Posted on 03/14/2014 11:26:38 AM PDT by george76
Five-Thirty-Eight's Nate Silver mocked New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as a "hedgehog" who "only knows one thing." When asked to describe what a hedgehog is, Silver pointed to Friedman specifically and the op-ed columnists at the Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal:
...
They don’t permit a lot of complexity in their thinking. They pull threads together from very weak evidence and draw grand conclusions based on them. They’re ironically very predictable from week to week. If you know the subject that Thomas Friedman or whatever is writing about, you don’t have to read the column. You can kind of auto-script it, basically.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
A DIY guide to making thomas friedman columns: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/create-your-own-thomas-friedman-op-ed-column
I think hedge hogs everywhere should feel insulted!
I wonder if Nate and I were separated at birth.
Freidman, a prolific writer on the Middle East, in which he has mostly regurgitated the points of views he got from folks in the middle east who told him what they wanted him to hear.
That's called "agitprop."
Welcome to the New York Times, Nate.
-PJ
“Eugene Robinson, pick up the white courtesy phone.....”
And stand-by for a vicious, bourbon-fuelled screed from the Grande Dame of Hedgehogs, MoDowd.
These people have made a very good living writing 300 to 1000 word columns once a week of most recycled material. That gets them on the lecture circuit where the real money is and they do very well without having to work hard. My B-I-L is one of these folks so I know something about the biz.
It would not surprise me if the White House had journalists on staff to write columns for newspapers.
I assume you know that Nate Silver is a big, big Lib.
Notwithstanding that terrible tag I am a bit of a Nate Silver fan myself for a few reasons:
1. He was on the nose in the 2012 election. You have to give him some credit for that despite the terrible outcome.
2. He is clearly a bright guy.
3. I read what he had to say about Global Warming in his book. I would say that at best he supports the Global Warming Nazis by about 51/49. For a Lib he actually approached rationality on the subject.
4. He left the NYT.
Really ? Did he predict the big slide in voter turn out?
I have no idea. What I do know is that he predicted the winner in all 50 states. That is no mean feat. I believe he is the only one who managed it.
Maybe he was lucky. Or maybe he knew many Freepers and many others would stay at home rather than vote for a Rino like Romney. I wasn't any happier than anyone here with a Romney nomination. But look what the failure to vote for him cost us. I really don't think the tradeoff between a Rino for President and the good feeling you get by not voting for him was a good trade.
Of course we taught the world a lesson that you need to nominate a real conservative if you want to get the base out for an election. Still not a good trade. We should fight for our guys as hard as we can and if we lose then vote for any Republican against any Democrat. It is foolhardy to do otherwise.
YIKES! Hedgehog he said.
Ok I did not know anything about him that you listed. But his summary of schlock journalism resonated with me because it’s exactly how I think.
I did find out he’s younger than me so give him a few years and he should be a full eagle conservative after wisdom sets in.
You listed he left the NY Times, that’s an indicator of exceptional brains. It also would explain any liberal tendencies because just being in that milieu, just to be accepted in that environment necessitates showing some liberal stripes.
So I surmise he was a young liberal Turk who somehow grew in wisdom, likely from inherited sensitivities. He will likely turn into a conservative at the same rate that he loses the baby face.
I suspect that your Nate Silver the Dem Insider Theory isn’t too far off the mark. It seems likely that at a minimum he had access to Dem internal polling data.
But did he have insider knowledge of the Dems illegal voting plans? That is the Nate Silver Question of the Day.
It could be. But if not he is smart enough to make his own estimates. The bottom line is that he called all 50 states correctly. And yes that includes North Carolina.
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