DQ here. I just read a brochure from XM radio that demonstrates the liberal bias-blindspot. Each XM station gets a little (always positive) write-up in the brochure. They are advertising their product, after all. To serve their diverse audience, XM includes a variety of talk stations, including AmericaRight and AirAmerica. Here are the advertising descriptions:
AmericaRight — You may be delighted or you may be outraged, but you won’t stay neutral. The most controversial talk in America. Politics and society get a right-wing makeover as Michael Reagan, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Bill Bennet, and other share their hard-hitting views and opinions.
AirAmerica — Air America Radio’s talented and opinionated on-air personalities, including liberal satirist Al Franken, comedienne Haneane Garofalo, radio veteran Mark Riley, long-time television talk show host Jerry Springer, and commentator Alan Colmes, put their witty, intelligent and unique spin on politics and current events.
Okay, to summarize, the “right-wing” folks on AmericaRight are “controversial” and “hard-hitting” and want to “makeover” society. The “liberal” folks on AirAmerica are “talented,” “opinionated,” “witty,” “intelligent” and “unique” and are merely putting their “spin” on politics and current events.
The irony is that you just know the writer was trying to please the potential audiences of both stations and had no idea the descriptions exposed any bias at all. This same bias-blindness is at work when liberals honestly believe the presentation of the news is objective, and conservatives know better.
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Hmm, and here I thought Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo and Jerry Springer were opinionated and outrageous. How could I be so wrong?! (/sarcasm)
Unique spin, DQ, Unique. “Right wing makeover”, why does that not sound very appealing?
I didn’t know Alan Colmes was on Air America, one more reason not to listen in. It’s just not their views I object to, it is their entire absolutely gigafreakish personality portfolio that I find problematic. Colmes is just… annoying. He’s a pain, compared to Hannity, which I only find objectionable when he starts going on the “answer my question” tirade, which I consider a waste of time. Alan’s entire repertoire of arguments are so base, so low-tech, so obsolete that if I went outside and kicked a cow, it would produce a more enlightening sound than the sound of Alan’s arguments.
Hannity, if he gets any points from me, gets points for tolerating Colmes. I could not do that, either socially or in the work environment.
One of the reasons these people don’t know the flipside of a hamburger as to their interior biases, is because they don’t meditate in the Eastern fashion. Meditation allows a person to look inwards, to use his mind and control it, while at the same time controlling the body consciously with the mind. When the body relaxes, the mind relaxes. It goes both ways, mind-body interplay. You don’t have to know martial arts to be an introspective kind of person. A person who always asks himself why this is right or how this works, is a curious, inquisitive, open minded individual by personality. An untrained talent in otherwords. It’s much better for a student, in anything, to start questioning what they have been taught and forming independent judgements, rather than just regurgitating what they think the teacher wants them to say. There is no quick fix. You can’t make someone who is prejudiced, an instant cosmopolite with martial arts meditation.
You have to wonder whether people on the Left and in journalism are afraid of looking inside themselves, inside their souls. Is it because they don’t believe that they have a soul? Is it because they don’t believe in spiritual matters, or is it because their personal religion is enough spiritual dogma that it precludes anything else like introspection? Do they believe they will see themselves as they truly are, and are therefore afraid to do it?
Putting America in a gilded cage, arguing Good and Evil, and championing “human rights causes”. These are the things they purpotedly support. Yet… they have a rather serious problem in believing, not just accusing, of any one that disagrees with them of harboring motivations of putting women under veils (CHristian fundamentalism). Excuse me, but conservatives are not the ones trying to put anyone into a gilded cage, in which the person caged is deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’d be the Leftist, fake liberal, wannabe “morally superior” dudes. It’s pretty clear that the Left has their own notions of Good and Evil, yet they complain much about Bush putting the world into Good and Evil terms. Wasn’t it supposed to be more complex than that? Or do they just object to Bush exposing the Leftist charade?
And what about human rights and just causes? What about those, I ask. Did they look inside themselves lately, and asked themselves what human rights are they exactly purpotedly fighting for?
A lot of people may not be interested in psychology and what makes people tick. But my interests in propaganda, psychological warfare, and military history brought me face to face with exactly some of the most pernicious motivations of the human condition. I could not not ask myself what motivated people, to war or peace, and what could propel a nation to victory or defeat. You cannot truely understand WWI and WWII and America’s history without then asking yourself “how did it come about “why did it come about” “to what brand of luck or providence did victory owe”. Memorizing facts and dates is not “true understanding” anymore than a guy with a 200 IQ has wisdom.
So, okay, the more I learned, the more questions i had. I was required to learn how people on the Left operated. Much as any officer in a war is required to understand the enemy so that the enemy’s actions may make sense and may perhaps be predicted. This goes against the popular miscomprehension, of course, the idea that military history and military tactics require a person (like me) to actually understand people better. You cannot be truely good at grasping military affairs if you cannot truely grasp the nature of humanity. Armies are made up of people, and last time I checked, all people were part of the human race at one time or another. Understand the human race, and you not only understand soldiers, but politicians and journalists as well. Up to and including an army.
They still teach Sun Tzu at Army War College because of one simple fact. SUn Tzu understood the human soul, and he advocated perfecting your war skills first by understanding people and human principles. That is why his writings are still relevant day, more than 2,000 years later.
Humanity has not changed, our weapons have. Remember that the next time someone says Palestine is justified in blowing up Israeli civilians because Israelis have helicopter gunships while Palis do not.
A person who does not know himself, who is clueless about his own mind and heart, like fake liberals and Leftists in this world, are not fit to render judgement upon their enemies, whether Republican or Jihadi. You might as well trust a ripped and torn resistor cable of not electrifying you if you touched it while you are grounded and it is powered.
I said before that politics is not so much a spectrum of colors to me, as it is a liquid globe. GO far enough to the Left, and you’ll hit the extreme Right folks like Pat Buchana and David Duke KKK. Robert Byrd bears that out quite well.
So is it really any surprise when the moral superiority tones and patronizing attitude of someone like Jerry Falwell is translated into “Democrat” terms with their behavior on the war on terror? Here’s a meta-translation.
“Oh my god, we must stop this heathenish obsession with gambling, it is a sinful behavior, and God will strike down all those who are promiscuous and in league with the Devil!!”
“America must be above the terroists, we must hold ourselves to higher standards and not lower ourselves to the conduct of terroists. Or else we will lose this war, because we will have lost the right to win”
“God HATES YOU, God hates fa**ots, and the military lets in FA**OTS! Your son deserved to die!”
Wow, another great proof politics is globular rather than spectral in origin. Ever see a pendulum that had minimal friction and was well designed? Back and forth, back and forth. Most people see the back and forth and think that is political spectrum behavior. I recognize that if you tilt the pendulum far enough to the left or right, it’ll come back on the opposite extreme. Nice visual, eh?
With thanks to the blogosphere, I think what many intelligent citizens have found is that the media world is mostly bias. MSM is all about manipulation of real or imaginary factoids designed to control public opinions in this country.
The blogosphere has said that involved observors who care and think about the real world no longer have to settle for journalistic fairy tales a-la- Rather. We don’t need the mega information corporations.
The nation is not ‘dead from the neck up,’ as Gore, Kerry and the Democrats believe.
Many interests want to ‘own’ America. We won’t be.
I think the part of this that is both wonderful (as in the sense of being a source of wonder) and highly amusing is that so many of these people – Cronkite, Rather, Brokaw, the idiot Couric, Williams, Sawyer, et al; will go to their graves believing – and I mean really believing, totally honestly, with complete sincerity; that they are the most unbiased and fair people on the planet.
Listening to them – which admittedly I hardly ever do – is endlessly fascinating.
Hi, Book,
A pleasure to visit, as always, and I like your blog’s sleek look. Bardseye is out of traction and back in action. My wife’s morning sickness lingered into the seventh month (we’re now in the eighth), and we also moved to a place we thought our son, Isaiah Sho Abrams, would more approve of. Hence my hiatus.
As for why recess has ended, Kiyoko finally ordered me back to bardseye, observing that I’m a happier companion when I blog.
Since patriotism is the meaning of our days now before July 4th, it might be well to examine one patriot, one whom Michael Yon calls ‘warrior.’
Marine First Sergeant Brad Kisal: We remain yet free because of him and those like him.
NPR has had more about his story, and there are apparently books to be published. Yon’s writing has another aspect in mind: the media.
You will see in the link that Time Magazine has chosen to degrade Sgt. Kisal’s fight by using a photo of him to attack the role of the military in Iraq. (Which I surmise from Yon’s comments.)
So, we discuss media ‘bias’ as if it were an intellectual talking point, yet it is a much more deadly failure. It is a complete rejection of our country and its beliefs and its defenders. And, of us–Americans.
———see link
http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/warrior.htm
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It’s not so much degrading, as it is trying to dishonor the warrior’s heroics. By trying to shame people into seeing Haditha along with the “heroics”, they setup an emotional harominic that would tear any truly unprepared civilian apart from the inside out. They need to do as much damage to civilian and military morale as possible, with this Haditha fabrication, until Haditha goes away, permanently. When it goes away permanently, the damage will already have been done, and the ship will be sinking and so someone on the titanic is going to drown in frigid waters.
Stop whining you conservative idiot (oxymoron). You’ll have a lot more to cry about on 11/8.