Category: media and media people

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ideological culture media and media people Second Amendment rights

Caught in the Crossfire

There are some things people with different values just won’t “get” about their opponents. Folks who support gun bans and greater gun control just don’t “get” arguments for the Second Amendment and for “more guns” in peaceful citizens’ hands. And so, when confronted with a scholar and analyst of gun control like economist John Lott, they shy away from actually arguing with his points.

Their approach? Scattershot. Sniping. Crossfire.

Thus it was, this week, on Piers Morgan’s CNN interview show. Morgan grilled Lott in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater atrocity. Lott ably started making his case numerous times, but Morgan refused to engage Lott’s points, instead unleashing a barrage of “isn’t your positions just ridiculous?” non-questions.

The lack of engagement with ideas is astounding.

When Alan Dershowitz joined the “debate,” it only got worse. Dershowitz repeated an accusation of “junk science” without really demonstrating how the science marshaled by Lott was unsound, and engaged (falsely) in the favorite ad hominem gambit of the age: “research funded by the NRA.”

The sad thing about this is not the inability of Morgan and Dershowitz to understand Lott. The sad thing is their unwillingness to even give it a good ol’ college try. It was downright uncivilized. Dershowitz is a lawyer, so his resorting to base rhetoric in a no-​holds-​barred attack is understandable. But Morgan is allegedly a journalist, on the advance guard of history, a seeker of truth.

But Morgan is not seeking truth; his mind is already made up. Facts be damned. That doesn’t lead to good interviews.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Learning from Krugman

We often have much to learn from our intellectual opponents. But some opponents we must deal with only because they are there … in some inescapable way.

Paul Krugman, for instance, is a Nobel Laureate economist. We deal with him not because his technical work is more relevant than the work of a hundred other economists, or because he wrote a really fine essay on the law of comparative advantage. Or because some Swedes thought enough of him to give him a big award and cut him a huge check.

We deal with him because he has a column and a blog at the New York Times.Paul Krugman, economist of a different color

And for the Times he’ll commit almost any sort of fallacy or public foolishness. Thanks to the New York Post, you can read a grand demolition of Krugman’s modus argumenti. “Krugman is a most unusual economist,” Kyle Smith writes:

Others may measure their words, issue caveats, acknowledge that the research isn’t conclusive, admit that their biases influence their reading of facts. Not Krugman.… He changes the subject, ignores inconvenient evidence and plays playground bully to people he sees as ideological enemies (a list longer than Nixon’s). He blasts away at others’ work without even providing the basic courtesy of a link to what he’s talking about.…

And Smith goes on, in part to review Krugman’s new book, End This Depression Now! (turnabout being fair play, no link from me). Not surprisingly, Krugman’s advice is a Democratic politician’s delight: spend more. Lots more.

Smith’s destruction is funny, and devastating. My complaint with Krugman has long been his relentless partisanship. But Smith reminds me that we have something to learn from Krugman, too: How not to promote a cause we regard as good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Greetings, Gridlock

“If you think you have seen gridlock, just wait and watch Goldwater’s final victory.” That’s how Mark Mardell, the North American editor of BBC News, snarkily concluded his column bemoaning Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock’s resounding defeat of 36-​year incumbent U.S. Senator Dick Lugar in Tuesday’s Republican Primary.

Goldwater?Barry Goldwater

Noting that when Ronald Reagan captured the White House in 1980, George Will quipped, “It took 16 years to count the votes, and Goldwater won,” Mardell added that with Mourdock’s victory, “Goldwater has now won his campaign to purge his party of moderates; it has just taken him 48 years longer than he had hoped.”

Indeed, Goldwater helped define conservatism as favoring less government, and his 1964 presidential campaign led to a more pro-​free market GOP. But Mardell’s implication is that those who want less government are inherently unreasonable, always and everywhere the cause of dreaded “gridlock” in Washington, while those who favor ever bigger government are just being reasonable.

Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 conservative presidential campaign, proclaimed, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

“Bipartisanship has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy,” Republican Senate nominee Mourdock said during his campaign. “We don’t need bipartisanship, we need application of principle.”

Being serious and committed to restoring fiscal sanity to Washington is no vice.

And even the dread gridlock would be a welcome change over out-​of-​control spending and debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment media and media people

NBC Bears False Witness

The Trayvon Martin shooting has gripped the nation for weeks now. In my Townhall column on the subject, nearly two weeks ago when we didn’t know as much of what we think we know now, I withheld judgment on the actual responsibility for the shooting:

We know too little about Mr. Zimmerman’s state of mind before or during this tragic clash. But whether his shooting of Trayvon Martin was spurred by race or an itchy trigger finger or a hero complex or something we know absolutely nothing about, or was actually somehow in self defense, is beside the point.

The point is that our justice system ought to get to the bottom of it.

And I concluded that public reaction and a free press were doing what is required in such cases, spurring government action.NBC self-besmirched

But I need to make an amendment: Not all media are equal; some have behaved in socially irresponsible ways. NBC especially. This major news source aired George Zimmerman’s call to the police, but with a drastic editorial cut — and this sound edit pre-​disposed all listeners to think Mr. Zimmerman a racist. After an “investigation,” the network apologized.

But not on air. Those poor souls relying on NBC still may think that Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin, could think nothing but.

Shame on NBC for not apologizing on air, but in a press release. And for not apologizing to Mr. Zimmerman. And for offering no explanation of what happened. The news source’s sound edit was more than a distortion, says Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, it advanced “a falsehood.”

Poor reporting is disappointing, but the press bearing false witness is something much worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

There Goes Da Judge

Andrew Napolitano, former New Jersey superior court justice (and therefore often called “Judge Napolitano”), has been a legal and constitutional analyst for Fox News for some time. For several years now he’s hosted a nightly program on Fox Business called Freedom Watch, ending each show with a tagline: “Defending freedom, every night of the week.”

Monday night he amended it: “Defending freedom, everybody’s freedom, every chance I get.”

The tagline changed because Freedom Watch is now off the air. Fox pulled it.

Thankfully, Napolitano will still appear on various Fox commentary shows as an on-​air consultant. Hence the teeth in those parting words: “every chance I get.”

The show began three years ago as a weekly webcast video. It soon began to air more frequently, and in 2010 hit the Fox Business channel — though it should have found a place on the News channel, alongside Hannity and O’Reilly and The Five. Napolitano drove home his philosophy with a series of oft-​repeated slogans, including one of my favorites, “Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?”

Napolitano’s straight-​forward, enthusiastic and general “good guy” approach made the radicalism of his political beliefs palatable to a wide viewership.

Yes, Freedom Watch was a great show — there is nothing else quite like it on television, though John Stossel’s weekly show remains on Fox Business, and hails from a similar perspective. Both are popular as excerpted on YouTube.

A lot of folks will miss Freedom Watch, but I, for one, will keep watch for Napolitano’s future projects.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people political challengers

And the President Is …

Unless our elections are rigged, Congressman Ron Paul — like anyone else running for president — has a bona fide chance to win.

Because we regular people get to decide. It’s our votes; it’s our caucuses.

So, why does the news media keep telling us that Ron Paul has no shot?

A brand new Public Policy Polling survey shows Paul leading the pack in Iowa at 23 percent to Mitt Romney’s 20 percent, with Gingrich falling precipitously to 14 percent.

Queried about a possible Paul victory in Iowa, Fox News’s Chris Wallace responded, “Well, and the Ron Paul people aren’t going to like me saying this, but, to a certain degree, it will discredit the Iowa caucuses because, rightly or wrongly, I think most of the Republican establishment thinks he is not going to end up as the nominee.”

Hmmm. Ron Paul can’t win. So, if he does win, it discredits the process.

It’s déjà-​vu all over again: GOP strategist Mike Murphy said back in August that had Congressman Paul received just 75 more votes and won the Iowa straw poll “it would have put the straw poll out of business forever.”

According to a Washington Times story, “Paul could be positioning himself as a spoiler or worse.”

A spoiler? Worse? Dr. Paul is positioning himself as the next president. Which I guess spoils things for Wallace, much of the media and the Washington establishment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.