Great summary of recent events from the DC Trawler:
The joke was on everyone as the Sherrod chainsaw howled to life. She announced that Fox News was just using her as a “pawn” to “take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.” She dragged out the wheezy old canard that all opposition to the policies of our glorious Leader Of Color are due to racism. And the true motivation of Andrew Breitbart? Why, nothing less than the reinstitution of slavery. Once Shirley Sherrod is out of the way, there will be nothing to stop Breitbart from using his giant mechanical spider to kidnap the President and reboot the Confederacy.
I was always a fan of the spider.
What Sherrod says during the remaining fourteen minutes of her celebrity is doing a lot more damage than anything she said on that videotape. Moral of the story: do your homework before you stick a glow-in-the-dark statue of someone to your dashboard. I have a suspicion the only figure in the Sherrod saga who took the time to understand her, or even read the full transcript of her speech, was Andrew Breitbart.
Indeed. Desite all the shrieks of “Eeeeeeeeeeeeevil!!” mortared at Breitbart from the left, he turned out to be right not to apologize, and every time Sherrod opens her mouth she confirms it.
UPDATE: The original Breitbart story, which I don’t think I’ve linked till now, has some words that ring especially true in the aftermath:
But the new media will not be silenced. It will not allow for the main stream media to propagate hateful and hurtful lies in order to save the Democratic Party from the toxic choices it has made over the past few years. And by bringing up race, and demanding a zero tolerance of racism, the left, and the NAACP in particular, has opened itself up for scrutiny.
Judging from the hate levelled at Breitbart since, the gander doesn’t seem to like the goose treatment.
{ 74 comments }
That is lie. Shirley Sherrod never said that Breitbart wanted to reinstitute slavery or that he had a giant mechanical spider. The Daily Caller is a big fat liar with its pants on fire.
Oh, you think that might have been some hyperbole. Are only right wing bloggers allowed to use hyperbole? You think maybe some of the things that Shirley Sherrod said to the media might have contained a little hyperbole? She was very pissed at the slanderous treatment she got from Breitbart and Fox News. Slander for which they refuse (except for Bill O’Reilly) to apologize.
Now they think the remarks that Shirley Sherrod said, after she was fired because of their false slander, can be spun to ex post facto justify slandering her in the first place. This just lays bare the total lack of moral character of the people who keep writing and blogging in a desperate attempt to justify violating the 9th commandment.
Get your hate on, mike.
Sorry I can’t get to YouTube at work, but there IS video from Anderson Cooper 360 where Sherrod plainly states that Breitbart’s motivation in this is “to send blacks back to the time of slavery”.
That is categorically NOT a lie.
If Sherrod wants to be pissed at someone, she should start with Vilsack and go up the chain of command from there, and you know damn well where that ends. Obama knew damn well that she was going to be fired over this and if he gave a shit about her, he, of all people, should have been the one to demand to see the whole video.
How about you check out the video, eh, Mikeca? To quote:
You guys certainly are dense. Shirley Sherrod never said anything about a giant mechanical spider in that video.
The fundamental issue here is that Andrew Breitbart bore false witness against Shirley Sherrod with the video he posted on his site which led to her being fired. He claims that he did not know it was false when he posted it, but he has refused to apologize for bearing false witness against her and he is now trying to use statements Shirely Sherrod made after being fired to justify his sin.
Andrew Breitbart is an unrepentant sinner who lacks moral character and common decency. Those who try to defend his actions have lost their moral compass.
He told the truth, mike.
Yours,
Wince
Slow golf clap Dave, slow golf clap. When discussing the behavior of Brietbart what “the left” is saying is irrelevant, whether Sherrod is a flawed human being is irrelevant. You are essentially seizing on personal failures of Sherrod to excuse the behavior of Brietbart. This is called “the ends justify the means”. It directly compromises your personal integrity.
The most interesting, but not surprising element of this story to me is the lengths people are willing to go to to excuse behavior they are constantly accusing “the left” of engaging in. Pot and kettle.
Sheesh. If anyone deserves an apology, it’s Andrew Breitbart, for all the lies mikeca’s crowd is throwing at him, not to mention Sherrod claiming he wants blacks back in chains. Have they no decency at all? I guess that answers itself.
These people aren’t just hateful, they’re also incredibly stupid. It wasn’t Breitbart or Fox News that got Sherrod fired, it was the NAACP. They produced the video, they had the full video, they denounced her. The incompetents at the Obama admin then fired her.
Then we got an incredibly stupid explanation that the “context” cleared her, when it very obviously doesn’t, which the left happily ran with. But if you read the original Fox News article, it’s already known FROM THE CLIP that this is part of a larger story of overcoming her racial prejudices in favor of Marxist prejudices. That not only wasn’t exculpatory, it wasn’t even new.
I really, really hope she actually sues Breitbart. Discovery is going to be fantastic.
He told the truth, Nate.
Yours,
Wince
Quote Mikeca: “That is lie. Shirley Sherrod never said that Breitbart wanted to reinstitute slavery or that he had a giant mechanical spider.”
Quote Kevin D.: “How about you check out the video, eh, Mikeca? To quote:
“Because I think he’s like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That’s where I think he’d like to see all black people end up again.””
Quote Mikeca: “You guys certainly are dense. Shirley Sherrod never said anything about a giant mechanical spider in that video.”
The lesson here: Mikaca maintains the moral high ground because Sherrod didn’t mention anything about a giant mechanical spider.
I’m not usually one for personal attacks, but I think this is warranted: Mikeca, you’re being an obtuse idiot.
Most importantly, he thinks he told the truth. And if he thinks he told the truth, even if he is wrong, he isn’t lying and can’t be bearing false witness. mikeca and Nate are trying to carry water for some really bad ideas. Your buckets need bottoms, guys!
Yours,
Wince
No, Brietbart has shown a callous disregard for the whole truth. I watched him on Fox. His excuses for releasing an abbreviated video and for ignorance of the contents of the whole video were hilarious.
His “source in Georgia” set him up. Instead of deservedly burning his source, he set him up as some kind of potential martyr invoking the spectre of Joe the Plumber. And doubled-down on his attack. Please.
I like how insisting on integrity and honesty has become “carrying water for the enemy”.
Since Sherrod is such a horrible woman and the NAACP and Obama Administration are incompetent, therefore Brietbart is not irresponsible, he hasn’t been defending distortions of the truth. Yeah, *that’s* ironclad logic right there.
The “edited” (it’s actually excerpted, not edited) video isn’t substantially different than the full video. I have yet to hear any coherent explanation of how the rest of the tape contradicts anything in the excerpt.
Hey, maybe if you work at the federal government you shouldn’t give speeches talking about the racist things you did, even in the context of overcoming your racism. You know, if you don’t want to be fired. And if you don’t want to be thought of as brimming with racial bile, maybe you shouldn’t claim your critics want black people back in slavery.
Breitbart sure is owed a lot of apologies. No doubt he’ll get his right after the Tea Party and Trent Lott.
Oh, Brietbart is owed an apology by many, to be sure.
He also deserves to be blacklisted as a source. Especially by conservatives.
Next week on Dean’s World: Gavrilo Princip, actually a national hero since the US and its allies won World War I.
Heh, well I can see Breitbart has succeeded in sticking the left where it hurts. Their hate has caused them to abandon all reason.
I think I’m going to link him as often as possible going forward. He’s a modern-day hero for taking on these hatemongers, and deserves support from all reasonable people who want to end racism.
The fact that you automatically assume *I’m* on the Left because I disagree with you only demonstrates that you’re the one who seems to be abandoning reason.
Search and replace Brietbart with Moore and I wonder how many posters on left-wing blogs have said the exact same thing? What makes you any different then them?
Wince, you either have become very forgetful in your old age or you are being deliberately obtuse.
I already explained this to you at length.
The more you post, the more you expose your lack of moral character and basic understand of right from wrong.
> No, Brietbart has shown a callous disregard for the whole truth. I watched him on Fox. His excuses for releasing an abbreviated video and for ignorance of the contents of the whole video were hilarious.
I see. So it’s that he released an abbreviated video and was ignorant of the contents of the whole video. That’s not bearing false witness, Nate. It’s jumping the gun.
> His “source in Georgia” set him up. Instead of deservedly burning his source, he set him up as some kind of potential martyr invoking the spectre of Joe the Plumber. And doubled-down on his attack. Please.
I’m unfamiliar with this. I don’t watch Fox and generally avoid video. Do you have a link handy, or better yet a link to a transcript?
> I like how insisting on integrity and honesty has become “carrying water for the enemy”.
That’s a good idea, not one of the bad ideas I think you both are carrying water for.
> Since Sherrod is such a horrible woman and the NAACP and Obama Administration are incompetent, therefore Brietbart is not irresponsible, he hasn’t been defending distortions of the truth. Yeah, *that’s* ironclad logic right there.
Sherrod is not horrible. She is racist, but not especially so, and she has such a great mitigating excuse that we can declare her “not guilty of racism because her father was killed by a white man and the all white grand jury would not indict.” It’s like racism in self-defense, to draw an utterly ridiculous analogy which should still give you an idea of what I’m driving at. Having seen Sherrod in the video and hearing her voice, I think we would like each other fine as long as we avoided discussing politics or I was very careful. And I would try the first very hard and then the second very hard.
But that does not excuse Breitbart. It does mean that if he claims Sherrod is racist he is not distorting the truth.
The NAACP, on the other hand has a problem which reduces it’s effectiveness. They are playing the race card against people who disagree because of policy, not race. They also don’t know how to advance colored people who are not Democrats. Instead they tend to kick them out of the movement. That’s bad tactics and it’s bad strategy and it’s bad grand strategy.
But that does not excuse Breitbart. It does mean that if he claims the NAACP is racist he is not distorting the truth. And his clip was excellent evidence that the NAACP is racist and the remainder of the clip does nothing to change that.
The Obama Administration does seem to be broadly incompetent.
But that does not excuse Breitbart, either.
Breitbart should have waited for the whole video. That was irresponsible. It was a very typical irresponsiblity in the news media. You do best by keeping the story fresh, because your customers want fresh, and yawn and ignore old news.
The following does not have links. I have not had the time to do a good comment with links. It’s on my to-do list.
From the context I have – including the NAACP site and quotes from NAACP members and supporters – he is not wrong about the NAACP. In support of their measure someone said something like “David Duke thinks the Tea Party people are his best friends”. They have invoked the KKK in other ways. They associate the Tea Party with various white supremicist groups, even though they would not allow me to associate the Democratic Party (or the Peace Movement or the NAACP) with either the white supremicists or black supremicists or a very wide variety of Jew Haters or the wide variety of Stalinists which support those movements. The NAACP on it’s own web site repeats as true the Lewis and Cleaver charges which at best are unsupportable, but which, if you examine the evidence, you will decide are most likely false. It turned out he wasn’t wrong about Sherrod either, since she was not his point.
And it turns out that Sherrod still is racist. Not as racist as she was before her Damascus moment, but still racist. Worse, though, she is more Marxist after her Damascus moment. Historically speaking, Marxists are more dangerous than racists. Nationalists are more dangerous than Marxists, but just because nationalism was thought of first. During the time after it’s rise, Marxism has been the most dangerous ism of all.
From where I sit, it is you and particularly mikeca who are “defending distortions of the truth” and mikeca is actually distorting it.
Yours,
Wince
Like most of your arguments, I don’t think it’s correct. When it comes to political argument I almost always think you should stick to physics.
Yours,
Wince
mikeca wrote,
You guys certainly are dense. Shirley Sherrod never said anything about a giant mechanical spider in that video.
The whole giant mechanical spider is a joke reference to “Wild, Wild West”. That’s not serious.
I’m listening to the frothing and foaming over this. All I can say is, “Get your hate on”.
> The more you post, the more you expose your lack of moral character and basic understand of right from wrong.
mikeca, you are escalating. It’s not working. You aren’t on the moral high ground. You are in the mud, slinging it.
Yours,
Wince
This was the video interview in question, sorry I’m not sure how to access a transcript: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4288023/racial-double-standard-in-white-house?playlist_id=86924
I know it may come as a shock, and is a rather antiquated way of doing things, but my primary opinions regarding Breitbart haven’t come from blogs or news stories, but watching him in several interviews regarding this whole affair, as well as the original videos in question.
I’m not taking sides in this debate, but I’ve noticed this trend: for 8 years I defended George W. Bush, who I voted for twice. This made me a right-winger. Now if I ever defend Obama or support any of his policies, even though I didn’t even vote for him (I voted McCain) I’m a leftist. It’s common. A very human failing, and I’ve probably fallen prey to it myself, making a discussion about someone’s motives rather than what they’ve actually said. Maybe we could all do better at that.
Man, you are dense. Did you read what I wrote. The next sentence says:
Is hyperbole too big a word for you?
Hyperbole is a rhetorical device in which statements are exaggerated. The mechanical spider was hyperbole. My paragraph calling the Daily Caller a liar was hyperbole, and I think some of Shirley Sherrod’s statements are a bit of political hyperbole too.
There, now, perhaps this thread can be a learning experience for you.
As I said in the other thread, Breitbart handled your problem acceptably. He put a correction right below the headline, as I said, and he floated a comment over the video, as you said. That’s two corrections. You are escalating because he did not correct this in the manner you prefer. That’s childish, not principled. I think there are excellent arguments that his method of handling this shows MORE journalistic integrity than yours, NOT less. I am willing to admit yours might be better, but these arguments are so good I don’t think you are defending the high moral ground. At best you are in a fog and think you are on top of a hill. I will give the arguments below. I alluded to them in our thread, but did not spell it out. I would be surprised if you were not familiar with them and, if familiar, disappointed if you did not apply them in this case.
Breatbart said he didn’t edit the video. Editing includes titling. One of the ways the internet has improved journalism is that we like access to the full quote. If Breitbart edits or retitles the video he is making things worse not better.
If I have an unknown source I would rather have everything they provided out there, without editing and have the emphasis in the commentary.
In addition, in the internet world people often keep the original and add a correction, to preserve the history of the event. That’s good. My personal policy generally limits editing in this way, although I have in some cases I have deleted comments I decided were too inflammatory. Your method screws that up, and is no good for Brietbart. He’s too high profile. For him to erase history like you want is a bad idea.
Breitbart handled this in an acceptable manner, keeping the video as presented to him.
Yours,
Wince
> Hyperbole is a rhetorical device in which statements are exaggerated.
Some kinds of hyperbole are extra inflammatory and insulting. As hyperbole, “bringing back slavery” is one of those. It makes things worse. As hyperbole, calling people liars also makes things worse. As hyperbole, giant mechanical spider is funny. It adds lightheartedness. It makes things better.
> Man, you are dense.
Did you measure him using a giant graduated cylinder? Did you place him in it with a giant mechanical spider? That is so cool!
Yours,
Wince
As I have explained to you before, Andrew Breitbart bore false witness against Shirley Sherrod, false witness that got her fired. Andrew Breitbart claims he didn’t know it was false at the time he posted it. If that is true, he acted in reckless disregard for the truth. Any person of good moral character knows that you don’t post that kind of inflammatory accusation on the web without first verifying it. After the information was found to be totally false (and I have pointed out to you exactly what part of it is totally false), Andrew Breitbart refuses to even apologizer to her for posting false information that got her fired.
Andrew Breitbart is an unrepentant sinner.
> As I have explained to you before,
I replied both in this thread and in that one.
> Andrew Breitbart bore false witness against Shirley Sherrod
Nope. To give false witness he must be lying. Can you prove his mental state?
> false witness that got her fired
Unknown. You haven’t verified this. She does seem to be a racialist loose cannon, and the Obama Administration gets faster and faster on throwing these people under the bus. Any excuse means this excuse was not the reason. All the spokesmen we have heard from may be spinning this, and the original memos have not been published. By your argument, you are remisss in not tracking them down. This is the internet, right?
> Andrew Breitbart claims he didn’t know it was false at the time he posted it.
True.
> If that is true, he acted in reckless disregard for the truth.
False. He said he didn’t have the whole video, and the statements given and the response to them were very important and should have been exposed, even with the wrong or incorrect context. Suppression of important information is also reckless disregard for the truth.
> Any person of good moral character knows that you don’t post that kind of inflammatory accusation on the web without first verifying it.
False. I know dozens of people of good moral character who don’t know this. I also know dozens of people of good moral character who believe this is false, because they feel perfectly justified not to follow the rule. Many of them believe that you do a reasonable amount of looking and, if you can’t find it, you are OK. Breitbart said he made a good effort to find the original, didn’t he?
> After the information was found to be totally false (and I have pointed out to you exactly what part of it is totally false),
If most of it is true, which it is, the video does not lie, it’s mostly true, not totally false.
>Andrew Breitbart refuses to even apologizer to her for posting false information that got her fired.
Well, do you know his mental state? If he believes it’s 100% the NAACP and Administrations fault, it would be morally wrong for him to apologize.
My advice is to stick to physics, mike, or deescalate. Rapidly. You are in a foggy swamp, perched on a small hillock, not the moral high ground. That tickling on the back of your neck is spanish moss, not fresh air.
Yours,
Wince
This is the stupidly defense for lying.
In the video posted on Andrew Breitbart site Shirley Sherrod says “Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm”. A simple Google search will show you that Chapter 12 bankruptcy was added to the legal code in 1986.
In big block letters at the beginning of the video it says:
“On July 25, 2009 Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack appointed Shirley Sherrod as Georgia Director of Rural Development. …
Ms. Sherrod admits that in her federally appointed position overseeing over a billion dollars she discriminates against people due to their race.”
With a trivial google search Andrew Breitbart could have verified that the events described in the video could not have happened while Shirley Sherrod was a federal employee and the text at the beginning of the tape had to be false. It was the accusation that Shirley Sherrod admitted to discriminating against a white farmer while a federal employee that got her fired, and that information was false.
Andrew Breitbart at minimum displayed reckless disregard for the truth in posting these inflammatory accusations. Since he refused to even apologize half heartily, it is clear he didn’t care whether they were true to not.
Making inflammatory accusations with reckless disregard for whether they are true or not is bearing false witness.
mikeca,
> This is the stupidly defense for lying.
No, it’s not. Your response is the “mikeca lacks imagination and critical thinking skills” response. There are an infinite number of ways for Breitbart to have been mistaken, and therefore, not lying. Many of them, BTW, involve a strong and blinding emotional attachment to a particular story. Like the story you seem to have a strong emotional attachment to – or the story I seem to have a strong emotional attachment to.
This is incredibly common. Smart people do it all the time. But their rationalizations sound really good.
It’s also a nice out for you. In case you are, you know, wrong.
> A simple Google search will show you that Chapter 12 bankruptcy was added to the legal code in 1986.
A simple Google search that you think to make. Easy only in hindsight, mike. Frankly that’s the kind of argument I would expect Adrian Monk to make. In fact I just saw an episode where a date like that was the turning point when he solved the crime. It requires specialized knowledge. Totally obvious after the fact and completely opague before then. You lose this one, big time. Lack of imagination.
I bet this was some talking point you read, not realizing how stupid the talking point was because you were so thrilled with the brillance of the deduction.
> With a trivial google search Andrew Breitbart could have verified that the events described in the video could not have happened while Shirley Sherrod was a federal employee and the text at the beginning of the tape had to be false.
Already refuted.
> It was the accusation that Shirley Sherrod admitted to discriminating against a white farmer while a federal employee that got her fired, and that information was false.
You located the administration’s memos! Please publish! Otherwise the only accurate statement is that we don’t know why the administration fired Sherrod.
> Andrew Breitbart at minimum displayed reckless disregard for the truth in posting these inflammatory accusations.
Not with that video clip. Too damning on the face of it. It’s a long clip. Lots of available context right there. Worse by far than anything Trent Lott said.
> Since he refused to even apologize half heartily, it is clear he didn’t care whether they were true to not.
You are guessing his motivations and you don’t have a crystal ball. He could have an understandable hatred for half hearted apologies. He could have spent so much time criticizing false apologies that he refuses to make one unless he feels it. That would be devotion to the truth.
He could also be a self-righteous jerk. Ever know anyone who behaved like a self-righteous jerk?
You have been trying to read Breitbart’s mind the whole time. Do you have a revolutionary discovery to share? Please, please, is there a giant mechanical spider, an inflatable car and a genetically engineered stand up comic involved! I’m so excited!
> Making inflammatory accusations with reckless disregard for whether they are true or not is bearing false witness.
True. Are you making inflammatory accusations with reckless disregard for whether they are true or not? It’s a serious question, not a joke this time. You haven’t shown that Breitbart was.
Look, if Breitbart was spending all his effort trying to get the original video and failed, he may easily have decided he spent enough time on due diligence and published. Have you seen the bags under his eyes? I blame lack of sleep.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
I think it’s fair to judge Brietbart by his own standards. On his Fox interview, the implication was that the NAACP audience laughed at a comment because of racism. Of course I could repeat the same comment in a crowd of scrawny geeks, women, service folks, etc and tell a similar anecdote and get the same result. But no benefit of the doubt or charitable reading, it’s *racism*! How are we to know there *is* a farmer’s wife? Er, source in Georgia?
I find it amusing your defense is based on him being merely incompetent versus malicious. Taking this for the cause, given how he *responded* to his incompetence leads me to the conclusion that anyone who takes something coming out of his mouth at face value in the future is going to ultimately find themselves the fool.
> On his Fox interview, the implication was that the NAACP audience laughed at a comment because of racism.
Which was how the NAACP approaches comments (and signs) it doesn’t like. Which was Andrew’s point. Did you know that they said a picture of Obama as Hitler was racist? No way!
I’d say it was a somewhat cogent critique of Obama’s corporatist philosphy. Mussolini would be better. Do you think people would get the reference? OTOH, Mussolini never cared about race, and Obama did embrace Jew Hatred in the form of Reverend Wright for twenty years, so Hitler might be the better choice.
Anyway, it shows people think Obama is President. Lampooning Presidents as Hitler is an old tradition around here. So traditional you could even argue that not lampooning Obama as Hitler would be racist. Since Mussolini is viewed as Hitler’s junior partner, you could even argue that lampooning Obama as Mussolini was saying Obama played second fiddle to Hitler and therefore is even more racist.
> Of course I could repeat the same comment in a crowd of scrawny geeks, women, service folks, etc and tell a similar anecdote and get the same result.
Yes, but we don’t stigmatize other forms of bigotry like we do racism, so no one would care. This is wrong of us. Racism get overemphasized and other forms of bigotry under emphasized. This has been a common theme of mine lately. It would be nice if there were an N Triple A P organization, where the third A is All.
> But no benefit of the doubt or charitable reading, it’s *racism*!
Yes, that’s Breitbart’s point, and mine. Glad the three of us agree. Of course we are picking different people to be charitable to. Some of us pick more people than others.
> I find it amusing your defense is based on him being merely incompetent versus malicious.
It is not, and I don’t think he was incompetent or malicious. I think he was right. I’m mainly proving that mikeca is taking an unjustifiably hard line against Breitbart. Lots of people are taking unjustifiably hard lines against Sherrod, too. But we are being too easy on Jealous, the NAACP and the Administration.
> Taking this for the cause, given how he *responded* to his incompetence leads me to the conclusion that anyone who takes something coming out of his mouth at face value in the future is going to ultimately find themselves the fool.
You are much much better at arguing than mikeca. You are more careful. But not enough. I’m not sure why you would unreasonably narrow this to Brietbart. If it appears in the media don’t take it at face value in the future! Other shoes will drop.
I’m such a broken record.
Yours,
Wince
Andrew Breitbart has told us what his motivation is. He wants to be remembered as the guy that brought down the institutions of the left. He is a warrior fighting for what he thinks is some great cause. As we know, the first casualty of war is truth.
Andrew Breitbart knew what he was doing when he posted this video. If Andrew Breitbart was a human being with a thread of decency in him, he would have apologized. He is a warrior fighting in some great battle against some imaginary evil. Warriors don’t apologize for the collateral damage.
Whatever evil Andrew Breitbart imagines he is fighting against, it is an undeclared war that only exists in his mind. He is an an unrepentant sinner.
> Andrew Breitbart has told us what his motivation is.
Not in this case. Dude, you are just repeating yourself.
> He is a warrior fighting for what he thinks is some great cause. As we know, the first casualty of war is truth.
The first casualty of taking an analogy literally is often your argument. In this “war” which is fought with words, truth is a weapon, not a casualty.
> Andrew Breitbart knew what he was doing when he posted this video.
What he said he was doing was criticising the NAACP, not Sherrod. Apparently you think your mind reading device is more accurate than his own self report of his own motivations.
> If Andrew Breitbart was a human being with a thread of decency in him, he would have apologized.
I already covered this. Now, if you are a human being with a thread of decency in you, apologize for ignoring me. See. It’s easy to demand an apology. If you don’t think you should apologize, an apology is a lie. I thought you didn’t like lies.
> He is a warrior fighting in some great battle against some imaginary evil.
The match of the left through our institutions is not imaginary. It is evil. You probably think it’s good.
> Warriors don’t apologize for the collateral damage.
Stop slandering warriors. They apologize for collateral damage all the time. Do you apologize for collateral damage? If so, your credibility awaits your phone call. As do those warriors.
> Whatever evil Andrew Breitbart imagines he is fighting against, it is an undeclared war that only exists in his mind.
Still mind reading? Look, progressivism is the American Facism. Do you know how Wilson and FDR treated their enemies? Thinking badly of the left is entirely principled. The left is contrary to the American experiment which emphasizes the individual over the collective and the wisdom of the common man over the wisdom of the elites.
> He is an an unrepentant sinner.
I’ve no doubt. I haven’t repented of my unknown sins. Have you repented, mikeca?
Yours,
Wince
This gets to the heart of the matter.
You think it is ok to post false information about someone on the web that gets them fired, if by so doing you are exposing some imagined racism.
There are no escape clauses there for racism.
Your hated of the NAACP has blinded you. You have built a facade of imagined excuses to hide Andrew Breitbart ‘s moral failings, but not everyone is fooled by the facade.
You think it is ok to post false information about someone on the web that gets them fired, if by so doing you are exposing some imagined racism.
Ok, mikeca…
You’re such an amazing person, capable of acting perfecting at every moment that I can only bow down before you.
Won’t you please share some of your amazingness with me?
> You think it is ok to post false information
No, I don’t. I said that.
> about someone on the web that gets them fired,
Which you have not demonstrated.
> if by so doing you are exposing some imagined racism.
Not imagined. Real.
> There are no escape clauses there for racism.
I’ve covered the “escape clauses”. It’s not false witness if it’s true. It’s not false witness if you think it’s true. You have lost the argument, mike, because you don’t understand morality.
> Your hated of the NAACP has blinded you.
I don’t hate them. You can’t read my mind either.
> You have built a facade of imagined excuses
It’s called the benefit of the doubt. Ever heard of it?
> to hide Andrew Breitbart ‘s moral failings
I’ve admitted his moral failings.
> but not everyone is fooled by the facade.
It’s not a facade. It goes deep. Don’t you know me any better than that?
I already said that Brietbart should have found the original video. I already said I thought it could have been handled better.
Now, here is a question. Where do you stand on the “false witness” given by Al Gore, James Hansen and the East Anglia crowd? Where do you stand on the “false witness” given against Bush? Where do you stand on the constant “false witness” that members of the press, media people and ordinary people (like you) do all the time?
You talk about context! The bigger the context the more people you have to condemn for false witness.
Now here is the weird thing. You have never complained about this before. Only about Breitbart. That’s odd. You suddenly get “false witness” religion about Breitbart. Maybe this is just a talking point for you. How could you suddenly care this much about false witness and never before? I don’t know. I can’t read your mind. But with all the false witness in the world you pick this instance only. How do you explain this?
Oh, and by the way my questions aren’t always rhetorical (that last one wasn’t) and I don’t remember you answering them. I try to answer yours. There was a partial answer to one I hadn’t finished above, and I may take the time to do a complete answer for you.
Here is the truth. The Obama Administration is at fault. No reasonable person would expect Sherrod to have been fired over that video. Particularly that fast. That’s exculpatory evidence. Why don’t you mention it every time you write about Brietbart? Isn’t your failure to do so false witness by your standard?
If I followed your own method of accusation, you, personally, do almost nothing but give out false witness, here on this blog, and especially in the Sherrod threads.
But I don’t think you bear false witness. I think you are incorrect. You aren’t trying to understand the people you disagree with, which is a Dean’s World norm. I have been very patient with you, and finally I started having fun. But you are unable to address the simplest arguments about the nature of false witness and responsibility, merely repeating yourself over and over.
Look, you are a physicist, right? Can’t you tell physics stories that illuminate things for us? You are in academia, right? Can’t you bring us wonderful stories from that world, not just repeat yourself? Take Arnold. He is not the most understanding guy in the world. You’ve read what he says about Islam. Yet he and Aziz get along fine. He has given Aziz the benefit of the doubt. Aziz has given him the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve extended repeated little olive branches, little benefits of the doubt to Sherrod, the NAACP and you. Maybe not the Obama administration. Where are your olive branches? Where are your benefits of the doubt?
Tell me, can you name any of the principles that Brietbart might hold dear? Any at all? This is a challenge. Are you up to it? Show me that you are Dean’s World material.
Yours,
Wince
So let’s talk about false witness, due diligence and the Obama Administration. Sherrod’s bosses have her phone number. They can call her and she’s going to answer. (In fact, she did!) There may be a policy that all press inquiries must be forwarded to the public relations department, like there is where I work. But there is no policy that boss inquires must be answered thus. So, Sherrod’s bosses get this information and don’t do any checking at all. No Google searches. No calling Sherrod.
That’s odd. They all pass around this information without any due diligence. But this isn’t a press issue. There isn’t a 24 cable news cycle which turns old new stale faster than a speeding bit stream. This is H.R. This is wrongful termination lawsuits – which are a lot easier to win than slander or libel.
I’d have to say that Sherrod’s firing was 100% the fault of the Obama Administration. And mikeca must be really steamed. Because when they passed around that information without checking they were bearing false witness in a way that got someone fired. And it was even easier for them to check than it was for Breitbart. In fact, Sherrod tried to tell them and they wouldn’t listen.
I wonder what unprincipled jeremiad, what holy war mikeca thinks the members of the Administration are fighting, that they should behave like this.
I’m sure he is going to accuse them mercilessly.
Yours,
Wince
The Obama administration deserves part of the blame, but the Obama administration main error was mistaking Fox News for a real news organization that would not put a story like this on the air without first verifying its accuracy.
You have never demonstrated that.
I have watched the whole original video. I see no evidence of racism. The Obama administration and the NAACP both changed their mind when they saw the whole video. The white farmer and his wife, who are suppose to be the victims of this discrimination, don’t think Shirley Sherrod is a racist and consider her a good friend.
You really need to explain why so many people, including the alleged victim, cannot see the racism.
I have pointed out to you several time that some of the large block text at the beginning of the video is false. When I view the whole video I see no evidence of the racism Andrew Breitbart and you keep talking about, and either do lots of other people, as I explained above.
The false text at the beginning of the video and the clever editing made the racism claims plausible. When the video is viewed as a whole, it is just not plausible. Even the victim can’t see the racism. If you want to continue to pretend to see racism, go ahead, but don’t expect anyone to believe you.
> the Obama administration main error was mistaking Fox News for a real news organization that would not put a story like this on the air without first verifying its accuracy.
You don’t have your facts straight. Fox only reported this story on the air after the other networks. Perhaps you should just say the Obama administration main error was trusting any news organization. Of course they could have just … asked Sherrod. Which is … um … common HR practice.
Is it possible for you to make a poorer argument, mike?
> You really need to explain
Not right now, I don’t. Not to you.
It’s your turn to explain.
Two things.
Can you name any of the principles that Brietbart might hold dear? Any at all?
Just to be fair, I’ll give you four principles Sherrod might hold dear.
1. Rich people should not be able to take advantage of poor people.
2. Black people should work together for their common good.
3. Poor people should work together for their common good.
4. The historical deprivation of black people in this country must be addressed.
Sound pretty good, don’t they? Those are, perhaps, the kind of principles someone would be proud to hold dear?
Your turn.
Where are your vehement accusations against the Obama administration? Their duties and responsibilities were greater in this case than Breitbart’s. But they made the same false accusations. They did even less work to verify them than Breitbart. And yet, it was even easier for them to get the truth.
Go on, mike. Make your accusations as vehemently as before.
I want to hear you rant about the Obama Administration. I want to hear you name Breitbart’s principles.
Stretch, mike.
Then, maybe it will be my turn again.
Oh, and hey, remember my request that you apply something personal once in a while. Draw a conclusion. Tell a story. Make a poetic allusion to a grand physics issue. Tell a joke. You can use lighthearted hyperbole if you like. It’s easy. Do something other than repeat yourself.
Yours,
Wince
On the other hand:
It is interesting that you are willing to imagine all kinds things not supported by any facts to justify Breibart’s actions and refusal to apologize for them, but your imagination totally fails you when it comes to Lewis and Cleaver.
Would that have something to do with their political party?
I believe FoxNews.com was the first non-blog source to run the story. There may have been some local TV news channels that picked up the story, but as far as I can see, the Fox News channel was the first to run the video.
That’s because you can’t. This is the core of all your arguments and it is just empty rhetoric. You have been repeating this accusation of racism against Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP all over this discussion, and you can’t defend it.
All your arguments are vacuous.
This is empty speculation. You can’t read Shirley Sherrod mind, and I am not going to try to read Brietbart’s. I would refer you to this interview with Brietbart to get some insight into his motivation and beliefs.
I did, in my first post in this thread. It seems to have gone right over the head of several of the people in this thread who proceed to attack me for my hyperbole. Thankfully, you did not.
You all realize, I hope, that Fox News did NOT cover the Breitbart/Sherrod story until AFTER she was fired/resigned. No video till AFTER she was canned. And furthermore, when they did start talking about it, they were defending Sherrod and ripping the White House and the NAACP apart for their treatment of her.
mikeca,
> your imagination totally fails you when it comes to Lewis and Cleaver.
I have already (although not here) pointed out that both men are elderly and may have misheard what was shouted. Did that the first day that old story broke. And see below.
This is a new argument for you. Very good.
> I believe FoxNews.com was the first non-blog source to run the story. There may have been some local TV news channels that picked up the story, but as far as I can see, the Fox News channel was the first to run the video.
I believe you should read Nicola’s comment. I didn’t know that they broke this after the firing. Now you have to blame the White House for believing Breitbart. That’s even worse, those terrible ninth commandment breakers! I await your black hearted hyperbolic rant against the White House and the DoA.
I really do await it. Type it out. Do it in your own style. Hit Submit. Should take you maybe three minutes.
> That’s because you can’t. This is the core of all your arguments and it is just empty rhetoric. You have been repeating this accusation of racism against Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP all over this discussion, and you can’t defend it.
> All your arguments are vacuous.
I can. I have in fact mentioned some of my reasons above. Did you read it? I have explained many things. Most of my arguments are better than all of yours. To make the claim that I am making vacuous arguments when yours are worse is not a good idea. It’s like a temperature below absolute zero!
Physics reference!
I may make a long post about this racism. It will take time. I’ll have to look up some links. I can do the stuff in this comment with just my own head.
It’s your turn to explain, mike.
> This is empty speculation.
Speculation, yes. Empty, no. I have reasons for believing that she believes those things.
> You can’t read Shirley Sherrod mind,
It’s clear I know this. That’s why I said “might”.
> and I am not going to try to read Brietbart’s.
When did this policy change occur?
> I would refer you to this interview with Brietbart to get some insight into his motivation and beliefs.
You are repeating yourself. It isn’t helping you here. Why does Breitbart want to destroy the institutional left? What are the principles he “might” be following? You don’t have to believe the principles you state are completely correct. I, for example, believe that there are other principles which may override the ones I gave for Sherrod.
Come on, mike. I just imagined why Lewis and Cleaver could think they weren’t lying. Here’s a couple more:
1) They were so sure they were going to hear racial epithets they actually heard them even though they weren’t hurled. There is a reason eye-witness testimony is considered so unreliable.
2) Someone said, “Did you hear that?” (Not meaning the n-word. Meaning something non-racial.) Someone else said, “Were they screaming the n-word?” (Not having heard it.) A few minutes later everyone was completely convinced that people had been shouting the n-word, and they were outraged. This sort of thing happens all the time. There are reasons the police question people separately. Because people, even with no malicious intent, simply by trying to understand what happened, will agree on a story. We like stories. We crave narrative.
This is pretty easy. People do it all the time for their allies. You can do it, too.
It’s your turn, mike. I’m not asking you to read Breitbart’s mind. I’m asking you to state some real principles he might hold.
> I did, in my first post in this thread. It seems to have gone right over the head of several of the people in this thread who proceed to attack me for my hyperbole.
It doesn’t work to use lighthearted hyperbole when you have been ranting with black hearted hyperbole for days – unless people can see your face or hear your voice or you use a smiley. I can’t blame them.
> Thankfully, you did not.
I’m afraid I can’t take credit for this. I thought you were going off the deep end when I read you calling the Daily Crawler a liar. I just didn’t want to address it.
Yours,
Wince
As far as I know, Bill O’Reilly showed the video on his Monday evening show and demanded that Shirley Sherrod resign. He, of course, has apologized for this. She may have already resigned by that time, but apparently Bill O’Reilly was unaware if she had.
Wince, your argument is:
Andrew Breitbart was mislead by his source about the time frame. Posting the false information about the time frame was not a lie because Breitbart didn’t know it was false at the time. You rationalize away Breitbart refusal to apologize for this error arguing that even if the time frame is wrong, the video still shows that Shirley Sherrod is a racist.
The Obama administration officials don’t think the full video shows racism. The white farmer who is suppose to be the victim doesn’t think the video shows racism. Even Bill O’Reilly apologized for showing the edited video and calling for Sherrod to resign.
This racism seems to be like the emperors new clothes. You need received wisdom to see it. You claim to have great arguments, but ordinary mortals just can’t see them.
I say the emperor has no clothes.
mikeca,
Your summary leaves out so many important points that it is useless, although I suppose you would prefer vacuous. I can refute you by leaving out all your points, too. If you are going to castigate me for vacuous arguments don’t make them yourself.
I suppose the only thing that would suck more than a vacuous argument would be a black hole argument.
Physics reference! (Also false. In general, any gravity well for an astronomical body larger than the earth would suck more than a sea-level vacuum.)
You still haven’t censured the DoA and the Obama Administration (and for that matter the NAACP) for doing exactly what you accuse Breitbart of doing, only worse.
You still haven’t given me any examples of possible principles motivating Breitbart.
And last, try to have some fun here. Be playful. Play is how humans learn.
Yours,
Wince
mikeca,
New challenge, if it’s easier for you. Give our full argument. From both threads. Don’t leave anything out, since we are likely to disagree on what’s important.
No, that’s way too much work.
New info, for me: Chris Matthews supports Breitbart by noting an important fact. One that I missed.
The redemptive part of Sherrod’s story was not left out.
That false witness charge is looking very shabby. Andrew said this:
“Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help.
If we were trying to show that Ms. Sherrod was “boasting” of discrimination and were prone to editing the tape as evidence, wouldn’t we have cut that part out?”
Gee, maybe that’s why there was no apology.
Yours,
Wince
P.S. And by the way, this shows exactly why Brietbart CANNOT re-edit the video to remove the text that offends you. The Matthews memory hole is wrong. It’s a typical tactic and it’s wrong. It’s disinformation. It’s devious. It’s deceptive. You don’t airbrush your mistakes or those who provided you the video, just like you don’t airbrush Trotsky out of the photos. It’s always better to keep the original video if you can.
mikeca,
Oh my goodness! I just realized that you have to rant about your own false witness about my vacuousness! You edited my arguments, leaving out important information that was very easily available. No Googling required! Just cut and paste from only two threads! That’s your formula, mike, not mine! Aren’t you required to rant about yourself and then apologize?
Of course, it could be that your formula is no good. You could apologize to Breitbart, instead.
Yours,
Wince
I have pointed out to you in great detail what part of the tape is the false witness, and this is not it.
I see you are still running around without clothes or have all your arguments disappeared beyond the event horizon?
What is your thing with physics references?
“The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.” VIA The White House
> What is your thing with physics references?
They are fun! Aren’t you a physicist? Even if I got your profession wrong, I’m trying to get you to be playful.
> I have pointed out to you in great detail what part of the tape is the false witness, and this is not it.
No, it’s some of the exculpatory evidence you consistently ignore.
Yours,
Wince
Where’s that rant against your repeated, unrepentant, unapologized false witness against Fox News, mike!
Don’t forget the apology. Isn’t it awful to be exactly like Andrew Breitbart, except with fewer excuses?
Yours,
Wince
Either Bill O’Reilly was unaware of this, or his show is taped sometime before it is broadcast.
> I have pointed out to you in great detail what part of the tape is the false witness, and this is not it.
It’s supporting and exculpatory evidence. You know, one of the many, many, many kinds of evidence that you like to gloss over. BTW, I remember your great detail. It’s the titling. I also remember that I have made several arguments against this particular point.
Some of my arguments are able to refute your point all by themselves. Others must work in concert. Generally speaking you haven’t bothered to refute my arguments, in fact you usually don’t bother to do anything other than repeat youself.
I will mention one. If he thought it was true, it isn’t false witness. He said he thought it was correct. He admitted he was mistaken. Mistaken means, “I thought it was true, but I was incorrect.” He then corrected his mistake twice on his website. This is utterly devastating to your arguments. It means that you are completely wrong – unless you can give evidence he was lying about his own mental state. You haven’t done that. You haven’t given any evidence I can remember that he was lying about his mental state. It’s hard to prove perjury in court, even though we can be pretty sure some people are in fact lying on the witness stand. You haven’t tried at all.
Generally getting new evidence or arguments out of you is like pulling teeth. It’s really hard for me to consider my arguments vacuous when you are unwilling to address them.
Frankly your non-existent arguments against mine are the sort of things which are better described as vacuous or emperor’s new clothes. One shred of evidence is generally more than you are willing to provide.
Make some arguments mike.
> Either Bill O’Reilly was unaware of this, or his show is taped sometime before it is broadcast.
What do you mean by this?
Yours,
Wince
Are you criticizing Bill O’Reilly for calling on Sherrod to resign after she resigned? It still means that Fox News didn’t say anything on video until after she resigned.
Which means that Fox News didn’t snooker anybody with their video coverage. Hanging your hat on FoxNews.com – which according to both Fox News and Sherrod spent all day trying just the sort of due diligence you have been demanding from Breitbart – is pretty, well, hateful of you, mike.
Do you hate Fox News, mike?
Yours,
Wince
We have gone over this ground before. If Brietbart had been mislead by his source and this was a good faith error on his part, he would have offered some form of apology. Instead he has basically just carried on, claiming the error about when this incident occurred makes no difference, and the full tape shows the same racism as the edited tape.
I don’t see the racism in the full tape. The Obama administration officials don’t see the racism in the full tape, but they did in the edited tape. The alleged victim of the racism doesn’t see any racism in the tape.
Brietbart is not acting like man that committed an honest mistake.
On Bill O’Reilly’s Monday show, he showed part of the edited the video, and then demanded that Sherrod resign immediately. If she had already resigned, why would he be demanding that she resign?
In addition to what I said above, it was known at the time that the issue of the video was going to be on Fox on Tuesday. Brietbart had been tweeting and emailing people late in the day Monday to advise them that the story of this video was going to break on Tuesday.
I do not think Fox News is a reliable news source.
> We have gone over this ground before.
Yes, we have.
> If Brietbart had been mislead by his source and this was a good faith error on his part, he would have offered some form of apology.
I’m sorry, mike. But that is not a reason to believe Breitbart was lying. It has nothing to do with whether or not he was lying. Just imagine that as proof of perjury in a law court. It wouldn’t wash. Frankly this makes no sense at all. I’m sorry, but this argument is so poor that when you originally made it, I thought it was just a different complaint against Breitbart, and I didn’t even really argue against it. In any case, as I say below, if he is right, there is no need to apologize.
> Instead he has basically just carried on, claiming the error about when this incident occurred makes no difference, and the full tape shows the same racism as the edited tape.
The full tape does show the same racism as the edited tape. I believe it. I’m not lying. I may be wrong, but I’m not lying. So therefore I don’t see any reason to believe Breitbart is lying.
Sorry, mike. No false witness.
BTW, no goalpost moving! You can’t keep jumping back and forth that first it’s the titling (which he corrected) and then it’s not.
> I don’t see the racism in the full tape.
I’m not surprised.
> The Obama administration officials don’t see the racism in the full tape, but they did in the edited tape.
The Obama administration is racist in the same (relatively minor) ways as the NAACP and Sherrod. They play the race card against their political enemies in ways they won’t against their friends. It’s similar to the way you refuse to apply the same standards to your friends, Obama, NAACP, Sherrod and other news sources that you do to your enemies, Breitbart and Fox News. I’ve tried accusing you. I’ve tried hyperbole. I’ve tried challenging you. You won’t try to apply your standards fairly in even the smallest way.
Since the Obama administration is just the same as the NAACP and Sherrod, how could they see the problem?
> The alleged victim of the racism doesn’t see any racism in the tape.
That’s not true. I’m one of the many victims, and I see the racism. Breitbart is one. He sees it. The entire Tea Party are victims, and many other Tea Party people see it as well. Fox News is a victim, but they are careful not to mention it. They hope to get interviews, you see.
> Brietbart is not acting like man that committed an honest mistake.
You are right. He’s acting like a man who got almost everything correct, and who corrected what he got wrong. This is because he … got almost everything correct, and corrected what he got wrong.
It’s not our fault that you can’t figure this out and won’t look at the evidence. Shoot, you’ve been hounding me to explain, but Breitbart has been giving excellent explanations the whole time. I saw that video Nate linked above. I saw an honest man giving a good explanation. The truth is that you hate Breitbart so much you won’t believe anything he says. You probably won’t believe it if I repeat it to you, and you probably will discount anything I say if you realize Breitbart said it, even if I come up with in independently.
I have tried to get you to make a good faith effort to show that you could consider Breitbart’s arguments honestly and with good faith. You won’t.
> If she had already resigned, why would he be demanding that she resign?
Why do you care? Clearly he was not a fault. He was too late. Otherwise it’s just a typical mistake made by a news person.
> I do not think Fox News is a reliable news source.
I think you hate them. You can’t say a single positive thing about them. Either admit it, or find something positive to say. I’ve pointed out that they were trying really hard to let Sherrod tell their viewers her side of the story, but she wouldn’t talk to them.
OTOH, if you said there were no reliable news sources, that would be totally believable. I’ve learned this from personal experience. Neither Hollywood nor the news can be trusted to get the details right. Both are too concerned with the narrative (because a good story is what we want) to worry about the details (because we don’t care about them as much).
Yours,
Wince
P.S. Asking a news source to be reliable is like asking McDonalds to serve filet mignon. You aren’t paying for that. McDonalds does relatively good food, but fast and cheap. News sources go for good, interesting stories fast. Accuracy is not something their customers really care about. Interesting, fast and accurate. You can only pick two.
I am very busy this weekend with family visits, so I don’t have much time to reply in detail until next week.
You have presented no evidence that you are a victim of the alleged racism in this tape. The emperor has no clothes.
I don’t trust them, but that is not the same thing as hate.
I have a PhD in astronomy. Many, many years ago when I worked at a major observatory I can remember reading NYT articles announcing some discovery in astronomy. Almost every time we could not make head or tail out of the NYT article. We had to wait for a preprint of the technical paper to make sense out of it or call one of the authors for an explanation.
Now if any paper in the country could afford a science writer that knew enough science to get the details right, you would think it would be the NYT, but apparently they couldn’t, at least not in astronomy.
In the 1980s I was so mystified by an article in the San Jose Mercury News, I actually called up and talked to one of the reporters. The article was about a drug bust of a plane arriving from Panama at an airport in Almeda, CA. Now the problem with this story is there are only 2 airports in Almeda. A tiny airport for small private airplanes and the Almeda Naval Air station, which at that time was still an active military base. The drug bust was suppose to be a large cargo airplane, and it seemed to me the only airport in Almeda that could handle a plane that big was the Naval Air Station. The article however just said an airport in Almeda. The reporter told me that he and other reporters had asked that very question at the press conference, but that the federal law enforcement refused to answer. The story was written saying just airport in Almeda, because that is all they were told. In this case law enforcement did not want the military base mentioned in the stories on the bust, and the reporters were very deferential and reported only what law enforcement wanted reported.
Many reports sometimes report just what their sources want reported, and nothing more. This is especially a problem in political reporting. Everyone is anonymously leaking information to their reporter friends trying to spin the stories being written. I don’t put much trust in anyone’s reporting based on anonymous sources.
The interesting thing is the idea of objective journalism is a relatively recent development. For much of American history there was no such thing. Newspapers were biased and made no effort to hide it. There was no difference between editorials or opinion pieces and news. I think it was the shift to the advertising based revenue model for the news business that lead to the development of object journalism. Advertisers did not to advertise in a left wing or right wing newspaper for fear of offending someone.
Fox News is trying to bring back the era of explicitly biased news. They want to be the right wing news channel. Of course they are not up front about this. They try to pretend they are being objective.
The only news programs I can really stand to watch is the PBS news hour. On controversial issues they usually get people from both sides that can actually explain their position. This is far more informative than listening to political operatives shout talking points at each other, which is all you get on Fox, CNN or MSNBC.
“This is far more informative than listening to political operatives shout talking points at each other, which is all you get on Fox, CNN or MSNBC.”
Actually, all you get are the *reporters* shouting talking points at each other. Except for the talk shows, the subject of a story rarely, if ever, gets more than a sentence fragment. Then the rest of the reporting time is spent while the viewers get to watch the perfectly coiffed microphone-holder tell us their own perspective.
Mike, I agree with you about the idea of objective journalism being a relatively recent development. However, the idea that the shift to the advertising based revenue model for the news business lead to the development of object journalism is, I believe, misplaced. If you look at old copy from some of the most partisan newspapers from 100 to 150 years ago, you will see that the advertising based revenue model has been around for a very long time.
mikeca,
Your long story about the news was fantastic! Bravo! I think Dean should put it on the front page. I cannot tell you how happy I was to read it.
> I am very busy this weekend with family visits, so I don’t have much time to reply in detail until next week.
I have a lot of work myself, so I can appreciate this.
> You have presented no evidence that you are a victim of the alleged racism in this tape.
Don’t have to. Still refutes your point, which was about whether the victim saw racism. It doesn’t matter whether there is racism or not to invalidate your point. All that matters is whether someone perceived he was a victim of racism.
Whether or not there actually is racism is a different argument. Actually both evidence and argument for that has been been presented – by Breitbart, in the links which started this story and in the video of him which Nate linked. He’s quite good at explaining. Since I mentioned this above, I have presented evidence. You glossed over it. Are you skimming? Sometimes I miss things when I skim.
Do you hate Breitbart, mike?
> The emperor has no clothes.
No, you are finally starting to clothe the man. It’s very nice. He has an ugly figure.
> I don’t trust them, but that is not the same thing as hate.
Yes, but you then give a long, very well written story which shows you don’t trust any news source except the PBS news hour, when they have a show where experts from both sides explain themselves. You then mention several other networks you don’t trust.
There are several things odd about this.
First, you mention several networks other than PBS (which I have found to be quite untrustworthy, myself) with opprobrium. Yet they all have segments which bring opposing experts together and let them duke it out. Fox does this all the time. I used to watch a lot of Fox, MSNBC and other cable news shows. There is considerable variation among the talking heads in how capable they are at moderating a group of experts. This is also true on PBS.
Second, it is odd that you don’t see how untrustworthy an argument among a panel of experts can be. It’s far to easy to manipulate, or worse, to fail due to random chance. First, it is easily biased by the selection of the experts. If malice, or much more often random chance (people’s calendars are hard to coordinate around the news), causes the expert for one side to be more capable than the other, it biases the discussion. Second, it is easily biased by the selection of the questions the moderation uses to frame the discussion. A good moderator in these forums will naturally gravitate to the controversies, because those are the most entertaining bits. But in many stories the most important information is those things on which the experts agree. And third, we have a lot of experts who refuse to work honestly. They are trying to make political points of their own, and some of them are very good at forcing their expertise to serve their political ends.
I’m not seeing why Fox uniquely earns your opprobrium. It isn’t like other networks failed to cover this story, and in exactly the same manner as Fox – only faster, causing more damage quicker, because Sherrod wouldn’t talk to Fox. Nothing did the Administration, the NAACP and Sherrod more damage in this story than their own reported words, and Fox was shut out.
I think you attack Fox vehemently because they are on the other side. I have repeatedly offered you the chance to broaden your criticisms of Fox to the entire news industry, and you have been unwilling to do so until now. Since you really don’t trust any other news source, you should mention that once in a while. It will increase your credibility on the matter.
I like Fox and Limbaugh and talk radio better than the other shows because I find them less irritating, because they agree with me more often. I think they are more trustworthy for the same reason. That’s called confirmation bias, which is a logical fallacy. Of course, and perversely, if I am correct, and they do agree with me, they are more trustworthy. I find this paradox very amusing.
By the same logic you could quite reasonably like PBS better. But you have no business attacking Fox the way you have.
> I have a PhD in astronomy.
Arrgh! Astronomy! Not physics! Half my old head remembered astronomy and half, physics and I picked the wrong half. Next time I am making an error of fact like this, please correct me.
At least my black hole example was also an astronomy reference.
Are you skimming? :) And here I was, hoping my comments were compelling, gripping prose.
I apologize for not remembering.
Now, back to your long story….
And here is where the bias towards controversy comes in! This is deliciously ironic. I agree with almost everything you wrote above, and our points of agreement are actually the most important thing about this part of the discussion, at least, yet here I am, spending all my time on the things we disagree on.
> Fox News is trying to bring back the era of explicitly biased news. They want to be the right wing news channel. Of course they are not up front about this. They try to pretend they are being objective.
Not exactly. They want to combine objective news and conservative opinion, like the Wall Street Journal. They HAVE been up front with it. This is a great business model, because we almost always get the objective news and liberal opinion business model. (BTW, most of the reasons it happens like this are presented below. mike, can you tease them out and tell us why this is the most popular business model? Bonus points explaining from a business perspective why Fox was able to break the mold and why other news source are foolish not to follow.)
Both business models require a vigorous nod to opinions from the other camp, so please don’t act like I said the Times has no conservative columnists.
In this they have actually been more successful than the WSJ. The WSJ, because of their location and the reporter pool they draw from has combined news with a slightly left-wing bias with conservative opinion.
The news in Fox News has even less left-wing bias. Most of Fox’s remaining left-wing bias is due to the problem that j-schools turn out 90% leftists – most of whom started out that way. If you want the best journalists you are going to end up with mostly leftists, because the supply is mostly leftist. The unconscious bias which is impossible to get rid of moves Fox news coverage slightly left. I think Fox has done a better job of minimizing it than the WSJ.
Fox’s opinion work (O’Reilly, Hannity, etc.) is decidedly conservative. No question.
Dean has quoted all the studies which confirm this. Fox’s news reporting consistently matches PBS’s news reporting as the top two networks.
Of course the Journolist scandal may be in the process of showing that Dean and I are entirely too trusting of the news. HA!
Yours,
Wince
The first sentence explains the second two.
Mikeca lives in an alternate universe which, not surprisingly considering his background, is accessible only to him.
You claim you are a victim of the alleged racism in this video and you don’t have to have any evidence to support that claim. You can simply make up claims and that is suppose prove something? This is a breathtakingly silly argument. Next you are going to tell me your imaginary friend was offended by the video.
> You claim you are a victim of the alleged racism in this video and you don’t have to have any evidence to support that claim. You can simply make up claims and that is suppose prove something? This is a breathtakingly silly argument.
You said that the Obama administration, the NAACP and the victim didn’t see any racism in the tape. You didn’t offer any evidence as to why the tape was not racist, you just polled some interested parties. Well, I’m an interested party and you didn’t poll me. So, to counteract your argument all I have to do is say that I saw racism in the tape. Others are interested parties and you didn’t poll them, even though they see racism in the tape.
Now do you understand why your own argument was breathtakingly silly?
> Next you are going to tell me your imaginary friend was offended by the video.
Are you saying I’m imagining all these folks on the internet who are offended by the video, or are you saying I’m imagining they are my friends?
Just look up thread, mike, for others who found the video offensive.
I have of course, pointed out that evidence of racism has been presented.
I may some day do a long comment which shows the racism in the tape as well as outside the tape. Let’s see what I can do in a short space, confining myself to the edited segment Brietbart posted.
Racist language is bound up in stereotypes. This is a problem, because sometimes stereotypes have a basis in fact. For example, African Americans are overrepresented among the customers of fried chicken restaurants. This seems to derive from the strong influence of the Southern sub-culture on the African American sub-culture. This has not prevented white racists from embracing the stereotype of blacks eating fried chicken, nor has it prevented blacks from protesting the stereotype when employed.
Similarly had Sherrod been white and had she been tasked with helping a black farmer and had she said that she could tell he was lazy and was trying to get her to do all the work, everyone would be all up in arms because that is a racist stereotype. But Sherrod evoked a different stereotype. She evoked the stereotype that whites think they are better than us. In other words, that whites are all racist. At that point she was getting all kinds of agreement from the audience. Next she noted that he was white and she really only wanted to help blacks. She decided not to follow through on her temptation, but she was tempted to discriminate on the basis of race. That’s racism. And she was still getting all kinds of agreement from the audience.
That you are unable to see this obvious racism is not to my discredit, mike.
Yours,
Wince
Another shoe drops. Sherrod is accused of the same sort of labor exploitation as ACORN – only much worse.
Marxism does not improve at a small scale.
Yours,
Wince
In addition, on the original edited video, we have Sherrod admitting that being tempted to discriminate on the basis of race is wrong,
Why admit to wrongdoing if she wasn’t doing something wrong? And why couch it it terms of race if it wasn’t racism?
Yours,
Wince
Marxism does not improve at a small scale.
Some people think they can treat others badly, tell them what to do, and expect them to do it, and actually have the job done well.
Mostly not so much.
Still, I’m not sure your commentary will find resonance with mikeca. After all, this is the guy who said the country would be better if people just paid more taxes.
*crack*
Back to work, slave!
/snark
And another shoe. The NY Times issues a correction in the matter of racial epithets directed at Congressman Lewis.
Context is still my friend.
Yours,
Wince
More context.
CosmicConservative on: Code of silence corrodes morality, puts blacks at risk – St. Petersburg Times.
Yours,
Wince
More context.
The “Mongrel” President.
Yours,
Wince
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