Text 2120, 245 rader
Skriven 2006-06-07 23:39:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2566.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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@MSGID: <u52f82peci3ohs20kqo2tnolicmjt7sn3q@4ax.com>
@REPLY: <j-udnUpnrMJ01OLZRVn-pg@comcast.com>
On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 18:04:24 +0000 (UTC), "Vorlonagent"
<jt@otfresno.com> wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:sk2982d2n768hfo6t6pk6cbq37ak9f9pdi@4ax.com...
>
>>>There is no reaonable, useful comparison to be made between Fox News and
>>>Al-Jazeera.  Fox is not a propaganda outlet.
>>
>> !
>>
>> That's one for the books . . .
>>
>>> It may have a rightward bias
>>>but that does not equate to propaganda.  You would have to show that 
>>>heavily
>>>distorted mis-and disinformation is being put out by Fox on a 24/7 basis,
>>>every hour every day and presented as fact.  This is what al-jazeera does.
>>>
>>>Lacking such proof, equating Fox News to al-jazeera is an ad-hominum at
>>>best, further serving as a nice example of the politics of personal
>>>destruction practiced by the Left these days.
>>>
>>>It's like that statement Amnesty International made a few years ago 
>>>equating
>>>Guantanamo Bay to a Soviet gulag.  The comparison is so preposterous and 
>>>at
>>>the same time prejudicial, it runs afoul of the spirit of Goodwin's Law
>>>(since nobody was actually compared to Nazis or Nazi Germany, neither
>>>comparison runs de-facto afoul of Goodwin)
>>
>> Not at all like it. If I'd wanted to do that, I would have compared
>> Fox to Pravda. And while there are indeed times when it acts just like
>> Pravda -- like when they photoshopped the picture of Bush in the
>> presidential debate to make him look as tall as Kerry (seems it never
>> occurred to them that someone would post the altered version on the
>> Internet so anybody could see), or when they looped the film of relief
>> vehicles going to New Orleans the way Mussolini circled his troops
>> around the block to impress Hitler during a parade -- they also
>> provide a glimpse of the other side, like Geraldo complaining about
>> dying babies. (Which practically made the shill I mean anchor melt
>> down.)
>
>I will accept the camera angle issue as accurate for the sake of debate, 
>with the proviso that there may well have been non-propaganda reasons for 
>setting things as such.  I don't want to get into that because I'd be trying 
>to read the minds of Fox producers and camerapeople or digging for obscure 
>answering factoids.

Nah, this wasn't camera angle -- they modified /stock coverage/ and
the /original still was available for comparison,/ identical in every
respect except for the fact that Bush had been raised.

>  Your looping film example and comparison to fascism 
>does run afoul of Goodwin's Law and needs no further comment.

I don't accept that. The truth is what matters, not a "law" that
wouldn't have any real standing even if it were directed at Fascism
rather than being specific to invocations of Hitler.

>  Geraldo is a 
>sensationalist and always has been.  That's his problem.
>
>In the end you are citing a few scattered examples.  Even if all of them 
>were accurate, you would equating those scattered examples to what 
>Al-Jazeera does on a day-in, day-out basis.  And I don't accept all your 
>examples.

I mention those examples purely as examples. I am familiar with many
more, some of them out-and-out scandalous and widely reported, and I
/rarely/ watch Fox News or even television.

>Moreover Fox News could not become the ratings juggernaught it is if it were 
>truly nothing more than a propaganda outlet.  Bill O'Reilly's ratings cannot 
>mount to the point of snapping at the heels of CBS Evening News if all he 
>spews is hate.  The market for propaganda, hatred in the US is simply not 
>that big.

?

I know it's circular, but then, how explain Fox News? Murdoch knew
exactly what he was doing -- creating an overtly partisan right-wing
news outlet.

>But enough of the same old dance.
>
>
>Josh, I honestly think you're an intelligent and well-meaning human being. 
>Same for Amy.  Same also for Wes Strubing who is outside the context of most 
>of what I have to say.
>
>Your comment equating Fox News and Al-Jazeera brought me up short because it 
>was so sharply at-odds with my own experience Fox News.  I stopped all other 
>debate here while a thought finally got through my thick head.
>
>I finally understand that if I watch and episode of the O'Reilly Factor, I'm 
>not going to see anything in the same solar system as you, Amy or Paul would 
>see if you saw exactly the same thing.  How can we come to any kind of 
>meeting of minds when we see though such radically different filters?  If 
>*we* can't how can the USA, where the popular, extremist-driven debate is 
>usually far less adult?
>
>At this juncture, I don't think we can.

I find that depressing, although you'll understand that from my
perspective it's because you've been so flooded with conservative
Republican propaganda that it's just not possible to make headway.
It's a self-perpetuating system:

"Here's the evidence."

"The 'evidence' is from the liberal media and can't be trusted, look
at this honest (read propaganda) source instead."

It's as if conservatives have spent years systematically creating an
alternate universe, one that is in most regards out of phase with
reality and exists essentially to serve corporate interests and
bottom-feeding political hacks. And when people lose site of that,
when they're manipulated as the Republican electorate has into
disbelieving the decent people and believing the bad ones, you can't
do anything, because the /facts themselves/ are missing, because
people don't understand that global warming is real or that Saddam had
nothing to do with 9/11 or that John Kerry was a war hero or Al Gore
an honest, committed man.

The current brouhaha about the gay marriage and flag burning
amendments is just the latest example. How insulting! Can anyone
possibly be credulous enough to believe that with Osama Bin Laden
still on the loose, global warming, the mess in Iraq, the highest
budget deficit in history, illegal immigration, outsourcing, a
president who thumbs his nose at the law, sky-high fuel prices,
scandal after scandal in Congress, unprecedented levels of pork, and
Iran developing nuclear weapons, we should be worrying about these
trivial issues? Certainly not most of the cynical Republican
legislators who voted for the amendment -- and yet they believe that
they can bamboozle a significant American minority. It is sad, it is
depressing, it is frightening.

But what really takes the cake is that you, and some other
conservatives I've debated on line, actually believes that Fox News
isn't a propaganda outlet. When it gets to that stage, when this
commonplace, obvious, neither subtle nor secret fact (among other
things, the people at Fox have been known to slip and refer to
Republicans as "we"), we're in deep, deep shit.

>As a result, I am done with politics on this forum for the forseeable future 
>after this post.

Fair enough, I think.

>No doubt this brings welcome relif to Jay and Cheryl.  Thanks for the 
>usually thankless task of keeping us civil and in-boundary.
>
>A few election predictions.
>
>Lacking a paradigm-shifting Something Big, the battle lines have been drawn 
>and the american people are sick to death of the petty, rancorous bickering 
>between the two parties. Expect popular disgust with both parties to drive 
>participation downward, leaving the elections in the hands of those willing 
>to swim thought that disgust or are immune to it.  Expect the primaries to 
>send incumbents and party loyalists (i.e. relative extremists) to the 
>November election.

This is a damn shame, because the parties are /not/ the same, even if
they're not as different as some might hope.

>In November, expect that same disgust the american people have for both 
>parties to effectively mute the impact national issues, leaving local ones 
>to determine who goes/returns to Congress, with incumbency having its normal 
>heavy influence.  Result: minor changes in the US House and Senate.  No 
>Democratic sweep to power, no major gains for the Repuiblicans.  Not because 
>anybody's doing anything right but because they both have it spectacularly 
>wrong.
>
>The first party to get it right on anything resembling a regular basis will 
>dominate US politics for a minimum 20 years.

How can that happen when the Dems can't get majorities? And how can
you overlook the fact that the Clinton Administration was successful
and popular, while Bush has made such a godawful mess that even
Republicans are up in arms about it?

Having made a royal mess of things, the Republicans are now trying to
minimize the damage by claiming that the Democrats are no better. Lie
after self-serving lie -- it never ends with them. Does the public
really have such a short memory that they've forgotten the prosperity
of the Clinton years, have forgotten a time when the budget was
balanced, everyone was getting richer in the largest peacetime
expansion in the nation's history, we were at peace, poverty was
declining, employment was soaring, and we had the respect of the
world?

It beggars the mind. They're like hypnotists.

>Finally, two simple tests for extremism.
>
>The collective consciousness of the US has endowed both the Left and the 
>Right with a few cardinal virtues.  They don't always act out of them, 
>however.  (Example: one virtue of the Right is "Discipline", something the 
>current lot of Republicans have appallingly little of)
>
>The Left and the Right also are prey to a few common vices, of which much is 
>made in various media sources.
>
>Name the vices that can truly be associated with the movement you agree 
>with.
>
>Name the virtues that have been associated with your movement's opposition.
>
>The more trouble you have swimming against the normal currents of thought 
>that you nomally swim with, the greater the danger those currents could 
>sweep or have swept you to extremism.

I'm not really fond of extremism of any stripe, except in extreme
circumstances, of which our own revolution might be considered a good
example. But I hope you'll forgive me if I'm too tired now -- it being
bedtime -- to enumerate the qualities of the extremists. I'll merely
point out that Barry Goldwater said that the religious right had
ruined the Republican Party, whereas the Dems eliminated their left
wing, the Communists and Socialists, many years ago, and tamed the
Jackson Democrats some time after. If anything, they've moved too far
to the center, started acting like Republicans lite, and that means
that they've handed control of the agenda to the other side.

>I do not intend to answer any posts answering this one or any other post in 
>this topic.  I'm done, now.  I may return one day, but don't hold your 
>breath.

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                                                                               
             
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