I am glad that ED’s argument is not that good conservative journalism does exist, but that it might conceivably exist, sort of like life on Mars. He writes that:
I suppose what I was talking about was better conservative analysis and opinion, rooted firmly in facts and evidence.
If it was rooted in facts and evidence, it would no longer be called conservative. It’s like asking for a great journeyman relief pitcher; if he was great, they wouldn’t call him a journeyman. Don’t get me wrong, Daily Caller may occasionally produce a decent article, just as a journeyman relief pitcher might have a decent outing, but these will just fill in the gaps between attempted rapes of CNN anchorwomen, Jim Treacher’s humor, etc.
I might have been wrong to say that journalism was liberal, it’s more accurate to say that it’s not conservative. I don’t claim that liberals love to engage with reality, merely that they avoid it less than conservatives do. It’s a fine point anyway — in today’s world, if you’re not conservative then you’re a liberal. You’re with them or you’re against them.
Facts follow philosophical statements within conservatism. A mainstream conservative believes Reagan was right and that tax cuts are therefore always good. A real winger believes that Bush was right and that therefore the Iraq War was a success. A would be intellectual conservative believes that Burke was right and that health care reform is predestined to fail.
I’m not saying there aren’t gradations. A mainstream conservative ignores reality (Reagan never raised taxes!), a true winger invents his own (there were WMD in Iraq!), a would be intellectual attempts to integrate pseudo-factual material into his arguments (an AEI scholar has a long article in National Affairs about the effectiveness of school vouchers).
Global warming is a good example. A mainstream conservative admits the world may be getting warmer but says it’s not because of humans, a real winger says it’s not getting warmer at all, a would be intellectual says that an AEI scholar has a long article in National Affairs about the ineffectiveness of cap-and-trade. In the end, they all agree that nothing should be done, and that Al Gore is fat. They don’t like the idea of government action on climate change and they find some reason to argue against it.
It’s the same with health care reform. In order: our system needs a fix but the government shouldn’t be the one to do it, our system is the best in the world(!), an AEI scholar has a long article in National Affairs about the ineffectiveness of the public option. They don’t like the idea of government action on health care and they find some reason to argue against it
I realize there are a few “conservative” commentators who aren’t exactly like this. Daniel Larison describes himself as conservative but never agrees with anything Republicans want to do. Conor Friedersdorf describes himself as conservative and is constantly disappointed that Newt Gingrich is not quite as serious as Conor thought he was. What does that prove? It proves that the few reality-based conservative commentators out there aren’t really conservatives at all.
That’s hardly an argument in favor of the theoretical existence of quality conservative journalism.
Ryan
Not sure I’m in love with the whole ‘objectively liberal’ stance.
attica
Good journalism is inherently skeptical. ED’s ‘gathering and reporting’ definition isn’t quite right. If so and so tells you something, the first instinct of a good reporter should be ‘is it true? Might there be an agenda or perception bias?’
Most reporting we see these days is stenography. And in more egregious, but increasingly common instances, the reportage is framed so as to support the pre-set narrative or ideology.
cmorenc
There actually exist some countries whose reality objectively, defies and refutes conservatives’ notions of what sorts of government/social/commercial/taxation norms are structurally doomed to failure and tyranny, and which are incubators of success and freedom. Take Denmark for example, a country whose government social benefit structure (including universal health care) is outright socialism by conservative standards, and where taxes are considerably heavier than by US standards (including taxes at all levels combined). Yet, the Danes enjoy a thriving commercial sector and are among the happiest societies on the planet, the government is a bona fide democracy, and…well, stuff works in Copenhagen and the trains and buses run everywhere, frequently, conveniently, comfortably, on time. The principal downside is that they suffer absolutely miserable weather much of the time – cloudy and chilly.
Not saying the US needs to model itself on Denmark (the demographics are a bit different, for one thing, and I doubt Americans have the inherent instinct for making nearly everything beautiful and functional and very little tacky and dysfunctional), but it nonetheless stands as an irrefutable refutation about virtually EVERYTHING wingnut conservatives believe about society and government.
Linda Featheringill
If we could find conservative types of any profession that would face reality, then perhaps we could profit from analysis from a different viewpoint.
If we could get some people to admit that the earth is warming, we might get some ideas about how to deal with that phenomenon. If we could get some more people to agree that oil is going to get pretty damn scarce in the next decade or so, maybe we could start working together to prepare for that. If some people on the conservative side would see that financial difficulty is a worldwide problem right now, with unemployment and recession just about everywhere, we might could start talking about how to protect ourselves during the economic storm.
We would be better off if all this would happen. Our children would be better off and our grandchildren would have a better life.
But I don’t see it happening.
Edited to add:
Okay, I’ll admit it. I am angry at the large portion of adults in the US that aren’t doing one god damned thing to help us deal with/prepare for the problems facing us in the not-too-distant future.
Downpuppy
Well.
If daffodils tourniquet, then James Dean.
I loves me some hypotheticals.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
When epistemology and eschatology are in fundamental and irrepressible conflict with each other, we have to choose between them – one of them trumps the other. Where do your loyalties lie? Some people will pick the former, others the latter. I don’t care what sort of political labels you make up to call these different groups of people by. I already know which team I want to be on – the rest is just haggling over nomenclature.
beltane
Someone in Kain’s thread made a very good point: liberal is not synonymous with left-wing. Once this is understood, it is easy to understand that yes, journalism is an inherently liberal endeavor. It’s the same reason we have the “liberal arts” and not the conservative arts. At it’s core, conservatism is about obedience, both to tradition and to authority. It is about not asking questions, because to do so always tends to undermine authority.
MBunge
“If it was rooted in facts and evidence, it would no longer be called conservative.”
Yeah, ’cause stuff like the Nuclear Freeze Movement and a 14 year old being able to get a surgical procedure without telling her parents are totally rooted in facts and evidence.
Mike
Karmakin
Two things. First, I agree 100% with the post.
Second, I’m not one to do this. Ever. But there’s a particular banner ad right now that’s making me want to scream and run for the hills. Yes, the one for that DVD. Holy crap that’s a nightmare. I’m fine with advertisers wasting their money..that’s all I think they’re doing anyway. But still. I guess even I have my limits :) (Not that I think it should be taken down or anything. Consider this a playful jest)
Anyway, at the end of the day, all the flavors of Movement Conservative thought come down to the same thing.
TooManyJens
Well… facts follow philosophical statements when you’re intellectually dishonest. And I think you have to be intellectually dishonest to hold a lot of the right’s pet positions these days. If that’s the point you’re making, I agree.
I think it’s possible to be conservative in the sense of tending to value tradition and authority, and to have a strong bias against change that takes a great deal of evidence to overcome, without being intellectually dishonest. That said, there is negative selection pressure against intellectually honest conservatives in the current climate.
matoko_chan
Here’s Dr. Manzi fluffing Douthat.
duh. because the US is the only democracy where one of the two main political parties is wholly RELIGIOUS.
freelancer
OT – cause we haven’t had one today, but last night’s TRMS had some jaw-dropping moments. One of them was about key issues that are near and dear to Joe Miller supporters. I know we talk a lot about teatardism, but rarely is it this distilled and upfront.
BGinCHI
I don’t know who the hell this DougJ is, but they should make him the business and economics editor here.
Wait, maybe that’s punishment.
E.D.’s post was really useful in setting out the groundwork for precisely the argument we aren’t having anywhere in this country but here, or places like it.
Jon Meacham, you had a whole fucking magazine and you couldn’t do what a bunch of people who are already busy are doing for free.
Asshole.
morzer
Is there a “not” missing here? Logic suggests that there ought to be one before “quite”. On the other hand, Conor Friedersdorf constantly reminds me of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland:
gil mann
Why does this site keep redirecting me to Swords Crossed?
Jim Treacher
Tell us more about the “lawn jockey,” Doug.
New Yorker
Bruce Bartlett? He’s been shouting from the rooftops about the fiscal insanity of the GOP for a while now, but I don’t see anything else that suggest he’s not a “conservative”, unless the idea that tax increases are preferable to financial ruin now makes one a liberal.
Midnight Marauder
@TooManyJens:
But let’s not forget the salient point that most (if not all) of the values and traditions in this country being protected by conservatives were founded on a basis of furthering white supremacy. That’s the battle that often goes undiscussed when talking about changing or sustaining the status quo.
DougJ
@Jim Treacher:
Tell us more about why underage girls should ask their teacher if they can sleep with you.
Jeff
I am having a hard time thinking of a big news scoop or expose that was both substantively important and good news for conservatives. Journalism is inherently liberal.
Sly
I still maintain that modern journalism is an inherently conservative undertaking, at least in terms of the political journalism that is given any sort of mainstream credibility. Conservativism is about protecting established institutions from critique and reform, out of fear that exposing such institutions to criticism will invariably lead to societal decay, nihilism, and anarchy.
And nothing describes mainstream American political journalism better than an exercise in comforting the comfortable.
kdaug
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias”.
Seriously – it feels like today’s “conservative” has to believe that the world is 6000 years old. That’s not conservative, that’s a cult, no different than those folks who killed themselves thinking Haley’s comet was going to take them to the mothership, or the ones who sarin-gassed the Tokyo subways.
Only this time around, they can get their hands on nukes.
Fun times.
Culture of Truth
It’s like conservative humor. It doesn’t exist anymore.
Oh, there are plently of commedians and funny writers and bloggers mocking liberals and maintsteam Dems. They’re just not conservatives.
BGinCHI
Jim Treacher in the house!
Jim, I loved your dad Arthur’s fish & chips. Glad to see that you’ve followed him into the fast food business.
Keep fuckin’ that chicken, dude.
cleek
@Sly:
ring the bell, we have a winner.
smedley
“The essence of Ross’s reply is that actually public opinion in many major European democracies is surprisingly similar to that in the U.S. – so the really interesting question is why the U.S. political system is the only one that gives voice to this skepticism”
What does public opinion have to do with science?
beltane
@DougJ: Hee hee. Only the underage girls have to ask? Are the boys given blanket permission?
Martin
@freelancer: That was head-bangingly frustrating.
Teatard: “Look at Holders voting record!”
Maddow: “Holder’s never been a legislator.”
Their entire worldview is shaped by Google searches. Holder+guns returns a bugfuck crazy page about Holder secretly joining with the UN to confiscate guns. IT MUST BE TRUE!
And the woman who was very, very seriously worried about the New Black Panthers. They truly believe that the lower 48 are being overrun by hoards of armed angry black men trying to steal votes. I wonder where they got that idea from?
Jim Treacher
@DougJ:
LOL! It was a takeoff on the name of an old Tori Spelling TV-movie. You’d like it. There were no black people in it.
morzer
@DougJ:
Damn you and your unacknowledged stealth corrections, DougJ!
morzer
@Jim Treacher:
Have you met Angry Black Lady yet?
mikefromArlington
@DougJ:
ba-rum dum dum ttsssshhhh
kdaug
@smedley: My point exactly. If “conservatism” means believing things that are demonstrably not true, why should it be given any voice in policy? I don’t care if you think the world is flat, but I sure as shit don’t want you working for NASA.
matoko_chan
oh hai….how is your lawsuit coming along…..the one from being struck down by a black
stealth helicopterSUV treach?morzer
@Martin:
The same place as they got the idea about gangs of rampaging lesbians, perhaps?
DougJ
@Jim Treacher:
Really?
Xenos
‘E.D. tried, he was halfway crucified…’
Another Dr. Wu reference?
In any case, the argument is hampered by imprecise terminology. I think it perfectly possible to have good conservative journalism, just like there can be good liberal journalism. I would love to have a national paper give thorough coverage to the union movement, although I would not expect that even in an excellent conservative paper. Likewise an excellent liberal paper would probably not cover things that are not of interest to liberals… although I can’t think of anything that should not be of some interest to liberals.
But I would not expect decent journalism from the American Workers Party, or the equally extreme American Plutocrats Party (those people misidentified as ‘conservatives’ in modern discourse). The hard left and the hard right are dogmatic ideologies, and people in that mindset are incapable of honest journalism. So E.D.’s question should have been ‘Can running-dog reactionaries produce good journalism?’ And the answer, plainly, is ‘of course not.’
morzer
@DougJ:
There’s a word for ageing men who watch old Tori Spelling movies….
kdaug
@morzer: You’ve given me an idea for a film…
morzer
@kdaug:
*grins evilly* Tell me more….
DougJ
@morzer:
Sorry, I knew this would have a lot of typos so I’m fixing them as I go.
Martin
@DougJ: When you’ve stumped DougJ on obscure media references, you’ve achieved an entirely new strata of failure.
morzer
@DougJ:
I figured that might be the case, but I couldn’t resist giving you a hard time. Not all of us are softies like Treachle Pie.
freelancer
@DougJ:
Jim Treacher, Lifetime Movie Network afficianado.
Every day has a surprise for me.
Calouste
@matoko_chan:
The major party in Germany is the Christian Democratic Union. I don’t think they are climate science deniers.
The fact that the US system only allows for two parties with no serious competition and the crazies have to go somewhere would be a better explanation.
morzer
@Martin:
Pre-Cambrian? Jurassic? Or Jeebusanddinosauric?
DougJ
@Xenos:
Yeah, for a few brief moments yesterday, I actually thought ED’s initials were KD. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done Dr. Wu reference with with it yet. When I realized it was ED, I decided to go through with it anyway.
Southern Beale
Yes, I agree with that, and believe it’s because conservatives have an ideological imperative to see the world in BLACK and WHITE, in rigid absolutes. It comes with their authoritarian worldview. It’s that certainty they crave, which I believe has a biological component — I’m doing some book research and have been reading how certainty activates the same pleasure centers of the brain as sex and drugs.
Ideological liberals tend to be more comfortable with uncertainty, with ideas that have neither black nor white but endless shades of gray. It’s what allows us to look with compassion on those who have need of social services and not see them as resource-sucking leeches, to look for solutions that are reality-based, not based in how things “should” be, or in some fantasy, idealized view of how things are.
matoko_chan
@Jim Treacher: lawl….link that all you want, teatard. it wont get you a single black, brown, or youth vote will it?
the RNC’s Michael Steele tokenism is an epic fail, and so FOXnews tokenism will be an epic fail too……
and the demographic timer goes……tick……..tick……….tick……
Corey
This isn’t that hard to summarize. For conservatives, ideology comes first, facts second. Facts are subordinate to the larger ideology, which persists without input from the real world. The fact that there are different versions of this ideological supremacy is just attributable to culture; wingers can get away with making things up since the people they’re talking to don’t know the difference, while the “intellectuals” have to cloud the issue with National Affairs pieces since they often talk to liberals.
Liberalism, to a much greater degree, consists of facts feeding into ideology. Scientists observe global temperatures rising because of economic activity, and liberals make a plan to reverse the temperature rise. Health care costs rise beyond sustainable levels, and liberals create a plan to slow the rise. I’m not saying we don’t have our blind spots (unionization and corporate demonization tend to be among them) but for the most part, liberalism is just a less ideological set of beliefs than conservatism.
kdaug
@morzer: We’re kicking it up a notch – rampaging hoards of lesbian ZOMBIES! Our protagonist will be the last surviving red-blooded celibate God-Fearing American male defending his well-worn Bible from the approaching Undead Apocalypse!
Should be able to get some production money from Tim LaHaye…
joeyess
I agree wholeheartedly with this:
Gradation.
And it’s everywhere in our public discourse. Sometimes on the same teevee and radio shows. Simultaneously.
This is the battle that this country faces. We have been gradually driven societally insane for the last 30 years by the pervasion of conservative opinion being pawned off as news. It all started when the major networks decided to model their news departments as profit centers. Prior to that, networks only offered news because they were required to do so to retain their FCC licenses and the result was objective, straightforward, and yes, boring news. However, once the barn door was opened to the profiteers and the sensationalistic tendencies of shows like “A Current Affair” the race to the shiny object was on and the search for facts and reason were replaced by broadcasting the equivalent of the proverbial he said/she said sexual assault case.
It’s a problem.
Jim Treacher
@DougJ:
No, not really. It was just a random string of words. Like “DougJ is a racist.” Nothing to do with anything.
Midnight Marauder
@Jim Treacher:
“Hi, I’m Jim Treacher. You might remember me from such moments as dropping into Balloon Juice threads unannounced to accuse front pagers of racism that is wholly ungrounded in real life. You might also remember me from my comment in that very same thread citing a post where a lengthy, intelligent, and informed discussion was already held on the only “trump” card I have to play on DougJ. I pretty much have nothing else going for me, except for pithy comments that are rather impotent.
Now watch this drive.”
geg6
Journalism is neither liberal or conservative.
However…
I agree with you, Doug, that conservatism always starts from some policy or goal which they would like to see implemented and then finds “facts” that fit in with the furtherance of that goal, regardless of whether or not the actual facts fit their meme.
Liberals also have policies and goals they’d like to see, but almost always are limited by reality. It is the reason we all get so disappointed by our pols. They are constrained by reality, we know that they are, but we wish they weren’t.
Journalism, as it is done by real journalists (and not by FOX or commentators or “analysts”), is just about facts. A journalist may or may not have a bias, but bias is irrelevant. Who, what, where, when, and why are the only things that matter and the story is what it is. We have very few of these types of journalists any more and absolutely none who are conservative. And the reason for that is because of how conservatism has been perverted by its partisans and practitioners over the last 40 years or so. No conservative can ever admit to paying attention to facts and reality, especially if neither facts nor reality line up with conservative policies and goals.
Ed Marshall
I@MBunge:
What is your problem with the nuclear freeze movement? Reagan came around not to the freeze movement but the disarmament school of thought. There isn’t anyone in academia or government, right/left, there is no one serious on the planet who knows proliferation issues that *isn’t* in the disarmament school.
People argue about how to get there, but I can’t think of *anyone* in the field who thinks the status quo is acceptable, and you know why? Because part of what they do is to calculate the risks of even an accidental first strike or a misinterpretation of a first strike and retaliation and that risk is absolutely non-zero. It’s high enough that everyone establishes the odds of a nuclear exchange happening some time in the next century as near certain. Then you start getting into coin flips as to if the exchange generates a “use em, or lose em” freakout by the rest of the nuclear powers that ends the planet. No alternative is worse than that.
This is probably the most important issue on the planet and people don’t treat it that way because humans suck ass at risk assessment and they treat unlikely events as impossible events and a global nuclear war isn’t a million to one shot, it’s about one-hundred to one every year.
Mojotron
Since you’re here Jim, this was something that puzzled me- weren’t there any witnesses who saw your so-called “hit and run” and would be able to corroborate your version of events and validate that you were in the crosswalk? Especially as you originally claimed it was a hit & run? Are you fighting the citation (on grounds other than “they got the actual intersection wrong”)? I’m not being snarky, I’m really curious.
Martin
@Xenos: I’d agree with this. I’m going to stick with my separation of terminology for how attitudes are held vs outcomes desired. Journalism should then be very liberal in the former, and neutral in the latter.
matoko_chan
@Calouste: Germany is a parlimentarian republic, not a presidential one. For example, the parlimentary process shields Germany and England from climate change denialism, but not from islamophobia.
the difference is christian ‘conservatives’ in america are anti-science.
only in america have we had 50 years of memetic selection for stupid.
but both America and Germany are judeochristian nations.
lol.
gil mann
Mother, not teacher. And I hate how everyone bashes Treacher for that–coming up with the name for his blog was the last time the dude was actually funny.*
“Okay.” That still cracks me up.
*intentionally, I mean
BGinCHI
@Jim Treacher: Wow. Just wow on the weak sauce there.
Project much?
MikeJ
@kdaug: Or Larry Flynt.
DougJ
@Jim Treacher:
Seriously, I want to know if it really was a take off on the title of a Tori Spelling movie. Let me know.
EDIT: Never mind, I googled it. It’s “Mother May I Sleep With Danger”. It’s not such a clever title take off you used. Such a fine line…
dj spellchecka
sly at #20 beat me to it, but the whole point of muckraking was to “discomfort the comfortable.”
today’s industrial-media complex is far too corporate to do that…and the whole point of fauxnews is to prop up fatcats and trample the powerless
i keep constructing the question the other way “what would a liberal media look like?”…. a guy can dream
kdaug
@Ed Marshall: Roger that, mate. And with a President Palin we can kick that up to ten-to-one in any given year.
Southern Beale
@Corey:
yeah that’s it in a nutshell. Thanks for summarizing in two sentences what I was trying to say in three paragraphs.
God I sometimes feel so out of my league over here. But in a good way, y’all!
:-)
eemom
why does everybody know this troll? Is he a famous troll?
morzer
@kdaug:
That’s not a movie. That’s a keynote speech addressed to the Young Republicans!
BGinCHI
Treacher, why don’t you check out E.D. Kain’s post just prior to Doug’s, then read down through the comment thread.
You might learn something.
If you had even the slightest bone of intellectual curiosity in your body you’d engage with some of the ideas there.
Or, you could just joke your way through your pathetic life.
geg6
@morzer:
Heh. Indeedy.
morzer
@DougJ:
Still hoping for intelligent dialog with the Kim Jong-il of the blogosphere? Your fortitude amazes me.
jacy
@DougJ:
There was a Tori Spelling movie titled “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger.”
In my defense, the only reason I remember this was because it makes no fucking sense in this universe or any parallel reality thereof.
Culture of Truth
No one else has heard of that tv movie but me? C’mon.
morzer
@jacy:
I once watched Gods and Generals. We all have skeletons in our movie closets.
kdaug
@dj spellchecka: Ya know what a liberal media would look like?
You’re reading it.
I’m not saying that we’re all liberals, or that we all agree on all the issues, but that’s the point. No one’s getting paid to put posts up on here. There’s no corporate influence. Just random jackasses saying what they think. Meritocracy, in the sense that the foolish get laughed at, mocked, and ignored.
Punchy
@Jim Treacher: Damn right DougJ is a racist. So am I! NASCAR is the bomb!
jacy
@morzer:
I fear my movie closet is nothing but skeletons. Despite my best efforts, I’m a pop culture magpie.
Fencedude
@DougJ:
Not that I want to actually defend Treacher, but the movie actually does exist, but its still a ludicrously obscure reference and just generally sleazy sounding.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Midnight Marauder: And male supremacy.
Tim in SF
Abstinence-only sex ed is a good example, too:
Mainstream conservatives don’t want children being taught about condoms on principle, real wingers say that abstinence-only education actually keeps kids abstinent until marriage.
Seitz
See also: Jumbo shrimp; Military intelligence.
Jim Treacher
@DougJ:
Now that we’ve settled that: Besides Juan Williams, which other black people would you characterize as “lawn jockies”? Just for the purposes of discussion, please keep the list to 25 names or fewer.
kdaug
@Tim in SF: And the highest rates of teen-pregnancy are in the areas where the real right-wingers rule.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
morzer
@Seitz:
Christine O’Donnell’s knowledge of the Constitution, Sarah Palin’s knowledge of the Constitution, Rand Paul’s… well, you get the point.
Xenos
@dj spellchecka:
It would look a lot like The Guardian and The Nation. Both are structured in ways (being funded by subscriptions, limited advertising, and endowments) to limit the risk of being coopted by commercial interests. You could draw a parallel to the family-owned liberal and conservative papers from 100 years ago. Of course both The Guardian and The Nation have leavened their pages with some pretty loopy leftism, but at least those writers get published and can be engaged, argued with, and so on.
Contrast that to the memory hole which apostate conservatives get tossed into. Is Frum even still alive?
Barb (formerly gex)
I wonder if E.D. will have another go at this topic.
geg6
@Jim Treacher:
Not that a troll like you should be acknowledged, but since you seem to have a major reading disability, I’ll ignore my usual troll policy.
Doug never once called Williams a lawn jockey. He simply stated the truth that FOX uses him as such. If you want to be calling anyone a racist, I guess you have to turn to FOX and do it.
Southern Beale
No, I don’t think so. They may think it keeps THEIR kids abstinent until marriage. Not those brown kids in the projects. Honestly, I don’t think they really even THINK about it. They just don’t want any “awkward” conversations around the dinner table. Some things are better not thought about at all, Miss Scarlett.
Martin
@morzer: Didn’t Coburn already declare the lesbian zombie movement well underway in Oklahoma school bathrooms back in 2004?
Is this a sequel or a remake then?
Xenos
@Jim Treacher: Oooh, oooh, can I play, Jim?
First I gotta break out my Fanon and get in the right mood for this…
Barb (formerly gex)
It is also funny that Larison gets brought up. If he is the closest example to responsible conservative journalism…
Well, let’s just say that it is a poor fit with modernity. I’m not sure how conservative ideas packaged that way survive in this day and age.
morzer
@Martin:
A prequel, I suspect. The Phantom Menace: Lesbian Zombie edition. It ought to be a hit with the teabaggers. Just imagine: two DEAD teenage girls getting it on with each other. It’s in the Constitution, man!
Update: hopefully Treachie hasn’t been too excited by this talk of dead girls having sex. Just remember, Jimbo, they may be dead, but they still wouldn’t fuck you.
joeyess
@Ed Marshall: I can’t find it right now, but there was this great little site that was interactive and allowed the visitor to try to build a nuclear weapons program in a world that was agreed that no one should have them.
It was powerful and seemed possible.
Damn! I wish I could find that thing. It was great. You would pick the method of enrichment, storage, weapons systems, etc. and every way you tried, you got caught. I played it for about 4 hours one night and couldn’t get anywhere past the enrichment phase. The moment I tried to apply the enriched uranium to a weapons system and tested, I got busted. Every. single. time.
morzer
@Barb (formerly gex):
Be fair now, Barb. Larison was way ahead of the curve in the tenth century AD.
BGinCHI
@Xenos: Wow. I never, ever expected a Fanon reference on this thread.
If you can get Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism in your next comment you win the internets.
joeyess
@morzer:
Ha ha ha!
Three-nineteen
@Ed Marshall: I think MBunge means nuclear power, not nuclear weapons.
eemom
Aha. A Fucker Tarlson flunky. Google is my friend.
Maybe y’all should take pity on him. He was probably looking for a job when he turned up the “lawn jockey” post.
eemom
repeat fail
TooManyJens
@Midnight Marauder:
A fair point, though I’d amend to at least “white, male, Christian supremacy.”
catclub
@Ed Marshall:
“humans suck ass at risk assessment and they treat unlikely events as impossible events”
I think there is a lottery manager outside who would like a word with you. He arrived in a limosine.
(The suck ass part is still true.) I think it is that we have a very hard time envisioning events in the moderate to far distant future. Flossing one’s teeth in order to HAVE teeth in 50 years is difficult to get across, other than telling someone:
floss your teeth because I said so, that’s why. Think of climate change deniers as uncooperative six year old’s with a toothbrush.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
1: a worker who has learned a trade and works for another person usually by the day
2: an experienced reliable worker, athlete, or performer especially as distinguished from one who is brilliant or colorful
morzer
@eemom:
Jim Treacher: proudly lawn jockeying for lawn jockeys.
kdaug
@morzer: Working on the backstory here… thinking that maybe they smoked a lot of pot and had sex, and then went to a teabagger rally where they were attacked by a bunch of fat old white guys who curb-stomped them to death. They return for revenge – but I’m not sure how we can fit “no taxes” or “keep government out of my Medicare” into the storyline.
Ideas?
Midnight Marauder
@Barb (formerly gex):
@TooManyJens:
No, you’re both right.
It should have read white, male, Christian, heterosexual supremacy.
Xenos
@BGinCHI: Alas, I am not that well read. I am trying to get through Germinal, but my French sucks and I am failing to get most of it.
BGinCHI
@kdaug: Jesus.
“…but I’m not sure how we can fit “no taxes” or “keep government out of my Medicare” into the storyline.
Ideas? ”
Obviously they burst into song. Just do it like it’s Glee. Or Rocky Horror.
morzer
@kdaug:
After their murder by liberal activists, they are raised (sort of) from the dead by Glenn Beck, who sends them to save the Confederacy from Emperor Obamatine….
BGinCHI
@Xenos: You sure picked a long-ass book then.
Great book though.
Maybe get a nice Robbe-Grillet. The French is much easier in Nouveau Roman.
kdaug
@BGinCHI: Ah, brilliant! So the fat old white guys stomp the stoned lesbian girls’ heads into the curb WHILE SINGING!
“Start spreading the news…” [stomp] [stompidy] [stomp]…
Outstanding!
BGinCHI
@kdaug: Just use the Rocky Horror soundtrack.
“Let’s do the time warp again….” is essentially the old white people Pledge of Allegiance.
Just change it thusly: “a turn to the right….a turn to the right”
Barb (formerly gex)
@Midnight Marauder: It’s tough to remember all the various groups of untouchables who have been allowed into the club, furthering us from the pristine Eden that was the way of the Founding Fathers. In fact, not all Christians were on the good team, and those white dudes had to be land owners.
No worries. We’ll remember that once we deal with these atheists, Muslims, women, and gays.
kdaug
@BGinCHI: Now we just need a song for the underage stoned lesbian zombie girls to sing.
I’m thinking a riff off “We don’t need no education”…
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Lack of taxes will ensure that your zombies are operating in an environment without effective law enforcement. The still human will have to rely on themselves and their guns. Keeping government out of their medicare will ensure that many people don’t have scooters thus making them easy to catch and increasing the zombie horde. But that just a suggestion… if you use it I want story and associate producer credit.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Done.
Doris! Get me Hollywood!
And kdaug, ask yourself what the stoned lesbian zombies are already singing….that’s right: KD Lang.
Not to be confused with ED Kain.
Davebo
Just as E.D. never responds to comments on his own posts I really don’t expect to see him respond here.
And that’s a bit sad as he is a fairly reasonable front pager for the most part.
But his apparent refusal to try to support his ideas with what are the most part reasonable comments seems to paint the picture of someone just slinging shit against the wall to see if anything sticks.
His blog name is probably adept.
kdaug
@BGinCHI: Welp, there ya go. Sold.
Think we can get this in the can before the next Young Republican’s Convention?
maus
Not even Reason magazine can keep up the facade. Perhaps if Little Green Footballs acquired Politico, maybe there might be a glimmer of interest, but I don’t see anything changing anytime soon.
morzer
@BGinCHI:
I bet he lip-synches beautifully!
BGinCHI
@kdaug: Tell Cole we need some scratch to get started and we’ll obviously have to write a part for Tunch.
That cat can really act.
ornery curmudgeon
I might have been wrong to say that journalism was liberal, it’s more accurate to say that it’s not conservative.
I’d agree with this wholeheartedly … liberalism is about ideas (human rights, individual liberty, equality) … it’s not a profession.
Larry Bird
It’s more about what the readership of each group demands. Liberals, whatever that means to you are better at processing new information that contradicts what they were taught. I don’t believe that a person who calls themself conservative who disagrees with the current GOP party stance on something means they are not a conservative anymore. If thats the case theres a shitload of New York Democrats who arent Democrats anymore because they oppose the mosque being built near ground zero. If you need your house painted fast I suggest contacting dougj to employ his impressive broad brush.
General Stuck
I get the impression Dougj is having a tricky day.
Ripley
What in fucking hell is a ‘Jim Treacher’? And why does it keep humping the leg of this blog I read?
morzer
@General Stuck:
He’s been toying with the hapless Treacher like a well-fed cat amusing itself with a particularly stupid mouse. Overall, he seems happy – his eyes are shining, his whiskers erect….
Catsy
@Jim Treacher:
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the race to see who can be the next douchebag to make their way into my pie filter.
I mean, are you fucking twelve years old or something? Or are you just fucking twelve-year-olds?
Friendly suggestion: next time you get the urge to stir shit up, stick a spoon up your ass instead of trolling here.
monkeyboy
While I haven’t read all the comments I think it is important to distinguish between between journalism and media outlets.
It could be quite possible for a conservative outlet to take entirely objective journalism and merely by selecting which reporting to publish give it a strong bias.
Here are a few ways.
1) Mainly publish violent crime stories with black or illegal immigrant perpetrators while rarely publishing those with white perps.
2) Publish stories about how owning a gun saved somebody from being a victim, while ignoring any stories of public shootings that that some might argue as evidence for stronger gun ownership restrictions.
3) Only publish positive stories about teabaggers while ignoring stories about their lying, violence, stupidity or general craziness.
A reporter working for such a publisher will tend to concentrate on writing publishable stories even if they are objective. Since the publisher has obvious biases, it is probably beneficial to the reporter to write biased stories.
Kaleb
I just want to jump in at the bottom of the thread to say thanks for this beautiful and pretty accurate frame:
“A mainstream conservative ignores reality (Reagan never raised taxes!), a true winger invents his own (there were WMD in Iraq!), a would be intellectual attempts to integrate pseudo-factual material into his arguments.”
morzer
@monkeyboy:
Ironically, that’s how many book blurbs end up – they pick the one complimentary phrase “X has a bright future as a writer” and discard “even if he can’t apparently manage to create a coherent plot or credible characters.”
someguy
Let’s speak the truth here for a second. You can’t be a good person, much less a good reporter, if you’re conservative. By definition, being conservative means you’re a closed minded, vicious, bigoted and backward looking moron.
By no means does that rule out a successful career at Fox; just a career in journalism.
WereBear
@cmorenc: They manage in spite of the fact the weather is awful.
I think they cope with drink and pastry.
Cermet
@Larry Bird: If you could understand the point Cole made, you wouldn’t sound so stupid – a ‘liberal’ media would report the facts on the issue but not make shit up; yes, some demorats are stupid and don’t look at facts but what at all does that have to do with Cole’s post – read and understand a post before going off subject and proving that you already have a preconceive idea based on stupidity. The existing fake news network only reports information that makes its already preformed opinion look correct even while it is full of shit like most repub-a-thugs. That is a huge difference.
suzanne
@TooManyJens:
The problem is that the tradition that conservatives supposedly value so highly is inherently based on preserving a power differential and marginalizing certain groups of people. So unless one admits to being self-interested at the expense of others, literally to the point of sociopathy, I don’t see any way to be completely intellectually honest. And anyone who said such a thing would be (rightly) scorned as amoral and would be hard-pressed to find prominence in the public square.
Short of that kind of admission, I don’t think there can be any serious conservative thinking, because it’s ignoring the elephant in the room.
matoko_chan
@Jim Treacher:
well…..maybe Juan was NPR’s lawn jockey.
But he’s FOXnews’ lawn jockey now.
Your side has quite a collection of lawn jockeys.
For example– Michael Steele.
And not a one of them will get you a single vote from blacks, browns or the Cellphone Nation (18-34 demographic).
the demographic timer goes tick…..tick……..tick….
Crusty Dem
@Jim Treacher:
So let me get this straight, Treacher showed up here because DougJ mentioned that he’s not funny? And then he proved it? Mission Accomplished!
Jim, go back to the “Daily Caller” (if that is a real website) and say something nasty about Jon Stewart, all the updates on “Dancing with the Stars” have made Tucker sad.
WayneL
I never intended to be. I was firmly in the middle. Then the earth shifted to the right and I ended up on the left. I never changed. They did!
The day rational thought became extinct among people more conservative than me.
Larry Bird
@Cermet:
I’m really having a hard time following your post and how it pertains to mine. Probably because I’m stupid. I was responding to dougj’s post not Coles and I gave liberals credit for their willingness to evolve when presented with new information in comparison to conservatives.
I could have just responded I guess by saying “read and understand before you post” but that would make me sound like an asshole. Seriously are you posting in the wrong thread?
matoko_chan
guys, this is the classic ‘conservative’ inversion argument.
they are not the racists, the NAACP and black people and President Obama are the real racists.
Treach is not a racist, DougJ is a racist.
FOXnews isnt racist, NPR is racist.
Women without control over their their own bodies aren’t slaves, fetuses are slaves.
Like Douthat and McMegan– it was OUR FAULT that Dr. Tiller was killed by a godbothering terrorist– we wouldnt overturn Roe and made him crazy.
LIke Goldberg’s Librul Fascism– we conservatives arent fascists, its you liberals that are fascists.
its all they have.
slag
Wait. So, now we’re saying that the act of calling Juan Williams out for providing cover for Fox’s subtle and not-so-subtle racism is, itself, racist? Wow! How’d I miss that?
mclaren
@MBunge:
This offers a fascinating example of how a far-right crackpot winds up inadvertently making a cogent point.
Yes, as a matter of fact, the nuclear freeze movement of the mid-1980s was rooted in facts and evidence. Specifically, the 80s nuclear freeze movement came out of the scientific discovery that a thermonuclear exchange would produce nuclear winter. Once nuclear winter was proven scientifically inevitable as a result of thermonuclear war, it became clear that most life on earth would end. Without sunlight, the plants die: without plants, the insects and smaller animals die, and without insects to pollinate plants and without smaller animals to provide food for the larger animals, most life on earth would die.
So facts and evidence would up being crucial in sparking the nuclear freeze movement. A lot of people realized that unless human beings cut back on the number of nuclear weapons in our arsenals, it became increasingly likely that at some point (whether by accident or brinksmanship) we’d wind up with a situation where all life on the planet would end.
Likewise, facts and evidence proved crucial in turning around the abortion debate. It is simply a blunt proven fact that the states in the deep south with the most religion and the most abstinence-based sex education are also the very states in America with the highest rates of teen pregnancy, the highest rates of sexual transmitted disease among teenagers, and the lowest age of first sexual encounter.
Since it’s effectively impossible to legislate the culture of part of America (in this case the deep south), the only logical remaining solution to the problems of teen pregnancy and promiscuity is abortion. Abstincence education has been tried: statistics show clearly that it increases sexual activity and increases the number of teen pregnancies. Religion has been tried: the more religious the community, the statistics clearly prove, the higher the rate of promiscuity and STDs and teen pregnancy and the lower the age of first sexual encounter among teenagers.
Isn’t it interesting how these far-right kooks make sneering comments intended as scathing irony which turn out to be exactly correct? As, for example: “Yes, I suppose the IPCC reports contain a complete explanation for and thorough proof of global warming.” Yes, in fact, they do.
mclaren
@matoko_chan:
Exactamundo. Billmon called this the “Spock with a beard” strategy.
Conservatives accurately describe everything they do but claim that liberals are the ones responsible. So when conservatives cut taxes and deficits skyrocket, conservatives blames the deficits on liberal tax-and-spending. And when conservatives launch unprovoked unwinnable wars of aggression in third world hellholes, conservatives blame liberals for losing these unwinnable wars. And when conservatives let Wall Street thieves run rampant and wreck the world financial system, conservatives blame “the inefficiency of liberal big government” for the global financial collapse.
We see the same behavior among certain pathological commenters on this forum. Mnemosyne has admitted she had severe psychological problems in high school and said she “didn’t get the help she needed,” yet now she accuses everyone else of having mental problems. (In another thread tonight she accused one commenter of hearing “voices in his head.”)
Soonergrunt applauds torture and presidential assassination orders against U.S. citizens without charges or a trial, then turns around and accuses anyone who criticizes him of being anti-American.
And so on. It’s remarkably consistent. Ann Coulter accuses liberals of being “cruel bigots who tell sadistic lies for sport,” perfectly describing her own behavior. Karl Rove accuses liberals of manipulating elections through voting fraud and voter caging, perfectly describing his own behavior. Glenn Beck describes liberals as pathological liars who derive unholy glee from demonizing their opponents, perfectly describing his own behavior.
It’s an intriguing question how long conservatives can keep up this tired old tactic before voters finally get wise to it. This conservative tactic dates all the way back to Joe McCarthy, but they keep using it. At some point you’d think this rhetorical trick would get so stale that it would stop working.
SciVo
DougJ, nice post until the end, where you went a bit “no true Scotsman.” I’d rather you deal with counter-examples than dismiss them because, well, your conclusion is true so they can’t be! Pshaw.