Posted on 12/07/2005 7:04:39 AM PST by Rummyfan
I sent the final draft to the copy editor last week. It is due on shelves May 06. Probably advance order on Amazon in April.
Wait, are your referring to my latest, 'Why Americans Win Wars?' which is coming out May 06, or the history of journalism I'm still working on? I don't know when that one will be finished. I have a ton of analysis to do: I collected editorials, two per month, from each of the five leading papers (NY Times, WaPo, LA Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Atlanta Journal) for a 12-year period to analyze the shift over time.
I think, most of all, that this shows the "atheist's dilemma," which is that absent God, there is nothing to keep the train on the tracks, for eventually all logic says "you have your view of what is right and I have mine. Who's to say which is better?" and then you have chaos. That is where the MSM is today---no contraints, no view of basic good or of evil. Just the "story." In the book I'm working on about this, I quote an ad you might remember from the 1980s by ABC, where Peter Jennings ends by saying, "There is no truth, only news." Huh? If that is true, then that sentence is irrelevant---why should anyone believe that statement?
For the life of me, I cannot figure out all these anti-American libs. (I've thought about this a LOT). And there's NO question it's antipathy for their country that informs their politics.
Is is it their genes? Whatever it is, it seems to be a pattern that such people are less inhibited from vile language/behavior. The Dems "scorched earth" politics remind me a lot of the "Dis culture" of gangsta rap. These people also display an uncanny sense of moral superiority. (As a conservative, I don't think of myself as superior---more like, just normal.)
I'm serious. What makes a person derive all his political positions from his belief that America is evil, stupid, corrupt, etc.? For some young people it can be put down to being "fashionable". But it makes no sense whatsoever when we're talking about well-to-do senators and the like. But it's not just posturing. Their knee-jerk response to most subjects is to blame America, find fault with soldiers/policemen, etc.
What explains this?! I just don't believe a normal, rational person can hold these beliefs while living in this society and being almost "lionized" for "holding America accountable".
Seems like I would remember that - if I had heard it.How, you might ask, could I have avoided hearing it? By then I had learned from Reed Irvine's "Accuracy in Media" newsletter that "the media" were "biased," and I no longer believed that the public-spirited citizen naturally followed broadcast journalism. In fact, I had begun treating broadcast news as an ad for a product I wouldn't buy. For example, I have a clock radio set to come on at the start of Rush's show - not at 12:00 but 12:06, after "the news."
I confess the TV is on a lot during the evening, but unless I'm tuning in a football game I virtually forget that the broadcast bands even exist.
Clemens' quotes are as accurate today as they were when he made 'em. Going back even farther, Thomas Jefferson had many unkind words re the media of the day. Now, these two fellows at least didn't appear to make any distinctions that I'm aware of when it came to the media. Their media vs our media so to speak. I don't know of any comments attributable to either one praising their contemporaries in the media. Interesting in and of itself.
.
The flaw may be fatal unless the BOD's and/or editors are willing to revisit/reinstate the hard and fast rules they established for themselves to mitigate bias. I don't know if it's too late for the MSM to revive itself or not. They have allowed(?) the internet and talk radio in particular to make huge inroads into their kingdom. Whether by choice or by chance, the result is the same; they are bleeding profusely. From where I sit, the conservative media appears to be gaining on 'em.
You might argue the point, but LS's comments re the loss of a religious foundation that was once shared by those in the media makes a lot of sense. Relativism is the bastard child of a media, or culture, without a moral compass. A "Ten Commandants of Journalism" might do wonders for their bottom lines. And the good they could do...
.
That's the one. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Will you be needing a proof reader? ;^)
Just excellent points IMHO.
What explains this?! I just don't believe a normal, rational person can hold these beliefs while living in this society and being almost "lionized" for "holding America accountable".
I think it's a kind of desperation for adequacy and it is, ironically, found at both extremes of American society. In the poor it is, seemingly, explicable: "I don't have, and everyone else does, so what does that make me?" In the rich it seems to be a combination of condescending pity for "the poor" (who BTW are as well off as the middle class was fifty years ago) and a desire to manifest distinctness from the middle class.The middle class has no desire to tear down the rich and can't afford to patronize "the poor," since its separation from that status is a work in progress.
In any event, the phenomenon of American antiAmericanism puts me in mind of the story of the Almanac editor who received a draft prediction of the year's weather and called up its author:
"Look here," the editor said. "You are predicting that it will snow on the tenth of July. In all of recorded history it has never snowed on the tenth of July."These people are so desperate to be superior to middle America that they make fantastic claims - and if any of them ever pans out they will, at least in their own minds, be amazing prophets."No," the author replied, "and it probably won't this year either - but if it does, I'll be the darnedest prophet that ever lived!"
Sure, I'd be happy to let you read a draft. In "Patriot's History of the United States," so-called amateurs picked more, and more important, errors than the so-called professional historians.
Wonderful! I'll be around.
>"but I'd be curious to know if he may have been a student of the social experiment that was the Bolshevik revolution and its progress(?). Was he in fact a socialist at heart???"<
-FDR was a Commie.
FGS
Your reference to "editorials" didn't hit me until several days after reading your post. I have meant to get back to you on this point but have been distracted by other "issues". First of all, what 12 year period of time are you looking at. Was this a period of time in which you believe the newspapers were pretty much reporting straight news and leaving their opinions/advocacy on the editorial pages? IOW, could the news pages be trusted to have very little in the way of "advocacy" journalism??? I suppose what I'm trying to determine is will looking at just the editorials during this period of time develop the clues you seek?
FGS
Our sample is 12 years, 1958-1970; LA Times, WaPo, NY Times, Atlanta Constitution, and Cleveland Plain Dealer. It's gonna be a baseball bat between the eyes of the MSM.
Heh. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. Thanks and good hunting.
And a Merry Christmas to you and yours.
FGS
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.