6 years vs 2 years as governor. Survived reelection as governor. Close but obviously more qualified.Tim Pawlenty seems like a terrific fellow and fine governor, but he is not obviously more qualified than Palin.
The whole issue of "executive experience" is slightly off the mark. I absolutely consider executive experience to be of great value. But it is not necessarily what the candidate learned in all that experience - it is what the electorate learned about the candidate.IOW, it is not "time in grade" that counts but, in a real sense, the opposite - how long it takes the candidate to be considered worthy of promotion.
And that is actually an argument against John McCain, and for Barak Obama. If McCain wins he will set the record for attaining the presidency after a longer time in Washington than anyone else has ever done. To counter that argument you have to make the case against the Democratic Party which has elevated Obama to their highest position. What is the quality of their nominations in the past, and have they vetted their nominee?
If you look at the Democratic Party you have to consider that between 1968 and 1972 it finished its transformation into the party of criticism, condemnation, and complaint. The fallacy of that was delineated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1911:
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.Actually socialism - so-called "liberalism" - is really nothing other than the elevation of criticism over performance. So we see Democrats systematically criticizing the police and the military for brutality and/or ineffectiveness. And claiming that the oil companies do not provide enough fuel and demand too much credit for delivering the fuel that they do provide. And the same, essentially, for the medical profession and any other industry that gets too important.It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .
And what the Democratic Party has done in nominating Barak Obama is to elevate to its top position a man who is a lot better and slyer at criticizing than in actually doing. The difference between criticism and performance is actually embodied in what Obama claims is his executive experience running his own multimillion dollar campaign for the nomination. What he is actually claiming is that he knows how to direct people and resources into the task of criticizing opponents without getting blamed for being unfair.
The firestorm of media criticism of Sarah Palin, her husband who got drunk once (back at about the same time that Obama was using cocaine), her seventeen year old daughter (and for all we know her dog if she has one) is of a piece with official Democratic Party criticism of everyone who works to a bottom line. Criticism is what journalism is good at, and nothing in the world is more natural than for critics who are journalists to be in perfect alignment with critics who are politiicans. As the ease with which George Stephanopolis switched from "liberal political activist" to "objective journalist" illustrates.
Sarah Palin does not have the same duration of political experience as senator-for-life Joe Biden, and she doesn't have as much executive experience as dozens of Repulican governors could boast. What she does have is a record of accomplishment which has fueled a meteoric rise from PTA leader to nominee for vice president (not president, yet) of the United States. She is entirely qualified for a position which has no executive authority but rather is heir to that authority for a specific 4-year term. It otherwise carries an implicit 1/2 vote in the senate (an ability to vote only when the senate is otherwise tied), and carries the requirement that the candidate for it not be from the same state as the candidate for president.
That last provision is properly understood as a mandate for an identity which helps unify the country, and that arguably is served by a candidate who is a woman. It would also be well served by a black candidate - but Sarah Palin has far better executive credentials than any black American - of either party. And it could be argued that in fact the Democratic Party has in fact implemented that mandate in an inverted fashion by selecting not their vice presidential candidate but their presidential candidate with an eye to representing the diversity in the country (but that is hardly Palin's fault).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2074048/posts?page=103#103
And could that be the real point of the attacks on the media? To unify the Republican Party?No, that is simply the cynical, media view.
Though as Lily Tomlin says, "No matter how cynical I get, it's just never enough to keep up."
You know, Roger Simon, that's precisely the trouble we have had with Big Journalism - no matter how cynical we try to be about the Big Journalism, you consistently exceed our expectations.It's to the point that we are gradually realizing that the "codes of ethics" you love to post on your walls are there just so you can snicker to yourselves that so many of us are such rubes that we actually think those "codes" mean something about what you will and will not do. All experience, frankly runs counter to the idea that those "codes" mean anything at all. They are just "boob bait" and nothing more.
What predicts your behavior is nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with what's in your own self - make that "special" - interest. Journalism is a special interest and, through the mechanism of the Associated Press, a monopoly one at that. It is not any objective reality other than your own interest which makes you collude with all other journalists to claim that journalism is "objective." The only thing which sustains that fatuous conceit is the fact that all journalists go along and get along with each other, rather than competing in the sense that the public takes for granted that you should. And really knows that you do not do.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2075741/posts?page=41#41
Ping.
I have a buddy who says that eventually the media will come around, but I don’t think they will
. Actually, they can't. Their business model requires that the public buy assumption that journalism is objective - but it also requires that journalism function as a special interest which needs, and actually manufactures, bad news.And the public is beginning to notice . . .
Ping.
Another BUMP-TO-THE-TRUTH for OUTSTANDING work!
I see the religion clauses of the First Amendment as amplifying the speech and press clauses - we are to have freedom of speech and press even in matters of faith claims which cannot be proven or disproved.And the assembly and petition clause likewise make it clear that freedom of speech and press apply to criticism of the government.
The application to this case is simply that Senator Biden can state his opinion about Catholic doctrine, Bishop John Mashek can state his opinion as it relates to Senator Biden's remarks and exercise his rights as his religious organization stipulates - and Mark Finkelstein is free to be wrong about Bishop John Mashek's rights, in print. As long as no one attempts to enforce that error, it is - in secular terms - all good.
I’ll spend time later reading your . . . post more thoroughly, but from what I’ve read - although I do (sort of) understand where you are coming from when you link in the AP - I don’t agree that a the 1st Amendment establishing the right to a Free Press is more like having the RIGHT to be lied to, than the right NOT to be lied to. In saying that you sound exactly like the college interns at the RMN who were defending the papers’ decisions to print lies in their voters’ guide by saying the “First Amendment guarantees we can print WHATEVER we want”. If that were truly the case - as I said before - then there would be no slander or libel laws on our books. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2089183/posts?page=46#46
I agree that slander and libel laws are justified if carefully tempered by the right of people to be wrong at the top of their voice. There is of course a difference between me saying that the moon is made of green cheese and someone systematically attempting to obliterate a person's reputation with with callous disregard to fact.But to the point of the First Amendment in particular: what is there in 1A which promotes judgements against libel or slander? IMHO the only possible answer is, "Nothing." The only possible effect of 1A on libel/slander legislation would, it seems to me, be the possibility that 1A might be used to overturn such a law - not to enable a suit for libel/slander on the basis of 1A without any act of Congress.
So in that sense I would have to say that the First Amendment certainly is more like (even if it is not exactly) a right to lie than it is like a right not to be lied to. It is the right of the people to listen to and/or read what we chose to, and to make up our own minds - rather than to be fed a party line and be told that we have an obligation to believe it because it must be the truth or the government (or "objective" journalism) wouldn't be saying it.
Ping.
Link to your http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2095728/posts?page=1 and Ping.
Indeed - IF THEY HAVE NO HIGHER CALLING THAN THEMSELVES.Moderators are journalists, and journalists define "objectivity" as what they themselves are - and they define "liberal" (or, synonym, "progressive") as exactly the same as "objective" except that the term "objective" is...
And most today, unfortunately, do not. - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2096506/posts?page=90#90
Ping.
The fact that such a man may well become President of the United States is simply astounding. The fact that if this happens it will be because big media has ignored the evidence excavated by the blogosphere which requires the most urgent and thorough interrogation of Obama -- questions which simply have not been asked – is as terrifying as it is appalling.
Say rather, it is terrifying and appalling that so very many people - and I must recognize the extent to which I was once among their number, at least partially, and to some smaller extent still am - take for granted that they know what is going on because they listen to the news and read the paper.I say, "still am," because there are things like polls which I am easily suckered into taking at face value if I'm not careful. Is it not for such reasons that we come to FR to pool our skepticism?
Yes, perhaps absolute objectivity is impossible, but one can still, whether in journalism or in academia, at least make an effort to try and be objective and to consider different sides of an issue. It’s called being professional, and it’s very different from claiming to be objective when in fact your goal is present propaganda for one viewpoint.
Not only is objectivity impossible, the business of journalism is not about trying for it. Objectivity was not even notionally the objective of founding era newspapers; the paper sponsored by Hamilton was not about to recognize "objectivity" in the paper sponsored by Hamilton's political opponent Jefferson. And vice versa.Journalism claiming objectivity as we know it is an artifact of the telegraph and the Associated Press, which made nominally competitive newspapers actually partners in the business of reporting news from sources to which the man on the street could only be privy by reading an AP newspaper. It is journalism's interest that we believe that the news is important to know (it was during 9/11/01, but that is the exception), and that we believe that journalism is objective. But journalism follows rules which, if we are to believe that journalism is objective, we would have to believe to be in the public interest. It is easy to see how "If it bleeds, it leads" and "Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man" are valid rules for interesting the public - but impossible, IMHO, to justify as being in the public interest.
And even the vaunted speed of communication of modern journalism appears fatuous if one asks what the two biggest stories of 2008 have been:
How did the vaunted speed of breaking news affect public knowledge of those stories? The answer is that journalism busied itself using its fast reaction reporting to talk about everything else. Once the casualty rate in Iraq dropped, journalism dropped Iraq - with the result that the public little notes the success of the surge. And the collapse of Fannie and Freddie was a decade in the making - but journalism took a "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach to that slow-motion train wreck. Until it was too late to prevent or ameliorate the consequences of the irresponsibility at the heart of the scandal.
- the success of the surge, and
- the collapse of Freddie/Fannie.
So yes, as the article suggests, objectivity - certainly objectivity of journalism - is not possible. Journalism is in fact inherently radical. Rather than arguing from the assumption of their own objectivity (i.e., their own superior wisdom), journalists would better approximate objectivity if they took the philosophical approach and assumed the posture of being lovers of wisdom rather than engaging in the sophistry of claiming to posses wisdom. But journalists cannot do so, because humility is not in their DNA or they would not be journalists.
OUTSTANDING article by Michael S. Malone. Thanks for posting.But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible. That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views, and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can’t achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty - especially in ourselves.
And thank you for the ping! Bookmarking - and a maximum-effort ping!IMHO the exact reason for the extreme tendentiousness of Big Journalism, and of the Democratic Party with which it is in symbiosis, is the fact that journalists do not write to be objective, they write from the assumption that they are objective. And that is sophistry.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2114806/posts?page=142#142
Ping to this thread which I expect you'll like.
The “off” switch works pretty well.
I think it was Matt Drudge who used to say on his radio show, the most violent action anyone can take against any form of media or entertainment was, to simply change the channel.
The OFF switch is, thank God, effective within your own house. But as MarkWar put it,Imagine you are a Native American 150 years ago. Imagine you complain to your tribe that the locomotives are making it possible for the Europeans to spread _their_ civilization west and _replace_ your civilization. And imagine one of your own tribe said, "Hey, buddy, if you don't like trains, just don't buy tickets and don't ride on them..."The OFF switch setting is indispensable. But it is also inadequate as a response. An adequate response must delegitimate the fatuous conceit of journalistic objectivity, which is profoundly subversive of democratic principle. But that fatuous conceit cannot be attacked from within journalism; journalism depends upon it for its existence - it cannot possibly internalize an honest critique of itself, or it would collapse. For then indeed it would be seen for the dinosaur that it is.Do you see my point? We can all choose to "not watch" -- journalists or the media in general. But we _know_ that the vast majority of people are going to be watching this garbage and it will be influencing their thinking/actions. Just as locomotives were the enabling technology (one of them) that made it possible for Europeans to replace the Indians, now media is the enabling technology (one of them) that is making it possible for our civilization to be replaced.
Problems don't go away just because we close our eyes. (I wish they did, but they don't.)
The First Amendment does not say that journalism is objective; to the contrary, so long as it is respected it is an impediment to the government in any attempt the government makes to require journalism to fit the government's definition of "objectivity." The newspapers of the founding era made no pretense to objectivity; Hamilton and Jefferson sponsored competing newspapers in which to wage their partisan battles with each other.
So the question is not, "Why isn't journalism objective," the proper question is why anyone would think that journalism is, or even might be, objective. And the answer to that is that journalism as we know it didn't exist in the founding era because the Associated Press didn't exist back then. Journalism as we and our grandparents have known it all our lives is a creature of the Associated Press (founded in 1848), which is itself a creature of the post-founding era technology of the telegraph.
. . .
It is plain that the McCain-Feingold law, indeed all "Campaign Finance Reform," is an object failure at its nominal objective of "taking money out of politics." Obama apparently, and most unsurprisingly, flouted money raising strictures massively. But even if his fundraising was technically legal, $600 billion is actually quite a lot of money, and I'm sure Obama's donors will get their money's worth. And over and above even that is the incalculable in-kind donation constituted by "objective" journalism which is explicitly exempted from McCain-Feingold "to make it constitutional."
Without McCain-Feingold, McCain probably faces more effective primary opposition and doesn't get the nomination; without McCain-Feingold and its equally unconstitutional (and useless) predecessor "Campaign Finance Reform" laws, a conservative Republican would have "gone negative" and therefore would have had a chance against Obama.
I predict a run on ipods and sat radio receivers.
Podcasts and satellite radio will be the medium.
Yes. The great difficulty is the still-dominant noise from monopolistic Associated Press journalism propaganda machine. There is a lot, but only so much, to be said for getting our information from sources which smell right to us rather than from the take-it-or-leave-it propaganda from the one-way media.That allows us to retain our sanity while others are losing their heads. But it does only so much when the mind-numbed robots of the left head to the polls. Even if every self-consciously conservative American were given satellite radio for free, that overarching problem would remain. I do not propose that leftists should be ghettoized any more than I think we should be. I recognize that there are tens of millions of those people, some of them close kin - and they should have a voice. But as Chuck Schumer's comment comparing Talk Radio to pornography makes chillingly clear, leftists simply will not be content with having a voice, they are determined that theirs shall be the voice - the Establishment.
Their claims sound perfectly reasonable once you make the absurd assumption that journalism is objective. But that assumption is ridiculous because journalism has obviously adheres slavishly to its own business interests while claiming to speak in the public interest. Journalism claims to be "the press," and yet journalism as we know it (and especially as it makes its fatuous claims of objectivity) is essentially a product of the Associated Press (founded 1848) and did not even exist in the founding era when the First Amendment was written and ratified. For leftism to be the Establishment, the Associated Press must be the Establishment. They are joined at the hip by mutual interest.
It’s not unlikely that you will find this interesting . . .
With respect to the SCOTUS, I ask why must we go hat in hand to them to ratify a right which we were born with? Do we not empower them to control us when we ask their permission to do something we already can do? I say we just speak out as we please and defy them to come after us.
It's similar to the Heller case. I'm glad we won it, but what if we hadn't? Why give them the power, I ask?
Perhaps I'm too belligerent, but I think it worth noting.
It is a question to be respected. But the Heller case did succeed (tho some would argue for the flat-out abolition of gun registration, rather than merely "shall issue").And in any event we do not face the same risk in seeking a rehearing of McConnell v. FEC for the simple reason that we already bear the burden of the adverse result of McConnell. And, whether you think it prudent or not, the Republican Party (or some subset thereof) is even now bringing the issue raised by McConnell v. FEC back into the courts. So in that sense the issue is out of our hands anyway, and the question is now whether the courts will burden us with yet another rebuff to our peading for relief from McCain-Feingold.
And as SCOTUS is constituted following the resignation of O'Connor, Justice Kennedy - in the minority in the court's erroneous 5-4 holding against McConnell in McConnell v. FEC - is now dominant. So there is lively hope of success in that suit. But even if SCOTUS were to overturn McConnell, that would hardly guarantee that SCOTUS would issue a broad enough ruling to protect the people's "freedom of the press" rights to FReep and to have Talk Radio be on an equal footing before the law with "objective journalism." So I suggest a "friend of the court" filing along the lines of my #54 which would suggest to the Court (i.e., to Justice Kennedy) a rationale by which the Court could settle the issue in a way which is readily defensible (far more so than Heller, which required a patient Justice Scalia to give the country a history lesson on the meaning of the language used in the Second Amendment) and congenial to the majority now sitting on the Court (again, essentially Justice Kennedy).
In summary, that rationale is that:
Accordingly any law (and McCain-Feingold in particular) which purports to restrict the right of the people, or any one of them, to spend money to propagate opinions (and most unambiguously, political or religious opinions explicitly mentioned in clauses of the First Amendment) is no law enforceable under constitutional government. Or else, the exceptions in McCain-Feingold for "the press" apply to all the people and not to a privileged subset of them.
- "freedom of the press" is a right of all the people, and each of them individually - and not limited to a subset thereof as yet unborn in the framing era.
- "freedom of the press" is not limited to the technology of printing circa 1792. It includes the high speed printing press developed since the 1830s - and it includes telegraphy, telephony, movies, radio, Xerography and television developed much later, the PC Internet today, and whatever communication technology may extend those capabilities in as yet unexplored ways in the future. If anyone can use the Internet and put up web sites, everyone (who can afford it) can put up web sites.
- The government does not get to elevate some people to privileged status officially recognized as "objective" or any other title of nobility. Anyone can claim to be objective - but no one may be obliged to defer to any such claim. People who make such claim do not, no matter what the weight of their purses or the printing presses or other communications equipment they may own or even the number of others similarly situated who may be in concert with them in making such claim, thereby attain even to the credibility of witnesses under oath. Let alone to that of the verdict of a jury. They are still only people with no authority over their fellow citizens, and no part of the government.
That would be the limit the holding which the case brought against the FEC by the Republican Party would immediately reach - but it would be a shot across the bow from SCOTUS delegitimating any threat to Talk Radio or Free Republic. I think it could be worth serious investigation as to the possibility of using the Republican Party's suit to ask SCOTUS for just such a ruling.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2136032/posts?page=73#73
I am enamored of my latest point of attack on Big Journalism, which is to skip over "anecdotal" evidence of journalistic bias (you could show bias in every article in every newspaper in the country, and Big Journalism would still call your evidence "anecdotal"), and even elide the impossibility of proving that journalism is objective. And go straight to the heart of the matter, which is IMHO that the government simply lacks the authority to decide whether journalism is objective or biased.Of course the First Amendment supports that position, in that it only talks about freedom, and not at all about responsibility other than the responsibility of the government to butt out. So if freedom is the only issue, the government's opinion about the tendentiousness of journalism must be irrelevant. But further, it seems to me that the stronger case is to refer to the Article I Section 9 edict that
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United StatesAnd simply note that the Associated Press is a private organization which is entitled to call itself and it members and their employees anything it likes. It calls its members "the press?" Fine. It calls their employees "objective journalists?" Fine. There are all sorts of fraternal organizations which give their officials all sorts of grandiose names, and that is fine, too. But in court, those terms are merely labels having no more meaning than x and y do when used as algebraic symbols.Considering that "freedom" includes the possibility of doing things differently and better, and doing different things - and that the Constitution plainly contemplates progress as a general possibility to be promoted
Article 1 Section 8
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveriesthere is no warrant to read "the press" narrowly to mean only printing. A literal press means nothing if it is not fed ink and paper and if no writer, no editor, and no composer can be paid to create the text and graphics to give meaning to it. Freedom of the press is the right of Pinch Sulzberger, or anyone else, to spend money on the technological means to promote his opinions. It is a right of the people, not of the membership of the Associated Press (as it styles itself).Ownership of something is, patently, full control of that thing. If you own something you can burnish it and put it on display, or you can neglect it. You can use it, or you can dispose of it in any way you wish. Government ownership of a press is the very antithesis of freedom of that press. Thus we can readily see that "public" (meaning nothing other than "government") ownership of broadcasting stations - never mind "the airwaves" in general - is unconstitutional. Just as freedom of the press must entail freedom to buy paper on a nondiscriminatory basis to print on, freedom of the technological press must entail the freedom to buy spectrum on a nondiscriminatory basis.