Rightwingers Take Over The Media
This is getting ridiculous–the country has been treated to a couple of weeks of whining by leftwing commentators claiming that the national media have been infiltrated and taken over by rightwingers. First, Al Gore declared that a conservative "fifth column" has taken over the commanding heights of the national media. Earlier this week, one of the country's most reliably boring left-leaning columnists, E. J. Dionne, hilariously repeated this claim in the Washington Post.
The straw that broke this camel's back was the whining earlier this afternoon by "entertainment studies" USC professor Marty Kaplan who aped the complaint on Publc Radio's Marketplace program. Kaplan explained that rightwingers have been successful in taking over the media takeover because they are simplistic thinkers and thus can attract audiences. He even complained that conservatives dominate the internet–a place where any idiot can publish a website. It never occurs to Kaplan that subtle thinkers of complex thoughts like him are ignored by the unwashed masses because their policies have failed for a generation and the public no longer feels like being condescended to by superior intellects like Kaplan.
The leftwingers evidence that conservatives now dominate the media?–Fox News now attracts more viewers than CNN, Rush Limbaugh is the king of talk radio, and the Washinton Times has over 100,000 subscribers. As Atlantic editor and columnist Michael Kelly points out, that "brilliant" analysis overlooks the fact that news outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and NPR, just to name a few, have not yet noticably succumbed to Al Gore's conservative "fifth column."
Leftwing commentators like Kaplan and Dionne simply can't face the fact the public is weary of their divisive appeals to identity politics incoherently combined with their kneejerk egalitarianism. Anyway, Gore, Dionne, and Kaplan should just relax, polls show that 60% of reporters and editors still lean to the Democratic Party while only 15% lean toward the Republican Party. Of course, in my unbiased opinion, what Americans, who are increasingly socially liberal and economically conservative, really need are more libertarian journalists.
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Please see The Daily Howler, a site that meticulously documents how the “liberal media” perpetuated phony stories about Gore throughout the 2000 convention in accordance with RNC directives. All these “centrist” news outlets told us day after day about how Gore “created the internet,” made up stories about “farm chores,” “reinvents himself,” “discovered Love Canal,” grew up in a “penthouse” — on and on and on it goes. To ignore the mountains of hard evidence this site provides is to disqualify yourself from even having an opinion on the subject.
Gore didn’t say he “created” the Internet, but he did say he “took the lead” in creating it, which is simply wrong. His bill did nothing of the sort.
Sites like The Daily Howler discredit themselves defending this sort of shite.
Hey Bill, I haven’t bothered to read that conspiracy theory site you mentioned. You think I’m not qualified to have an opinion. I disagree. Could you tell me if I’m qualified to have an opinion about whether I’m qualified to have an opinion? Thanks.
Either you’re at the wrong magazine or your magazine’s got the wrong name. Neither Gore nor Dionne were talking about ratings or subscriptions, and neither Gore nor Dionne were talking about the political leanings of individual reporters and editors. I can’t tell from your post whether or not Kaplan was making those points, but if he was leave Gore and Dionne out of it. Or, if you want to actually argue with them, shouldn’t you argue with what they actually said or wrote rather than with a replacement version that you find easier to dispute? Gore and Dionne were both talking about the effect that the tactics of the right have had on mainstream media, and there’s plenty of evidence of that — for some one-stop shopping try The Daily Howler.
Kaplan and alikes don’t want to accept the facts that they are the abbsolute simplistic thinkers. In almost every position they take, the simple fact remains that it somehow involves “taking something from one class of people and handing it to another class of people.”
What could be more simplistic than that? At least consevatives (liberatarians) have some real ideas on how to get things done. I am not saying they are perfect. At least they think outside the box.
madman
In regard to the comment that what Gore and Dionne were talking about was the reaction of the media to the tactics of the right, give me a break. Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Washington Times will call attention to stories the left leaning media ignores. In fact, it is this power to select the stories that you run that reflects the mainstream media left leaning character. It appears to me, that those on the left don’t like the fact that “their” media is forced to cover these stories once they get out.
If you’re arguing that I’m wrong about what Gore and Dionne said, try reading it. If you’re arguing with their point, I can’t speak for the rest of the left, of course, but I have no problem with legitimate stories no matter who introduces them. But the key word is legitimate; when the media jumps on the bandwagon spending time on bogus stories of any sort it bothers me, and far too many of the stories put out by the right and the RNC are just that.
The Daily Howler provides many quotes, names, dates, publications — all hard facts, zero conspiracy theory. You’re on the other hand are just lazy. Of course you’re entitled to have any stupid uninformed opinion you want.