Category: media and media people

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ideological culture media and media people

Feeding the Narrative

Liberal NPR fired liberal reporter Juan Williams after he admitted on O’Reilly Factor to feeling nervous when sharing a plane with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Williams also told O’Reilly it’s important to combat prejudice against Muslims, but that sentiment didn’t protect him. Honest man, out!

Some liberals, including Jesse Jackson, have joined conservatives in blasting NPR for the precipitous dismissal.

Various commentators have also been saying, “Hey, I never did like NPR’s smug condescending liberalism, so why are my tax dollars funding it?”

There are many reasons government shouldn’t be funding broadcasting — the unfairness of forcing us to pay people to noxiously condescend to us is surely one of them.

Some hate to admit that National Public Radio is what it is. For example, Politico.com scribe James Hohmann, relaying Jackson’s support for Williams, adds: “NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for saying Williams should keep his views about Muslims between himself and ‘his psychiatrist or his publicist,’ but her remarks fed into the narrative that NPR is liberal, smug and condescending.”

Hohmann’s reluctance to state that Schiller’s remarks support that unflattering view of NPR, rather than merely “feed into the narrative” about it, is but a pretense at objectivity. Should another damning bit of evidence come up — for example, another NPR broadcast — would that, too, constitute just another incidental detail to be “fed into the narrative”?

No, Politico, let’s instead accept the obvious conclusion warranted by the abundant evidence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Alaska Misfire

The wrong man was fired.

The campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller seems to have been at least twice targeted as November 2 approached. In one case, questionable doings came to light after a reporter with CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA forgot to turn off his phone after leaving a message with a campaign spokesman. Newsroom reporters then chatted about how to sabotage Miller’s campaign — for example, by finding that “one person” among campaign supporters who is a child molester. The station claims that a recording of the incident gives a “misleading” impression.

Then we have the campaign of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Miller’s opponent, acting to kick conservative talk-show host Don Fagan off the air.

After the Alaska Division of Elections aided Murkowski’s write-in campaign by deciding to distribute lists of write-in candidates at polling places, a listener said he had now become a registered write-in candidate himself. Fagan then suggested — on-air, as part of his regular talk programming — that other listeners might want to do the same. Uh oh. The station fired him after the incumbent’s campaign threatened to sue the station for so-called “electioneering.”

Compare the two cases. It’s fine for any media outlet to push its political opinions — but not to fabricate smears. It’s fine for candidates to make any complaint they wish to media outlets — but not to coercively curdle speech they happen to abhor.

I say, the wrong man got axed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture media and media people

Sometimes a Great Reversal

After World War II, European Social Democrats — the heirs of Karl Marx’s delusional vision — broke with their heritage. They rewrote their political principles, compromising. No longer would they go for socialism whole hog; they abandoned its key feature, the replacement of markets with total government control.

This was a great moment for modern civilization. It bequeathed Europe (and, perhaps, America) a clunky and intrusive (and unsustainable) welfare states, sure . . . but that’s far, far better than Communism.

We may be witnessing a similar groundswell of ideological shift in America’s stronghold of the status quo, the media. This week the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times endorsed budgetary rules that would take power and unlimited budgetary discretion from California’s out-of-control legislature:

It’s unfortunate that automated budgeting is necessary. But it is necessary. The state must continue to invest in the social welfare of its people, but we must do it in accordance with California’s projected growth so that we do not repeatedly yank from the young, the elderly and the poor the very services that we provided only a year or two before.

This may not sound revolutionary. But, as Tim Cavanaugh put it on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run, the Times — long an opponent of spending limits — has “acknowledge[d] clearly and publicly that out-of-control spending, not insufficient tax revenue, is suffocating the Golden State.”

And that is revolutionary. Not American Founder-revolutionary, but Social Democrat-compromise-y revolutionary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people

Catastrophic Q & A

Suppose I say that the world will blow up tomorrow unless we shut down industrial civilization. I can’t really prove this. But, if you allow me certain unsubstantiated assumptions, that is what the extrapolations show.

Hey, maybe I’m wrong, but what if I’m right? To be on the safe side, all mankind better lapse into hunter-gatherer mode immediately.

If you’re not taking me seriously, well — me neither. But my unserious argument isn’t very far from the approach of certain environmentalist doomsayers, as unable to defend their theoretical house of cards as I am to defend mine.

Exhibit A: Australian journalist Andrew Bolt’s interview with a leading environmental alarmist, Tim Flannery. Bolt does his best to pin Flannery down with respect to some of the wilder claims that Flannery’s made in his career. But it’s no go.

When Bolt points out that Flannery once claimed that Australian towns like Brisbane might “run out” of water by 2007 or 2009, his interviewee first sidesteps the question and then says it’s a lie that he ever said any such things. So Bolt comes up with a quote from Flannery’s writing that belies the denial. Flannery now “responds” by noting variability in rainfall and trying to promote a lecture series.

And so on. Bolt is determined to hold Flannery to account for his alarmism; Flannery insists on persisting with flimsy flimflam.

Read the whole thing. It’s awfully illuminating. (And boy, do I mean “awfully”!)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people too much government

Boring Ferry Story?

Government has a notorious record of wasting money when it engages in regular business activity. One reason is that governments tend to pick up businesses that fail, and deliver goods at prices that often have nothing to do with costs. So of course government businesses lose money. They’re set up that way.

But it’s worse than that.

Three years ago I told the sad story of Washington State’s ferry system for Puget Sound. For over a score of years, ferry system managers have been unable to provide a comprehensible audit, unable even to account for cash flow.

Now, a series of stories for Channel 5 in Seattle, by Susannah Frame, has exposed the operation for wasting “millions and millions of taxpayer dollars,” according to Ken Schram, a popular Seattle-area pundit who works for another news service on another channel.

Schram claims not to know “why every news organization in the Puget Sound isn’t outraged.” He sees this as a non-partisan issue, and is befuddled by lack of interest from news consumers. And he’s especially annoyed by Washington State’s governor, who blew off the news story, saying she couldn’t keep track of everything. Schram calls her arrogant, and goes further: “I find her lack of regard and respect for taxpayers offensive.”

I’m on Schram’s side, except I wonder: Is this really all so inexplicable? Maybe everybody just knows, deep down, that government businesses never will run as well as real businesses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people political challengers too much government

The Story of Our Time

The election season is heating up and challengers are making headway. So, here comes the name-calling by media hot-heads. The boiling point was quickly reached when Keith Olbermann called a Tea Party candidate a liar and a traitor, declaring that the challenger should be arrested and jailed.

This is, sadly, not unexpected.

In the 20th century, what was once considered radical and extremist became mainstream. The common sense wisdom of America’s founders was thrown out for imported philosophies like socialism and “dirigisme.” The leading intellectuals at the start of the century, many educated in Germany, took home doctrines of limitless government and added a can-do American spirit, creating Progressivism and then the New Deal.

Big Government went from the thing most feared to Our Friend.

Then, in England, a socialist noted that this alleged Big Brother could be awfully cruel, the opposite of fraternal. An Austrian economist explained how even well-intentioned government, if unlimited by a rule of law, could send us all down the road to serfdom. A backlash began.

Though increasing numbers of intelligent, concerned citizens began to doubt and then decry the growth of government, government continued to grow. And establishment opinion called supporters of limited government “extremists” and “radicals.”

Now, as government spending lurches beyond all sanity, it’s the establishment that appears extremist.

Expect a few skirling kettles to boil over this season. And then boil dry — and empty. Like the establishment’s big government philosophy itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people too much government

Liberty and Licenses

Oh, no. We’re being drowned — in alternatives.

Remember the good old days, with three choices for national broadcast news, Walter Cronkite and whoever the other guys were? Plus the local paper and the New York Times? Sure, there were other avenues. But if the big boys happened to have a unitary government-approved perspective on something, you could battle uphill for years with hardly anyone noticing your particular flag.

Then cable arrived. The Internet. Zillions of webzines and blogs. If you want an alternative to whatever the Official View is, you don’t have to look very far or for very long. It’s harder for the powers that be to burble baloney unchallenged.

Big, big problem, all this competition, right?

It is according to Michigan State Senator Bruce Patterson. He wants to license journalists the way Michigan licenses plumbers and hair dressers.

From what I can tell, the state can’t be trusted with protecting us from bad hair cuts, let alone tell us who’s best suited to toot out the news. But Patterson says we’re being overwhelmed by all the media outlets. Poor us! So we need guvmint — which always puts the truth first, of course — to tell us good reporting from bad.

Think about this: The traditional job of journalism is to provide a check on lying politicians. Now politicians will vet those who get the privilege to criticize them?

Puh-leeze.

Patterson, we’ll take a pass.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency media and media people

Christie Crushes Crazy Media Crotchet

Whether or not Governor Christie fully succeeds in slashing spending and taxes as they need to be slashed to revive the New Jersey economy, he’s pursuing his mission the right way: head-on, without a lot of obfuscatory politician-speak.

The latest evidence of forthrightness comes in response to a reporter’s question, the video of which has gone viral. The reporter is puzzled and perturbed by the governor’s terrible tone in dealing with the legislature. He wants to know whether Christie thinks that “this sort of confrontational tone can increase your odds in getting [a trimmer budget] through the legislature?”

Christie says he was sent to the governor’s mansion to combat bigger government, higher taxes, more spending, not to soft-peddle his views. He’s going to push for lower taxes, lower spending. “Now, I could say it really nicely. I could say it in the way that you all might be more comfortable with. Maybe we could go back to the last administration where I could say it in a way you wouldn’t even understand it. . . . When you ask me questions, I’m going to answer them directly, straightly, bluntly, and nobody in New Jersey is going to have to wonder where I am on an issue. . . .”

Meanwhile, aides standing in the background look like they’re about to pump their fists in the air, as perhaps taxpayers are doing right now all around New Jersey.

All I can say is: Keep up the good work, Governor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Smart Reaction?

If you balk at having more and more of your life run from the nation’s capital, you’re stupid.

Or, so blares Joe Klein in a Time magazine online article, “Too dumb to thrive.”

See, “smart” Americans understand that a trillion in federal “stimulus” spending can only do “good.” Apparently dumb Americans are the ones telling pollsters that the “stimulus” money is being wasted.

Klein says the biggest part of the stimulus is a tax cut for most, meaning more money in their paychecks. But ignorant Americans focus on the huge debts we’ll have to pay back . . . in higher taxes.

Klein says that the second biggest portion of stimulus money went to state governments to keep our kids’ teachers from being laid off and state taxes from being raised. The notion that without the stimulus all the public school teachers would have been pink-slipped is a bit much.

As for higher state taxes, couldn’t state spending actually be cut? And not just on police, teachers and firemen?

Klein’s blithering blathering reminds me of Chris Matthews, and other MSNBC geniuses, who contend that politicians are in deep doo-doo because “people are angry and scared” and want to take their frustrations out on someone.

People are angry and scared, sure. But taking out our anger out on those responsible for destroying our wealth and freedom seems . . . well .  .  . smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

Haiti on the Hot Seat

Television theologian Pat Robertson attributes Haiti’s current woes to a two-century-old pact:

[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti. . . . They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” . . . Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other. . . .

Pact with the devil? True story??

The Haitians threw off the French long before the rule of Napoleon III . . . but, whatever. It is doubtful that any amount of thumbing through an encyclopedia before going on air would have saved Pat.

Soon after the Robertson clip we got the clip from actor Danny Glover. Glover says climate change caused the earthquake. Apparently, he was mad about the failed summit. “They’re all in peril because of global warming . . . because of climate change. . . . When we did what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens. . . .”

Hey, why not? “Global warming” causes everything! Maybe even the heated hectoring of Pat and Danny.

Where’s the common sense?

Oh, here: This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.