They all do it
September 28, 2009 11:42 am ET by Jamison Foser
If there's one thing journalists love, it's pretending that every flaw evident among conservatives is mirrored exactly among liberals.
Sure, Ann Coulter may fantasize about killing journalists, and Lou Dobbs may help spread nutty ideas about Barack Obama's birthplace, and the conservative movement may have accused Bill Clinton of being complicit in dozens of murders, but reporters will rush to assure you that there are extremists on both the Left and the Right -- and they enjoy similar positions of prominence on both sides.
Enter Slate's William Saletan, whose recent feature about the "food police" contains this whopper of a false equivalence:
To justify taxes on unhealthy food, the lifestyle regulators are stretching the evidence about obesity and addiction ... Liberals like to talk about a Republican war on science, but it turns out that they're just as willing to bend facts. In wars of piety, science has no friends.
Oh, really? Many conservatives want to stop teaching evolution in schools, to pick but one obvious example. They deny global warming, even as the polar ice caps melt away before our eyes. But liberals are just as willing to bend facts, according to Will Saletan, because ... Well, because their estimates of the budgetary impact of increased obesity may be too high.
Yeah. That's the same.
(It's telling, by the way, that Saletan doesn't feel the need to list any actual conservative falsehoods by way of comparison -- he assumes it is self-evident that both sides are "just as willing to bend facts." No need to actually compare the ways in which they do so before making that assertion.)
The other right-wing media mogul you should worry about
Palin's book and Obama's bow: a media week to forget
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
Sure would be nice to see conservatives criticize themselves a little more.
The right-wing noise machine obsession with all things liberal almost NEVER points its microscope back on itself.
And how does the conservtaive press (the other 95% of the media) respond? At best they do the same thing, only blanatly slanted, and at worst the dismiss the report as 'coming from liberal media' anyway.
It's sad how far america's critical thinking skill have fallen. It's sad that there are that many people stupid enough to buy into this tripe.
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I don't care WHAT you think, as long as you know HOW to think!
It's the logic used by the concern trolls who visit this site, you know who I mean. They pop up on a regular basis, usually "former liberals" or "moderate conservatives" who have seen the light, and realize that both parties, and all media, are bad. Since there is only good and bad, they all have to go.
These same people were very quiet during eight years of Bush, but suddenly, they're everywhere, advising the poor ignorant liberals to wake up and see that they have to.... well, it's never really clear what they're suggesting, except that the Dems finally having some power is horrible.
I have my differences with the Democratic party, and with most of its leaders, but I certainly don't have any trouble seeing that the alternative of GOP government is a disaster.
But the concern trolls have convinced themselves that they're seeing things from an unbiased perspective because they see (at least they claim to)everything as equally bad.
Which would only be unbiased if everything was, in reality, exactly equal.
I used to think like this myself. Of course I also used to be conservative. (Or at least think I was.) I first "saw the light" and landed in this school of thought. Basically, I discovered that Repubulicans (who I thought were good) were just as bad as Democrats (who, at the time, I KNEW were bad.)
I 'saw the light' again upon learning that most of the reasons I thought Democrats (liberals, etc...) were BAD, were based on lies, strawmen, misquotes, etc... And coming to appreciate the pure depth of the deception, espcially as it realtes to the myth of the 'liberal media,' not only took the curse off of the Dem's in my eyes, but at the same time made the Pub's look all the more despicable.
At the moment, the choice to me is clear and the climb is both long and steeply uphill to bring people back the light of reason and principles. And as steep as the slope is, one side (the Dem's) clearly want to go up, while the other (Pub's) do everthing the can to not only push DOWN, but to make the slope steeper, fill it with cranks, loose rocks, etc...
That being said, I can respect the intellectual courage it takes to come down on one side or the other. Misguided as they may be at least the partisan conservtaive has chosen sides. S/he may not be intellectually honest, but at least they're not being intellectual cowards. The person who takes the above position (both sides equally bad) is a coward. They are copping-out of the discussion, afraid to do the necessary mental heavy-lifting of analysis, or else afraid to offend anyone. It's a blatant cop-out. It's called 'letting the perfect get in the way of the good.' It's an excuse for inaction or indecision. It's a sign of poor management in business, and it's a sign of intellectual cowardice in politics.
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That what I believe anyway.
I generally see the concern trolls as being one of two types;
Hardcore cons who think they're more clever than they are, under the impression that they can persuade people to their side by pretending to be unbiased, and using the same weak propaganda that worked on them, or
Cons who are starting to see reality, but have a lot invested in their ideology, and have only progressed as far as being able to admit that Republicans are bad, too.Deep down, they realize they've been suckered, and try to make up for it by adopting some phony "post-partisanship" and insulting anybody who is able to see any difference in political parties.
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And, in the eyes of true conservtaives, infected me with another one!
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The Midnight Review
Mum Is The Word
This after they forward me some nonsensical email. I do research, and debunk it. I provide links to my sources in my reply email.
They're the ones who got the original, easily-debunked chain email, and forwarded it without checking out the facts and learning if it was true or not. I am the one who took the time to check the facts that they should have done, and it's me who is having knee-jerk reactions?
Snopes recently refuted the math done in one of those chain emails. The subject was the Cash for Clunkers program, and the author of the email thought that there was a direct, 1 for 1 correlation between the number gallons of crude oil in a barrel of oil and the number of gallons of gasoline that came out of the barrel of crude oil. It's not. The author also misfigured on the issue of gas savings by only figuring the savings from increased mileage for one year, like people buying a CARS vehicle will only keep it for 12 months, instead of reaping the benefits of that increased mileage for many years, which multiplies the money saved! Finally, the author incorrectly assumed that the reason for the CARS stimulus was to save gas! It wasn't. It was a side benefit but it was for economic stimulus to get people to buy cars.
Both Snopes and I debunked the email. The reply I got in return? Snopes's facts were wrong. He said he was going to send an email to Snopes and inform them to change what they said. They haven't. He was wrong, but still couldn't admit it because it ruined his party.
The replies I got were usually something about how "angry" I got, after I gave them the facts. I wasn't including commentary or insults, just sending facts or reasonable questions about the topic, and this was interpreted as "anger".
One time after I pointed out, with backup, that an item was 100% BS, a co-worker explained to another that I got really "upset" because I only liked to hear "the Democrat side of things", while he was open to hearing every side of the issue.
I found that amazing. The emails this group sent and received were completely right wing, and almost always easy to expose as propaganda, but I was closed-minded and partisan for adding some facts and reality.
But I am the one who's too angry. I am the one who's dangerous!
I got an email this spring from them decrying the Obama Administration's efforts to stop ammo recyclers from getting whole shell cartridges from the military to enable private individuals to get cheaper recycled ammo.
I did some research, and found out that the law had been passed during the Bush Administration last year. I discovered that as soon as the Obama Administration was informed about this, they determined that empty shell casings were not a threat to our national security (the reason for the law regarding military surplus), and with the help of two Democratic Senators, the ruling had been rescinded before the email ever got to me.
Their reply? That I wanted to restrict their gun ownership anyway, so why should they believe anything I said.
They should have acknowledged that the error was that of the Bush Administration, and that when it was reported to the Obama Admin, they fixed it rapidly because it was a nonsensical rule. I don't understand why they seem reflexively incapable of doing that, but I have never gotten a 'thanks for providing us the correct info here'. They don't want the correct info. They want to stay misinformed and angry, and want to be able to claim that I am the one who is misinformed and angry, which they can only do if they stay misinformed and angry!
One guy keeps checking out the gun magazines and already owns a couple guns. When I ask him what he needs all those guns for, he tells me that I will be "running to his house when the revolution comes"...
Scary.
If I found the information on a government website, they were obviously protecting the administration.
If I watched an entire video, rather then cut ups, they argue that the person still said what they said, regardless if it was taken out of context...
Every response I get makes my jaw drop. If I conducted myself like the commentators on television, or these people I come across, I would have failed every class. II would love to write an essay for a professor, fail, and then state that they were wrong because I was only writing what I believed to be true!
Now, when conservatives want to stop teaching evolution, it's usually because they wish creationism to be taught. It's a holy war, in other words.
When conservatives claim that global warming, or global climate change cannot be caused by humans, it is because they either want to continue to be enslaved to petroleum (because it makes those at the top fabulously wealthy), or because they are afraid of change. In the case of money, at least, it is still a holy war, just a different deity.
When it comes to Coulter, Dobbs, and the rest of their ilk, it's a simple matter of greed. Again, a holy war, and this time for the same deity, the Almighty Dollar.
Out of curiosity, how many think the Democrats are now or have ever waged a holy war over the nation's health? Show of hands, please?
Actually, the way to do this is to tax production of corn syrup, not the foods themselves. And the way you do that is to undo farm subsidies for producers of unhealthy additives like high-fructose corn syrup.
But rather than acknowledge the problem and offer a solution, Saletan seems keen on making the false equivalency in order to pretend the problem doesn't exist.