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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Compare the Paris Hilton story as it was treated online and by the LA Times:
In Salon, three different writers ranted very vehemently about the early release, citing all the poor and working class people who weren't celebrities who didn't get released early from the DUI probation violation terms.
The LA Times used a different approach. They sent actual reporters to get the actual incarceration statistics from the county jail administration.
They found out that the actual time served for female DUI probation violation in LA County has shrunk over the years so that now the women don't even serve a whole day before they're sent to home detention. Even the poor and working class ones get sent home early.
The problem is -- it takes time to dig up facts and calculate statistics. By the time the LA Times staffers had the jail stats all added up -- the story was all but finished on the Internet.
Who cares about Paris Hilton any more? That was yesterday!
@ Nulla Sulla: the problem with the American press isn't that it is biased, it's the pretense that they aren't. It's not just the Guardian that has a specific political tone, there are conservative papers as well - the Telegraph or the Tory-graph as I like to call it is one instance of that. Selectively mocking the Guardian misses that point - and I'd argue that in fact it misses the value of openly biased newspapers.
The myth of "objective news" is that data without context is useful. For instance: an objective report about the strength of the dollar is that the dollar is worth less than it has been for some time. That doesn't answer the "so what?" question at all. And the answer to "so what" depends on whether you think it's more important to address trade flows or investment flows, or to leave them both alone, or what.
Leaving that discussion in the realm of a couple of paragraphs about "some people think X, some people think Y" doesn't do it. I'd rather be able to look at substantive coverage from a proper newspaper that has open biases and work out which version I find convincing.
This is not a mindless love letter to the British press - it certainly has its problems and since it's a genuinely competitive market on a national scale, one of them is the hyping of stories to shift copies even when there's not really that much of a story to be told. Openly siding with British criminal suspects to "stick it to Johnny Foreigner" - i.e. the McCann girl story - is certainly not edifying. But overall it certainly has some benefits.
In the month after 9-11-01, I was listening to an NPR commentator on a lovely Sunday morning. He was a soft-spoken man whose name I cannot remember; he was one of many men of reason I listened to on the radio in those days.
On that day, he frothed. On NPR, the commentator called those who opposed Bush's coming invasion of Iraq traitors. He snarled and called opposition treason, a danger to our persons and aid to the enemy. This quiet NPR commentator.
Imagine, if you will, the last seven years where the most sane of voices on the radio, on public radio, called those who pointed out the madness traitors, and worse than traito. Imagine a country where none opposed Bush in the media of radio, TV, and newspapers. This could have happened, and we'd be waging WW III, the war against Islam, right now.
But we had a million voices bloom on the verges of the old phone system, posting marked-up text and pictures and video, calling the old voices fools and worse, and proving it.
Imagine the US without those voices. Imagine hell.
gregrocker wrote:
Welcome to Nation of Rednecks.
Indeed, and Joshua Zeitz in his illuminating piece ('Dixie's Victory') in American Heritage) showed clearly how the US of A came to be the land of confederate flags, NASCAR and bible belt religiosity long before Dubya got in and crystallized it into a bad ongoing national joke.
Any fucking moron or imbecile can write about how we need to come together and sing 'Kumbiyah' - but the facts of history since 2001 disclose we are dealing with aggressive, venomous vermin who are intent on destroying this country. In this zeitgeist, being palsy and bi-partisan doesn't get it done.
Rovian tactics and politicizing every federal decision mean, rather, one must endorse and embrace (just as vehemently) all the OPPOSITE memes. This is the basis of memetic warfare. (In the same vein, as a recent WaPo article noted, anti-religious mindsets are now growing as a counterpoise to all the religious zealtotry of the past 15 yrs.)
To insist liberals sit down with conservatives of the Bush ilk is to demand a surrender pact. To leave all our principles and social investment there for the trashing. This is not on.
Another thing, when weasly politicos on the "left" give in so often to aid and abet the verminous Right, it is expected that online rage (of the base) will increase in compensatory fashion for the spineless representation on offer.
This author obviously doesn't grasp the dynamic. He'd do well to read 'The Lucifer Principle' on how specific memes engender their opposite and why this is necessary to preserve a social, cultural and political equilibrium.
As I have said before, we (on the left) will never EVER accept any of their presidents, and they will never accept ours. The only recourse is to split the country into "Red" and "Blue" states (or analogous regions based on politics) like India and Pakistan did in 1948.
It is abundantly clear we cannot live together, nor should we even try.
I hardly think you can blame the internet for the ghetto(ization) of politics. If anything the internet makes it easier to access other political views and to compare them.
The author's thesis makes the dangerous assumption that either side of the aisle thinks it can take something positive from the other. A simple experiment, no doubt engaged in by many readers here, seems to disprove this.
On headier days, I like to cruise over to the right-wing blogs a bit. Powerline. Drudge. God help me, even LGF.
I try to look for something, anything in the positions taken (both by the punditry/bloggers and the general rabble) that I could consider rational. Anything that isn't a base appeal to the emotions of conservatives. Anything that smacks of self-examination or self-criticism. It's nonexistant.
The problem I have with this article is that it suggests that the Malkins and Savages of this world actually have something to offer besides blind partisan garbage designed to inflate their paychecks. The right-wing of American politics, in its present form, is simply devoid of rationality and logic. It's a hyper-reactive, frightened, angry strain of ideology - and we've all seen the consequences. Simply put, why should I even try to see eye-to-eye with the people who espouse this crap? Trying to agree with Limbaugh on anything would be worse than futile, because of what Limbaugh and his audience are.
When the right wing in American politics stops using fear and emotion as the only means of spurring political action/opinion, I'll start to treat them like something other than a sick joke.
Powerline and LGF - this is the right wing base. Read the comments sections. Tell me there is any reason - any at all - to consider the political opinions of these people valid. It's all I can do to avoid throwing up on the keyboard.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
