Not Too 'Hip' and 'Edgy' for Censorship (or, "Please. Behead me last.")

National Review ^ | 04-24-10 | Mark Steyn

[thouworm]

....in terms of the electoral map this November, you’ve only got to scare a relatively small percentage of squishy, suburban moderate centrists back into the Democratic fold, and how difficult can that be?

Hence, Bill Clinton energetically on the stump, summoning all his elder statesman’s dignity (please, no giggling) in the cause of comparing tea partiers to Timothy McVeigh. Oh, c’mon, they’ve got everything in common. They both want to reduce the size of government, the late Mr. McVeigh through the use of fertilizer bombs, the tea partiers through control of federal spending, but these are mere nuanced differences of means, not ends.

(snip)

For a long time, tea partiers were racists. Everybody knows that when you say “I’m becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending,” that’s old Jim Crow code for “Let’s get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson.”

(snip)

Meanwhile, Comedy Central — you know, the “hip,” “edgy” network with Jon Stewart, from whom “young” Americans under 53 supposedly get most of their news — just caved in to death threats. From a hateful 83-year-old widow who doesn’t like Obamacare? Why, no! It was a chap called Abu Talhah al Amrikee, who put up a video on the Internet explaining why a South Park episode with a rather tame Mohammed joke was likely to lead to the deaths of the show’s creators.

(snip)

Yet in the end, in a craven culture, even big Hollywood A-listers can’t get their message over. So the brave, transgressive comedy network was intimidated into caving in and censoring a speech about not being intimidated into caving in. That’s what I call “hip,” “edgy,” “cutting-edge” comedy: They’re so edgy they’re curled up in the fetal position, whimpering at the guy with the cutting edge, “Please. Behead me last. And don’t use the rusty scimitar where you have to saw away for 20 minutes to find the spinal column . . . ”

Terrific. You can see why young, urban, postmodern Americans under 57 get most of their news from Comedy Central. What a shame 1930s Fascist Europe was so lacking in cable.

[LS]

I don’t have it in front of me, but I’m pretty sure we discussed the telegraph, just not in the context of news bias. And no, I don’t have a problem with that. Most of the history of journalism I’ve researched pretty much concludes that there were multiple factors, including the “managerial revolution,” the demise of the Dem-dominated partisan press, the demands of facts about the war, and others, all EQUAL to the telegraph, that seems to me to make the omission in this context entirely justifiable.

[abb]

First part true. Last part, no, I think it is the natural self-selection process.

Yes, a very logical conclusion.

I frequent the websites and blogs of the 'journalism community' most every day. Romenesko, CJR, E&P, Nieman Journalism Lab, etc. What is clear (and quite amusing) is that the prospect of them losing the ability to control information flow is causing them to become unhinged. Deep down, they view this as a greater evil than their economic problems. How dare these untrained people even be allowed to write and report and opine!

From time to time I throw a stink bomb in amongst them...

[abb]

Just damn. When you google one book, you find two others that need to be read. These look to be must reads that would show some history of what happened BEFORE the telegraph came along and how the newspapers co-operated.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Us-kDH5LqHEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Nation’s Newsbrokers: The formative years, from pretelegraph to 1865
By Richard Allen Schwarzlose

[Liberty Valance]

bttt

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

our research did NOT show what I thought-—a sudden lurch during or after JFK. Rather, it showed a very steady but consistent move further left by ALL major papers every year. The implications are that you cannot tie this leftward lurch to a specific event, but rather to larger forces that are more difficult to quantify. It is across the board-—At. Constitution, Cleveland Plain Dealer, NYTimes, WaPo, and LA Times moved at about the same rate.

35 posted on April 26, 2010 12:56:18 PM EDT by LS

Perhaps the shift leftward is a result of the collectivists purposely going into journalism to co-opt the trade." - abb

First part true. Last part, no, I think it is the natural self-selection process.

The mystery is not why journalists agree with liberals, but why it was possible for them to get more in agreement with them over time. They should - I refer you both to my #32 - have always been perfectly simpatico, at least after the hegemony of the AP was established.

"Objective" journalists and "liberals" are the same thing - cardboard heroes who construct, and defend us from, "enemies" who are perfectly harmless in the first place.

I recall your having proposed the theory that journalism became liberal after JFK, Larry - and I'm confident that I said at the time you first mentioned it that the Joe McCarthy example illustrates clearly that journalists were already very markedly leftist by 1950. As Ann Coulter documented in Treason, the denouement of the Army-McCarthy hearings was created pretty much out of whole cloth by journalism.

[LS]

You have to be careful with journalists and McCarthy. He was the master at playing reporters, and his recent biography shows that for some time he was very “in” with reporters. There certainly were leftist streams in journalism before 1960, but our research shows that the five major papers, in both domestic and foreign policy, on a scale of conservatism vs. liberalism were quite conservative from 1958 until the mid-1960s.

[Mr. Blonde]

Wonder if the growing access to college and j-schools played a part. As those who spent time at college instead of working their way up the foodchain at a paper began to assume editorial control it could work to explain it. But as you said that still leaves a lot of factors that are hard to quantify.

[LS]

That's some of it. Some of the veteran reporters I interviewed noted a growing problem of just ignoring reporting standards---dual/multiple sourcing, no unattributed sources ("on background," "a White House spokesman").

One also identified the rise of the unions in journalism as an important part.

[ForGod'sSake]

Thanks cIc. Steyn can certainly turn a phrase, all the while hitting a target dead center. I wish I had half his talent.

LS, I have been patiently awaiting your effort on the "History of the Media". It was my understanding from earlier comments it was to be a work to determine when, how and why the major media went left. The mechanisms that enabled the leftist media to effectively be the last man standing is of no small consequence IMHO. I don't believe it's an overstatement to claim they almost singlehandedly moved the country to the left and away from our founding principles and precepts. From the sound of it, you've encountered a large ball of string; a furball even.

Would it be a stretch to suggest the forces that were and are at work moving major media and many of our elected officials, primarily in DC, towards collectivism are one and the same? If these forces exist, and I believe they do, who and what are they? Properly practiced, investigative journalism would be a hoot, eh?

[LS]

I’m not going that far. What I’m trying to convey is that sometimes in academic research, the “obvious” answer isn’t always supported by evidence, or sometimes the evidence doesn’t prove what you hoped it might. When that happens, you just have to develop a new hypothesis. But to be able to test something, as you put it, it can’t be too big a ball of string. That’s the limits of scholarship. It’s one of the reasons that conclusively showing what “caused” the Great Depression-—when you’re dealing with international gold flows, different nations diddling with tariffs and money supplies for their own ends, and just plain old nuts dictators-—is harder than one might think. The same is true with this. We developed what I thought was a pretty foolproof test with a TON of data, but it pretty much confirmed the obvious (the media moved left) without ever providing us sufficient details on the WHY.

[ForGod'sSake]

I’m not going that far.

Well ok. Would it be safe to assume you suspect it wasn't entirely happenstance? That while there's no apparent smoking gun that maybe your instincts, like mine, suggest otherwise? Just curious.

We developed what I thought was a pretty foolproof test with a TON of data, but it pretty much confirmed the obvious (the media moved left) without ever providing us sufficient details on the WHY.

A mixed bag then. Maybe putting too fine a point on it but aren't we actually talking about the decline and near demise of major conservative media and the ascension of leftist media? Which allowed the liberal media outlets to move even farther to the left. IMHO what caused these nearly simultaneous events is the most interesting question about the media out there.

An aside of sorts: how large a part if any, could the general decline and decay of our culture have played in hastening the movement of the media to the left? Or was it the other way around?

[abb]

See my post #34. It’s a rather simplistic theory of mine and backed up by no data. However, Luce was one of the single most influential “media moguls” of the era and he was somewhat conservative. All the national politicians were scared to death of him and made no move without considering what he was going to write about their actions.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

You have to be careful with journalists and McCarthy. He was the master at playing reporters, and his recent biography shows that for some time he was very “in” with reporters. There certainly were leftist streams in journalism before 1960, but our research shows that the five major papers, in both domestic and foreign policy, on a scale of conservatism vs. liberalism were quite conservative from 1958 until the mid-1960s.

At the same time that I assert that Big Journalism was leftist in the 1950s, I grant that it has gotten much more so in the last couple of generations. And I admit that I spent decades wondering why journalism was leftist, even as it got more so - and now that I see the mechanism for leftism in journalism, my only question is "What limits the leftism of journalism?"

If journalism wasn't as leftist in the past as it is now, what prevented it? I think that religion has to be considered as a factor. Journalism isn't just news, journalism is bad news - and the word "gospel" means good news. Writing to the Philippians (4:8), St. Paul writes,

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Reporters tend to consider that stuff to be boring, and reporting it certainly doesn't fit the template of magnifying the reputation of the journalist by tearing down the reputation of people who are just trying to make an honest buck by providing a good or service that people will willingly pay for.

I just had the scary thought. "Doctor New Deal" was replaced by Doctor Win-the-war" because the New Deal was a cardboard hero - and the Axis wasn't a cardboard villain. WWII might have had the effect of sobering up some of the cardboard heroes with the example of some real villains who transcended the cardboard ones with which cardboard heroes are eager to contend. Maybe it just took a while for that sobriety to wear off . . . and it won't be reestablished until such time, if ever, that we face another existential threat like the Axis Powers - and survive?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

how large a part if any, could the general decline and decay of our culture have played in hastening the movement of the media to the left? Or was it the other way around?

Ping to my #53.

[abb]

I just had the scary thought. "Doctor New Deal" was replaced by Doctor Win-the-war" because the New Deal was a cardboard hero - and the Axis wasn't a cardboard villain. WWII might have had the effect of sobering up some of the cardboard heroes with the example of some real villains who transcended the cardboard ones with which cardboard heroes are eager to contend. Maybe it just took a while for that sobriety to wear off . . . and it won't be reestablished until such time, if ever, that we face another existential threat like the Axis Powers - and survive?

An interesting comment which definitely has merit.

As to the future, I hold great expectations for 'citizen journalism' to correct many errors of the past. Control of information flow is, in my opinion, more important than political theory and the execution thereof.

It doesn't so much matter what "is," but more what the electorate think "is" is. And they know only what they're told.

I cite as proof the hysteria with which the MSM view the prospect of citizen journalism and their corresponding loss of power.

We shall see.

[LS]

You are on to something. But before we go further, have you read Marvin Olasky’s book on religion and journalism? I forget the title, but you can find it on Amazon. See what you think about his arguments.

[LS]

I think the main component of the WW II success involving American industry is that FDR knew he needed business, and he needed it FREE. He unshackled most of the industries he had attacked and harassed during the New Deal, particularly Henry Kaiser. In my book, Halsey's Bluff, I describe a fictional conversation between FDR and Kaiser, but one that I think most likely took place in some form or another. Basically, FDR said to the businessmen: "we'll not regulate you and we'll pay whatever you want. Your end of the deal is you make great ships and good weapons and excellent planes in unbelievable numbers."

[bvw]

We’ll know that re-re-education effort is succeeding when Zinn is forgotten and his book’s sales run to zero in any quarter.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35122065

[abb]

Just the other day finished “The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick” by Richard Norton Smith.

Fascinating account of the battles between FDR and McCormick.

[ForGod'sSake]

However, Luce was one of the single most influential “media moguls” of the era and he was somewhat conservative.

I gather he had the cojones AND enough influence to skewer any of the toughy-feely types of his day and the rest of the media world paid attention. Probably safe to argue he lived and worked at a time when there were still competing ideas in "mainstream" media, that is, there still existed likeminded defenders with some stature. Would he be skewered, or at best, ignored today?

All the national politicians were scared to death of him and made no move without considering what he was going to write about their actions.

Those were some heady days my friend! Are there any conservative pundits today who wield that type of clout? The environment over the last half century all but precludes even a man of his stature getting a hearing.