It's late, H&C is blathering in the background and making me pissed off, so pardon the vitriol...
As for gyc's comments: that's so uninformed... desperately, hopelessly uninformed. "The Media" is not trying to "stick it" to Bush- simply put, he has been getting an easier ride. Heck the Pew Center report showed this to be true, even though the so-called liberal media spun it as "we wuz fair, honest!" (as if we can trust the foxes to run the henhouse). Bush had far fewer stories reported about him than Clinton in his first 60 days, and a smaller percentage negative and a higher percentage positive. Indeed, part of the cause might be the continued obsession of the media on a man who wasn't even president anymore.
Both your comments, gyc, and the myth of a "liberal" media bias demonstrate a real flaw: the notion that the media should be objective anyway Of course they shouldn't be objective- not when 'objectivity' means simply reporting what one official said, and then reporting what an opposing voice said. The very non-objectivity that is so desperately needed in a democracy- the context and history of political events, and dogged pursuit of the factual truth in public statements- is the very thing that is damned as "bias" and left out in most reporting. It's not bias, for example, to point out the wealthiest 1% do receive a disproportionate and majority amount of the tax break. Yet the so-called liberal media deigned not to press that point, instead spending countless hours discussing whether Bush scored political points with his completely disingenuous "fuzzy math" comment (not to mention the constantly shifting numbers of how much that tax cut would cost, anyway).
The major media outlets at this point are neither liberal nor conservative, but lazy, fattened, pompous, and corporate- owned. Further, their brand of objectivity is urban, secular, pseudo-intellectual, ahistorical, and tremendously cowardly in the face of concerted government or corporate pressure. Conservatives tend to benefit more from these biases than do liberals, most especially if they- as in the Arkansas Project- manipulate this gullibility of the press to push rumors and innuendo knowing that fact checking and discretion are not the strong suits of FOX or MSNBC.
Anyone who buys into the liberal/conservative media nonsense is foolishly allowing themselves to be a willing pawn of Machiavellian machinations. Welcome to the club, gyc... you must be proud!
posted by hincandenza at 10:49 PM on May 27, 2001
I just wish McCain hadn't let South Carolina put him out the primary (not to beat a dead horse, but was that an early example of "changing the tone"?). He could have pushed on, or he could have kept running as an independent. Can't say for certain that I would have voted for him, but McCain v. Gore, or McCain/Bush/Gore would have made for a slightly more meaningful campaign all around.
posted by hincandenza at 11:10 PM on May 27, 2001
It is bias, or at least sloppy reporting if they point out the 1% fact without reporting what percentage of taxes the richest 1% pays.
I notice that you don't report how much the richest 1% pays either. I don't know how much it is. Why not? Why haven't the Republicans been hammering on this point all year? Is the monolithic press so biased that even Rupert Murdoch conspires to keep this number in the dark? Or does Bush not want it public because he knows it will not help him?
It's totally irrelevant as the point was to get the most electoral votes and not getting the most total votes.
It's relevant if your goal is real democracy -- one person, one vote -- and not to preserve a back-room deal done two hundred years ago to bribe the small states by giving them a disproportionate influence in the Presidential election. It stunk then and it stinks now.
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posted by gyc at 8:11 PM on May 27, 2001