Letters to the Editor
Paul Rosenberg
Published Letters: 995 Editor's Choice: 16
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El Cid Is Quite Right
[Read the article: The American media's fringe ideological view of Pelosi's trip]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would be among the first to acknowledge complexity at any level of my own analysis of the media.
However, despite Glenn's dislike of 'overarching' approaches to media performance, and the fact that there is actually journalism practiced occasionally, notice something significant.
Like recent problems with voting machines, notice that when there are huge, glaring, dangerous problems with mainstream media reporting of issues -- and ESPECIALLY with regard to foreign policy -- these problems always favor the right.
And those giant errors favor the right even at those very moments that the right feels beset upon.
If any of us see systematic problems going on for at least the last century of US news coverage, it isn't because we are unable to intellectually grasp complexity as well. It is precisely because we are able to understand that systemic realities can reveal themselves even through complexity & chaos.
Some folks feel the ned to strike a "reasonable" pose and say suff like, "well, the media may have had a liberal bias at one time" and it always makes me wonder when that might have been.
Was it during WWI, when they went along with the total censorship of anti-war views? Or the post-WWI Red Scare, which the media was instrumental in promoting, and which vanished almost overnight when it vanished from the pages of the papers?
Was it during the Great Depression, when the Literary Digest predicted FDR's defeat in the 1936 elections? (They were right, he lost--Maine and Vermont.) Was it during the McCarthy Era, when they printed McCarthy's wild accusations, and never asked to see the "list of names" he waved above his head, which later turned out to have been a blank sheet of paper?
Was it during the Civil Rights Movement, when a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. never made the New York Times front page? Was it any time since second wave feminism first appeared, when feminism has been repeatedly reported dead every four or five years or so? Was it during the 15-year long "global warming debate" when not one peer reviewed article was published on the "skeptics" side of the debate?
When, exacly, was this period of liberal media bias, when the majority of American papers have endorsed the Republican presidential candidate in every election since the Great Depression, except for 1964?
Yes, indeed, there is an incredible complexity of causes at work influencing the media. But the end result is overhwelmingly biased in one direction only--while reality itself is biased just the other way.
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Nice Try, Troll
[Read the article: The American media's fringe ideological view of Pelosi's trip]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hankest:
Paul, thanks for the response. I only questioned the poll after GG’s update, where he used it in reference to the video. I watched the video and it seemed like the discussion was more about the Dems overstepping their bounds - going too far - by enacting their own foreign policy than it was about how the Dems are putting forth a fringe opinion re: Syria.
So the first time he used the poll data, it made perfect sense, i fully agree. The second time not so much.
In the update, Glenn simply quoted himself from the first time he used it. He did not alter the context it was first presented in. In fact, the even larger context--a running discussion for quite some time now--is the disconnect between Versailles' opinion (let's blow them all up real good!) and America's opinion (let's not) across the full range of topics that Glenn has discussed.
The idea that the Dems are enacting their own foreign policy is absurd on its face, given that (1) Pelosi has not articulated a separate policy, and explicitly discouraged this interpretation, and (2) the Democrats could not possibly enact their own foreign policy this way, even if they wanted to, but could only do that through purely consitutional means--by passing laws with foreign policy implications, which could only take effect by over-riding Bush's veto, which in turn would require considerable Republican support as well.
In short, you are straining to impute an interpretation to Glenn's comment that is unwarrented on its face, when, on the other side, one has a palpably absurd premise that cannot possibly be defended under any conceivable interpretation.
The very definition of a concern troll.
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The Typical Troll--Falling Fast
[Read the article: The American media's fringe ideological view of Pelosi's trip]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While Hankest started out strong as a semi-camouflaged concern troll, his descent has suddenly become quite rapid. He's now reduced to the utterly banal troll move of ignoring the content of an entire post. (My post "Nice Try, Troll" at Friday, April 6, 2007 11:36 AM.)
In fact, he not only ignores the entire content of my post, but adds his own red herring:
Paul
Did you watch the video?
I did. If you saw it, well then, once again we disagree.
Of course, the content of the video was not the issue. The issue was his concern troll misreading of Glenn's quite clear writing.
I just know there's a proverb in here somewhere... Let's see, where's my proverb detecter gotten to....
Ah, yes, here it is:
He who takes the bait of a troll's red herring ends up chasing a white whale.
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The Logan Act Ploy--When All Is Lost, ESCALATE!
[Read the article: The American media's fringe ideological view of Pelosi's trip]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The latest mutation of the Pelosi FauxScandal (TM) is illustrative of a generalized pattern of wingnut behavior. To wit: once you've gone and made a total, unmitigated jackass of yourself, and folks are really starting to notice, that's when you roll out the nuclear option and escalate your stupidity to stratospheric levels.
The logic here is unassailable, really. It's like a gambler doubling down after he's already lost the car, the wedding ring, the house, his life insurance, and the children's college fund.
And so we're treated to the spectacle of a thousand babbling voices who just hours ago couldn't tell the Logan Act from a loganberry pontificating on how Pelosi violated it (despite explicitly stating that she was not authorized to set or change policy), while Saint Newt, of course, did not (even though he expressly deviated from, and sought to obscure, if not undermine long-standing US policy).
America! What a country! The cartoons come to you!