Well, Fox themselves, claim they came about as a counter to mainstream media that they considered “liberal” news. Before them, most of those outlets were called just plain old “news”.
Newt Gingrich, from either his first or second term in congress, started giving those overnight conservative diatribes bashing the democratic leadership and liberalism, in general, that were broadcast on CSPAN. Then other conservatives joined him. Funny thing, it was the popularity of those broadcasts on CSPAN that gave the idea to start Fox News.
Now I don’t deny that there have probably been democrat and leftward candidates bashing pubs and conservatives over the years. But I still maintain that it was Gingrich that started it on the road where it is today.
When discussing the Gingrich era its next to impossible to limit as to why the rhetoric turned the way it did to one particular reason. Liberals will tend to blame Gingrich and the Republicans. This is a legitimate enough stance for liberals to take, even if a predictable one. As someone from the Right I tend to look more at the House becoming competitive as the likely reason for such change. Competition can lead to “a race to the bottom” as we are often told in this now fashionable phrase. Add to the mix a newly conserative/libertarian movement on steroids and you have yourself a number of reasons why not only the Republicans would decide to play nasty. Again, these latter reasons are predictable for I as someone on the right to make.
As a British libertarian my knowledge of the issue is patchy at best. However, I did see a similar thing happen in the UK during the Thatcher era. The hatred in that ideological and political struggle was more than one way.
I’ve heard elsewhere that the atmosphere in Washington changed with the Bork hearings. After that things were never quite the same. I don’t know how true this is but it was one commentator’s take on the matter (and from what I remember not an obviously partisan commentator).
Here’s the thing, the House really WASN’T considered very competitive until Gingrich. The dems had a 40 year reign on the majority. Gingrich was pretty much the ONLY republican House member who talked about taking over the majority. Everyone else considered it a ridiculous notion. I actually give him credit for that. But the way he achieved it was to constantly demonize democrats over the span of YEARS until he and other conservatives chipped away at dem popularity enough to put the pubs in the position to take over.
NOW you can say the House is more competitive, but the pubs learned their slash and burn campaigning from Gingrich. Because it worked for them. Until another candidate of either party comes along and wins without such tactics, we’re gonna see this for a while.
Maybe, but the real best way is to consume a variety of sources from both sides and the middle, and draw your conclusions from there.
That’s the point I was trying to make (and in a lopsided way, BobLibDem too)- each side has their “best” sources, and we end up with 2 sides who are talking at each other about the same issues, but with different sources and biases, and as a result, there’s not much common ground.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but what comes to mind to me is 2 toddler siblings each asking a different parent the same question, getting slightly different answers, and then getting in a fight with each other because Daddy said the walls are khaki, and Mommy said they’re tan.
Are you talking about the MSNBC that has Joe Scarborough on for several hours a day? You’re right, he’s exactly the sort of lefty that, if you listened only to people like him, you’d get the same sort of epistemic closure that you find on the right.
Seriously, unlike on the right, there are just too few places to go to get an all-lefty view of the universe to get the same sort of thing going on. We don’t have our own TV network. The ‘liberal’ WaPo op-ed page has a whole stable of very conservative op-ed columnists, for instance, including not one but two former Bush speechwriters, plus old hands like Krauthammer and Will. The Sunday morning political talk shows on those ‘liberal’ TV networks have a pronounced Republican lean.
Like it or not, there just isn’t anywhere to hide from the conservative worldview, unless you’re willing to scrunch yourself into a really, really small subset of the media universe.
If you want to know what is real, you can’t contaminate your study with water from a poisoned well. Watching Fox or listening to Mike Savage gives you no insight on reality.
The current Senate GOP - hardly the most radical part of the GOP - has repeatedly filibustered Obama nominees that were eventually approved unanimously. And no previous President has had anything like this much difficulty getting his nominees through the Senate. Right now, all sorts of key ambassadorships are unfilled because the Senate won’t vote on them. And numerous GOP figures are talking impeachment on the basis of…hell, you tell me. Damned if I can figure it out.
Yes, as a matter of fact, U.S. politics used to be less hostile than they are right now.
I agree with Bob that there are some who just aren’t worth paying attention to, but there are good thinkers on both sides and it pays to know your enemy. If Democrats lose in 2016, it will be primarily because they didn’t bother to learn how Republicans actually think.
I’ve been listening to Savage myself on my afternoon commute. After two minutes I’m thinking holy fuck, if you believe what he spews you’re going to be one hateful bigoted motherfucker. This guy makes Limbaugh look like Mother Teresa.
Oh, I didn’t mean you have to believe what these guys say, only that it’s worth listening to, if only to know your enemy, so to speak.
My point was that if you only stick to the news sources that tell you what you like to hear, you’re going to have a skewed view of the world and of events.
In other words, it’s good to get a little pissed off every now and again just so you know what the other side is concerned with. I mean, I don’t really agree with a lot of the progressive party line stuff around here, but it’s worth knowing, so that I’m aware of the opposing viewpoint and why they think that way. You may change your mind, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.