Hmm, you’re right. (I think he would have been better off using my approach.)
I figure that I will be accused of dead horse flogging yet again, but I just have to make a few points.
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Re: Clinton’s Jones depo- the dictionary definition of sex doesn’t matter, nor does my definition, nor does yours-in the depo, the definition of sex was spelled out and limited. It was essentially this: If Clinton touched ML’s genitals or other erogenous parts, it was sex. It said nothing about her touching his naughty bits. Further, there had been a second paragragh discussing the use of “objects” for stimulation, but that paragraph was struck. Thus the question is not “is a blowjob sex,” but rather “did Clinton do anyting that the paragraph defining sex in this deposition mentions?” Absent proof that he did do one of the things in the the clause, it’s difficult (at least for us strict constructionists) to say he lied under oath.
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Materiality. Plaintiff was trying to show that Clinton’s alleged action in the complaint would not have been out of character for him by showing a “pattern of behavior.” When the Judge threw the case out, however, her decision was based on the fact that the only damage that Paula Jones could show was that she did not get flowers one secretary’s day. All of her allegations of missed promotions and raises, etc., that she had sworn to, and which were therefore obviously very material to the case, were shown to be lies. The Judge did not question whether Clinton had made the alleged demand in the alleged fashion, but threw the case out because with no damage stemming from Jones’ alleged refusal, the demand was only “boorishness” and not harrassment. If the only relevance that testimony about ML had went to whether Clinton might have done the foul deed that Jones alleged, and the Judge said that whether Clinton did it was irrelevant to the case, then the testimony should not have been allowed in the first place, and certainly is immaterial.
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The Grand Jury Testimony, which can be found here:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/transcr.htm. Remember, the House voted to impeach Clinton on this, and not the Jones deposition. The Starr report called this perjury. In this testimony, Clinton said this: “**When I was alone with Ms. Lewinsky on certain occasions in early 1996 and once in early 1997, I engaged in conduct that was wrong. These encounters did not consist of sexual intercourse. They did not constitute sexual relations as I understood that term to be defined at my January 17th, 1998 deposition. But they did involve inappropriate intimate contact. **” Later in the testimony he discusses why he believes that oral sex performed on him by Monica is not included in the definition of sexual relations from the Jones definition. He also discusses why his use of “objects” on Monica is not covered, since the paragraph that mentioned them was struck. Anyone reading the Grand Jury Testimony will get a complete picture of what Clinton and Lewinsky did. I do not see how this could be called perjury, unless it is claimed that they did things beyond this (fucked, for instance), and to my knowledge the Starr report does not claim that. Where’s the perjury?
Read the transcripts and a very different picture emerges. JDM
Just as you’d like to pretend you never suggested any such thing. But I can’t deny your words any more than you can.
The only relation I can see between this wrangle and the OP is its vague similarity to the Clintonian shuffle over what the meaning of “is” is.
What it’s more reminiscent of is the passage in Steven King’s The Shining where the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel are coming to life, and various scenes from the hotel’s history are playing out simultaneously like bad time exposures.
While this exchange is going on in one dimension, there’s a rehash of the Bad Clinton/Good Clinton debate playing in another dimension.
Since you’re not ready or willing to back up your “corporate media” thesis, go have fun in the Second Dimension.
Not saying he’s a liar. Court decisions almost always have good points and bad points for each side. The sides inevitably play up the good points and play down the bad points. Remember the appellate decision in Microsoft? The Court of Appeals affirmed the decision that Microsoft was a monopolist that had abused its position. The court also held that the district judge had acted inappropriately, and remanded to a different judge for further proceedings on the appropriate remedy. Microsoft labelled the decision as a victory. Spin, baby.
In this case, if Starr had been let off with an admonishment, it would be quite common for a person in Starr’s position to label that a “ruling in his favor.” After all, nothing bad happened to him.
Neither of us should guess what Judge Johnson’s ruling was until we can read the ruling.
I’ll second Gadarene - who the hell was “demonized” as a result of the House Post Office scandal?
Anyway, we are back to the original question - who do you think is doing the demonizing? If it is Clintonistas, you still have the problem that the Clintonistas would (and did) demonize these guys before Zippergate. And, of course, Nixon partisans did demonize the Watergate investigators. Pat Buchanan springs to mind.
If you are talking about the general population as being the demonizers, then you still have the problem of the dividing line between demonization and judgment.
Sua
Are you joking? You’re suggesting that to the extent Gingrich was demonized, it was (by implication) in large part for his investigations of Rostenkowski and the House Post Office? I seem to recall an old saying about correlation, and how it doesn’t imply causation. Maybe that’s just me.
If you’re saying that Gingrich’s reputation as a bomb-thrower was based unfairly on these episodes, perhaps you’ve forgotten about his claim that one-fourth of White House staff were drug users or his overblown screed (picked up by major media) about House bank overdrafts. Perhaps you ought to look into his campaign to topple Jim Wright as Speaker of the House, an event that is generally regarded as the inception of the contemporary cycle of Congressional scandal politics? Perhaps you ought to read The Ambition and the Power.
Newt Gingrich, demonized because of the House Post Office Scandal? Please.
You are referring to the same Newt Gingrich who very soon thereafter became Speaker of the House of Representatives, right?
If “demonization” results (pretty directly) in my achieving the job I dreamed about since I was a child, then please demonize me, baby.
Sua
Okay, I give up–what the hell are you talking about? What words? Show me, please, where I state, intimate, or even hint that centrist-liberal social cant in the media is counterbalance, neutralized, justified, or otherwise offset by centrist-conservative social cant–or else go fly your freak flag somewhere else. Here’s a hint, which seems to have pinged off your stubborn skull as a BB might a mailbox: that I think both cants exist in no way suggests a counterbalancing of any kind, nor even any specific normative judgment. I observe a centrist-liberal social cant. I observe a centrist-conservative economic cant. The two have little or nothing to do with one another.
sigh I stated at the outset that I wasn’t looking for a protracted hijack. And I’ve resisted defending the assertions you’ve asked me to defend for the simple fact that I never made them. But I’m more than willing to back up my “corporate media thesis.” Ready? Here we go: Most major media outlets are owned by corporations. Ta da. Really going out on a limb with that one, aren’t I? Me am from Bizarro world if me think that.
If you’d like some support for my observation that major media tends to be profit-driven, audience-driven, and access-driven–that is, if you seriously don’t believe those things to be true–then I’d be happy to comply. They’re hardly radical propositions.
If you want to debate the existence of a centrist-conservative economic cant, then by all means start a new thread. If I don’t jump immediately into the fray, take a breather, read the Wall Street Journal, and I’m sure I’ll be with you shortly.
When, that is, you provide evidence that I think the media’s social center-liberalism balances out its economic center-conservativism, or admit the nonexistence thereof.
Jackmanii, you are fooling no one with your sophism.
I should congratulate myself. Keeping pace with you has not been easy.
You joined this thread to counter a spurious claim, made by you and you alone, that rightward tendencies in the media “counterbalance” leftward tendencies.
The posters in question have all repudiated this claim numerous times and have challenged you to demonstrate where and when this claim was ever made.
Your Substance-Free hit counter is ticking away.
Then you displace the blame to “liberal apologists”:
No one on this thread made that claim. Nor does anyone but you particularly care what the apologists of the left have to say on this matter. Why did you even see fit to mention it in the first place?
And then you have the temerity to continue to accuse Gadarene of making an argument that he never made.
Neither the selections you nor the ones IzzyR related suggest in any way, shape, or form support the argument you wish Gadarene had made.
But you can’t deny his words.
So don’t. Learn to stick to the level of logos.
If you are going to debate arguments evidence for which you cannot even produce based on tenuous interpretations of the words of others, well, I think we are going to have to leave you in the second dimension.
Or better yet, in the Overlook Hotel.
I think this “counterbalancing” thing is getting a bit clearer. Gadarene is using the term to mean something that directly offsets - meaning that the media skew to the left on social issues is actually offset by the media skew to the right on economic ones - IOW, that the media is not, as a practical matter, as skewed as they might be on either issue, because the two different skews interact and cancel each other out. Jackmanni is using it to mean that the media cannot be said to be skewed overall because since it simultaneously skewed in both directions (on different issues) the overall direction is neutral. This was also my understanding of the term, which may be incorrect (I don’t wish to debate this).
Gadarene has not said the first, but has said the second. Truce?
I’ve said neither, Izzy. If anything, the latter opinion is closer to my own–which is that you can’t talk generally about a “liberal media” if the media is not overarchingly liberal. But nothing is being “offset” or “counterbalanced”; that is, just because I think the media tends center-conservative economically doesn’t mean I think it somehow makes it okay for the media to tend center-liberal on social issues, as a “counterbalancing” effect would suggest.
I don’t know how I can make “the two cants are not related” more clear than saying that the two cants are not related, which I’ve done.
Your call for a truce is premature, I think. Not that I don’t welcome the mediating hand.
This turns out to be an example where Gingrich was essentially correct, but the media didn’t give him a fair shake when Secret Service agents testified to the facts.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Newt taken to task for something he said reguarding Tip O’Neill, when the later was SOTH? Supposedly when C-SPAN first came out?
Gadarene, you’re losing me again. What is the difference between “the media cannot be said to be skewed overall because since it simultaneously skewed in both directions” (my language) and “you can’t talk generally about a “liberal media” if the media is not overarchingly liberal” (yours)? No one said (as far as I remember ) that it “somehow makes it okay”.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gadarene *
**
Gadarene, didn’t your momma ever tell you not to pick at your scabs, for fear they’d get all infected and nasty?
But for purposes of argument I’ll take you at your word and that you don’t realize what it is you’re suggesting.
Your screed on the State of Media on page 1 of this thread suggests that media coverage of social issues has some degree of liberal tilt, and that there is some kind of tilt toward conservatives on the economic front. You then state that neither side is happy with the degree of favoritism it receives. It seems obvious to me that you are arguing that neither side gets any net benefit from media bias, that as a practical matter any “social issue” bias is counterbalanced by an “economics” bias.
Izzy dug up this statement of yours from another thread:
“I think we should define our terms. What’s involved in taking a “liberal” stance? Being generally pro-choice? Yes, the media are generally pro-choice. Being generally pro-gun control? Yes, the media are generally pro-gun control. Being abstractly (but not practically) pro-environment? Yes, the media generally fits that, as well. What else? What about economic issues? What about issues that affect their advertising stable rather than their viewership? Wealth disparity, corporate malfeasance, free trade, globalization…interests entrenched in today’s institutions. I’d argue that these are more pertinent.”
So. Economic issues “are more pertinent” than “social issues”. You suggest (not to mention intimate and imply) in this thread that conservatives benefit from a center-right tilting on economic issues.
Therefore, if I’ve misstated your position in any way, it’s to the extent that you think there’s a net right-wing media bias. And that’s even goofier than what I taxed you with previously.
**
That’s your concrete evidence? The major media are owned by corporations, Sinister Denizens Of The Right, and that proves a corporate media bias in reporting? For starters, you have difficult ground to plow in implicating corporations in general as devotees of a Right Wing New World Order. Then you have to develop convincing evidence that the corporations that own major media outlets have a similar agenda. Following that, you have to trace an influence from above that overrides the natural political sympathies of news editors and reporters. And then you’ll need to show us how conservatives benefit from such a tilt more than liberals.
You have shown none of this.
In the absence of evidence*, you’ve more than outdone any of december’s conspiracy theories.
*And no, I’m not going to do your research into the perfidies of the Wall Street Journal for you. And even in the case of that august publication, you’ll find plenty of argument about your implication that the WSJ is a hotbed of bias in its news coverage.
There’s no real substantive difference between these two statements. It’s just that you felt Jackmanii was asserting that first statement, rather than me.
Here’s what you said:
Here’s my response:
I can amend “closer to my own” to “much closer to my own,” if you like. I hesitate to subscribe wholeheartedly to someone else’s paraphrase of my beliefs. And it seems to me that Jackmanii’s position re: “counterbalancing” is that I do, in fact, think that competing biases in both issues somehow “makes it okay.” If I’m making an incorrect inference into Jack’s contention, I apologize; I’m just clarifying (for the umpteenth time) that I don’t believe the two sets of cants balance each other out.
An old practice of the House of Representatives was the “Five Minutes”, in which any member of Congress could stand up and speak at the podium on any topic of their choosing for five minutes. This wasn’t really used much until C-Span came along and began filming Congress, and then suddenly lots of young Congresspersons jumped at the chance for five minutes of free airtime.
Gingrich had a nasty routine- he would stand at the podium and attack another Congressperson, throwing out a charge and then standing back and “waiting” for a reply. Given that most of Congress didn’t even bother to show up for other peoples’ “Five Minutes”, Gingrich could throw out a charge with no worry about any reply, but because the camera was focused solely upon him, the average viewer got the impression that the charge was so true that the accused couldn’t even come up with a good reply. Tip O’Neill, as Speaker of the House, was so disgusted by this that he went to one of the cameramen and told him to pan across the room, which he did, revealing that Gingrich was talking to a nearly empty room. Gingrich stopped the practice after that.
This is all contained in Tip O’Neill’s “Man Of The House”, a book I highly recommend to all those interested in politics and good reads. There’s a little too much hagiography of Kennedy in it IMO, but O’Neill was an incredible story teller with great stories, and the book is just a great view at the realities of politics from 1960 to 1985.
Ah…now I remember! Thanks. I read about that in a recent biography of O’Neill, but couldn’t remember what happened.
(IIRC, afterwards, Gingrich basically mouthed off to the Tipster, who pretty much considered him a young "whippersnapper).
Thanks-I’ll have to check out the book which you speak of.
First, it wasn’t a screed. When I write a screed, you’ll know it. Second, this is what I said in my original post:
No, I don’t need to do any of that. Because I’m not making any of those claims. You asked me to defend my “corporate media” thesis. To the extent that I possess one today, you’ve been handed it in full. I said nothing about sinister denizens, or new world orders, or agendas, or benefits at all. It’s not a debate I’m engaging. Methinks you’re coloring your putative opponents arguments a little to strenuously. Tone down the scare speech characterizations, and people will take you more seriously, 'kay?
Nor have I posited any of it.
Didn’t ask you to. If you’re looking for generally centrist-conservative economic coverage, though, the Wall Street Journal’s a good place to start. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody’s saying anything about bias or perfidy. Well, you are–I’m not.
Oh, I see, Gadarene. You’ve really been speaking all along about a media “perspective”, or “tendency” or…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gadarene *
**
But oh no, not “bias”. That would be dreadfully misrepresenting your views.**
Yes, I have. I just haven’t been seeing it from you.
You were asked to back up your conclusions with fact. You instead decide belatedly that you don’t like the sound of your own statements on the issue, in effect saying awww shucks, I wasn’t serious:**
Do us a favor. The next time you don’t want to take the trouble to support one of your “theses”, announce beforehand that’s it’s a joke. That way we won’t mistake your subsequent contortions for a cop-out.
It’s funny, 'cause I actually did think you were deeper than this.
“Bias!”
“No bias!”
“Bias!”
“No bias!”
“Bias!”
“No bias!”
ad nauseum, fade out
laugh Whatever, Jack. You’re playing with yourself here.