Starving, maybe you still think Limbaugh is great journalism, but I don’t think so.
He was hell on wheels against drug use and wanted all sorts of harsh bad things to happen to druggies until he got caught. -Hypocrite.
He still is waving the Swifties like some sort of flag, procaliming them to be great and honest men, heroes. -Lying scumbags have to stick together I guess.
He tried to ridicule the very proper indignation most of us felt when the Abu Ghraib scandal came out in the open. -War crimes supporter.
He made light of the possibility that we were holding people with no charges and no trial in Gitmo. -Gross violation of what his own country was supposedly founded on (due process).
He lies constantly and is utterly repugnant. I listen to him. Why? “Know your enemy”. He is a hypocrite, coward and, liar and a huge steaming pile of horse excrement. He compounds it by being smug, snide and sarcastic.
I agree with your point about moral cowardice as far as it goes.
But we also must keep in mind that the big money boys, the owners of newspapers, radio, and TV channels tend to favor Republican ideology because the Republican party favors them.
So the word goes down to the writers and commentators: Go easy on Bush. And they do.
This kind of thing just slays me! Who the hell, around here or anywhere else, is thinking in terms of being so inclined “economically” when they use the term liberal or conservative? When liberals or conservatives here are praised or railed against it isn’t because of their fiscal beliefs. And when people identify themselves or others around here or in society at large as being liberals or conservatives, they aren’t speaking of their fiscal beliefs.
In my opinion, this is just another liberal cop-out: "Yeah, well maybe most journalists are liberal (although as we’ve seen, they prefer to consider themselves “moderate,” just as Bernard Goldberg said), but that’s only socially. Financially, we are conservatives.
Well, so the hell what? In the first place, what does that mean? Are they against government social programs, tax reduction, etc.? What do they even know about economics in the first place? You don’t know because they don’t ever talk about it, unless it’s to attempt to portray conservatives as being heartless and selfish because conservatives tend to disapprove of governmental redistribution of wealth.
But the truth of the matter lies in the 5 to 7 percent that identify themselves as socially conservative (and frankly I’m surprised it’s that high).
I’d appreciate it if you could post the quote of mine that led to your apparent belief that I regard Limbaugh as “great journalism.”
I mentioned, as should be apparent to anyone, that 10 years ago Limbaugh’s was about the only conservative voice among the mainstream media, and that even now Limbaugh, Hannity and O’Reilly constitute the only real conservative voice in the mainstream media. This would be as contrasted with NBC, ABC, CBS (the worst offender for decades), CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, etc., etc., etc.
Oh, that’s bullshit and you know it. I was pointing out that O’Reilly made a statement that is his opinion. It was also clear from my post that even I didn’t even agree with it. But, just because one might disagree with that opinion doesn’t mean that O’Reilly is a liar who is not worth listening to.
O’Reilly’s show is his opinion. The entire time he’s on the air he’s offering opinions. If only 1% of them are stupid opinions, I consider that a pretty good ratio, even if it means that his enemies are given plenty of ammunition over his carreer to fill a web page up with a list of them.
[QUOTE=Larry Mudd]
Yeah, it contrasts even more sharply with Afghani opinion polls.
I guess that’ll happen when you have an international membership. :)[/QUOTE
Good point. I should have said the reason some US posters see this board as left leaning… However, if you focused only on US posters, I think my statement would still hold.
At any rate, the insights offerred by the non-US posters is one of the things I like about this board. I don’t really care which way it “slants” as long as there are good debaters on all sides-- which I think there are. It doesn’t take long to figure out who are the nuts and who are the thoughtful posters.
You do realize your source is a conservative media watchdog group, don’t you, Liberal? Expecting them to admit there’s no “liberal media bias” is like expecting Shaquelle O’Neil to admit he’s overpaid.
As for the threadworn notion of writers being biased towards liberals, how come no one ever looks at the bias of the publishers and the editors – you know, the folks who decide what actually gets printed or not?
That logic doesn’t really work. I’d expect partisan conservatives to claim the media has a liberal bias, and partisan liberals to claim the media has a conservative bias, regardless of any actual media bias. That’s what extreme partisans do: fantasize about being persecuted.
Or if one were to realize that reporters don’t have total control over which stories go on the air (or into print), how much time (or space) is devoted to various issues and positions, etc. You have to look at the political leanings of editors and producers, not just anchors and reporters.
Nonsense. We’ve had plenty of threads about taxes, free trade, school vouchers, welfare, etc… those are all fiscal issues and the divisions are apparent.
IMO, they should just call themselves libertarians. Social liberal + fiscal conservative = libertarian, at least in my book.
Yeah, I assume so. If they call themselves fiscal conservatives, I’d expect them to favor tax reduction, oppose expensive social programs, and strive for freer markets - that’s what fiscal conservatism is.
SA:Who the hell, around here or anywhere else, is thinking in terms of being so inclined “economically” when they use the term liberal or conservative? When liberals or conservatives here are praised or railed against it isn’t because of their fiscal beliefs. And when people identify themselves or others around here or in society at large as being liberals or conservatives, they aren’t speaking of their fiscal beliefs.
Say what?!!? As Mr2001 pointed out, we do indeed have a lot of controversy around here over fiscal issues, and differences between fiscal liberals and conservatives are very clear.
In fact, I’d argue that fiscal issues are the most important source of controversy between conservatives and liberals on these boards. There’s a pretty small minority of posters around here who are strongly socially conservative (e.g., anti-gay rights, anti-abortion rights, anti-pornography, in favor of more government involvement with religion, etc.), and when they promote such views here, they generally get a pile-on from self-identified liberals and conservatives alike. The standard quarrels in which liberal/conservative opinions are more evenly balanced are over foreign policy and fiscal issues.
The sad fact is that he used at least to be a good entertainer. The Limbaugh of, say, 1994 was funny. In no wise does that statement remain true. It’s been a sad decay.
Oh, c’mon! You know as well as I do that whether or not a fiscally-related discussion may take place around here or not, that when someone is assailed in a non-fiscally-related thread for being a liberal or a conservative no one is thinking of their fiscal philosophies.
And besides, my comments were made in regard to both the board and society at large. In both arenas, each side’s societal philosophies are the usual identifying and descriptive criteria by far.
SA: *You know as well as I do that whether or not a fiscally-related discussion may take place around here or not, that when someone is assailed in a non-fiscally-related thread for being a liberal or a conservative no one is thinking of their fiscal philosophies. *
And when somebody is assailed in a fiscally-related thread (of which there are a hell of a lot around here) for being a liberal or a conservative, everybody is thinking of their fiscal philosophies.
Trying to equate “liberal” and “conservative” strictly with “socially liberal” and “socially conservative” just won’t cut it. Plenty of the people around here whom I think of as “conservative”, such as Sam Stone, John Mace, and manhattan, are in fact socially quite liberal. Their fiscal conservatism is a big part of why I think of them as primarily “conservatives”.
If it were only non-fiscal issues that mattered, they’d probably be somewhat hawkish liberals, not conservatives at all. I think if you tried to tell Sam and John and manny that they’re actually liberals because their fiscal philosophies are unimportant aspects of their political beliefs, you’d get quite an earful.
I am probably much more socially liberal than you think, and most certainly more than I am thought to be in general…but most people around here consider me a dyed-in-the-wool hard line conservative. And whether they think of me as a libertarian, a liberal conservative, a moderate, or an out and out conservative jerk, it is in no way contingent upon my fiscal beliefs.
My talking about myself, or your talking about three or four guys who don’t fit the mold doesn’t take away from the fact that, overwhelmingly, when people speak of liberal media, liberal journalists, Hollywood liberals, etc., they are talking about the societal beliefs and/or goals that these people ascribe to.
SA:overwhelmingly, when people speak of liberal media, liberal journalists, Hollywood liberals, etc., they are talking about the societal beliefs and/or goals that these people ascribe to.
And when people speak of, e.g., “tax-and-spend liberals”, they are talking about the fiscal beliefs and/or goals that these people subscribe to.
In other words, designators like “liberal” and “conservative” sometimes refer to social ideology and sometimes to fiscal ideology. And in assessing whether someone is, overall, a “liberal” or a “conservative”, we need to take both fiscal and non-fiscal issues into account.
Kimstu, I see the point you are trying to make, but couldn’t the same be said for each individual aspect of liberal or conservative ideology? Fiscal philosophies are only an aspect of liberalism or conservatism, as are gun control, abortion, gay rights, the environment, etc. Are we to get bogged down over what every individual thinks or believes on every aspect of an ideology before we engage that person in dialog? Clearly, that would be unworkable. Identifiers are for convenience and they are umbrella terms that most people understand. If we were to get bogged down over what every liberal or conservative believes on every aspect of society before we agree to consider them as such, any worthwhile discussion of the issues at hand would become impossible.
I think this demonstrates O’R’s main problem. He talks intelligently and well. He’s correct to point out that he’s challenged on everything in his own interview while Franken gets a free pass in his.
Put the, overall, he comes across as parnoid, self-centered, and babyish.
Perhaps, but the “social” and “fiscal” measurements are useful because they’re mostly orthogonal. Sites like The Political Compass use two axes to place someone on a political map.
Not really. There are a lot of people who are “socially liberal” and “fiscally conservative”. The labels are unfortunate, because being socially liberal doesn’t really make someone more likely to be fiscally liberal.
SA: * Identifiers are for convenience and they are umbrella terms that most people understand. *
I agree. What I’m saying is that those identifiers get assigned based on a variety of ideological factors including fiscal ones, not just social ones.
ITo recap:
You said that “when people identify themselves or others around here or in society at large as being liberals or conservatives, they aren’t speaking of their fiscal beliefs.”
Mr2001 and I pointed out that in fact, many people are referring to fiscal beliefs when identifying themselves or others as being liberals or conservatives.
You are now arguing that we shouldn’t " get bogged down over what every individual thinks or believes on every aspect of an ideology before we engage that person in dialog".
That’s not really relevant. Nobody’s arguing that we need to know every little thing about what someone believes on every issue before we consider them “liberal” or “conservative”. But that doesn’t mean that your single-issue litmus test, where only social ideology matters in determining who’s liberal and who’s conservative, is a better solution. It certainly doesn’t accurately describe how people actually get identified as “liberals” or “conservatives”.
