Posted on 10/23/2005 5:22:43 PM PDT by SJackson
Media stand on sidelines behind cloak of fairness
Fairness in the media is way over-rated. When people talk about a desire for fairness in the media, one common definition they often use is that the media should present "both sides" of an issue.
It shouldn't be hard to spot the flaw in that logic. What if there are more than two sides to some issues? Or, dare I say it, less than two?
Who came up with the magic number two, anyway? If life were always an either-or proposition, it wouldn't be nearly so complicated. Even the Magic Eight-Ball offers several more subtle responses than a simple "yes" or "no."
The idea that there are two sides to every public controversy has been reinforced with a vengeance in recent years by the color coding of the states of the union based on how they vote in presidential elections.
Wisconsin is a blue state based on its presidential voting record and the party of its governor and both of its U.S. senators. Yet, both houses of the Legislature are as red as the blood that would flow if they ever succeed in arming everyone on our streets with deadly weapons.
The simple-minded Dr. Seussian red-state, blue-state formula reduces the most complex issues of our lives to an elbows-out game of shirts versus skins. Everybody is required to pick a side and beat the other team's brains out at all costs.
One of the consequences of expecting the media to present two sides to every issue has been to set up some of the most spectacular mismatches since Godzilla battled Bambi.
Believe it or not, Godzilla is usually the one who is treated most unfairly in such clashes by the media.
Take the current battle to the death of evolution vs. intelligent design.
In the blue trunks, we have a widely accepted scientific theory that has been tested and refined over 150 years to help explain how all life changes and adapts to survive and perpetuate itself.
In the red trunks, we have the idea that life is so complicated that someone must have designed it, possibly an elderly white man with a long beard sitting on a cloud.
For the media to present those two ideas as equal is, by definition, grossly unfair.
They are not alternative scientific theories that should be taught to our children in science class.
One is a scientific theory. The other is a metaphorical children's story made up to illustrate a particular religious belief.
One has been repeatedly tested and improved upon as science learns more and more about life. The other can never be tested. That's why it's called faith.
The most unfair thing I could suggest is that it is a Republican or red-state belief that religion should be taught as science in our schools. I do not think for one minute most Republicans believe that.
Only the most extreme fundamentalist zealots really want our educational system to be corrupted in such a way. But a Republican president of the United States is actually willing to publicly support teaching fundamentalist religion in science class to pander to those religious extremists.
All the more intelligently designed Republicans who know better remain silent. That has been a problem for the Republican Party throughout the Bush presidency.
The majority of intelligent Republicans have remained silent while President Bush stubbornly pursued narrow-minded, extreme policies at home and abroad that are increasingly opposed by the majority of the American people.
It goes back to balkanizing into red and blue teams. Loyalty to the red team took priority over loyalty to long-standing Republican principles such as fiscal responsibility and avoiding pouring hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of American troops down foreign rat holes.
Even when Republicans have been willing to join in a bipartisan effort for the common good, the media are so accustomed to perpetuating the Red and Blue War they don't seem to notice.
Embryonic stem cell research has the potential to save millions of lives, both red and blue. That's why it is supported not only by Democrats, but also by Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and anti-abortion conservatives such as Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. It was even supported by the late troglodyte Sen. Strom Thurmond.
You could call that a consensus. Yet the media keep presenting the "two sides" of the controversy as if they were equal, ignoring the fact that one side is a tiny sliver of extremists to the right of Strom Thurmond and the other side is everybody else.
By dividing every public issue into two equal, opposing sides and then pounding the war drums, the media are in danger of becoming the biggest weasel on the playground - the sniveling kid who holds everybody's coats and eggs on the fight.
.......................
Joel McNally: Far-right politicians give Christians a bad name
October 8, 2005
Lutheran Pastor Jeff Wild stands before about 900 wooden crosses erected in 2003 at the Madison Christian Community to illustrate the human cost of the war in Iraq. (Photo by David Sandell/The Capital Times)
I would like to say something on behalf of Christians.
Whenever someone asks me about religion, my usual response is that I am a fallen Unitarian, which is about as low as you can go.
But anyone who has any familiarity with progressive politics is surrounded by Christians and deeply religious people all the time.
Whenever I go on a peace march, I am surrounded by Christians.
Once a month, I attend community brainstorming in Milwaukee where African-American leaders and ordinary folk get together to talk about serious social issues. It's in a church basement, and a whole lot of the people there are really devout Christians.
My wife and I went on a journey earlier this year to some of the most notorious civil rights crime scenes in this country - places like Selma, Ala., Birmingham, Philadelphia, Miss., Meridian, Miss. People we met who risked their lives fighting for American values during dangerous times were Christians in the very best sense in the word.
But there's one thing about all those Christians I just mentioned. They bear absolutely no resemblance to the Christians I read about in the media who are the apparent interest group behind narrow-minded, mean-spirited legislation introduced by Republican legislators.
The Christians I know do not promote hatred against other people. They don't oppose medical research that could save millions of lives. They don't want ignorance taught in our schools.
They still believe Christianity has something to do with loving your neighbor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the least among us.
So I think the media and politicians should stop giving Christianity a bad name.
Jim Wallis, the evangelical Christian who wrote "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the LeftDoesn't Get It," likes to point out that one out of every 10 verses in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke refer to economic injustice.
Yet politicians ignore the huge forest of biblical teachings to concentrate on a few tortured twigs they somehow twist into justification for virulent opposition to abortion or gay marriage. (The conservative religious position on gay marriage should be to insist upon it.)
Kurt Vonnegut, in his new book of essays "A Man Without a Country,"wonders why the publicly pious are so enamored of the Ten Commandments instead of Jesus' beautiful Sermon on the Mount in which he blessed the merciful and the peacemakers.
"Often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings," Vonnegut wrote. "I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"
It's been said that those who use the Bible as an excuse to pass laws against private sexual conduct that's none of their business should read the entire book instead of just the dirty parts.
Of course, reading the Bible doesn't do any good if people can misinterpret poetic language that encourages love and compassion for one another as somehow advocating the exact opposite - hatred and intolerance.
It is an injustice to good-hearted Christians everywhere that politicians today define moral issues in the most small-minded, divisive ways imaginable.
Instead of focusing on the major moral issues of the day - oh, little things like reducing the growing chasm between bloated have-it-alls and desperate have-nots - politicians play Sneetch politics.
"The Sneetches" was the Dr. Seuss book in which Star-Belly Sneetches whose bellies had stars considered themselves morally superior to Plain-Belly Sneetches who had none upon thars.
In bill after bill, Republican legislators attempt to chip away at a woman's right to decide whether to have a child if she becomes pregnant or to torpedo the pioneering stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin that could revolutionize medical treatment forever.
Instead of looking out for the long-term health and welfare of Sneetches everywhere, politicians seek short-term advantage from intentionally inflaming petty differences between Star-Belly Sneetches and Plain-Belly Sneetches.
Wisconsin has just become the national repository for all approved stem cell research lines. All the other states spending millions to attract such research would kill for the distinction. Legislators here are still trying to sabotage stem cell research.
State Senate Republicans just passed a ban on human cloning, something that isn't going on in Wisconsin anyway. But hidden in the bill was a ban on therapeutic cloning, which could be used to extend stem cell lines for medical research.
Stem cell lines in a Petri dish are not human life. They will never become human life. On behalf of the most virulent religious extremists, politicians are still trying to shut down this life-saving research.
The majority of Christians who really care about human life should demand politicians stop taking their name in vain.
Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a weekly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: jmcnally@wi.rr.com
For your politics list?
ok... I took a deep breath and feel better now.
"explain how all life changes and adapts to survive and perpetuate itself."
Heck, not only does it survive and perpetuate itself, it causes itself to spring into life in the first place. Something out of nothing, just a little bit at a time.
Republican legislators attempt to chip away at a woman's right to decide whether to kill a child if she becomes pregnant.
The Jeff Wild idiot makes me rejoice we jetisoned the ELCA years ago.
Well....after all....it's the childs fault...
Catholics are the far right of Christianity? We should be more like Dr. Seuss? Or Vonnegut?
He sure wants to redefine Christianity. He's talking about "Christians" who do not believe the Bible or most if not all of the standard Christian doctrines. Pay them no mind. Their just part of the "Ministry of Truth" on the left that tries to lie and redefine everything that ever was.
I'm sorry, science is also faith driven. Just cause science is more tangible doesn't change that. That's why they're called scientific THEORIES and not scientific LAWS. Science and the left make the very dangerous assumption that science is always right, easy to test and offers explanations to everything.
Consider the science of the solar system. For almost 2000 years there was the unshakable belief that the earth sat at the middle. There were mathematical formulas that tested and reaffirmed this belief. It took years before Scientists decided something was wrong with their model.
There are other examples of how science has been wrong. But my point still stands: science is also taken on faith and faith is a characteristic of religion.
I don't care how many times they say it: "Secular" is not the opposite of "Religion". It IS possible to worship a government (that's what communists do.) And it is possible to worship Science (this is what Athiests often do.) The irony is that this is a religion of "no god". BUT IT'S STILL A RELIGION. Just because it disagrees with the Christian religion that doesn't mean it's not a faith based series of it's own. (I think the opposite of "Christian" would not be someone who doesn't believe in it, but someone who believes the OPPOSITE of it ("Satanist" anyone?)
Athiests like to play this game of "I'm not religious" to kick religious people out of the public sphere.
Okay tough guy, prove that there is no god. (Oh, well science doesn't prove things, it only disproves things...) Very well then, prove that there is no god. (Well, I can't do that - I just know that he doesn't exist.) So you take it on FAITH that there is no god? That sounds like religion to me.
Yes, interesting. But probably not for the evolution list. Perhaps for Junior's archive. Perhaps not.
Typical liberal foaming at the mouth from the Peoples Republic of Madison (Wisconsin that is).
In the red trunks, we have the idea that life is so complicated that someone must have designed it, possibly an elderly white man with a long beard sitting on a cloud.
Or the man in the white heat versus the man in the black hat.
no bias here oh no. Good grief Charley Brown if that is not the most ridiculous thing I have read today it comes in at a close second.
What is "far right?" I acknowledge that the universe did not randomly appear out of nothing. So this makes me, a black woman of African origin, a far right toothless KKK racist knuckledragger? Then I guess most Christians in Africa fit that description. :)
Guess the author never heard...there are two kinds of people in the world...those who divide things into two choices, and those who don't.
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