Ship of fools
I don’t think a reasonable person can deny that the current administration has failed at everything it’s done since the day it began. I’d argue that it began it’s terrible downward spiral on the day that Obama named Joe Biden to be his running mate in the 2008 election. Obama, who has final say over the advice that he gets from his circle of obviously moronic advisers, so ultimately, he’s responsible, and that is probably his greatest failure. he’s appointed tax evaders to his staff who advise him to raise taxes to balance the budget. He implements Joe Biden’s plan in Afghanistan despite the fact that Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of history since he started shooting his mouth off about foreign policy.
Now, he’s looking at making US history’s most infamous anti-war protester the Secretary of Defense. Our status in the United Nations has tumbled terribly, so our ambassador to the UN is now named as the first choice for Secretary of State.
His CIA director involved himself in covert sexual dawdling, while the commander of his military forces actively engaged in combat in a foreign land sends 30,000 emails to a married woman. During those escapades, the chairman of his joint chiefs of staff, instead of complaining that his troops are forced by the Biden policy in Afghanistan to present themselves unarmed to to potential enemy attacks, blames those same troops for blowing their noses in public.
Now, thanks to a compliant media, we know more about the sexual habits of our generals in one week than we’ve learned about the deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi consulate two months ago.
They’re still fishing bodies out of the water around New York City, parts of the surrounding communities are still without power as we stand on the cusp of Winter. As Ace of Spades helpfully points out, we don’t even know the name of the FEMA director, the way we had Michael Brown’s name tattooed on our collective consciousness after Katrina.
Businesses are laying off workers by the thousands anticipating the lack of understanding in this administration about how jobs get created in this country.
And still, the media is silent, more excited about the hotels in DC filling up with reservations for the Inauguration Day celebrations – and the off-chance that they might get to see Lebanese boobies.
But on to my main point, that any buffoon can be President as long as they surround themselves with competent people – look at Bill Clinton. but this buffoon can’t even get that right.
November 14th, 2012 at 5:27 pm
On things like Petraeus’s appointment to D/CIA, I’d make an educated guess that McCain, had he won, would have been inclined to do the same thing. He was a good choice for the job. Let’s not reconstruct history based on the present fallout and somehow claim appointing him was a ‘failure’ of President Obama.
And, as someone with friends in State Island -friends who have been visited and aided by FEMA- I’m inclined to say that FEMA is doing much better than it did during Katrina. Is it perfect? Of course not. But come on, there are enough things to actually complain about without manufacturing new ones via bad comparisons.
November 14th, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Lebanese boobies.
WHAR LEBANESE BOOBIES??? WHAR?????
/or should I say, “To whom, kind sir, do you refer?”
November 14th, 2012 at 5:44 pm
Mr. Anonymous #1; I have no idea what you’re talking about. I made a several hundred word post of facts. I made no comparisons except that one about Katrina, but you skipped over my main point that this president has hired the biggest collection of idiots ever to occupy the White House and he obviously plans to continue down that road. Now you can argue my facts, but, please don’t argue things that aren’t there. And my point about Katrina had more to do with the media than it did this White House. But since the rest of the post shot over your noggin, it’s no surprise that you missed that one, too.
November 14th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Guess it depends upon one’s perspective. If the goal was to fundamentally change the United States, I’d say that has been achieved quite successfully.
No, I do not believe that this is an accident or due to incompetance. Nothing that has been done to us so far was done without careful calculation.
Sorry – must disagree. These are not failures. They have done exactly what they set out to do.
November 14th, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Amen, Jonn.
November 14th, 2012 at 5:51 pm
You do know that John Kerry was in Vietnam?
November 14th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Just Plain Jason: I heard Kerry claimed to have spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia. While Nixon was President.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2002005720_cambodia15.html
November 14th, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Just Plain Jason: I think this is what Jonn meant when he referred to Kerry as the most infamous anti-war protester in US history:
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/2/20/john_kerry_then_hear_kerrys_historic
November 14th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
While totally supporting the bulk of the post; I’m willing to nitpick a little on Allen’s mails to Kelley (I get those names right? Apologies if not) They are LOOKING at 30,000 pages of mails…. no one has claimed he exchanged that many with her (a 10 word mail with a 100 page attachment is probably counted as 101 pages – we are talking about the same feds who estimate street value of pot in the millions per baggie). Most accounts I am seeing says the consensus is that while mildly flirtatious, such as calling her sweetheart, there is no indication of an affair, sexual or otherwise. Give the guy a break; the media is trying hard enough to crucify him on the basis of innuendo. Might also note no one has claimed all the mails being examined are from/to the two of them.
Given that high ranking generals are primarily uniformed politicians – Petraeus excluded since he was promoted primatrily under Bush – are the rest of the current crop of “Generals Gone Wild” examples of the admisnistration eating their own young?
November 14th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
take your meds.
November 14th, 2012 at 6:13 pm
Good post. But I would note that Pres. Clinton, who I don’t like or admire, far outclasses Pres. Obama in nearly every respect. Academically, diplomatically, as an orator; hell, simply as a politician. Maybe a despicable character with whose policies I usually disagreed; but he has displayed abilities that Mr. Obama has not. Which, of course, just makes the people’s choice for president (again) just look all the worse.
November 14th, 2012 at 6:13 pm
Jonn, Anonymous(1) is simply trying to change the subject by bringing up FEMA and Sandy.
And FEMA should be doing a whole lot better WRT Sandy than it did WRT Katrina. Katrina was a much worse storm.
Sandy’s storm surge was about 10 feet. Katrina’s storm surge topped out at well over 20 feet – though, thankfully, that was well east of New Orleans. Katrina’s max sustained winds were also substantially higher.
Had that kind of surge hit NYC, virtually the entire city would have been underwater.
November 14th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
@4
That’s exactly right. Just depends on your perspective. Obama wanted Obamacare, he got it. He wanted the stimulus package, he got it.
I think we all knew at the time his claims of wanting to “reach across the aisle”, “build consensus” and “work towards bipartisanship” were the purest of bullshit. They were just things to be said for the cameras while he prepared to strongarm the dissenters into compliance. “Elections have consequences” isn’t exactly the most bipartisanship thing to be said.
Why is this relevant?
“Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, ‘Americans are tired of division,’ and urged Republicans to give on the tax-rate issue.”
Typical. “We want to work with the Republicans…we want bipartisanship…we want consensus” is Lib-Speak for “Do it our way, Bitch”. And if you don’t do it our way, we’re going to lie to the compliant and complicit media about you. If you do it our way, we’re going to claim victory over you to the compliant and complicit media.
I’m almost to the point of saying, as I find myself doing at work, “Give it to them. Publicly raise the point that it will have negative results and hand it to them. Give them every thing they ask for, because there’s no percentage in fighting it. And when it all turns to shit, point back and say ‘You guys wanted this. You were told it’s a bad idea. You fix it.’”
November 14th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Jonn –
Disagree with you. The folks the POTUS surrounds himself with are competent within their realms – but that’s the problem: the realms of academia, of 3d and 4th Generation Red Movement politics wherein power and prestige are inherited as among the high-level Party leaders of the USSR, or European royalty.
These folks are competent, but not hardened to the reality that ‘the enemy gets a vote.’ That fact makes the POTUS advisors revenge-minded.
Their plan for FEMA works excellently on paper. But as you know, tactics is for amateurs, logistics is for professionals. And the weather and the sheer need of all the people, not just the wants of their friends in Lower Manhatten defeats all their paper tactics.
Their plan for Libya (and all the Arab Spring) works excellently on paper. And yet, at every juncture, the POTUS advisors find a relentless, deathless enemy has seized the key ground and continues to maneuver weeks and months ahead of them. What do we have? Drone strikes after the fact.
Their plan for the economy makes for an excellent compendium of doctoral theses. Will it break us? Sure. None of those academics, even Valerie Jarrett, have ever earned a dime. They inherited their money and their parents hired excellent businessmen and women to make more money for the Party Elite. They’ve wrapped up Congress and the Courts too tightly to permit those who’ve made fortunes, like Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, to provide any input and get the economy moving.
And in all of this, they have historical parallels screaming lessons at them. So, not so much a Ship of Fools as the Flying Dutchman – maybe, just maybe by applying that academic theory, they’ll make it around the Cape of Good Hope.
November 14th, 2012 at 6:30 pm
@6
And Cambodia.
November 14th, 2012 at 6:35 pm
@ Jonn: Sure, you’re technically correct – you made a post of facts about things which you feel the Obama administration ‘failed’ at. And include in that the ‘failure’ of picking Petreaus, a choice which most people would have seen as a good one, so viewing it as a ‘failure’ via the hindsight of this scandal is a bit disingenuous, I think. Accurate in the technical sense, but misleading.
And I didn’t gloss over the rest of your post, I simply didn’t disagree with it to anywhere near the extent I did with this – appointing Petraeus was one thing I felt the administration did very RIGHT, so to re-label it a failure because of a questionable personal decision (and not, as far as we can currently tell, job ones) seems off-base.
And FEMA is less in the news not because of media bias but because they’ve done a decent job – no sensational stories to tell. Certainly we can nitpick certain things, and people are, but the two responses -Katrina and this one- simply weren’t on the same trajectory, else the media would’ve bitten into it like it did last time.
Your blog, your thoughts, but my personal opinion is that when you stretch that far to criticize someone, you also stretch credibility.
November 14th, 2012 at 6:38 pm
@ Hondo: I honestly wasn’t trying to change the subject, I just felt this was a long reach to tie Petraeus’s scandal to President Obama’s record. In a nutshell, I thought he did good by appointing Petraeus and so using this as a mark against him just rings a bit hollow. That’s all. Is reasonable disagreement so unfathomable on these sorts of things?
November 14th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
boobies
November 14th, 2012 at 7:01 pm
I didn’t think I had to add the sarcasm font when mentioning John Kerry’s ninja raids into cambodia!
November 14th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
@16
And FEMA is less in the news not because of media bias but because they’ve done a decent job – no sensational stories to tell.
You mean the media has not sensationalized stories to tell… which is a symptom of media bias.
Are you really trying to suggest that if a Republican was in office that the media wouldn’t be screaming (and making up stories) about, for example, the Staten Island response?
November 14th, 2012 at 7:05 pm
I agree that from now on, whenever the left wants something, Republicans in Congress should simply vote “Present”.
Let the leftists get whatever they want and when it all turns to shit, which it will, then they will be owning it lock, stock and barrel.
November 14th, 2012 at 7:16 pm
AW1 Tim – nah, it’ll be Bush’s fault. They blame him for everythiung from rush hour to halitosis. It’s part of the Democratic Party Mantra, replacing “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Baaaad.”
November 14th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
I’m glad I peeked in here. That there piece is a hardcopy and frame!
November 14th, 2012 at 8:01 pm
@16
“And FEMA is less in the news not because of media bias but because they’ve done a decent job – no sensational stories to tell. Certainly we can nitpick certain things, and people are, but the two responses -Katrina and this one- simply weren’t on the same trajectory, else the media would’ve bitten into it like it did last time.”
They’re not in the news because it’s the Obama Admin now, not Bush. There are plenty of horror stories about FEMA’s incompetence – driving by on Staten Island with clipboards but not giving any real help, supplies that were supposed to be moved closer to the area BEFORE the storm being stuck in warehouses in Georgia and elsewhere, shutting down for 2 days during the nor’easter because of the weather, etc.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/04/Sandy-is-Obama-s-Katrina-FEMA-Response-A-Supply-Chain-Disaster-That-Fuels-Growing-Anger-of-Victims
Again, it’s the private companies and volunteer organizations that have come through:
http://digitaljournal.com/article/336715
Groups like Team Rubicon, the Mormon’s Helping Hands, Salvation Army, the kid who organized his neighbors into Brown Cross because the Red Cross was nowhere to be seen, etc. Even the Occupy people showed up to help.
The real problem with FEMA is not who is the current POTUS, it’s that disaster response, just like everything else, is done better, cheaper, and more efficiently by the private sector than by government, ESPECIALLY the Federal government.
Let’s also mention that most of the deaths and injuries in Afghanistan have come during Obama’s watch, not President Bush’s. And that’s because of ridiculous, horrifying ROE that prevent our guys from defending themselves.
Obama and his cadre of perpetual college students are incapable of governing, which everyone should have known before the 2008 election but didn’t because the MSM covered it up.
November 14th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
@21 AW1 Tim
California doesn’t have to worry about GOP obstruction anymore…Dems have super majorities in both houses of the legislature and a Dem Gov. Voters recently approved Proposition 30 to raise taxes on the “wealthy” and hike state sales taxes. California has a $600B state debt, failed to balance its budget, and still wants to maintain the lavish welfare state and entitlement spending…gee this will be very interesting to watch, don’t know where all the “rich” tax payers are going to come from since quite a few have beat feet out of Cally. Stay tuned…
November 14th, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Jonn, are you sure this is the president that’s had the worst and most serious collection of idiots in his administration?
I got into the Wayback machine and went back to Zachary Taylor’s administration. Some of his cabinet members did amazingly stupid things, such as Reverdy Johnson, who was responsible, along with John Glenn and Evan Ellicott, for exacerbating the Baltimore bank crisis of 1835. Following the collapse of the Union Bank of Maryland, Johnson obstructed efforts to obtain a fair and objective accounting of the bank’s assets in order to maintain his personal fortune. He falsely accused Evan Poultney and Thomas Ellicott of misconduct in order to create a smokescreen to obscure his own misconduct. (source: Wiki)
I think stupid behavior frequently accompanies the majority of people who work directly for the President, and in a very peculiar recurring way.
Can anyone forget that while Nixon’s people were responsible for the criminal behavior they engaged in, Nixon recorded every dingbat conversation that went on in the Oval Office? Or that this is what forced him out of office?
Is there anything stupider than doing something that will prove you knew everything that was going on and approved of it?
I’ve been trying to remember which President it was that was more interested in decorating the White House than he was in being President, and it was somewhere around the time of Harding or Taylor or maybe a little earlier. The attention that was devoted to interior decoration could have been lavished on the budget, but it wasn’t and one of those regular 19th century Panic Attacks occurred.
I think stupid human tricks are a trademark of the Oval Office, and this current bucketload of idiocy is par for the course.
We just get to see more of it than was seen by people in previous administrations because TV, the internet, and various social media make it much more possible for the Big Cheese to be scrutinized 24 hours a day.
November 14th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
@25
So far Cali has been hanging on. Maybe they’ll continue to do so by raising taxes higher and higher.
I’ll be quite disappointed, however, if the Feds bail Cali out, should that become necessary. That should be a good measure of the Liberal plan for the US. However, I suspect they’ll say “No…it works…we just need to do it to the entire country to make it work”.
November 14th, 2012 at 9:44 pm
The Obama Admin makes Carter look like Clinton. Of course, all 3 are too smart to label their failures as mistakes, and it was the Gingrich Congress that forced Clinton to balance the budget. No, they have a “plan,” and that just doesn’t happen to be the plan they sell to voters. But Americans are willing to buy the commercials, instead of actually thinking through what is being sold, or care to investigate why the Founding Fathers wrote what they did in the Constitution, why domestic governance was the purview of the States, which are more responsive to their voters.
I will however take the side of the Humans: Generals Petraeus and Allen, who are no friends to the Admin, even if Allen once was. They are both more loyal to Nation than to the politicians. Allen fell out of favor when he told the truth on 60 minutes, that insider attacks are a bigger problem than the Admin is saying, that he is still resolved to winning. Within a week, the Admin announced its plan to “promote” him out of the war zone, and into a smaller, ever less important command.
As of current reports: there is ZERO evidence that Petraeus committed any crime, or that Allen did. Allen called Kelley a “sweetheart,” a common term in the South, even with new customers in a local store, and Petraeus’ moral infidelities were discovered in a PRIVATE email account, hacked by the FBI.
And Petraeus was put in that position, to keep him quiet, by the Administration. Petraeus has consistently put his Nation ahead of his politics. He has served with Honor for decades. His moral indiscretion is between him, his wife, and his biographer.
On the rest of the list, I’ll generally agree with Jonn. Like I said, Obama makes Carter look like Clinton.
November 15th, 2012 at 9:38 am
How odd. During the weeks leading up to the election, jobless claims were falling. Now, there’s 439,000 new jobless claims for the last week. They “expected” 375,000 new claims.
November 15th, 2012 at 9:58 am
“Is there anything stupider than doing something that will prove you knew everything that was going on and approved of it?”
Yes – not burning the damn tapes before their knowledge became public. (smile)
November 15th, 2012 at 9:58 am
@21, Somehow it would still be the Republicans fault.
November 15th, 2012 at 11:29 am
@31
The R’pubs would be blamed for NOT obstructing, after they were villified FOR obstructing. Dems will win heads or tails…they hold the greatest weapon – the liberal media universe (news, entertainment, sports, culture, spanish language, foreign press). The facts can be bent or distorted to shield the Dems & smear the GOP all day long.
November 15th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
He’s not so much a failure that he couldn’t manage re-election…
November 15th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
@32
Ain’t that the truth?
@33
It’s tough to beat Santa Claus. He didn’t so much win an election as a popularity contest.
November 16th, 2012 at 11:06 am
The liberal media universe? In a world where Fox is a media juggernaut, folks still think them dirty lib’s control the narrative? Wake UP! MSNBC and Fox are the same critter, and the other networks all chase whatever sensational scraps are available (instead of planning around a specific base) to drive viewership. Its not about ideology, its about capitalism. If what the market of undereducated Americans wants is scandal, they’ll find.
All these victims complexes sound a lot like the liberal stereotypes you regularly revile.
November 16th, 2012 at 11:29 am
Uh, Anon . . . last time I checked, the “NBC” part of MSNBC stood for “National Broadcasting Company”. That’s quite a different company from Fox.
You might actually get folks to listen to what you say if you knew what you were talking about. Just sayin’.
November 16th, 2012 at 11:48 am
Hondo, read my post again, and tell if you still think the business relationships between the networks is what I was referring to.
November 16th, 2012 at 11:57 am
“MSNBC and Fox are the same critter”. Your words, Anon – not mine. If that’s not what you meant to say, well, that’s not my problem.
Yes, each network chases the sensational. However, point of view and editorial emphasis/”spin” is decidedly different between Fox and the rest of the media.
Case in point: wanna guess which network it was that presented an edited transcript of the initial 911 call in the Trayvon Martin brouhaha – a version specifically edited to make Zimmerman look like a racist? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Fox.
And that same false meme (“Zimmerman was a racist looking for trouble – just look at the 911 transcript!”) was picked up by every network in the media except Fox. They all jumped on the same false bandwagon – because it fit their preset agenda and inherent bias (80+% of journalists are liberal Democrats). Until it came to light that the transcript in question was selectively edited and incomplete, of course, and they were forced to back away.
That’s only one example of many.
Anyone denying that the media in the US has a decidedly liberal bias is living in a dream world. An evenhanded US mass media was history by the early 1960s – if it ever existed before then. It’s had a pronounced liberal bias ever sense.
November 16th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Hondo, you could also add CBS editing out Obama calling the Benghazi attack terrorism because it didn’t fit the youtube video narrative.
November 16th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
” An evenhanded US mass media was history by the early 1960s” — if it did exist in the 1960s, it ended with our full tilt entry into the Vietnam War, when reporters and film crews went over there to report the progress of the war and found themselves in something for which they were not remotely prepared. The shenanigans of Nixon’s WH crew didn’t help, either.
Yeah, we do want the truth, and we do want people responsible for misbehavior brought to bear. We want to see people like Erin Brokovich expose real wrongdoing, but unless the press is knocked off its silly parade float, the general public will only get the harsh truth from the edited copy.
We live in a period when instant gratification for everything, including news, is the norm. The less people have to absorb, the happier they are. They want the hugs and the glad-handing sack of shit politicians, not the light of day putting a spotlight on the flaws of people at the top. They want the news people telling them that Zimmerman was a racist and that’s why he went after Trayvon.
This naughty-bits dustup over Petraeus/Allen — Broadwell/Kelley is a distraction which will take attention off real issues, unlike the Congressional investigation, which had better damn well get to the root of it. The most obnoxious thing I’ve ever heard was yesterday, listening to NPR in the car, when the FDA director refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer to a direct question that required nothing else. I think we can expect to get more of that kind of thing, especially if the entire Big Cheese land is as corrupt and self-serving as I think it is.
November 16th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Hondo, you did not read the entire sentence before fixating on an illusory “gotcha.” Reminds me of the selective editing referenced later in your post.
You seem to have been misled on the composition of the journalist population, maybe they were overwhelmingly far leftists way back in the day, but few still identify that way. A plurality see themselves as moderate, while a minority is on the right. The idea of a left-wing media conspiracy is just an excuse to hide in a confortable Fox-Blaze-Breitbart-Newsmax (let me know if I’m missing any) ideological bubble.
The most recent survey of journalists political affiliation I could find was from 2006: http://www.journalism.org/print/2304
November 16th, 2012 at 12:56 pm
@41
They may claim moderate. They may even think they’re moderate. That doesn’t make it true. Really, how many people think of themselves as “far-left” or “far-right” or worse “Extreme” in one direction or the other?
From Msnbc (hardly Fox or Blaze or Breitbart or Newsmax):
“Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/#.UKZzumdQDak
November 16th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Anon: I read it. It is irrelevant to your overall argument.
Yes, Fox is a major player in the broadcast news industry. It is a major player only because all of the others are (1) obviously biased in the opposite direction, and (2) Fox is probably less biased than they are – though that’s debatable.
Further, Fox is one voice out of many. All of the other broadcast networks are liberal-oriented. Ditto most news periodicals. Ditto most major daily newspapers in the US. Need I go on?
The only area in modern media where conservatives have a marked advantage is that of talk radio. And that’s not anywhere nearly as influential as the rest of the media.
In short: I know exactly what you were trying to do. Whether you even realize it or not, you were trying to use a well-known exception to the general rule (Fox) to prove that the rule (liberal media bias) does not exist.
Clue for ya, sunshine: Fox is the exception that proves the rule. If that were not the case, there would be roughly an equal number of conservative- and liberal-oriented news networks, periodicals, and daily papers. There aren’t. (Given that the conservative/liberal split in the general population is roughly equal, that is precisely why Fox is so popular – it’s the only reasonably conservative or objective network out there.) The political party affiliation of journalists in general further proves that liberal bias in the US news media is real.
Nice try. No cigar, though.
November 16th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
@43
Truth.
Look at the cable news ratings. O’Reilly is at the top pretty much every day.
Now why is that? I like O’Reilly’s program, sure. However he irritates me at times and I certainly don’t view him as some sort of news-tainment second-coming. He’s on top because those of “moderate-”, “far-” and “extreme-” right wing persuasions have no place else to go.
If there were truly an even, or even much less left, bent to journalists and news-tainment sources, O’Reilly would have to work much harder for his viewership.
As it stands, with no other real choices which are even close to their values, conservative viewers go to Fox. It’s their only choice.
November 16th, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Liberals will never admit the media has a Liberal bias because it tells them what they want to believe is the truth.
November 16th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
By referencing a number of outlets(and I should have mentioned the Wall Street Journal and the National Review – though these are much more respectable than Newsmax or the Blaze, which reads like a tabloid)I was not fixating on Fox, even if it is the most prominent example. MSNBC is the only network that is more biased than Fox. Pew just did a study on this topic, and while the media was slightly kinder during the election to Obama, it was no shut-out: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/02/msnbc_fox_news_which_cable_channel_is_more_partisan_pew_report_suggests.htmlI
November 16th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Anon: you want to point out where you made specific reference to any media outlets in your comments above other than Fox and MSNBC? If you did, I can’t find them. The only two I see you reference are Fox and MSNBC – which you equate as being “the same critter”. They’re not. If anything, they’re opposites. But MSNBC has lots of company; Fox doesn’t.
Face it: your entire point in comment 35 was to equate Fox and MSNBC in an attempt to prove a lack of liberal bias in the media. I called you on that.
If you want to argue that Fox is biased too, make that argument. But don’t hide behind a bogus “they’re all the same” smokescreen while doing so.
And don’t insult our intelligence by telling us that the rest of the media isn’t biased when it is. With a biased workforce and leadership, they can’t help producing biased content.
November 16th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
In comment #41, I made it quite clear that Fox was part of a group of similarly biased conservative outlets including Blaze, Breitbart, and Newsmax. Subsequently I mention in comment #46 two more respectable conservative publications. You were the one that fixated on Fox, as well misreading my posts. I have also provided two different sources contesting your victimized perception of reality, showing that members of the media may lean left and liked Obama slightly more than Romney (to which the only response was denial that strangers know themselves better than you do), but hardly overwhelmingly. The second source, about the Pew study, proves my original point – and puts paid to the notion that Fox is the least biased.
November 16th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Oh, and Anon: I checked your source above. In fact, I followed it to the Pew article it purports to use.
The Slate source you mis-cited above (I’ll provide the correct URL below) appears to fixate on only one aspect from the actual Pew article on which it’s purportedly based in order to support a preconceived thesis. In layman’s terms: it “cherry picks” data that it likes and ignores data it doesn’t. Slate is known to be heavily biased towards the liberal POV. When compared to the source it purports to use, the Slate article you cited appears to be yet another example of that bias.
Further, the overall data in the Pew article shows the media was decidedly MORE positive on Obama overall than Romney, and that Romney overall received more negative coverage. Remove Fox and MSNBC and the picture remains the same.
It also doesn’t support your equating Fox and MSNBC. Even accepting positive/negative reference ratios as evidence of bias, ratios of 23.67:1 and 7.67:1 (actual calculated ratios) aren’t the same degree of bias, amigo. The former (MSNBC anti-Romney) is 3+ times more one-sided than the other (Fox anti-Obama).
Correct URL for Slate article:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/02/msnbc_fox_news_which_cable_channel_is_more_partisan_pew_report_suggests.html
URL for actual Pew Research article:
http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/winning_media_campaign_2012
Is Fox biased? Probably. As is the rest of the media. But equating the level of bias in Fox and MSNBC is ludicrous; a 23.67:1 ratio is hardly the same as 7.67:1. And without seeing the figures for each network assessed by Pew, I’m frankly not willing to accept their blanket assertion that the rest of the media was significantly less biased than either Fox or MSNBC. The substantial edge accorded to Obama by the media (evident in their overall percentages) was hardly due to MSNBC alone.
Further, the Pew article also documents a distinct time-of-day bias. Morning news programs (7AM) – which are watched by fewer people – tended slightly pro-Romney. Evening news telecasts – watched by more people – were decidedly pro-Obama.
Not even a nice try.
November 16th, 2012 at 2:55 pm
2004, Pew Research Center: Five times more national journalists identify themselves as “liberal” (34 percent) than “conservative” (just 7 percent). In contrast, a survey of the public taken in May 2004 found 20 percent saying they were liberal, and 33 percent saying they were conservative.
Source: http://www.people-press.org/2004/05/23/iv-values-and-the-press/
How many admissions, from within the News Media do you want? And while I’m thinking about it, let’s not forget. “Media” is more than “Journalists”. It’s musicians and actors and athletes and authors and a whole host of other occupations.
“The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions….We’re not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I’ve been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats.”
— Washington Post “Book World” editor Marie Arana in a contribution to the Post’s “daily in-house electronic critiques,” as quoted by Post media reporter Howard Kurtz in an October 3, 2005 article.
Joe Scarborough: “Is there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the most money?”
Former ABC 20/20 anchor Hugh Downs: “Well, I think the latter, by far. And, of course, when the word ‘liberal’ came to be a pejorative word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn’t want to be thought of as merely liberal. But people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a little more about what the background of what’s happening. So, I suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what’s happening.”
— MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, January 10, 2005.
“The notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it’s pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things. The seeds of its demise were sown with the best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP [American Mainstream Media Party] was founded in good measure (and ironically enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS’s star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon’s fate as the first President to resign. The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born.”
— Newsweek’s chief political reporter, Howard Fineman, “The ‘Media Party’ is over: CBS’ downfall is just the tip of the iceberg,” January 11 , 2005.
“I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.”
— CBS’s Andy Rooney on the November 7, 2004 60 Minutes.
“There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards — I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but — they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.”
— Newsweek’s Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, July 10, 2004.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
@41, so what you’re saying is that the only person in the room who has a right to have an opinion is you, even if your personal opinion is biased in one direction and not supported by extensive references?
Frankly, there is no news source on the planet that is not biased in one direction or the other. There is no print rag or online site that does not have a lean, whether it is liberal or conservative. Equating MSNBC, which is decidedly to the left of center, with Fox, which has become somewhat less right of center is incorrect. They are not cut from the same cloth.
NYTimes is left-ish, Wall Street Journal is right-ish. That does not make either of them right or wrong, it just makes them different. Ditto Fox and MSNBC — neither is right nor wrong, just differing in their opinions, which is what this is all about.
Using the term “victimized perception of reality” has no basis in reality. How does disagreement make one a victim? Your statement means that anyone who disagrees with you is nuts because he disagrees with you. Having an opinion and stating it does not mean that someone has a twisted view of the real world.
Opinion is simply self-expression, nothing else. It’s one thing to hold a different viewpoint. It’s an entirely different to state, or even imply, that because someone else’s opinion is different from yours, he’s crazy, which is what “victimized perception of reality” means.
You specifically labeled two media news sources as being cut from the same cloth when they are not. They are as different as goats and porcupines. If you’re going to discuss media outlets, at least do your research first. Anyone here can come up with more than a few moderate conservative media outlets, as well as liberal outlets, without going to a lot of trouble in the process.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
What I don’t get, Hondo, is how you can look at that study and come to the conclusion that there is a pro-Obama bias in the media as a whole. We would expect if there was this really significant liberal bias that Obama would be portrayed positively, with few negative stories, rather than the negative stories outnumbering the positive, as is actually the case. The comparison is between a mixed narrative for Obama and a negative narrative for Romney (its easier to go after a white plutocrat than the first black president – not that we should focus so much on personal characteristics over policy). Directly from the article (whose hyperlink when I posted it had -gasp- an extra l on the end that, unfortunately, broke it):
“Most of the advantage in coverage for Obama, however, came in September in the form of highly negative coverage for Romney. This was a period when the GOP nominee was losing ground in the polls, he was criticized for his comments about Libya, and a video surfaced in which he effectively dismissed 47% of the American public.
All that changed almost overnight after the first debate on October 3. From that day through October 21, the coverage in effect reversed. In all, 20% of stories about Romney were favorable, 30% were unfavorable, and 50% were mixed-a differential of 10 points to the negative. For Obama, 13% of stories were favorable, 36% were unfavorable, and 50% were mixed-a differential of 23 points.”
As I said at the first, its about what is selling, and after the first debate the media grabbed on to Mitt-mentum. Would they have done that if they were all in the liberals pockets, except for Fox?
I also mentioned that MSNBC was more biased, didn’t I? I understand that 23.67:1 is a much worse ratio than 7.67:1, but that doesn’t exclude Fox’s performance down to a “probably” biased. Pew also supports my assertion that Fox and MSNBC are the same sort of network, as Pew refers to them as “two cable channels that have built themselves around ideological programming.”
I could mirror your final comment regarding your mis-representation of the data.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:33 pm
SInce it takes a while to write out 350 words, I missed EX-PH2 and Nik comments, but briefly:
Nik, look at the quotes you posted and they accord with what I said, the media is slightly baised left, but its ultimately about the money.
EX-PH2, the victimized perception of reality I referred to is the conspiracy theory that only Fox tells the truth and the mainstream media (a notion your post implicity rejects in identifying a diversity of views among leading news sources) is a far-left monolith lying to the American people on behalf of Democrats. I agree with what you wrote, and for the record, I do think people that beleive in conspiracy theories aren’t all there. Fox and MSNBC are cut from the same cloth because they both sell an exceptionally ideologically doctored version of reality to appeal to their base.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:34 pm
Anon:
Let me spell it out to you in pictures:
In all cases, Obama overall got (1) greater overall stories with positive “spin”, and (2) fewer overall stories with negative “spin”. The only cases that were close to neutral were (1) discussions of issues, and (2) the “blogosphere”. It’s hard to spin facts successfully – though the media tried – which explains (1). Interestingly, (2) is the only category above written by a population that approximates an actual cross-section of the US population.
And, for the record: no, you didn’t initially mention that MSNBC is “more biased”. Specifically: in comment 35 above, you said no such thing. There, you explicitly equated Fox and MSNBC in terms of bias. You only admitted MSNBC to be decidedly more biased later – after you’d been called out for equating the two.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
What do you mean “slightly”? From Pew:
In the most recent survey, 40% of journalists described themselves as being on the left side of the political spectrum (31% said they were “a little to the left” and 9% “pretty far to the left”). But that number was down notably, seven percentage points from 1992, when 47% said they leaned leftward.
The percentage of “middle of the roaders” moved up slightly to 33% in 2002 from 30% in 1992. And the number of journalists identifying themselves leaning toward the political right also inched up to 25% from 22% a decade earlier (20% “a little to the right” and 5% “pretty far to the right”).
34% vs 7% is not slightly. It’s dramatically.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
@38: I’m afraid the media bias goes back further than the 60′s. Walter Durante won a Pulitzer prize for his NYT articles describing how he gave the perfect blowjob to Stalin and how wonderful it was.
November 16th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Also: If anyone remembers that CNN admitted to giving favorable coverage to Saddam so they could keep access to him.
Here’s their latest snippet to show their bias: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/11/16/Fraud-CNN-Uses-Video-Footage-Of-Faked-Palestinian-Injuries
November 16th, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Ah. Apparently, I did not make myself clear. My intention is to always be as clear as possible. So, here goes.
A bias toward the liberal or toward the conservative side of the political spectrum is dependent on the sociopolitical environment where the bias originates.
In the USA, where free speech is taken for granted, a news outlet like FoxNews is considered modestly right, or conservative, and at the same time, MSNBC is more oriented to the left, or liberal side of the middle of the road.
To put it in perspective, if FoxNews were in Pakistan, where free speech is not well-received, its output would be considered dangerously left-wing and possibly explosively liberal. MSNBC would be so far to the left that it would be on the receiving end of death threats and lethal attacks, as witness what recently happened to the outspoken teenager Malala. al-Jazeera, the state-approved news outlet, would be considered modestly conservative, very close to the middle of the road. And the jihadist media, of which there are several, would be more slightly conservative.
It is socio-political geography that creates a liberal and/or conservative bias, not the medium itself.
The medium is the message. — Marshall McCluhan
November 16th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Ex-PH2, I think I’m stilling missing your point. I will tell you what I have understood from your two posts, and maybe you can help me from there.
In your initial post at 51, you take umbrage that I identify people who believe in a far left main stream media as having a victimized perspective, then explain that using that language delegitimizes opposing views. You also point out that there are a variety of viewpoints in the media and some bias is inevitable in all of them.
Your subsequent comment observes that context is everything when it comes to evaluating the perspective of a new source relative to its peers. You also mention that the medium is not to blame for the biases of US news outlets.
I agree with your points in both posts, but I am having a hard time seeing how the discussion of global context clarifies your criticism of the language I used or adds to your point that all news is biased when what was at issue, as I understood it was the degree, rather than the existence, of bias in US news media as a whole, and two networks in particular.
November 16th, 2012 at 7:21 pm
If you’re that dumb, you’re on your own.
November 16th, 2012 at 8:34 pm
EX-PH2, I put aside my pride to get an intelligent friend of mine to look over what you wrote, and it still is only connected in your mind. I can get a third opinion from a buddy of mine that graduated from an Ivy, and maybe he can parse your brilliance. Until then my conclusion is that you didn’t say anything meaningful (in fact, #58 is terribly banal, but I didn’t want to say that when I still thought you would be constructive).
November 16th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
And I don’t care what you and your pseudo-intellectual buddy think.