Why The Right Doesn’t Get It
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Discussing yet another international poll showing a dim view of America, conservative Rob Port observes:
all this anti-Americanism is media driven anyway
While it’s a classic conservative Republican response to the issue, it also illustrates everything wrong with the right. So convinced are they of their own dogma, and surrounded by media outlets that parrot that dogma right back at them, that anything that deviates from it just has to be considered the enemy. It’s just not easy for Port and others like him to take an honest consideration of why we’re in such low regard since the Bush presidency and the resulting disasters both in foreign and domestic policy. The idea that George Bush just isn’t a good president is so alien to his cultish programming, that it’s got to be something else that’s at fault here. So it’s no longer the policy that’s to blame, or the incompetent implementers of the policy – but the way in which the press reports on the policy that’s to blame.
If I were to apply this same logic to other venues, clearly the press is to blame for the Redskins having yet another lackluster season. The players did fine, the media just reported that they lost eleven games in a brazen act of treachery.
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Aw c’mon Oliver. Our failed invasion of another country had nothing to do with it. It’s the media’s fault we’re so poorly regarded in the world.
Because, you know, everybody in the whole wide world gets CBS.
Credit where credit is due. The media has been increasingly unwilling to regularly inflate Castro’s lungs.
Memo to: “pull – a – quote” (AKA Oliver)
Which sounds simplistic, but it’s true. After the pounding the world’s citizens have gotten from the media about Bush being an arrogant war aggressor (among other things) should we really expect them to feel any differently? Especially given that most of them (including Americans) don’t get information about our President and his policies from anywhere but the biased media?
Lets put it this way. Put me in charge of the media and I’ll make Bush a great president, loved around the world. I think a lot of it is media. Some of it is envy. Some ignorance. Some fact.
Love how conservatives believe the media is a monolithic presence worldwide. In every country. No wonder you people lost Iraq. People like Dugger were in charge of it.
dr AGH has a good point. I mean, most folks living in third world mud huts try to get their information from primary sources…they like to show up at white house press conferences, or sit around at the coffee house and look at the blogs to see what is REALLY going on.
the silly “media monolith” is just another republican canard…. /sarcasm
It may surprise you that many nations actually have their own media, Pedro. So many that it actually makes no sense to argue that the “world’s citizens” have “been pounded” by anything. It’s utterly meaningless.
The idea that know-nothings like you, Dugger, and Frank are in any position to IDENTIFY the worlds’ various media outlets, much less ASSESS them, is hilarious.
If you differ, then break it down in a given country or region. How about Latin America? Care to try, Pedro? How did media elites turn the Peruvian public against Bush? What media outlets in Latin America are most responsible for conservatives’ claims of “pounding” and “bias”?
Fanatics like Rob believe in the “liberal media bias” in the same way Catholics believe in transubstantiation. It is a matter of blind faith, not reason.
This is too funny.
Frank accusses Oliver of selectively quoting Port only to pull a quote himself that confirms Oliver’s reading of Port as entirely accurate.
Dugger simply reasserts Port’s claim adding that he hiimself would use the US media for blatantly partisan and propagandistic purposes as if the media now was actually run by one person.
Pedro simply suggests that the rest of the world is simply too poor and stupid to understand the complex forces shaping their everyday lives.
Put em all together and you have absolute proof of Oliver’s argument in a nutshell: The right just doesn’t get it.
Why did we lose the support of the Japanese? Media did it.
Why did we lose the support of eastern europeans? Media did it.
Why did we lose the support of the Indians? Media did it.
Brazil? Media there, too.
Reality, on the other hand? They KNOW that had nothing to do with it.
Frameone, as usual, misinterprets what people have said, and then berates them for it…
I was merely pointing out that it wasn’t as simple as saying “the media did it.”
(As if people pick up a newspaper on Monday, and hate America on Tuesday.)
And thanks for getting through a paragraph without calling someone an idiot.
My point is my belief that one can control a large portion of public opinion if one controls the media. hence, IF I were media God, I could make George Bush popualr – worldwide. Now my conclusion is that about 2/3s of teh media is tilted leftward and hates George Bush and thaat the going in positon of that 2/3s is that george Bush is an evil idiot. Threefore, their reporting and analysis, even if they tried to be impartial and open minded, will inevitably be greatly skewed against Bush and Rs etc.
But I certainly acknowledge that I cannnot prove that point – as you could not prove to me the media is unbiased.
Put me in charge of the media and I’ll make Bush a great president
Only if you lie. All the ‘liberal media’ has to do to get Bush hated around the world is tell the truth.
This crucial distinction is what our right-wing brethren just don’t get.
What really gets me about all this constant whining about “Liberal Media Bias Waaaaaaaa”…
…look, it’s one thing to complain that everyone’s against you when they’re not, but when they’re demonstrably bending over backwards to please you it goes from simple chronic paranoia to serious mental illness.
“Now my conclusion is that about 2/3s of teh media is tilted leftward and hates George Bush” — quite a laugh line, especially since Dugger’s making claims about the WORLDWIDE media. That means every television network, newspaper, and radio station in every country in the world — Dugger’s not only aware of it, he’s made general quantifiable conclusions about it.
More masturbation in la-la land from the people whose self-glorifying fantasies brought us the Iraq war. The right really doesn’t get it.
I think a lot of it is media. Some of it is envy. Some ignorance. Some fact.
Job performance in the white house has absolutely nothing at all to do with that, right?
Put me in charge of the media and I’ll make Bush a great president
Thank you, William Randolph Hearst.
Let the record show that Frank was the first one here to use the word “idiot”.
And let me be the first to use the term “willfully pig-ignorant, immoral self-glorifying masturbator.” That one’s directed at Dugger, mainly.
It may surprise you that many nations actually have their own media, Pedro. So many that it actually makes no sense to argue that the “world’s citizens” have “been pounded” by anything. It’s utterly meaningless.
The idea that know-nothings like you, Dugger, and Frank are in any position to IDENTIFY the worlds’ various media outlets, much less ASSESS them, is hilarious.
Dr AGH it would be fun to have this conversation with Charles Johnson, or Ace of Spades. Until the dan rather “story” (oh, and it was a story…!) was run down, the press had it everywhere. Currently the AP continues to “stand by” its story that 6 people were immolated, and multiple mosques were burned down when in fact, Michelle Malkin just took pictures of them last week, and the morgue that the bodies were “viewed” in doesn’t exist.
Unfortunately, the medias of various countries use the same crappy, biased news services as the MSM here in the states,ergo, bias world-wide.
Oh, well, if Michelle Malkin says it, it must be true.
Oh, wait…
Ok how about date-stamped photos from the US military?
Or do you just mutter “oh poo-poo, it doesn’t exist” whenever hard evidence is dropped in front of your face?
Do you think the George Soros might be behind it, Pedro? Back in reality, foreign countries have their own correspondents right here in the United States., and do not rely on the AP for their views of us, which is the topic under discussion.
As for Iraq, foreign correspondents are present. If you think any given country is relying on false information, that has to be demonstrated. Does the Russian media rely on the AP? The Japanese? If so, show that it does. And if the AP is “biased,” you’ve failed to prove it. All you’ve done is post speculation and cast doubt on a single story. The overall story, however, that Bush lost Iraq, is all-too accurate, sadly for us all, and for the half-million dead Iraqis.
Pedros right, the witness Jamil Hussein who the AP quotes as saying those mosques had been destroyed was incorrect, as they had only been subject to small-arms weaponry and firebombs to damage them. After spending weeks trying to unsuccessfully prove that Jamil Hussein does not in fact exist, she has gone and proven that the extent of the physical to the buildings he mentions in this specific part of his interview is somewhat exaggerated, and that when he described those buildings as “torched,” “burned and [blown] up,” and “destroyed,” that he should have described them as merely “torched,” and “burned and [blown] up.”
The Associated Press’s failure to investigate every of Jamil’s claims to such a degree that they’d expose a single word he had used as being possibly an exageration just goes to show how far the gay-jew-run librul media will go to pretend that things are not going well in Iraq.
On another note, who the hell let Pedro out of his cage?
yea rex, except that “somewhat exaggerated” information is used by lefties like OW to headline “conservatives are always dumb-dums” or something like that.
A story about 6 people being immolated in front of Iraqi troops…didn’t actually happen, and that is what you lefties consider “somewhat exaggerated?”
And Dr agh…it has been demonstrated again and again that the american left has a stranglehold on the major part of the US media. 80%+ liberals in the media itself.
600 something insurgents captured in Sadr City today…is that on the front page of the NYT? Do you think the world would think things are going better if the lede was “20 insurgents dead” instead of “Helicopter crashes in Iraq”?
Oh, and thanks for those corroborating links, Pedro, that really cleared things up.
Oh and I expect that Ollie will quickly tire of me “speaking truth to power” here, figure on him crushing dissent in a week or two.
Should I stop posting now OW?
“it has been demonstrated again and again that the american left has a stranglehold on the major part of the US media. 80%+ liberals in the media itself.”
Untrue. Further, demonstration of liberal bias would require something other that what you’ve purported to show. Further, you’ve yet to back up your statements about the “world media,” whatever that is.
Finally, you don’t speak truth to anyone, Pedro; you’re just masturbating.
Truth to power? Is that what you’re doing? I thought you were just wasting billable hours on an obscure left-wing blog.
Even if the “80%+ of the media is liberal” canard turns out to be the gospel truth, all it proves is that people whose career involves (humor me) looking at the world and seeking the truth tend to lean to the left. I’m OK with that, just as I’d be OK if it were proven that 80%+ of CEOs (whose career is driven by $$$$$ and little else) lean to the right.
I’m not obscure!
That’s true, sorry about that, Ollie.
Oh, you know what I mean!!
Put me in charge of the media and I’ll elect Denny Kucinich.
Is it a conspiracy that 9/10s of the wildebeest herd crosses ‘Crocodile River’ at the same point. No. they think alike and act alike and follow the leaders.
“Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are ‘conservative positions.’…”
“The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war….It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy….It remains fixated on the unemployment rate….”
“The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race….On the strength of all the negative coverage of the President and all his own positive coverage, Senator Kerry heads into today’s twin primaries on a roll. “
— From the February 10 edition of ABCNews.com’s “The Note,” a daily political memo assembled by ABC News political director Mark Halperin and his staff.
A story about 6 people being immolated in front of Iraqi troops…didn’t actually happen, and that is what you lefties consider “somewhat exaggerated?”
No, “somewhat exaggerated” refers to how the 4 mosques that were hit with bullets and firebombs are not as “destroyed” as the AP quoted one source as saying they were. As far as the 6 dead people, I have to concede that I cant demonstrate their existence any better than you can demonstrate their non-existence. However, given how mind-blowingly wrong Malkin was about Jamil Hussein not even existing at all, and how much her career depends on the pretense of teh lubrul media being teh biased omgwtfbbqxorz!!!11!, I’m not really going to give her words too much weight at the moment.
Oh, and yes, you should stop posting. You should never have started back up again, we were all happier without you. Tell you what, you were kicked out before for, what was it again, think you accused Nimrod of being a pedophiliac rapist or something? Why not accuse me of the same right now. Seriously, put us all out of your misery, and say I rape babies so we can be rid of you again.
From the February 10 edition of ABCNews.com’s “The Note,” a daily political memo assembled by ABC News political director Mark Halperin and his staff.
just for the record, what year is that from? It is still January here in the northeast.
Also, that sounded pretty well biased to the right if you ask me. Shorter Mark Halperin: “We’re not showing the President enough Man-Love!”
…what was it again, think you accused Nimrod of being a pedophiliac rapist or something..
Wow, I missed that. Pedro, you really have no boundaries, do you?
Is it a conspiracy that 9/10s of the wildebeest herd crosses ‘Crocodile River’ at the same point. No. they think alike and act alike and follow the leaders.
That’s a new one. I have never heard the MSM compared to a herd of wildebeests before. Hilariously wrong, however. They cross the river at the same place because A) their mommies took them there when they were young and B) it is the shortest distance across and thus makes the most sense. So if the media takes a look at the hubris coming out of this administration and a majority of them all say WTF?, it still isn’t a conspiracy. It’s reality.
Bluto: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!!”
Otter:”Germans?”
The other guy whose name escapes me:”Forget it, he’s on a roll.”
“Is it a conspiracy that 9/10s of the wildebeest herd crosses ‘Crocodile River’ at the same point?”
I’ll bet it looks that way to the crocodiles.
especially to the crocodiles down river who refuse to move to where the wildebeests are.
The washington elite consensus is a) liberal on social issues, except for abortion; b) conservative on economic issues, especially when it comes to complicated topics on which they’re easily spun like privatizing Social Security; c)hawkish on defense.
That doesn’t add up to liberal, Pedro. It adds up to McCain, Lieberman, and Hagel — hey what a coincidence! Those guys are on Meet the Press EVERY SINGLE WEEK OF THE YEAR!
“Wow, I missed that. Pedro, you really have no boundaries, do you?”
Ahhh the liberal blogosphere….don’t bother with the truth…just spit stuff out, don’t worry they’ll believe you! LOL…
And Rex, if I were throwing down weak-ass arguments like yours, and would want me gone too. The mental midgets here get a wee bit defensive when the echo chamber isn’t behind them all the way….by your logic Rex, if the AP reports that space aliens have landed at the Quicky-Mart on route 2, it is up to me to disprove it.
Oh, and Duros, I believe the name you are looking for is “Boone”
Ahhh the liberal blogosphere….don’t bother with the truth…just spit stuff out, don’t worry they’ll believe you! LOL…
Alright pedro, I just took the time to look it up, and true enough, about a month ago in a discussion about McCain wanting internet regulations, you accused Diamond LeGrande of being a child pornographer for what seems to be the purpose of scoring a political point through accusing your opposition of sex crimes. Eat Frank’s dick, Pedro.
by your logic Rex, if the AP reports that space aliens have landed at the Quicky-Mart on route 2, it is up to me to disprove it.
Like all your disjointed arguments this is meaningless and follows from nothing. I’m making the point that the AP’s actions in this specific case may point more to their limitations in a war zone and perhaps even general laziness rather than teh librul bias, and you cant even pretend to be stupid enough not to see that. Your example doesnt apply, not even remotely, to the actual situation here. However, if the AP reported that one witness claims to have seen aliens eating at a White Castle in an area with alot of different fast food restaurants and mant burger-hungry aliens, an area where, since I clearly have to spell sense out for you, the claim of aliens at the white castle cannot sanely be automatically dismissed, then yes, it would kind of be upon you to prove it never happened, especially after how you claim for a month that the guy who reported the story to the AP never existed, and it turns out he is in fact the local cheif of police. Your’s is the credibility that needs to be built, not the APs here.
“I was merely pointing out that it wasn’t as simple as saying ‘the media did it.’ ”
Frank, once again proving himself to be the supidest fucking person on the internets.
From Port’s post:
Port aserts that Bush’s poor ratings are all the media’s fault then suggests that even though this sounds simplistic, it’s true.
In other words, Port wasn’t saying the media plays a role in a complicated network of causes. He was saying “The Media did it.” Period.
God, you’re an idiot.
What an idiot.
Hey, there’s two for you, Frank,
– just trying to catch up. Thanks for point out I was one behind.
“IF I were media God, I could make George Bush popualr – worldwide.”
Isee what you mean. Bush could be killing kittens on the front lawn of the White House while ordering the slaughter of first borns around the globe but with the right press coverage, everyone would love the guy.
You guys are idiots.
Put me in charge of the media and I’ll elect Denny Kucinich.
Okay, Dugger, I call. Let’s forget about Kucinich and go back to your original claim about Bush. Imagine that you, Dugger, are in charge of all media the world over, and your aim is to make President Bush the most beloved American ever. What do you run in your news outlets in the first few days of your media czarship?
Let’s see how far you can go without a) lying or b) avoiding the mention of something that any rational person would consider news.
It wasn’t me, it was Diamond leGrande:
http://www.oliverwillis.com/2006/12/john_mccain_wan.html#comments
It’s great having the archives up, we’ve got Frank insisting both before and after the midterms that the Democrats wouldn’t win, and then saying that not only will Barack Obama NOT run in 2008, but Hilary Rodham Clinton might not either.
frame
Of course, Big Dugger Media would not consider Bush’s kitten slaughter newsworthy. We would have to do a human interest story on a small Iowa business driven to bankruptcy by high taxes: the weeping mother, the weeping daughter, the tired haggard father. All because of heartless Democrats. We would also have an expert academician (Dugger certified) on telling us about deep seated perceptions that Democrats hate brown people since they oppose the Iraq war. And Jimmy Carter’s anti-semitism. Man we would get into that. Carter pictured against a background of Auschwitz. ” Of course we’re not saying the ex southern Baptist president who has made enemies of many Jews wants to murder millions of Jews but we note the concern about his increasing anti-semitism (technically correct – but fair?).
Yeah, put me in charge. I’d have Europe loving W and hating the Dems.
So, just ignore the kitten slaughter in the Rose Garden, then? Good plan.
Nimrod & rex: thanks for that link. Putting aside the irony of Pedro getting banned for a month in a dsicussion about censorship on the internets, I stand by what I said. Pedro, you have no boundaries.
Not the first time, either.
I’d have Europe loving W and hating the Dems.
Oh. It’s just about Europe now.
Caution: Please stand clear of goalposts while in motion.
Now you’re talking about suppressing the news. not exactly a free press in Duggernaut, I guess.
Or is that Asshatistan?
frameone: That’s three now,you dumbass. Boy, did we miss your input.
Don’t you have a movie to trash or something?
Yeah, put me in charge. I’d have Europe loving W and hating the Dems.
Sorry, Dugger, you lose. If you knew anything about Europe you’d know that even as things are, most Europeans consider what you call the ‘liberal media’ in the US to be lying shills for conservative corporate interests. The transparent propaganda you want to put out on DuggerMedia would only convince them that the pretense of objectivity has been abandoned.
The trouble with your Orwellian fantasy, is that no one person can control information these days. People have e-mail, you-tube, cell phones. You can put all the smily-faced stories you want on DuggerTV, but the people whose loved ones are coming home in body bags are eventually gonna compare notes, and the jig will be up.
As a liberal, I don’t want to control all the media, I just want the media to get out the truth. What’s public knowledge already is enough to make anyone with a conscience despise our current leadership.
Yea rex like all leftists you remain honesty “challenged” even when you have the data in front of your face….
“lright pedro, I just took the time to look it up, and true enough, about a month ago in a discussion about McCain wanting internet regulations, you accused Diamond LeGrande of being a child pornographer for what seems to be the purpose of scoring a political point through accusing your opposition of sex crimes. Eat Frank’s dick, Pedro.”
you see, when there is an “are you….” followed by a question mark…we refer to that as a “question”, not an accusation. Particularly taken in context…
Well, there you go, I’ve gone an done it….Count down to banning….4,3,2……
Holy God, Pedro, why do you think this is anything like a good idea?
“Yeah, put me in charge. I’d have Europe loving W and hating the Dems.”
Dugger, I agree the media wields huge influence over opinions, but what you and pedro are both suggesting is that people are so fucking stupid they can’t tell the difference between media propaganda and what’s happening to them on a daily basis.
No amount of propaganda is going to convince any Iraqi living in Baghdad that it’s safe to go to the market.
No amount of propaganda is going to convince anyone in Darfur that anyone anywhere gives a fuck about what is happening to them.
If the world has a problem with Bush it’s because they see a discrepancy between what he says and what he does. The media is not alone in creating that impression, forgetting for a moment that the media is not biased to the left. People experience it in their daily lives, especially in places like Afghanistan and Iraq where BUsh’s policies have a direct impact on the lives of people there.
Let’s take yourself for example. If the left wing media is so fucking effective at brainwashing people into hating Bush, how can we account for you or pedro or frank for that matter? Are you, and other conservatives, the only ones capable of resisting the powerful spell of the left wing media?
Gee, how self-aggrandizing your are.
“Boy, did we miss your input.”
Yes, Frank, please continue to ignore the fact that your spin on Port’s opinion had zero basis in fact.
Pedro, you must be aware of the concept of rhetorical questions because you obviously used one there. You didnt ask Diamond that question to ascertain, for educational purposes, whether or not he molests children, you asked to suggest that he does. Te same way if I were to ask something like “tell me pedro, how much cock do you eat in a day?” I’m not asking because I’m doing a penis-consumption survey, I’m ‘asking’ just to be able to say that you eat dick. There is no context where my ‘question’ is not an accusation. But you know that, and hide behind your belief that youre smarter than everyone to justify holding the idea that you were banned for “speaking the truth!” and shit. Go away pedro. Go far, far away and never darken the doorstep of any thinking person again.
Oh, ok rex…sorry.
Oh, and by the way…the answer to your simple question is : None. And except for the lefties out there, who always seem to be able to determine motive without a shred of evidence, WHY I asked the question can not be ascertained by looking at the question in a vacuum…and it also remains ancient history.
And rex, thanks for qualifying your demands, cause when you putting “thinking person” in there, you really narrow the field around here….
Thats good, pedro, thats very good improvement. Youve gone from your baselessly offensive claiming people as child molesters to a pathetically impotent ‘stupid’ joke. Youre gradually becoming a real boy, and we’re all so proud of you.
In the interest of exposing this travesty of our shared “ancient history” then, tell me, were you actually asking Diamond if he were a child pornographer purely in the interest of speculative inquiry? You were what, writing a report and doing research?
fd10801 | Jan 23, 2007 5:39:51 PM
“frameone: That’s three now,you dumbass. Boy, did we miss your input. Don’t you have a movie to trash or something?”
You’re foaming at the mouth, old man.
Hey, “s”, isn’t the first anniversary of your never having posted a comment coming up soon?
Or did I miss it?
When you’re 12 years old, all adults seem to be “old men.”
Old men pose for tranny-attracting pictures to post on the internet dressed in pajamas, looking stunned, clutching a drink with a half eaten bag of chips next to their elbow. YUM!
pedromd07 | Jan 23, 2007 8:54:50 PM
“cause when you putting “thinking person” in there, you really narrow the field around here….”
This from a “doctor” banned for the last month for implying someone else is a child molester.
A variation on the “not one provable lie” thing, wherein all arguments against Pedro require some form of telepathy.
Doesn’t apply to him, of course.
“s” — are you keeping a file on em?
Is that picture posted on the wall next to Brad Pitt?
You do have a crush on me, don’t you?
hey frame and duros,
I didn’t say I wanted to do it. I said I could do it (if media God). I would prefer a free and open media with a governing ethic of reporting facts and impartiality. And its not a matter of, necessarily, smarts. You can be no smarter than the raw data you have to deal with. And if certain types of raw data are excluded from presentation – you will not be able to consider that data, obviously. If I don’t know a tree fell in the forest if, I certainly would not be worrying about the cause of its falling.
And the point also is that we do have free media today and it is possible to get both sides of a story, but that doesn’t mean the majority (I believe about 2/3s of the media is skewed to the left) of that picture isn’t dominated by the left.
Wilbur, Doesn’t bother me an iota that Eupopeans consider our media right wing.
I don’t buyin to European judgement being superior. I seem to remember the Europeans found a way to accommodate the Nazis and then the commies and only the bad ol’ cowboys from the Newnited States bailed their latte sipping, cigarette-smokin butts out.
Duggs
I don’t think you could. Most people (MOST people) can smell bullshit.
If I don’t know a tree fell in the forest if, I certainly would not be worrying about the cause of its falling
Hey, how did all these dead kittens get out here on the South Lawn?
Dugs, you keep overlooking the fact that for all their power, the media can’t convince people to ignore the reality of their own lives.
The media does indeed distract people from the reality of their own lives with endless pap and bullshit about celebrity divorces and American Idol.
But when the media does report on issues of importance that impact people around the globe, most of those people effected by those issues will know when they’re being fed a line of bullshit.
Look at Nazi Germany, as classic an example of modern state controlled media as they come. No one could say that Goebells didn’t get Hitler’s message out while, at the same time, doing his best at distracting Germans from their daily lives with endless amounts of puff and pap (his model for the Nazi film industry was Hollywood, afterall).
But for all his efforts, average Germans still knew they were being fed buckets of shit. Tragically, they either couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything serious about it. From the link:
The point being that if so much of what the so-called liberal media was saying about Bush contradicted what people here and in other countries understand about US policies based on their own personal experiences of them in their own lives, you’d get a different result in the polls.
And let me add, that the same so-called liberal media was at work when Bush’s domestic poll numbers were high. Are you suggesting that at some point since 9-11 the media radically changed its reporting of Bush’s policies to exclude all positive news? That’s what you believe?
No, it’s just that the inherent greatness of President Bush briefly managed to break through the treacherous clouds lowered by the devious Media.
frame
OK, I agree that at some point people will (stubbornly?) resist a medium message that does not correspond with their personal reality (“Bush says the economy is good but we’re having trouble making ends meet”). The problem is that portion of the world and events therein that are outside their personal area of observation/experience and for which they have rely on others for knowledge. Like Iraq or national health care. Re your Germany example, evidently enough people bought into the message – the image to sustain Hitler for a long time. But totalitarian states aren’t the best example. They’ll just murder or clap non-party-line media persons in jail. More important in a free society where we want our populace to be truly smart and independent and thereby, theretically, give us good govrenemnt (maybe limited government).
When you and duros etc poo poo liberal media bias, I hope you understand others don’t see the world the way you do and have had very different life experiences. Its quite possible for several intelligent, honest people to have completely different but logical opinions on many things – including bias.
Hey, Dugger, there was this one country that didn’t get invaded by the Nazis and is thought to have also contributed a great deal to their eventual defeat.
“Like Iraq or national health care.”
Yes, health care falls outside my realm of personal experience. Jesus keerist.
And as for Iraq, there is an obvious cognitive dissonance between what the Bush administration itself is saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there. If the Iraqis are starting to take the lead, why do we need to send more troops? If the Iraqis haven’t taken the lead up until now, how will 20,000 more US troops suddenly allow them to step up?
And Dugs, I don’t see a left wing bias in the media, if anything I see a right wing bias. But let me ask you this: Did the media have a left wing bias when Bush’s poll numbers were soaring just after 9-11?
And if the media was then as it is now, how do you account for the serious erosion of Bush’s popularity and support for his policies? Was it the constant drumbeat of left wing bias or the consistent failure and incompetence of Bush’s policymaking?
Which answer sounds more plausible: A vast, unspoken media conspiracy to undermine a sitting president or a genuine popular response to expectations gone unfillfilled?
Nimrod must be referring to Switzerland….
Nimmer,
I love your country. Maggie Thatcher is one of my all time heroines. And Blair ain’t bad. But lets not forget umbrella man, “peace in our times” and the Oxford Union declaration earlier.
frame,
I do not see any sort of national conspiracy – no more than a wild mob trying to lynch somebody is a conspiracy (there’s probablya better desciptor). Of course, there are times when the media is less or more biased. While there is bias, strong bias IMO, the media still are a collection of independent -mostly baised- entitities who still might react diffrently at diffrent times. My case is that the media is predominately – not totally- biased. You will always (I hope) be able to point out individual contra indications to my conclusion.
And health care as a national issue -the costs, ramifications and impacts- do fall outside of most people’s areas of expertise.
Maggie Thatcher is one of my all time heroines.
Why am I not surprised?
no more than a wild mob trying to lynch somebody is a conspiracy
No, actually, I think that is a conspiracy.
‘wild’, duros
And?
“And health care as a national issue -the costs, ramifications and impacts- do fall outside of most people’s areas of expertise.”
Um, expertise and experience are two different things. As I personally experience the health insurance system in this country, it sucks. All the rosy media reports in the world ain’t going to change that.
frame
So you think the health care system sucks. Why not do your own health care? Why should a doctor who goes to school forever and does hard work 24/7 thereafter, be forced via a government gun to give away his service to you?
“Cool’ Libertarian Dugger
“Why not do your own health care?”
Okay. You’re an idiot. Nice talking with you …
Yeah, darn that Oxford Union and its free speech. And darn that Neville Chamberlain and his genuinely tragic inability to see that his determination not to let the single worst war in history be repeated wasn’t shared by Hitler. And I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about with the Umbrella Man. Either you mean the Roald Dahl story I never read, or the JFK assassination, which we had nothing to do with.
And yay Thatcher! Sure, she left the country in ruins spiritually and culturally, but that’s what we want, because we’re on the right wing and we’re sociopaths!
And who needs health care! Why should Doctor who spent years at university training in medicine, be asked to actually heal people without also taking their money at the same time? This is America! Essential services, schmessential services, you get sick, you pay for it. It’s your own fault anyway.
frame and Nimmer
You don’t get it. One has to work very hard, spend a lot of money and sacrifice a lot of his life to become a doctor. It is something you attain. Do you nimmer or frame have a ‘right’ to that doctors toil and sweat? Just take it away from him? Have the government point a gun at him and say: go provide service to nimmer or frame or we will put you in jail. What do you give up in return that is worth as much? Movie reviews or Internet posts?
Nimmer
BTW, umbrella man was a nickname for Chamberlain.
Jesus christ Dugger. Yes, the reason the health care system is fucked up is because poor people don’t want doctors to earn a living. Are you that fucking stupid? Oh wait … of course you are.
frame
Come on. Why do you (or I) have a right to a Dr’s hard earned toil. What does he/she have a right to that you own?