Yep, and then David Brock wrote a book “Blinded by the Right” in which he documented that there was, in fact, a conspiracy of media types on the right to smear Clinton and that he was a member of the conspiracy and named other names, described meetings, stories assigned, how they were edited and discussed for spinning. None of the people named sued for libel.
A most amusing little diatribe, that…but you continue to miss the mark, strive though may to try to find a perch from which to look down upon us Righties.
I was cognizant of – and railing against – media bias as far back as the late sixties. And far from mindlessly or stupidly parroting right-wing radio and GWB, many of us formed our opinions and points of view regarding politics long before talk radio and GWB were even blips on the national radar.
What you and others of your ilk still fail to recognize – despite the fact I’ve said so out loud right on these boards – is that to the great many of us voting Righties, the messages of talk radio and the Fox network are things we’ve felt and believed all along.
You can continue to try to assume the intellectual high ground by deluding yourself that we are parrots, Bushbots, etc., but the fact of the matter is that Bush, O’Riley, Hannity, and even Limbaugh – though I’ve long given up on him as too mean-spirited – are merely elucidating thoughts, ideas and points of view that we’ve long held on our own, thank you very much.
But that’s okay. Keep deluding yourself that yours is the only right-thinking and logical POV and everyone with a different opinion is simply a mindless robot spouting administration talking points, and you’ll keep losing elections and being frustrated at how so many people in this country can be mindless idiots.
What are you talking about? I thought we held all this power and that’s why the question of right-wing persecution has been coming up.
As far as why no complaints before, it’s simply because we had no voice during those times, as I said above. It wasn’t until Limbaugh began to have a large national following in the early and mid-nineties and Fox came along with the advent of cable television that our complaints could even be heard. This doesn’t mean they weren’t there, it just means you damn sure weren’t going to hear about them from the likes of CBS, ABC, The New York Times, Washington Post, et. al.
Now we join in the national debate about what course the country could take, and yes, we complain about things we don’t think are fair or right…you know, just like you guys have been doing for decades.
Eh, I didn’t care then and I really don’t care now. 95% of all political sniping/stories/commentary can be ignored and not even worth paying attention to, no matter what wing they’re coming from.
I’m not. I’m looking down upon a specific group of people - notice that I mentioned Bricker as an example of someone whose views I’ll probably never share but who clearly comes to them from thought and consideration.
Parroting Bush? Sweetheart, do you even believe that Bush actually has original thoughts?
I’m perfectly aware that there are news programs carefully calibrated to tell you what you want to hear. The idea that there’s some amorphous evil that’s keeping the little guy down is not exactly a new one - but the careful cultivation of this persecution complex in order to sell a political viewpoint is new and fascinating.
I can easily see the flaws in your own ability to listen and respond to thoughts by your kneejerk leap to claim that I’m looking down on all righties. I can certainly make room for people to be knowledgeable and thoughtful and have different opinions than mine. There’s plenty of them here on the SDMB. However, you, Starving Artist, are a good example of the sort of person who doesn’t really have thoughts at all when it comes to politics, which is why I brought you up.
Anyway, you guys have been in power for what - not quite five years now? Careful about that buildup of pride, Starving Artist.
You know, you really do make this too easy. Not only do you trumpet your own ignorance for all to see, but you do it with such an arrogant sense of superiority. You could not possibly know what I’ve seen in my lifetime, what I’ve thought about, and how and why I’ve come to the conclusions I have. What you like to delude yourself into thinking is that by virtue of the fact that I hold so strongly to the convictions I have, I’m being intransigent and inflexible in my thinking. What you fail to grasp is that these very convictions are born of the very thought and consideration you so arrogantly and baselessly contend I am bereft of.
Of course, I do, darling. You are again displaying your own ignorance and bias for all to see. It is absolute nonsense to contend Bush has no original thoughts of his own.
Hell, even you occasionally have original thoughts.
Somehow, I think the delight you supposedly find in this “new and fascinating” insight is more than a tad disingenuous. Rather, my guess is it’s simply another transparent attempt to appear intellectually disassociated from and above the fray.
You know, you really aren’t fooling anyone, sweetie.
Ah, yet another attempt at intellectual superiority. Perhaps you should give thought to the fact that certain things are said in a general context insofar as it’s quite impossible to take into account every possible interpretation of this remark or that. One relies on the other party to use discernment, judgement and context in order to correctly perceive one’s intent. This, of course, fails when dealing with an adversary whose primary goal is to try to assign an intent not really there in order to attempt to portray himself as being intellectually above the fray.
I see. In other words, I fail to compromise or come around at least somewhat to your point of view; therefore, I’m merely a stubborn dolt lacking in both knowledge and thought. Gotcha.
(You know, you really do seem to have a problem with trying to appear intellectually superior. It’s a hallmark of virtually every conversation we’ve had…and frankly, I’m beginning to sense feelings of insecurity and/or inferiority on your part. Perhaps a counseling session or two with a trained therapist would be in order.)
Oh, don’t worry…I remember quite well the way my team blew it after coming to power in Congress in '95 and I see troubling signs of similar danger all the time. The pride you sense comes from seeing the success of Fox, talk radio, and the last two presidential elections and learning that a much larger percentage of the population than I previously thought feels the same way about many of the issues facing this country as I do, and that fewer than I would have thought have been won over by sixty or seventy years of liberal encroachment and mass media support.
How lovely for you. You get to have your own wittle news tailored to your delicate sensibilities.
And I simply love the concept of the massive liberal MAIN STREAM MEDIA conspiracy crap. When the news says something that you don’t like, it’s just because they are liberal. You don’t even have to think about it.
I’ve never understood why the liberal media thing has never been treated as the tinfoil hat belief that it is. I’m not saying that there aren’t loads of problems with the news today, but rampant political bias ain’t one of the biggies.
Because of time differences I only get to see the Fox News breakfast bunch.
They kindly give me 15 minute updates on the most recent hurricane and cut to talking heads blathering on about DeLay.
When I flip to the BBC I find the rest of the world does still exist and non wind related things are happening!
I have no idea what impact Fox news has (none here as only we insomniacs see it) but ‘Fair and Balanced’ seems to be a slight exageration, ‘Obsessed and Repetative’ would be more accurate.
I watch for the amusement factor…that and the insomnia.
How wonderful it is when one’s differences with the political opposition can be boiled down into a single, glaring character flaw on their part.
It simplifies thought marvelously.
Sorry, but this is utter horseshit. Ronald Reagan was elected way back in 1980, and GHW Bush in 1988. Both of them received lots of favorable coverage from the mainstream media. And the conservative causes that they espoused, and the accompanying criticisms of liberal positions (what you call your “complaints”) were definitely very visible in the mainstream media before the days of Rush and Fox.
Conservatives have had plenty of voice in the media over the past several decades, not just in the new right-leaning media outlets.
Actually, when it comes to important policy positions, a much larger percentage of the population agrees with liberal viewpoints than with conservative ones. Americans on average believe that balancing the budget and helping the poor are more important than new tax cuts, that the Iraq war was a mistake, that we need better environmental protection and energy conservation, and so forth.
Two-thirds of Americans think that the country whose government you conservatives are controlling is headed in the wrong direction. Conservatives have, in fact, done an absolutely miserable job of getting Americans in general to agree with them about actual policy preferences. And this lack of confidence in conservative positions has increased since the rise of conservative media and conservative control of the government, so you can’t whine that this is still all the fault of that darn liberal media.
What conservatives have managed to do very successfully, however, is to make the term “liberal” into a scare word. Americans may prefer the substance of liberal positions, but they are no longer comfortable with the word liberal, since conservatives have devoted so much energy to insisting that “liberal = bad”.
“Republican Pravda” is the most concise and accurate term I can come up with.
I’m going to type this really slowly, so you’ll understand. There is no left wing media cabal trying to oppress the right. Just because you repeat it ad nauseum, doesn’t make it true. When the network news reports that 2000 soldiers died, without saying “but it’s all well worth it!” doesn’t make them against you. Some the news is just plain news. Reporting what is happening, doesn’t make it biased.
The problem is that you need a right-ward slant. You don’t understand lack of bias. You need a slant like a crack whore needs a hit. Without a slant, you don’t know what to think. You can’t justify your position. You need the talking-points of the week, so that you can have a rationalization for all your liberal friends.
You didn’t need the bias in the instances I was talking about; in the Regan, Bush I and Clinton implosion, because you were getting your way. The media is fine, as long as it agrees with you. When it doesn’t agree with you it’s a conspiracy, it’s a “liberal bias”. For example, yesterday on one of the shows (Hannity I think), he was still talking to Juanita Broderick about her claim that she was raped by Clinton. Now let me see, what else was in the news yesterday? Oh yeah, 2000 American soldiers killed in Iraq, possible indictments on Bush staffers, the Meiers nomination still in shambles, in addition to the standard earth, wind and fire. But what is the fall back? Clinton. So why wasn’t Broderick taken seriously? Liberal Bias, of course. Not because she claimed in an affidavit that the sex was consensual, but Liberal bias.
You need to listen with different ears.
For the record, I do recall that during the Reagan and Bush I Administrations there was a lot of bitching in right-wing circles about the alleged liberal slant of “Big Media”. A lot of the Right’s vilification of the “Mainstream Media” goes back at least as far as the 70’s when many of them believed the liberals in the press ganged up to get Nixon. There’s also the whole school of conservative thought that America lost the Vietnam War due, in part, to the leftist anti-war bias of the media (especially TV). Basically, the Right’s loathing of the “Mainsteam Media” is nothing new–it’s just gotten more polished and honed as an effective political tool.
Ummm… what’s she wearing??? :o
Okay, and now I’ll type even more slowly so that maybe even you can understand. I never said a media cabal was trying to oppress the right. I never implied it, either. Nor have I ever stated that their goal is to “oppress” the right.
Media bias is simply the way reporting is done by journalists who are overwhelmingly liberal in their numbers and who feel that their point of view is the only reasonable and correct one. Many of them think they are unbiased. They are just reporting facts as they see them, and they view the country at large as consisting of normal, intelligent right-thinking people and right wing nutjobs.
Surely it must not be bias to give short shrift to the nutjobs, eh?
What they fail to realize is that at least half the country consists of these “right-wing nutjobs”, and many of us who see the way they play favorites have been seething about it for decades.
Now along comes Fox and Limbaugh and Hannity, and for the most part they seem right on and reasonable to us and you guys see bias.
Imagine how you would feel if for the last fifty, sixty or eighty years the news media consisted almost entirely of Fox, Limbaugh and Hannity types, and that all the reporting and investigation of misdeeds was done by them. How do you think the left would fare? Not well at all, I imagine. And that’s how most of us on the right who rail about mainstream liberal media bias have felt for a long time.
Now, I’m certain some of you will counter what I’ve just said by declaring that Fox, et. al. are clearly biased, but mainstream reporters aren’t…and to that I will repeat that it only seems that way because the liberal slant of their reporting gives you no offense.
I’ve often contended that that the simple fact that the left isn’t up in arms over mainstream media’s reporting is evidence enough of its left-wing bias.
Perhaps you can explain this then, for clarities sake. Bolding mine.
My that’s patronizing. They can’t help themselves. I also like how they apparently look down on the nut jobs on the right wing. If I may ask, how did you acquire your miraculous powers of telepathy.
What brave white knights to ride to the rescue like that. :rolleyes:
Wow. That’s almost painfully bad. The media must be biased to the left because the left hasn’t complained about it yet? That’s your proof? This is a whoosh, right? Because out of all the threads debating the liberal media, this is the lamest evidence that I have seen.
Why, soitenly! No problem at all.
It’s one thing to oppress the right by biased reporting, and it’s another to intentionally oppress the right by biased reporting.
As I clearly said, I have never felt there was an organized attempt at such oppression, it has simply been an incidental by-product.
Hardly.
Look at how you guys are forever whining about Fox, O’Reilly and Limbaugh.
I would further suggest that Fox, O’Reilly and Limbaugh would never have found the rabid audience they enjoy if it weren’t for the wide spread resentment that has existed because of left-wing media bias. Clearly the media, even if it were truly trying to be fair, has fallen woefully short in presenting the news in such a way that it didn’t cause offense to the right. If you have a news media that is causing much offense to one side and very little to the other, I don’t believe you can say it is unbiased.
In addition to the rebuttal posted by Harborwolf, there is this:
A reasonab;e observer would, IMHO, be very likely to conclude that an inference of the existence of a dissension-quashing cabal is being invited.
Inviting an inference is pretty much the same as implying something.
That must be what separates this line of crap from the tin foil hat stuff. It’s unintentional. Forgive them lord. They know not what they do.
For starters, I don’t know what you are talking about with the whole “you guys” thing. I think fox news is crap, but not because of any right wing bias. It’s just shitty sensationalist news period. It doesn’t need politics to suck.
And if anyone is getting their news from Limbaugh and O’Reilly, then they have other problems then the “liberal” media. Thoy obviously suffer from an inability to discern an editorial from the actual news. Lord knows what else they suffer from.
The rest is still stupid. The media must be left wing because the right wing is complaining about it. :rolleyes: You’re trying to make opinion into fact by virtue of multiple people holding it.
Nattering nabobs of negativism.
Say what you like about Spiro, he had a good writer.