Posted on 09/20/2008 5:22:48 AM PDT by vietvet67
Atlantic Monthly runs an article on John McCain. A photographer, Jill Greenberg, takes pictures of McCain for the piece. She deliberately takes awful photographs, using her skill as a professional to make the senator look as offensive as possible. Charlie Gibson, given the chance to help Americans to get to know the most interesting political figure in decades, uses that opportunity to score cheap political points to demean her instead. These are two perfect examples of the Leftist bias of the media.
But what is it, really, that offends us so much about this bias? There is nothing wrong with having an opinion or incorporating that into coverage of events. We should not apologize for the bias of Christian television stations or Rush Limbaugh. American journalism has historically been biased, but there is a profound difference between the expressed beliefs of opinionated Americans and the creepy bias of the Leftist media. Once, when newspapers were the main source of news in America, many newspapers had partisan names like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette or the Pottsville Republican. That was fine.
What bothers us about bias in the mainstream media is that the Left lies about its bias. It pretends to be an objective collegial body of neutral professionals. It conceals its opinions and pretends instead to be an honest umpire of the facts. It tries to trick us.
That was what was so very wrong about the Jill Greenberg photo sessions with Senator McCain. Ms. Greenberg pretended to be a genuine professional who would have used the camera in the same way for McCain or Obama. Instead, she used her position as an unbiased professional to fool McCain into trusting her. Then she betrayed that trust.
It is when the Leftist media pretends to be accurate, balanced, and objective that we feel outraged. Clinton taught us how politicians look right into the camera and lie, but we saw that in the Leftist media long ago. Pubic opinion polls routinely show that Americans believe that the media is too liberal. These polls show that Republicans and Independents trust the media much less than Democrats. Even Obama supporters believe that the media is out to get Sarah Palin. How, then, can an honest person look at the American people and say with a straight face that the media is not slanted to the Left? An honest person cannot, but this is precisely what Leftists do all the time: They pretend that conservative complaints about the tilt of network news, national newspapers, and weekly magazines are nutty, even when the Left knows that the bias is real.
The Left does not want to argue honestly or to win fights fairly. Leftists believe that the end justifies the means. If that means pretending to be neutral when in fact you have a distinct political agenda, that is fine (as long as you win.) The Left does not believe in honest umpires. Leftists view those umpires of our society as simply players in the grand game of ideological war.
News anchors and reporters are presented to America as objective referees of information. Healthy societies need good umpires. We expect public school teachers, psychologists, heads of nonprofit organizations, professors, and other types of referees to not have a common political agenda. We expect these societal referees to put their biases aside, to forget their party label, and to look at us as individuals. We do not expect them to abuse our trust.
Leftism, however, has politicized every aspect of human existence. The media is just one slice of our life in which ideological partisans pretend to be good umpires. Public education has become a tool for instilling "correct" value systems. The legal profession, led by the American Bar Association and purely political judges, now has policy goals, rather than process goals like justice. We no longer have systems regulated by the integrity of umpires -- reporters, teachers, judges, etc. -- because the Left has consciously striven to turn all umpires into advocates.
This is because the Left is, at its core, utterly totalitarian. It is pure theory divorced from practice and immune to the lessons of experience. It is ideology hostile to all real ideas (if you doubt this, try telling a Leftist that men and women are basically different -- just as an idea.) It is intense religious faith without the transcendent moral constraints of faith in God. A priest, a minister, and a rabbi all have definite opinions about how to live a good life, but all find their methods constrained by divine principles. Judeo-Christian morality does not believe that the end justifies the means. The zealous clergy of Leftism are constrained only by the gullibility of their audience. An NFL referee looks at a play closely to see how what happened on the field fits into the rulebook. The referees of Leftism have a rule book in which the single rule is to advance their ideology. A judge at the state fair looks at cherry pies or show pigs for defined qualities, but an activist judge in an apellate court enthralled with Leftism looks at ideology and desired outcomes.
The corruption of our referees weakens every part of our society. It is much bigger than the Leftist media, although this corruption of honor has given us the Leftist media. Everything now is political, or it soon will be, if the Left has its way. Although we need many victories for Judeo-Christian civilization to survive, perhaps the biggest victory is to bring back people we can trust. Would it bother us so much if ninety percent of the media was Democrat, if those Democrats behaved impartially? Would the Leftist media be a problem if the Left acknowledged that bias?
Leftists contend fairly when they contend openly. Once there were honorable Leftists, but when the ideology of the Left is tried and fails, as it always does, then these honorable people either change their opinions or make arguments which do not persuade -- or they stopped being honorable people trying to convince us that their ideology is good and, instead, they become the Left's crooked umpires.
bookmark for later
...For example, socialized medicine is destined to fail because it takes something of great value, medical care, and makes it free....
Well put!!!
But I think you meant...and it PRETENDS to make it free. Like all socialized programs, there is a cost but the lie that it is free removes the “controls”. It’s like telling the pilot of the 747 that he can fly forever on that tank of gas....without giving him a gas gauge.
The hag takes snapshots and needs Photoshop to correct her screw-ups.
Interesting post. I recently taught in Russia for a few weeks and the instructors found it perplexing that I would ask the students questions. Normally, all classes were taught as lectures . After classes, the teachers would ask me why I would teach that way and I would explain.
zimfam: As a conservative teacher myself, I applaud your classroom teaching strategies. I do the same in my classroom. My approach is to question statements students make as they come up in discussions, usually informally. My liberal collegues fill their minds with the standard, biased misinformation. For instance, a student might say, “America consumes 25% of the world’s oil supply, but we are only 3% of the world’s population.” So then I sort of stop and consider the statement and say something like “Well do you think any of that oil is used by American industries to manufacture products people around the world can benefit from having? Do you think America is being greedy or is using the oil to benefit the rest of the world.” I never come out and say what they believe or have learned is wrong, I just put questions in their minds that I can tell they’ve never been taught or has never occurred to them before. I can tell that by their reactions. I’m not kidding myself that I can single-handedly overcome the liberal brainwashing by stridently confronting students with the truth, I’d loose my job, for one thing. But I’m using reason to get them to think, and to question what they accepted as fact, and then expect that they will reject the liberal notions and replace them with new thinking on their own. The goals and objectives of a conservative teacher.
“Pubic opinion polls routinely show” >p
At first glance I thought that was a typo.
bump
Look how quietly the Rangel thing is creeping away as just a little something something...AND the bullcrap about the Palin’s and the babies...Those lies are getting more plaays in the media that Rangel.
When it’s all said and done, Another example will be how deeply Obamanism and his advisors are in on this Fannie Mae debacle....
My late Dad spoke to me seriously about this very thing in the 50s when I was awakened to the horrors of the death camps and was asking him about them. I had seen some RKO newsreels at the movies, pretty grim, graphic stuff, some of you remember them: buldozers pushing huge mounds of bodies into a common grave, etc.
I owe him for opening my eyes even more. He was exempt in WW2 (married w/children) but he worked at a boatyard in Brownsville, TX as a carpenter building PT boats and minesweepers so he certainly did his part so he served also.
A man's man, no huggie, kissy kind of man, certainly no "metrosexual" but he taught us boys manners (or else) and how to treat women with respect (or else) and perhaps more importantly to study history. Thank you Dad...
And strong women as well.
Yes, you’re right. There have been a hundred articles up in the last couple of weeks with lefty broads hyperventilating about how “scared” they are of Sarah Palin. Honestly! They ought, as some FReeper observed, to just shut off the news, pull down the blinds, drink Bourbon, and talk to the cats.
Outstanding article by Bruce Walker. A snapshot of one individual in the context of a wide angle view.
Great thread. Thanks to all posters.
Do “independents” need more examples?
Thanks to all like-minded lurkers on this thread.
Palin threatened to clean up corruption in Washington as she cleaned it up in Alaska. No wonder the politicians and their henchpersons—notably in the “Newsmedia”—are out to destroy her!
They see themselves as referees; we see them as Tim Donaghy
For your classroom:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=OGVlY2RhOGM0MWE5MjNmMGM2ZjY0NzcxMjMzMTc5NWI
THE UNDEFENDED CITY
..........But it is certainly so today. And standing against all this hypnotic power the power of the mythmakers in Hollywood, the power of the information peddlers in the media, the corrosive power of America-hating professors on every campus in America against all that we find an old warrior a paladin if ever there was one an old, beat-up warhorse standing up in defense of his city one last time. And beside him: a wonder. A common person just a regular mom who goes to work, does a difficult job with intelligence and energy and grace and every-day competence and then puts it away to go home and have dinner with the family.
Against all of that stand these two.
(more....)
And there is no “bullying” involved as there is with liberal education..... like I suggested, liberal ideology is fundamentally flawed. Due to those flaws, minions are created out of issuing a sense of guilt lined with threats — emotional agruments if you will... you can see what these liberals have modeled in the classroom broadcast in all facets of daily life, especially through the media. And as you I believe one of the most important goals I have in my classroom is to help foster an environment where students are enabled become constructive skeptics and responsible constituents of society.
>>Every totalitarian government that I have studied has a common theme, “The ends justifies the means.” I have had a small handful of democratic officials tell me this as well.<<
That’s what the son-of-a-Dem who apparently hacked Palin’s email says. When they use unethical or illegal means, it’s justified. But when Nixon did it, that was bad.
ping
Excellent.
, the corrosive power of America-hating professors on every campus in America
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Marxism is our nation’s **most** serious threat. It isn’t islamofascism.
K-12 schools, and our colleges and universities are the Marxists’ **most** powerful weapon. We will lose our freedom in the voting booth.
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