Sometimes, odd things happen. Like a few of the pundit class will all happen to harp on one of the bullet points in the Talking Points Memo. Of course, it’s of varying quality, and overall, not quite worth the mass effort on all their fronts. The topic: the “radical left”. Oh, and that Mozilla guy that had to step down because liberals forced him. The usual suspects? Charles Krauthammer, Russ Douthat and Jonah Goldberg.
I’ve been meaning to write about this mythical radical left wing of the liberal party for some time. In the great false equivalency machine that is the pundit class, there HAS to be a mirror to the TEA Party patriots that are ruining things for everybody…right? There has to be some radical movement on the left that is punishing democrats for not supporting climate change, fighting for a fair wage, at-will abortions, and so on. Every single day we hear about shaky Democrats in Congress that are being primaried by even more liberal fellow Democrats. Right? Yeah, I thought so.
This is one of those topics that you kind can’t believe the GOP/right-wing still mess around with. There’s that continuing notion from them about the “War on Women” being false, yet time and again some republican is putting their foot in their mouth on women’s issues. This piece by Dana Milbank talks about the Heritage Foundation holding a shindig with women right-wing luminaries that you just can’t make up. That there’s some radical left is utterly false.
That all the author’s articles mentioned start from a place of attacking truth and facts is unsurprising. They’re trying to make a basic argument that at the very least the liberals are just as bad as the conservatives when it comes to certain topics. Krauthammer’s “thought police” is a more sinister way of saying “people are trying to make Charles Krauthammer feel bad for being a stooge”. Or better yet “Charles Krauthammer is an old white man who’s white knuckle grasp on culture wars is slipping and no one cares”. It’s Glenn Beckian in it’s “the left is destroying people for being anti-gay and anti-woman” when it’s more like times are changing and the general public are course correcting society again.
Now, the Krauthammer and Douthat articles about liberal overreach are at least passable as they at least stay on topic. But I was more drawn to Jonah Goldberg’s article because of not only it’s profound stupidity, but how it perfectly encapsulates the right-wing pundit’s viewpoint on the left is somehow equal to the right. Confirmation bias is a nasty thing. It’s on full display on the GOP/right-wing, so it’s a bit odd that Jonah Goldberg, who lives in a glorious glass house, would start chucking rocks about the topic.
It’s humorous that Mr. Goldberg’s article is about an assumed confirmation bias, when he’s actively contributing to bit of his ideology’s very own the week this was published. It becomes clear when you look at just the examples I gave. He also continues to show that conservatives are allergic to facts and truth with his article condemning liberals for being diabolically rigid when it comes to facts.
Ezra Klein’s got a website that is attempting “explanatory journalism” which Mr. Goldberg just outright mocks, doesn’t even bother trying to define what that might mean in the context of media. “Phooey! Facts!” And that liberals have confirmation bias too, not because of anything Jonah Goldberg relates in his article, but because Ezra Klein said so! Well, at least Mr. Goldberg is maintaining the lazy legacy of his pundit class.
Mr. Goldberg then goes on to rattle off from the Talking Points Memo about the scary liberal scourges who are looking to “purge” those who don’t think like they do! Thought police! Coming in the night, taking your bigotry and misogyny…probably your guns too…Bastards! Then hamhandedly tries to blame this “disinterested servants” idea on liberals? That these “servants” got in to government and were more keen on staying in power and expanding their reach than serving their constituency? What?!
Fearing that he’s losing his footing, Mr. Goldberg turns to the tried-and-true attack piece for help here. You see Klein makes the mistake of showing all kinds of conservative biases, but no liberal ones. Odd, I wonder why that would be? One ideology has majority control of talk radio, a pundit class that dominates the opinion page, a channel completely dedicated to it and its “news”. The other ideology? Well, they sort of have chunks of the internet that the libertarians have let them borrow, MSNBC…kind of, and Paul Krugman?
Mr. Goldberg, from reading Klein’s piece, assumes he didn’t make much effort to find liberal confirmation bias. How he comes to this conclusion he doesn’t elucidate on, which is his typical wont. But, since Klein does at least admit that there is SOME liberal confirmation bias, he doesn’t have to anyway. Then he goes on to attack Paul Krugman for thinking he‘s better than conservatives essentially.
After going through his hate Rolodex of right-wing boogeyman and shoe-horning in how they‘re mire in their own confirmation bias, Mr. Goldberg get’s back on track. You see, liberal confirmation bias had lead to “bad policies”. What policies are those? Nope, not here. But he does assert this grand assumption that liberals think that they have sole access to the Truth. Yes, he capitalized truth.
He abandons that notion, but it is worth exploring. Why would one ideology be so in to the Truth? When did that become such a bad word? Why did truth start having two sides to it in the wake of a GOP/right-wing resurgence with Fox News? When did insisting that people accept truth become a personal attack on their rights and freedoms?
Funnily enough, if you change all the words in this article to conservative, it starts to make a LOT more sense. I would love if liberals wielded the power that Krauthammer, Douthat and Goldberg mention in their articles. We would actually get things done as a nation.
Mr. Goldberg’s folly is that he uses up an entire article essentially proving just how deep confirmation bias is in the GOP/right-wing. It’s become so engrained in the ideology they can’t even see when they themselves are falling victim to it. His article is far less informative about the liberal confirmation bias as he is displaying right-wing group think buoyed by Fox News and talk radio. It’s the same bubble that has mired there message through the last decade. Remember when Dick Morris predicted a Romney landslide in the 2012 election? That’s just one example of the level of the group think bubble. I could go on for days.
It is time, however, to push back against the GOP/right-wing and their ideological rigidity. If they get this agitated over a little push back from a few liberal pundits, just think of what they’ll do when more of the general public start acting accordingly. We saw how they lost their minds in the in the midst of the Occupy Movement, and history has shown just how utterly on the wrong side of it the right-wing is. But liberals must also get away from trying to educate people to the facts and truths of news. For too long, they’ve wasted too much time trying to win debates with facts. The GOP/right-wing doesn’t trade in facts and truth, they trade on fears and prejudices. We need more pundits like Jesse Myerson, who satirize the self serious pundit class, and less cookie cutter Rachel Maddow’s, who make easy right-wing targets and get paid no mind because to the GOP/right-wing she’s an icky girl and a lesbian.
No comments:
Post a Comment