The New Media Echo Chamber
If you’re a Republican, chances are nine out of ten I can tell you what you believe. You believe McCain knows Iraq and Iran better than Obama; you believe McCain’s DC drop-in was sincere and/or clever; and you believe Sarah Palin is sharp, energizing, and pithy. You believe Barack Obama is arrogant, is wet behind the ears, has no talent but for speech delivery, and possesses no sense of the existential dangers we face.
You believe the MSM is practically campaigning for a Marxist who doesn’t believe the surge worked when it obviously has, and that it is unfairly hounding a great woman of promise and principle. America, being a center-right nation, won’t fail to elect Obama because he is black; they won’t elect him because he is a threat to stability in uncertain times. You read Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Hugh Hewitt with delight and have fashioned a dartboard out of Keith Olbermann’s picture.
That was easy enough, though it’s just as easy with Democrats.
If you’re a Democrat, you believe that anybody who could possibly vote for John McCain is either a moron or a near-fascist. You believe that Sarah Palin is a threat not only to women who want reproductive rights, but to sleeping children and cute baby moose everywhere. You believe that Obama is a brilliant man, anti-war, and above the lowliness of Chicago or national electioneering. He should be elected both because he transcends race and because he’s half black. He understands the world as it is. You think that he could only lose because of deep-seated racism in America.
You believe the MSM is fundamentally committed to maintaining the corporate elite’s status quo and setting the parameters of argument. You believe the perceived liberal bias aids this by setting novel ideas that challenge the status quo beyond the pale of acceptable conversation (you have a friend who actually took the time to read Manufacturing Consent that told you so). You read E.J. Dionne, Andrew Sullivan (gay and pro-Obama balances out the conservative part), Bob Herbert and swoon, and made your Bill O’Reilly dartboard so long ago, it’s gotten lost somewhere underneath your collection of magazines bearing Obama’s stately portrait.
It’s all way too easy. It shouldn’t be.
The media majority
There are now about a billion books and articles one can read about how new media is destroying objectivity and critical thinking, but once you’ve done so, you can go to your computer, open up your favorite websites, and, to the exclusion of all those you routinely exclude, read all your favorite commentators. Those people have jobs and a name for one basic reason: they are suited to the new media environment.
Ideologues and fervent party-liners make Real Clear Politics roundups a must-read every single day. Real Clear Politics provides the vital service of allowing us to see the best cross-section of what the national opinion-makers are saying. It isn’t their fault that the opinion-makers are who they are or operate the way they do.
The great advantage of a site like RCP is that you can see articles from The Nation and Mother Jones alongside those from National Review and the Weekly Standard. But it’s easy to sift through. An Obama supporter, opening RCP on Monday, September 29, can spot the headlines “Obama Holds His Own on Foreign Policy” and “The Era of Obama Begins” and go directly to those. Excluding “How McCain Wins” and “McCain Controlled Agenda in First Debate” is simple.
Whose fault is this? Is it the reader’s, for being selective in the way he or she builds a warm cocoon of affirming, non-threatening opinions? Or is it the fault of the opinion-makers for being so predictably and blindly partisan? This is a harder question to answer. Spending just one week reading every single article on RCP will yield the ability for any modestly intelligent person to do precisely what was done at the beginning of this piece: name the party lines, one by one, and the names of the people that extol them.
On the other hand, one need only perform the trusty “evidence against interest” test on any of the prominent talking heads in the information business to discover that almost no one ever passes. What are the chances that Norman Podhoretz at Commentary will be offering any honest appraisal of the strengths of Barack Obama and his campaign? About the same as the chances that Justin Raimondo of Anti-war.com will be telling us what he thinks the Bush administration has done well during the last eight years. But that’s not their job, one might argue. Fair enough, but then whose job is it?
OK, Josh. I’ll buy your “half a loaf” premise. At least in part. Where does a moderate, an independent, a “traditional liberal” go to find “news”? You can’t.
There’s so much spin in every “story” you need a dramamine before you put on your reading glasses.
But in making the point, seeking the perfect balance point…it glosses over the truth of it. The entrenched media is corrupt. Forged documents, fauxtography, staged “news” events, photoshopped magazine covers, are NOT “spin”.
When we are unable to get basic facts upon which to trust and rely…because they are intentionally and fraudulently kept from us, and worse…they are filled with lies and distortions masquerading as “news”, then our ability to self-govern this land of ours is completely stripped bare.
Sorry, moral equivalence fails miserably in that regard. I will buy much of the rest of your premise and defend it to the hilt.
The second point I wish to make, in tilting the scales of information stream justice back to actual fairness rather than artificial equivalence…is the utter failure to ask one side of the political landscape a single tough question.
Each and every time a national political figure left of center is asked a tough question, they run away whimpering like a little schoolgirl. Joe Biden was asked a handful of questions the equivalent of which is simply a Tuesday morning press conference for a Republican and he acted like someone spilled punch on his party dress.
An average Joe the Plumber asked a question after HE was approached…and he got excoriated for merely doing so, by the mendacious entrenched media. That’s not moral equivalence, that’s not fairness and by God that’s not right.
You can’t tell a thing about what I believe about Proposition 8 by the mere fact that I comment here, you can’t tell a thing about what I believe about pro-choice or pro-life issues. You can’t tell a thing about what I believe about women’s rights, Israel-Palestine, Roe v. Wade, gun control, the “fairness doctrine”, ACORN, voter fraud, foreign funds in our elections, earmarks, litmus tests for judges…unless and until you read what I write. You only think you can…because the fringes, not the center, is always in the spotlight.
The reason your analysis succeeds, is because it is built upon a premise that contains quite a bit of truth. The reason that it fails, is because it fails to recognize that sometimes you can’t artificially balance the scales and then pronounce justice. You actually have to weigh them. The reason that McCain/Palin comes out ahead in the actual scales, instead of the artificial ones…is because they get tested every day. Obama/Biden know the proctors and get to cheat on the exam. They are never asked the tough questions, and when some brave soul finally does….they run and hide like little schoolgirls.
Do you really think that everyone who reads blogs is a brainwashed partisan incapable of bringing their own questions, thoughts and life experiences to bear on controversial issues? Do you really think that we cannot recognize spin and BS? Do you think that we all suffer from long-term memory loss that renders us unable to detect positional changes and judge whether they are warranted based on new facts or are simple pandering?
I look for blogs that try to answer questions that the MSM neglects. I look for intelligence, thoughtfulness, experience, and humility. I reject pundits like Maureen Dowd because her columns are simple-minded, not because I am unwilling to consider similar positions. I can barely stand most TV news pundits because they all seem to be aiming for Keith Olberman’s old job as sports reporter–all tactics and statistics with very little depth on issues. I look for people who can take a position and then explain why. I happen to like writers who make me think and who seem to respect my intelligence. And I feel free to reject information that is over the top.
In short I don’t think you will be able to put me in a box based on the blogs I read, because you have no idea what I take from them.
No one knows how many people check out the other side’s point of view. I will read a lefty article if the author is someone I respect, someone who provides information rather than obfuscation. John Judis would be an example.
One thing I’ve found helps is to sideline most ‘opinion’, ‘analysis’, commentary, etc and focus on facts and what I hear with my own ears or see with my own eyes.
Of course on then runs into the not so small issue of who has chosen what to share.
But it is rather significant that when one does attempt debate on the issues, especially in any ‘tribal’ publication’s home turf, if one sticks to fact and look like making fair points, the ad hominems or ‘you lot from [xx] get unleashed pretty quickly.
Amazing how few major media these days can grasp that many still have diverse thoughts and beliefs, and any attempt to compartmentalise is often counter-productive.
Josh,
I am a conservative and will not read or listen to far-left loons who demonize and vilify me and think I am somehow less than human.
I am willing to listen to a rational “other side”. Not a hateful, fascist, intolerant one who would sooner deport me to the Aleutians (given the power to do so) than give my ideas a serious hearing.
“…sometimes you can’t artificially balance the scales and then pronounce justice. You actually have to weigh them.”
- beautifully stated, cfbleachers.
“America, being a center-right nation”
Personally I think this is your problem. America is a center left nation. Most people believe in abortion rights, environmental regulation, social security, government involvement in health care, a progressive tax structure, unions, gays in the military, stricter gun laws. What conservative views are popular? The death penalty and traditional marriage? Perhaps a general hawkiness.
That said, there’s no doubt that the partisan ideology is a logic killer on both sides. The left has 911 truthers and anti-vax groups and the right has the global warming is a hoax crowd and the Obama birth certificate nonsense. And yes, the echo chambers make it worse, much so.
Listen to the left, and logic is something to be thrown out as it is the european white man’s tool of domination. Aynn Rand, if nothing else, illustrated good vs evil in terms of that which supports life vs that which destroys life. Without objective means of discerning what is true vs false (logic), then evil rules. We are trying to use logic against an enemy who refuses to recognize that logic is even valid. Truth should be the goal, not party loyalty.
Not a lot of choice. I have been banned from most Left wing (moonbat) sites. For political reasons, not vile language or abusive posts, but because they didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I’m certain I’m not the only one.
One of my pet peeves is hearing Iraq called a war. It isn’t. Iraq is a campaign, theater, or front WITHIN a war, it is NOT a stand alone war. Win or lose, stay or withdraw from Iraq and the war will go on.
In WW2 there was a major argument between the Brits and the Ami military commanders over how to conduct the war against Germany and Italy. The Brits wanted to nibble around the edges and focus on Italy in the theory that forcing Italy out would lead to Hitler asking for peace.
The Americans wanted to land troops in France drive to Berlin and hang the bastard. General Marshall asked General Brooke “How are we supposed to win this thing?”
In the end a compromise was reached. FDR declared the policy of unconditional surrender to let the rest of the United Nations (what the Allies called themselves) know that Hitler wasn’t going to wiggle out of the war he started, and then as a sop to the Brits, agreed to invading North Africa. North Africa wasn’t a war, it was a campaign.
So it is with Iraq. The left fails to see Iraq as a central front in the Global war on Terror. President Bush does, Osama bin Laden does. Like N. Africa, the US Military was split on the subject. What the anti-Iraq campaign types can’t do is answer General Marshall’s question. Iraq offers a chance to “win this thing” in a generation or two.
The only other way to win is bt destroying Islam, which is doable, but would be such a monstrous crime that it would destroy ourselves in the process.
So if I post this, or anything like it on a moonbat site, it gets deleted (censored). They are afraid to debate ANY of the issues. They especially don’t want to face the fact that pulling troops out of Iraq WILL NOT end the war.
On the other hand, moonbats that post on wingnut sites don’t get censored, they get laughed at. Same effect.
Left and Right are drawing farther apart, pulling that center with them. Eventually, this will lead to a civil war and the creation of two ( or three) nations where once there was one.
“America, being a center-right nation”
Personally I think this is your problem. America is a center left nation.
Boris you are wrong again;
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_082508/content/01125110.guest.html
Question D3. About 60% of Americans identify themselves as conservative to one degree or another.
This is a FACT, one that has held for the last 13 Election cycles.
This fact is why the polls keep coming up wrong, why Republicans keep winning elections.
Ad money and clever rhetoric can create good poll numbers, but when the curtain closes on that voting booth, that 60% comes thru.
It will happen again in 8 days. Obama bin Biden won’t lose because of race, but because they are liberals. Mondale wasn’t half black, nor was Dukakis or McGovern. They lost because they were Liberals. Ohhhh……BAAMA! is even farther left then they were.
I agree that most people self label as conservative, and are probably personally conservative, but look at the polling on the issues:
http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/report
That report uses Gallup polls to show that Americans–often by wide margins–support progressive views.
Now, before you go all Rush Limbaugh and start talking about how all the pollsters are biased, consider that Gallup had Bush ahead by far more than his actual winning margin in 2004.
There is a divide between liberals and conservatives in the US greater than anytime in the past. Who will win? Conservatives will win because conservative ideals work while liberal dogma ultimately fails.
As for blogs, I read lucianne.com, ACE HQ, pajamasmedia, little green footballs, drudgereport, newsbusters.org and my favorite, angrywhitedude.com..lol.
I find it extremely funny how all the polls always show Obama winning in a landslide so I turned to a poll being ran by an independent outfit from another country. They have been going to all the states and talking with people on the streets to find out the real truth of what people think. I laughed when they said that the polls are lying to the American people because their polling has produced a flat out tie between the candidates. Since they report in over 40 countries it tells over 1 billion people what is actually going on in America straight from the people on the streets not in the TV or newspaper room pulling for Obama.
There’s no need to visit liberal media sites. If you spend any time in an airport, for example, you get all the left-wing talking points and ranting from CNN that you need. You go to the right blogosphere to find out what the ubiquitous MSM isn’t telling you.
I mean, really. When Tass is printing the party line, what’s the point of reading Pravda? What the intellectually curious Soviets were reading wasn’t being published by the apparatus.
“It’s absolutely possible McCain felt he was doing the right thing”
Actually, if Draper’s account in the NYT magazine piece yesterday is accurate, McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was a strategic one. That McCain also may have believed it was the right thing to do, this seems to be a secondary consideration. As such, it does, in some respects, undercut his ‘Country First’ message.
Minor quibble in a really interesting post.
You believe the MSM is practically campaigning
Help me with practically – use actually instead.
Josh Strawn writes: Sarah Palin is likable and talented. She is also completely unfit for the vice presidency. Obama is untested, halting, and wet behind the ears — qualities that don’t recommend him to the highest office in America. His progress is also so substantial that in the course of one campaign he has gotten up to speed with those who have decades of experience.
Mr. Strawn you contradict yourself, do you not? Put on your blindfold and quit looking at the candidate’s faces for a moment. Put on your “objectivity hat” and consider the achievements of two candidates who shall remain nameless and faceless for a moment.
One is an “aggressive activist reformer” whose career demonstrates that “you can work hard, you can achieve, you can rise” despite not having attended an Ivy league school or receiving the financial support of well-off backers whose interests are unclear but whose money certainly smooths the road ahead. This candidate has as much executive experience running a state government and negotiating large international projects requiring trust and goodwill between all parties, to the benefit of the United States as a whole, as the opponent has serving in the Senate.
This candidate has also served in small, local government and demonstrated an ability to understand the common citizen and protect that populace from larger government forces, even when required to face down her own party in order to do so. And while every single decision this candidate made for those citizens isn’t wildly popular, all of the accomplishments were positive for the constituency in some regard. This candidate is a battle-tested whistleblower who didn’t sit back and watch or “go along to get along” with the good-ol-boy network of politics, but actively sought to forestall corrupt practices and did not take money from lobbyists who perpetuate them.
The other candidate has a record of voting nothing, essentially, during the experience gained as a senator, except to take a stance against giving medical aid to babies born alive during the elective termination of a pregnancy. This candidate refuses to open past records for inspection, and has a record of lying about past associations with persons of interest to those responsible for protecting our national interest. This candidate actively misrepresents himself and misquotes history and demonstrates a tendency to stick his head in the sand and pretend he was right on issues he so obviously got wrong.
Though this candidate takes several attempts to get the correct responses to foreign conflicts, he is a mesmerizing presence who is transformational in the respect that he is capable of making people believe in something for which there is no evidence and perhaps would have made an excellent religious leader, based on that trait. He is more in tune with what “the world thinks of us” than he is helping the beating heart of American commerce – the business owner who employs people. On the official biography guide of the United States Congress, this candidate’s single paragraph concerning experience, leadership and dedication to the people he is sworn to serve is remarkable in the number of achievements it doesn’t list rather than the opposite.
Now if you haven’t taken your blinders off and peeked yet, take in the fact that Candidate One is running on the Vice President ticket and Candidate Two is running on the top of the ticket for President. Then consider that they are not running on the same ticket and you begin to get an idea of why anybody who respects the “little person’s” rise to the ticket would be offended by your statement.
Please use some of that ever-elusive objectivity you admonish the rest of us to have when it comes to this one salient point and you will have learned something from your own words.
Well, speaking personally, I’m a Democrat and, as the saying goes, part of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. I also know who Eugene V. Debs is, which I suspect puts me in the minority of the readers here.
I don’t visit many blogs. I used to write in one myself until my health made writing original material too difficult. I also don’t read a lot of opinion. I take opinion at a great discount, including my own.
I test myself not by my opinions, but by my mastery and use of fact. So my most constant reading online is my own package of RSS news feeds: Reuters Alert Net, AP Top Headlines, Top News UPI, McClatchy Washington Bureau, Google News, Christian Science Monitor, NPR Topics: News, Roll Call, BBC News Front Page, The Economist News Analysis, and C-SPAN recent video.
In the election season I have predominantly gone to the poll aggregators for information about the race: Pollster.com, Five Thirty Eight, Election-Projection.net, Electoral-Vote.com, InTrade Projection Markets, Presidential Election Forecasts, Real Clear Politics, Election Projection: 2008,and the one I follow with the greatest interest, Princeton Election Consortium.
Sam Wang at PEC uses a method that both predicted the Bush/Kerry EV numbers on the nose and predicted the Democratic takeover of the Senate in 2006.
Most of the genuinely interesting political analysis ends up getting linked to these poll sites one way or another, so I follow the links from there.
I read PJM a lot, and stick my oar into the controversies, since experience tells me that the best way to sharpen a knife is to rub against the hardest stone you can find. The intelligent commentors are interesting and the delusional ones far more entertaining than on the equivalent Democratic sites. Delusional liberals merely froth at the mouth, delusional conservatives are apt to be buying guns, so it is more entertaining, and safer, to keep an eye on them.
I can’t say I find your caricature of a Liberal Democrat to be all that accurate, at least in my case. I actually do know intelligent and reasonable people planning to vote for John McCain, and I cherish all three of them.
I don’t in the least think Sarah Palin is a threat. I think she gets by in the world with a wink, a smile, good facial bone structure, and not much in the way of real information between the ears. Sort of a Breakfast at Tiffany’s with moose sausage on the menu.
I think Obama is intelligent [not brilliant], measures up quite well to the vaunted standard of “family values” in his private life, stable and not whim ridden in his public capacity, has general good judgment, and
is cool and clear when the chips are on the line.
I think Obama will win, and win big, but I think he could very well have lost if McCain, his campaign, had had enough sense to understand elementary strategy, and enough humility to actually learn from observation and experience. And this without any help from “racism” at all.
I don’t have that many criticisms of Obama, but that is only because the stuff I would criticize has largely been knocked out of him by ten months of Presidential campaigning. You seem to think so,too.
Oh, and I do have a favorite blog: Elizabeth Scalia’s The Anchoress. It is where I always turn when I want to see a more rounded picture of a conservative’s life and views.
I consider myself a liberal, and what i do is read both right wing and left wing news sources and commentary — and I think about what each has to say and I fact check.
I’ve been very annoyed at mainstream news for years of just accepting on face value what a politician says is true at the time he (or she) says it and never holding him accountable for those words when they are proved to be patently false.
I also think a lot of Amercan’s have been so inundated with buzz words that they’ve lost the ability to question what those buzz words actually mean, if they are valid, and what impact, if they are valid, they’ll have on America. Most of the people here who hear the words “socialist” or “Marxist” don’t in fact know what those words mean — only that they are somehow magically bad and will bring about the downfall of the country.
I don’t buy buzzwords. I don’t believe politicians unless their words match their actions. Idealism is not enough and blind faith is just bad. I look to see if their policies *work*, and the Republicans “free market”, “no negotiation” policies, and “credit card” spending has done nothing but bankrupt us and made us unpopular around the world.
When do the workers of the mind go on strike?
I am glad I bought my guns and ammo already, when the fighting breaks out, I won’t be standing in line at the store. The rhetoric has gotten so insane I think we are about to see a civil insurrection, if not outright war whoever wins this cycle. God help us to hold elections in 2012, I am no longer sure we will if one of the two men currently running wins.
There is a discernible liberal media bias. Fox obviously tilts right, no question about it. In contrast, you have MSNBC, NBC, NY Times, Boston Globe, Washigton Post, LA Times, CBS and to a lesser extent, CNN that are unabashedly left leaning.
The scary part is we are about to elect the least experienced and least known President in our history. George W. Bush is often criticized for his lack of intellectual curiosity. The same could be said of our media, who have largely given Obama a pass by not asking questions and pressing harder on certain issues.
I am by no means a political expert & I probably don’t visit as unbiased a spectrum of news sources as I could; however, I don’t feel that I am uneducated or grossly biased. I balance my primary news sources by following up on the information cited & seeing if it stacks up and further, if I agree with people’s interpretations.
And yes, I have my beliefs, some of which I will cling to with my dying breath but that isn’t wrong. The issue is when beliefs become mindless dogma. That would be liberals saying that Obama will lower taxes for 95% of the population & we’re still losing the war in Iraq without being able to back it up. It’s conservatives who say that global warming is a crock & can’t explain what global warming supposedly is.
That said, I think you did contradict yourself when you compared Obama’s background favorably to Palin’s. Yes, the man did say that he would invade Pakistan, bu I had an issue with doing it by pulling out of Iraq & leaving that country to fend for itself. Not being sympathetic towards a figure’s statements or even ignoring them doesn’t mean we are polarized, it just means that people have looked at facts, weighed them & decided they don’t make a difference or they are contradicted by something else.
I also very much resent the insinuation that a failed Obama campaign will be based on race. Most of the people I’ve heard who are not voting for Obama would have been fine ot vote for Jindal, they don’t like Obama! Just because the man is black doesn’t mean that his defeat was based on bigotry. By the way, I know many educated women (of both political parties) who feel McCain torpedoed his campaign not by nominating an inexperienced VP, but by selecting a female VP, which they think more people have an issue with than electing a minority.
Hmmm and J. Marshall; I am sorry but I have been following this anti-American fervor because I’ve been living it here in France, and it all started back in the days of Reagan, the cowboy-movie actor President, that didn’t go to a big political school and get a super degree from the right kind of school (that argument is so old, and tiresome that is the way Europeans think: a good school and you’re cabale of running things). The rest of the world hates the US because the US goes against the logic that socialism is the best choice, and the Americans haven’t chosen it and horror of horrors, are doing better economically than the socialist countries are. Now, I am not the biggest fan of Reagan, although I do believe that many of his policies are responsible for the good years we had right up to the mid-1990′s…but this is another argument…the MSM is the only media quoted here in Europe, I have seen both of you commenting on various blogs that have had Irish and English, even Australians commenting on this. I have seen the media here in France tell me more about a story than what I have been able to find reading Msnbc, or yahoo (I tend to avoid CNN as most of what I get for information on issues back home comes from there) I personnally think that the rest of the world will hate s just as much as always, as long as we’re on top. And even if OHB is elected, if he dares to put American interests first, he’ll be critized horribly…I got a lot of laughs from my friends as they were bashing the S president daring to speak out like such an American…I asked my friends if it wasn’t a bit normal that US President defended US ideals as he um respresents the US and not the rest of the world? So if you’re really weighing things out and questioning issues you’ll be looking at and questioning your own ideas and then coming up with new answers even if the answers are similar or based in your original beliefs…and my experience and world has taught me that you have to work for something to get something, and quite frankily OHB has not proven to be of that mind set.
cfbleachers, thanks for your observations- you correctly point out the unmentioned elephant in the room. BHO is not a citizen of the US- refused to make public a birth certificate, didn’t mention his AKAs when taking the Bar, etc.. his own family members refer to being present at his birth in Kenya; furthermore the certificate in Hawaii is shown to be a photoshop job; yet Berg’s lawsuit etc. is relegated to the fringe by some bought off judge & the All Barak Channel, the National Barak Channel & the Citizens Barak Service.
“The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology”. ~ Ayn Rand
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
— George Santayana (1863–1952)
(& later quoted by Churchill)
“Haven’t you heard? It’s a battle of words- & most of them are lies” – Pink Floyd
Just out of curiosity, view from afar, do you ever read the International Herald Tribune? If you do, I’d like to know what you think of it. Also, who do you think gives the best English language coverage of France?
You were doing good up until here: “One could argue that the media is just giving the public what it wants. But if that is so, then media outlets can be justifiably accused of putting profit ahead of truth and populism ahead of professionalism.”
Bzt. Take the New York Times (and most other big city print media). They are losing money like never before. Why? Because they have lost all credibility. They have put ideology above profits and professionalism. The rare exceptions are papers like the WSJ: makinng money through credible reporting.
Also, Americans are not by and large willing to accept the consequences of “rolling the dice” on Obama. Most of them don’t have a clue what kind of risk is involved with the election of a far left cult-of-personality candidate such as Obama. If he wins, they will find out, and their response will be far from “accepting the consequences.”
Does that make us more extreme?
No, that stops some of us from throwing things at the TVs when the TV news is on. Better still, we don’t have to watch any more news readers who make multimillions reading the news and then lecture us on how selfish we are for refusing to spread our wealth.
Joseph Marshall says: “Delusional liberals merely froth at the mouth, delusional conservatives are apt to be buying guns, so it is more entertaining, and safer, to keep an eye on them.”
Oh really? Well, maybe go a step further and look at who actually USES guns in the political context. Hint: The One’s VP’s bus hasn’t been shot at and supporters of The One haven’t had their offices shot up. Or we could get into whose supporters have committed the most politically motivated vandalism this election cycle.
Right wingers might buy more guns, but they mostly want them for protection, to be safe at home (and in public) from real and sometime exaggerated threats. Left wingers are more apt to use their guns for political purposes, and many actually fantasize about killing off evil right wingers, e.g. the Weather Underground’s dicussions about having to kill 25,000,000 Americans to transform this country into a communist state (just google Ayers Weather Underground 25 million).
Not really, I gravitate to blogs like this one to confirm how out of touch, and often plain nasty some on the further reaches of the right are. Really, and as generous as I can be, the prospect of losing really brings the worst out in some.
The recriminations will start 7 days hence, and there will be blood
“Now, before you go all Rush Limbaugh and start talking about how all the pollsters are biased, consider that Gallup had Bush ahead by far more than his actual winning margin in 2004.”
I wouldn’t say all pollsters are biased, just ALL the polls. The pollsters even brag about it, you just don’t understand what they are saying. First, let me point out that Obama being ahead 51 to 47 doesn’t mean he will win, it means that if they held 100 elections, Ohhhhhh……BAMA! would win 51, NcCain would win 47 and 2 would end up no results.
Polls give ODDS not predictions. The Pollsters use various algorithms to “spin” the results. They are trying to produce a prediction. Statistical Analysis is a scientific tool used by engineers and scientists in various disciplines. It is the father of Opinion polling. Opinion polling differs from statistical analysis in that Opinion polling is about people, while stats is about physics. People LIE and change their minds. Physics doesn’t lie and always stays the same or changes by established rules.
The Law of gravity won’t change tomorrow because somebody spills coffee in their lap on the way to work. An opinion might.
Here is one guys opinion of how Gallop “spins” their polls;
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/donkeyrising/2004/10/gallup_poll_raciallybiased.html
This is worth snipping;
“Note that the demographics of Gallup’s LV sample are not adjusted in any way (as their overall samples are) and are simply allowed to fall where they may.
What this means is that if, say, minority voters are much less likely to answer the 7 questions “right”, they will be correspondingly under-represented in the LV sample–perhaps severely under-represented.”
This applies across ALL demographics. In a contest like this one, where Race has been injected as a basic issue by the candidate that is a minority, Demographics will be critical. Yet Gallop is adjusting ( spinning) for political party. We will see how that works out on November 04.
The context of the period we find ourselves in is hardly stripped bare of the driving philosophical constructs of academia. Journalists do not arise out of thin air. They are ostensibly educated individuals who have taken courses in English literature, writing, philosophy, history, et al. They are exposed to the reigning mores and habits of those who are ascendant in the journalism profession. All of the major graduate schools of journalism in the country share an ethos, a worldview. It shapes the contours of perceptive filtering which journalists apply to the real world.
For at at least three decades now cultural Marxism and post-modernist “ethics” are operative in academia, including journalism. These teach that there are not objective standards or moorings for truth. Truth itself is a biased construct, and you choose what your biases are and then you work for that cause regardless.
This is why the journalist community will refuse to kick the tires of and look under the hood of the career of Barack Obama, but will send investigators to Hanoi to probe John McCain’s experience in the Hanoi Hilton and send their emissaries to Wasilla, AK to find dirt on Sarah Palin. They are practicing ADVOCACY JOURNALISM, which is the reigning template for journalism in the top schools. You pick a side and then you work it, against the other side.
The alternate media weblogs and new sites that lean right of center are essentially a protest movement against the hegemony of the Left’s monopoly of the Big Media and mainstream journalism. It exists as a place where one can find relief from the degeneration and addled nature of the post-modernist ethos.
That is why refugees from Marxism like me go to the National Review, American Thinker, and Frontpagemag.com, as well as PJM. I know the other side like the back of my hand, and have been deeper into the Left’s ideas since the late seventies than most of the kiddies over there today ever have been or ever will be. When you know something inside and out, and you eventually decide that the path you’ve been on is wrong, it is only natural to gravitate away from what you perceive as its intellectual dishonesty and sloth.
to THE WRITER OF THIS ARTICLE-I HAVE A QUESTION? WHERE WAS THE “CONSERV ATIVE MEDIA” BEFORE FOX NEWS OR TALK RADIO? RUSH LIMBAUGH AND SEAN HANNITY AND BILL OREILLY DRAW AUDIENCES FOR A REASON. THE NY SLIMES,THE WASHINGTON COMPOST AND THE COMMIE “MAINSTREAM” MEDIA ARE LOSING AUDIENCE? WONDER WHY? DIDNT LIBERAL BERNIE GOLDBERG WRITE A BOOK CALLED “BIAS”? BY THE WAY,WHO OSTRACIZED HIM FOR WRITING THAT BOOK? HAS ANY CONSERVATIVE TREATED OBAMA WITH PHONY FACTS LIKE THE MEDIA ATTACKING PALIN WITH THAT FAKE STORY IN “US WEEKLY” ABOUT HER SON? OR EVER COOKED UP “FACTS” LIKE DAN BLATHERS PHONY DOCUMENTS IN 2004? SEEMS TO ME THE OLD MEDIA IS MORE EXTREMIST THAN EVER,ESPECIALLY NBC. THAY WANT THE “FAIRNESS” DOCTRINE SO THE GOVERNMENT CAN ELIMINATE THE COMPETITION THAT THE COMMIES CANT OVERCOME THEMSELVES. IT WASNT THE CONSERVATIVES WHO LIED ABOUT THE BUDGET BATTLE IN 1995-IT WAS THE MSM. THE MSM HAS ALWAYS BEEN FAR LEFT MY WHOLE LIFE AND ONLY THE NEW MEDIA GIVES CONSERVATIVES A FIGHTING CHANCE.
Josh Strawn – The whole article is a complete misunderstanding of every situation.
I read all the articles at RCP. I usually cut the Lib ones short, as their facts just don’t add up, or their links lead to more bilge. They rarely give solid info. The discourse is generally puerile. Personal attacks reign. Talking points abound. Debunked rumors persist. I only read them now to know what the other side’s positions are. Every now and then, they make a good point.
My posts get deleted at lefty sites. I post now only at PJM, because the responses will often have some great info or insight. The links provided are great, with loads of details.
Iraq IS a victory. Make no mistake about it. It IS fragile. Our presence is only necessary to keep them from reverting to tribalism and civil war. They are trying to learn about democracy, power-sharing, and revenue-sharing. It’s always easier to just oppress the other side if you think you can. They are learning new ways. Our presence keeps them honestly on track. and they know it, or we’d've been out some time ago. To withdraw now would be to throw it all away.
Oops. Time’s up. Gotta go.
I’ve got a simple solution that can’t be done yet.
Robots.
Yeppers, let computers and robots report the news. All human news casts are marked as “biased” (since obviously a human is giving the opinions or information) and if you just want plan cold facts you can tune into the computer controlled data mines.
I know I know there are all sorts of ways computers can be manipulated but it’s a fun thought isn’t it?
Sarah gathers super-crowds of the real people, Obama gathers mega-crowds of the threatened union members and their families. As I said before:
OBAMA FAKE CROWDS:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/6765
Please, read it if you want, but please, please send it to Rush, one of our last mouthes:
ElRushbo@eibnet.com
MY PROVIDER BLOCKS IT ALL THE TIME, PLEASE HELP ME,
OBAMA REALLY FAKES HIS CROWDS!!!!!!!!!
Send it to Rush or wherever you like, spread it, please,
DON’T LET THEM KILL OUR SPIRIT WITH THEIR FAKED POLLS!
People read items in search first for new information. And when new information is encountered, they then want to make sense of it. Sometimes they step back to contemplate it. Sometimes they also consider what other think of it. When the two coincide, their opinion is reinforced. When the two conflict, then most would look for more information as to why the two conflict. I disagree with your premise that people just look for their opinion to be reinforced. People are starving for facts.
And a democracy needs to provide facts to its people, its constituents, its voters, for them to make an informed choice. In this regard, the media tend to be a failure at this. It is inevitable that bias creeps in. Your article is a clear example of this. You say Palin is unfit to be president (you drop this as fact, but in fact you provided no fact to support your opinion) but that Obama has grown into fitness due to the past year of campaigning (again you drop this as fact, without providing fact for your opinion). Thus it is hypocrisy to decry those seeking opinions like their own, yet you are more than willing to give your opinion as fact. Same fallacy we lament in the MSM.
I read news and blogs looking for facts. And this piece, though started strong with the emphasis on the need to differentiate between facts and opinion, degraded into simply more factless opinion.
Try again?
This is assuming whoever reads either right-leaning or left-leaning blogs completely absorbs and agrees with all things said.
If that is the case, then there won’t be a need to leave comments, right? All comments will be “Brilliant!” or “100% on the mark”. Think how boring that would be.
Marc:
Actually, I like this article. That’s exactly why I read PJMedia. I think your comments about liberal sites being light on facts is just a manifestation of your media bias, based on what you read. I mean, I think *this* site is equally questionable, and frequently wrong.
You really have to step outside of yourself to realize that maybe you don’t have the necessary perspective to understand your own views. I still think that a lot of the info on PJMedia is rather transparent and desperate opinion, but then again, I always have to take into account my media bias.
All you have to do is look at what gets reported. There are so many hugely important stories that get totally ignored. So much for getting a conservative opinion on a certain issue – if it’s too damaging, or there’s no way to spin it, it gets ignored. You get things like that at KOS as well. We should just be getting our news from non-partisan sites.
Someone75 – No, my view of liberal sites being light on facts is not just my bias interfering. I’m the kind of guy whose mind can be influenced by new information. I actively seek it. I have no trouble dumping my position if the info clearly proves otherwise. Like I said, sometimes the left make some good points. Read my post again. It’s there.
As for not addressing an issue, some of that has to do with what’s being emphasized or not outside of the blogs. One hardly hears anything about illegal immigration, but the right’s position on it isn’t embarassing. It’s just that Obama and McCain are fairly close on the issue, except McCain doesn’t want to give them driver’s licenses. So, no controversy, no political story.
The right is very good at castigating their own. They don’t shy from issues. The biggest disadvantage they have this year is that the left is very much monolithic, and the right is not. So, I’ll stick with mostly right-leaning sites, thank you, and scan all the RCP stories.
I read a variety of blogs including Michelle Malkin, LGF, Volokh, and Talkleft. I’d read more Liberal blogs if I could find some that didn’t make my skin crawl. I’m not willing to slog through filth like DailyKos to get an opposing viewpoint.
So does that mean I’m just seeking validation? I don’t think so, since I was a Liberal myself until about nine years ago.
One comment claimed “marxist” and “socialist” are just buzz words. In reality, they are not; it is a political and social beleif system in conflict with the constitution of the US. Americans know what it is and have seen, with their own eyes and they have seen what it does with power.
I think the biggest division in our country has been the straying away from the original meaning and limitations of the US constitution by the elite in law making and in the courts. This lack of respect and knowledge of the constitution has created the most rabid conflict in our country and among our people. We no longer share a common understanding of our own government founding document and individual freedoms. We no longer share a common respect and support for it. From there, we share nothing in common with one another – politically or socially – across party lines. That common creed understood and shared by the vast majoity of Americans in both political parties, used to be “liberal.” It is the power of that creed that has held together the Republic.
Now “liberal” has progressed to be socialist and that ideology is in conflict with the constitution socially, economically and poltically. For one who sails a political and social ship within the boundaries of the constitution – a classical liberal – there can be no compromise with those who reject it.
This MSM election coverage of the election issues has been a literal fiasco on assisting citizens who are strongly undecided because their political ideology differences are truly outside the left center and the right center candidates platforms as well! This has been unduly evident in the representation of facts that are relevant to the independent, liberal conservative, or even worse yet a libertarian, you are not going to find any news at the MSM networks. This is a purposeful strategy on their part. The media has tucked it’s ethical tail and now runs an effective frontal attack and side show to boost the performance of the left by utilizing journalistic acts of blatant omission, manipulation of fact, bias, opinion, and in the case of the LA Times, media malfeasance for witholding the release of a vid tape which is crucially pertinent to issues concerning the left candidates character and his political ideology regarding the Israelis and Jews here in the US. If your political ideology falls in the outlier of Constitutional Conservative you go to blog sites that are representing your concerns in this election. And you go to the MSM for a few laughs. I hope the MSM entertainment does not cost us the loss of this country as a result of the medias socialist and unethical practices.
UNI-PARTY GOVERNMENT: A BAD IDEA
One party rule is ruinous, as explained at this link:
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/uni-party-government-very-bad-idea.html
obama will be a disaster, the likes of which we have not seen since jimmy carter
an obama victory also means congressional democrats will now actually have to develop a strategy – i.e. they can no longer rely on the old standby “Bush sucks” as their answer to everything.
that’s right, now the democrats have to actually govern. do you trust nancy pelosi to lead? i don’t. she couldn’t match wits with a dirtclod and has the emotional depth of a comatose eggplant.
tell ME SOMETHING-HAS ANY ‘MEDIA” “OUTLET” LOOKED INTO THE POSSABILITY THAT THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN GOT LOCAL OHIO DEMON RATS TO GET PERSONAL DIRT ON JOE THE PLUMBER? OF COURSE NOT. WHATS NEXT_JOE THE PLUMBER IS TRIGS REAL DADDY” OR “JOE THE PLUMBER SPOTTED IN THE SAME BATHROOM AS LARRY CRAIG”? THEY HAVE NO TIME TO “INVESTIGATE” THE VIOLATION OF A CITIZENS PRIVACY OR THE VIOLATIONS OF ACORN? NO TIME FOR BILL AYERS? RASHID KHALIDI? JEREMIAH WRIGHT OR OTIS MOSS AND THERE RACIST HATE AMERICA CHURCH? OO COURSE NOT. BUT WE CAN SEND 30 “REPORTERS” TO ALASKA TO LITERALLY “DIG” UP “DIRT” ON SARAH PALIN. WE CAN FIND “TIME” TO DIG ILLEGALLY INTO RECORDS ON PRIVATE CITIZEN. WE HAVE TIME TO HACK INTO SARAH PALINS E-MAIL ACCOUNT(ALSO ILLEGAL). BUT WE HAVE NO TIME FOR WILLIAM JEFFERSON,CHARLEY RANGEL OR THE MILLIONS OF ILELGAL CAMPAIGN DONATIONS TO BOTH THE CLINTONS AND OBAMI COMMIE. THE MEDIA IS DEAD. AND I WILL NOT ONETEAR FOR THE COMMIE PUKES. THEY DESERVE THERE DEATH.
THE IDIOT WHO SAID BUSH WAS FAR AHEAD IN 2004-HATE TO TELL YOU-ONLY JOHN ZOGBY AMONGST THE 5 MAJOR POLLSTERS HAD BUSH AHEAD IN EV COUNT. AND THE SO-CALLED “EXIT POLLS” WERE WRONG IN NOT ONLY FLORIDA,BUT IN 15 OTHER STATES. THE MEDIA WAS CELEBRATING “KERRYS WIN” AT 5 PM ET . GUESS WHAT -BY 9PM ET ANY SMART PERSON KNEW BUSH HAD WON BOTH FLORIDA AND OHIO,THEREBY GIVING HIM 2 OF THE BIG 3 HE NEEEDED TO WIN. THE MEDIA IS A BUNCH OF COMMUNIST ANTI-AMERICANS AND ELITIST SNOBS WHO THINK THERE BEING ON TV MAKES THEM BRILLIANT. IVE DONE WELL WITHOUT THERE “BRILLIANCE” AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO.