Dancing with flacks
Another laughably he’s polarized/she’s polarized editorial from the Strib.
[I]f Stewart wants his “Million Moderate March” to convince conservative and liberal loudmouths to “take it down a notch for America,” he may be missing half of his target audience. According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, Stewart’s viewers are just as politically polarized as Beck’s. Seven percent of Americans say they regularly watch the “Daily Show,” while 7 percent tune in to the “Glenn Beck Show” on the Fox News Channel. But rarely, if ever, the twain shall meet. Among self-described conservatives, the number drops to just 3 percent for Stewart, but spikes to 19 percent for Beck. Self-described liberals merit a polling asterisk for Beck, but 14 percent are part of Stewart’s audience.
This partisan polarity projects beyond cable opinion shows to the broader news environment itself. Fox News’ audience is composed of 60 percent conservatives, 26 percent moderates and only 9 percent liberals. MSNBC, the anti-Fox, has an audience of 30 percent conservatives, while 38 percent describe themselves as moderates and 30 percent call themselves liberal.
The poll paints a picture not just of a society divided, but a media industry united in its desire to cater to them.
Sorry, didn’t mean to drown you in claptrap right off the bat. The term “self-described” is perhaps the only mitigating stab at accuracy in this hogwashed editorial. Polarized means extreme opposites. Jon Stewart viewers are not polarized, they’re rational. You might as well call heterosexuals the polarized opposites of homosexuals. You could as easily label symphony orchestra lovers the polarized opposites of Vikings fans.
Really, there is no limit to the absurd comparisons you could make when contrasting intellectually isolated rural/mostly elderly Fox Watchers with the clued in mostly younger mostly urban The Daily Show crowd.
Fox viewers are drawn to Fox because their minds are voids needing to be filled. The Daily Show attracts those whose heads are full, but in need of comic relief to help them deal with the horrorshow world we live in. In what possible way do these viewers reflect any kind of polarization other than the struggle of the few to remain breathlessly uninformed in the face of massive information technology dedicated to helping them find the facts?
I understand how babies are made. Does that make me the polar opposite of a fourteen-year-old Promise Keeper? Does my understanding of how Bush-Cheney roped us into a phony war make me the polar opposite of a flag-waving hockey mom sending her boys off to fight in a bloody stupid unnecessary war?
Fox viewers are the few, the isolated, the morally crippled fucks who’d rather be lied to than risk exposing their worldview to contrary facts. Yes, they have polarized themselves from normal people.
Stop telling us that makes normal people the political equivalent of the mouth-breathing right.
Stupidest fucking editorial I’ve seen in years, and that includes Washington Times content.
First they demonized the left, but I didn’t say anything because I was the first one sent to the camps.
Then they demonized the center by calling them liberals. They had to take the upper bunks at Camp Freedoms.
Then they came for the non-teabagging Republicans because what’s the point of being pure if you have to hang around those filthy, nasty 98% pure types?
And then they turned on each other because without hate, the fucktwat right has no purpose.
Like I said, worst editorial ever. The truth is out there but these assholes couldn’t find it with GPS. [more of the same from FAIR]
Rich people buy bad laws/regulations (are they the polar opposites of poor honest people?)
Wrecking the economy by gaming regulators
When money is the only consideration, businesses make terrible decisions that grossly impact the quality of your life
Texas fundies decide to go after ALL textbooks, not just their own
Another anonymous million bucks to support the stupes
Cannibalizing the mother party is not “picking up steam”
The horrible truth in every iteration will be reviewed and panned by David Brooks
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More politics:
In which Jimmy Carter reminds us why he was a one-termer
WaPost goes SCARY by refusing to consider letting tax cuts lapse for the rich but not the rest of us by instead switching gears and pushing for letting them expire for everyone (nothing advances the ball like a fight in the stands which maybe explains this poll)
Polarization is Haaretz thinking the Caspi swastikas only disturbs Jews in Sacramento
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Progs have long discussed fixing the Middle East by buying Baja California from Mexico and moving the Israelis there. Now Obama and Ehud Olmert are talking about something similar: moving the Palestinians to the United States.
Only 100,000 to start, but last I heard there were quite a few more displaced Palestinians than that, and then there’ll be the inevitable laws forcing out the few remaining Palestinians living in Israel.
Sick.
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Finally! A Tiny Revolution converts to the one true path.
I feel soooo vindicated.
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Etc.:
Virginia insists on its right to lethally inject a retarded grandmother just because they can
I know, this is just me being stupid, but why is this illegal?
Eggs (an online poll — please vote, the Vegans are winning)
Eggs (the litigation)
Dancing with flacks (and yes, she does look pregnant)
Whatever it takes to keep Wall Street ticking . . . (an econ bomb waiting to go off and off and off)
Fifty links in the folder but I’m throwing them out. This is, I think, more than enough if not too much.
I don’t really think usage would go up if they legalized marijuana. I think a few people might try it but then go back to their non-smoking ways, and I think a lot of people who had been afraid to admit to their usage would come out of the closet, so to speak, which would appear as an increase in usage. The only real usage increase would be from people who suffer through lengthy dry periods because they can’t find any. Presumably, after legalization, you will be able to get it any time you want, so those dry periods will disappear resulting in increased usage.
Absolutely superb rant, Wege. Especially this:
“The truth is out there but these assholes couldn’t find it with GPS.”
Then there’s this:
http://www.priceofweed.com/.
An anonymous survey about the street price paid by the end user.
It’s probably a fake site that feeds the DEA data banks with more info on where you are, dopers.
You appropriately call out the Strib editorial, but I found this seemingly innocent sentence to be the most ridiculous:
“This partisan polarity projects beyond cable opinion shows to the broader news environment itself. ”
They are putting Beck and Daily Show on the same plane as cable opinion shows? The last time I checked, Daily (and Colbert) are satirical comedy shows … you know … “humor?” I understand that the far-right Foxes don’t understand the concept, but nonetheless …
Neither Stewart nor Colbert shy away from ridiculing lefty ridiculousness with the same relish as the right version, it’s just that the plentiful low-hanging fruit of Beck-Fox dishonest puffery and humorless fear-baiting crowds out the competition.
The Daily Show has a slant, but it is not one of polarized political opinion as that editorial suggests. It is the opinion that bullshit stinks on both sides of the pasture, and we’re all better served when it’s exposed.
—BD
Thanks for the reminder about Jimmy Carter. I like Jimmy Carter as an “ex-President” but 30 years of not very good presidents cannot undo the fact that Carter was not defeated by Reagan as much as he was not re-elected by supporters. I doubt too many Ted Kennedy supporters voted for Reagan. I think a lot of them voted for John Anderson (an ex-Republican) who split the Democratic vote.
Reagan had that great magic trick where he took a napkin with “Laffer Curve” written on it and palmed it … and then teased it out of hand and the more he pulled the handkerchief kept growing and growing, just an endless ribbon of brightly colored fabric. Remember how great that was? You knew it was a trick but wow it looked great and made you smile.
That’s what you get when you elect an actor to public office. That’s their gig … they know how to make a cardboard cutout of a painting of a saloon look just like Dodge City in 1888.
—BD
(from yesterday’s news)
Speaking today at the American Enterprise Institute, Senator Lindsey Graham (R – SC) declared that the United States must prepare to launch a military attack on Iran, but predicted that absolute victory including a regime changing wouldn’t require a single ground soldier.
“The United States should have in mind the goal of changing the regime,” Graham declared, “not by invading but by launching a military strike by air and sea.” The attack, he insisted, would have the duel aims of destroying Iran’s civilian nuclear program and toppling the government.
Sen. Graham is one of a growing number of US officials calling for a military attack on Iran, even as intelligence officials concede that Iran hasn’t made any decision to attempt to acquire nuclear weapons and as IAEA reports continue to verify the non-diversion of the civilian program toward any military use.
And despite Sen. Graham’s predictions, a military attack would almost certainly be a precursor to a ground invasion. The US launched air strikes against the much weaker Iraqi government for a decade without successfully toppling it (and if anything giving it public cover to go after domestic opponents). In late 2008 Israel destroyed pretty much every single government building in the Gaza Strip, including police stations and universities, without toppling the Hamas government. The idea of even a sustained conventional air campaign causing a regime change on its own simply isn’t supported by the evidence.
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Lindsey Graham and similar pasty-assed middle-aged wankers chafing at the keyboards to drag the country and ANOTHER generation of brain injuries into screaming reality. Far worse than that dungeon dominatrix, but who gets arrested?
Y’know, IF — as in Gladiator, where the Russell Crowe character actually mounted up and fronted the assault during an actual war — the older men would suit up and be the first on the grill into battle, I might have a different opinion of all this. The task of the old men in many Indian societies was to reign in the warriors. To chillax, dudes, sit down and smoke the peace pipe and let’s think out all of the repercussions of this. Now it’s the old guys who are out there whipping up the young guys to paint up, get on the warhorses and kick ass. While they sit in the tent wanking off to their visions of prairie-conquering grandeur. Not a pretty picture, or sane.
The downside of that being you end up electing people like John McCain and Ollie North.
No, when we send our troops to war, the draft-age children of the Generals and Congress critters are the ones who should be on the front lines.
What I mean is “if you declare a war, you fight a war.” (new rules) If that means your immediate 2 degrees of blood relation have to be in the front brigade by law — great, I’ll take that. But we’re what-iffing on hypotheticals that aren’t even options anymore. War now is too mechanized, too remote-robotish, too high-tech.
I just basically think we’re fucked six ways to Sunday on the major issues of this time in history. Cue the soundtrack from the film version of The Road.
I’ve had The Road sitting on my hard drive for over half a year, but I just can’t fire up to watch a post-nuclear holocaust flick. Seems too much like the world we’re actually living in, imho.
I saw the film first and thought (all the way through) — “This is too literal. The book has got to be superior.” And it was. The book is a quick read and packs a real meditative punch. Doesn’t have to be read as just post-apocalypse porn, it’s more lyrical-poetic-meditative than that.
Conversely, I like both the film version and the book version of No Country For Old Men — both worthy in their own way.
Q up reality. Fuck it… one might seriously consider moving to Baltimore. Sounds as though they now have an official Frank Zappa Day.
I want to see the dungeon equipment damit! I am having these visions of Lindsey with the bar of truth shackled to his ankles alternating with visions of him jerking off to a full glossy photo of Sarah with the Taboo Goddess’s heel is in search his prostrate.
Fucking nasty man all this aggregation is taking its toll.
BTW I wonder how many of the Johns there in the suburbs of Stillwater were prison guards?
I still want to see the dungeon photos WTF! If Kristal does not make bail we should all send her 20 bucks.
Without her trade I hate to imagine how much more the world would be fucked up.
News rules republicans must pay 300 an hour instead of 150 or else….