make anything disappear, and Turbulence is applying that to the question of think tank influence in the media. Analyses of this kind often have value in helping advance knowledge, though I think that there’s a tendency to far exaggerate that value. But systematic skepticism is not a useful way of dealing with actualities.
My view of journalism (similar to yours) can be found here: http://contusio-cordis.blogspot.com/2011/01/facts-are-overrated-anyway.html
With the current job description maybe some accountability for willfully spreading misleading, if not false, stories may help, see http://contusio-cordis.blogspot.com/2010/11/freedom-of-speech-clarification.html eventhough that article is not entirely applicable to the media.
Thanks for reminding me; I’d meant to say something about that, but life intervened.
John, please read the posting rules. Granted, they’re not as clear as can be, nor are they consistently applied, but they’re our rules; we invented them, and the rules are our own.
One of them is:
This rule is in place so that some of our readers (not to mention front-pagers and front-pager emeriti) don’t have the blog suddenly become inaccessible due to workplace filters.
Other posting rules are:
All of which inspired my comment to Turbulence, upthread, regarding inappropriateness of his response to you.
At this stage, a ban or even the threat of a ban is a bit premature. But it should be a given that all guest posters and prospective front-pagers should be asked to read and agree with the posting rules before being granted posting and policing privilege.
Try not to think of us as the blog equivalent of a police state. In actuality, we’re closer to Mr. Whipple admonishing shoppers to please, for pete’s sake, don’t squeeze the Charmin.
It’s very common for people to think that they are well enough informed because they watch TV news.
It’s very common for people to not know what they don’t don’t know. One way TV news spreads ignorance is by leaving out most f the story and misleading people inot thinking that they ahve just been informed.
The myths promoted by the rightwing are rooted in the worst of human character and resonate with many people for that reason. The myth of balancing the budget by eliminating waste, for example,appeals to selfishness. That’s why rightwing lies are so easy to promote. It requires background knowledge which people never get, least of all from the Sunday morning talk shows, to ward off conservative lies.
I realize that the mainstream media has been uterly corrupt in the past–the yellow journalism of the robber baron era is mentioed up thread. However, that knowledge is not reasuring to me. It is pretty easy for a domecracy to become a matter of empty form, an illusion, which is what the Republican party leadership wants. Rove, McCneel, Boehner,those guys don’t want the US to be a democracy. They want this country to be an oligarchy like the good ol’ robber baron days and they are a very long ways down the road to success. A corrupt media and a misinformed public are elements of the faux democracy.
Russel is right that grassroots organizing is the only way we have left to fight back. That’s why community organizers are rightwing boogey men. The last thing conservatives want is for the peons to be organized!
I expect that we will have our pro-democracy greasroots uprising when global warming really starts screwing everything up. One thing Americans agree on, inspite of decades of conservative lying, is that government is here to solve problems. When the problems are widley precieved as effecting primarily the nonwhite, conservatives don’t care. When problems get so big that even the conservatives can’t blame the victims any longer, then there will be grassroots anti-consevative upheaval.
I’m glad I’m old. I don’t think the future is at all bright.
Is heavy-handed, snotty sarcasm still cool?
But he sets the rules around here.
You keep repeating this. And it is not true. Don’t you understand that repeating obviously wrong things makes you look dumb?
To me that counts as influence of the media and progressive weakness.
John Emerson, there are at least two theories that explain that data. Theory 1 is that the media are already conservative (which you admit) and thus favor conservative think tanks because they are conservative. Theory 2 is that conservative think tanks somehow (magically?) coerce the media into covering them more. But you can’t tell which is true just by noting that conservative thinks are disproportionately covered in the media. That fact cannot help you decide whether theory 1 or theory 2 is true. That’s why I said that proving causality is hard. If you don’t get basic concepts like this, then maybe media criticism isn’t for you.
By the nature of the piece, it wasn’t all going to be documented.
Look, I’m a liberal. And I dig media criticism. If anyone here was likely to read your little screed and nod their head and say “Amen Brother, preach it!”, it was me. But parts of your screed don’t make sense and I can’t ignore it. When conservative posters here write screeds full of stuff that doesn’t make any sense and seems evidence-free, I call them on it. I’m not going to stop doing that just because the screed writer is a liberal.
Thanks for the civility, asshole. This place just reeks of goddamn civility.
We have now spent the majority of the thread talking about 21 words of a 2000 word piece, words hardly necessary to my argument, though they do contribute and I stand behind them. And the problem apparently isn’t that what I said isn’t true, but that it might not be true, that it is not proven, and that there might be a different explanation of the data.
My purpose in putting together a summary version of my whole point of view on these topics was to start a discussion of my overall point, and some here have responded to that. But, probably by inveterate habit, one individual (and thankfully only one) searched through the whole thing to find one secondary point to quibble about.
I know the old joke is that NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans, but I’d like to suggest a new interpretation: Not People, Robots.
Caveat: I am not going to cite any of this unless someone asks, and even if you ask, I probably won’t because I really should be working on something else and I might ask someone with excellent google fu, free time, and an agreeable disposition to do it.
In my uncited opinion, I think the spectrum of Republican-conservative-winger-libertarian talking points are much more appealing because they are often extremely simple and flattering to the audience. I also feel that many Republican policy positions boil down to:
You’re not the problem. It’s people unlike you who are the problem. We must persecute the outsiders.
That “policy position” is a viscerally appealing one and it isn’t often susceptible to rational argument. I think it is so deeply and biologically ingrained to think that way that great effort is required (not just of Republicans, of anyone) to not do so.
Further caveat, I don’t think that all democrats are morally superior to republicans because of their political opinions. I think most people including myself arrive at their political opinions by tribal affiliation first and acquire the rationalizations first. Having said that, I of course think I am right on the merits about the policy opinions I have (but who doesn’t?).
As to where we go from here, I agree with Russell. If all you can do is very little, do that. Contribute incrementally. I’m going to attend law school and I want/plan/hope to work at ACLU or a local CLU or DOJ if I can swing it.
I think that social incentives are up there with money in influencing human behavior. People care quite a lot about being cool and they don’t want to be unlike other people. As to how to make progressive positions cool, I can only think of the obvious and already tried answers, but more of them. Grassroots campaigns, get young people involved, use social networks. I don’t think the method is mysterious, I think the effort required is the hardest part. We need a progressive movement to achieve criticality. The way to get more people involved is to get more people involved. As more people join a movement, it becomes more appealing and recruits people at an accelerating rate, or so history looks to me (look how many people are doing that thing! It must be a good thing to do!). The fact that it will be a miserably slow process at first does not mean that there is a better option.
Lastly, we could entirely sell out the progressive movement to some industry (multiple industries would be better)and promise them massive policy concessions in exchange for our unswerving allegiance. Energy, healthcare, agriculture, finance, and defense are already taken; is Google hearing offers?
de rigeur, sometimes. But if you read what I wrote, you’ll note that I was, in as nice a way as is available in my admittedly limited repertoire, reminding Turbulence about the posting rules.
As I said, or attempted to say: posting rules regarding civility are difficult to enforce. Typically we just try and self-police, and when that doesn’t work, we try something different.
Of course it would be nice to be clear and consistent, but we’re a volunteer staff, and sometimes we can’t resist squeezing the Charmin ourselves. Then we have to do an extended act of contrition, usually.
John and Turb–I don’t honestly think you’re that far apart. But I am sometimes given to pollyanish attitudes when two people I like to read start bashing each other. On the point in question, I agree with both. Seriously. Rightwing think tanks seem to get most of the press, in my unscientific opinion, but Turb has a point in saying that doesn’t mean they “control it”. I’d guess the MSM (or whoever controls it) chooses to quote right-leaning think tanks because whoever is in charge wants to do so, not because of the power of the think tanks themselves. But that does seem like a minor issue to me.
Now for sapient’s comment–
“Liberals, on the other hand (or should I say “progressives,” or should I say “civil libertarians,” or should I say “unaffiliated refuse to be labeled”) don’t work together – they spend most of their intellectual energy criticizing the people they elect. Very NPR-like – trying to be even-handed in the accountability watch. Making false equivalencies. That’s why we’re failing. And we could turn it around but for the fact of the circular firing squad. ”
Sorry, but if that’s the problem it can’t and shouldn’t be cured. Lefties who are into human rights issues have long noticed that there is considerable continuity between Democrats and Republican administrations. Democrats aren’t as bad, on average, but that’s no reason not to criticize Democrats.
I see this “unity” argument made on the far left sometimes, in a different context–don’t criticize Hamas when Israel is the main problem, is one example. Stay unified. It won’t work there either, because people who pay attention to human rights issues notice double standards at work and people who employ them lose credibility.
As for NPR-like–well, there are a lot of things onc could say about someone like Greenwald, but being NPR-like isn’t one of them.
What I said was “many outlets end up subcontracting their stories to think tanks. Since liberals and Democrats have not bothered to learn the think tank game, this creates a rightward trend in news coverage.”
Not “think tanks control the press”.
“Have not bothered to learn” is sarcasm, but I think that the Democratic / liberal results are poor in large part because the effort was poor, especially initially. There’s a long way to go to catch up.
Thanks for the civility, asshole. This place just reeks of goddamn civility.
Look, if you’re not smart enough to write comments without cursing people off, I don’t think this is the place for you. Clearly, you are struggling with the posting rules. Isn’t there some blog devoted to pro-wrestling you could be commenting on instead? Or have they already rejected you as well?
We have now spent the majority of the thread talking about 21 words of a 2000 word piece, words hardly necessary to my argument, though they do contribute and I stand behind them.
First of all, we’re dealing with a small piece because I was trying to be nice, seeing as how you’re new here and all. Second of all, I think that a lot of regulars aren’t getting involved here because your piece was poorly written and difficult to finish. Third, based on how poorly you reacted to simple questions about one point, I don’t think you can blame any of us for holding back on critical comments on the rest of it. I mean, after a few simple questions on one point, you started telling people to go f*ck themselves, insisted that I was king of the universe, promised us that you were never going to comment here again and generally threw a Grade A Class I tantrum. I don’t know what you’d do if we critiqued several more pieces of your “argument”, but the possibility that you might bite the heads of some chickens does weigh heavily on my conscience.
And the problem apparently isn’t that what I said isn’t true, but that it might not be true, that it is not proven, and that there might be a different explanation of the data.
You make claims about the world, the burden of proof is on you to, you know, prove them. If you can’t prove them, don’t make them. Or at least retract them. But don’t whine at me about being asked to bear the burden. Grow up and deal with it like an adult.
And I still don’t get it: why are you still writing comments here? You already did your ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ tantrum — that means you are supposed to stop commenting here. Why haven’t you? Was the tantrum just an emotional outburst? Or do you often lie?
First of all, we’re dealing with a small piece because I was trying to be nice, seeing as how you’re new here and all.
I’m generally a Turbophile, but I must say, at least in terms of tone, you seem to have missed the mark on the whole niceness thing, Turb.
That doesn’t excuse the vulgar responses, mind you.
So, to both Turbulence (very apt handle right now) and Mr. Emerson, can’t we all just get along? That’s not to suggest that you shouldn’t critically question one another’s arguments, but this is getting awfully personal considering the issue is whether or not right-wing think tanks are better at influencing the media than their counterparts on the left, unless that’s somehow code for calling someone a child rapist or something and I’m simply unaware of it.
Sheesh…
As I said, I’m philosophically even-handed between stupid, snotty sarcasm and cursing. You seem to think that one of the two shows immense superiority. I prefer to curse, but different strokes.
I am still writing comments here because the thread is interesting when you’re not on it.
“The burden of proof” — how much of this kind of thing ever is proved? I was laying down a starting point, or trying to. If you think that it’s significantly wrong, say so. If you’re philosophically opposed to the kind of complex summary statement I just made, then just butt out. If the site philosophy is opposed to this kind of summary statement, then I shouldn’t be here at all. You and I might come to an agreement on that point.
This is experimental both for me and OW. OW is deciding if they want me here, and I’m deciding if I want to be here. Indications tend toward no, certainly to the extent that you speak for the site.
I really wanted the topic to be the thing that I was talking about (the media) and not the thing that I wrote. But on academic-influenced blogs that’s often not possible.
I think the spectrum of Republican-conservative-winger-libertarian talking points are much more appealing because they are often extremely simple and flattering to the audience.
To be fair, you could say the same about many liberal and/or progressive talking points.
I am in general agreement with the thrust of John Emerson’s argument – most of the media channels that have a broad public audience are, from the point of view of actually providing useful, accurate information, crap. Their focus is entertainment, and quite often that entertainment takes the form of rattling everybody’s cage to spike up their level of general resentment and pissed-off-ness.
We’re a nation of Art Immelmans. That’s a Love in the Ruins quote, inserted just to put a smile on Countme’s face.
Inside joke, John, and not directed at you.
There are some ok-to-pretty-good liberal / progressive / what have you equivalents. NPR has the broadest audience, even though it’s kinda weak tea. Colbert and Stewart, who basically approach things from the humor angle.
I personally like Thomm Hartmann, who claims a national audience of a couple million, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever met anyone else who’s ever heard of the guy.
I digress.
That’s generally why I argue for ignoring big media and directly engaging people – actual human beings, that your personally know – and challenging the stuff they think they know based on crap information. You can actually have an impact.
Ditto the suggestion to directly engage folks who can make and implement policy, especially where you personally are one among tens of thousands, rather than one among millions.
If you’re one among ten thousand, and one in a thousand people bother to do anything at all, you have suddenly become ten percent of the popular input. It can be a big lever.
I give money to my federal House Rep, and my state House Rep, and am often in contact with them through local contacts. In my federal House Reps case, that’s his local office two towns over. In my state House Reps case, that’s her email, which she herself answers, and occasionally phone.
In my town, I’ve been to selectmen meetings, attended town meeting, and have spoken up and presented agenda items in both contexts. I have also approached selectmen directly, by phone or face to face, to discuss stuff that’s important to me.
If you make an effort – a specific, personal effort, directed to specific people – it gets noticed, especially in contexts where the overall population is not so large.
Yes, the media sucks. So you have to make it person to person, otherwise it gets lost.
And yeah, it does require a lifestyle change. You have to get up off of your behind and do something.
That’s pretty much all I got. Hope it’s helpful.
Last but not least, since I’m now an occasional front-pager, I suppose it behooves me to weigh on John vs Turb.
FWIW – John, it’s not cool here to tell people to f**k off and call them @ssholes.
Sarcasm, on the other hand, is acceptable.
That may strike you as dumb or hypocritical in any of a number of ways, but nonetheless it’s how we roll. For good or ill.
Lots of folks here have personal styles that rub other folks here the wrong way. Over time we’ve kinda learned to deal. Or, folks just decide to pack it up and go do something else.
Hope you decide to stick around, I think you will actually find it congenial in the long term.
That’s your call.
Thanks for the post!
I’m generally a Turbophile, but I must say, at least in terms of tone, you seem to have missed the mark on the whole niceness thing, Turb.
To clarify: I was trying to be nice by picking one unsubstantiated point that I figured Emerson would have the a relatively easy time finding a cite for.
Also, I think my tone was pretty damn polite right until John Emerson decided that he didn’t need to provide any evidence for anything he wrote because the voices in his head told him he was correct. Go read my first two comments in this thread and please, point out the rudeness. If Marty or McTex tried to pull that “argument” I doubt they’d get as much politeness from the commenters here, and I really don’t see why John Emerson should be treated any better.
Turb was engaging in some peacocking in a cry for attention, and John Emerson took it a bit too personally rather than just writing Turb off as someone who, I suspect, has a desperation to try to seem “even handed.” Seriously, Turb, you added NOTHING to the discussion and hose to nitpick over what is an obvious point by Emerson.
It has been nice watching ya’ll squabble, as usual you progressives can spend all your energy fighting yourselves.
The whole point of this post is that somehow the right wing has taken over the media, which is in itself and absurd concept.
I do watch the Sunday morning shows occasionally and if there ever was a Sunday devoted to the right wing it was only to make up for the 50 weeks a year that the left wing dominates tose conversations. George Will is a regular and gets two sentences a week.
I assume Fox is very right wing.
Outside that there is no MSM that carries any torch for the right wing.
Oh, that’s me quoting me, sorry.
But really, in general, as people get older they are more afraid of getting old and being poor so they work harder to hold on to what they have. They become more conservative, less inclined to support more taxes except Medicare and SS so the conservative Ambient Opinion is easier to sustain. And we have lots more older people.
It’s really not the think tanks or weak kneed journalists or any of that. Go look at any newspaper left on a train and see what section hasn’t been opened, it’s probably the “WORLD” section, next would be the op-ed page. Even the people who read the paper everyday read the sports and front page first, local news, weather and then the funnies.
The media is not responsible for all that.
I really had thought that I was talking to people who knew their butt from a hole in the ground. Turbulence is playing dumb and quibbling.
I basically agree with hairskirthedonist that this isn’t worth fighting about, but to T. it’s very very important
T. says that he kindly only picked one single undocumented point to question me about. What does that mean? Because there are dozens of undocumented points in the piece. I wrote it that way. If I’d been questioned about every single one of them this thread could go into the thousands without accomplishing anything at all.
This is a summary piece. I was making a general statement about the whats and whys of the media and was trying to start a discussion about where we go next. An actual disagreement, one which meant that my summary was wrong and misleading, would have been appropriate, but I didn’t think that T.’s quibble contributed anything.
I suggest that there just aren’t any absolute gauges of winginess, Marty, as evidenced in part by the mention of “Nice, Polite Republicans” interpretation of NPR, upthread.
But I might possibly have misinterpreted.
, and John Emerson took it a bit too personally rather than just writing Turb off as someone who, I suspect, has a desperation to try to seem “even handed.”
You know, I’ve been called many things, but this is the first time anyone has ever suggested I was too even-handed. I think people who have been reading my comments here for a few years will look at this statement of yours and conclude “Tyro has completely lost it”.
Seriously, Turb, you added NOTHING to the discussion and hose to nitpick over what is an obvious point by Emerson.
It is not an obvious point. If it is so obvious, provide a cite. Should be trivial.
Look, Emerson doesn’t have the intellectual capabilities to understand the difference between correlation and causality. I figured that you might, but now I’m not so sure. I’d suggest that you either put up or shut up: find a cite backing Emerson’s claim, or leave us in peace. But your continual evidence-free harping grows tiresome.
I mean, surely you are capable of doing more than inventing fictional notions about my need for attention. If you find it so obvious, find a cite.
Right now the entire major media, except for Krugman, MSNBC, and I suppose a few others, that Social Security needs to be fixed. The way it’s argued it’s a right wing idea; the fixes needed are quite moderate, and different than the ones being suggested.
Likewise on balancing the budget. Tax increases are off the table, reducing military spending is off the table, and nothing can be done to reduce skyrocketing medical costs if it harms any big business whatsoever. Another right wing dialogue.
Bush v. Gore: anti-Gore dominated.
2000 recount: Republican dominated
Iraq war: pro war spin
Olbermann talks vividly, but he’s not very far left, and he’s one of very few.
Wingers call centrists liberals and think that thjey win the argument that way.
Go read my first two comments in this thread and please, point out the rudeness.
Can’t do it. It’s not there. So, no, you didn’t really start off rudely, Turb. If I’m going to go all-in on the meta, I’d say John Emerson was a bit dismissive of your questions with the *think what you like, I don’t care* thing, and could have started off with some of his later-presented reasoning on how provable his statements were and what his intent was in making them. Perhaps that wouldn’t have started what seems to be a tit-for-tat, mutual escalation of insults. Still, blood on both of your hands. Well, all four, if each of you has two, I mean.
Failed to italicize that first sentence, which is Turb’s, to be clear. Sorry.
Since liberals and Democrats have not bothered to learn the think tank game, this creates a rightward trend in news coverage.
This is the astonishing sentence which has driven the ever-so-civil Turbulence into a screaming rage.
Maybe I could have nuanced it a little differently, but would that have helped? He would just have found a different nit.
Cite?
Your claim, dude. Fly with it.
Number 9 banned. Feel free to write the kitty and explain why we should unban you. It should be an interesting bit of speculative fiction.
I was very happy to see that John Emerson was guest-posting here. And I thought his first post was a damn good one (albeit horrifically depressing).
It would be damn shame if this was the last we saw of John here.
Not going to wade any further into the murk…just wanted to say that.
If I has said “contributes to” instead of “creates” the main point at stake here would disappear, though I also think that T. doesn’t believe that Democrats and liberals were inept at the think tank game.
I personally would find an in-depth conversation about the degree of and reasons for the success of right-wing think tanks in influencing the major media outlets rather interesting. Maybe what seems obvious here really isn’t. But I don’t see why it has to be about the supposed stupidity of some number of the people commenting here. How is this personal?
Outside that there is no MSM that carries any torch for the right wing.
I’m thinking John E makes a pretty good counter-argument to this in the first two paragraphs of his 12:09.
Number 9 banned.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.
Thanks for that hsh.
I guess I’m looking at this a bit differently than some. I don’t care that Emerson insulted me. I care that he rejects the whole idea of providing evidence for one’s statements. I mean, even Charles Bird didn’t really do that. Have we, at long last, finally found a front page poster worse than Charles Bird?
Cite?
The fact that when trying to provide a cite for a claim that conservative think tanks cause conservative media bias, all he could come up with was a cite showing that the media cite conservative think tanks more than centrist or liberal think tanks. That is a common error. See my comment here for more detail.
I’ll make your life easier Slarti: John Emerson is a liar. He told us that he was leaving here and not going to comment here anymore, but he keeps coming back. Would you like a cite for that as well?
Theory 2 is that conservative think tanks somehow (magically?) coerce the media into covering them more. But you can’t tell which is true just by noting that conservative thinks are disproportionately covered in the media. That fact cannot help you decide whether theory 1 or theory 2 is true.
What kind of inane bullshit is that “conservative think tanks somehow (magically?) coerce the media into covering them more.” The conservatives have done a better job of working the media than the liberals. No magic, no coercion. This is a straw man.
And yes, I didn’t document that think tanks have many activities besides than placing stories in the media — lecturers, coferences, retreats, and their own publications. Nor did I document that the conservatives have been more successful than the liberals in this area.
I could have left that whole sentence out and my overall argument would scarecely have been changed, and I could have changes “created” to “contributed to”, but does anyone really think that that would have allowed the discussion to be about my overall point? T. has as much as said that there were a lot of other things he wanted to attack.
And Marty comes on with a perfect example of ambient opinion. Other 50 weeks please. Note turn will not throw a fit asking him for a cite, because everyone knows better than to engage with a republican
To be fair, you could say the same about many liberal and/or progressive talking points.
I considered addressing that objection in my post, left it for later, and now it’s later.
Yes, liberal / progressives get off on moral superiority over conservatives / Republicans, but I would posit that liberal policy positions are generally NOT of the “punish the outgroup” variety. In fact, many are at least nominally selfless and mostly of the “spend-money-on-other-people-variety.” It’s up to you to determine if many coincides with “most.” The ones I am thinking of are
Affirmative action
Equal Protection laws for minorities / women
Same-sex marriage and DADT repeal, subset of the above
Welfare
Foreign aid
Voter registration
Government-funded health insurance
Social Security
Of course, if you’re poor or gay or a minority or a woman or some combination of those, you are voting in your self-interest (but defensibly and for the greater good as well, in my opinion). If you’re a straight white upper-class man like me, I just don’t see how I can be accused of self-interested and anti-outgroup voting. To use a phrase of Jon Stewart’s I once liked, who the heck is funding the prowelfare side of welfare fight? Big Poverty?
Lastly, for John Emerson, regarding profanity v. sarcasm: profanity triggers filters in many workplaces. That alone seems to me an insuperable argument for antiprofanity policies and adhering to them on this blog.
FWIW, Number 9 reminds me a lot of matoko_chan on Balloon Juice. No cud lip though, so for that we can be grateful.
If I has said “contributes to” instead of “creates” the main point at stake here would disappear,
Adding weasel words won’t make the problem go away. You’re arguing for causation. That’s hard to prove, even if you’re just arguing for partial causation. The problem is that you have no evidence.
though I also think that T. doesn’t believe that Democrats and liberals were inept at the think tank game.
What “game” are you talking about? I think lots of liberal think tanks produce much better reports than their conservative equivalents, but so what? Is that the “game”? Is the game raising cash? Getting their research showcased in the media? What?
The conservatives have done a better job of working the media than the liberals. No magic, no coercion. This is a straw man.
Are you talking about conservatives or conservative think tanks? You keep switching so it is difficult to get a handle on your argument. I haven’t seen any evidence that conservative think tanks are better at working the media than liberal think tanks. Do you have any examples in mind? Anything at all?
Nor did I document that the conservatives have been more successful than the liberals in this area.
What do you even mean by successful? By what metric are you arguing that Heritage is more successful than CAP? Is it more conferences and publications and lectures? Because if that’s it, I don’t see how that affects the media.
This goes back to my very first two comments to you, where I specifically asked “what metric are you using”. I’m still waiting for an answer.
I would posit that liberal policy positions are generally NOT of the “punish the outgroup” variety.
I agree with this.
To be fair, I’m not sure that conservative policies are primarily about punishing out groups, as much as they are about not making an out group’s problem *my* problem.
In practice, the real-world consequence of that is that out groups often find themselves up the creek, no paddle.
So, some might say, not so much difference in the end. But it’s worth recognizing the difference in intent, at least.
But yeah, conservative policies have a tendency to bring negative results to folks who don’t have a lot of advantages to start with. IMVHO.
Turbulence is still playing dumb. As I understand, he now wants me to precisely quantify the political superiority of conservative think tanks to liberal thinks tanks, and then plug it into a causal formula proving causation, and until then I cannot say “Conservative think tanks have been more effective than liberal think tanks, and that contributes to the rightwing slant of the media.” He also seem to think that that statement is not only unproven but also wrong, and not only unproven and wrong but also unintelligible and meaningless. The problem’s with him as far as I’m concerned.
I think that what I’ve said was clear enough to anyone who intended to understand it, and nothing can be clear enough for someone who intends not to.
Turb no one could meet those standards. Expecting someone to only make observations on which he has a harvard media studies meta-survey would be limiting no? You don’t believe John, fine. Please stop derailing the thread with requests for impossible levels of proof.
“Turbulence is still playing dumb. As I understand, he now wants me to precisely quantify the political superiority of conservative think tanks to liberal thinks tanks, and then plug it into a causal formula proving causation”
No, he (and I) would like for you to provide a word at least that defines superiority in a metric that can be evaluated. More mentions? You said that, is the metric you want to hang your hat on? More influence as measured by policy initiatives that make it to legislation?
Since the paragraph wasa about outsourcing legislative writing it seems tha if the Democrats have fewer think tanks but still use them as often to write legislation it limits the impact.
How is the advantage of the right manifested in a way that i can see or measure? Is it just in the reputation of the think tanks that exist so that if Cato says it the it must be true?
he now wants me to precisely quantify the political superiority of conservative think tanks to liberal thinks tanks
I want you to write something, anything really, explaining what you think they’re doing better. Are they better because they’re raising more money? Getting more journalists to spend time at their conferences? What?
Look, I’ve made answering this question as easy for you as I possibly could. I’ve even made suggestions about what you might mean so you don’t even have to come up with an explanation by yourself. But you still can’t answer this really simple question.
The problem’s with him as far as I’m concerned.
Hey, sometimes, I’m dumb. So: can anyone, anyone at all, explain what John Emerson is talking about when he writes that conservative think tanks are winning the “game” over liberal think tanks and how conservative think tanks are more “successful” and maybe even how this “success” translates into making the media more conservative? I’ve got no idea what John Emerson is talking about. Frankly, I don’t think anyone does because his thinking seems shallow and unformed to me. But maybe I’m wrong.
So, can someone please explain what he’s talking about?
I’ve got no idea what John Emerson is talking about.
Others do. Ask them.
Please, someone talk to the guy. Seriously.
I’ve got no idea what John Emerson is talking about.
The link saying that conservative thinktanks are consistently more often quoted in the media didn’t tip you off?
In any case, it seems clear that you’ve identified a claim in the post that you think is ill-supported. It’d be nice if it were possible to talk about the rest of the post as well.
“Likewise on balancing the budget. Tax increases are off the table, reducing military spending is off the table, and nothing can be done to reduce skyrocketing medical costs if it harms any big business whatsoever. Another right wing dialogue.
Bush v. Gore: anti-Gore dominated.
2000 recount: Republican dominated
Iraq war: pro war spin
Olbermann talks vividly, but he’s not very far left, and he’s one of very few.”
In order:
Tax increases discussed on nightly news every night this week
Same with military cuts
5 minutes this morning with Sessions on SS and Medicare being on the table
Both Bush/Gores were covered pro-Gore by MSM
Iraq war you are correct, and wars are almost always covered that way
So Olbermann is not far enough left for you, how about Maddow? And just for reference neither is as far left as Harry Smith, he just happens to have to try to hide it.
Russell: “We’re a nation of Art Immelmans”
Broad smile. Thank you.
Right about now, everyone on this thread could probably use a quick temporal lobe massage and reading with my Ontological Lapsometer.
Maybe I’ll wait to break out the instrument until we’re all presenting rearwards like chimpanzees.
Which is also an inside joke not directed at anyone.
Turb: “I’ll make your life easier Slarti: John Emerson is a liar. He told us that he was leaving here and not going to comment here anymore, but he keeps coming back. Would you like a cite for that as well?”
You don’t need my advice and no effing offense intended, but quitting while you were behind with “adorable, really” might have been good.
My Dad, who was not a liar, on the few occasions when he directed a rant at the kid I used to be, would often stalk out of the room at a point everyone thought was the end of the rant (because he said that was it, he’d had it, do what you want because you will anyway, that was the last time he would waste his breath), and then reappear soon after (I had to cover my mouth to hide the relieved grin and then look all solemn and terrified again in a split second) with another paragraph or a coda to the rant …. or he would reappear just as suddenly and start a perfectly normal conversation with my brother or someone else, ignoring me.
If I’d have said he looked adorable or accused him of lying about leaving the room, some version of “go eff yourself” (the “f” word replaced by a considerable uptick in the volume) would have broken loose and I’d have deserved it.
Frankly, (not directed at you Turb) I’d like to see less reasonable analysis by liberals on the political talk show circuit and the oped pages across the board and more John Emerson-like go eff yourselfism (with a threatening lean across the table in the case of O’Reilly, Hannity, and the rest of the vermin). Cokie Roberts, too.
Which is where I think we should go from here.
Not constructive nor analytical, but bracing and kind of refreshing.
Tax increases discussed on nightly news every night this week… Same with military cuts
clearly, budget hawkery is a leftist preoccupation.
Both Bush/Gores were covered pro-Gore by MSM
you should go read the Daily Howler for a while.
Not really sure how to start this. John, I’m a huge fan, as I mentioned earlier, so I would like you to hang around. I’d would note that your point of view is similar to things that Bob McManus, who used to comment here, had. I also enjoyed what he had to say, and he also left off commenting here with much the same complaint that you had, that this place was too civil. I don’t disagree with the observation, the place can be too civil sometimes, but the civility stays because it seems like the downsides of not being civil are worse than the advantages of coarsening the tone would bring.
One reason is that if we do drop off the civility, it reduces everything to taking sides. You may argue that the left needs to do that a bit more often and you are just providing a visceral example. But if (and by making this observation, please don’t think that I am taking Turb’s side on this) one comment from one commentator is enough to have you leave the forum, it seems that this sensitivity at being challenged prevents anything from getting done.
Turb’s point might be restated ‘are conservative think tanks a cause or a symptom?’. I don’t agree at all with the way he’s tried to express that point, but that seems to be the core of the point, and understanding this is important, if only for tactical reasons. Your answer seems to be ‘who cares, everything else I wrote stands’. I have no problems accepting that as a response, but I hope you can see that it doesn’t answer the question, and it then becomes a litmus test of ‘you think it’s important? Well, go stand over there with the other losers’ It seems that these sorts of tests are what makes the left so fragmented.
Your 1:06 comment puts the onus on all the other commentators to gang up on Turbulence because he didn’t like your response. That’s probably not going to happen, not because of any support of what Turb is saying, but precisely because of the civility of the place. We go thru paroxysms of
self flagellation over this from time to time, but we’ve always seem to return to it.
IMO we should adopt the Johnny Dangerously standard and allow the epithets “Bastage!”, “Farging Icehole!”, and “Sonamabatch!” when needed to vent otherwise unvented steam.
Maybe also the occasional “Why you I oughta…!”.
Is there an emoticon for the Moe Howard eye poke?
I’m actually stunned that most people appear to be falling all over themselves to say that Turb’s in the wrong here. Are we in the Red Universe or something?
Well, it wasn’t one comment by T. It was the series of comments he made after I had failed to take his original comment seriously enough for him.
I wrote a 16 point summary of what I’ve concluded about the media during the last 8 years or so. It did come to a conclusion: we’re in bad shape; what do we do? The thread ended up being about the 21 word coda at the end of one of the 16 points. And if it hadn’t been that, it would have been one of the dozen or more other points I asserted without substantiation in my summary.
The cause / effect problem is a quibble. It’s as unlikely that the Republican thinktank superiority had no influence at on on the media as it is that it was the major cause. I say that there was some degree of cause — i.e., that conservatives weren’t completely wasting their time and money, since influencing the media was one of their goals. This seemed then and seems now an uncontroversial statement, and also one which was not necessary for my main point, though it did contribute to it. So I basically blew T. off, and from there on he was explaining things to me in that charming way he has.
would make an outstanding name for a band.
when ObWi gazes into its navel, does its navel gaze back ?
You know that sometimes that gazing-into thing yields bizarre results?
Turbulence: “Eh, what? What about CAP? Or EPI? Or the Urban Institute? Or the Roosevelt Institute?”
This would be from the late 1990’s, but it illustrates the situation – the budget of the Heritage Foundation was greater than the budgets of the top 10 liberal think tanks/foundations/institutes.
Is Hannity or O’Reilly or even Buchanan “more conservative” than Katie Couric, or Maddow or Olbermann? Maybe not as cute or PC, but hardly the nazis vs the resistance. Alright, line up the Fox despots in front of the…virtual firing squad and line up the CBS/NBC/CNN ones next to them. At any rate there’s an issue of …confirmation—quantifying that…media exploitation–which Emerson overlooks.
In other words, it’s Emerson’s usual PC pathos, padded out with some Deweyesque policy wanking , guaranteed to please soccer mommy liberals
Donald Johnson: Lefties who are into human rights issues have long noticed that there is considerable continuity between Democrats and Republican administrations. Democrats aren’t as bad, on average, but that’s no reason not to criticize Democrats.
I’m assuming that you place yourself, Donald, among the “Lefties who are into human rights issues.” Well, I place myself among them too. And I have not noticed “considerable continuity.”
I have noticed that in terms of human rights of American citizens (such as racial minorities and lgbt people), there is a huge divide. I have noticed that in the area of reproductive rights, there is a huge divide. I have noticed that in the area of treatment of prisoners from a foreign battlefield, the Bush administration authorized its own people to engage in activities historically considered by the United States to be torture, drumming up ethically questionable “legal opinions” written by its own appointed hacks to support such activities, whereas the Obama administration banned such treatment, and advocates his policies before the courts. And speaking of the courts, let me notice judges, the people who have the most significant affect of anyone in the government on human rights. Let’s see – where’s the continuity between Justice Alito and Justice Sotomayor?
But what I’ve mainly noticed is that most of the criticisms by the “leftist watchdogs” are unfair and misplaced, and that they never have Obama’s back on any issue. I mentioned, early in the thread, the New York Times editorial denouncing Obama saying that the Justice Department should “presume” DOMA unconstitutional and not defend it in court. Here the “newspaper of record” bashes the president for not selectively enforcing the law of the land. (Of course, anyone who believes that Presidents should just ignore laws they disagree with would have been very happy with the Bush administration, and will be thrilled when the next Republican president decides not to enforce the Health Care Act.) But who has Obama’s back on this? The progressive blogging community is happy to let the NYT convince Americans that Obama is weak on gay rights issues. If you read any gay rights blogs yesterday, all you saw were comments cheering the very wrongheaded article, and denouncing the gross failure that is Obama. The knee-jerk simplemindedness, disloyalty and lack of discipline (or patience to find out the real story) is nauseating.
As someone who is “into human rights,” I notice that the wealth disparity in this country leads to many of the abuses that are common. But who’s addressing those? I see little continuity between the Democratic and Republican positions on these issues, although unfortunately there has had to be compromise.
Of course each and every example of “human rights” issues can be debated at length (and many are, in the courts). But the pathetic inability of liberals to solidly back their leadership, when there’s such a stark difference between the parties, is the reason we’re so weak.
Unsurprisingly, “Sal Paradise” is the artist formerly known as 00001001.
Shocker, I know.
Ninester, please say something relevant, or be consigned to the spam-heap. I mean, I think we get it that you don’t like John Emerson. Noted. Next?
Think tanks on the right tend to attract right-leaning academics whose work attacks academic consensus and casts that consensus in ideological terms. They aim their output at an audience on the mid-upper edge of popular journalism standards and salt their publications with memorable soundbites.
Left leaning think tanks tend to be more policy-wonky in their work and are more like applied academics in the face of their academic counterparts theoretical orientation. They aim their publications at an audience that is college educated and aim for a more academic presentation.
The media adopts the former more often than the latter because the former understands that its audience is the media professional with a megaphone to the public and not the congressional aid with policy input for legislation.
“I have noticed that in terms of human rights of American citizens (such as racial minorities and lgbt people), there is a huge divide. I have noticed that in the area of reproductive rights, there is a huge divide.”
Conceding the the torture discussion following this paragraph, I was wondering if you could point out more than 1 or 2 concrete examples of policy differences over the last forty years between Democratic and Republican administrations in practice, rather than in rhetoric.
“considerable continuity” assumes some differences, I was just wondering what differences defined a “huge divide”.
Cool. There’s potential for a slugfest between Sapient and me that could divert attention from the one between John and Sapient. It won’t happen, but there is potential.
“Considerable continuity” doesn’t mean there aren’t important areas of difference. I’ve noticed over the years on some issues that I can’t tell much difference between Democratic and Republican administrations on sanctions on Iraq in the 90’s or assistance to Indonesia as they slaughter Timorese for a few decades or on the Israel/Palestine issue, just to think of a few. Both parties often stink on human rights and when there is bipartisan consensus they often stink the most. I’m not as impressed by Obama’s policies on torture as you.
There are other areas where they are distinct, so you’ll have to find someone else to argue with on those.
As for having Obama’s or any politician’s back, not interested in general. I give support to advocacy groups whose stands on issues I agree with–politicians are a different sort of thing entirely and if you get too wrapped up defending one of them I think it warps your judgment. YMMV.
“between John and Sapient.”
I meant John and Turb.
Somewhere up above, Emerson threw a shot in about what one might expect from a blog frequented by academics, a statement for which I have a moderate and self-critical (I coulda been a contenda) amount of sympathy.
So, I thought this was ….. funny:
http://volokh.com/2011/02/15/libertarianism-and-asteroid-defense/
Well, not funny, but along the lines of Emerson’s criticism here of the media I now fully expect as the asteroid approaches that we will be treated to weeks (will we have time) of earnest discussion on the tube and the internet about whether to employ all of the government’s power and weaponry (hey, commandeeer private resources as well) to shoot down or deflect the asteroid or whether we should await the outcome of the Tea Party’s bake sale to see if we might have the privately-raised funds to do the job.
Cokie Roberts would moderate the discussion, as the asteroid grows larger in the backyard telescopes, giving each side equal and deeply sympathetic time. Bland-faced libertarians and conservatives on the bake-sale side would calmly explain the moral pitfalls of allowing the human race to tax itself to save itself (think how they might become dependent on the government for future asteroid destruction), rather than just letting the free market decide how many the asteroid will effing kill.
Meanwhile, Michelle Bachmann and Steve King will successfully shepherd (with right-wing media thundering in their defense) a bill through the House prohibiting the use of Federal dollars and resources for the effort, with the bureaucrat government scientist nearing solution on the problem having his funding zeroed-out.
Because, in America, bland-faced nutjobs actually elect certifiably crazy people to run the country who will cheerfully slaughter the human race because the word “asteroid” isn’t in the effing Constitution.
Shrug.
At any rate, I hope John Emerson is on the quaint little panel on CNN hosted by Cokie and ends the dialogue with a “go F#ck yourself” and goes across the table at the libertarian/conservative and, yes, kills him or her right then and there.
I’ll be happy to help.
Yes, it would be excessively politically correct for Emerson and I (what, we can no longer say “Keep the government out of asteroid destruction”? By God, what will become of free men?) to do so, but sometimes you just have to stand athwart history and tell it to go f#ck itself.
This comment has nothing to do with Turbulence but everything to do with Emerson’s criticism of the media.
Stern reprimand to tone down the violent left-wing rhetoric. How many times do you have to tell history to go f#ck itself before it actually does?
Think of what you’re saying, man.
I also enjoyed what he had to say, and he also left off commenting here with much the same complaint that you had, that this place was too civil.
This was not Emerson’s complaint.
Yokay.
But the idea that violent political rhetoric leads to violence and that political violence might be contagious was pooh-poohed in these pages not too awfully long ago.
Wasn’t it? Kind of.
But I agree to tone it down here.
Sarti, first tell me who “Sal Paradise” is. Hint: he’s not covered in your fave Krugmannian klassic, or in Al Franken routines.
It was relevant. JE may have a good heart at times but the…media monster’s far larger–Viacom-large, weirder, post-Orwellian–. Frat boys don’t get it.
As an aside, the media is really becoming less signifciant anyway as it’s role has been coopted by Obama’s Media Machine: State Run Media 2.0?
There undeniably is “considerable continuity” rather than a “huge divide” between Bush and Obama as far as human rights are concerned, e.g.:
Obama exempts CIA ‘torture’ staff
Obama and Guantanamo: A chronology of his broken promise
Obama Backs Bush On Bagram Detainees
Just to put some perspective on all of this, here are some things you do not hear discussed as serious options on major market American media.
The elimination of corporate personhood.
Taxing capital gains and earned income at the same rate.
For that matter, taxing capital gains at a higher rate than earned income.
Nationalization of essential industries.
Required representation of labor and/or other non-investor stakeholders in corporate governance.
That’s what a moderate lefty agenda looks like. It does not exist in American public discourse.
I had a conversation with a friend recently, in which he referred to the American dream as being starting a business, building it up, then selling it for a lot of money. By “a lot of money”, he meant, like, 8 or 9 figures.
That’s actually a somewhat common occurence in some of the circles he travels in, so it’s not crazy talk. He (and I) personally know folks who have done this.
But I’d like to know how “the American dream” became synonymous with “make more freaking money than you and your family can possible spend or use in a lifetime”.
Americans worship money and the things it can buy. It’s what we as a society love, it’s what our society is arranged to serve.
The difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals think wealthy / comfortably well off people should chip in via public channels so that folks who didn’t get the brass ring don’t freaking freeze to death and starve, and conservatives don’t want the government telling them they have to do that.
There’s an inch or so of difference on civil liberties, but not much more than that. There’s something more than an inch of difference on social and cultural issues, so that’s usually what folks yell at each other about.
But everybody loves money and the things that it can buy.
The media simply reflects all of that.
That’s my take.
If folks want it to be any different, you’re going to have to work your @sses off to make it so, because you’re swimming against the tide.
Sarti, first tell me who “Sal Paradise” is. Hint: he’s not covered in your fave Krugmannian klassic, or in Al Franken routines.
Edgy!
As an aside, the media is really becoming less signifciant anyway as it’s role has been coopted by Obama’s Media Machine: State Run Media 2.0?
LOL
There undeniably is “considerable continuity” rather than a “huge divide” between Bush and Obama as far as human rights are concerned
Agreed.
The only people I see making a big, public, not-on-a-blog stink about human rights are the Ron Paul folks sticking it to Cheney and Rumsfeld at CPAC.
I give them props.
russell,
there is a big couple of lines between
Moderate lefty:
Pretty far left:
and Way Over There on the Left:
Not that I missed your point. I have heard in every tax debate discussions of how cap gains should be treated.
I am not sure how many people would grasp the whole labor representation in corporate governance discussion. I am not sure why anyone who is doesn’t represent management, labor or investors would have a seat at the table.
I am sure that somewhere around 12 people (no cite available) in the US would have a positive reaction to nationalizing key industries.
political football,
Actually, I think that is part of Emerson’s complaint. Early on, he wrote
This place just reeks of goddamn civility.
Trying to move that away from ObWi meta, I’d note that this is not simply a problem here. Go to any site that features a more heterogeneous collection of the left, and you will see this argument going on. That oscillation between being civil and taking no prisoners could be called The Liberal Left’s burden.
John, don’t know if you are still around, but you said
The cause / effect problem is a quibble. It’s as unlikely that the Republican thinktank superiority had no influence at on on the media as it is that it was the major cause. I say that there was some degree of cause — i.e., that conservatives weren’t completely wasting their time and money, since influencing the media was one of their goals.
Fair enough, I did say that was one response. But you are also asking us to tell you what we think should be done. That sort of needs an explanation of how we take this problem on.
novakant most hilarious link is his citation to Bush flack (and Laura Bush’s press secretary) Andrew Malcom’s criticism of Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo. See what Media Matters has to say about the quality of Andrew Malcolm’s journalism: http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/andrew_malcolm?page=1
But that’s okay, because his other links cite a second hand report of a memorandum filed in a court proceeding, and the fact that Obama failed to prosecute CIA employees who were carrying out the Bush administration’s torture directives. Let me see – whose human rights would that have helped?
Just wondering how effective Donald Johnson has been with his advocacy groups. Not criticizing, just wondering. Because from my perspective, when change happens (especially in the human rights arena) it’s because good judges make humane decisions in individual cases. There’s a huge difference in the records of Democratic and Republican appointed judges. Advocacy groups don’t appoint judges.
Sapient, you are conflating two people in your comment, novakant and Donald. In my experience, I find that is never going to end well.
Also, I’d note that you have adopted a 3rd person address. While there are times for this, when the people are on the thread, it is more than a bit rude to not simply ask them.
Of course, if you were to say ‘Hey Donald, what advocacy groups are you a member of?’, you are basically setting off a pissing contest and one reason to adopt the 3rd person address is to avoid actually asking them. Yet, I hope you can see how deeply disrespectful that is. I say all this as a person who has been sympathetic to the point you are trying to make. But the rhetorical strategy you are climbing on is really not a winner.
there is a big couple of lines between….
Noted, and yes I agree my short list of lefty bullet points covers a pretty broad spectrum.
How to handle cap gains does get discussed, but I don’t see any kind of actual policy proposals to treat them similarly to earned income. The other stuff is sort of off the map here.
But I appreciate your thoughtful reply. No snark.
The other party I could see at the corp governance table would be communities in which corporate operations occur. They often are asked to encourage business development by providing or enhancing infrastructure, through tax subsidies, etc. Benefits flow to the community from that, but I could also see a place for them at the table.
Long story short, I’m not necessarily advocating anything on my list. Other than the corporate personhood thing, I am clearly in favor of seriously limiting that. Beyond that I’m at most a moderate lefty.
Just wanted to call attention to what the actual spectrum of right to left is.
sapient, as I understand it, officers of the United States government that have engaged in torture have not been brought to justice. It is the position of the current US administration that no employee of the government who has engaged in torture will be brought to justice. No matter how many times a CIA agent might have wired up a car battery to the genitals of completely innocent people, it is the position of the Obama administration that such torturers must never be brought to trial.
Do you disagree with that assessment?
Thanks, LJ. No problem, though, because I’d already decided I wasn’t in the mood for a big internet fight to decide once and for all the future of American politics.
On human rights issues I support Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a few more specialized groups. Politicians are objects one votes for or against as the case may be, because they have the sort of power which advocacy groups do not have, but you don’t trust them or get emotionally involved with them , because as Teresa Nielsen Hayden said , just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side. (I don’t know what the context was for her remark, but it always seemed to me to be a perfect fit for politicians one votes for.)
I have no idea who Andrew Malcolm is and I don’t care. I could have pulled thousands of similar articles using a search engine, because the fact of the matter is that Guantanamo is still open, that Obama disregards habeas corpus just like Bush and that he has granted the torturers amnesty – these facts are undeniable and shocking to anybody with the vaguest interest in human rights.
“Turbulence: Fine, that’s four names. Liberals and Democrats have been doing a piss-poor job at the think-tank game, and they’ve been losing overwhelmingly. Those are junior players.”
It sort of depends on context I would think. As the think tanks you mention were created to counter the (believed by the think-tank creators, I’m not making any normative judgment about it) perceived liberal biases of high profile universities, you have to at least consider the idea that the think tanks should be compared to say Harvard and Yale. In which case it feels to me like the think tanks come off on the lower side of political relevance.
The interesting thing to me is that most of your post reminds me vividly of the kind of things that conservatives talked about in the mid to late 1980s when talking about media bias. The overton window complaint, the legs/traction concept, the omerta comment all seem like a blast from my high school in church youth group past.
A guess everything really does cycle.
With lj’s admonitions in mind, let me just say, Donald, that I respect the work of the groups you support. Still, I’m not sure how effective they are, especially with regard to United States policies. People who are effective are judges, and to a lesser extent lawyers. And again, the caliber of judges is decided politically. The results are very clear.
Turbulence, I too am disappointed that people who tortured have not been brought to justice. But I have spent a great deal of my life reading court decisions, and there are many reasons why it might be unwise to prosecute government employees and contractors for actions they took in order to further the policies of elected officials – foremost, because such prosecutions would likely fail. This is especially true in the sorry state we find ourselves, with our extremely politically polarized (mostly republican) judiciary. Considering how little support Obama has gotten in Congress even for his meager attempts to close Guantanamo, the failure of the Senate to confirm important Justice Department appointees (such as Dawn Johnson) and other initiatives aimed toward “doing the right thing,” I find it difficult to believe that he could have pulled off a major prosecution of CIA officials and contractors (not to mention the real culprits – the Bush administration officials who orchestrated the policies). Turbulence, can you point to any prosecuting attorney who has published any suggestion that prosecution of these CIA operatives would have been successful? I’ve read a lot of pundits, but few lawyers, especially lawyers with prosecutorial experience. It would be interesting to actually read some wisdom from people who know what the practical obstacles would be. Easy to take out the pitchforks; harder to make a legal case.
I don’t believe that Obama is a saint and I don’t support every decision he’s made. But the stronger his support, the more he believes he has “political capital” to do courageous things. The constant backbiting and criticism that he receives can’t possibly be inspiring. How much easier is it to do good work when one feels that people have confidence in one’s judgment and competence? We liberals (or “people who are into human rights”) are in a very tough fight against some people who really aren’t in favor of rights for anyone but themselves. Fighters need to march in sync, and with discipline. Until we do this, we will lose.
To return from the dead, it was true at the time they said it. People like Reston were political insiders with special relationships to the Democrats.
One theory is that the media suck up to power.
you have to at least consider the idea that the think tanks should be compared to say Harvard and Yale.
Well said.
And as an aside, if anyone (and apparently there are those who do) wants to know why there aren’t more conservatives in academia, it’s not least because the money at Cato and Heritage is lots better.
Sebastian,
I can see your point, but the fact that Yale and Harvard and other academic institutions have different internal cultures and strictures undermines the comparison, at least imho. Those internal cultures have things like tenure to protect academic freedom and functional goals of educating students that look a lot different than to get as many eyeballs to look at a page as possible. I admit, some of these are more honored in the breech than in the observance, but they constitute a major obstacle in making the comparison. I would note that while conservatives have (with little success) tried to create their own universities, I would suggest that they have not failed simply because Harvard and Yale got there first, but because the goals they have are in some sense inimical to the goals of the university.
This is proabably a lot sharper than it should be, but I’m between meetings, so I can only dash off this observation.
Great post. Tedious argument between Turb and JE.
JE: please post more.
More to the point: I know who he isn’t.
Just when I’m not serious, people start taking me seriously. I give up.
Irony from the cipher.
I give up, too.
while the hopelessly stupid believe the Earth to be an oblate ellipsoid.
Or an oblate spheroid if they’re both hopelessly stupid and anal-retentive about precise use of terminology.
John,
Didn’t I warn you back in the day that there’s three kinds of fool: the fool, the fool who follows him, and the fool who participates in “reasonable debate” on ObWi?
Well, no I didn’t. But I plainly should have.
Great piece, of course, except it’s depressing to see that you still have to explain the painfully obvious to the Very Serious.
I would note that while conservatives have (with little success) tried to create their own universities, I would suggest that they have not failed simply because Harvard and Yale got there first, but because the goals they have are in some sense inimical to the goals of the university.
It’s the same reason that the conservative answer to The Daily Show was The 1/2 Hour News Hour: their idea of both persuasion and humor is preaching to the choir with a sledgehammer.
A spheroid is an ellipsoid. It’s just a particular kind of ellipsoid.
Not to forget that science is for losers. Cons go into finance.
Only half in jest. Iirc we had that discussion here once that conservatives are underrepresented in the classical sciences because that’s not where the money is and the rich (by tendency conservative) send their brats into moneymaking careers. And the ‘other’ type of conservative mistrusts science per se. What’s left finds a cosy place at ‘Liberty’ etc.
Posting Rules:
I’m not in a postion at present to even read the rest of this thread right now, let alone comment.
But, yes, John, I did mention the posting rules to you several times, and I didn’t think it necessary to give the exact link, and the exact words, and for everyone’s benefit, I’m now doing so, part-way through the thread.
Everyone has to adhere to them, including front-pagers. No exceptions.
Additionally (and I’m working on a codification of these into one coherent piece, which has been waiting since 1/19/2007):
Again, that absolutely crucial email link is under the kitty, upper left, under “EMAIL ME” and is: obsidianinfo@yahoo.com
The Banning Rules, which I’m also working on updating, since you’ll notice a problematic part, due to, again, NOT HAVING BEEN UPDATED since January 26, 2005:
Yes, I realize this makes no sense whatever, but we’ve had some internal problems finding agreement on fixing this, but seem to at least have found agreement that I’ll be submitting a new draft, and since I’m writing it, mine obviously throw that entire paragraph out. The rest:
For now, ignore all that stuff about “the fence” and simply consider that bannings will be appeallable through that ABSOLUTELY VITAL EMAIL ADDRESS: obsidianinfo@yahoo.com, and will be dealt with by the person answering it, namely, me, and then I’ll bring it to the attention of the others, and… whoever of the front pagers happens to be willing to discuss it will have it discussed with, and it’ll be dealt with at whatever pace we can manage.
Don’t expect fast answers, I’m afraid; we’re all busy, and we have several bottlenecks, including that I’m the only one reading mail, and if I’m in hospital, or otherwise indisposed, apparently nothing will happen, and frankly, at this point, given… other problems, all I can say is that it’ll be dealt with when we can.
For now there are… communication issues among the front pagers. I’ll leave it at that.
But this remains operative:
And this:
Thanks for your help and understanding and patience.
Since we have a lot of new front pagers, let me remind everyone that THESE ARE THE ONLY RULES WE HAVE.
There are NO provisions allowing ANY front pager to make up ANY other rules for their own threads. NONE. PERIOD.
If any front pager ignorantly announces that such and such is forbidden on their threads, then you may complain to the kitty, and if necessary, the front pager will be banned from the blog for violating the posting rules. This includes making up ANY RULES WHATEVER that are not included above.
At ObWi, all is permitted that is not banned in these rules. Period, end of story. If a front pager tells you otherwise, they haven’t been around here long enough, haven’t been instructed in the rules, and that should be brought to the attention of the kitty, and if necessary, the front pager WILL be banned for violating the rules.
Commenters, contrary to any claims CANNOT HAVE COMMENTS DELETED save for violating these rules. Length limits CANNOT be imposed, or suggested.
Front pagers CANNOT imply that they have personal rules for their threads. Period.
NO RULES WHATEVER exist at ObWi save necessary work arounds of the fact that, obviously, appeals to Charles Bird, Andrew, and Sebastian Holsclaw, Von, and Hilzoy, won’t get you very far, and common-sense interpretation of the above.
(Spambots are already noted; insane off-topic screeds will be considered a violation of the rules.)
Front pagers, I repeat, are subject to these rules, and those who violate them WILL BE BANNED, just as they always have been, MANY TIMES.
A codification of what banning consists of will also happen.
I hope.
I’m hoping we’ll agree to clear and fixed terms, with specifics to be chosen, for the sake of simple consistency and justice and fairness, so there’s no arbitrariness involved, but generally along the lines of:
1) Warning
2) Short banning
3) Somewhat longer banning
4) Much longer banning
5) Extremely long banning.
I’m thinking something along the lines of “1-3 days,” then “week to two weeks,” then “1-3 months,” then a year or two, but we’ll see.
Meanwhile, these are more or less the current rules until we post new ones.
Meanwhile, I’ll stress this part:
This is called “community,” and we hope everyone will take part, and in the spirit of the thing, everyone should please act as if the others are acting in good faith, try to be civil, try to avoid paranoia and taking things personally, and if you find yourself feeling emotional about any of this, then get up, walk away from your computer, and go smell some flowers, play some music, hug your loved ones, and do whatever it takes to Go To Your Happy Place.
Thank you, all.
I’d like to get this done as soon as possible, but in all honesty, my health isn’t good, and I’m rushing to do this right now, because right now odds seem reasonable that I may yet again be back at the emergency room soon — with luck, my Current Thing is merely a passing thing, and no such thing will happen until my next scheduled hospital visit, but meanwhile, you’ve all now just been reminded.
Please remember that the links to these rules are in the upper left sidebar, clearly labeled, and may be referred to at any time, and anyone can so remind others, though I also ask that “rules lawyering” not be engaged in, that the rules not be whipped out as a club to beat anyone with, that we’ve always taken a, cough, liberal view of these, that, yes, they’ve been applied very inconsistently at best (and not at all for the TWO YEARS that the mail wasn’t even read), so please don’t misuse the rules either.
Just try to play nice, talk to… this is purely a personal opinion, as a commenter, taking off my Official Hat, but I suggest that discussions with Slart, as the person who otherwise does the most work on the blog, and with Russell, who is also among the most long-term and sensible of the front pagers, both of whom are most apt to be reading the comments, are good people to approach, but keep in mind that NONE of us reads all the blog, some, ah, much less than others, and it’s all just a bunch of humans trying to get along, and that right now we have some particular problems with the amount of turnover that’s been going on, particularly since publius left.
Do good, avoid evil, throw a room party.
Now, back to your normal squabbling, but no profanity, a rule which is there SOLELY BECAUSE OFFICE SOFTWARE WILL BAN ACCESS, not because anyone is particularly offended or gives a sh*t, though the rule does help keep the heat down a little. That’s the ONLY REASON that rule exists.
(And, frankly, I find it questionable, but meanwhile, it’s there.)
Incidentally, when you have a problem posting, try just REFRESHING THE PAGE. That cures most problems.
Failing that, try closing your browswer, reopening it, and trying again.
Failing that, try waiting ten minutes, and repeating the above.
Failing that, try some more, including another means of signing in and out.
In short, Typepad has idiosyncracies and gives no warnings.
Among them: it will time you out if you delay posting for more than perhaps half an hour, possibly less. Refreshing the page will cure that.
If you cut and paste, you may need to add a single additional fresh typed letter, then delete it.
Only after trying these methods need you conclude there’s a problem, and time is still the answer.
Use of more than 4 links in a post may also be problematic, but Typepad seems to be completely erratic about this these days.
We DO hope, or at least I do, to add the widgets to allow posters to add links, italics, bold, and other tags, with a single click, and this has, I recognize, absurdly been delayed SINCE 2005, but all I can say is that we have certain behind the scenes problems for that long that have delayed implementation, even though if we didn’t have these problems, it would take about ten minutes work to fix this.
The problems for now are not technical, but internal communications. And that’s all I can say, save that when we can get past those problems, we will. Thanks for your understanding.
I should add that liberal japonicus has also been around the blog about as long as anyone besides myself and Sebastian, is much more present than Sebastian, who is in semi-retirement, practically speaking, and that LJ is wise, level-headed, and that despite having just been added to the front page, should be, in my view, considered to be as senior as any “senior” member of the front pagers, and has full authority, and is also another good person to approach on the basis of having experienced several regimes, and therefore is inapt to be confused by some of the more recent… confusions taking place due to… some circumstances presently in existence.
So talk, also, to LJ.
All front-pagers are, of course, authorized to speak to the blog, but due to… certain circumstances, some are MUCH less familiar with ObWi customs and practices than others, and basically, if you’ve not been regularly reading the blog for four or more years, you may not have context to understand either standard ObWi custom and practices, which are NOT THOSE OF OTHER BLOGS OR SITES, and you may not fully understand what’s going on.
And all of us are busy, lack time, and have Issues, for various reasons, be they work, health, family, combinations of, or even unknown between ourselves, since some of us are more communicative than others.
Thus my emphasis on taking guidance from those who have actually been reading the blog, and commenting, for many years, over more “formal” “seniority,” with no disrespect intended in any way to those front pagers who are fine writers, but not really up on the continuity of ObWi since 2003, or at least since 2005, and in descending order since then, as readers/commenters, rather than as front-pagers.
This is all obviously my own personal opinion, and obviously I can’t be speaking officially for the blog about this.
Lastly, this is all written while under tremendous physical pain and distress, and medication, so if any of it comes out with errors, oddly, or otherwise problematically, I ask you that you please take that into account.
Thanks, I can barely see straight to type this.
John Emerson:
John, this is nonsense; Turbulence doesn’t set any rules around here any more than you do. Where you’re getting this sort of thing from, I don’t know, but it’s coming from inside your head, not from the only rules we have.
Moreover, you have to stick within the rules, or you’ll be banned. They’re not hard rules to follow: stick a g*ddammed asterisk in one of the words that sets off software blockage, don’t abuse people personally, and that’s it. It’s not hard, and it’s got nothing to do with anything else.
Otherwise, courtesy in life is a nice thing if you don’t like punches in the face.
Turbulence: please try turning it down a few notches, consider that John is new around here, you don’t have to give him a hard time, and ease up somewhat.
I realize this is all out of date, but I have no idea when or if I’ll be able to catch up, or I would’t necessarily be asking guest posters by in the first place.
I’m interested in the idea that, because right-wing think tanks were started to counter the liberal influence of elite universities, they should be compared to those universities rather than with left-wing think tanks. If we’re talking about media influence today, and it’s effects on current popular political perceptions, I’d say they beat the universities a long time ago. (No, I don’t have a cite and am open to someone changing my mind about that.)
Keep in mind that I’m not suggesting that media influence and swaying popular opinion constitute the whole of political influence, or that right-wing think tanks have total control in those areas. But I think that the reasons for starting right-wing think tanks are not necessarily relevant to the argument that, in recent decades, the left hasn’t been able to match the gains of the right in influencing media and popular opinion because the left hasn’t done as well on those particular fronts (rather than, say, quality of research) by way of their think tanks.
Please: no mind-reading. No speculations on the motivations of others unless you can produce proof that you are able to read other people’s minds.
We respond to each other’s words. Deciding what their motivations are is purely speculative, and doesn’t advance conversation; it’s simply disruptive and causes acrimony.
Ditto that you have the same right to object to the same.
“the left hasn’t been able to match the gains of the right in influencing media and popular opinion because the left hasn’t done as well on those particular fronts (rather than, say, quality of research) by way of their think tanks.”
There are a lot of open terms here which can push the argument either way depending on how you think of them.
Gains: this could be a China growth thing, lots of gains because they were starting so far behind. A huge rate of change doesn’t suggest that they caught up.
Media: are we just talking news media? Or are we counting Hollywood?
Popular Opinion: are we talking voters, or everyone?
Think tanks: are we for some reason including Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck? From where I sit they are much more of what you want to complain about than CATO or whatever.
Right-Wing Think Tanks: I had been presuming that we’re aware that CATO and Heritage and Reason end up having very different views on quite a few important issues. But if you weren’t, they do. So I’m not sure how easy it is to measure media influence or what have you when they advocate very different things (see for example immigration).
An interesting measure of their influence might be something that they all agree on, but that liberal think tanks pretty much don’t agree on. All the right-wing think tanks that I see mentioned above think the drug war is ridiculous and should be stopped. Yet we all know that isn’t the actual policy OR talking points on the radio.
I suspect that the legitimate gripe has little/nothing to do with the think tanks and much more to do with Rush Limbaugh and Beck.
No speculations on the motivations of others unless you can produce proof that you are able to read other people’s minds.
Gary, you were thinking about sex on at least one occasion yesterday. Am I right?
QED
A spheroid is an ellipsoid. It’s just a particular kind of ellipsoid.
One with two axes of the same size. Without that, “oblate” doesn’t apply.
I suspect that the legitimate gripe has little/nothing to do with the think tanks and much more to do with Rush Limbaugh and Beck.
I suppose the question regarding this becomes, at least in part, how the output of right-wing think tanks filters down to Limbaugh and Beck. That’s beyond what I can claim to know, or even suspect with great confidence. I’d also say that it’s been demonstrated that more mainstream media sources (yes, news media) more often cite those think tanks that are generally classified as being conservative, even if those think tanks don’t always agree on everything, and even of not every position they advocate becomes policy, or is seriously considered for such. I don’t think their influence is in dispute, rather the (demonstrable) reasons for that influence.
(And whether it’s a gripe or simply an observation depends on your point of view.)
“and even if not every”
not “and even of not every”
Oh, dear god, John, this isn’t helping. Hold your temper. If you can’t, get up, walk away from the computer, and come back when you’re feeling less thin-skinned.
Don’t do that. Don’t be abusive.
A) No one is “screaming” unless you have activated their webcams. B) You’re again speculating on other people’s emotional states; this is not helpful. C) you’re being personal; this is also not helpful. Try blanking out people’s names, and responding simply to the words, not who you imagine people are, since that’s all you’re doing: imagining; none of us knows each other, none of us knows the internal conditions of anyone else’s mind, nor what external situations put them in a state when they’re typing. Declarations of knowledge that one can’t possibly have undermines credibility.
No one forced you to respond. If you don’t want to, don’t. If you do, complaining about the fact that people keep responding to what you respond to is simply complaining about yourself. So if you don’t want to argue: stop.
Exactly. None of us is omniscent, and subjective declarations of what we believe are pointless; we all believe different things. Anecdotes and assertions aren’t arguments. If you want to be persuasive, cite facts, and use cites. There are usually different explanations of data, in which case cite the ones you consider convincing. If you think it’s inarguable, give the cite that so convinces you. If something is so inarguable, giving a cite is trivial. If giving a cite is difficult, it’s obviously arguable.
This is simple logic. We like logic, we don’t like the fallacy of argument-by-assertion, and then getting abusive because someone points out fallacious reasoning.
So fricking ignore Turbulence if you don’t want to read what he says: what’s the problem here?
PLEASE stop making this personal.
If you want to blame anyone for the whole “give cites and prove your case” meme being on ObWi, blame ME; so far as I can tell, I’m the one who imported it from Usenet, and specifically from Panix and panix.chat, circa 1995 to here, circa 2003-2004, but it’s also the way I’ve been all my life. Everyone has an opinion: so freaking what? Either opinions can be supported by logic and fact, or they can’t. If they can’t, they’re worthless. That’s all there is to it.
It’s the difference between argument and assertion, and abusive assertion is particularly destructive of productive conversation.
Ipse-dixitism
Read the rest.
Proof by assertion:
Engaging in fallacious arguments convinces no one but the speaker.
Which itself is begging the question:
You can’t cite your own views as obviously true. It’s a logical fallacy.
No one cares what anyone else “wants.” You don’t care what Turbulence wants. That’s why we talk about what’s written, and don’t pretend to mind-read, and don’t arrogate to ourselves false omniscence about what other people think, why they’re saying things, or what they want. We can’t do that to you, none of us can do it to others, we just respond to arguments, logic, and facts, as much as possible.
Granted, this is an ideal, and people regularly roundly kick each other’s asses, but we do try to discourage conversation that leads to nothing but aggravation for all concerned. Whomever is being aggravated, or causing aggravation.
God knows I do my share of being aggravating at times, and I’m rightfully called on it.
Russell:
As usual: what Russell said.
That being the case, though, the Earth is not a spheroid of any kind.
Except by approximation. Other approximations might have it be an ellipsoid or even a more complex shape at some given moment in time, but that shape would be different the next moment.
Maybe “round” is the best descriptor, after all, if brevity is of any value.
I’ve beaten that to death, I think. But my original comment was more of a lark than anything I’d expect to be taken seriously. You can argue about nearly everything, because lots of what you think is true is wrong for one reason or another.
Like those parabolic trajectories you (I, anyhow) learned in high school Calc. Those were pure fiction.
“I suppose the question regarding this becomes, at least in part, how the output of right-wing think tanks filters down to Limbaugh and Beck.”
Doesn’t it seem just as likely that Limbaugh and Beck refer to CATO when they feel like it, and ignore CATO when they don’t? It sounds like CATO isn’t really involved in setting the agenda, and that Limbaugh and Beck are the ones with influence.
“I’d also say that it’s been demonstrated that more mainstream media sources (yes, news media) more often cite those think tanks that are generally classified as being conservative”.
You seem to be thinking of something like CATO as a singular unit, while you think of something like Harvard as a bunch of different professors. CATO is significantly less monolithic, and Harvard is a least a touch less atomistic. But however you choose tho think about it, you should consider the idea that they are at least in the same zone in the monolithic–atomistic continuum. So it isn’t clear that cites to people with CATO should be counted as one thing, while cites to professors at Harvard should be counted as dozens of different things if you are trying to measure political influence.
“even if those think tanks don’t always agree on everything, and even of not every position they advocate becomes policy, or is seriously considered for such. I don’t think their influence is in dispute, rather the (demonstrable) reasons for that influence.”
I think that the influence of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck is pretty big. I don’t see similar evidence for CATO or Heritage *such that we should think they are much more (if at all) influential than liberal universities or think tanks*.
I think that the influence of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck is pretty big. I don’t see similar evidence for CATO or Heritage *such that we should think they are much more (if at all) influential than liberal universities or think tanks*.
Again, if we’re discussing news media political influence, rather than total influence, political or otherwise, the number of cites of conservative think tanks in mainstream media is greater than that of cites of liberal think tanks. That’s an apples-to-apples comparison at whatever level of atomization think tanks operate at. Perhaps universities are more influencial and are cited more often if you count every single professor who’s quoted. But, if we’re talking about politics, it’s not the raison d’etre for universities, and much of the information they put out is not political in nature, and it not relevant to political influence in the mainstream news media. (Feel free to suss that all out.)
Either way, the point was that liberal think tanks aren’t keeping up with conservative think tanks in popular news media in terms of shaping the political discussion. It’s not a novel idea. Some of the URLs below are for very recent articles, and some go back several years.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3211.htm
http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/02/koch-brothers-media-beck-greenpeace#
http://www.suite101.com/content/top-think-tanks-cited-by-the-us-media-changes-a-shifting-bias-a274577
http://www.completecampaigns.com/article.asp?articleid=88
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/thinktanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
Normally you’d be correct, but yesterday I was too tired.
I don’t know anything about this source, but here’s something that speaks to the influence of think tanks on Rush et al. When considering think-tank political media influence, it doesn’t really make sense to take the influence of some segment of the political media and compare it to that of think tanks. Influence on the media flows through to affect the influence of the media.
http://agendaproject.org/History_of_the_Conservative_Movement.pdf (emphasis mine)
I’ve beaten that to death, I think.
Me too. I thought “anal-retentive” was a clue that I was being silly, but apparently not a sufficient one.
“When considering think-tank political media influence, it doesn’t really make sense to take the influence of some segment of the political media and compare it to that of think tanks. Influence on the media flows through to affect the influence of the media.”
I don’t see this as obvious or true. It seems to me much more likely that large media figures choose what they want to take from the think tanks and shape it from there than that the think tanks are doing much to shape the discourse. So Limbaugh and Beck decide what they want to talk about, and if the think tank agrees with them, they get cited, if not, they don’t. I’m sure lots of us intellectuals like think that means that the think tanks are doing much to influence Limbaugh and Beck, but frankly I doubt it.
If it were really think tank —–> Limbaugh we wouldn’t have so much focus on immigration, we would have a different view on the drug war, we wouldn’t have a resurgence of protectionist rhetoric, we would see Rush arguing for expanding the earned income tax credit, and all sorts of other things.
I think your only strong case is maybe school vouchers. There are lots of ideas floating around think tanks. The real movers choose what they want and discard most of it.
“Normally, you’d be correct, but yesterday I was too tired.”
Gary, the excuse of weariness and a headache is to be respected in every relationship, of course, but I’d put-out to yourself once in a while, even if you don’t enjoy it.
Grin and bear it.
If you don’t, your eyes will begin to stray and pretty soon there will be a triangle of three Gary Farbers.
Keeping the whole thing secret won’t be easy.
You’ll eventually find out and all of you will be hurt.
An interesting measure of their influence might be something that they all agree on, but that liberal think tanks pretty much don’t agree on.
Free markets and limiting the scope of government.
Also just wanted to say that I will be looking for any and all opportunities to drop “ipse-dixitism” into casual conversation.
If it were really think tank —–> Limbaugh
This is an overly simplistic graphic, I think. I’d say it’s a strawman to suggest that I’ve said think tanks have some sort of absolute control over the likes of Limbaugh. It’s a matter of influence, and relative influence at that. Do you think liberal think tanks have more influence over Rush Limbaugh than conservative ones? That would be a relevant question, I think.
If it were really think tank —-> Limbaugh
Yes, overly simplistic.
Especially if you are David Frum or Bruce Bartlett.
Another mostly a stranger to the OW commenting threads vote that the original post was interesting, I’d be interested in seeing more of the author, and Trubulence’s replies were by my standards uncivil. And though I realize that lengh is not to be imposed on anyone at all, according to the rules, also another vote for not being able to deal with comments that are very very long and repetitive.
It is the position of the current US administration that no employee of the government who has engaged in torture will be brought to justice.
Adding to this, the issue here is not merely punishment, but also possibly compensation of victims. See Maher Ahar and the contrast with the Canadian government in that case.
Length limits CANNOT be imposed, or suggested.
Says who? Overly long comments can be as disruptive to a civilized discussion as other rhetorical offenses. While I wouldn’t want to regulate them via posting rules, I would welcome a gentleman’s agreement to try to keep them reasonably brief (say 5 standard paragraphs or something like that).
Count me as “pretty far left,” then. That’s pretty mild stuff. Why should the people who do the work not get a say in how their workplace is run? Why should it be an autocracy based purely on money, with labor having no say? What kind of notion of human rights is that?
Is the United States government “pretty far left” given that we have the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS)?
The freaking Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA) was created under well-known communist President Dwight D. Eisenhower! If this is “pretty far left” it’s from the standpoint of the John Birch Society!
What’s so “pretty far left” about any of this?
What’s so far left about labor corporate governance?
I don’t get it.
Basically, the model for labor not having a say in management is called “feudalism.”
I thought we were against that these days, but YMMV.
I agree with Sebastian’s February 16, 2011 at 10:39 AM.
These aren’t monolithic groups, and acting as if they are is simply ignorant.
It’s one of those things I hate about the whole simplistic dualistic “us/them” approach to anything in life. “Your” side is always full of nuance and distinctions but “they” are all a homogenous bunch of loons.
That’s not the way humans work. They’re individuals, who find common cause in some areas, not in others.
Go into any office, and everyone has their own agendas and loyalties. Same in every university, every organization, and most families.
That is how human beings work. It’s an incredibly obvious observation.
Yet so many people look at people they don’t understand and perceive them as homogenous Other.
That’s just stupid.
And as soon as you start looking a little closely at these groups of other, you’ll notice that they’re full of divides, differences of opinion, and so on. Heritage and Cato are very different.
So is, say, Change to Win Federation from AFL-CIO.
If these groups weren’t different, they wouldn’t be separate groups.
Really, how hard is that to understand?
I write online and link to myself instead.
It gives me hairy palms, but I’ve learned that if I don’t do it for myself, pressures build up.