Politics and the Media

Truly wise people listen to CBS, whose former talking head was the now disgraced Dan Rather.

Dan as all good Leftists (ha ha ha) recall conspired with Mary Mapes to forge documents smearing President Bush in their failed attempt to throw a presidential election. While they should have both been tried for conspiracy, instead they were merely fired.

Please, any Leftist here, name me ONE conservative talking head who was likewise fired for fabricating documents to throw even a congressional election, much less a presidential election.

Name one.

Then name a conservative columnist equivalent to Walter Duranty, who famously pronounced the famine in the Ukraine to be "a sheer absurdity."
He was given a Pulitzer Prize for lying through his Leftist teeth.
Duranty wrote for the Leftist New York Times - that famous publication which refused to fire Jayson Blair, fabricator of many articles, because Jayson happens to be black.

Then there is New York Times fabricator Lincoln Steffans, also a major liar.
"I have seen the future (socialism in the USSR) and it works!"

Steffans, like Duranty, saw untold suffering, and starvation, but like a good Leftist, he lied.

Let's continue, shall we?

Eason Jordan, Executive Vice President of CNN, lied at a group of pressies in Europe that American troops were "targeting the media."
Jordan resigned in disgrace.

Name for me one conservative who likewise resigned in disgrace after smearing our troops. Just one.

I could, in the words of infamous Leftist Richard Dawkins, "multiply up examples", but it would do little good. Leftists have no intention of trying to start being honest.

Lies are the sine qua non of the Left.

 

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Don't drop out of junior high. You need it.
And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

 

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No "conservative" intellectual or media figure has resigned any post of privilege, or suffered any other penalty, for lying about anything in the past forty years.

We can set Beck aside, because we can't tell whether he actually believes that sling of his, but examples abound - just yesterday we had John Yoo on NPR lying his ass off about matters squarely within his professional expertise and curriculum experience, and he risked nothing to do so.

You have none of your facts straight, there - from the names to the allegations, a pile of errors and inventions creating a fantasy world of your own adoption (not creation - these aren't your thoughts).

 

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I think Glen Beck is funny and while I don't think ANYTHING he says should be taken as gospel, it should be food for thought, or a laugh.

The man's job relies on ratings, he needs to keep you interested by saying controversial things.

What separates him from other talking heads is that he actually does a lot of research to support his conspiracy theories. The man knows how to build a great debate argument; that doesn't necessarily mean that he even believes in the things he says, he just knows how to back an argument.

 

Not really. He's recycling old John Birch Society pamphlets and similar stuff - somebody else did whatever "research" was involved.

 

This is earth science??

 

Wasn't it Dan Rather??

 

No doubt you DO take anything spoken by a fellow leftist as "gospel".

Air America said controversial things. I listened to their raving lunacy regularly. They spewed lies, venom, hatred, and ignorance. You might have thought of it as "gospel."

Among the many differences between liberal news or commentary the conservative counterparts are that Glenn Beck, and Hannity and O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Prager and Larry Elder all have guests of the opposite side of the political spectrum on their shows. In fact, Fox News has hired Juan Williams who was fired from PBS.

Balance is offered by conservatives, but rarely by liberals. Even-handedness and honesty are not in the Democrat lexicon.

 

Dan Rather didn't forge anything.

 

'An action of moderation'?? I'm a moderate and I like the sound of that.

Regarding media bias, I think that it exists on both the right and the left. It seems to be growing more and more common too, as more and more media of all sorts emphasize 'analysis' (read: 'opinion') over straight reporting. No longer are they content to tell us what happened, they have to tell us what they believe it all means and instruct us in what we should think and do about it. Editorial decisions about what news stories to run seem increasingly motivated by a desire to provide new illustrations for preexisting political conclusions.

I think that in general the mainstream media lean left. That's probably sociological, since the major media outlets are headquartered in big cities, particularly in New York. The people in the industry all know each other, they attend the same Upper West Side parties and they share a similar received-wisdom about events. The rightwing media take more of an insurgent populist tone, in smaller-town media and on talk-radio and the internet.

It feeds on itself. As the internet eats into older forms of media that consequently experience reduced revenues, they lay off their expensive reporters and news departments and they turn more and more to providing pre-formed opinion to smaller and more committed core audiences. We see that happening with once mainstream magazines like 'Time' and 'Newsweek' who freely admit that they've cut pages, reduced news and emphasized politics.

And as more and more of the public gets their news from the internet, it's easier and easier for people to seek out opinion outlets that are almost guaranteed to agree with their preconceptions, whatever they happen to be.

I remember driving around the US as a college student in the 1970's. One thing that struck me then was how Americans everywhere, whether in the Nevada desert, the Great Plains, the hollows of West Virginia or in downtown Baltimore, all watched the same TV news networks and all read 'Time' and 'Newsweek'. No matter how diverse their geographical circumstances, everybody was kind of on the same page. I don't really sense that is true any more. The self-segregated left and right increasingly live in separate blue and red worlds where they only hear what they want to hear.

 

Yes, yes, the left and the right are full of it. Only the brilliant folks in the "middle" have the answers. This is the same argument posited by libertarians, who are right of the "right." It is the same argument posited by the left, who were all around Barack Obama, until he was humiliated by the recent elections. No worries. Obama blames that outcome on "communication." Good one, Mister 57 States.

Ya think? Leftists swear exactly the opposite. But you know Leftists. They lie. Take Dan Rather, please.

Oops! Millions on the Left didn't want to hear the crap Obama and Company were handing them, so they voted lots of Leftists OUT of office.

Perhaps you should read some of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers. Conservatives hear them, loud and clear. Democrats have turned them off, completely.

 

Dan Rather didn't lie. Bush did neglect his sworn duties in the National Guard. But unfortunately his agents were able to divert attention from this by stealing the actual document and forging a copy. It's a brilliant tactic, no casual viewer would notice the difference, but neither could it be used as evidence.

 

No, but he rushed to publicize somebody else's lie, without taking the time to fact-check it. Maybe it was a newsman's eagerness to 'scoop' the competition, maybe it coincided with Rather's own politics, or maybe a little of both.

Bush flew supersonic F-102's. That's pretty cool. What did Barack Obama do when he was in the military?

Kinda like Barack Obama's birth certificate.

The people who went after Bush and the people who go after Obama are pretty similar, in my opinion. Maybe they are on to something, but most likely they are just hoping to cause trouble.

 

The facts checked. There were no falsehoods in that forged document - one of the reasons it suckered Rather is that its content was corroborated so well.

It was apparently forged by someone well acquainted with the actual events.

Obama's birth certificate as presented by the State of Hawaii in official document form, was a forgery with accurate content?

 

the fact their is literally no record of him being in alabama while not 100% solid and concrete evidence makes it a highly probable assumption that he was never their. the military is a bueracracy to have no record means most likely it didn't happen.

 

how could he have flown a plan he didn't log the required hours for?

 

Maybe it was a simulator...

 

English isn't your strong suit, is it.

Hint: When the red squiggly line is under a word... look the word up, unless you wish to keep demonstrating that ... English isn't your strong suit.

Oh I forgot. You can't think until you've had a cup of coffee.