“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” - George Orwell
While we’re on the subject of Mr Blair, consider his definition of crimestop:
I think it shows that McCain is becoming irrelevant. It is about Sarah now. They think he is a dead man walking and they are actually voting for Sarah . She represents the real base . She is the future of the party. He is just the ticket letting them in the door. She panders to their craziness . She is one of them.
Yes, this says a lot about modern conservatives.
Hard core lefties can go on and on about the establishmentarian bias of the New York Times, especially with regard to foreign policy. Yet even these fringe types don’t find it imperative to retreat into their cocoon, and limit themselves to a diet of The Nation and In These Times.
Liberals and traditional conservatives can filter out the spin, but they demand fealty to the goddamn facts. Both groups read the New York Times, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal’s news section. But watching Fox News or listening to some radioland chowderhead is out of the question. Only those with sensitive dispositions cower from unpleasant truths.
I don’t even feel this DESERVES a response.
:rolleyes:
Possible OP data point: this dude says that William Ayers wrote Dreams from my Father.
I sort of have to ask what the point of making the claim is, given its absolute unprovability and the relative shakiness of the evidence.
(ETA: Okay, I can see a point: further motivating Obama opponents who already think that he and Ayers are basically two political peas in a pod. I mean, some are already seeing the allegations as “disturbing” and saying that nothing Obama ever wrote before gives ANY indication that he could’ve written it. Which may be so, but it’s still a big leap to say that Ayers, in particular, was the ghostwriter.)
When Obama met Ayers, Ayers was a English Professor at Univ. of Illinois. He had the title of Distinguished Professor.
He has written and edited many books on education theory and practice.
He worked with Mayor Daly in shaping the public School reform.
He is one of 3 authors of The Annenberg Challenge ,which won a 49.2 million dollar grant for public school reform.
Since 1999 he has been on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti poverty ,philanthropic foundation.
Why would a young man getting started in community activity not seek out and welcome help from such a man. Oh yes, I forgot.when Obama was around 8 years old Ayers was involved it the Weathermen . That would clearly make him a collaborator . At least to Palin.
Ok, you can certainly interpret the McCain campaign and the oppo researchers in this regard. You can see from the inconsistency of their attacks that the McCains really don’t hold particularly firm views about Obama.
I think it goes beyond this though.
How to explain the words of National Reviews blogs? I mean they’re just talking among themselves, right? And they seem to think that Obama is a latter-day Maoist, just as those characters thought that Clinton murdered Vince Foster. Seriously: this is weird stuff.
Maybe they’re all lawyers at heart: instead of analyzing the facts, they construct briefs that best fit their world view. And because they’re emotionally stunted, they can only imagine that everyone else does the same thing. So all fact-based analysis is seen as an invariable stand-in for an underlying ideology. Within that world, anybody that mentions a fact you don’t like is biased and provokes a strong emotional reaction.
Sensible conservatives deserve better.
You mean we’re not? Well, come the Revolution, that’s gonna change!
Look, I get my news from just as narrow a range of sources. Three of my radio pre-sets are NPR stations (have to dodge the fund drives; pledge early, and switch stations); I don’t watch any t.v. news except PBS; the only paper I ever read is the Wall Street Journal, and I don’t take it very seriously.
But I do not live in a vast Liberal bubble; I don’t hear that McCain, or even Bush, is the anti-christ; I never even heard about McCain’s first wife. I don’t hear heavily slanted anti-Republican diatribes.
I know people who get all their news from Fox; yes, they have lost touch with reality. I first noticed during the Clinton mess. It got much, much worse after the war started. It has become so bad, I now avoid these people, because they scare me.
I also know perfectly reasonable people who vote Republican, who believe in supporting business to support the economy and who have strong traditional values; these people are scared, too, of the same things that scare me.
Well, of course not, given that facts have a liberal bias. 
If the middle had not been called “Left” for so long as to skew public perception, and more folks knew actual leftists, they would see that folks on the left have just as much trouble watching or reading those same MSM outlets.
= = =
It is amusing, to me, to see folks on the Right talk about how others on the Right have been “driven” from the SDMB. In reality, long before any on the Right had chosen to bail, we actually had a (very) few folks on the Left–and they were “driven out” long before any Right-leaning posters became disenchanted with the place.
There are issues on which the MSM tends to express views toward the Right and issues on which the MSM tends to express views toward the Center-Left, but the MSM is basically interested in obtaining an audience and they will do (or report) any shocking thing to grab that audience.
= = =
As to the OP, I really do not see where “some right-wing supporters” are all that worth worrying over. Clearly “some” left-wing supporters have also demonstrated only the most tenuous grasp on reality from time to time. (Go back and look at how many of the TM were absolutely sure that GWB could not possibly be re-elected in 2004.)
While this thread has provided a few instructive moments, it really is more of a way for various partisans (both sides) to demonstrate the failings of partisan rhetoric.
Kid yourself that this is the case all you want, but no one is ‘cowering’ from the truth. They (and I say that because I get news from lots of sources, though mostly online) have simply chosen not to expose themselves to the aggravation inherent in watching and listening to the MSM.
Furthermore, many conservatives are far from the belief that they are getting the full story when it comes to these so-called truths from the MSM. As with almost anything in life, there are both positive and negative aspects to virtually every situation the media reports (barring natural disasters and so forth). One can report negative, pessimistic things about conservatives and still be telling the truth, but it’s only a partial truth. One can also report positive and optimistic things about the left and still be telling the truth, but again it’s only a partial truth.
The difference lies in how the media emphasizes negative truths when it comes to the right vs. emphasis on positive truths when it comes to the left (or on the other hand, how they gloss over or ignore negative truths when it comes to the left but trumpet them to the heavens when it comes to the right).
I don’t expect you or very many other people here to admit to (or frankly, even recognize) the hundreds if not thousands of ways the media overtly and covertly work to promote the left and undermine the right. It’s merely my purpose in this thread to try to give a little honest perspective on why so many conservatives have gravitated to Fox/Limbaugh. It has nothing to do with cowardice, fear of the ‘real’ truth, or losing touch with ‘reality’. Most of it is simply a case of conservatives having gotten tired of subjecting themselves to the aggravation inherent in watching/listening to the MSM, and now, thanks to radio and cable, the right finally has not only a voice but someplace to turn for information that hasn’t been slanted against it.
Redefining “cowering from the truth”, doesn’t make it any less cowering. The reason they find that evil, evil “MSM” intolerable is because they can’t stand any truth whatsoever.
Oh, please. The media has sucked up almost obsessively to the right. They just haven’t sucked up obsessively enough, in the eyes of the right.
Because it doesn’t happen, except in the Right’s persecution fantasies. In reality, the media is heavily slanted to the Right.
No, that’s exactly what it’s all about. The Right has gone collectively and willfully insane; they are withdrawing more and more into their little delusional bubble and becoming more and more isolated from reality.
Your case would be more persuasive if it contained any substantiation whatsoever.
Let me take an example of liberal/leftie media criticism,courtesy Brad DeLong and OpenLeft.
The Washington Post reports 168 states leaning Obama, 174 states leaning McCain and 196 swing states. Seems like a tight race, no? Maybe McCain is even winning.
Now let’s look at some of their definitions:
Obama leads by 13.8% in Pennsylvania and 10.4% in New Hampshire. Those are considered swing states.
McCain leads by 2.2% in West Virginia and 3.8% in Indiana. Those are leaning Republican.
Huh? Why are small leads for McCain reported as “Leaning Republican”, while big leads for Obama correspond to “Swing States”?
What’s the point of such an exercise? And why tilt matters so far towards McCain’s side? Remember, this is from the allegedly liberal Washington Post. This analysis is just bizarro, and at variance with the underlying facts. Yet apparently it still doesn’t pander adequately to the modern conservative mentality, witness O’Reilly’s constant complaints about the liberal bias of that Washington paper.
Liberals and sensible conservatives want the facts: they don’t need Washington press corps stroke. The outrage of the above is not that it’s slanted towards McCain. It’s that their categories present the reader with a wholly warped perception of the underlying reality. If the reporter wanted to play games with the cutoff values, that would be one thing. But favoring a 2.2% lead over a 13.8% lead? That’s silly.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/10/open-left-a-22.html
Here’s my take: there’s a large market of right wingers with dispositions that can’t handle facts, only stroke. Their leftie counterpart, OTOH, is of de minimus size.
ETA: It ain’t over until it’s over. We could still have an October surprise. So I’m not claiming that McCain if forked (though I’d say he has something under a 20% chance of victory). I’m saying that WAPO’s presentation of the existing situation is so nutty so as to be misleading and unhelpful.
Another video shows her not buying it. She walks away the way she walked in. Obama is an Arab.
CJJ* , I’m curious. Did you really think you were going to get a bunch a Conservatives responding to the thread? Or were you really just looking for like-minded posters to agree with your position? Based on your length of stay at the SDMB, I’ll wager it’s the latter. But I’ll let you respond to confirm.
Now do Conservatives want McCain to win despite the enslaught from the left? I’d guess yes. You dont, hence the different perspective and the contined amazement that the Right doesn’t just fold up shop and move to Alaska. If fact, IMO, the Dems have been out of the White House so long that anyone with a D at the end of their name will do. To me, that’s losing touch with reality.
Also, keep in mind that if NObama was in McCains place in “The Polls” and then I posted a topic with similar “evidence” labeling it: “Are some left-wing supporters losing touch with reality?”, do you think the posts to my OP would look any different than your post? I’d guess yes (dramatically) again. In fact, I’m certain a pile on would ensue that drown out any hopes in getting an objective answer.
-LC
“some right-wing supporters” should really read “some right-wing supporters whose influence is taken seriously by the Republican establishment.” Their influence, for example, is the only way to explain the selection of Sarah Palin. Ideology aside, she is clearly unqualified for the job, and despite a week or two when her unknown quantity injected some life into the McCain campaign, her frequent gaffes (not to mention the political issues any competent campaign would have vetted her on) have been a substantial drag on the ticket. I think the Republican leadership would have preferred a half-dozen candidates over Palin, but wouldn’t take a chance on alienating the rabid base.
I agree this isn’t worth worrying over–if you’re a Democrat. The more McCain rallies look like lynch mobs, the more out-of-touch Fox News appears to the average viewer (many of whom get their news from non-traditional outlets like the Colbert Report), themore long-term damage is done to the political right.
When true believer paranormalists fail a test of their powers, they always propose previously unknown confounding factors. How do they know these confounding factors exists? Because they must: otherwise their powers would work. The idea that their powers don’t exist is never acknowledged. It is unthinkable. Consequently, they simply posit the presence of something, often something unfalsifiable, to smooth over the gap between their unshakeable faith and the facts as reality seems to present them.
ISTM that the conservatives you are talking about are pulling the same trick. If the story they get doesn’t suit them, there must be something they are not being told. How do they know? Because the story they are getting doesn’t suit them. And their position is essentially unfalsifiable, because whatever we might say, they can always say there are some contrary facts that are not being revealed, “out there somewhere”.
No, it comes from knowing there are two sides to every story, and that when it comes to the news media one side’s position usually gets positive reportage and the other side’s position usually gets negative reportage. Why should we take news reports about the economy, the war, polls, etc. at face value when we know that the left is going to get positive spin and the right negative spin?
This is why unbiased reportage is so important, and why it’s too bad that we don’t have it.
But I think my position here is being taken the wrong way. I’m not trying to prove that what conservatives think is correct (though I believe it is), what I’m doing is trying to give some insight into why so many Republicans have turned away from traditional news outlets, and the fact that it has nothing to do with ‘cowering away’ from facts we don’t want to hear.
If a particular leftwing administration was a bunch of incompetents, would you expect a theoretical unbiased media to run stories about them that tended to mention more negative things, or tended to mention more positive things, or that tended to mention both equally (taking it as a given in this hypothetical that this incompetent administration stuff a lot of things up)?
And who would be making the assessment that this hypothetical administration is incompetent?
See? Therein lies the rub. Even on this board there are posters who think Bush (for example ;)) is evil incarnate, others think he’s a dumbass who couldn’t find his way in out of the rain, others think he’s a good man doing the best he can even if some things haven’t gone as well as he hoped, and others think he can do no wrong. (Now, admittedly, the latter two are very much in the minority around here, but I’m confident the roles are reversed almost identically on right-wing boards.) So who’s to say who’s right? Everybody, that’s who. One man’s incompetence is another man’s righteousness, and who is the media to decide which is which?
I, personally, don’t feel it should be the media’s job to decide who is incompetent and who isn’t, and especially not to then slant their coverage to get that message across to the masses. IMO, they should report things factually, give both sides equal time, and let people decide for themselves who is incompetent and who isn’t.
(And while we’re on the subject, I don’t recall a great deal of media attention being given to Carter’s incompetence - something which is almost universally accepted to be the case now - yet history and the true facts of the matter have revealed his incompetence quite well despite virtually no media prosyletization.)