In Media [sic] Res

[the_gneech]

Interesting stuff c/o kelloggs2066...

I never have a greater sense of two Americas than when I'm watching public opinion, the whole possibility of public thought, being swamped by pundit opinion. That other America is very tiny, it has onlv a few inhabitants, they all live in Washington, and they never shut up.

Original article here.

My first genuine political thought came when I watched actual gov't sessions on C-Span, without the filter of the Tongue-Wagging Class, and discovered that Newt Gingrich was a real human being with a reasoned and thought-out opinion rather than the bile-spewing misogynistic bigoted homophobic ogre I'd been brainwashed into thinking he was. And once you realize, really realize, that they're lying to you about one thing, the rest of the house of cards comes crashing down.

I understand the impulse that drives it; I'm as inclined to paint people on other sides of political arguments as Evil Nazis™ as anybody, sorta like giving in to the Dark Side ... it's quick and easy and seductive, but ultimately just makes things worse.

It doesn't help that there really are Evil Nazis™ out there, either. :P But with all the shrieking and pointing, it's very difficult to tell which ones they are.

In the time since then, I've met and interacted some real reporters, including being interviewed and then ignored by the guy who wrote the infamous Vanity Fair furries article because I didn't support his "furry = weird sex" conclusion. (Not that Vanity Fair is exactly a standard for journalistic integrity, I know. But I'm not particularly convinced that he was in any way atypical of the profession.) I've also done some digging on various stories and discovered that the line in "The Rutles" seems to apply with startling regularity:

"The press immediately grabbed the wrong end of the stick, and started beating around the bush with it."

--Eric Idle, "The Rutles"

Is it any wonder people -- both good and evil -- have such an adversarial relationship with the press?

-The Gneech

Comments

[wbwolf.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem with the press is ourselves. The press, rightly so, has the ideal of presenting objective facts (whether or not they are objective, is subject to debate...). However, most people want to have a spin put on the news. People don't want complicated arguements; they want simple good vs. evil- spoonfed "he's the good guy, he's the bad guy". The real truth of the matter is most politcios are complex and nuanced, but if you only have 3" of column or 5 minutes of soundbites, any complexities are lost. Then you get the notion that bad news sells better than good news; the driving force in the business of journalism since Pulitzer's time.

The upshot is journalist, as a whole, are not malicious or trying to obscure the truth, but rather constrained.

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

You know, Man,

That article just got my brain turning over and over all day.
Anything that can make me mentally re-evaluate Clinton is a LOT of food for thought.

I refuse to give into paranoia, but it seems like we've been lied to and lied to and lied to by people who may or may not have an agenda. It's paranoid conspiracy theory to think that they do have some sort of coordinated agenda. But... It's even scarier to think that they don't. They're not kicking the anthill for a *reason.* They're just kicking the anthill to get the ants to scatter.

And the dirt all rains down on *us*.

Damn, it's a thought provoking article.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I forget who said it first, but I find a good guideline to be, "Never ascribe to malice what can more easily be explained by negligence or incompetence."

-The Gneech

Hanlon's Razor

[hantamouse.livejournal.com]

A corollary of Finagle's Law, similar to Occam's Razor, that reads “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
At http://www.statusq.org/2001/11/26.html it is claimed that Hanlon's Razor was coined by one Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, PA. However, a curiously similar remark (“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”) appears in Logic of Empire, a classic 1941 SF story by Robert A. Heinlein, who calls the error it indicates the ‘devil theory’ of sociology. Similar epigrams have been attributed to William James and (on dubious evidence) Napoleon Bonaparte.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/Hanlons-Razor.html