The craving that "Everything must be different!" begins in personal psychology, and then becomes articulated in political beliefs. That's why the same people can turn into anarchists or Nazis, Communists, or today, Post-Modernists, Deconstructionists, Radical Feminists, Socialists, Hillary followers, Islamo-fascists, you name it. It is why the ACLU chooses the worst criminals to defend; they secretly adore criminals, who are the ultimate rebels against society.
"Everything must be different!" implies that changing society - a whole people and culture - for the better is , as a long-ago professor characterized his extraordinarily neat chalkboard lettering, "a mere act of will." And since the existing society and culture is the product of many prior generations, that conceit is arrogant in the extreme. It is easy to criticize - but then,The Left's Lust for Revolutionary TransformationThere 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.That is a perfect put-down of the mindset of the leftist - and it is also a perfect put-down of the arrogant "objective journalist." Mark Steyn's characterization of the phenomenon is perfect - malignant narcissism.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 . . . Theodore Roosevelt
Did you ever consider the possibility that, in and of itself, being an "objective journalist" is being an ad man for the Democrats?We can dispose of the claim of objectivity by noting, first, that if you or I were to claim that we were objective, no one would hesitate for an instant in taking that claim as evidence, not that we were actually objective, but that we were grossly self-absorbed and therefore distinctly subjective. And secondly, we observe that "objective" journalists not only label each other "objective," they assign similarly positive labels to everyone who supports the conceit that the criticism and second guessing which is the mainstay of journalism. And negative labels - "reactionary," "right wing," or merely "conservative" - to those who agree with Theodore Roosevelt when he asserted that
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arenaFinally, we note that the rules of journalistic story selection (If it bleeds, it leads, and so forth) are not rules for gaging the societal significance of stories but for gaging how useful those stories will be in attracting the attention of the public, which is significant to the bottom line of the newspaper.IOW, no matter how "objectively" you apply story selection rules which are themselves self-interested, you cannot use that "objectivity" as a measure of societal virtue. Only of your benefit to the bottom line of your own newspaper. This is true no matter how accurately you may tell the stories that "objective" process has selected, since
Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin FranklinThe difference between a conservative talk show host and an "objective journalist" is that the talk show host is responsible to his audience for his topic selection and for the thoroughness of his discussion of each story. Whereas the "objective journalist" hides story selection behind self-interested rules and, by format standards, regulates audience expectations to limit the discussion even of the stories which are selected. The conservative talk show host is a man exposed, and the "objective journalist" is a man behind a curtain.