No Matter How Cynical You Get, it is Impossible to Keep Up
Now is the time at Ed Driscoll.com when we juxtapose!
Not long ago, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the 41-year old publisher of the New York Times, was greeting people at a party in the Metropolitan Museum when a dignified older man confronted him. He told Sulzberger that he was unhappy about the jazzy, irreverent new “Styles of the Times” Sunday section. “It’s very”—the man—paused—“un-Times-ian”
“Thank you,” Sulzberger replied. He later told a crowd of people that alienating older white male readers means “we’re doing something right.”
– New York magazine, November 16th, 1992.
I think the effect of Fox News on American public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general. It has contributed to the sense that they are all just out there with a political agenda, but Fox is just more overt about it. And I think that’s unhealthy.
– Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, yesterday.
Keller added:
We have had a lot of talk since the Gabby Giffords attempted murder about civility in our national discourse, and I make no connection between the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse. But it is true that the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past, and to some extent, I would lay that at the feet of Rupert Murdoch.
Keller may not make any connection between “the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse,” now, but his paper newspaper sure did from the very moment the story broke. As their ombudsman wrote a week later to whitewash his paper’s rush to smear the right, “To be fair, there were some good reasons to steer the coverage initially in this direction.”
(Concept via SDA; headline via Lily Tomlin.)
It really IS impossible to keep up with your cynicism! Just the other day we were sending billions of dollars to the Egyptian army as moderate stones in the wall of freedom and today…not so much. Yesterday Obamacare was all the rage for Democrats and today they don’t want to talk about the details of their 2700 page bill even after a fairly large percentage of a case of beer. I like it!
Right, he makes no connection between the shooting in AZ and Rupert Murdoch. Make sure everyone knows that he doesn’t blame RUPERT MURDOCH for the SHOOTING IN ARIZONA. So anyone who thinks he’s accusing RUPERT MURDOCH OF SHOOTING REP. GIFFORDS AND KILLING SIX OTHERS is wrong.
You’ve got admire the technique the same way you admire any good con.
By simply repeating they don’t believe there is a connection over and over again, they can plant the idea that there is a connection just by shear repetition. Eventually, when people hear about the shooting their minds will instantly associate that with Fox News, Palin and whomever else they wish.
It’s pysch 101, basic formative association.
They revealed their unprincipled and irrational biases in their rush to judgment about the shooting and now they are using their denouncement of their own mistake as a smear.
Frankly, I hope to God the cynicism is justified. If it isn’t, that means people like Keller actually still consider their news organ to be earnest in its pursuit of truth, informative of its findings, and reflective of America.
So yeah, typing that out just now, I think we can rest easy knowing that the cynicism is justified.
I’ve seen a photo of Bill Keller, and I’ve seen a photo of someone shagging a sheep. I’m not saying there’s a connection between Bill Keller and shagging sheep. But it is true that guys shouldn’t shag sheep.
See, it’s a fun and easy game to play!
Wait – Didn’t the Times initially report that the Tucson incident should be blamed on Sarah Palin and the Duke Lacrosse team?
“We got the narrative right but the facts wrong…”
Ignorance is arrogance’s foundation.
And I’d say the foundations of the NY Times run very very deep.
so, Keller’s complaining that Fox is, in his estimation, being honest about their political bent, whereas the Times, CNN, MSNBC and the rest are lying about theirs. In this analysis, it is the leftist media liars who are the good guys and the honest folks at Fox who are to blame for creating cynicism. That’s rich!
It’s been this way for years (decades?) if you’ve been paying attention. I consider it proof that solipsism is false (solipsism is the theory that the world is only an illusion created out of your fevered imagination and you are a butterfly sitting quietly in a padded cell somewhere). I would be proud to own an imagination capable of inventing statements like “[w]e have to pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it” but I know I am not clever enough by half to come up with something like that.
“I make no connection between the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse. But . . .” Never waste a good crises or let the facts get in your way.
As for Fox News making people more cynical about the news, I see that as due to the realization of a lot of people that the old media haven’t been telling us the whole story.
The cognitive dissonance exhibited is so severe. I mean just because they’re running around stamping “Trust Me” all over doesn’t mean we should…..Reagan had it best – “Trust but verify.” Unfortunately, the NYT, WashPo, LA Times, yada, yada, haven’t passed the verification part for quite awhile now.
We live in an era almost without grace. The Missoula Community Theater stages the Mikado with lyrics calling for the beheading of Sarah Palin to applause and laughter. Following national exposure by the indispensable James Taranto in “The Best of the Web Today”, we get nonapology apologies but no apology to Sarah Palin and her family.
And if some deranged Leftist should harm her or her family would the NYT and their ilk take any responsibility? Not a chance.
It is not possible to express my loathing for THEM.
You know, the truly disturbing part of all of this is that I honestly believe that, in his heart, Mr. Keller really doesn’t believe he’s biased. If you believed that the Times provided straight-down-the-line objective journalism, I suspect it would strike you that Fox News was some sort of wild outlier polarizing the body politic. It would probably seem that the Times’ drive to lay the Tuscon shootings at the feet of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rupert Murdoch was an understandable mistake of little significance. I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance. The thing is, that latter problem is probably more damning here.
“But it is true that the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past…”
It’s called ‘push back’.
Justices and judges engage in judicial activism. In fact, the Warren court did just that in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan when it ruled that it is OK to libel public officials, especially southern white ones. Segregationists had used libel suits to intimidate news organizations that covered the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The downside of that action is that it is now OK to libel any public figure. That makes for a more vulgar world in which people are not held accountable for their lies.
Thus, using such logic as the left, the NYT is responsible for all the incivility in the public square today….well, maybe that is logical.
“Thank you,” Sulzberger replied. He later told a crowd of people that alienating older white male readers means “we’re doing something right.”
I guess the fact that the Tea Party makes the NYT and it’s fellow travellers in media, politicans and entertainment flick rancid spittle like a bunch of coked-up Olbermans must mean THEY’RE doing something right.