I am getting a lot of flak from the right and praise from the left for this statement:
In fact, many in the media are downright flagwavers and damned patriotic, and in the case of some, outright jingoists. I have no problem attacking, by name, slimeballs (again, Eason Jordan and Ted Rall come to mind), but we have got to stop this generic smearing of the media. Most of them are doing their best to get it right. Just because they are rightly suspicious of the military establishment does not make them anti-military or anti-American.
So let’s stop these generic attacks on the media. Media Slander is up, and they will document the actual atrocities. And while we are at it, can we conservatives please stop this laughable cult of victimology? We have the Presidency (for the second time in a row and the fifth time in the last seven elections). We control the Senate by a ten seat margin. We control the House by a larger margin. We have dismissed or dismantled virtually every institutional check in order to limit opposition debate and increase institutional control, regardless how short-sighted that might be. We are ramming through just about every judge we wanted, and are about to reload the Supreme Court with Antonin Scalia at the helm.
We control dozens of governors offices and an equal number of state legislatures. We have hundreds of think tanks, hundreds of talk show hosts, hundreds of conservative columnists, millions of bloggers. We have dozens of partisan magazines and pundits, legions of 527’s and grass-roots organizations, and dozens of think-tanks. We have, ostensibly, our own damned cable news channel and so many right leaning editorial boards of newspapers I can’t even begin to count them. Memes that start in obscure blogs find their way onto the front page of allegedly liberal newspapers in the matter of two days.
We may be a lot of things, but persecuted victims we are not. To assert otherwise is to engage in a self-defeating flight of fancy that should be met with nothing short of outright ridicule.
Do I think there is bias in the media? Yes, at times there are subtle biases and at times there are overt and blatant biases. Most of the time, I think the bias comes from stupidity, ignorance, and laziness. Most of the time the biases that appear to be anti-conservative or anti-Republican come from the fact that many in the media are, in fact, liberal, and through no actual intent their pieces come out biased.
Let’s take abortion as an example. I do not think I am going out on a limb stating that most people in the media, but not all, are pro-choice and decidedly so. Because they are so overtly pro-choice, they have, in many cases, never taken the time to look at and thoroughly examine the anti-abortion position, and look at from where this belief structure takes its roots. They do not recognize that for many people who are anti-abortion, there can be no compromise on abortion, because their belief is that abortion is murder. Period.
This belief comes from their complete faith in a transcendent God, whose word as represented in the Bible and other religious texts serves as the explanation of and the reason for the existence and creation of all life. Thus, not only is abortion murder, but it is an act that they view as reprehensible and tantamount to a grave sin against God. It is not, as many in the media and on the left in general mistakenly believe, a negotiable position.
Their absolutism is not because they are thick-headed, want to control a woman’s ovaries, anti-sex, or misogynistic. It may appear that way because many of their beliefs do seek to restrict certain behaviors, but their absolutism on this and similar issues is rooted in their faith, and is NOT an issue for which they CAN negotiate. It is, in essence, a core belief that will not be changed (if I have misrepresent this in any way, let me know).
You can disagree with their position, as I do on virtually every issue regarding sex, homosexuality, abortion, stem cells, etc., but you should recognize why they think the way they do. This will only help your news coverage, and a lot of people in the media just don’t get it.
Looked at from that perspective, the fact that abortion is allowed at all is, in fact, tantamount to an ENORMOUS compromise, and you can understand why they are spitting mad about Roe v. Wade. Many in the media just don’t get that because, through isolation, group-think, or a lack of exposure to those who do have that belief, they have never heard it articulated as such. This is precisely what Bernard Goldberg was talking about in Bias– a lack of diversity leads to accidental biases that, were there people in the news room who thought differently, would not happen.
Another example, from the comments of the original post:
The press isn’t ‘anti-military’ per se, they’re just profoundly ignorant of the subject they’re covering.
Ignorant of the culture, ignorant of the terminology, ignorant of the basic rules that govern the conduct of the people involved, and, worse, they don’t care.
A rough analogy would be a paper that assigned a business reporter who didn’t understand the distinction between a lock-out and a strike to cover a labor dispute.
I think this is the cause of most of the perceptions of bias around issues- it isn’t usually out of mean-spiritedness, hatred, or any other of the malicious attributions forwarded, but out of a lack of exposure to a profoundly different values system.
I understand this, and I understand the frustration from conservatives about such biases. I reject, however, that the media is anti-military or anti-American or unpatriotic. I was asked in the comments to list some flag-waving journalists, as if they do not exist. I can think of hundreds of them, and I will start with one that will shock you:
Dan Rather.
Dan Rather, for all his sins, is one of the most overtly patriotic newscasters I can remember. He may hate Republicans and in particular the Bush family, and he has been on a crusade against Republicans since Nixon until this day. His list of sins and his list of slanted coverage may be long, but to assert that he is anything but a man who loves his country and is patriotic is an insult to my intelligence.
While he has exaggerated his military service as a Marine, the man earned his reputation covering the Vietnam war. His opposition to things such as the Vietnam War, or Republicans in general, may be obnoxious and lead to biased reporting, but to assert he did it because he hates the country or is unpatriotic or hates the military is simply offensive. He so desperately wants to associate himself with the Marines, that he has lied about his military service. This is what the military-bashing media looks like?
The man clearly loves this country- have you forgotten his behavior in the aftermath of 9/11:
Rather’s two moments of spontaneous, bone-rattling despair on Letterman weren’t signs of weakness, cracks in judgment or evidence of an inability to be impartial. They were a newsman’s personal and immediate reckoning with how to be — a nonverbal acknowledgment that no one, not even those who have been trained to keep their composure at all costs, is immune to the emotional fallout of events like last week’s. That should be a comfort, and not an embarrassment, to the rest of us.
Rather’s appearance on Letterman was as a news personality, not a news anchor; he was wearing a different hat. His views of last week’s attack didn’t make for particularly incisive news analysis: He spoke of the inevitability of American retaliation, a statement that probably seemed jingoistic to some viewers but wasn’t particularly strident considering most Americans’ simmering (and ongoing) anger and confusion. He made it clear that the enemy was not Islam itself but a relatively small contingent of religious extremists. He spoke of those extremists’ “jealousy” of America and Americans, for its riches and apparent unassailability. And he made no bones about the attack as a manifestation of pure “evil” — a word that in the past week has proved to be resolutely practical in attempting to explain the inexplicable.
Rather maintained his evenness until he told Letterman that a song Americans have sung since they were school kids, “America the Beautiful,” will never sound quite the same to him: “Oh beautiful for patriot’s dream/That echoes through the years/Thine alabaster cities gleam/Undimmed by human tears.” His voice broke as he got to that last line.
The United States is peopled by all kinds of patriots: Repressive ones, even-handed ones, annoying ones, lazy ones. The most sensible patriots, and the ones that are most needed now, are the ones who have come to terms with the difference between the real America — the messy one, the one that often makes mistakes, the one that has plenty of enemies — and the dream America that we sung about as school kids. Nonetheless, there’s a place where those two Americas intersect. In the space of that verse Rather saw that America, that inextinguishably bright oval in the Venn diagram, and the sight of it was too much for him, in that moment, to bear.
This is what an America hater looks like? Please- Dan Rather may be a lot of things, but anti-American he is not, and so it is for any number of media types.
How about Tom Brokaw, whose uber-patriotic Greatest Generation books smack of outright jingoism? How about Lou Dobbs, who has all but joined the Minutemen on the border? Neil Cavuto? Chris Matthews? Tim Russert? What about Peter Jennings- who as recently as 2003 CHOSE to be a citizen of this country.
Just because people disagree with you on issues, or because their news coverage may be slanted towards another political viewpoint, or because they are overtly hostile to a certain political party- that just does not mean they aren’t patriots. My goodness- the father of modern liberalism, George McGovern, was a war hero and one of the most patriotic human beings to ever walk on American soil, and if you try to say otherwise, war hero and staunch Republican Bob Dole will be the first person in line to kick your ass.
Republicans don’t own patriotism, and it would be wise to get this through our heads. There may be journalists and members of the media who really do hate America, but they are few and far between, and marginalized by society and their peers.
*** Update ***
More here.
Tim F
The gap shrinks between you and Marshall Whittman.
Almost sort-of on topic: Wuh-oh
I’m using the dKos BBCode plug-in, which seems to work best for this site.
KC
Excellent post, especially the portion about McGovern. I could never understand how partisans could call a guy who flew a bomber over Germany in the Second World War a wimp. After all, what was Nixon doing during the Second World War? Opposition to Vietnam (or Iraq) does not a wimp make. Of course, that doesn’t mean one has to like their politics either.
Jon H
“They do not recognize that for man people who are anti-abortion, there can be no compromise on abortion, because their belief is that abortion is murder. Period.”
On the other hand, the media hasn’t looked very hard at the lack of pro-life protests in front of fertility treatment clinics. Flushing a fertilized, but surplus, egg ought to be just as worthy of protest as abortion, or the morning-after pill.
However, fertility clinics are popular, aren’t seen as empowering casual sex, and aren’t used by teenagers. So the pro-life people give them a pass. That *is* a compromise.
Darrell
Who is claiming that Republicans “own patriotism”? It was Dems who were far more often questioning the patriotism of GWB and Dick Cheney. Wes clark, Ted Kennedy, Bob Graham are all on record having overtly accusing Bush of being unpatriotic. Tereza called Cheney “unpatriotic”. And let’s not forget all the “chickenhawk” accusations from Dems. Show me where Bush or any of his top aides did likewise. Let’s not pretend that Dems and leftists are the victims here, when they themselves are the very ones who typically launch such charges.
As for Rather, I’m not sure I’d call him unpatriotic, but his ass-kissing propaganda interview with Saddam comes pretty close, don’t ya think? As for leftists who exaggerate or invent military service, as with several of John Kerry’s associates in the 70’s, they are doing it to add credibility to their anti-military leftist views, NOT because of patriotism. Isn’t that obvious?
And didn’t Brokaw call GWB a ‘capitalist tool’ or something similar on the Daily Show? Brokaw is a leftist for sure, but I agree it’s probably unfair to call him unpatriotic.
I do think the media overall focuses disproportionatley on the negatives, heavy focus on civilian casualties in Iraq for example, while almost always failing to contrast that reporting with the other side, such as the hundreds of thousands of mass graves under Saddam.. they don’t offer reasonable perspective, and consciously or unconsciously undermine US efforts through unbalanced and unfair reporting. I think there are a number of reporters who never give the US the benefit of the doubt, and some of their reporting does fall into the ‘unpatriotic’ camp.
Steve
John,
What would you say should be the number one priority of a patriot
bls
Good for you.
ppgaz
At the risk of starting to look like a sockpuppet or a paid shill …
You are, once again, right on, spot on, absolutely positively correct, John.
As for “patriotism”: Patriotism demands different things from different role players. A patriotic press is one that challenges, questions and criticizes … more importantly, pushes the citizenry into doing those things. It is not a press that waves flags, grovels before power, and criticizes opposition because it’s opposition.
Let the press be a cranky, poorly trained watchdog. I’m in charge of the property, I’ll decide which barks are the ones I need to respond to. That’s my job.
I know how to do that job, and I expect the press to do its job. Don’t tell me the 20 things the suits are doing right. Tell me the two they are fucking up. Doing things right is their job, the press is not there to applaud them for it. That’s my prerogative.
Tim F
If in reality you are doing exactly what the enemy would ask you to do were he able
Steve, al Qaeda has a master plan for the Middle East. It’s in their stump speeches and it’s in their propaganda. Their goals are hardly obscure. Want to know what their number-one objective was as of 2001? Draw the US into an unpopular war of occupation in the Middle East. Preferably against a secular Arab nationalist, who they plan to topple anyway, and encourage as much inflaming of muslim sensibilities as possible. Oblique references to ‘crusades’ by US leaders would be particularly helpful.
Be careful how you define ‘patriotism’ lest you find yourself ensnared in your own semantic net.
pdf
Chris Matthews threw a hissy fit on Hardball the other night when a guest dared to imply he’d ever said anything negative about George W. Bush. He immediately yelled her into backing down, talking all about how much he loved W and admitting he’d voted for him “at least once.” He came very close to admitting what people on the left know already – that he spent the entire 2004 campaign slandering every Democratic candidate and fellating Bush at every on-camera opportunity.
Every time I hear the words “anti-military media bias,” I just think of all the worshipful “embedded” talking heads, and I feel certain that these people who are complaining have never actually watched the nightly news, let alone the Sunday morning circle jerk shows.
Kimmitt
Republicans don’t own patriotism, and it would be wise to get this through our heads.
If your Party would actually get this, I’d stop hating it and start just trying to win elections against it. I’m sitting here at my computer actually choked up at the thought of how unutterably sweet that would be.
Steve
TimF
I agree that al Qaeda
hadenoughofthisyet
“I feel that all Americans, including those in the media, should do all that they can to support our winning that war. There is no 2nd place here.”
Here is an interesting collection of Republican statements during the Kosovo conflict. Suffice it to say, they are not ‘supportive.’
http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/gop_kosovo.pdf
Steve
Hadenough
Birkel
KC,
It is as you stated with regard to McGovern’s military service and yet many labeled Bush 41 a wimp in spite of his military service. It goes both ways, me thinks.
JPS
Kimmitt:
“If your Party would actually get this, I’d stop hating it and start just trying to win elections against it.”
Well, I for one get it. Always have.
Now then: If your side would get that they don’t own compassion, and try to understand that a hawk can hate war as much as any good peace activist…well, I don’t hate the Democratic party to begin with, but I sure would spend less time seething.
(And thanks for using the word “hating.” I’m surrounded by liberals who sincerely do hate people who think like me. I can live with that, but the crowning indignity is that they generally claim to be so much more tolerant than those haters on the right.)
stakl
When Clinton ordered it, it was fine with Democrats
You have a very selective memory. I remember a great deal of gnashing of teeth among Dems over whether the humanitarian benefits outweighed the “this is a European problem” arguments.
JPS
KC:
“After all, what was Nixon doing during the Second World War?”
Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy. He served as a cargo officer in the South Pacific. As a Quaker he wouldn’t have been drafted, but he volunteered anyway.
McGovern’s service was certainly riskier, but Nixon (of whom I am no fan) served honorably.
Kimmitt
surrounded by liberals who sincerely do hate people who think like me.
I don’t hate you, I hate the foul institution to which you appear to belong. They are different things. I hate certain members of the Republican leadership, and when I see someone wearing a purple heart band-aid, I want to punch them in the mouth, but the rank and file? They’re just people, most of whom are selfish like everyone else but nice enough once you get to know them.
If your side would get that they don’t own compassion,
With all due respect, we aren’t the ones trying to dismantle Social Security. We aren’t the ones who think gay people don’t deserve civil protections. We aren’t the ones who popularized the concept of the “welfare queen.” It may be kind of like the American Medical Association — individual doctors are among the kindest people I know, but the AMA is mercenary and often cruel. Of course, you may not agree that dismantling Social Security, etc. is an appropriate policy goal; obviously no one agrees with their Party’s leadership all of the time. I’m just saying; the Republican Party platform and standard operating procedures are something less than paragons of kindness.
JPS
Kimmitt, thank you for your second paragraph, which basically makes my point for me.
I don’t believe in “dismantling” Social Security. I do believe that maybe people ought to be able to have the choice of investing part of their Social Security contribution privately.
I’m sure you have some fine scholarly arguments as to why this is a bad idea, but leave them aside for now: they are beside the point. Because to you, I’ve already announced that I want to dismantle the system. And why? Clearly because I’m heartless and don’t want old people getting their Social Security checks.
Whereas if this were simply a debate over the best means to achieve the same end, that would take a lot of your self-righteous fun out of it, now, wouldn’t it?
As Bill Buckley wrote in 1986, “Every time some change to Social Security is considered, the Kennedys and Moynihans and Peppers and O’Neils carry on as if President Reagan, paintbrush in hand, were setting out to touch up the Mona Lisa.”
(As for civil protections for gays, I’m in favor.)
Oh, and I don’t mean to suggest my left-liberal colleagues hate me. To them, you see, I’m an inexplicably deluded nice guy. It’s just everyone else that believes as I do who’s heartless scum.
shark
Oh, what a load of crap. Hey, if you want to carry water for those who view you as the enemy, who want to see the policies you support fail, who view YOU as evil because of the policies you support, go ahead and be my guest. Just don’t expect applause because you’re being a maverick. John McCain is a maverick also.
Sometimes the overwhelming urge to be fair and be liked translates into a real showing of acquiescing weakness. This seems to be the case.
John Cole
You are right, Shark. I don;t need to be fair or reasonable to people. In that spirit, your idiotic viewpoints are what is wrong with this country and I think that makes you a treasonous bastard.
Hey- these standards for patriotism are fun!
Kimmitt
Because to you, I’ve already announced that I want to dismantle the system.
Well, you’ve announced support for a program which will dismantle the system which was proposed by people who want to dismantle the system. Which means that:
I’m an inexplicably deluded nice guy.
is a pretty accurate assessment.
When we get into:
It’s just everyone else that believes as I do who’s heartless scum.
we get to a meatier portion. No, not everyone who believes as you do are heartless scum; most of them are, “inexplicably deluded nice [gender neutral term]s.” But the guys running the show are heartless scum, and we’d really like it if y’all would notice it and replace them with inexplicably deluded nice people like you. Please.
Jon H
It’s funny. Conservatives (other than John Cole) like to mock the liberal educators who want to do away with grades in order to not damage kids’ self-esteem, and who insist on games in which everyone wins and nobody loses.
But they want a press where the US always wins and never loses, and they want the US and President Bush to always get gold stars, never any criticism that might damage the nation’s self-esteem.
Libertine
I can’t agree more John…right on the money!!
Rocky Smith
Republicans want to dismantle SS? I’d like to see proof of that. I’ve heard that arguement for twenty years, yet grandma is still getting her checks. From what I have read, Republicans realize that SS is a potentially big problem down the road and want to fix it, not destroy it. I don’t know if private accounts is the best plan, but at least it is a plan. What do Democrats propose? Tax hikes, if they even admit there is a problem. Don’t like Bush’s plan? Let’s see yours.
Sojourner
Rocky:
Want a plan for SS? Here’s two:
Raise the cap on salary contributions to SS. Or remove the tax cuts on the wealthy and put the money into SS.
Much better than dismantling the system in order to “save” it.
Martin Knight
In other words, Rocky, raise taxes.
Sojourner
And there won’t be a tax increase to pay for the trillions of dollars it will cost to privatize SS?
Dream on.
I’ll take the tax increase that will be cheaper. And it ain’t privatizing SS.