I told someone privately a couple of days ago that the American media has lost the ability to sway public opinion in any appreciable way.
CNN/USA TODAY POLL: Only 13% blame Bush
They failed when they called a win for Gore, failed in their predictions of an “inflamed Arab street” the run-up to the Afghan and Iraq wars, failed in the “quagmire” reporting of the Iraq invasion, failed to pin blame for 9-11 on the Bush administration, failed to win an election for John Kerry, and today, they’re failing to turn an act of nature into a White House plot to “let black folks drown”.
There’s no mystery as to why – the American public is onto them. You’d think the freefall in newspaper subscriptions and network ratings would be a clue. As usual, the last ones to see the “root cause” are the media themselves.
(Update: Things like this don’t help either. )
Update to update : Or maybe not – Geraldo smeared by NYT?
The only thing the TV is good for anyomore is to watch “House” (a FOX product) and golf.
I’m personally finding the present lack of the CBC in Canada quite refreshing. The noticable lack of public interest/outcry over the loss is telling. Evidently most Canadians put very little stock in the credibility of our national broadcaster.
Oh, well…They earned it!
And so you go to news polling — left-wing media polling no less– to prove your point. Was Fox not available?
When before it was irresponsibility through Welfare State Paternalism and black stupidly and now it�s �an act of nature�. You are tendentious. You�re also an unreconstructed racist — even if your criticisms of liberalism have a modicum of truth. You will never be taken seriously because your tone is severe and racist and far from constructive.
No dummy, we went to the internet to get that information.
You know, the TV with a keyboard attached?
Yhe one you use to play “Pong” all day?
Oppressed and White seems a tad angry…
But I must admit, its fun to run around and call people racist all day long.
Cut in front of me during rush hour? Racist!
Set off your car alarm late at night? Racist!
Give me incorrect change when I buy something? Racist!
Reminds me of Lenny Bruce in another context – you use the word racist for everything you dislike and pretty soon, that word has lost all meaning.
“Forty-two percent of respondents characterized President Bush’s response to the disaster as ‘bad’ or “terrible.'”
This, from your own link. From an undersampled poll done on a weekend.
You’ll have to do better than this.
I like “House” – pretty much the only thing to watch on the tube. Too bad the Canadian media wasn’t as ineffectual.
Oppressed, by whom? And what does white have to do with anything? Racisim? Tendentious, good word. I forget what it means exactly.
Reading the rest of your comment, I’m going to pass on looking it up. I was about to ask for your *constructive* input, but now I don’t know. What constructive feedback did you expect your comment to generate? 73s TG
Disgruntled over high gas prices, (hell, who isn’t?) truckers park their trucks, slowing traffic into NB from Quebec, causing hardship for business… notice the article doesn’t mention the fact the truckers aren’t working?!
http://www.canadaeast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050906/CPA/31074024
This pisses me off. It’s affecting my company. We require a shipment of raw inputs in order to function. It was due Tuesday, but thanks to spoiled unionists, the near and long term is now iffy. I would hope they would get back to business, point made, and do their damned jobs like everyone else, the price of gas notwithstanding. Why not raise the cost of trucking via a fuel surcharge in line with the price of fuel today, or push the feds and provinces to slash fuel taxes effective immediately? Their actual behavior will NOT help! Does the petition even deal with what I just suggested? That’s all I can find in the MSM on the situation, and it looks like it was written by a high-school student, not a pro journalist. (Where, oh, where is the SUN group? We could use them in the Maritimes).
Guess truckers have no perspective vis-a-vis the terrible plight of so many in New Orleans. They need to get some big, hairy nads already.
Pls, no flaming. Just my POV.
PS, my big-L Liberal boss didn’t sound very lefty today. Said the truckers should be ordered back to work or else be shot! Is this the beginning of the end for socialism? I hope so.
Just Googled the issue above. Weird findings. Sites like “World Socialist Worker”, or whatever it was called, “The Militant” and even Michael Moore’s site popped up to blah-blah on that issue, and not just today, or in NB, but everywhere and in the past. Huh.
What is it with trucker protests against fuel prices and extreme leftist moonbattery?
Nice try Dawg, with your use of quotes…it actually says that 42 percept described the federal government agencies’ response as “bad” or “terrible”.
Of course, as we all know, Bush is personally responsible for every action of every federal agency.
Certainly, blame can be allocated amongst all levels of government, as well as upon each and every individual. Fact is, playing the blame game doesn’t save lives.
Yeah Stephen, been there years ago. Now it’s your turn in the pressure zone. A good manager stays diplomatic, cool and listens well. You can’t afford to blow up at anybody.
The trucker who can do a favour will call the guy who was hurting but was cool and easy going. May as well be you.
Speaking about media. If Martin continues to win every step he takes to clamp down on the freedom of information act. There won’t be any. Any information from government that is. Katrina is divrting us from what is going on behind closed doors in Ottawa right now.
There’s an exchange with Darcy on DustMyBroom that ties a few moves together. ‘3s TG
Ok, that’s my newslink and take for the day. Betcha Maz2 wasn’t aware of that one. 😉
So most Americans think Nawlins will never recover: Poll. Huh? Say what? What kind of poll was that really? Loaded, leading or manipulative? Or perhaps most Americans are unaware that Japan recovered from two nuclear strikes and Germany rebuilt after being pretty much reduced to rubble? I’ve learned to take polls with a grain of salt.
I believe the failings of the American media and the irrelevance of the polls will quite soon be followed by same here in Canada. No wonder Stephen Harper is so confident, MSM polls on the CPC’s support level notwithstanding.
And, believe me, Liberals everywhere are still clueless. They don’t realize we conservatives have figured out the whole plot of how they’ve been able to hold on to power so long. Nor do they realize they already have one foot in the electoral grave.
This is why I, too, am confident today regardless of Liberal-syncophant-conducted polling. (Oui, j’accuse!)
Dr. Dawg
“Forty-two percent of respondents characterized President Bush’s response to the disaster as ‘bad’ or “terrible.'”
I guess that means that even some Democrats who voted against Bush in the last election don’t think it’s his fault aye?
And what was it you said? You’ll have to do better than that? Works for me.
… And it is my deep hope and wish that the Candian media are as out of touch with ordinarly Canadians. Polls (which I believe are severly skewed) keep predicting Liberal wins and liberal gains in Canadian politics. Oh how I hope they are wrong. … MSM in north america have been the apologist for the left for to long.
Excellent point, John C. Let the Dawg sink his teeth into that one.
People, careful. “Oppressed and White” may be Warren Kinsella or Scott Reid trying to bait us again.
“Don”‘t fall for it. They’re barking up the wrong tree.
Public Service Announcement
TonyGuitar wrote, “good word. I forget what it means exactly.” Well, since I have been referred to by Stephen McAllester as “Tony Big Word Guy”, perhaps I can help.
One of the things I like about reading on the Internet is that if I don’t know the meaning of a word I can just double click it, right click + Copy, open the bookmark I keep to http://www.answers.com, and then right click + Paste + Enter. Or, I just enter answers.com/someword right in the address bar.
I find this to be valuable for helping me improve my vocabulary.
It also turns out that it is trivial for web software developers to embed a little JavaScript in their pages that, when a word is double clicked, automatically takes the user to a popup page containing the relevant answers.com page. I’ve seen it at a few sites, but it does not seem common yet. Kate, perhaps you could ask your providers about such a feature.
Sorry for the interruption, we now return to our regularly scheduled topic 😉
But Kate would have you believe — in her winsome vehemence — that the poor are poor as a result of government handouts; which, among other undesirable qualities, fosters dependency. But at least that diffuses the deterministic argument — that the poor are simply inferior. She wouldn�t want us to believe that epithet even though her writings are of two minds: Welfare paternalism, Genetics. Please Kate, concentrate the mind. Does phylogeny and meager intelligence account for their penury, or is it the Welfare State? Kate, you�d be considered unoriginal if you weren�t so cute — and you are� so cute. But this dungeon you continue to exercise — risible to be sure — is painfully superficial. I mean, you can�t really be that stupid. I�m coming to believe that Kate is the pseudonym for an emasculated, bedraggled fool. Oh what a shame it would to be lose sweet, ethereal Kate.
Dress it up, dress it down, inside your feeble souls screams a feral racist — and for no other reason than our once vaunted position in this Confederation is being challenged by our falling birth rates and their increasing fertility. Why is this, you ask? Because we are choosing to have children later in life and focusing more of our resources on them.
They, alternatively (this is a fallacy) have too many children and strain our resources. In real terms, particularly in Canada, they are predominantly lower-income Caucasians with little to no education and abysmal employment prospects. They are overwhelmingly the strain.
The immigrants, contra conventional wisdom or Frasier Institute talking points, are highly educated, industrious, and fearless — these being among the stringent entry qualifiers in our immigration policy. Regulatory bodies, which hoard expertise and dispense falsehoods, create artificial shortage to remain relevant (viz. CMA; doctors) while available pools of highly trained immigrants service (mostly in menial work) our racist, bloated masses.
If you believe at all in the integrity of the Confederation you must accept two things � a) that commerce and trade is our lifeblood, and b) willing and intelligent Canadians must work in Canada. Long term demographic trends suggest that Canadians are having fewer children, which in turn suggests that labour shortfalls will put our economy in a difficult position � this is not even speak of the Brain Drain.
Therefore, immigration policy, with respect to the number of new immigrants let into the country each year, will likely become more liberal, despite our consternation. But remember, these new immigrants are already much smarter and more industrious than the regular Canadian, love it or loathe it. I love it.
So these deep seated fears are an inevitable outcome arising from xenophobia against the other. Demographic and cultural shifts are always fought tooth and nail by the rearguard conservatives. Historical parallels to the ethnic nationalism and furor against �parasitic� minorities of the early 20th century abound today. Dress it up, Dress it down. Your indignation is shrill and cyclic. I say, start having more children � in a traditional nuclear family, of course.
Troll, troll, troll your boat….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
There’s talk of it being an assassination.
He’d been complaining about how long it took Bush to send help to them on the island.
John, are you that obtuse. 50% of Americans don’t classify themselves as Democrats just as the other 50% don’t characterize themselves as Republicans. There is a “diversity” of classifications in the spectrum — have you heard independents, or maybe, Conservatives, which aren’t exactly Republicans; or better still, Liberals, who are far to the left of Centrists but not entirely Democrats in the traditional sense; and then you have your plain old Undecideds. There are so many more colors of the rainbow — even if you are willfully blind to them.
I guess the Americans have given up on their media to listen the liberals keep talking and they never stop. I mean aren’t you guys kind of tired of CNN? I think everyone is getting tired of CNN! After this big accusation against Bush by Kanye West, only 13% support such thing and among this 13%, 3% would be Muslims, who would never support Bush. Therefore, West and CNN were able to sway the opinion of only 10%!
Were you just looking for free space to post that slice of ad hominem padded leftist “wisdom”?
Because, if you check again, this post is about the media’s attempt to shape public opinion in the US through politicization of the news (including, in this case, the use of race politics) – and the credibility it has cost them among their viewership.
Now, if you have problems with that I suggest you send an email to them.
Belmont Club >>>> Join Doug Santo and this commenter in despising western media.>>>>>
Doug Santo said…I am a critic of western media, but this article [from Commentary Magazine] blew me away.
…
I read an article in the recent edition of Commentary magazine by Nidra Poller. The article is �Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair�. It describes the circumstances surrounding the media-driven claim that Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 12 year old boy. This event was televised world-wide in September 2000 and some claim the event was the causal agent of the al-Aqsa intifada. The article is free and may be found at:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com
Please read this article. It sheds important light on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the coverage that western media gives this struggle.
I am a critic of western media, but this article blew me away. It is fair to say now that I despise western media and reject much of its reporting as not worthy of consideration from a serious observer. To get valid information one has to search it out and verify it through several sources. One cannot simply trust media reports to be accurate.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
“The immigrants, contra conventional wisdom or Frasier Institute talking points, are highly educated, industrious, and fearless — these being among the stringent entry qualifiers in our immigration policy.”
What about our refugee policy? What about “family class” immigration? What is the ACTUAL percentage of people arriving in Canada who are ‘highly educated, industrious, and fearless’? If it’s high, I’m happy. Bring ’em on. If it’s low, we’ve got a problem. Anybody have ready access to the numbers?
Pending concrete information, I’m going with Doug on the troll your boat thing… And how did this get so far off topic, anyway?
I’m trolling for the day to keep your asses in check. Nothing doing here. I thought I’d at least get a fight. I was mistaken; all your bluster is empty. But I can’t get over how cute Kate is. Don’t you think? That’s my guise. I’m looking for a love connection. Yet, there�s something about this self-congratulatory circle jerk — cluster fuck, if you will — that is so adorable, like the children being allowed to stay up and talk politics with the adults. I�m done.
OT.
http://www.cleverkeys.com/ck.html?p=home
CleverKeys is free software that provides instant access to definitions at Dictionary.com, synonyms at Thesaurus.com, and more..
Tony (Guitar), you’re correct. I assure you I’m diplomatic in dealing with all kinds of clients. In person, I’m much more personable than in the blogosphere.
Oppressed and White is more like “Retarded and Blind”.
I mean, immigrants, like everyone else, are pretty regular folk. They are not warrior-gods of the amazon.
If they are so wonderful and perfect, then we are killing countries by stealing their best and brightest, no?
We are radicalizing the leftovers.
In the old days, we welcomed poor, huddled masses. We wanted the weakest, the most dejected.
Now, in the era of Liberal-think, we say keep your fucking poor and weak and lame. We want to cherry pick your best and the rest can rot in the open sewers of your 3rd world bunghole.
Oppressed and White?
More like: Sniveling, Evil Motherfucker who uses labels like “racism” when s/he is the one who covets seing the destruction of societies across the globe in the name of preserving Canada’s pension scheme.
Chilling and evil.
Kate, you’re still not making sense — but how you make ‘not-making sense’ so cute is beguiling. I actually wrote that in ten minutes (notwithstanding the first paragraph I wrote earlier and used on Tart Cider to malign you), that’s all me. It’s typically ad hominem yet nevertheless the germ is true. To be fair, it�s all true — I�m that good. More to the point, I�m I being enough of a jerk? Can we hook-up sometime? And I would attack your argument if you made one.
My undying love,
Whitey
Quick comment: sometimes leftists come here posing as conservatives, trying to bait us into showing red skin and horns or something, then having failed, fortunately they leave.
I’m thinking perhaps MWW is here… eek!
Kate:
I think it’s time for a good old fashioned burning–er–I meant BANning.
Probably some fat ugly broad that wouldn’t get a second look from Alfred E. Newman. Let her spout, she/he’s probably just getting her jollies off here because of a little jealousy of our hostess’ obvious attributes.
Yes, that sounds like MWW, with all the bogus, malicious racism charges and the jealousy against Kate being good-looking…
If this is MWW, maybe the following will make her shut up: does MWW have some kind of bizarre lesbocrush?
I don’t want to feed this side thread, but I do wish to note that though I did use dictionary.com &c a few years ago, I particularly mentioned answers.com because it aggregates multiple dictionaries and thesauri, and things like Wikipedia, and Google, all into one convenient result page. So, for example, answers.com will tell you about Small Dead Animals too, even though it’s not in any dictionary (yet 😉 Anyway, I think y’all might really like it; sorry for sounding like a salesman.
Go to Western Standard for the link:>>>>>
What the Media Would Have Said
Had Katrina Hit While Clinton Was Prez
Craig Newmark has a wickedly hilarious piece on how the media would be treating the situation if Katrina had hit and Bill Clinton were president. Excerpting from it is impossible; you won’t regret it if you read the whole thing!
Posted by The Eclectic Econoclast on September 7, 2005 at 12:58 PM
Obsessed and White has obviously studied with the great Dr. Noam Chomsky .
The dazzling brilliance of his words are just too much for we mere dullards.
His intellect is beyond our (ken). There’s a word for you to look up , Tony.
Unfortunately, you give the general public,( in the United States, and this country, too- more intelligeance than they really have.) I know plenty of people who NEVER read a newspaper,(or anything else). The only ‘news’ they get off the tube, is while changing channels. (And a lot of them speak-and understand- NEITHER of our ‘official’ languages. These people are so dumb, that they actually believe what the politicos tell them- and they have lots of ‘special interest groups’ to tell them how to vote.
Cal, thanks for mentioning the Great Bloviator, Dr. Chomsky.
For hilarity, the chomskybot can always be invoked:
http://rubberducky.org/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl
“Suppose, for instance, that this selectionally introduced contextual feature is not quite equivalent to a descriptive fact. It appears that any associated supporting element is to be regarded as a general convention regarding the forms of the grammar. It may be, then, that a descriptively adequate grammar is rather different from an abstract underlying order. Note that this analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of features suffices to account for the levels of acceptability from fairly high (eg (99a)) to virtual gibberish (eg (98d)). By combining adjunctions and certain deformations, the systematic use of complex symbols is unspecified with respect to the extended c-command discussed in connection with (34).”
It says something, with out making any sense.
Noam Chomsky sucks. He was imposed upon students, including myself, at UNBSJ. First, I had to watch “Manufacturing Consent” (ironic he’d claim the MSM is right-wing), then a commie econoprofessor of mine made me read stuff he wrote as if it were fact (also had to read Linda McQuaig and all sorts of -exclusively- leftists, too). Then the commie prof actually brings the Chom in in person… somehow I had the instinct to stay away, as fortunately, it wasn’t required we endure that ubermoonie…
Mc, gee, the Chomskybot sounds eerily like Tony Big Word Guy… 🙂
What a friendly and tolerant arena this is. I may have been less tolerant. Very likely I would have zapped white oppresion promptly, ignoring any possible value, due simply to a high unpleasantness reading. Tilt! 73s TG
Heh, good one Stephen 😉 Funny though how the more one gets into the hard sciences the less one sees of the likes of Gnome Chompsky. Perhaps that’s because, in engineering for example, no amount of waxing eloquently will prevent your bridge from falling down if you got it wrong.
Judging by the relatively low level of damage to the petrochemical infrastructure (as designed) and the speed with which plants were shut down and then restarted, it would appear that in areas where for-profit market-based engineering is at work, the systems run fairly well. Too bad the army corps of engineers at-home work is funded by government instead of the insurance industry.
Perhaps we should pay a bit less attention to the emoting artists and ambulance chasers, but that’s not so good for the media, because it doesn’t capture eyeballs and therefore doesn’t sell advertisements.
Human nature. But what else do we have?
I think it would be a good idea to just ignore the trolls. And if they become offensive then just ban ’em, which Kate certainly has a right to do. But if this were my post I would never ban ’em unless they became *really* offensive to my readers — foul language, recism, inciting, etc. Banning ’em from a blog like Kate’s would be a feather in their little pointed hat. Just don’t reply. Getting replies is how they get their jollies. People like these idiots hate to be ignored. So, ignore ’em.
“Opressed and white” makes my skin crawl; “obsessed and white” would be more like it. This is one creepy dude.
Tony, it’s easy to look up words if you’re using Mozilla/Firefox and you install the Dictionary Search extension. Double click, right click, done. You are using Firefox, aren’t you?
For an example of how untrustworthy the media is check out this story about the bridge shootings in New Orleans:
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=1868
Did police shoot eight Army contractors walking across a bridge in New Orleans? Or did they shoot five or six looters on the bridge? Did the police kill four of them or only two? Whichever it was, the media has reported several variations of this story within two days and no one yet knows the true story.
I have been using Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.5 (before it was even Firebird). I was simply trying to help out by noting that the 11 characters commonly known as “answers.com” is an easy to remember great way to look up aggregated definitions, and things like that, by anyone, with any browser, without further ado. It’s bad enough that I brought it up off topic to begin with, the last thing we need is a plethora of suggestions for platform-specific alternatives.
Tim R. has provided us with proof that the MSM is no better than, and may even be not as good as, the blogosphere.
As I said many times, the MSM is becoming increasingly irrelevant as a source of timely, accurate information. Speaking of which, what the hell actually happened on the bridge in Nawlins? Sounds kinda like an incident in Roswell, NM, in 1947 to me… perhaps there’s a weather balloon involved somehow?
I would again submit that is the beginning of the end for elitist media dominance and the beginning of citizen-dominated newsreporting. Eventually it’ll be people like ourselves who will publish the newspapers everyone buys in the AM on the way to the daily grind…
Come on, envision it… oui, c’est possible…