Former BBC producer Anthony Jay has a pamphlet out about the culture of the Beeb; an excerpt appeared in the Telegraph.
It applies as well to things here in the states – both to the media groupthink and to the overall pattern of thought in the prog-blog community as well.
Jay says:
I think I am beginning to see the answer to a question that has puzzled me for the past 40 years. The question is simple – much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of what are called the chattering classes? They are that minority characterized (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form found in the Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, show business and BBC News and Current Affairs, who constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus – though the word “liberal” would have Adam Smith rotating at maximum velocity in his grave. Let’s call it “media liberalism”.
He goes on –
We belonged instead to a dispersed ”metropolitan-media-arts-graduate” tribe. We met over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner to reinforce our views on the evils of apartheid, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment, the British Empire, big business, advertising, public relations, the Royal Family, the defense budget – it’s a wonder we ever got home. We so rarely encountered any coherent opposing arguments that we took our group-think as the views of all right-thinking people.
The second factor which shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run, and yet with no involvement in the process or power to do anything about it. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, yet having good arts degrees from reputable universities, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge. We ignored the tedious practicalities of getting institutions to adopt and implement ideas.
This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world. We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. Some people called us arrogant; looking back, I am afraid I cannot dispute the epithet.
A while ago, I wrote my own take on it:
But when I read much of what comes from the left, I’m left with the feeling that they want to consume the benefits that come from living in the U.S. and more generally the West without either doing the messy work involved or, more seriously, taking on the moral responsibility for the life they enjoy.
I haven’t seen much to change my mind…
I would further than the BBC Producer.
The interests of the elite are DIRECTLY COUNTER to that of the ordinary person. You can see this most directly by the membership of those in the various “activist groups.
For example, look at the Peace Movement. Entirely run by women, with almost no men, and upper-class women at that. If you came in from Tau Ceti, and looked only at the Peace Movement, you’d think middle aged white women were being blown to bits in Baghdad. While young men took their ease.
Obvious what is tremendously threatening in an all-volunteer military is the prospect of sharing political, social, and cultural power with young men who put their lives and bodies on the line. We can’t have that.
Look at the Green Movement. It’s all about expressing the elite contempt for the average person and attempting to control every bit of their lives. Down to how many squares of toilet paper they use. Obviously Greens don’t believe for a moment their own theories, as they’d give up their private jet travel, massive caravans of semis for concerts, mega-mansions, and the like. Al Gore’s 25K electric bill per month is proof positive he doesn’t believe in what he preaches: it’s merely the means for him to control Joe Average.
What we have is a parasitic elite that has nothing but contempt for the people, coupled with deep rooted fear of sharing power with them. Of course their default position is against the people and the institutions and organizations that exist to protect the people: the police, the army, patriotism, and so on. It’s moreover an elite that can only exist in a very socially stratified and hierarchical world, where the masses of the people are desperately poor and ill-educated (hence the elite preference for as many illegal aliens as possible) and the hereditary few are the nobility (as in Latin America their social model).
I call it “intellectual laziness”.
It’s much easier to avoid trying to think of practical solution to real world problems, and just assume that there must be an easy solution and that everyone else is simply stupid or evil for not thinking of it.
To be honest I think people who behave like this do the world a disservice. They make it harder to solve the real problems by constantly distracting us from them onto problems that are, in the grand scheme of things, rather trivial.
Agreed Nicholas.
I’ll also take issue with Jay’s assertion that the metropolitan liberal media elite care about individuals. They certainly don’t.
When confronted with honor killings in Britain, they excuse it and ask for no prosecutions “it’s their culture.”
When confronted with Islamism, Islamic supremacy and hatred for Christians and Jews in British Mosques, the liberals excuse it and say people must tolerate it.
When confronted with fatwas and death sentences and killings of Rushdie’s publishers and translators, the liberals excuse it, justify it, and say Rushdie deserves it (for insulting Islam).
When confronted with death threats and murders over Danish cartoons, well see above. Liberals are fine with and excuse this behavior.
When confronted with Islamic terrorism, Liberals can’t even say the words Islam or Muslim.
When Muslims object, Liberals outlaw teaching the Holocaust in schools.
When working class white children don’t want to participate in group projects where they are excluded (because the other children don’t speak English) the working class white children are arrested by Liberals. And lectured by Liberals. And convicted by Liberals. Imagine! Not wanting to be excluded by basis of language in your own country! The nerve!
The conclusion: Jay is demonstrably wrong in saying Liberals reacted to too much authority by championing too much individualism. That’s laughable. At every turn Liberals have sought to seize power and wield it by absolutes. The most monarchical of the Bourbons could not have done better.
200 years ago, the British left-elite loved Napoleon. It didn’t matter that Napoleon had plunged Europe into decades of continent-wide war, or that their own country stood alone as his constant opponent. The more the common people hated and feared Boney, and the more people like Wellington and Castlereagh opposed him, the more they loved him. The more blood he spilled, the more they loved him.
Henry Hazlitt said, “It depends on whether you believe people were born to be free, or born to be slaves.” If you believed in “freedom”, you were for Napoleon – QED. It didn’t matter that Napoleon didn’t bring freedom to Russia and Spain, just devastation and looting armies. What Napoleon claimed to symbolize was more important than what he was.
“This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world …Some people called us arrogant; looking back, I am afraid I cannot dispute the epithet. ”
Does this ring any bells among those who supported the Iraq war?
No. Should it?
I never said it would be easy. Just that it was the right thing to do.
But, there are a lot of right things to do. Stop genocide in Darfur. Stop fighting over Israel. Get rid of warlords in Africa so the people can get proper access to food and medical services. Free the North Koreans. Get aid to people hit by earthquakes/tsunamis/famines/etc. We can’t do everything, all the time. We have to choose. Was it a wise choice? I don’t know. Did it need to be done? Yes. Is it too late to go back? Yes.
I didn’t decide to invade Iraq but now that it’s done I’m going to support our guys to get the job done, because it’s a job that needs to be done, with potentially very positive benefits if they do it right.
John, I specifically said it would be hard, and that the biggest problem we’d have would be having the bottom to stick it out. And I’ve been continually critical of Bush for not making the case for the war and for his strategy.
So what, exactly, am I supposed to be remorseful over?
A.L.
This is one of those cases where you really want to read the whole thing. It’s worth it.
I would add to the four factors multiculturalism, which is a great destroyer of trust and solidarity.
But that’s been one of my biggest gripes. The realization that for us to have any type of success in Iraq, certain requirements must be met both by the US and by the Iraqis.
Then, when pointed out that there’s no way either the administration, or the Iraqis will be willing to meet those requirements, it’s decided that we still have to continue trudging along.
To me at least, it’s an incredibly dishonest position to hold.
Davebo, re trudging along. I’m gonna write probably too many words about that:
Well, as you summarize it, it’s not necessarily dishonest, it’s at least dysfunctional. Which is a popular opinion of the overall situation, if putting it mildly.
One of the problems is that humans can play p*ker, and they can play ch*ss ( 🙂 ), and that makes them think they can solve problems or end things — but this situation is orders of magnitude harder than that because of the number of “players”, the dificulty in determining the moves, the positions, their values, and the likely duration of the “game” and difficulty in determining its “conclusion”.
Dynasties are built to handle problems that span generations — keeping the crops watered in China or along the Nile. Cultures that foment father-to-son hatred are also built to address mutigenerational payback. Those who promote violent jihad have the best of both those worlds.
What have “we” (Western Civ) got to match that? The momentum of commerce? The attraction of affluence? Manifest destiny? Microloans?
I think we need more patience than we are in the habit of cultivating. Patience? If so, which kind? The patience of holding a screaming convulsing crackhead at arm’s length until he get tired, or the patience of slogging through something that might make the Eatern Front of WWII look familiar a few decades later? Or the patience of staying in our house without locking the door ignoring the outside world where the screaming convulsing crackhead will, hopefully, stay? Given globalization, that last is an utter nonstarter.
I just don’t know. I wish it were as easy as saying people were just dishonest about this.
I found more interesting (or, at least saw eye to eye) with a comment he made later in the article:
_It is astonishing how many of the technological inventions of the past century have had the effect of separating us off from the group… Our knowledge of public events and political arguments come direct from the media rather than from a face-to-face group.
I think this observation explains not only the liberal elite, but also the christian elite, the business elite, the sports elite etc. There are so many venues of information out there that people can literally pick and choose which sources they follow. So, understandably, most people choose to follow sources that funnel them into like-minded groups.
Take ESPN for example. What was once considered overkill, (a 24-hour sports network) has sprouted at least 5 24-hour sports stations on my basic-cable package. Each one meets a niche, and expands to enough people that they only need a small minority population to make ends meet. Don’t like getting a broad spectrum of sports news? Try 24-hour local sports news, or NASCAR news, or NFL news. Chances are that you don’t want to associate with tennis people anyway.
Ther are many different kinds of elite here at WOC. I would add that we are also part of another elite…. A political elite. How many of us work in a position outside of politics… who become so frustrated when seeing that day’s news that we complain about it during break, only to see deer-in-headlights stares from co-workers who have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re as seperate from your avg. american as each elite group.
Just my 2 cents.
Re: #9 from Davebo…
This is a good article it you are looking for clues on what George W. Bush might be on about, and how people came to think this way. (And I don’t mean that “looking for clues” in a patronizing way. “What on Earth does George W. Bush think he’s doing?” can be a genuinely puzzling question at times even for very smart people.) (link)
If you assume that George W. Bush means what he says, I think this article shows that his policy is understandable, without necessarily being workable.
George W. Bush:
If that’s what you believe – and you believe, O Lord you believe all the way – then you already have in hand the beginning of the conflict, its true nature and cause (that some countries are as yet not sufficiently democratic) and the ending. Let freedom reign!
Since perfect knowledge is not granted to Man, there is bound to be some mystery some where, perhaps in the middle bit. And indeed that’s where the problem is.
Charles Kesler:
This is why I back off a bit on damning the media.
As I’ve said before, the mainstream media has made it impossible to pressure Saudi Arabia properly to stop spreading jihad, but there’s no point in objecting to that as George W. Bush never had any intention of squeezing the Saudis anyway. Whether the door was open, closed or locked, he was never going though it.
And the mainstream media has misrepresented George W. Bush and the Bush Doctrine in a shallow, paranoid way, attributing to malice and stupidity actions that can and should be attributed to real differences in policy and perspective. But how much have you really lost through that, if when you take the man at his word and give the doctrine as it is (not as it is misrepresented) a fair hearing, it comes out unrealistic and harmful to follow? Of course the Bush Doctrine as glimpsed dimly through a fog of mainstream media lies and distortions could not win support – but it would not have been able to sustain support in the plain light of day either.
And on Iraq, the mainstream media presents things in a consistently biased way, distorted by liberal prejudices and narratives, but that does not mean that the reality must be better than the liberal media presents it. It might be worse, because the liberal filter defining Iraq and Iraqis as our victims excludes the intractable Islamic roots of the fatal hostility and dishonesty we encounter.
Though the mainstream media clock may have stopped with its hands pointing to liberal positions, it may be “time to get out” anyway.
alchemist:
I don’t know what to make of all your elites here. I’m surprised you didn’t include a Professional Wrestling elite.
The business elite you speak of no longer exists, and has not for some time. Big business is no longer owned or operated by patrician families who build art museums with their pocket change and go down with the Titanic.
I don’t know who the Christian elite is, either. Would that be the Catholic bishops, or the rich evangelicals?
If your looking for someone who parallels the parochialism and the contempt for outsiders that the left-liberal elite has, you probably want to look at something like the fashion model industry, or the Branch Davidians.
It’s been a while since I felt that the comments at winds really enhanced the post, but this thread goes a good ways to reaffirming my faith in the rationality of the winds community. I particularly like #12, though I would add that I don’t consider Bush’s theory completely unworkable – simply that as a practical matter the window during which Americans would have been willing to exhert enough effort to make it workable was vanishingly small and Bush not the statemen or the poltician that could have exploited that window. So we ended up with a grand vision that was to be implemented on the cheap. It’s extremely poor project management, but that doesn’t mean that the high level design is necessarily poor. Now, I have some criticisms of the high level design as well, but none of them are inherently fatal. What’s ultimately fatal to the plan is that Americans simply do not percieve a threat (Jim would probably say do not want to percieve a threat) sufficient to justify the expenditure that would be required to implement the project.
For my part, I’d put it in terms of just war theory, and quite arguably come to the conclusion that fundamentally reworking the culture of the middle east would kill more innocent people than could be justified from the benefit at this time. But whether you believe that depends on how you weigh the total benefits of a new political system and the future threat of not altering that political system. One of my criticisms of the high level design of the ‘Bush Doctrine’ is that it is inherently statist in nature, in so much as that it percieves the root causes of the problems in the middle east as a failure of the political system and correspondingly the solution as an inherently political one. This is one of the many reasons that I see Bush as a liberal that happens to be a born again Christian, as that statist view of the problem is not by my reading a Burkean one.
Anyway, great thought provoking thread all around.
Glen: As much as I may be interested in lexicography, I think there has been entirely too much arguing over the meaning of the word ‘elite’ lately. I don’t think he literally meant a small cadre holding disproportionate power. I think alchemist is right to suggest that one of the unanticipated side effects of information globalization is that it is on the other hand easier to find or form your own tiny little village of like-minded people with similar interests and equally narrow horizons. This is in my experience true of, as alchemist suggests, just about everyone. We are all starting to inhabit towers, even if they aren’t ivory ones.
If I tend to think that conservatives tend to inhabit slightly less of an echo chamber, its only that they have not yet completely walled themselves into thier own room. A liberal can easily avoid Rush Limbaugh, but its hard for a conservative to completely avoid the MSM. Let Fox drift a little more conservative in its bias, let the conservatives come up with an answer to Reuters and AFP so that their media doesn’t have to rely on even the same sources as the other media, and I’m sure that tiny difference in obstinant ignorance between the two sides will completely disappear. It’s already a pretty narrow call.
celebrim:
Well, the British are past masters at that, with their hordes of stamp collectors, bird watchers, and train spotters. Not to mention the dreaded British gardening elite. These persons have not previously required any assistance from “information globalization” to survive and reproduce.
I see no reason why the modern surfeit of information should not broaden horizons as much as it narrows them. Obviously the defect lies in the information consumer, not the information itself.
I don’t think this tells you anything about the “media liberalism” (I don’t care for the term) that Jay talks about. As I pointed out earlier, this same “elite” existed 200 years ago and they haven’t changed a bit. And quite unlike train spotters, they want to tell everybody else what to do.
Glen that’s a good point, and it echoes the struggle between the Jacksonians and the Adamses over who would run America: the Westerners and average folk, or the blue blooded aristos of New England.
Now the media folk are intermarried and entwined with the current elite. It’s a new elite, with old line money like Ned Lamont (great grandson of JP Morgan’s partner) mixed with newer arrivals like Barbara Ehrenreich (her son is a PBS exec). Above all like all aristos they want to keep upward mobility at bay and never ever share power.
They’d rather surrender to an agressive enemy piece by piece: Mo-toons, Rushdie, South Park, the fatwa on Evan Almighty and Morgan Freeman (he played God, Muslims are enraged again). Because to fight back would require sharing power.
OF COURSE the English left elite supported Napoleon and hated Wellington. It was ALL ABOUT POWER. Nothing more. The more power Wellington had to fight Bonaparte, the less THEY had.
The Priest vs. the Soldier. Always in conflict. Look at the Peace Movement. Run by middle aged white women who mostly have no kids (at all) and none in the fight. Who lose power to 20 year old Staff Sergeants in War. Notice how the power-threatened women call the soldiers “children” because they are threatened by their sacrifices and bravery.
Davebo: We are in Iraq now. Our soldiers there by and large support the mission strongly. They and the generals think they can win. Winning defined as tamping down the violence so that basic services can be provided. Withdrawing now hands Iraq to AQ as Pakistan teeters on the brink of AQ/Taliban control (including it’s nukes) and Iran is again threatening Israel (and the US) with missile strikes. Afghanistan’s South is under AQ/Taliban control as toothless NATO forces under “caveats” from spineless parliaments forbid combat operations and a safe haven under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella exists for the enemy. With not much larger forces possible in Afghanistan (the existing logistics airbridge won’t support a large force).
Surrender is an option but it puts a giant “Nuke Me” sign on our cities. Not a gamble I’d take.
But that points to the big disconnect. Libs/Media people argue that terrorism like 9/11 is “the cost of doing business in the global economy” and us little people should just take it. Our lives are not literally worth fight back for in any way. We just aren’t important enough. Well of course. Sharing power with soldiers and cops and other blue-collar types would never do.
_it echoes the struggle between the Jacksonians and the Adamses over who would run America: the Westerners and average folk, or the blue blooded aristos of New England._
Adams did predict that an aristocracy would naturally take positions of power in the new order, but that it would be a “natural aristocracy”:http://www.bigeye.com/aristocracy.htm of talent, not of inheritance (akin to a meritocracy). His chief concern, with which he offered a variety of remedies, was the manner in which this natural aristocracy could be compelled to use its talents for the public good.
The BBC producer and his colleagues are clearly an intellectual elite whose talent and suitability for their jobs is probably unquestionaable. But they lack wisdom. They don’t know the practicalities of how government works or how people think or live outside their class. They don’t act in the public good, but occupy their time sneering from the sidelines. This is a classic Adams conundrum.
So what would Adams do? I suppose he might directly regulate the media with sedition laws to ensure the patriotism of their content. He thought titles were a good way of using vanity to coax elites into acting in the public good. He might look at the education system to find out ways to encourage virtue and wisdom (but he was less optimistic than Jefferson about the role of education). I wonder if he would look at our political class and agree with the media that the politicians are not worthy of admiration and if so, whether this is the central problem. Perhaps we have done too little to encourage natural elites to serve in public life or this Hamiltonian society too greatly rewards other endeavors.
I am not sure that these are good answers, but I do think the basic question is:
Is the media patriotic? Why or why not?
Glen: I think Celebrim has a closer understanding of what I mean. We are falling into niches as a society, and these niches become echo chambers for your current beliefs and stereotypes about other niches. When I say ‘a christian elite’ I’m talking about Christians who have a very poor understanding of what it means to Jewish, Budhist, a non-violent muslim, or agnostic/aethist. Then of course, you have similar elites in all those groups too. This is essentially what drove me from being a christian, fellow church-goers weren’t content with having a great faith, they had to dump on everybody else in their spare time.
By business elite I’m talking about people like my brother-in-law, who sleeps, eats, breaths business news. He refuses to talk about anything else, and has no knowledge of the world other than stocks and bonds. Even though he hasn’t graduated college yet, I can tell he’s already looking down at the rest of his family because they don’t have ‘high-money’ careers.
This whole media debate is somewhat misleading (in my opinion) because each of us is looking for different qualities in their news. Many here are looking for ‘patriotism’ in their news, which is understandable. I’d rather have unbiased and well reported news, but I think we can agree that these qualities are hard to find together, and that each outlet has some preety major flaws. Knowing this, I tend to go back and forth between sources/debates to get a good understanding of what effect an event actually has. I think that’s common among WOC posters, and that’s a community I like to debate in.
Unfortunately, I think most people (in america and else-where) are content to sit in their own echo chamber and disavow contrasting information. I think it’s a disturbing trend, where in the very near future differing viewpoints will no longer be able to agree on even the underlying facts behind recent events.
“But when I read much of what comes from the left, I’m left with the feeling that they want to consume the benefits that come from living in the U.S. and more generally the West without either doing the messy work involved or, more seriously, taking on the moral responsibility for the life they enjoy.â€
Christopher Lasch has some interesting thoughts on the background for this in “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy”
He sees three bad developments:
1. The widening gap between haves and have-nots,
2. The appalling state of political discourse,
3. The decline if not abolition of religion in American life.
His premise, which is similar to yours above:
The Elites assume that having risen to the top through their own merits and efforts they are absolved of any obligation to others. They have no conscience. They favor a State that takes over charitable duties so they never have to meet the poor in person.
He sees this as a modern development since the previous generation of old money elites didn’t hesitate to put their personal fortunes and physical beings where their mouths were.
Great book since he takes no prisoners in proving his point. The Left and the Right get it equally.
Is the media patriotic? Why or why not?
Mostly not. The basic reason is that “the media” is composed entirely of large corporations, whose loyalty is by design only to the bottom line.
So advertising-oriented media must compete for audience-share to get advertising revenue. And they must also avoid publicising things that would offend their advertisers. Beyond that they must avoid doing things that get governments ready to punish them.
There isn’t much room for patriotism in that mix. Individual reporters can be patriotic, and their careers are likely to suffer as a result unless they manage to be at the right time and the right place, so that their patriotism happens to enhance their jobs. Individual editors can be patriotic, and their careers are likely to suffer for it. Individual managers can be patriotic. The higher you go up the hierarchy, the larger the penalties for letting patriotism interfere with doing your job.
This is the central reason that Bush/Cheney have not yet been impeached. Patriotism would say to publicise their misdeeds, but it doesn’t pay, it doesn’t help the bottom line just yet.
Jim, I hate to break it to you. But the public isn’t buying your mushroom clouds anymore.
Ever hear of the boy who cried wolfe? He only did it twice.
I think that very good examples of “intellectual laziness,” “echo chambers,” “group think,” “intellectual elites,” etc., though not of the liberal variety, can be found in comments #1 through #21 above.
It seems to me impossible to not view the world through some particular lens. The lens through which the BBC and other MSM liberal elite institutions, such as the NYT, view the world is a perfectly reasonable and intellectually justifiable one, in my opinion.
To me the central mistake that is an embedded given here is best embodied by something celebrim wrote in #15, where he contrasts Rush Limbaugh on the one hand, with MSM, on the other. The implication–invalid in, my view–is that these are equal weights on opposite scales. I as a liberal can shut out Rush Limbaugh, whereas you, as a non-liberal, cannot escape the MSN. But I would argue that, unlike the MSM, Rush Limbaugh does not offer a reasonable and intellectually justifiable lens through which to view the world.
In general, the MSM struggles not to advocate. Obviously, the MSM comprises thousands of individuals who share a common intellectual heritage…they are not members of the Taliban, e.g…they have a western education, believe science to trump faith, assume democracy & basic capitalism are the best forms of gov’t & economics, are skeptical of power, and regard themselves as watchdogs of gov’t. But beyond those basic assumptions, I think they do struggle not to advocate for any particular agenda within accepted spectrum of political life—at least in Britain and the US. Unlike Limbaugh, or Fox, which does consciously advocate for a conservative agenda and does not struggle to be fair or accurate but to advance a specific political cause or creed.
These are all generalities, of course, but there are never really specific charges leveled at the MSM, just vague accusations of liberal bias, which, upon examination, usually amounts to nothing but a failure to advance a conservative cause.
I think I agree w/ alchemist/Celebrim that specialization is an issue. Though I think it goes back further to industrialization and includes rising meritocracy. If I were to extrapolate with a data point I would compare the career and life experience of John Marshall before appointed to the head of the SCOTUS at age 45 with the prior experience of any other current Justice. The education requirements are steeper today, the term of military services longer, the competition fiercer. Many of these are good trends, but I think there is a potential disconnect between wisdom and specialization.
mark:
“But I would argue that, unlike the MSM, Rush Limbaugh does not offer a reasonable and intellectually justifiable lens through which to view the world.”
Except, you don’t argue that. Or if you would argue that, then do so.
I suggest that you cannot judge whether the lens Rush views the world through is reasonable and intellectually justifiable unless you’ve actually spent considerable time listening to Rush Limbaugh – which you almost certainly have not done. What you probably have done at the absolute most is occassionally be referred to Rush Limbaugh by third parties during moments of contriversy, such as when Limbaugh has exposed some weakness in his argument that makes him worthy of riducule at that moment. But this is no means by which to judge the man’s intellectual rigor, intelligence, or anything else. It is entirely possible based on my former experience that you have dismissed Limbaugh solely on the reputation he holds within a certain social group, which would be sufficient to prove you have no clue what an ‘echo chamber’ actually is. In any event, unless you happen to be a regular listener to Rush, your basis for judging Rush’s opinions and biases is considerably less than my basis for judging the MSM opinions and biases.
In any event, you are entirely wrong. The implication of my statement was not that the two have equal intellectual weight, or even represent equal bias. My statement holds true even if I give different intellectual weight and consideration to one side or the other. All that is critical to my point is that the regular listeners of one side or the other do not give serious consideration to what the other side is saying, but instead dismiss it on one grounds or the other. To that salient point you’ve offered no counter-argument; but rather, as is typical of my drive-by critics, your attempt at arguing against what you think my point is only validates my actual point.
In general, by thier own admission, the MSM struggles to advocate. One needs only to ask a journalist why they became journalists, and the answer almost invariably is some form of, “To make the world a better place.” Media bias comes about because the journalist believes that the truth, namely his own lens of the world, is self-evidently the more reasonable and intellectually justifiable one. It never occurs to them that there might be a broad spectrum of intellectually rigorous points of view. It never occurs to them that they are not the guardians of what is the accepted spectrum of political life in the US, nor that if thier own spectrum of opinions differs markedly from the norm of the viewing public that this implies a possible failing on thier part and not the public.
celebrim, this, i.e. your #25, is what I am talking about…at least in part.
I DO listen to Rush Limbaugh–at least as far as I can stand it–in the same way that I frequently visit this site (and never liberal blogs). RL does not report or gather news or information…he rails…he selects others’ reporting, chops it up, and re-presents it in a fashion that would seem to back up a set of political views he already holds. But in any case, your assumptions about me and the manner in which I have come to hold my views is way off base.
I don’t see how you have demonstrated that I was entirely wrong in my description of the implications of your RL/MSM contrast. In fact, you strenghtened my case by restating your original proposition (“All that is critical to my point is that the regular listeners of one side or the other do not give serious consideration to what the other side is saying, but instead dismiss it on one grounds or the other)” IF RL is representative of “one side” and the MSM is representative of “the other.” If the implication of this is NOT, as I said, “that these are equal weights on opposite scales,” then we are so far apart as to the what basic words mean that it is probably nearly useless for us to try to communicate with one another.
“One needs only to ask a journalist why they became journalists, and the answer almost invariably is some form of, “To make the world a better place.” ”
Oh really? How do you know this? I think this is an uniformed assumption on your part. Not idle speculation, but deliberate (though perhaps unconscious) fanciful storytelling that bolstesr your preconcieved views. My own experience is quite different. I know scores of MSM journalists and it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone of them would ever give such an answer.
“Media bias comes about because the journalist believes that the truth, namely his own lens of the world, is self-evidently the more reasonable and intellectually justifiable one.” Isn’t that equally valid for everyone? Isn’t that a good working definition of “truth”, ones own lens of the world that is self-evidently reasonable and intellecutally justifiable? This was my original starting point. That the MSM lens CAN be seen as reasonable and intellectually justifiable and that is the best criteria by which to judge whether it is an acceptable lens…and I find it one.
“It never occurs to them that there might be a broad spectrum of intellectually rigorous points of view.” Says who? You? How would you know this? You honestly don’t think the reporters and editors—smart, well-paid people, the very nature of whose job is to REPORT on the rest of the world–don’t understand that there is a broad spectrum of intellectually rigorous points of view? Is this a credible belief of yours? or another unsubstantiated statment that serves to reinforce a view that you want or need to hold.
“It never occurs to them that they are not the guardians of what is the accepted spectrum of political life in the US, nor that if thier own spectrum of opinions differs markedly from the norm of the viewing public that this implies a possible failing on thier part and not the public.” ”
First of all, who says that the MSM view differs markedly from the norm of the viewing public? How can they be MAINSTREAM and at the same time have a markedly different set of opions from the norm? Isn’t there an frighteningly obvious internal contradiction in your view? And 2nd of all, I would argue that the role of the press IS to be a guardian (vs. the gov’t) of the accepted spectrum of political life in the US. 3rdly, who has claimed that there is a failing on the part of the public? The MSM needs the public in order to survive. If they were delivering an unwanted product, they wouldn’t be in business long, would they?
Celebrim: I’ve listened to Rush on a regular basis. And Coulter, And Savage, and Hannity, and O’Reilly, and Franken, and Snow (although I kindof liked listening to Snow, before working for the Admin). Name the other ones, I’ve probably listened to them to. The used to be indexed on my car radio.
I will say that Limbaugh & MSN are bad for different reasons.
Limbaugh (& his ilk) are bad because of their push towards ‘shock’ polltical radio. Although they have an intentional systematic force towards the right (or left), and they sound convincing, they’re all straw men. These people don’t do debate. Forthright honesty is not their thing, they focus entirely on entertainment & enragement. Limbaught’s ‘over-the-top'(OMG is he a moron?) attacks actually bring him more viewers than if he played it straight.
Don’t believe me? Read this great article on radio personalities from “The Atlantic”:http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200504/wallace/.
While MSN made kid itself that it has no bias, I do believe that they intend to have little bias. Unfortunately the problem with the 24-hour news networks is more about laziness. Their push to get up-to-the-minute news, there’s no actual reporting, no deep investigation of the issues. They also cover ‘shock’ stories to get viewers (they’re easy), although they’re usually more of the celebrity gossip/to catch a predator type stories. This usually means that they end up covering talking points instead of real journalism, and this coverage that has poor explanations is then biased by the employer/editors/news personalities. The News part of Fox News contains essentially the same flaws. I think BBC has bias, but actually does better reporting (in general) than any american news network.
Note: This is very different than Limbaugh, who meticulously researches stories, and then intentionally bends them into his view of the world. He claimed on his show last week “All you need is read the first paragraph of any newspaper article…” but he’s smarter than that.
Alchemist: I have my own problems with Rush, O’Reilly, and the rest. None of those problems are however germane to my original point. I agree with you that they are bad for different reasons and I’ll even suggest, bad to different degrees.
As for Limbaugh specifically since he draws so much heat and serves as so much of a sterotype for the whole group, in his more honest moments he admits that he is primarily an entertainer. In my opinion, Limbaugh gets most of his schtiq – maybe consciously given his evident intelligence – from the great Israel Lutsky. I take him for what he is and rarely listen to him because I don’t need what he’s selling; but, if I had too, I’d rather listen to him that the rest of the talk show hosts if only because he entertains.
As for the media, the experiment with objective media was a fairly short lived phenomenom, basically only occurring in the US, and is now long over except for the pretences. It is useful economicly for the major outlets to pretend that they have objectivity, but they’ve been spending that social capital and they don’t have much left.
mark: My assumptions about you are based on the fact that you never say anything that is the least bit surprising. You never say anything that makes me go, “I’d never heard that before.” You certainly aren’t saying anything that makes me go, “Hmmm… this guys clearly thought more deeply on this matter than I have. Maybe I should listen.” If my assumptions about you are wildly off base, then by your own argument I’m just as accurate as the MSM – which is an indication you haven’t thought your argument through very well.
First of all, Winds is a liberal blog. If you are looking for the conservative blogs, go down the virtual hall to RightWingNews. If you are looking for the libertarian blogs, try Instapundit or RightThinking. Winds is a solidly liberal to moderate blog with a couple of conservative contributers and a few even more conservative posters. I think you may be confused about its Hawkish stand. Hawkish != Conservative.
Secondly, I know you don’t see how I demonstrated you were entirely wrong. That is entirely the problem.
“IF RL is representative of “one side” and the MSM is representative of “the other.” If the implication of this is NOT, as I said, “that these are equal weights on opposite scales,” then we are so far apart as to the what basic words mean that it is probably nearly useless for us to try to communicate with one another.”
Indeed. Nonetheless, the implication that there are two entities in no way implies a normative judgment about either one, or that one is the equal to the other, or anything of that sort. It merely is a statement that there are two sub-cultures and they typically don’t consider and often don’t even hear the other. That you persist in hearing something else reveals more about you than it does about me.
“My own experience is quite different.”
I’m sure it is.
“Is this a credible belief of yours?”
Yes.
“First of all, who says that the MSM view differs markedly from the norm of the viewing public?”
Unlike some of my claims, which were as you point out merely ancedotal, that claim is an entirely factual statement. That you are so ill-informed on this subject as to not be aware of even basic facts like that, leads me to believe that it is a waste of time to have a conservation with you until you are. It is not my job to educate you. It takes most of my time educating myself. Google for a while and then get back to me.
“Isn’t there an frighteningly obvious internal contradiction in your view?”
No.
“And 2nd of all, I would argue that the role of the press IS to be a guardian (vs. the gov’t) of the accepted spectrum of political life in the US.”
Right. I believe I said that earlier, only you objected to it when in a different context.
“The MSM needs the public in order to survive. If they were delivering an unwanted product, they wouldn’t be in business long, would they?”
Yes, I believe that is a relevant point as well. Again, go Google for a bit and then get back to me.
alchemist –
You are using the word elite in a way that has no analogy with the elitist left.
If your brother-in-law wants to spend all his time reading Forbes, or watching college basketball, or fretting over rare varieties of orchids, more power to him. It’s a free country. So what if he looks down on other people? The Amish look down on people who wear buttons on their clothing, but the Amish are not planning to force their ways on everybody else through political power.
Again, I do not see the left-elite as an example of information specialization. For one thing, information is not particularly their coin. They much prefer abstraction. While some of them may be ignorant of practical realities (like, for example, the impact of crime on people who do not live in upscale gated communities, or the effects of the minimum wage on small business) I do not believe that they think the way they do because they are limited to a narrow band of information.
On your side of the argument, I recall Jeane Kirkpatrick saying that there was a time when EVERYBODY she knew was a liberal Democrat, and how surprised she was to discover a whole wide world outside of that. But plenty of elitists know about that world – they hate it, and they want to control it.
Glen: While I agree with you that there is a self-described ‘liberal’ subculture, which for simplicities sake we will call the ‘elite left’, which is motivated not by ignorance but by the desire to maintain long held power I don’t think that that is a sufficient explanation for a complex phenomenom.
But perhaps I misunderstand or underestimate your argument.
There is alot to say on this, I hardly know where to begin.
Let me begin with an ancedote I’ve probably used to often. When I was in High School I was on a scholar’s bowl team. One of our chaperones was a self-described Liberal, old money, and active in the Democratic party. One evening, evidently feeling that by virtue of our proven intelligence that it was unthinkable that we’d have different opinions than her own, she confided in his the purpose behind her beliefs. She thought she was among friends, and the mask came off. (What I’m going to say next, alot of people simply refuse to believe, but this is the honest truth). Abortion? Like Margaret Sanger she believed it was necessary to keep “the brown people under control” (her words) Desegregation? Had nothing to do with equality, rather it was a play to bankrupt black business owners, lawyers, doctors and other “brown people” who had gotten an education and then got uppity.
So yeah, I’ve met the sort you are talking about on several occassions. I don’t doubt (can’t doubt) their existance and their strong influence over the ‘liberal agenda’. They come out of the wood work at cocktail parties and academic meetings when they think that they are amongst thier own kind.
But also based on my experience, people who are that self-reflective about thier goals and purposes are pretty rare. At the very least, you also have to explain how the rest of the group rationalizes to themselves thier own politics.
Likewise, its my experience that the majority of the moneyed left isn’t consciously or unconsciously motivated by power and the fear of sharing it, but takes the public position of the ‘media liberals’ on good faith and with good intentions. To explain them, you can’t fall back on trite positions like ‘they are evil’, ‘they are stupid’, or whatever. It seems to me that having had a narrow range of experience is the most likely explanation for how they maintain what appears to me to be a manifestly counter-factual view of the world in thier head.
celebrim,
“If my assumptions about you are wildly off base, then by your own argument I’m just as accurate as the MSM – which is an indication you haven’t thought your argument through very well.” I’m sorry but that statement makes no sense. What were you trying to say? I do not claim that the MSM is wildly off base.
It’s not so much that your claims are based on anecdotes but on myths. I reiterate that the Mainstream Media’s views cannot by definition be markedly different from the mainstream public which chooses to consume it. MSM, with the exception of PBS, are profit-making outfits and have to meet public taste and demand in order to survive financially. Whenever they deviate from the norm, they begin to lose money and have to adapt. This applies to the news and commentary side as well as to more purely entertainment side. Mass market products are a reflection of public taste.
This is what you said (perhaps it was a typo): “It never occurs to them that they are not the guardians of what is the accepted spectrum of political life in the US,..” I took this to mean that it is your belief that they, the MSM, are not the guardians of what is the accepted spectrum of political life in the US. You are now claiming the opposite view. Again, perhaps there was a typo in your first comment.
Glen: Yes, you’re right. Of course, elite cannot only apply to a single group. I’m looking at the word elite as broader than just media elite/infleunce elite etc, but through the eyes of every group that see themselves as better (for a variety of reasons) than those around them.
I’m looking at liberals in BBC forming this niche, and then making bad decisions based on information provided them in this niche. It’s a fairly common problem with niches, and fairly common among ‘member’s only’ groups throughout human history (from Rome to the USSR). Small groups of power, infleunce, or of specific moral standing (ie religion) see themselves as smarter, harder, better read, more pious etc, and thus better than the rest of society. Of course, the world is more complicated than any one person, or group of people can understand. So groups running the world on their own, without help, tend to make some pretty serious errors.
_But plenty of elitists know about that world – they hate it, and they want to control it._
Yes, because they think they know better. Everybody thinks they know better, right up until the moment when everything falls apart. Haven’t you ever thought “If only I/(group you’re involved in) ran the world things would run better!”. Congratualtions, that’s one way of declaring yourself elite.
What makes me chuckle at our friendly self proclaimed leftist political elites is their incredible idiocy.
We have a volunteer, professional military, with an increasingly multi-generational membership. A membership with something like a 0% overlap with our lefty political classes.
A military which they are doing their level best to make hate them (and succeeding).
While simultaneously pushing for totalitarian gun control of the civilian population.
If this doesn’t rate an F in Government-Management 101, I don’t know what does.
I’d have a lot more confidence in their ability to solve the big problems if they showed any competence in the basics.
mark: One last time, and then I’m going to have spend my time more productively.
“I’m sorry but that statement makes no sense.”
I doesn’t make sense. I believe that that was my point. The implication of something you said was senseless, and I thought I’d point that out.
But, I suppose you mean “I don’t understand what you mean.”, rather than, “The implications of that runs counter to logic.” So, like everything it seems, I’ll have to explain it to you.
“I do not claim that the MSM is wildly off base.”
I’m afraid you did. You said:
“Isn’t that equally valid for everyone? Isn’t that a good working definition of “truth”, ones own lens of the world that is self-evidently reasonable and intellecutally justifiable?”
No, it is not equally valid for everyone, and no that is not a good working definition of truth. It may be true that everyone’s biases come about in the same way, but it is not equally valid for everyone. It is not true that everyone is equally blind to the lens that they were, or that everyone’s lens are equally thick or warped or colored. If it was equally valid for everyone, then everyone’s opinions would be equally unreasonable. And it is not true that truth is what you believe it to be. One of the surest signs of truth is that you don’t believe it but you are forced to conceed it anyway. My point was entirely that the journalist cultures working definition of truth, the one you here argue for, was a bad one. In that sentence I used the word truth in irony, and with not a small amount of spite I must confess, and you responded with ‘Oh, yeah, but isn’t that true?’
Well done.
“It’s not so much that your claims are based on anecdotes but on myths. I reiterate that the Mainstream Media’s views cannot by definition be markedly different from the mainstream public which chooses to consume it.”
And I reiterate that this statement is counterfactual and that the evidence is out there to prove it to anyone’s satisfaction that the MSM’s views for better or worse are markedly different from that of the general public. Once again, you are responding only with what you choose to believe when the evidence is finger tips away if you want to look for it.
“Whenever they deviate from the norm, they begin to lose money and have to adapt.”
Indeed. Only they aren’t just beginning to lose money, and they don’t have to adapt. There are plenty of other options to adapting.
“Mass market products are a reflection of public taste.”
Not necessarily. They are reflections of the taste of a small group of people. If they endure and make money, then they are probably a reflection of the taste of a larger group of people during that time period, but there is nothing which requires any mass market product to be a reflection of public taste. And in any event, you seem to miss the irony of calling the evening news a mass market product.
“I took this to mean that it is your belief that they, the MSM, are not the guardians of what is the accepted spectrum of political life in the US.”
Yes, that is what I said.
“You are now claiming the opposite view.”
No, you are claiming the opposite view. Correct? And yet, you are also claiming that journalists do not advocate, indeed that they strive with all thier might and main to not do so. But the two claims are inherently contridictory. Either you believe you are a guardian (specifically a gaurdian with words), in which case your moral responciblity requires you to be an advocate. Or else you believe that you are not a gaurdian, in which case you morally must not.
Finally, while we are on the subject of your poorly thought out opinions and unreflective statements made without actually studying the thing you are commenting on, why don’t you re-read comments #1 and #21 and tell me again how they are reflective of an echo chamber.
alchemist,
“I’m looking at liberals in BBC forming this niche, and then making bad decisions based on information provided them in this niche.” I’m curious. Could you explain what a few of these bad decisions were?
There is a struggle here to come up with a suitable description, if not definition, of something that no one doubts exists: a liberal elite–although an apparently powerless one, if there is any connection between this “liberal elite” and the democratic party. I think the difficulty stems from the fact that this is a mirage…a bogey man…a catchall to explain all the world’s ills. The liberal elite is replacing the jews in this regard…the men behind the curtain.
Meanwhile, the actual elite…the small group of men who govern the country continue their winning ways.
“If this doesn’t rate an F in Government-Management 101, I don’t know what does.”
LOL.
We definately need to be handing out more F’s to our political classes. That may be one of the few areas of truly common ground I have with J Thomas.
bq. I reiterate that the Mainstream Media’s views cannot by definition be markedly different from the mainstream public which chooses to consume it. MSM, with the exception of PBS, are profit-making outfits and have to meet public taste and demand in order to survive financially. Whenever they deviate from the norm, they begin to lose money and have to adapt.
That observation has some power, but I don’t think it explains all that much.
Completely different example (not to derail the discussion, but to assert that this Media ‘failure mode’ is widespread). I saw the beginning of NBC’s “Today” TV show this morning, and the opening teaser was to yesterday’s earthquake in Japan and the leakage of radioactivity into the ocean from a damaged nuclear power plant. After the commercials, and headlines, this story then got its own reporter and segment.
The thrust of the report for most viewers–who’ve never worked with radioisotopes and know little about the subject–was that an severe earthquake may have killed seven people and damaged buildings, but the major impact was that very dangerous developments were unfolding at an inherently unsafe Nuclear plant–hazardous wastes had spilled inside the plant, and worse, the public and the environment were being exposed to radioactive poisons due to a major safety failure. A shifty-eyed Japanese electric company spokesman was avoiding blame, just like his American counterparts.
For me, and I assume most of the minority of watchers who know something about radiation, the takeaway message was, “this report is alarmist, incomplete, and queer–there is probably very little substance to it.” Indeed, the “Asahi Shimbun account”:http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200707170374.html shows that the knocked-over barrels contained low-level waste, and the cooling water that spilled into the ocean hasn’t been shown to have raised radiation readings over background levels.
So–opposition to nuclear power is a strongly-held view among the US public “(50% for it, 46% against).”:http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=27100 Fair to say that creative people working in newspaper and TV news are firmly opposed. Is this morning’s inane fearmongering merely an instance of pandering, as Mark might suggest on the strength of what I quoted above? Or is this episode (additionally) an instance of “pushing”–reinforcing the conventional, politically-correct wisdom that is, I’m sure, widely held among the producers and reporters of the “Today” show?
Note that one might have an anti-nuclear power stance and still recognize that the Japanese Earthquake story hardly concerned nuclear safety except in a glancing, reassuring way.
Is “Today’s” bow to P.C. wisdom typical or atypical of “the Media’s” performance?
On a different story, “Steve Sailer”:http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/07/john-edwards-latest-brilliant-campaign.html describes the process:
bq. It’s widely assumed that political correctness is just polite hypocrisy and that the big shots understand what’s really going on even though they aren’t allowed to mention it in public… but that’s naive. What happens is that political correctness severs the mental connection between private and public thinking.
Newspaper and TV news organizations both benefit from and promote this kind of lazy P.C. approach. That’s a bad thing.
Celebrim, well at last: something we can agree on. Your time spent here is unproductive. Return to your slumbers.
AMac, here’s what I don’t get: if, as you say, 50% of people are in favor of nuclear power, while 46% oppose it, how can you describe the minority view as the “conventional wisdom?” Wouldn’t it be the other way around? Albeit, in this instance not by a high percentage.
And why the assumption that creative people are among teh 46% in opposition and not among the 50%?
I have a counter personal anecdote. I only watch and read MSM—for the most part–and the information regarding the quake in Japan and the fire at the nuclear plant that I walked away with was that the leak was so small in this case that there was no need for alarm. Granted I didn’t watch the Today Show as I am a late sleeper, but from the shows I did watch and the papers I did read, I found no alarmist or undue hyperbole that would make me oppose nuclear power.
If MSM is reflective of the underlying views of society, where, precisely did the much derided Fox News come from?
Fox went from not even having a news wing, to approximately equal share with the other TV news networks in a very short time.
Fairly simple business logic dictates that the only way that happens is if they exploited a market segment that was not being served by the previously existing choices.
Ergo the existing (non-Fox news) MSM was not meeting the needs and views of a, substantial, chunk of the populace.
Now this would normally be just a standard market adjustment, except for the fact that Fox is so often derided for their views and reporting among some sections, which indicates that their is a large ideological split between those who mock it and those who watch it.
Mark: I first read the article through AL’s quotations… I read to see the point AL was getting towards. The writer, on the other hand, is saying that he was part of the formation of the BBC, and that he and his liberal peers set the attitude that makes the BBC intolerable today (ie their mistakes were assuming their correctedness).
I’m not quite sure that I see it that way, but then again I don’t depend on the BBC for my news. I generally read the BBC for news stories I can’t get here in the US: stories on Africa/Asia that Americans don’t care about. Since there is no conservative-framed articles on the same subject matter, it’s hard for me to judge. I feel they’ve been pretty fair with Iraq coverage, but many here disagree.
Many people here have argued that BBC is anti-conservative (some have gone as far to say that it is anti-Britain/anti-USA). I don’t quite see it that way, but I did agree with his synopsis of how group-think works, and why it has gotten worse amongst divisive groups. On that, I agree quite a bit.
Treefrog, you make a good point, I think. However, I’m not sure I would separate Fox from MSM in general. Certainly, it takes a more obvious and direct slant on the news, but it’s still basically the same fare during its news programming. They have more commentary than news during prime. But the other thing to keep in mind about Fox, if you do want to separate if from the rest of the pack, is that Fox does better than other cable news networks individually, but not collectively. More importantly, the more traditional MSM big 3 networks have huge news audiences compared to any particular Fox program. And that I think is what the discussion is about. On any given night, something like 22 million people watch an big 3 evening news broadcast. If they are so out of whack with the public, how do they command such high #s. Same with WSJ, NYT & WaPo, USAToday…people chose to read these MSM papers…obviously there’s a connect with the buying public.
My point remains that the MSM including Fox pretty much give the public what the public wants. If you don’t want to include Fox, you can argue that a small section of the news-consuming public did not have what it wanted till Fox came around, but that percentage was too small to make the case that MSM deviates from the norm.
Mark #40 —
bq. If 50% of people are in favor of nuclear power, while 46% oppose it, how can you describe the minority view as the “conventional wisdom?”
I quoted the first poll I found. Would you say that the C.W. is “Nuclear Power is safe and its use should be expanded”? Really?
bq. And why the assumption that creative people are among the 46% in opposition and not among the 50%?
Seems obvious to me that politically left-of-center, middle/upper class, non-science college-major folks would be anti-nuke by a large margin. I’ll post a retraction if I find this is wrong.
bq. I have a counter personal anecdote… from the shows I did watch and the papers I did read, I found no alarmist or undue hyperbole that would make me oppose nuclear power.
I wish that had been my experience too…
Treefrog: I would argue that Fox news had many things going for it.
1) Many conservatives didn’t like the nightly/cable news, felt it was unfairly biased. Fox news runs closer to the viewpoint of conservatives, and hit on an untapped resource.
2) Fox news also contains ore “pundit-esque” personalities than any other cable tv network. They’ve tapped into personailities like O’Reilly, Hannity, Hume etc that badly over-sensationalize the news. (MSNBC & CNN have them as well, just fewer).I would also add that these programs tend to have the highest number of viewers for each network, and tend to contain larger numbers of inaccuracies.
3) Fox news is also the sleeziest of the major news networks. By this I mean celebrity stories that hold more tabloid value, draw in large numbers of viewers, and pander to the lowest denominator. For example: “Anna Nicole Smith”:http://www.journalism.org/node/5719. According to this study, in 2007 Fox devoted 10% of their studied coverage to Anna Nicole. MSNBC devoted 6% and CNN 4% respectively.
4) Viewership of tv news was already “dropping”:http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_cabletv_audience.asp?cat=2&media=6/ by the time Fox entered the arena. There was spike between 2000-2003, but viewership is declining again. Fox news was initially outside of this trend, but now Fox news is starting to lose viewers as well. Why watch 24-hour news when you can google whatever story you want? News personalities (O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper etc) still hold the most market share, but they’re numbers are falling too.
Ouch, 22 million? Less than 10%? I knew it was bad, but that bad?
Speaking of hyper-specialization and self-selecting self-interested ‘elite’ groupings…
And while I do think blogs/alternate media are taking up some of the slack, I rather doubt it adds up to another 125 million or so to bring us up to a mediocre 50% participation ratio.
I’m having trouble with that last link now. Here it is in text:
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_cabletv_audience.asp?cat=2&media=6
‘3) Fox news is also the sleeziest of the major news networks. By this I mean celebrity stories that hold more tabloid value, draw in large numbers of viewers, and pander to the lowest denominator. For example: Anna Nicole Smith. According to this study, in 2007 Fox devoted 10% of their studied coverage to Anna Nicole. MSNBC devoted 6% and CNN 4% respectively.’
Damn those stupid proles…watching soap opera coverage of Anna Nicole Smith instead of what they SHOULD be watching, someone should pass a law…
And I suppose this is the crux of the problem.
Ordinary people have enough issues on their plate that they don’t want to deal with politics and government. It’s a waste of time, they’d rather delegate to someone else to deal with the issue, in the same way we’d rather delegate sewer repairs (and for most of the same reasons – except I think the sewers are cleaner).
The other side of the problem is that those who self-select to be that governing elite usually can’t handle a lemonade stand let alone a major country.
Resolving the two issues is THE political problem.
A fun example is the NYT happily preaching to the world what we should be doing while their own building literally falls apart around them…
Treefrog, but that 22 million is only on any one given night and it is only for network 6:30 news shows….doesn’t inlcude any of the other MSM outlets such as cable (which is much smaller) local newscasts, newspapers, magazines and websites. Blogs and alt/media I don’t imagine take up slack….I believe they supplement, not replace MSM. In many instances they provide altnernate access to the same info via links and so forth…but the basic, initial reporting is still done primarily by all the major MSM outlets & newsservices.
_If MSM is reflective of the underlying views of society, where, precisely did the much derided Fox News come from?
Fox went from not even having a news wing, to approximately equal share with the other TV news networks in a very short time.
Fairly simple business logic dictates that the only way that happens is if they exploited a market segment that was not being served by the previously existing choices.
Ergo the existing (non-Fox news) MSM was not meeting the needs and views of a, substantial, chunk of the populace._
Yes. Here’s my theory. For a long time — since the TV news settled down — TV news has presented a consensus view. The TV people mostly all agreed. They presented pretty much the same news with the same attitude. Then the newspapers would report the same things in more detail later.
If the media didn’t report it, it wasn’t news. If the way you thought it happened wasn’t the way they reported it, mostly nobody would believe you.
Everybody knew that they didn’t get things right. Nuclear power people knew they got the nuclear power stuff all wrong. Military people knew they got the military all wrong. Biotechnology people knew they got biotechnology wrong. Political types knew they got the politics wrong. But the military tended to believe them about biotechnology and the biotech guys believed them about politics and so on. There was no other voice. They were the consensus.
It wasn’t particularly a liberal consensus except that everybody was more liberal then. By modern standards, Reagan was liberal. Nixon was liberal. Eisenhower was liberal. Except about budgets. Heh heh. The media in those days was more liberal back then because everybody was.
So what changed? I’d put it at Rush Limbaugh and friends. Here’s a bunch of people who didn’t want to believe the mass media, who had their on opinions about what it meant and also about what happened. They wanted a news outlet that would tell them what they wanted to hear. And Fox did just that.
_Now this would normally be just a standard market adjustment, except for the fact that Fox is so often derided for their views and reporting among some sections, which indicates that their is a large ideological split between those who mock it and those who watch it._
Yes. It’s a sea-change. Used to be we had a national consensus because everybody mostly believed the MSM, except when they had direct evidence that said not to. For each story it was only a small fraction that had that evidence.
Now we have multiple consensuses. People not only choose their own opinions, they choose their own realities and they find others who agree with them and ignore everybody else. People who have nothing in common — people who live in alternate realities — try to share a single government. It doesn’t work. It can’t work. Like, most of our wingnuts have only a fantasy concept of the US military. They have no idea how it works or what it can do or where its limitations come in. Likewise our more extreme liberals. When the time comes that we think about whether to start a war, it’s a battle royale of fantasies. Then we watch the war on the news and everybody gets excited and makes bets about how fast we win, and it’s good times until the victory. Then we get stuck in an occupation with no victory in sight and the various fantasists argue about what to do.
It used to be that way back in the newspaper days. Different newspapers had wildly different views on things. And people went around saying “I only know what I read in the papers” meaning they didn’t really know anything. These days though people believe they do know. After all, not only did they hear the Lord’s own truth on Fox News, they also read a blog by a soldier who was right there! HE knows the real score! And those other guys who read some other soldier’s blog, they don’t know anything because their soldier doesn’t know what’s going on at all, and anyway the army is about to shut him down.
It was this sort of generalised disagreement that got us the Civil War. People living in fundamentally different worlds trying to agree on a single government together.
AMac,
“Would you say that the C.W. is “Nuclear Power is safe and its use should be expanded”? Really?” According to the link you provide, yes, that is what the poll found. 50% believed use of nuclear power should be expanded. Your link was to press report of a gallup poll from March 07. That 50% was down, by the way, from 55% last year. Now, if by conventional wisdom, you mean overwhelming consensus, then, no…we’re only talking a bare majority or high plurality. But in any case, more support than oppose, so you can’t really call the minority case the conventional wisdom.
(btw, I work with an awful lot of scientists and they seem to be as liberal as you can get in this country. YMMV. It may be the NYC locale. who knows?)
alchemist, great link…thanks
It’s amazing to me how much J Thomas’s and my own views run parallel to each other. Both because its interesting to me how much alike they are and yet how differently they approach the same problem and are constitant in thier difference.
If I had to pick one area which appears to be at the heart of our differences it is the belief JT espouses that the country is becoming more conservative, whereas I look at the country over the same period and see it becoming more liberal.
To begin with, we both agree that the success of Fox News is due to reaching an untapped market. Rupert Murdoch found a niche market – 50% of the USA. But, I disagree with him over the degree to which it is conservative and the extent to which it differs significantly in tone or content from the rest of the MSM. To begin with, to believe Fox is a conservative network, you have to believe that the people who brought us 90210, The Simpsons, Married with Children and so forth are earnestly conservative in thier beliefs and values. I see no evidence of that in any of thier programming, news or otherwise. What I do see is them allowing a broader spectrum of commentators, many of whom are not easily pegged with a simple label, and a whole lot of packaging. What I see is Fox selling themselves as somewhat more conservative than the other networks to reach the roughly 50% of the US disatisfied with the MSM, but not offering a significantly different product. And if anything, it is as others have said, sleezier, less professional, and more tabloid in nature.
I personally don’t feel that one could easily create a conservative news network even if you wanted to. That is because none of the big networks is truly an independent voice any more. In a way, the achronyms have become little better than blogs. Blogs with generally high production values, but that’s it. All of them – including Fox – rely almost exclusively on independent writers in the AP, Reuters, etc. for content. In a very real way, the description “selects others’ reporting, chops it up, and re-presents it in a fashion that would seem to back up a set of political views he already holds” is a pretty exacting description of how all the new agencies form thier news stories. There is very little in the way of actual journalism going on. The new agencies have become of the face of the news, but the actual news is being reported (and sometimes created) by semi-independent stringers with thier own agendas.
I use to subscribe to Wired magazine. The reason was that 10 or even 5 years ago, Wired was doing actual journalism. Some journalist would actually dig up the real experts in the field, interview them, and then compose a story. The difference was obvious compared to the more usual journalistic practice today, which is (at best) compose a story, find (or invent) some voices that support that story, and then publish it. At worst, stories are being paid for by interest and advocacy groups who either directly deposit cash or else get thier story published in exchange for doing all the real work in preparing the story which is more or less the same thing (because it allows you to cut staff). At present, most of the editorial control is in the hands of liberals (which can be verified through political surveys), and most the stringers come out of journalism schools with a liberal bent (again verifiable by taking surveys and in other ways) so you really don’t have the alternative of a conservative news agency because the infrastructure isn’t there even if you wanted one. For example, Rush when he’s not an entertainer is basically a radio blogger. Anyway, a few years ago I noticed that Wired went from offering fresh insightful commentary to becoming big enough of a market to attract the interest of the stringers, advocacy groups, and special interests and they suddenly started towing party lines (typically liberal ones, it is based in SF) and hashing over old topics in the same old ways. So I dropped the mag as a useless waste of dead trees.
But, back on the tracks, JT is right to suggest that we used to have consensus (more or less), and that we used to have trust in the media. More or less, they earned it. To a certain extent, they chaffed at not being able to advocate, but the general understanding was that thier reputuation depended on appearing to be objective and factual. I think he’s quite wrong to suggest however that this consensus began to break down with Limbaugh. Instead, I would go back further to something which had a more universal impact. Limbaugh is a symptom, not a cause.
The real sea change moment IMO is Walter Cronkite’s decision to voice his opinion on the evening news. It’s at that moment that it became safe for the journalists (who had been trending more and more liberal) to come out of the closet, and its at that moment that advocacy journalism became an acceptable professional practice. Frankly, if I could hang him for it, I would. Next to Johnson, Nixon, and the rest of the abusers of the public trust.
There is however a problem with the effectiveness of advocacy journalism. It only works if what you say doesn’t directly contridict the experience of who you say it too. At some point, what the journalists began saying was contridicting too many peoples personal experience. Once that happens, you realize that you are being tricked, that the journalists aren’t objective, and that they may be ignorant. You know longer believe that they hold the truth. And so the journalists lost peoples trust. They were spending the social capital that they’d built up back when we had consensus (or something like it).
Mark #51,
Sorry, I wasn’t clear on “conventional wisdom.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_wisdom Wikipedia agrees with your point:
bq. Conventional wisdom (CW) is a term coined by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society, used to describe certain ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public.
What I meant to assert is that I think those who oppose nuclear power do so with passion, as a group. Those who support nuclear power are, I believe, mostly lukewarm, excepting a few connected with the industry. (If I have the time to search and find a poll to substantiate, I’ll post a link.)
I think the anti-nuclear bias that I saw this morning on TV (but that you did not) is consistent with the consensus views of newsroom types, and also fits the model you describe in #32, “give ’em what they want.” An account that hewed closer to the facts of the case would fall short on both counts, if I’m right.
I agree with J Thomas as well, I think he hit the nail firmly on the head.
Which takes me back to my original point of how much anyone should trust those who stake out a patch of ‘reality turf’ and then proceed to exile everyone with weapons from their reality.
Lemmings was a great game but a poor model for government, at least from the Lemming point of view.
celebrim:
I’ve only seen one of those shows, but I have noticed that the Simpsons are the only TV family I know of that go to church every week.
I agree with alchemist about the high degree of sleaze on Fox News, though you can avoid much of it by not watching Greta Van Susteren, who is apparently determined to document every second of Larry Birkhead’s sorry-ass existence.
The best hope for the future of conservatism on Fox is the fact that the Democrats have chosen to anathematize it. The candidates backed out of a Fox debate in an act of utter craven subservience to the internet left – though once the primaries are over you can bet they’ll change that tune if Hillary is the anointed one.
But the great overlooked strength of Fox News is that they have a good supply of solid broadcast professionals, with no super-anchor. The networks are endlessly shooting themselves in the foot with their stupid attempts to find another Big Brother Walter who will make the funny little proles believe everything they’re told.
Never thought i’d say this, but flip on CSPAN. Live coverage of the house and the senate debating Iraq all night. Lieberman is speaking right now. This was a major mistake for the Dems. Rational discourse is not on their side on this one.
“I’ve only seen one of those shows, but I have noticed that the Simpsons are the only TV family I know of that go to church every week.”
Indeed. However, I think it would be fair to say that they don’t do so in order to place Christianity or traditional values in a positive light.
(Not that I have anything particular against the Simpsons for portraying Christianity negatively, because they pretty much slam everyone equally. No Presbyterian suicide bombers here.)
Still, I’ve always found it interesting how the Simpsons are the one show which can even deal with religion in America. In a way, it reminds me of the fact that Herman and Lily Munster were the first (and for a long time only) married couple allowed to have a single bed in thier bedroom, and indeed to occasionally occupy it. Some realities the powers that be just don’t want to acknowledge.
I always thought that Fox news was on the interesting fringe of the conservative mind: the dichotomy between free market conservatives and conservative christians. In a truly free market, everything is for sale. Fox has a longstanding tradition of sleazy programing, from shows that turn marriage into a reality show “My B.F.O. Fiance” to sexy singles shows like “Paradise Hotel”. Truly, everything is for sale on Fox Broadcasting Corp.
And then there’s the ‘personalities’ on Fox news corp, which decries profanity, and takes every opportunity to attack other networks for sleazy programming. It also goes out it’s way to point out how christian values are being attacked. Yet, they’re also being attacked by the Fox Broadcasting corp.
It’s a strange dichotomy, no?
_But the great overlooked strength of Fox News is that they have a good supply of solid broadcast professionals, with no super-anchor._
Professionals? Fox News? Are we watching the same programs? Which of these ‘personalities’ seem professional to you?
Bill O’Reilly
Sean Hannity
Brit Hume
John Gibson
Neil Cavuto
If by professional, you mean ‘profesional pundits’, yes, I’d agree with you. The democrats avoided the debate because Fox News Anchors would have intentionally shredded the democratic frontrunners. Not that they don’t deserve to be shredded, but I wouldn’t show up either if I thought the debate would be conducted through a guillotine.
On Democrats last night:
Truly amateur pollitical stunt. They were better off just waiting, but constintuencies are breathing down their neck. Dems should just hold off until January. By then, Republican senators will be tripping over themselves to get out of Iraq.
[Sayonara, sp*m. –NM]
Alchemist (#59)
I watch FoxNews and I agree with Neil Cavuto: you can go everywhere, in the civilized world, to discuss a matter if you have based your opinion in principles. The Dem candidates did not come into his program simply because they are in a demagogic position in many issues, and before people with principles, that would have been shown clearly.
Amac, celebrim (#53)
IMHO, the media simply cannot reflect reality, not even if they really wanted, because today’s world is very complex. They have to offer a simplified version of reality, and in that process of simplification much information is lost. So, if what they say, wouldn’t be exactly true no matter what they say…
Please, take also into account that some news agencies outside America are “State owned” or very close to the State’s policies. RIA Novosty for the Russians, Associate France Press (AFP), and EFE for Spain. It sometimes seems that their real task is to inoculate propaganda into the world’s media.
BTW, why don’t those Brittons talk about terrorism? Is it no longer a problem?
Here’s my problem with Neil Cavuto:
He frequently brings on Playmates, Models, and Hooters girls on to his show, and then tries to talk bussiness (which, they frequently know nothing about). I’m not really sure what the point of these shows are, but that does not seem to be professional to me.
Yeap, something like that has happened too when discussing illegal immigration, but I think he is right on the Dem candidates issue.
“IMHO, the media simply cannot reflect reality, not even if they really wanted, because today’s world is very complex. They have to offer a simplified version of reality, and in that process of simplification much information is lost. So, if what they say, wouldn’t be exactly true no matter what they say…”
Agreed. I’d be happy to settle for ‘not exactly true because the complexity has been simplified for the purposes of the news story’. Explaining the complexity and nuance is supposedly what you bring on the independent experts for and let them talk for a half hour or an hour in the longer formats. But that isn’t what happens, at least not anymore. To be honest, I’m not old enough to remember a time when it actually did happen. Did it ever?
Right now, what I get from the news is a good deal less than simplified complexity. It’s blatantly one-sided and often factually incorrect. To even feel like I understand the story, I have to go to multiple sources and even then do some reading between the lines to figure out what part of the story is left unsaid.
You are absolutely spot on about the lack of independence in the AFP, which began as a propaganda arm of the French Vichy government and has never strayed far from its roots. If it sometimes seems as if thier real task is to spread propaganda, it is because it is.
For all the complaining I do about the American media, I believe we have the finest least biased broadcast media in the developed world. We have a real market controlled independent media, and for all its flaws I’d never give it up in favor of the ‘European model’. (Though, I think the Brits have us beat in newspapers, and I’d love to see the wholehearted unabashed punditry model adopted in the US so then at least you’d know what you were buying.)
A good example of this is the beeb, which is ‘unbiased’ on in the sense of being less of a propaganda arm than the AFP. Or at least, not a propaganda arm of the government, but of a particular academic class. The beeb runs short subtle very well done little propaganda peices which it follows by bringing on a single ‘expert’ to do commentary and answer questions – who invariably has the same bent as all the other single experts. The beeb is sometimes great for getting to stories in the developing world (especially former British colonies) that don’t hit the American mainstream, but the relentless ‘Oxford/Cambridge British academic consensus’ spin gets to me. If all you listened to was the beeb, you’d get a really skewed picture of the world. And as an American, the beeb’s utter cluelessness at times about America and American politics is as sad as it is tragic.
Still, its not all bad. At least they finally changed thier mind about Robert Mugabe once his perfidy became absolutely undeniable. And after the VT shooting, they ran a typical ‘scary America’ peice, and then brought on the ‘expert’ so that the blond could ask – ‘In the light of this tragedy, do you think there will be any call for better gun control laws in America.’ The beeb ‘expert’ actually replied, ‘Well… no. The Americans place great store in thier 2nd Amendment rights and that’s not likely to change.” That, which probably translates to something like ‘the Americans are crazy’, counts as objectivity toward America by BBC standards.
I wont defend Fox, but i will happily point to the ‘professional’ journalists like Katie Couric, Kieth Olbermann, or Chris Mathews that the other networks trot out against anyone at Fox. At least Hannity and O’Reilly are _opinion_ shows, look up and down the shows like Meet the Press (Tim Russert, worked for Coumo and Moynahan for years) or George Stephonopolous at ABC. And those are just the guys that happen to have been in politics previously, every study has shown newsrooms around the nation are staffed overwhelmingly with left leaning journalists.
What i dont understand is how people that believe liberals can maintain nuetrality in newsrooms find the idea that the conservatives at Fox cant possibly. Actually, i understand it perfectly- its self-righteousness.
Yeah, Left/Right whatever, I don’t like Couric. I’ve never been a big fan of ‘Meet the Press’, but it does have alot of good interviews. I will admit that I watch “This week with George S.” ritually. I turn it on in time for the four member debate, and listen for what George Will has to say. He doesn’t talk alot, but when he does, he’s usually dead on.
I’ll stick up for FoX in this . . . Of all the Presidential debates I’ve seen so far (may not be saying much), the attempt by Fox to run a hypothetical bombing scenario was inspired. It broke out of the rut of giving the dozen or so candidates 60 second to recite their set positions. But they get a D for follow-through as the traditional format reasserted itself.
I’m an MSNBC guy to the extent I watch anything. Olbermann and Schuster excepted. CNN seems boring to me. And I think Glen is being generous in describing the Fox anchors as solid. Britt Hume and Chris Wallace excepted.
That’s an excellent point. I think part of the reason why Fox moved away from the “super-anchor†format is that they recognize today’s news audience is more likely to be more educated than 30 years and that education affects people’s perception of the news. When Cronkite was one of the most famous news anchors of his day, college was a pretty rare experience for most Americans and most journalists didn’t go to college and major in journalism. Today we have more Americans who went to college and a greater number of journalists who majored in journalism BUT those of us who went to college generally have a low opinion of journalism majors such that news anchors (even the ones who weren’t journalism majors) don’t carry the same mystique that Cronkite had in his day.
alchemist:
Well, Hannity and O’Reilly are highly successful in the very competitive radio market. So is Alan Colmes, to a lesser but still significant degree. By “professional” I refer to skills, and it does take skill to do what they do. It’s not a value judgment.
But as long as I’m jerking your chain, let me say that one of the very best broadcast professionals on the scene is Rush Limbaugh. A large part of his success is the energy and pacing of his program, which grabbed people who were skimming through the AM dial. That part of his success had nothing to do with ideology; it was the skill of a professional who had long experience in the medium.
That’s a point that the left seems doomed to forever miss, and a major reason why the left has failed at talk radio. They ought to study people like Limbaugh very carefully, but they’re too arrogant to listen. So they trot out hacks and amateurs – and poor Al Franken, who sounds like Deputy Dawg on helium.
The most successful “progressive” on the radio appears to be Ed Schultz, who was as high as #5 in the ratings a couple years ago. It is no accident that Schultz has long professional experience on the radio. Like Limbaugh, he’s a former sportscaster.
But then, Schultz is pro-life and opposed to gun control. Shows you what a desperate, spineless weasel-word “progressive” is, doesn’t it?
Out of curiousity, I was wondering how these cable news networks were doing relatively. I am kind of shocked at how well Fox is doing compared to its competition. It appears to win every time slot and O’Reilly repeats rate better than any of the competition’s shows. “Second Quarter 2007 pdf”:http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/original/q207ranker.pdf
I agree with you Glen. If only we were were willing to lose all moral principles and sell our souls to become pollitical schmucks, we could have a fancy tv show!
I’m joking of course, but seriously, these people are pundits of the worst order (Franken included). I hope they find a deep level of the inferno, as they make a living debasing honest debate and protecting criminals just because they stand on your side of the aisle. I think they are the perfect parallel example of what it means to be ‘media elite’, to be so sure in yourself that you must debase all who disagree.
Which is why the attempt to ostracize Fox will fail, especially after Hillary gets the nomination. No way is she going to deny herself access to that audience just to placate the Netroots.
They can push John Edwards around and play Harry Reid like a banjo, but if those pimple butts mess with Hurricane Rodham they’ll never know what hit them.
The big loser in the Fox boycott is Obama. As an Illinois native, I’ve been impressed by how the Senator has gone to hostile forums for question and answer sessions. He exhibits none of the qualities the BBC producer attributes to his fellow travelers. Instead Obama travels the country talking about the politics of unity, but it just sounds like talk unless he gets a chance to demonstrate what that means. Obama would do a good interview with Chris Wallace. Hillary doesn’t have the chops for it, and Edwards doesn’t have the desire.
I’m always perplexed with Team Lefty points to the relative success of Fox News as evidence of Right Wing Bias. As if a cable news network that gets roughly 2 million viewers at its peak can compete with the major networks that average roughly 19 to 35 million.
Liberal Radio fails because its no fun to listen to someone frothing 24 hours a day, and it put rank amateurs on the air. Broadcast radio is 100 times more difficult than scripted movies and TV, thats why the Frankens, Garafalo’s, etc shows all sucked. They were used to reading scripts, not thinking off the cuff. Its one thing to sit down and write out your position, its another to have to defend/support it in a live free form environment.
I loathe television news. Issues are far more involved than the 26 second clips present. I don’t read dead trees anymore either, yet I would say that I’m probably as well versed on the current issues as any broadcaster is because the internet allows one to quickly find sources that get to the point. Papers tend to reprint the latest from the AP and NYTimes, sometimes they even inject a few different words to make it seem like they didn’t plagiarized the entire article.
One thing that simply amazes me is the large number of Democrat hacks that somehow managed to land gigs on TV as “journalists” when their previous positions with Democrat administrations were PR flacks and spinmeisters. If Fox had a show with Andy Card or the dreaded Karl Rove the liberals would be shitting themselves with conniption fits about “right wing media bias”, yet we are supposed to sit here and listen to liberal hacks like Stephanopolus, Mathews, etc. While you sometimes see former speechwriters on op-ed pages from Republican administrations, I can’t think of any who are anchoring broadcast/cable news shows.
“One thing that simply amazes me is the large number of Democrat hacks that somehow managed to land gigs on TV as “journalists” when their previous positions with Democrat administrations were PR flacks and spinmeisters.”
Oh, it’s alot worse than that. Those are just the ones your recognize because they had nationally recognizable roles before they became journalists. The dirty little secret of the industry – well, one of them – is that it’s virtually impossible to land a gig as national reporter for one of the big three unless somewhere on your resume you were a staffer for some Democrat’s election campaign. Dig into the resumes of almost every recognizable current journalist, and you find that during college or just out of college or whatever they worked for the DNC or on the staff of a Democratic election campaign. The MSM makes big hay about how unbiased and objective that they are, and in the last few years you here lots of came lately cute theories about how of course they are biased conservative because they are corporations(???), but if 80% of them worked at one time or the other directly or indirectly for the DNC and thier election contributions are something like 9:1 in favor of the Dems, what does that tell you?
The dirty little secret of the industry – well, one of them – is that it’s virtually impossible to land a gig as national reporter for one of the big three unless somewhere on your resume you were a staffer for some Democrat’s election campaign.
So, by this reasoning we can figure that the auto companies are pro-union because 90+% of their employees are union members….
Reporters might have an unconscious (or even conscious) bias due to their own backgrounds, but editors get a solid chance to catch that and reverse the bias. And they’ll certainly try hard to do just that if their jobs depend on it.
“So, by this reasoning we can figure that the auto companies are pro-union because 90+% of their employees are union members….”
The just-so story followed by the false analogy? What’s next?
“Reporters might have an unconscious (or even conscious) bias due to their own backgrounds, but editors get a solid chance to catch that and reverse the bias. And they’ll certainly try hard to do just that if their jobs depend on it.”
Where do you get your evidence that the editorial staff of major broadcast companies and newspapers have politics and significantly different than the anchors and reporters? Do you know of any major editors, much less a majority of them, with conservative politics?
Let’s just stop this BS at the source. Where do you get your evidence that corporations are inherently institutionally conservative? Are there not many counter examples of corporate institutions lead by known liberals? Isn’t it true that the Democratic party recieves more donations from corporate institutions than it does from individuals? The real problem with whole ‘corporations are conservative’ just so story is to believe it, you have to believe that corporations are faceless inhuman organisms. Once you consider that a corporation is no more than a collection of individuals, the insistance that they must have conservative politics goes away.
So again, on the media, I think we’ve come to the point where we agree to disagree. I think we will all accept that different media sources present different information, and hopeful we can gather here to figure out where the heck the truth actually is in this matter. Although issues like Valerie Plame have illustrated how difficult it is to weed out truths (and how badly the media is adressing these dichotomies)
I think I’ve made it clear over many posts that I think the quality of ALL 24-hour news networks is going down the drain, and that I don’t think Fox News is an exception (and is in fact, a trend-maker in desiging news shows that are more entertaining and less educating). This is not really a shock, considering Murdoch’s past. I’m very curious what will happen to the Wall St. Journal.
“So again, on the media, I think we’ve come to the point where we agree to disagree.”
Actually, I think we agree more than we disagree. This is by far the most I’ve ever agreed with J Thomas over anything, and we’ve had people claim that J Thomas and Jim Rockford are evidence of an echo chamber. If JT and JR are sounding like an echo chamber – even if only to the inattentive – then we have as close to a consensus on something as we are ever likely to have.
There are whole passages of #50 that I could have written, and where we disagree isn’t actually critical to the main point. Essentially the only relevant thing JT and myself are arguing over in this thread who is more to blame – the liberals or the conservatives – and to my mind that’s a pretty trivial point.
The really important point that JT and myself seem to agree on is to my mind the most important and seemingly most contriversial – that if we continue on this course we are headed for a civil war. And presumably, both of us would like to avoid that.
_Essentially the only relevant thing JT and myself are arguing over in this thread who is more to blame – the liberals or the conservatives – and to my mind that’s a pretty trivial point._
I’m not even arguing that. We used to have a media-generated consensus. Now so-called conservatives have broken that consensus. To my way of thinking the main thing that consensus was good for was preventing civil war, I sure wouldn’t say it was “right” or blameless. I regard the so-called conservative stand as deluded, but the old consensus was deluded too. And mostly everybody who understood a specialised body of information saw that the media consensus got their field all wrong — but they were mostly willing to accept the consensus view on everything else.
Liberal and conservative ideologies are both mostly useless. Liberal ones started losing ground in the early 1970’s when the government first started driving the economy into the ground. When the economy is expanding faster than anybody expects, it’s easy to say the government ought to spend the surplus money for the public good. But when there isn’t enough to go around and the military needs more than we can afford, then the public good doesn’t look like such a good idea after all. Liberal ideas have naturally been losing ground over the last 40 years or so — the poorer we get the less liberal we get. I object to so-called-conservative lunacy primarily because they’re in the driver’s seat and they driving us into poverty.
My own ideology is pretty much straight out of CN Parkinson and John Gall. Bureaucracies expand independent of function, and the “work” they do expands to fill the available staffing. This is true for big-business bureaucracies as well as government bureaucracies. Innovative work gets done in make-shift quarters; by the time the buildings are ready that are designed to fit the needs, the organisation has ossified. Organisations can reach a point of injelititis where they’re so intent on dealing with themselves that they can’t respond well to the outside world — typically the only cure is to destroy the organisation and possibly try to rehabilitate individual members, at risk to the groups they join. And to get useful results out of oganisations you have to look carefully at the organisations as they exist and tailor the job to the group. If you want something done and you don’t have an organisation that can do it well, you need to grow a new organisation to do it — and that takes time.
The Democratic party is moribund. Their ideology hasn’t been updated from the time when labor unions were an important hope for employees. They aren’t ready to deal with the modern world.
The GOP is also moribund to the point that they couldn’t keep a bunch of lunatics from taking them over. Should we argue about which is worse?
The US Army and Marines are *still* intent on fighting WWII better. Beating blitzkrieg attacks in europe. There was an attempt to try something else by the army itself, and it was perhaps stalling. Rumsfeld tried to do it from the outside with a method that should have worked. He tried to grow the special forces into something that could win wars by itself, with the intention of then gradually mothballing everything else. That worked for the Navy in the late 1930’s, they build aircraft carriers and then when the war came and it was finally obvious that battleships weren’t good for much, at last they stopped building them. Rumsfeld tried to use iraq as a proof-of-concept. He wanted to attack iraq with nothing but special forces. Knock out the enemy communications and the iraqi army was just a bunch of units fighting blind, so engage the ones you have to and ignore the rest. Call in airstrikes whenever you meet something you can’t ignore or avoid. Maybe capture Saddam before he knows Baghdad is being attacked. The approach had potential. But the army insisted on bringing in a lot more units, and with so many people involved the logistics broke down (because Rumsfeld hadn’t handled that, with just the little special forces it wasn’t such an issue). It didn’t turn into the tour-de-force he wanted. Could special forces have taken Baghdad? As it happened most of the iraqi soldiers deserted. Maybe they could have done it. But it wasn’t obvious. And then we got to the occupation that nobody was ready for. You can’t run an occupation with an elite group of special forces, and you can’t do it well with an army that’s designed to beat the russians in west germany.
It plain isn’t clear what we need our army to do. But after we’re out of iraq the army will settle back to beating the russians at Fulda Gap because that’s where their momentum is directed. You can’t change that without starving the units that tend that way and funding something new.
Do we need an army that can run occupations? How big a country do we want to be able to occupy? Somehow the question never came up with russia. They’re too big to occupy so we never gave a thought to how we could pick up the pieces after we won a conventional war with russia.
We’re trying to act like a superpower when we no longer have a superpower economy. The remaining liberals as well as the so-called conservatives all want to think we can do whatever we want and the question is just what is the right thing to do. But we are slowly slipping out of the first world, and we’re starting to slip faster. There’s no political will to accept reality on this. So I think our best chance is to look for ways to develop cheap energy that doesn’t come from fossil fuels. If we get cheap energy we can be a superpower. We can make stupid mistakes and recover from them. Without cheap energy our mistakes can hurt us very badly.
I’ll stop now, I feel like I’m not being as coherent as I’d like to be. I never noticed until just now that it could be important to say it clearly. But there might be room for new ideologies just now, as the old ones get obviously more inappropriate.
“I’ll stop now, I feel like I’m not being as coherent as I’d like to be. I never noticed until just now that it could be important to say it clearly.”
Well, I’m glad you noticed. I was thinking I’d have to say something. 😉
Seriously, JT, I’m almost coming to like you. For the longest time at winds, I had you pegged as another one of the liberal meme bots that never had an original thought in thier life. Lately I’ve noticed you saying some suprising and interesting things. Now, alot of the time I disagree with those things, but at least it makes it clear that you have a brain in your head and might be worth talking to.
But you have really got to work on your rhetoric. Your rants are not made more convincing by dropping out unsupported assertion bombs that are sometimes so crazy as to cause me to wonder whether or not you are off your meds. Now, believe me, I know how this goes, as alot of people have the same reaction to me, and I’m smart enough to see that most of the time your assertions have a plausible argument you could build up to support them, and I for one adore the unintuitive declaration; but, BUT, BUT… if you want to be convincing you need to stay on target and not roll across two dozen wildly unintuitive claims without at least some attempt to support them. And if you aren’t going to attempt to support them, they don’t enhance your argument, they detract from it.
Just a few examples…
“Now so-called conservatives have broken that consensus.”
This sort of totally ignores a period that this country calls “the ’60’s”. It may not be as important as the baby-boomers think it is, but its a pretty important historical period. Have you ever heard of the ‘counter-culture’? I think you’ve got your work cut out for you if you are going to claim that it was the conservatives that broke the consensus, as if conservatives are just all about changing the status quo.
“Liberal ideas have naturally been losing ground over the last 40 years or so — the poorer we get the less liberal we get. I object to so-called-conservative lunacy primarily because they’re in the driver’s seat and they driving us into poverty.”
This is another meme that seems blatantly at odds with the facts to the point of becoming self-parody. There are at least a dozen serious logical problems with this line of argument that immediately jump to mind.
“My own ideology is pretty much straight out of CN Parkinson and John Gall.”
And it was a good thing I wasn’t drinking milk at the time, because that statement admidst all your earnest, anxious, cynical, seriousness would have caused me to perform classic physical comedy. It’s sort of like stating that your own ideology is pretty much straight out of WC Fields or Groucho Marx. It makes for good engineering humor, and there is some truth to be found there, but its not a serious philosophy. You do realize that, right?
“He wanted to attack iraq with nothing but special forces.”
Now, this at least is plausible, but I had some back channel connections to strategy planners and I wasn’t hearing anything like this even as a rumor during the run up. I do know that Rumsfeld didn’t plan to do nation building – he planned to get out and leave the Iraqi’s on thier own come whatever may – and that he was overruled, largely by Bush. But I’ve not heard a tidbit from anyone who has an ear in the halls that suggest the above scenario, and I have to ask just where are you hearing this? Where do you get your evidence of that, or is it just a plausible fantasy that fits your theory?
“But after we’re out of iraq the army will settle back to beating the russians at Fulda Gap because that’s where their momentum is directed.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. Again, where do you get your evidence that Fulda Gap is even on the radar at any of the US planning centers? If anything, I would argue – somewhat tongue in cheek – that we are likely to have to face the Russians at Fulda Gap because history teaches us that the US always prepares for the wrong war and certainly as far as I can tell from the outside no one is even remotely concerned about the Fulda Gap at the moment.
I would guess that right now the old iron is all about beating China at the Taiwan straights, and the new iron is all about decapitating Iran without the need for a major ground offensive. Whether either scenario is plausible is a whole other question.
“We’re trying to act like a superpower when we no longer have a superpower economy.”
And once again, if ours isn’t a superpower economy, what does one look like? China and to a lesser extent India are on thier way and I’ve little doubt they will get there, but they still barely match the economic might of Italy at the moment. Russia? The dead and dying economies of Europe?
Cheap energy would be a wonderful thing. So would magic. I would love to be able to flick a wand and say, “Wingardium Levioso” The problem is, that is just magical wishful thinking. And so is saying, “We need cheap energy.”
I have a hard time deciding whether you have a fine mind, you are insane, or both.
AL, take a gander at “Journalistic Indifference”:http://blogs.rny.com/sbw/stories/storyReader$524 and comment.
Regards/sbw
“Now so-called conservatives have broken that consensus.”
_Have you ever heard of the ‘counter-culture’?_
Sure, but it was mostly young people without a lot of influence, and they grew up and joined the consensus. It just wasn’t very important. Now, if the counterculture had elected Abbie Hoffman for president with Charles Manson as vice president to reign him in with some mature judgement….
“My own ideology is pretty much straight out of CN Parkinson and John Gall.”
_It’s sort of like stating that your own ideology is pretty much straight out of WC Fields or Groucho Marx. It makes for good engineering humor, and there is some truth to be found there, but its not a serious philosophy._
Put aside the faux-academic tone. They make good theory that is backed up mostly by anecdote. Parkinson has a fair number of british examples to back up his assertions. Just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. I’ve noticed other people make the mistake of ignoring things that strike them as humorous, just because they’re funny. People have told me that _Principia Discordia_ is not serious phlosophy, even though — for example — the Law of Fives and the Starbucks Pebbles stories are clear and concise.
Still, I’m glad to see somebody has at least read Parkinson and Gall.
“He wanted to attack iraq with nothing but special forces.”
_But I’ve not heard a tidbit from anyone who has an ear in the halls that suggest the above scenario, and I have to ask just where are you hearing this?_
It’s perhaps overstated. But look at the numbers he wanted to attack iran with, and look at the numbers of special forces we have plus their support. Subtract one from the other, and how much is left? But the army didn’t want to go along, and he kept compromising until we had a whole lot of regular army and marines involved.
“But after we’re out of iraq the army will settle back to beating the russians at Fulda Gap because that’s where their momentum is directed.”
_I would guess that right now the old iron is all about beating China at the Taiwan straights, and the new iron is all about decapitating Iran without the need for a major ground offensive._
Sure, and we’ll be thinking about beating china with the same sort of forces we developed against the russians. Our ground forces have 66+ years continuity and they’re cautious about making sweeping changes. And rightly so. They’re very good at what they do, and they might not be as good at something new and untried. So, incremental change, gradual evolution. And our recent occupation experience is not all that useful for war with china though it has shown some of our big material defects. When we lose M1s to IEDs it’s a sign to the world that tanks aren’t as useful as they used to be.
“We’re trying to act like a superpower when we no longer have a superpower economy.”
_And once again, if ours isn’t a superpower economy, what does one look like?_
A real superpower can afford its military. We’re paying for the war and and for a big chunk of our regular military expenses on credit. That never works for long. Like, we extended a lot of credit to britain in WWII. Then as the war was winding down the british said “Well, we’ll need to look at how to re-establish control over our middle-east oilfields”, and we said, “You mean *our* middle-east oilfieds.”. And they said, “Yes, *your* middle-east oilfields.”
There aren’t any superpowers at the moment. Projecting overwhelming military force has gotten too expensive for anybody. At the moment we’re the only ones who seriously try. The other large armed forces are mostly there to make it expensive for us to attack their countries.
Similarly, we have the only significant offensive navy. (Think about the british taking back the Falklands. Pathetic.) So everybody that we might possibly attack is designing their force structure to respond to carrier groups. In terms of technology we’re close to a stationary target — we make incremental improvements in carrier defense while they design whole new weapons systems to attack carriers.
_Cheap energy would be a wonderful thing. So would magic. I would love to be able to flick a wand and say, “Wingardium Levioso” The problem is, that is just magical wishful thinking. And so is saying, “We need cheap energy.”_
We don’t have it, and we need it. If we lacked any workable strategy to stop Al Qaeda, would you say “Too bad, I’d love to have a magic plan to do it but it’s just wishful thinking. There’s nothing we can do, we just have to surrender.”? No, you’d find a workable strategy.
We have no reasonable choice but to look for a way. With cheap energy we are America, a rich superpower with a high standard of living and maybe a labor shortage. Without cheap energy we will become another (squabbling group of) third-world nation(s), at best a regional power. Al Qaeda won’t need to think of us as their special enemy. We would be like brazil for them.
If we do our level best to get cheap energy and we fail, we will be no worse off than if we don’t try. Either way we have *lost*. Say what you like about Carter, he was right to call this the moral equivalent of war. If we fail at this we might survive as a nation, but that nation won’t be anything like what I think of as the United States of America.
For that matter, what is israel without cheap energy? At best another desperately poor middle-east nation.
If we agree that cheap energy is worth looking for, then we can look at how government can promote it, or at least stay out of the way. These are technical questions. We could start a new Department of Energy and easily make it as counterproductive as the old one. The US government is a giant force in the economy; you might say it shouldn’t be there but it’s no good pretending it isn’t there. We have to look for the details that could make it useful or at least harmless for our most important goal.
“We don’t have it, and we need it. If we lacked any workable strategy to stop Al Qaeda, would you say “Too bad, I’d love to have a magic plan to do it but it’s just wishful thinking. There’s nothing we can do, we just have to surrender.”? No, you’d find a workable strategy.”
Not a valid analogy.
Frequently people who realize how serious the energy crisis is say something like, “We need to have a Manhattan project for energy.” This is also not a valid analogy.
Fighting a terror against diffuse terrorist organizations in a globalized high tech society is a wicked problem. If you are truly a devotee of CN Parkison, you’ll realize that this implies that there is not a ‘workable strategy’ in the sense of ‘If I do A, then B will happen’. There is simply some system that will work better than not at all, and that system won’t be fully understood until after it is implemented and it will probably create a new problem ‘C’ after the old problem goes away. That is just the nature of wicked problems.
But you seem to suggest that finding cheap energy is a tame problem like building an atomic bomb, and thus if we just threw more resources at the problem things would get better.
Now, it is possible that ‘finding cheap energy’ is a tame problem that can be solved with sufficient technical no how, but if this is the case we don’t know what the question is that produces a tame problem. In other words, with what we know now, ‘finding cheap energy’ is just another wicked problem because, unlike the situation at the beginning of the Manhattan project, we haven’t discovered the tame problem we need to solve (‘how do we get an atomic bomb to work?’). At the beginning of the Manhattan project, the problem to be solved was well-understood – it wasn’t just ‘How do we make a single bomb that can wreck a city?’. The problem you call ‘finding cheap energy’ is about as well understood as the question, ‘What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything’? Until the problem is better formulated, we haven’t a chance of solving it simply by throwing more resources at the problem.
And I would argue that, since the problem of ‘finding cheap energy’ isn’t currently well formulated, that government intervention in the problem would – in terms you would understand – simply reduce the coefficient of efficiency of the system by adding more decision making components to it. What we need to do is wait for the market to stumble on to the right definition of the problem, say changing the problem from ‘how do I find cheap energy?’ to ‘how do we make fusion power cost effective’? At that point, yes, we can collectively throw resources at the problem to make the answer a reality. We can’t do that now. The best we can do is nudge the market and hope we are nudging it in the right direction.
Fighting a diffuse global terrorist organization and finding cheap energy are both very difficult problems, but of the two its the first that has the clearer approach, because, although some people like to pretend otherwise, we do have approaches to similar problems which are proven and reasonably well understood. We don’t have proven and reasonably well understood approaches to the second problem that don’t depend on non-renewable resources.
_The best we can do is nudge the market and hope we are nudging it in the right direction._
Suppose that’s true. Then we have the question of how to effectively nudge the market. We are nudging the market away from cheap energy already, how can we undo some of that?
And we might be close to some tame problems. When we started working on penicillin, it was a lab curiousity. First we found that penicillin was reasonably nontoxic itself. (Lots of fungal products are toxic to people too.) Then we had a lot of companies working together to solve the technical problems. Those technical problems left penicillin not practical. They got solved one at a time or a few at a time, until the big one left was just that the fungus didn’t grow all that well. When they got a version that could grow all through the culture medium instead of just on top, then the cooperation stopped. Now it was every company working for itself to get little advantages that could give them the most efficient production and the best profits.
When we have a problem that isn’t very close to a commercial product, that may be the *only* time that government-coordinated research has an important place.
_…say changing the problem from ‘how do I find cheap energy?’ to ‘how do we make fusion power cost effective’?_
Good example. We have a whole lot of classified research that might be useful for that. But it’s classified because there’s a chance it might help somebody make a bomb. I say, nonproliferation is dead already, so we might as well release that data to fusion researchers and see if it helps.
Again, the whole point is to go from something that plain isn’t cost-effective to something that’s close. You get industry interested if they think there’s a sufficient chance of results that they don’t want to risk getting left out. Then they cooperate with each other (and with government) until they get close.
Another approach that sometimes is very useful is to announce prizes for results. A research program that spends less than the prize money often seems like a better bet than a research program that depends on someday creating a salable product, getting further funding, marketing it well enough to beat out the competition, etc.
Careful taxation can make a big difference. We want market forces to create something that can start from scratch and compete with giant industries that already have economy of scale, trillions of dollars worth of installed base, many years of lobbying for legal and tax advantage, etc. My immediate thought is to put a rather large tax on every bit of fossil fuel mined or imported. That makes things more expensive according to how much fossil fuel they use. Then distribute that tax equally among voting taxpayers. On average they get their money back. But anything they do to reduce their fossil fuel use leaves them with more money. And anything producers do to reduce fossil fuel use leaves *them* with more money. The less oil your company uses, the less tax you pay that gets distributed to voters. You can keep the money or reduce your prices and sell more.
_Until the problem is better formulated, we haven’t a chance of solving it simply by throwing more resources at the problem._
OK, help formulate it. The top-level criterion is nice and simple. We don’t survive as a first-world nation unless we get cheap energy. So we need cheap energy, and fossil fuels will continue to get more expensive.
Now you want more specific solutions that will fit that criterion. OK, we have a nebulous market that might encourage large businesses and random inventors to make products that use less energy or that provide more energy cheaply. That market is strongly distorted by actions of the government. How can the bad government distortions be reduced? How can good government distortions be encouraged? What is the *right amount* of resources to put into new technology, and what is the most effective way to allocate those resources?
I eagerly await your suggestions for formulating the problem.
1) Clear the way for new nuclear power plants using mature 3rd generation technologies. These things aren’t quick to build. This guarantees some continuity of civilization in the event of a peak oil crisis or other collapse of hydrocarbon supplies while providing a much cleaner environmental solution than turning to coal.
2) Work on ways to increase the incentives for using solar power in order to push solar panel production to the point that economies of scale push the cost down into the range where its feasible return on investment for middle-class residential construction. Additional tax incentives are interesting (probably scaled to the region of the country with higher incentives for sunnier states), as is the possibility of program along the lines of the student loan program. Even a special deduction for solar water heater installation would be a good start. Solar power will never be a solution to a modern societies energy needs, but its is by far the safest way to nudge the clean power alternatives while we are working on a real solution. The sun isn’t likely to go away any time soon, and if it does we’ll have bigger problems than just an energy crisis. It’s also real power, not faux power like hydrogen, ethanol, bio-diesal and the rest of the so called green energy sources that are really just government subsidies for large land owners or big corporations in disguise (and with nasty economic side effects at that). Solar has alot of attractiveness from a conservative standpoint as well. Besides being a form of conservation (save the hydrocarbons for lubricants and plastics), once it is in place is a highly decentralized form of power production and thus enhances national security. The Germans of all people are already pushing this way, and we’ve got an excellent oppurtunity therefore to learn how not to do it. We need to be watching and learning from that.
3) More money for basic scientific and technical research (if I had my druthers, also taking money from soft sciences and investing it in hard ones). As you point out, society has a vested interest in helping bring new products to market. Also, the solution is likely to be something we aren’t thinking about (which is why we have to be careful not to nudge the market too hard). One of the things that caused me to nearly vote for Gore was the rumor that he was friendly to basic science, but I was forced to abandon that idea when a) Gore staff science writers weren’t even as compotent as Bush’s and b) Gore showed himself to not really have convictions so much as political postures, thus reducing the likelihood that he’d really follow through in an area that doesn’t have wide political appeal.
4) Incentives to increase enrollment by Americans in science engineering, and technical programs. Importing foreign talent is good and all, but sooner or latter the foreign supply is going to dry up as thier economies gear up. Like nuclear power plants, quality engineers aren’t built quickly. That means we need to native talent on hand in the event of a crisis. And while I disagree with you that we are getting poorer, I do agree that the possibility is there if we fail to control population growth (read: ‘unlimited illegal immigration’) and fail to properly train our next generation (read: ‘everyone gets a social sciences degree’. see Saudia Arabia).
5) I disagree with the idea of taxing fossil fuels. The danger there is you sink your economy and someone else comes up with the clean cheap power solution that you didn’t have the money to research or implement. Besides, there isn’t any evidence the government mandated green approach yields any better results than the market driven green approach. Witness the direction of American and European carbon emissions in the past few years. You idea of a tax that is automatically refunded is interesting, but a systems man such as yourself should spot the fallacy pretty quickly.
More later when I’ve had a chance to think about it, but let me close by saying that one of our better Presidents, Eisenhauer, once gave a speach on wicked problems and how we ought to respond to them. Only one part of that speech typically gets quoted anymore, and that out of context – the part about being wary of the ‘military-industrial complex’. But if you read the whole speach, you’ll see he doesn’t say that the military-industial complex is a bad thing, just as new thing. In fact, he says it’s become an essential and necessary thing. Eisenhauer is not such a simple thinker as the people who quote him. What the speach is about is being wary of simple solutions to complex problems. It’s a speach about using moderation, avoiding utopian thinking, and avoiding easy answers.
Celebrim, I pretty much agree with you on everything here, so let me just point out the one disagreement:
_I disagree with the idea of taxing fossil fuels. The danger there is you sink your economy and someone else comes up with the clean cheap power solution that you didn’t have the money to research or implement. … Your idea of a tax that is automatically refunded is interesting, but a systems man such as yourself should spot the fallacy pretty quickly._
It doesn’t sink the economy when the money is refunded. What it does is give you a choice. When gasoline is $3/gallon you pay it because you have to. When gasoline is $4/gallon but you get a dollar back to spend on what you want, you *might* choose to put that dollar into gasoline, but you have a bigger incentive to find a way to cut back on your gasoline and spend your dollar on something else.
The obvious fallacy is that the government will come up with an excuse not to give the money back, but instead keep it for government use. However, we can avoid that as long as we stay out of a war. Of course as soon as there’s a scary war the government will steal everything available and say they’ll use it “for the war effort”. But they’d surely have a gasoline tax and maybe rationing whether or not there was already a tax. So we get the benefits of a non-revenue tax until then, and we don’t lose a whole lot when the war comes that we wouldn’t lose anyway.
And incidentally, if prices go up on things that use fossil fuels but voters get their money back, what does that do to illegal aliens? Lots of things are more expensive for them. They pay full price and don’t get anything back. It makes the USA that much less an opportunity for them. It isn’t as good for legal foreign tourists either, of course, which is a regrettable side effect.
A less-obvious fallacy is that this puts money in the hands of voters, who will tend to spend it on importado. If voters use less gasoline but instead buy more textiles from china, the chinese economy gets the benefits. They can take the money and buy oil. But this isn’t really a problem with the fossil-fuel tax. This is a problem with our free trade approach. China is effectively subsidising their sales to us, and we do nothing about it.
According to one economic theory, they are primarily hurting themselves — we get their stuff cheap, they’re paying to give stuff away to us and we get the benefits. This is short-sighted. But we have let them do it for so long that now they have such dollar reserves it would be hard for us to challenge them. This is a problem we have to deal with, and we can’t handle with any of our other economic problems until we do deal with this. So it isn’t really a stretch for me to consider partial solutions to our energy problem on the assumption that we’re also managing our china problem.