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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
What we need these days -- desperately -- is some advocacy for objective truth -- for a rigorously "reality-based" discussion. Sunstein's nicey-nice, the-liberals-make-some-good-points-but-wait-the-conservatives-also-have-some-good-points rhetoric is the same shit we've been hearing for six years from those who would abdicate their responsibility to keep the conservative movement from destroying our country, and the world.
I don't think there's a liberal equivalent to "dittoheads," nor can the cowing and aping that characterizes programs like Limbaugh's, and their listenerships, be fairly called a bipartisan phenomenon. Even on sites like Dailykos.com -- and Dan Froomkin's blog -- there's intense and serious debate on the threads about nearly every post. (Okay: not so much on Froomkin . . . but then, what is there to argue about? Every day, he lays out in methodical detail the ways -- new ones every day -- in which every branch of government has become corrupted and politicized, with the tacit approval of the Platonic guardians who Sunstein believes should be delivering our news and analysis.)
Isn't one of the Big Ideas of civil political discussion that the "correct" ideas gain influence as others are exposed to them? Therefore, it makes sense that, if certain policies are better reasoned, and more beneficial, then discussion among perceptive, open-minded people will swing the consensus that way. When this happens, it's not a "troubling problem" requiring diagnosis. It's only a problem when badly reasoned, destructive ideas are gaining influence through dogmatism.
Cass Sunstein doesn't report on anything specific that happened during those panel discussions, and I'm curious to see whether the book discusses them in more detail. He seems to imply that when somebody mutters "The queers make me sick . . . Do you know what they do in bed?" and then others, not surprisingly, assent to that position from social pressure, this is basically the same phenomenon that happens when a liberal says "The truth is, my own marriage isn't affected by a gay couple's marriage . . . and in states like Massachussets and Vermont, where gay marriage (or its equivalent) has now been legal for some time, nobody seems to be reporting that 'traditional marriage' is under threat, or in decline," and with this argument convinces others to change their positions.
He also seems to suggest that we need equal room in our political discourse for people who advocate (or tolerate) rape, torture, and pillage (abroad) and looting and corruption at home, and for those who oppose these things. Is it really a problem that I'm not open-minded enough on the issue of the CIA's "black" torture sites in Romania and Poland? Am I so woefully underinformed about the objective science of global climate change?
Also, Sunstein assumes that, before the advent of the blogosphere, liberal and conservative viewpoints were getting fair play. That's not what I remember. In fact, it hasn't been until the last few years that I've been able to easily find intelligent commentary from the left. That's not because the commentators weren't out there before, but because the conservative, corporate newsmedia excluded them from the discussion.
"Dittoheads" -- and Limbaugh -- were a cultural phenomenon a good while before the advent of the Internet as a political force.
Finally, while ivory-tower intellectuals like Sunstein may enjoy long, serious daily conversations in their "salons" about the various issues of the day, for most of us working stiffs, it's been very hard, until the last few years, to find a place to discover the viewpoints of other concerned nobodies, and to express our own. I may be wrong about Sunstein's thesis, but my opinion (if I can say so myself) isn't worthless or idiotic. Because of a "niche" "content-provider" called Salon, others are able to hear my comments, echo them, or shout them down. I much prefer this to getting my news from Brian Williams and Katie Couric, or from roundtable discussions on NewsHour with approved commentators like Sunstein.
If you're "deeply concerned" about the blogosphere, you're "deply concerned" about the idea of a truly democratic marketplace of ideas. We liberals need to hone our rhetoric, and we need to gain more skill at holding our elected representatives to task. Our problem is not that we haven't given the conservative movement a fair hearing.
Maybe a better way to look at the difference between Fox News and NPR is to say that Fox viewers take unfortunate pride in their biases and NPR viewers take false pride in not being biased.
Here are some of the subjects that NPR approaches, quite openly, with a chosen view: immigration (anti-immigrant advocates are villified and described as being automatically prejudiced and out of the mainstream; illegal immigrants are depicted only as the victimized and virtuous, and difficult subjects like the real cost of providing healthcare, education and social services to illegals is often simply ignored); crime (all incidents designated "hate crime" are valorized as serious, important events and those who criticize the concept of hate crime laws are silenced, as NPR has actively participated in promoting these laws in the states; other crime is, in sharp contrast, minimized, and fear of non-"hate crime" is routinely depicted as prejudice or hysteria); punishment (NPR takes a consistent stand against incarceration in general, reporting in a very one-sided way on issues like three-strikes, minimum sentencing, and the death penalty); affirmative action (as with immigration, reporting is positive regarding pro-AA catchphrases like "the value of campus diversity," and often downright misleading regarding the material outcome of ending preferences). Need I list more issues dear to the liberal's heart?
NPR does great work in the hard sciences, I'll admit, and despite all those dollars from Dow. And they try to be fair, or at least inclusive, regarding religion and elections, perhaps because it's easy to see the ideological divides there -- one segment for each candidate, one show for each religious holiday, etc. But when they wander into the social sciences, or, everything else in the news, their version of norms, research and outcomes is often pretty representationally and ideologically skewed, and many points of view are automatically excised from their coverage. That's bias, albeit more sophisticated than some guy just shouting "fair and balanced."
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"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
