Why are the Palestinians upset that Israel blew up the Hamas guy?
He was parapalegic. He wasn’t getting any healthier. I suspect women weren’t flocking to him.
And Israel martyred him.
So if they really believe the line they’re feeding to gullible 14 year old boys, why aren’t they holding celebrations saying, “Thanks to Israel, the founder of Hamas is now cavorting in a land of milk and honey with 72 virgins! Bless you, Israel! You could have let him have a slow, lingering unmartyred death, but no! You were thoughtful and dropped bombs!”
But instead they’re all upset. Doesn’t make sense. Not if they really believe in the glories of the hereafter, instead of just using it to sending credulous and insecure teens to their deaths.
And the UN wants to condemn Israel for blowing up a man complicit in the murders of hundreds of Israelis. I’m curious: Was there a condemnation of Palestinians for cynically manipulating a 14 year old? A ten year old? Just wondering.
PAD
• 
“Actually, I think PAD’s original point was that if Hamas actually believes the bûllšhìŧ they feed the kids they recruit to blow themselves up in Allah’s Name, they should be celebrating their leader’s arrival in Paradise, not mourning his death. It’s kind of like when a Pope dies, and the entire Roman Catholic Church goes into a mourning period, when, if they really believed their own theology, they should be singing and dancing – their head guy just got his express ticket to Heaven punched, and gets to sit at God’s Table!”
Well, no, actually it’s not like that at all. The first part of your statement is correct. But mourning the death of, say, the Pope, makes sense, because there’s nothing in Catholic theology that says you get a fantastic deal in heaven if you martyr yourself, particularly if you’re killing Jews and non-believers while doing it.
Saying Catholics should follow the same logic as my proposed logic for Hamas isn’t fair, because the Catholic church is not making an open and public point of embracing the joys and benefits of violence and destruction. Hamas is urging children to commit suicide, for God’s sake. Does that sound *anything* like Catholic doctrine?
No, what I’m saying is that on the one hand Hamas makes a big deal of celebrating death, destruction and martyrdom…but only of hand picked kids and suckers. When one of their own (i.e., upper management) buys the farm, suddenly it’s “How dare they! Those bášŧárdš! They’ve spilled our blood and must pay for it!” Meaning they’re just a bunch of big freakin’ hypocrites, which I think we all knew deep down, but it’s impressive to see it so starkly brought to the fore.
And Baerbel, honestly, you should know me by now. You should understand my sense of irony, and that what I was putting forward was the proposed reasoning path of sadistic bášŧárdš. Not for a moment do *I* truly think that people without full use of their limbs have little if anything to live for. Of course I don’t think that.
PAD
Please permit me to make myself more clear, Peter (may I call you Peter?).
The reasoning I was following is as such:
In Catholicism, humans, being such sinful creatures as we are, need some sort of intercession on our behalf in order to get into Heaven. The Pope, however, gets to be infallible on matters of faith and morals; thus, he already has the intercession of the saints going on for him. He gets to go to Heaven without having o spend any time in Purgatory or Limbo, unlike the run-of-the-mill Catholics.
It’s by analogy to the Hamas idea of martyrs getting the express lane to Paradise – 72 virgins, no waiting! The true believers in Hamas should also be praising Allah that their guy doesn’t have to worry about what happens when the Leaves of the Book are unrolled; his “martyrdom” is supposed to guarantee his eternal bliss, right?
In the case of the Pope, it doesn’t mean that, say, Pius IX died for his faith, just that as Pope, he gets the benefit of the doubt from the Keeper of the Gate. Therefore, it also makes little sense to mourn a Pope’s death, although it’s nowhere near the abhorrent level of hypocrisy being evinced by Hamas…
Karen,
Some things NEVER change.
In the name of “political correctness” or “fairness”, the media in general and the New York Times in particular have sought to suppress identifying Muslims who wish to harm Americans as well, Muslims, even if that is pertinent to motive:
To wit:
1.) When Muslim terrorists first attacked the World Trade Center back in 1993, the New York Times ran the headline “Jersey City Man Is Charged In Bombing of World Trade Center.”
2.) On July 4, 2002, an Egyptian living in California walked into an El Al terminal at the Los Angeles airport and started shooting Jews. (Not that there’s anything unpeaceful about that.)
In the past, Hadayet had complained about his neighbors’ flying a U.S. flag, he had a “Read the Koran” sticker on his front door and he had expressed virulent hatred for Jews. The Times reported with a straight face that his motive for the shooting may have been “some dispute over a fare.”
3.) The Times also blacked out the information that the terrorists who seized a Moscow theater in October 2002 were Muslims. In a front-page article about the “hostage siege” is Russia, the Times referred to the Islamic terrorists who stormed the theater exclusively as the “captors”, the “sepratists” and the “guerillas”. Nowhere will you gfind a statement attributing the Moscow hostage crisis to Muslims. The only hint that the “captors’ were Muslims was the Times criticizing Russian president Vladimir V. putin’s attempt “to cast the rebels as international Islamic terrorists”.
christ is regarded as the messiah of his time but he is not regarded as the son of god.
the basic principle behind islam is that the elements of godliness are not divisible.
also try to understand that hamas represents .0000003 percent of the muslim population. to even go out there and say what they preach and do has something to do with islam is like saying:
“gee that guy just robbed a liquor store so it has to do something with catholicism”.
also the 72 virgins reference is more of a symbolic reference (look it up). theres hadith (sayings of the prophet muhammad) that will explain things such as evolution and the big bang theory.
if you want to understand islam read the quran and then try to read a few books on hadith, and interpretations. a modern islamic preacher by the name of yusuf islam has some very good writings – check them out.
Arafian, you believe the “72 virgins” thing is symbolic. Similarly, I believe the tale of Creation as given in Genesis is metaphorically accurate, although literally highly unlikely at best. On the other hand, there are those who sincerely believe that the entire sidereal universe was created in six literal 24-hour days, and that I’m going to Hëll for not agreeing. Similarly, there are those who believe the virgins are a literal reward awaiting them in Paradise, and that they really can get there faster by dying while killing those their leaders have told them are enemies.
Religious fundamentalists of any stripe make uncomfortable neighbors. I must say, I’d rather live next to you than next to my in-laws’ preacher…
Karen,
It gets worse. The media and Times in particular are almost neurotic in censoring terrorists/American traitors Muslim names. When an Arab becomes an American citizen, that is observed by the press, and rightly so. But when a Muslim terrorist/American traitor changes his name to Muhammad, that legal formality is ignored:
1.) Dirty bomber Jose Padilla had his name legally changed to Ibrahim in the mid-nineties. When he was arrested on terrorism-related charges in mid-2002, the media changed it back. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd laughed off the incident and basically called Ibrahim a dumb Hispanic who was incapable of assembling a dirty bomb. Obviously, Times editors gave her special dispensation to portray a “Hispanic” as dumb in order to divert attention from any evidence that the attack was the result of a Muslim extremist.
2.)California traitor “John Walker Lindh” changed his name to Suleyman Al-Lindh in HIGH SCHOOL! When he was captured by the Taliban, he was going by the name Abdul Hameed. He hadn’t used the name Lindh for years. But he was identified EXCLUSIVELY in the press as John Walker Lindh.
3.) Thwarted shoe bomber “Richard Reid” was identified by the French police as Tariq Raja. The name he answered to at the time he tried to bomb an airplane was his Muslim name, Abdel Rahim. Naturally, our nation’s media called him Richard Reid. The New York Times – surprise! – went an exra step, describing him as Richard Colvin Reid, a British citizen with a “Christian upbringing”.
So obviously, the fact that he currently was a Muslim was unimportant to tell people, but making certain the American people realize this violent would-be terrorist had “Christian upbringing” was vital.
In addition, the Qur’an also states rather explicitly that Jesus was not crucified. It says that a look-alike was crucified, and that Jesus was assumed bodily into heaven to be with God. (an-Nisa’ 157-158) This is a belief found in various early Christian heresies as well.
Jerome,
You seem to have a true dislike for the Times. I see that it is the only paper you are citing. If you want to convince me that there is a liberal slant to our news, citing one newspaper is not going to do it. Most of the pundits on TV lean toward the conservative perspective. The original “study” that said the media is liberal spoke to 139 journalists in Wash. DC. This is not enough of a sample to get anything but flawed statistics. The conservative pundits took this info and ran with it. It has been said so many times, that people believe it to be true without looking at what is truly out there. If the news were really liberal, wouldn’t there be more of an outcry about this administration? Meanwhile, not a day went by that the Clinton adminstration wasn’t derided by talk radio, which was then picked up by the major news organizations. And Clinton wasn’t even really a liberal. The center has been moved to the right, slowly but surely, until liberals have becomed so marginalized many have changed their name to prgressive to get away from the taint the right wing has given them. There is a propaganda war going on in this country. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the left lost a long time ago. I’d like to see how Air America does. I’m rooting for them. I also hope that by putting some REAL liberal viewpoints out on the airwaves, that people will be able to tell the difference between what we have been fed as “liberal” and what is really liberal.
Karen,
Perhaps worst of all, whe terrorist snipers in Maryland and Virginia turned out to be Muslims, the media treated it as a random crime. The older of the two Muslims had converted to Islam seventeen years earlier, changed his name to John Muhammad, belonged to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, and cheered the 9-11 terrorist attack. Indeed, he was so gung-ho about the 9-11 attack that three of his acquaintances contacted the FBI, believing he could be a terrorist.
Muhammad registered the getaway vehicle with the DMV on the first anniversary of the 9-11 attack, writing in the time of the registration as “8:52 AM”, the precise moment the first plane had hit the World Trade Center.
But what the media saw as the crucial, important fact about sniper John Muhammad was that he was a Gulf War Veteran! CNN insistedon calling John Muhammad by his Christian name (again – violent Muslims=good, Christians=bad) a name he hadn’t used for 17 years! The night the snipers’ names were first released, CNN’s Jeanne Meserve repeatedly called him John Allen Williams.
This is how The New York Times described the snipers: “John Alen Muhammad,41, a Gulf war veteran, and John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican.” The only clue to the snipers’ religion was the insistence by the Times that Islam had absolutely nothing to do with the shootings. In the three months following the capture of the Muslim snipers terrorizing the capital, the Times ran 128 articles about the shootings. Only 9 even mentioned the word “Muslim”.
Karen,
No, it is not just the Times, although I wish you had a valid answer for some of what I’ve posted already. And there is a big difference between someone like Rush Limbaugh, who never claims to be “objective” and is in the BUSINESS of giving OPINIONS and someone like Dan Rather or Peter Jennings who are supposedly there to give the nation an unbiased objective perspective. The most blatant example I can think of that puts the media’s bias into focus is this:
What the Big Three anchors had to say about Clinton’s first day in office and that of George W. Bush. As one of President Bill Clinton’s first initiatives, he reversed some anti-abortion policies of Presidents Reagan abd Bush the Father. During his first day in office, President George W. Bush reversed a proabortion policy of Bill Clinton’s.
JENNINGS ON CLINTON’S FIRST DAY: President Clinton keeps his word on abortion rights. President Clinton kept a promise today on the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Mr. Clinton signed presidential memoranda rolling back many of the restrictions imposed by his predecessors.”
JENNINGS ON BUSH’S FIRST DAY: One of the president’s first actions was designed to appeal to anti-abortion conservatives. The president signed an order reinstating a Reagan-era policy that prohibited federal funding of family planning groups that provided abortion counseling overseas.”
BROKAW ON CLINTON’S FIRST DAY: “Today President Clinton kept a campaign promise and it came on the twentieth anniversary or ROE vs. WADE legalizing abortion.”
BROKAW ON BUSH’S FIRST DAY:”We’ll begin with the new president’s very active day, which started on acontroversial note…”
RATHER ON CLINTON’S FIRST DAY:”On the anniversary of ROE vs. WADE, President Clinton fulfills a promise, supporting abortion rights. It was twenty years ago today the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark abortion rights ruling, and the controversy hasn’t stopped since. Today, with the stroke of a pen, President Clinton delivered on his campaign promise to cancel several antiabortion regulations of the Reagan-Bush years.”
RATHER ON BUSH’S FIRST DAY: “This was President Bush’s first day at the office and he did something to quickly please the right flank in his party: He reinstituted an anti-abortion policy that had been in place during his father’s term and the Reagan presidency but was lifted during the Clinton years.”
Any questions?
So President Clinton “keeps his word”, “kept a campaign promise”, “fulfills a promise”. And despite the controversial nature of abortion, none of the anchors called Clinton’s move “controversial”, as if, of course, any fair-minded, resonsible person would have done the same thing.
But in Bush’s case, the anchors’ tones appear almost prosecutorial. Bush didn’t “keep a campaign promise.” No, Bush acted “to appeal to abortion conservatives”, “to quickly please the right flank in his party” and he “started on a controversial note”.
The not so subtle theme: Clinton practices good government by keeping his promises to NOW, etc. Bush, in contrast, caters to, and becomes the errand boy for the “right flank” of his party.
originally posted by Jerome Maida:
Two blatant examples of the blatant bias of The New York Times…
1.)[Anecdote about NYT publisher]
2.) The New York Times stylebook REQUIRED the word “unwinnable” be used in any sentence about the Vietnam War.
Would you happen to have a reliable source for either of these claims?
The first one is an interesting anecdote, and might even be true. (Certainly there is nothing impossible about someone having said silly or embarrasing things during their teenage years — although I would like to see a reliable source for the story rather than accept it blindly.)
But the question is not what Sulzberger (or Turner, or Murdoch, or Moon) believed 30 years ago, nor even what they believe today, so much as how their beliefs affect how they run their news organizations.
The media source for which I’ve read the most complaints by reporters about interference with their reporting is the Washington Times, and these have been about pressure being put on to slant the news in a conservative direction. In contrast, I’ve seen fewer complaints about management interference with reporting at the NYT (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) and many of these have to do with pro-corporate bias (e.g. directives not to do stories that reflect badly on companies that run ads or that are part of the parent company). Liberals as well as conservatives have complained about the coverage they have received from the NYT, and with about equal justification (i.e. some of the complaints are valid, some aren’t, and the valid complaints generally seem to stem from sloppiness rather than deliberate bias).
I am highly dubious of your second claim, that the NYT stylebook requires the word “unwinnable” to be used in any sentence where the phrase “Vietnam War” is used. How sure are you that this is true? Would you be willing to give me a penny for the first exception I can find, 2 cents for the second, 4 cents for the third, 8 cents for the fourth, etc.? I suspect that such an arrangement would make me as rich as Scrooge McDuck…
It is ironic that so many who complain of media bias are often the ones who get fooled by false reporting! I suspect that your second claim, that the NYT stylebook requires the use of the word “unwinnable”, is a good example of this.
Sorry, but I have rarely seen any reason to favor either side over the other in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. These are two groups of people that hate each other with a passion that goes back millennia. One group is in charge, one is not. I have no love lost for the Hamas or any fundamentalist muslim group. Their actions are despicable and inexcusable. But I notice that here in america there is a tendency to completely ignore Israel’s part in this.
And really, the palestinians have been teated like dirt for generations. Several european countries tried to establish trading deals with palestinian authorities, to build a harbor and help them develop their stance in life and to lessen the poverty. The Israelian government told them the palestinians have no right to trade and it all should go through Israel. Israel has treated them quite similar to how the american settles treated the native americans. Treaty after treaty broken, land after land taken. People point out how Saddam broke 14 UN resolutions. Well, Israel as broken 142.
I see congressmen and senators give long speeches about Israelian children killed by yet another insane suicide bomber and I agree with them. But I fail to see why I should cry any less for palestinian children bombed by Israelian tanks. Really what’s the difference? Are the tears of their mothers worth less because they aren’t jewish? Innocent people die on both sides. Difference is that Israel only has to say they ‘suspected terrorrists’ to be at a place and they can level it, with all the civilian casualties they want. Boy does that excuse work for everything these days.
I am neither muslim nor jewish, but I know when I see two groups of people that hate each other. And of course Israel takes out an Hamas leader when they can. Except we are supposed to cheer that. If muslims took out an Israelian politician, those same people would condemn it. Either you accept that these actions are acceptabel in this war or you do not. And when you read up on either Sharon or Arafat it is plain that the title ‘murderer’ neatly fits both of these men.
Nova Land,
Good arguments. But I think some of what you say proves my point.
The Washington Times was created so there would be an alternative to the Washington Post. They have admitted they have a more conservative bent. It’s part of why they have been successful. People are getting stories and a point of view they would not get if the Post were the only game in town. The New York Post is the same way. Murdoch saved it – literally – from death in large part by having a far different perspective than the Times or New York Daily News. Due to this, and breaking stories the other publications MIGHT (I’m trying to be fair)have ignored, the Post is one of only three of the Top 50 papers in America that is actually gaining circulation. I worked in sales at the Philadelphia Inquirer/ Philadelphia Daily News, and that stat just shouted volumes.
So, since most writers in my experience have a liberal leaning, it is only natural they would feel they were interfered with at the Washington Times.
By the same token, if you are a liberal writer at the Times (which is almost all of them. Even safire voted for Clinton in 1992) you will of course have no problem with an editorial board that encourages and pursues liberal slanted stories, and be upset if you can’t bash big corporations.
Also, I didn’t say the New York Times stylebook STILL requires the word “unwinnable” be used in stories on the Vietnam War. Just while the war was going on.I do remember reading it from a couple credible sources. I will try to track them down. In the meantime, i challenge you to do a Lexis-Nexus search and see how many times from 1968 to the Fall of Saigon those words were used in stories about Vietnam.
“The United States is a capitalist controlled nation. It only reacts when resources or monetary gain are at risk:
Serbia-Kosovo”
What exactly did we get from Serbia-Kosovo? Other than avoid yet another mess in Europe’s back yard?”
Nope. You would be wrong. We created that mess. Or perhaps made it worse. Go find the Serbian Kosovo War by Chuck O’Connell CD. It goes pretty clearly into the battle for oil reserves between two significant regions. When the US companies didn’t see it coming there way they cooked up 30,000 murders to get a UN action when the actual number was 3000, a significant difference. This is important because larger numbers of people were being killed in the Congo and the US or the UN did not act. There was no strategic or economic interest to do so. They reacted slowly.
Instead they created a nation where Kosovars only represent 10% of the nation. How clever was that? And they had there competition for that oil, Milosevich, arrested. Yep another oil man.
If you look at the last three administrations they all had oil connected people.
Finally “preemtive strike” refers to striking those enemies before they do. In this case you DO NOT KNOW WHO THE ENEMY IS! Do you get it???
William
Nato’s Balkan War by Dr. Chuck O’Connell is the correct title of that CD. Find it. You will be surprised.
William
I think the Hulk said it best (to Sabra, after the death of Sahar):
Boy is dead because his people and your people want the same land! Boy is dead because you can’t share! Because two old books say that you must kill each other over the land. BUT BOY DID NOT EVEN READ BOOKS!
Sigh. That was written back in 1980. Que sera…
Jonathan (the other one) –
Theres symbolism in every religion. I’ve always taken time out to read all the texts – there are considerable differences at times in the major monotheistic but at the sametime theyre from the same tree. I view it like an apple tree – just that different trees give out different apples.
Judaism and Islam are a lot closer than Christianity is to either one. there are differences in how the religous code is adminstrated in legal terms (such as polygamy, commerce, etc), whearas christianity is different due to its more organized format (although shiaism is organised, sunnism is not), and the seperation of divine attributes.
My ex’s family preached 24-7.
And thats exactly why she’s an ex.
Peter – theres a rumor that you might be doing something related to the fantastic X-Factor book you did in the early 90s with Larry Stroman? Is that true?
I can’t believe Karen is writing a book when she can’t even grasp the notion that the New York Times is the least bit left of center.
CJA
William,
Haven’t been too impressed with Dr. Chuck in the past. The usual line of “argument” goes something like “Ðìçk Cheney has oil connections…Afghanistan has oil (or is near someone who has oil, or is known for oily food, or something)…therefore….the war was about oil! Thank you! I’m here all week!”
“Finally “preemtive strike” refers to striking those enemies before they do. In this case you DO NOT KNOW WHO THE ENEMY IS! Do you get it???”
Ummm, yeah. Had I expressed some confusion on the words “preemptive” (the correct spelling btw) or “strike”?
Incidentally, the Congo is rich with mineral and oil resources, so you’d think all of those capitalists would have been swarming over it instead of harassing that swell Milosevich fella. But there you are.
originally posted by Jerome Maida
…The Washington Times was created so there would be an alternative to the Washington Post. They have admitted they have a more conservative bent. It’s part of why they have been successful.
I agree that the Washington Times was created to be slanted to the right, and that this has made it popular with people desiring such a slant.
The Washington Times is unusual in being deliberately slanted to the right (or at least in being somewhat blatant about it). But the fact that most other papers are not deliberately slanted to the right does not mean they must therefore be slanted to the left. Based on the evidence I have seen, I do not believe they are.
… since most writers in my experience have a liberal leaning, it is only natural they would feel they were interfered with at the Washington Times.
If a reporter (liberal or conservative) were trying to slant their reporting and their editor edited this to remove the slant, the reporter might perceive (or, rather, misperceive) this as bias. But that does not seem to be the case with the incidents reported about the Washington Times. The incidents I’ve seen reported on (in places such as Columbia Journalism Review) were examples where the newspaper’s management was trying to add rather than remove bias.
This is only “natural” if you accept that a particular media outlet is biased (which the WT seems to be). It should not happen. I believe objective reporting is a worthwhile ideal, one which (like most ideals) may never be perfectly attainable but is still worth striving for.
But you have a good point, that charges of media bias may actually be due to the reporter’s own biases. While this does not appear to be true with the complaints against the Washington Times, it may well be true in some other cases, such as some of the charges that have been leveled against CBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. It is worth examining these on a case-by-case basis before concluding whether there is or is not bias. (So far, the one case you’ve mentioned is the charge about the NYT stylebook requiring the word “unwinnable” to be used.)
As I noted before, I have seen both liberal and conservative complaints about the way the news is reported in the NYT, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. You seem to think that liberals are happy with the way the news is reported in these sources, but that is not the case. What that indicates to me is that, while the media often gets facts wrong in stories about conservatives (which conservatives view as bias) and often get facts wrong in stories about liberals (which liberals view as bias), the problem is not so much a liberal or conservative bias in the mainstream media so much as it is sloppiness and a lack of work. The media no longer does adequate investigating of the stories it reports, and I believe this is where much of the problem lies.
… if you are a liberal writer at the Times (which is almost all of them. Even Safire voted for Clinton in 1992)…
Voting for Clinton does not make one a liberal, nor does voting for Bush make one a conservative. If Safire (who has long believed himself to be a conservative) is to be counted as a liberal, then you appear to be defining the terms conservative and liberal in such a way that the overwhelming majority of people in this country would be counted as liberals.
…you will of course have no problem with an editorial board that encourages and pursues liberal slanted stories…
Please let me know which editorial boards these are. I have to turn to genuinely liberal media such as The Nation to get such a slant (just as I have to turn to genuinely conservative media such as National Review to get a conservative slant) because the NYT and Washington Post do not provide it.
[Regarding the claim that the NYT stylebook required the use of “unwinnable” in conjunction with use of the phrase “Vietnam War”:
I do remember reading it from a couple credible sources. I will try to track them down.
Thank you. I’ll look forward to seeing that.
In the meantime, i challenge you to do a Lexis-Nexus search and see how many times from 1968 to the Fall of Saigon those words were used in stories about Vietnam.
I don’t have Lexis-Nexus (or if I do, no one has told me), but I can drop by the library next week and look up the NYT on microfilm. I will be glad to see if I can find cases where “unwinnable” does not occur in items about the Vietnam War.
Since your source claimed it was required, I should not be able to find any — so again I ask, would you be willing to donate 1 cent to Peter’s site for the first such instance I find, 2 cents for the second, 4 cents for the third, 8 cents for the fourth, 16 cents for the fifth, etc.?
Media:
I’m curious about what people mean when they call the American media ‘liberal’. In what sense? Nineteenth century free market liberal? Or post 1960s ‘make love not war’ liberal?
After all, I’ve seen CNN and one thing it isn’t is liberal in the latter sense (it is compared to the foaming maniacs at Fox, but then, what isn’t?). What’s more it’s really not that interested in what goes on in the rest of the world. I’ve met Christiane Amanpour, and her analysis of the Balkan crisis was infantile at best; her interest was in crafting a story that could be easily understood, replete with goodies and baddies. That’s hardly the kind of journalism that’s likely to accurately reflect reality, is it?
And certainly by European standards the NY Times and Washington Post are pretty much centrist papers, perhaps tilting slightly to the right…
Roamin around…
While the idea that the USA is a modern day Rome, conquering nations and building reality show colosseums, it doesn’t hold up–the Romans would doubtlessly laugh at the way we give back the countries we defeat to the people who live there
Well, no, because the Romans used to do that too. It took them a long time to get into the business of actually annexing territory, and sometimes, like in 196, they found it far more amusing to claim to have ‘liberated’ Greece from the evil Macedonians. Of course, from then on Greece and Macedon were little more than client states…
As far as the Romans were concerned, indirect control was as valid as direct control; wholesale annexation was generally only the option when security reasons or profiteering demanded it.
It doesn’t help to see the Romans as successors of the Greeks though; on balance the Romans seem to have contributed little of their own to the world, barring certain engineering techniques; their main achievement was to have filtered and transmitted Greek culture. In that regard, Constantinople a curious Romano-Greek hybrid, a successor to Rome, based in the Greek half of the empire, speaking Greek, yet claiming to be Roman. Odd, I know.
As for Hamas…
Finally, as for PAD’s question, ‘Why are the Palestinians upset that Israel blew up the Hamas guy?’…
Might it help to rephrase that? It kind of assumes that all Palestinians follow the same brand of Islam espoused by Hamas. I’m sure at least some Palestinians saw him as a leader of one of their resistance organisations, albeit one that favoured desperate and repulsive tactics.
In that case, I can understand them being angered at how Israeli forces had entered their homeland and murdered one of their people, indeed such a prominent one. It’s not totally unlike the Irish response after the British executed the leaders of the 1916 Rising.
I’m not so sure why the Hamas crowd are so upset though. That’s a fair point. Maybe it’s just that he didn’t get to choose the manner of his death?
From the wonderful James Lilek’s Bleat:
We stopped pretending we would ratify Kyoto. We only spent $15 billion on AIDS in Africa. We did not take dictation from Paris. If we had done these things, it would minimize the world
Greg,
First, if you need some examples of the “liberal” standards of the media in this country, you’re welcome to look back over my posts.
Second,
I’m not comparing our media to the European media because really, who gives a dámņ? I’m talking in regard to American political leanings and how such bias either away helps affect the debate and people’s perceptions.
Third,
Your criticism of Amanpour is really unfair (amazing that she’s also a conservative punching bag for trying to show the complex issued involved in the Mideast, etc. instead of just saying “We’re right, the terrorists are evil and that’s that.”). So she actually likes to make sure her stories are understood by a majority of viewers. How terrible! No, I guess she should tell stories in a way that only the ELITE understand. I have news for you, the majority of publications/ media outlets HAVE to dumb down their news or else they wouldn’t have an audience/ readers. Most people in the U.S. still don’t understand the Electoral College, for example. Or that a new President doesn’t take office the day after the election, but is INAUGURATED the following January.
In fact, dumbing down may be a bit harsh. But most people do not follow the news that closely. They are too busy with their lives. So if she can make a complex situation accessible and understandable to the average viewer, then I see that as a remarkable skill, and far from “infantile”. And sometimes things realy are more cut and dried than those who constantly see a shade of grey tend to perceive.
Of course, you betray your leanings when you refer to “the foaming maniacs at Fox”. You can alays pick out a liberal because he/she can’t talk about conservatives without calling them names.
BTW, Bill O’Reilly is denounced as “conservative” by those who believe the nation’s newsrooms accurately reflect the political spectrum. O’Reilly is anti-death penalty and pro-gun control, believes in “global warming”, and thought Elian Gonzalez should be sent back to Cuba – not positions generally associated with the Republican Party. Indeed, O’Reilly’s only manifest conservative credential is that he strongly disapproves of gasbags, phonies, bûllšhìŧŧërš, hucksters and liars.
My criticism of Amanpour is unfair? Have you met her? Were you there when I did? She made it very clear that in order to tell the story you needed a villain, so that people would follow it.
She was more interested in ‘the story’ than ‘the truth’.
Are most people in America really that stupid that things need to be explained to them in such a dishonest fashion? Does the ‘average’ viewer really not understand things that aren’t black and white? Do most Americans really not understand their electoral system? Do they really think that a new President takes office the day after the election? I had always assumed these were just the typical cliches spouted by Anti-Americans.
By the way, I’ve never heard of Bill O’Reilly, but it sounds like he’s a model conservative, in favour of conserving lives, the environment, and the family. What do other conservatives want to conserve?
(Incidentally, that may be the first time anybody has ever called me a Liberal.
The Blue Spider:
I can’t believe Karen is writing a book when she can’t even grasp the notion that the New York Times is the least bit left of center.
Given that Karen in fact never said she was writing a book and in fact explicitly referred to a book she was reading, I don’t really think she’s the one having problems grasping seemingly obvious notions.
Jerome:
You can alays pick out a liberal because he/she can’t talk about conservatives without calling them names.
Ah, yes. Liberals like William “nattering nabobs of negativity” Safire. Liberals like Newt Gingrich, who sent out talking points to campaigns telling them which negative buzzwords they should always use in reference to liberals.
Those guys?
(And it’s really silly to point to Safire voting for Clinton as an example of him being a liberal. Safire has called himself a conservative for decades, and has made no bones about his leanings for the 2004 election.)
If you explain to me how exactly calling liberals “traitors” is less inflammatory than calling conservatives “liars”, THEN you can claim the moral high ground on the issue. Until then, it might be better to acknowledge that any issue about which passions run high (which these days is pretty much any of ’em, it seems) is going to bring out strong emotional responses and phrasings on both sides.
TWL
Tim Lynch,
No, I messed up about Safire. I really did. He is jokingly called the Times’ “House Republican”. the point I meant to get across – which I admittedly did very poorly in this instance, sorry – is that:
a.) With Safire voting for Clinton, it is quite possible that none of their writers and editors voted for Bush the Father. And they HAVE NOT ENDORSED A REPUBLICAN FOR PRESIDENT SINCE EISENHOWER!
B.) Safire admits this. Can you think of a prominent reporter – not a columnist like George Will – who would ever conceivably vote for a Republican? Or ever admit it? (I realize Safire is a columnist too. I am not comparing the “objective” reporters to him. His admission just inspired the comparison.
Can you think of a prominent reporter – not a columnist like George Will – who would ever conceivably vote for a Republican? Or ever admit it?
Assuming you mean at the NYT specifically … I wouldn’t be surprised if Judith Miller did, though obviously I don’t know. (She’s the writer behind most of the Iraq-WMD stories prior to the war.)
As for “or ever admit it” — sure, but it depends on the circumstances. My uncle is pretty heavily conservative and certainly voted for Bush in 2000 (though with misgivings; both of us agreed that a Bradley/McCain matchup would be far more energizing than what we got), but doesn’t tend to bring it up much at family gatherings since it would probably turn a lot of conversations into debates. We all wear different hats throughout our day. I don’t generally wear my politics on my sleeve while I’m teaching, though I’m sure stuff slips out now and then. 🙂
If you mean “would X publicly admit to it in a reportorial capacity” — how many publicly say in writings that they voted for a Democrat? Or a Libertarian? Or a Green? Or mention what they had for lunch?
Given that a reporter’s job is generally to keep him/herself out of the story, it’s hard to see where that “admission” would come from.
TWL
Greg,
First, any reporter worth their salt is interested in “the story”. “The Truth” is also pretty subjective and not carved in stone. Like the saying goes, there are lies, dámņ lies, and statistics. If a company of 500 only employs two minorities in 1999 and in 2000 they increase that total to three, they can claim an increase of 50 percent in minority hiring! But if another company has 500 employees and employs 250 minorities in 1999 and they increase that total to 275 in 2000, they will only be able to truthfully claim an increase of 10 percent in minority hiring. Both statements are true, and someone could actually do a story stating that the percentage is greater for the first company than the second, but does that tell the whole story? Of course not.
You obviously have a mad-on for Amanpour, which again is ironic since many American conservatives blast her for being too sympathetic to the “causes” of terrorism. As stated, a columnist for the New York Post called her a “war šlûŧ”. I actually find her reports to be thought-provoking and even-handed. So I guess I disagree with both you and the Post columnist.
Finally, if you don’t know who Bill O’Reilly is (he only hosts Fox News’ highest-rated show, the O’Reilly Factor; has his own newspaper column, and has written two best-selling books in addition to being on talk shows constantly) then you obviously DO NOT WATCH FOX NEWS! In which case your “foaming maniacs” comment reeks of ignorance and bias.
Heck, I watch BOTH Fox News AND CNN.I read books by Ann Coulter AND Michael Moore; Pat Buchanan AND Hillary Clinton; Sean Hannity AND Alan Colmes; and the New York Post and The New York Times. I read Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. You get the idea. I do this to a.) gain different perspectives and b.)so when I criticize one of these outlets or something or someone, I can speak my opinion based on accumulated knowledge and not knee-jerk bias.
Why don’t you?
Jerome, keep in mind one thing when pointing out how differntly the major news anchors reported on the first days in office for Bush and Clinton: the controversy/scandal surrounding how Bush even got to have a first day in office.
“So, since most writers in my experience have a liberal leaning, it is only natural they would feel they were interfered with at the Washington Times.” -Jerome Maida
You realize that’s not really a statistic to base much on, right? I mean, unless you have read or personally know every writer for every paper in the country, it’s tough to say “most” and have it mean anything. At least you threw in the “in my experience” bit, but that just furthers my problem with you trying to make a blanket statement about the media. I know in this particular sentence you were referencing a particular paper, but it comes down to your “experience” and not facts. If the particular writers for this paper were indeed “liberals”, then it is perhaps natural for them to feel interfered with. But you didn’t mention the writers in your “experience” even wrote for this paper.
Monkeys.
I’m going to try something here that didn’t really work too well the last time – I suppose I’m hoping that Peter David fans will be able to exhibit at least some degree of introspection of their own ideas…
Simply put, can anyone provide for me their own (extensional, if necessary) definitions of “liberal” and “conservative”? When they’re used as pejoratives, it’s pretty obvious the correspondent isn’t using the classic dictionary definitions. (Of course, that’s pretty obvious when someone refers to Dubya as a “conservative”, too – there’s absolutely nothing conservative about his prosecution of the Iraq situation, nor about his formation of a whole new Cabinet-level department, nor about his proposal of yet another Constitutional amendment, this one aimed at the personal lives of American citizens, nor…)
And no, statements like “You can alays pick out a liberal because he/she can’t talk about conservatives without calling them names” don’t count – that’s kind of a pot/kettle thing there. Just tell me what a “liberal” is, and/or what a “conservative” is, and maybe this whole issue can head toward some sort of resolution. Whaddaya say?
Nope. You would be wrong. We created that mess. Or perhaps made it worse.
Kosovo… hëll, the entire Balkans, has been a mess for more than 100 years.
Toby,
The “controversy” on how Bush got into office – in the hands of objective journalists – should have nothing to do with how they report Clinton signing pro-abortion/pro-choice legislation compared to Bush signing pro-life/anti-choice legislation. Both kept “promises” to the voters who voted for them, and abortion is “controversial” no matter how you cut it and which side you are on. This just seemed lost on the networks, and the coverage was very skewed. NOW can be just as fanatical and “single-issue” minded as pro-life zealots. But most journalists not only are for legal abortion, they hardly ever interact with those who disagree. So in their point of view, Bush’s signing of pro-life legislation appeases “extremists” because that’s the point of view they hold, and very few people in their circle of friends challenge that.
Craig,
Thank you. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Jerome
Toby,
You are right about my “personal experience” at the Philadelphia Daily News being enough to paint with a broad brush. I had just cited the numerous polls of the media which consistently show 92-94% of the mainstream media voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. I also cited examples at other papers that I have gotten information on. So I thought I would just add that judging from my personal experience, I can believe that the polls are accurate.
Toby,
Since you brought the “controversy” on how Bush got into office, let’s leave Florida alone for a minute and take a look at election night 2000: Throughout the evening, Gore’s wins were posted rapidly, but all of Bush’s wins consistently demanded further study. This could perhaps be dismissed as coincidence if liberals hadn’t declared war on John Ellis at Fox News for calling Florida for Bush “too soon”.
A story by the Associated Press revealed Gore won Maine by 5 percentage points and was declared the winner within 5 minutes of the polls closing. Bush won Colorado by 9 points, and it took CNN 2 hours and 41 minutes to make that call. Even Bush’s 15-point margin of victory in Alabama took CNN 25 minutes to project. Bush won North Carolina by 13 points and CNN waited 39 minutes to announce a winner. Bush won Georgia by 12 points and CNN waited 59 minutes.
These were not flukes:
Arizona, Bush by 7 points (51-44) – 2 hrs., 51 min.
Michigan, Gore by 4 points (51-47) – 1 hour, 24 minutes
Arkansas, Bush by 6 points (51-45) – 3 hours, 42 minutes
Pennsylvania, Gore by 4 points (51-47) – 1 hour, 24 minutes
Tennessee, Bush by 3 points ( 51-48) – 3 hours, 3 minutes
Minnesota, Gore by 2 points (48-46) – 1 hour, 25 minutes
West Virginia, Bush by 6 points (52-46) – 3 hours, 16 minutes
Washington, Gore by 5 points (50-45) – 1 hour, 8 minutes
No matter how the projections are compared, there was a consistent rush to declare states for gore throughout the night. Some states were called immediately upon the polls closing. Of those, Gore’s average margin of victory was 18 points and Bush’s 26 points. It took the networks more time to give Bush states he won by 12, 9 or 7 points than to give Gore a state he lost = Florida in 52 minutes.
It really seems like the election-night coverage was an aggressive partisan campaign on behalf of Al Gore.
Jerome, I’ll concede that my ‘foaming maniacs’ comment was an exaggeration; my experience of Fox News has been limited to occasionally reading articles taken from its website, transcripts of reports and shows. I guess I shouldn’t have dámņëd the entire channel on the basis of John Gibson’s rantings.*
If I’ve got it wrong, then I’m sorry.
As for my ‘having a mad-on’ for Amanpour, my contempt is based wholly upon having met her and her giving a speech where she talked about the necessity of setting up a ‘bad guy’ in telling stories.
Hmmm. Now let’s see. Why did we always hear so much about the Serb villains in Yugoslavia, but basically nothing about how the driving of the Serbs from the Krajina was by far the biggest case of ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Second World War? Oh yes, because every reporter worth their salt is interested in ‘the story’, and having Serbs as victims didn’t fit into their narratives.
She may well have adopted a more sensible approach in reporting on the Middle East; I hope so, and if so, I wish her well. Maybe she’s changed.
As for your suggestion that I read stuff I don’t agree with so that ‘I can speak my opinion based on accumulated knowledge and not knee-jerk bias,’ well, all I can say is go to my blogsite and run down the margin to the section entitled ‘sources’. Fairly wide-ranging, I think you’d have to agree. Papers from left and right, based in New York, London, Washington, Dublin, Frankfurt, Paris, Athens, and Moscow, not to mention oodles of journals and the odd pundit…
But anyway, do you really think most Americans are as ignorant as you claim?
*(As for Bill O’Reilly, I’ve done some googling, and he seems comfortably on the right of your political divide. There even have been a couple of cases of his advocating the death penalty, so your claim that he’s opposed to it doesn’t really stand up)
originally posted by Jerome Maida:
The “controversy” on how Bush got into office – in the hands of objective journalists – should have nothing to do with how they report Clinton signing pro-abortion/pro-choice legislation compared to Bush signing pro-life/anti-choice legislation. Both kept “promises” to the voters who voted for them, and abortion is “controversial” no matter how you cut it and which side you are on.
Were both keeping campaign promises? Before getting too invested in the notion that this case proves media bias, it might be good to review their campaign literature and their campaign speeches. (You know — the kind of fact-checking which the media should do, in order to present the news fairly and accurately, but too often don’t do. Have you done that kind of checking? Or, if you haven’t, do you know for a fact that the source you are relying on has?
It’s far enough back that I’m not sure how explicit Bill Clinton was with his promises to abortion rights groups of what all he would do if elected, but I’m pretty sure that lifting the gag order (the action talked about in the news coverage you referred to) was one of his explicit and repeated campaign promised.
Likewise, it’s far enough back that I’m not sure how explicit George Bush was with his promises to abortion opponents about what all he would do if elected. My memory is of him trying to skirt the issue — to indicate he was pro-life, but to avoid saying what exactly he would do (other than, as I recall, to say he would not press for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion or try to make abortion illegal).
I think one of the actions Bush did immediately following his inauguaration was to re-institute the gag rule — something which was deemed as especially newsworthy because it was not something he had said he would do during the campaign.
If so, then the stories are not parallel, and the media would have been correct to cover them differently. If my memory is correct, then Clinton was, in fact, fulfilling a campaign promise, and Bush was, in fact, not. Care to put this to a test? I’d be willing to look up evidence that Clinton’s action was, indeed, fulfillment of an explicit campaign promise if you will do the same for Bush. My memory is not infallible, but I’m pretty sure I’m right on this. Interesting, though, that your source wasn’t aware of it.
It is easy to come up with supposedly parallel stories where liberals and conservatives were treated differently. Liberals can play that game as easily as conservatives.
Here’s why it’s so easy. The media likes to do stories that feature the words “however” and “but.” That is, if they are doing a story about something that reflects favorably on someone, they like to include a second part to the story, the “however” part, about how maybe it doesn’t reflect favorably after all. (Or if they are doing a story that reflects unfavorably on someone, they like to add on a “however” about how maybe it doesn’t reflect so unfavorably after all.) By taking two parallel stories, one about the right and one about the left, and comparing the unfavorable comments about one side (from one story) with the favorable comments about the other side (from the other story), it is possible to prove either (a) that the media is biased against the right, or (b) that the media is biased against the left, depending on which way you care to cherry-pick the stories.
This just seemed lost on the networks, and the coverage was very skewed. NOW can be just as fanatical and “single-issue” minded as pro-life zealots.
Not quite. NOW has no equivalent of Paul Hill, David Troesch, nor of the militants such as Michael Bray who advocate and defend the shooting of abortion doctors. However, if we exclude the pro-violence militants in the pro-life movement, then yes, there are people in NOW every bit as fanatical and single-issue as there are in comparable anti-abortion groups. And these people receive the same negative reporting in the media that their Pro-Life counterparts do. Both sides receive both good and bad coverage in the media.
I suspect you are more aware of the negative coverage that people you support get (because you disagree with it and may want to talk back to the tv set) and ditto for positive coverage that people you oppose get (again, because you disagree with it). In contrast, it sounds like you are less aware of the positive coverage people you agree with (because when the media says good things about these people you take it for granted as true and deserved) and ditto for negative coverage about groups you disagree with (again because you feel it is true and deserved).
Many conservatives who charge “liberal media bias”, for example, tend to brush off all the negative coverage that Clinton received during his presidency, or that Gore received during the campaign against Bush, since all these negative stories were (by their lights) true and justified.
I think if you counted the number of negative stories per year that appeared about Clinton during his terms in office with the number of negative stories per year about Reagan, Bush I, or Bush II, it would appear that the media is harder on Democrats than Republicans. This, of course, would not necessarily be a fair way of measuring the issue. But neither is the selective cherry-picking your source seems to be doing.
originally posted by Jerome Maida:
Bill O’Reilly is denounced as “conservative” by those who believe the nation’s newsrooms accurately reflect the political spectrum. O’Reilly is anti-death penalty and pro-gun control, believes in “global warming”, and thought Elian Gonzalez should be sent back to Cuba – not positions generally associated with the Republican Party.
It is not so much that O’Reilly is denounced as a conservative so much as that he (like Safire) self-describes himself as one — as do many of the people who watch his show, read his books, and agree with many of his positions. If you choose to define conservative in such a way that these people are no longer to be counted in their ranks, then what you seem to be doing is reducing conservatives to an extremely tiny minority of the US population. (In which case, the complaint that they are under-represented in the media evaporates.)
Are you as strict in defining liberals? I know many people who charge media bias want to count Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, et. al. as liberals (not to mention pro-death-penalty NAFTA supporting opponents of gay marriage such as the Clintons). It’s silly, I know, but I’ve even heard the Clintons described as ultra-liberals.
Posted by Jonathan (the other one):
Just tell me what a “liberal” is, and/or what a “conservative” is, and maybe this whole issue can head toward some sort of resolution. Whaddaya say?
Good question! I’ll try to post a response tomorrow, as I need to get off-line for a while now. Meanwhile, here’s a brief start:
While there are many different varieties of conservatives, and many different varieties of liberals, and these are not necessarily synonymous with right-wing and left wing (although they are often carelessly used that way), I’d suggest as a start that National Review is the journal most widely associated with conservativism in the US and The Nation is the journal most widely associated with liberalism. (American Spectator and Pat Buchanan’s The American Conservative would also qualify as good examples of conservative media; and The Progressive and American Prospect would qualify as additional good examples of liberal media.
People who feel at home reading one or more of the conservative set probably qualify as conservatives; people who feel at home reading one or more of the liberal set probably qualify as liberals. Politicians who are regularly praised in one of these media sets probably qualify as belonging to that camp; and politicans who are regularly panned in one of these media sets probably don’t.
(Obviously, that’s too simplistic. Pat Buchanan says in the masthead of his site, “The conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology, which is not the conservative movement I grew up with.” There is a great deal of disagreement among those who call themselves conservatives (and among those who call themselves liberals), not so much about underlying principles as about what courses of action those principles lead to.
The idea that either side has a “party line” is way out of touch with reality. The fact that someone opposes the death penalty doesn’t mean they can’t be conservative (e.g. Bill O’Reilly, not to mention the Pope) and the fact someone supports the death penalty doesn’t meant they can’t be a liberal.
But I think there are distinct principles underlying the two movements, and I will attempt to put those into words later.)
“However, if we exclude the pro-violence militants in the pro-life movement, then yes, there are people in NOW every bit as fanatical and single-issue as there are in comparable anti-abortion groups. And these people receive the same negative reporting in the media that their Pro-Life counterparts do.”
I have to totally disagree. Whatever one’s views on abortion, it’s obvious that the view of the media is very skewed toward the hardliner pro-choice view. A “moderate” republican, for example, is one that supports abortion rights to a degree far greater than what the public as a whole supports, whereas one can find people described as “extremist” if they do advocate even the most popular restrictions on abortion (note once again–I’m not arguing the merits of the issue, only how those who do are portrayed).
Whether pro-choice advocates like it or not, the polls, including those run by NOW and MS Magazine and others who have no interest in skewing the results this way show that the public does NOT support anything close to abortion on demand and would be quite willing to accept many restrictions, if not an outright ban. But try to find a character on TV who would espouse such a view…maybe Cartman or Mr Burns…
I’m having a hard time remembering ANY instance of a fanatical or single issue pro choice person being negatively portrayed in the mdeia or news.
Tim Lynch,
Yes, members of both sides of the divide engage in name-calling, but the MEDIA seem to relish perpetuating cruel and harsh assessments of Republicans. here seem to be at least three constants in news coverage about Republicans:
1.) The more conservative or popular they are, the more they’ll be described as “dumb”
2.) It’s almost mandatory for Republican/conservative women to be called “ugly”
3.) When a Republican like Newt Gingrich wants to reform welfare, he’ll be carciatured on the cover of “Time” magazine as Scrooge. When a Democrat like Clinton actually signs it, it will be described as his “signature reform” and a “good idea”.
4.) Any Republican/conservative’s verbal misteps will be replayed and reprinted a zillion times, but Democrats almost always speak well. If they sat something embarrassing, it’s ignored.
Yes, it is true the media love to portray Republicans as dumb. From Eisenhower to Dubya, this has been true. Although I think the obsession with making sure voters feel Bush is dumb and portraying him as such may dwarf similar efforts against ronald reagan, and that’s saying something.
The “centrist” New York Times had a story by Richard L. Berke with Rick Lyman, titled “Training For A Presidential Race” on March 15, 1999, in which it was stated “Mr. Bush has embarked on a cram course that could be titled ‘What you need to know to run for President’…There may never have been a ‘serious’ candidate who needed it more”. A “correction” issued four days later stated that the last sentence was not supposed to appear in the article, but was a “message between editors after the article was written” that somehow ended up in the article text.”
Nope. No bias there at the Times!
Jerome wrote:
“The more conservative or popular they are, the more they’ll be described as “dumb”
Bush fit this description long before he registered as a member of the Republican Party. 😉
and…
“Yes, it is true the media love to portray Republicans as dumb. From Eisenhower to Dubya, this has been true. Although I think the obsession with making sure voters feel Bush is dumb and portraying him as such may dwarf similar efforts against ronald reagan, and that’s saying something.”
The big difference being that Bush reinforces this every time he opens his mouth. Reagan was brilliant on many levels.
Of course, as I said, this all started with Eisenhower, who was only smart enough to get us out of Korea in six months after truman had us stuck there for two and a half years. His “intellectual” opponent, Adlai Stevenson, supposedly was a witty felow and a lover of books. he was constantly referred to as “the Thinking Man’s President”. It was later discovered that Stevenson was a bøøb who rarely read books. When he died, only a single book was found on his nightstand: “The Social Register”.
This fact has been noted only twice – in a single New York Times article in 2000 and a column by George Will.
As a result the myth of the “intellectual” Stevenson endures.
Grev,
Was looking over old posts and had to respond:
Simply put, if we withdraw our SUPPORT from Israel (you seem to be implying we have troops over there) and “let them settle their dispute among themselves, Israel will be destroyed. No question. They are still surrounded by enemies who despise them and seek nothing less than their total destruction. They are only about the size of Rhode Island. They would be destroyed if we didn’t help them. You may not care about that. I do, and do not feel we can let that happen.
Yes, members of both sides of the divide engage in name-calling, but the MEDIA seem to relish perpetuating cruel and harsh assessments of Republicans.
I’m sorry, but I really think this is so general as to be nonsensical. Your alleged “constants” in news coverage?
1.) The more conservative or popular they are, the more they’ll be described as “dumb”
I read a lot of news, Jerome. I don’t see the word in common usage on EITHER side of the spectrum. Columnists, yes — but on both sides. Reporters and editorial pages, no. Can you provide any evidence for this?
Let’s assume that you mean a more general argument, namely that if X is conservative, he/she will be portrayed as an intellectual lightweight somehow.
Our current president: agreed.
Reagan: agreed.
Gingrich (awfully conservative, I think you’d agree): no.
Schwarzenegger (a very popular Republican): not especially, no — and I live in a pretty liberal part of the state. The coverage of his governorship to date has been almost overwhelmingly positive.
Dole? McCain? Frist? DeLay? Santorum?
None of these people is routinely portrayed as dumb, Jerome.
Yes, the occasional Republican is portrayed as not overly bright. So is the occasional Democrat. Two examples hardly make a pattern.
(As Bill Mulligan has also pointed out in the past, when liberals DO play the Bush-is-dumb card they often shoot themselves in the foot because they underestimate his political savvy as a result.)
But as long as we’re on media portrayals … how about the savaging Carter took after (a) the “rabbit” incident, (b) the Playboy interview about lust, and (c) the “malaise” speech. Most of the press absolutely couldn’t wait to chew on him after that.
Or look at what the media did to the Dean campaign.
2.) It’s almost mandatory for Republican/conservative women to be called “ugly”
Can you name even one occasion where that’s happened? I think the looks of Republican women aren’t typically brought up much at all — and certainly someone like Ann Coulter is typically referred to as “a major BABE.” (Personally, I don’t see it.)
Compare, please, to Limbaugh referring to Chelsea Clinton as “the White House dog.” Or virtually any depiction at the time of Eleanor Roosevelt.
[Now, in fairness, I do think there’s some evidence that Condoleeza Rice is being portrayed pretty badly in the media. I personally think she’s one of the worst national security advisors we’ve ever had, but the picture typically used for stories surrounding her in the past week has been really dreadful.]
3.) When a Republican like Newt Gingrich wants to reform welfare, he’ll be carciatured on the cover of “Time” magazine as Scrooge. When a Democrat like Clinton actually signs it, it will be described as his “signature reform” and a “good idea”.
This one I can’t comment on except that a lot of media outlets certainly did NOT refer to welfare reform as “a good idea” initially, regardless of who proposed them.
However, this one sounds vaguely familiar to me, and is also policy-centered. Good call on your part.
4.) Any Republican/conservative’s verbal misteps will be replayed and reprinted a zillion times, but Democrats almost always speak well. If they sat something embarrassing, it’s ignored.
As one who donated substantial money to the Dean campaign, can I just call a “bûllšhìŧ” of epic proportions to that?
When you compare Tim Russert’s treatment of Bush on “Meet the Press” versus his and others’ treatment of Dean, your argument completely and utterly falls apart. Dean got savaged; Bush was thrown softball after softball, and Russert didn’t follow up really obvious avenues after a Bush response.
So that’s 1 for 4 as I see it. Hardly overwhelming evidence of bias.
TWL
Tim Lynch,
Nice counter-arguments.
Okay, you want examples. Here we go, starting with Republican candidates for PRESIDENT being routinely portrayed as dumb:
1.) Eisenhower vs. Stevenson I’ve already covered
2.) From your post above, you obviously agree the media portray Dubya that way and portrayed Reagan in that fashion, so I won’t give any more examples re:them
3.)The media couldn’t really portray Bush the Father (henceforth Bush41 as dumb, so they made sure to absolutely make sure that his running mate, Dan Quayle, was depicted to the American public as an absolute moron. and this was long before a teacher told him to correct a student by putting an E at the end of “potato”. This is a man who at the time was a “rising star”, has written two books and pieces of legislation and actually had a sharp wit on talk shows. Yet he was consistently portrayed as a buffoon.
One of the more blatant examples of how the media cite Republicans as dumb yet cover democratic gaffes concerned President Clinton’s bungling incomprehension of what the Patriot missile does.
In a campaign speech on September 8, 1992, Clinton said: “We come up with great ideas and then turn them into things like the patriot missile, which will go through doors and down chimneys.”
This was an extremely embarrassing error on missile technology. The Patriot is a purely defensive missile: It is a surface to air missile designed to shoot down incoming missiles, not objects on the ground, like chimneys.
Now, the meia is big on events or statements “reinforcing impressions” (Dubya’s not being able to name all four world leaders in his infamous pop quiz “reinforced” the idea that he knew little about the world and was therefore unfit for the presidency, for example; his father looking at a watch during a debate “reinforced’ the idea he was out of touch). Clinton’s mistake, therefore, might have been portrayed as “reinforcing” the belief among many that he knew nothing about the military. Now, i feel that national defense is more important than the proper spelling of potato. But maybe that’s just me.
Quayle himself even stated that Clinton had “confused the Patriot with the cruise missile. Bill Clinton knows less about national security than I know about spelling.’
So how did the mainstream media treat Clinton’s gaffe and Quayle’s retort?
The Los Angeles Times said, “Quayle had to extract both feet from his own mouth. He too had the wrong missile.” Time magazine said “Quayle tweaked Clinton for referring in a speech to Patriot missiles going down chimneys during the Gulf War. Ha, said Quayle, ‘Bill Clinton knows less about national security than i know about spelling!’ The weapons, said Quayle, were cruise missiles. Join the club, Dan. They were smart bombs.
CNN’s Frederick Allen said that “neither side had much luck when it came to discussing national security”.
So who was right? The Los Angeles Times, Time and CNN – or Dan Quayle? Dan Quayle.
What the meia failed to report is that although we do not use cruise missiles to go down chimneys, they can, and about equaly well as smart bombs. Thus, when talking about weapons that can “go down chimneys and through doors” it WOULD be accurate to refer to either cruise missiles or smart bombs. By contrast, the Patriot missile – identified by Clinton as going down chimneys -has nothing whatsoever to do with precise targeting. But the media was so determined to shift some of Clinton’s gafe onto Quayle and portray Quayle as a goof for the zillionth time, they could not bear reporting that they had Quayle had caught Clinton making a mistake. So they simply lied and reported that Quayle was wrong too.
Tim Lynch,
Maybe you can’t see it, but believe me, Ann Coulter IS a major babe.
of course, I’ve always had a thing for strong women ever since i can remember, whther it be a “tough rockers” like Joan Jett and Pat Benatar, to athletes like Chris evert, to butt-kicking babes on TV (Eliza Dushku as Faith on “Buffy”; Mariska Hargitay on “Law and Order:Special Victims Unit”; to comic characters like Tomb Raider, Wonder Woman, Emma Frost and Mystique.
I even had a crush on Susan Estrich 16 years ago, believe it or not!
Tim Lynch,
Can’t think of ONE instance where Republican women were attacked. I can name several, especially if they are seen as legitimate threats to Democrats.
Let’s start with the most recent and blatant:
Katherine Harris.
When she was thrust into the limelight, the liberal press couldn’t wait to attavk her on the basis of her looks. Some of the statements were literally sadistic, in my opinion. To wit:
a columnist for The Boston Globe wrote that unless Harris “was planning to unwind at a drag bar after facing that phlanx of cameras Tuesday night, the grease paint she wore should be a federal offense.”
Washington Post reporter – that’s reporter, not columnist – Robin Givhans wrote that Harris “seems to have aplied her makeup with a trowel” and “Her skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyes, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the telltale homogenous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemed to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid.”
She then made harris’ appearance a mater of national concern:
“One wonders how this Republican woman, who can’t even use restraint when she’s wielding a mascara wand, will manage to use it and make sound decisions in this game of partisan one upmanship. harris is clearly presenting herself in a fake manner…Why should anyone trust her?”
Jerome,
I’m sorry, but I think presenting Quayle as a moron appears to be pretty much correct most of the time.
Consider:
“Pollution isn’t harming our environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that do that.”
That’s not confusing a smart bomb (or cruise missile) with a Patriot — which I’ll grant is certainly an error and should have been called such. It’s showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what “pollution” IS.
Clinton got a name wrong. It’s not as though he was alluding to technology that didn’t exist — had he done that, I’d be with you in wanting to rip it to shreds. But it’s hardly a major offense.
Now, is that an example of media bias? I’ll go along with “maybe.” But, and I’ll say this again, it’s not like the media doesn’t do the same kind of thing to Democrats.
The news media, television in particular, is not good with nuance — when everything’s reduced to 30-second bits, it basically can’t be. As such, television fairly routinely latches on to one bit of characterization it can work with and then projects everything else through that prism.
Hence: Bush II is a moron. Clinton’s a womanizing redneck. Carter’s over-earnest and ineffectual. Reagan is charming but dim.
Does the media tend to stereotype? Hëll, yeah.
Does it do it to Republicans more than it does to Democrats? Not that I see. (Personally, I think the NYT goes a lot softer on Bush than is warranted by the facts — but I also recognize that no particular news organization is there to exactly match my own viewpoints.)
And as for
Ann Coulter IS a major babe.
You’re welcome to her. 🙂
TWL
Jerome,
Can’t think of ONE instance where Republican women were attacked. I can name several, especially if they are seen as legitimate threats to Democrats.
Let’s start with the most recent and blatant:
Katherine Harris.
Point granted in this case. Harris got a LOT of “Wicked Witch of the West” -type comments in 2000, and I’ll agree with you that it was inappropriate. I think Harris’s case is very much the exception rather than the rule, but you’re absolutely right that it’s a valid example.
I’ll still ask you how this is somehow worse than Limbaugh going after a 12-year-old, though. (I could also ask about various statements Bush himself has made, but if we want to stay focused on the media I’ll leave them be.)
TWL