Get a load of this… someone just sent me a link to some guy who thinks my couple of short posts about Ron Paul and libertarianism are a big deal. To get the full effect, you should click on the link. But here’s a sample:
Ron Paul’s growing popularity is extremely annoying to those on the left. And sometimes their annoyance gets out-of-control, as evidenced by the reaction from Brad Warthen, editorial page editor of The State, Columbia, South Carolina.
Maybe I’m reading that wrong, but I think this guy actually associates me with the left. But in case that’s not rich enough for you, it gets better:
…remember that Warthen, like many of today’s journalists, was born somewhere
the mid-1950’s to the late-1960’s. During the heyday of ABC, CBS and NBC, these journalists were kids in PJs eating cereal in front of the TV. This is how they learned about America and where they formulated their narrow views about the first half of the 20th century. Network television reporting informed them what was right and what was wrong and defined what the government’s role in appeasing the demands of fringe groups and "improving society" should be.
This guy actually seems to believe that there was a time in which I actually watched TV "news."
That’s life for you. Every day you learn something new … about yourself.
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So you are saying that as a child you never once watched tv news? Forget 34th St. if what you are saying is true, then this is the real miracle.
You never watched Walter Cronkite?
Don’t be obtuse, people. Yeah, I saw Uncle Walter when he did special coverage on the space launches. No, I never had a time in my life in which I said, hey, it’s time for the “news,” and actually sat and watched it. To me, the very notion is absurd.
This dude is saying TV news formed my world view. For me, it was always a thing in the background that I avoided. I write about that fact all the time on this blog — it’s a pet peeve. What little I know about it comes mostly from what others say about it, and the unfortunate times when I am exposed to it involuntarily — like, while I’m giving blood at the Red Cross, or trapped in a waiting room with the idiot box on.
The only times I’ve looked at it voluntarily has, ironically, been a few times lately when I was downstairs working out. What a miserable experience. I’m always hearing these people referred to by my interlocutors here — Hannity, Matthews, O’Reilly, Dobbs and what have you (excuse me if I misspelled them; I didn’t look them up) — and after a certain amount of time, y’all manage to shame me into thinking I need to know who these people are. It’s the cable people I make the effort to look at. No one seems to talk much about the networks.
But I’ve only done it in small doses. And every time I have, I get furious. The television approach to “news” is just mind-numbingly, offensively, aggressively stupid.
Between the two things — the idea that I am of the LEFT, and the one about me getting my notions from TV “news” — the thing about the left is more credible.
Do you think I’m a leftist, kc?
Then you post this.. and I add you to the ignore list.. hope “some guy” was worth it. Disappointment is inevitable when your a Ron Paul supporter when it comes to the media even small blogs like this one. Your no better then the corrupt “mainstream media”.. let’s just attack the supporters instead of discuss the message. Every campaign, blog, person has supporters who are out there why is Ron Paul so different?
I missed the part where he thinks your posts are a “big deal”.
Welecome to the internet old-timer. It’s a wild and crazy place where people actually critique each others posts. What will these whacky kids come up with next?
Hate to break the news to you, but you are the only one who thinks your post was a “big deal”.
And yet, you actually believed anyone would care? What is the point in this blog post?
Brad – what do you think of the main media’s a) coverage and b) depiction of Ron Paul? Fair in both respects or less so?
Oh, I admit it — a fossil like me can’t keep up with the kids like this Jarvis whippersnapper.
I’m also in Brad’s camp on televised news and the O’Reilly, Hannity, Rush, Dobbs, Olberman, etc. talking heads. But I will watch John Stewart and Colbert at every opportunity… there is far more truth in their comedy than in the “serious” news.
I have no recollection of watching Cronkite, Brokaw, Rather, etc. at any stage of my life.
The sad thing is that the people who watch those programs make up a higher percentage of the voting population than those who do not watch. Especially in the AARP generation, the nightly spoon feeding from O’Reilly and Hannity is a required event. It’s pretty sad.
Prior to the internet, I was probably a typical uninformed, apathetic citizen. Now, I can read opinions from all sides and form my own opinion…
I’m also a huge newspaper fan… I travel a lot and try to read both USA Today (a great paper in my opinion despite what old school news people might think) and a local paper wherever I’m at. It gives a great perspective on what’s hot in other regions of the country. For example, today I read the San Jose Mercury News at lunch and the “feel” of the news in that paper is totally different than in The State.
Thanks for the reinforcement, Doug.
To answer Alex’s question — and then I’m moving on to other stuff — I’d say on both counts, it’s about par.
On the whole, there is a shameful tendency of news media to try to oversimplify the race. The press, and the TV cowboys, like politics to be like sports, which means everything is couched in terms of winning, losing and whether the coach called the right play, and there are never, ever more than two teams on the field at a given time.
This means anointing two people in each race as the “front-runners,” and giving everybody else short shrift. This, of course, is appalling, especially when the most qualified candidates don’t make the short list, and that’s at least as often the case as not.
Look at the Democrats. It was decreed via the great colonial beast’s collective “mind” that Hillary and Obama were it. Never mind that the experience and qualifications for the two of them combined fell short of that of Biden or Richardson — or Dodd, if you’re hard-up. This had the benefit of shutting out previous celeb John Edwards, whose qualifications lag behind even those of Hillary and Obama. This is not to say either Hillary or Obama is a bad candidate mind you (the joker whose post I linked to above, after all, thinks I’m a huge Obama fan, because I have written nice things about him); there’s something to be said for sheer electoral appeal. Hillary’s got the Clinton fan club in her pocket, and Obama’s got that certain something called charisma. I’m just saying it’s ridiculous that Biden and Richardson have never been given a chance.
On the Republican side, the MSM have been confused. They’ve wanted in the worst way to have Giuliani and Romney be the anointed twosome, or maybe Thompson. But the facts that McCain is more qualified than any of them, and that Huckabee actually has qualities that appeal to key portions of the base (unlike ANY of the chosen ones) have led to what you’ll sometimes see the MSM refer to as “confusion” or “a muddle.” And the MSM don’t like confusion. They like clarity, and polarization, and a good fight. Giuliani’s a scrapper (and just loaded with personal idiosyncracies that make great copy); and Romney can have a knock-down dragout just with himself.
In light of these factors, Mr. Paul is far down the list of people who are likely to get major respect. As I say, the MSM like it simple. If they can’t keep the number down to two, then they assign simple, stock-character roles to other players. Mr. Paul has been assigned the role of Quirky Outsider Without a Prayer, a role filled with some gusto on the Democratic side by Dennis Kucinich.
Except that Mr. Paul is even more of an outsider than Mr. Kucinich. Dennis the Menace, after all, is a sort of double-distilled version of a liberal Democrat. Mr. Paul is not seen by any of the major players as any kind of a Republican.
While the MSM as a whole have the attention span of a goldfish — they find endless fascination in the repetitive, monotonous dysfunctions of well-built young women with substance-abuse problems — the guys on the political beat can be like the sports guys. That is, they can have long memories, especially for electoral trivia.
To political writers, Ron Paul is the 1988 Libertarian Party nominee for president, and he’ll never outgrow that role. To some extent, he has himself to blame, as he doesn’t seem to want to outgrow that role. He’s the same guy, believing and espousing the same things. To his followers, this consistency, this adherence to principle, is admirable in the extreme. To the press, it makes him a dependable eccentric.
Mr. Paul’s one hope to get Serious Attention lies in his other role, that of This Year’s Internet Phenom. You’ll remember that role was filled by Howard Dean in 2004. Unfortunately for Mr. Paul, the role lacks the freshness that it had when Mr. Dean created it. For a moment there four years ago, the MSM thought it was on the cusp of a genuine Paradigm Shift, where a guy with a passionate Cyber-following and impressive fund-raising capabilities as a result would actually sweep aside the front-runners and win it all. But that didn’t happen, and the MSM is uninclined to get swept up in such enthusiasm a second time, since it was such a bust the other time.
I don’t know if any of that helps, but I did what I could to answer your question.
For someone who doesn’t watch much TV news (or mainstream, or whatever you’re being accused of) I’m still struck by your mainstream-press slant on things. “Personal ideosyncracies”? “scrapper”? Is anybody still hung up on those ridiculous MSM non-issue signifiers like “qualifications” (whatever those were ever supposed to mean) or “electoral appeal” (ditto)? Sheesh…
Some of this sounds like the inside flap promo of some book called “America’s Press–Election 2007”. Comparing Paul to Dean only makes sense if you think the “internet phenom” thing is more salient than the issues the internet folks like me are concerned about. If the MSM likes a horserace, and likes to keep things simple, then that’s their stupid problem–it only makes them more irrelevant than ever.
And BTW, I’m a baby boomer, and can hardly wait to read the obits for the MSM…I hope to live to see it…
I wonder just how many non-voters and people from other parties Howard Dean motivated to vote in the primaries, and why.
Ron Paul’s message is about sticking to the constitution, and that carries a lot of weight with a lot of very solid people, many of whom have been non-participants, feeling that they have been muscled out of the political process while being made to pay the bills for this country. The snide treatment or offhand dismissal Dr. Paul gets from the media fuels their anger. Apathetic people come alive when they discover his message. They are hungry for the message and eager to spread the word. To them, he represents a way to get around the media dismissal of their rights and their options for their future. And the internet is the huge leak that lets information flow around the gates, simultaneously giving the people a virtually free way to communicate with each other.
They are coming out by the thousands, and these are people who have awakened to the critical importance of the primary race. They are determined that nothing will stop them from voting in the primary, most of them for the first time ever.
Last night, I attended a GOP meeting for the first time ever. So did about 30 other people, all of them there to support the party and Ron Paul. The six(!) regulars who had been holding down the fort by themselves for years were very surprised!
Is is possible that people in the media aren’t aware of this? Based on what I read, and the kinds of questions they ask Dr. Paul, it looks like they are in for a huge surprise in the primaries. Maybe it’ll fizzle, I suppose. But it might turn out to be the biggest story they ever tried so hard to miss.
Hmm…that was actually one of the most insightful blog posts(the last one) that I have ever read regarding Ron Paul and his relation with the MSM. You should have started your blog with that. Maybe you should re-post that as a separate blog for the Paul supporters(I’m one BTW). It offered a very different perspective than the usual claims that I constantly read about Ron Paul being suppressed by the MSM because they are shills for the establishment. While there might be some truth to that, your view holds a lot of water too.
When did this become acceptable? Why do we call them journalists? Should we start realizing, this leopard has stripes?
Green Diamond is back???!!! That is a perfectly good example of government out of control. What are the elected officials of Cayce thinking? Here is a good example that supports libertarian thinking. Hopefully Brad will devote some blog space to this issue.
Thanks, Peter. It’s nice to have an actual exchange of THOUGHT with a Paulite, instead of the usual, which seems to consist of the frantic hurling of slogans and cliches.
Sue, the explanation of the thing that seems contradictory to you is contained within your first sentence. I don’t watch TV. I read the mainstream press. Two wildly different things. The term “the media” is highly misleading, and encourages people to miss the distinction.
TaxSlave (which I can only type with a sigh of weary resignation), the thing you miss is that we’ve seen these things before. You’re in the bubble. You go to a party meeting, and see that Paulistas have swollen the ranks, and think you’re part of a wave that will drench the whole world. The people who show up at party meetings are enthusiasts. Paul’s supporters are the most enthusiastic, so of course they are more likely to show up. Note that 36 people is a tiny, tiny subset of a subset of the primary electorate in your particular political jurisdiction. Most of those who vote will vote based on factors very different from those that brought you to that meeting.
Being Republicans (mostly), they will vote for someone who seems like one of their clan. And Mr. Paul is someone they look upon as an outsider. Republicans, on the whole, are not overly welcoming to the ideological outsider. In fact, Mr. Dean probably had a much better chance of winning than Mr. Paul does, because his insurgency was based in principles dear to his party’s base. When this is over, don’t look for Mr. Paul to become Republican Party Chairman. He seems much more likely to take his followers and go an independent-party route.
I learned about being in the bubble in my first up-close-and-personal experience with politics, back in 1978. I started that political season traveling Tennessee with a dark-horse gubernatorial candidate who had a great deal of “alternative” appeal. For days, I rode with him in his car, with him driving, and everywhere we went, people came up to him and said HE was the one who made sense, that they had seen him in the debate and he was the best, and so forth. I felt like I was onto a scoop, the only journalist who was onto the fact that this guy was going to sweep past the “front-runners” and take it all. All the old experienced political writers at the bigger papers were going to be shocked when they found out what I knew.
But I was just in the bubble. He didn’t even come close to close.
Oh dear, I didn’t realize the HUGENESS of the difference between the mainstream press and TV news.
You probably haven’t paid close enough attention. In terms of WHAT is reported, as well as HOW it’s reported, they are separate universes.
I am acutely aware of this because I am immersed in one, and seldom see the other. This causes the following scenario to arise pretty frequently: Our cartoonist, Robert Ariail, comes in with an idea. I look at his sketch. I’m stumped. What’s it about?, I ask. He is stunned. He says, “It’s about that blah-blah!” I ask, “What blah-blah?” He practically tears his hair out. “It’s all over! Everybody’s talking about it!”
It’s then that I know he’s been watching cable TV news again, where they will go on for hours at a time about the latest tiny wrinkle in a minor celebrity’s life, or some lurid bit of sensationalism that wouldn’t even have made the local paper in an earlier day, much less national news (“Man Lures Cheerleader into Lingerie Modeling!”).
And I, who get my non-South Carolina news from the likes of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, still won’t know what he’s talking about. I’ll have to get him to tell me about it, from the beginning. It drives poor Robert nuts…
Separate worlds.
Do you think I’m a leftist, kc?
Heck, no.
"And that’s the way it is — Friday, November 30th, two-thousand and seven."
FYI, in response to Peter Kay’s suggestion that I post my extended answer to Alex’s question “as a separate blog,” I’ve done better than that. I’ve turned it into my column for Sunday.
That means, apart from the fact that it will be seen by a whole lot more people in the Sunday paper, it will be available here, as a separate post, on that day. Just as with all my columns.
Yes, it is with a weary sigh of resignation that I await an answer to my offer in compromise to the IRS, prevented from owning assets or making income over poverty level. Thus the name I post under, until I can buy my way out.
As for being in the bubble, I suppose you could get that impression from the small example I gave. But I see a lot of efforts by a lot of people, all over the country, generating huge turnouts. I suppose the positive response to the message might not make a difference. On the other hand, the constitutional position is very popular once people learn it, and people tend to stick with it for life. The degree of its success will be solely a measure of the success at exposing it to people, against the efforts of pragmatists in the press to dismiss it as irrelevant.
Don’t you live in a sort of bubble yourself, shunning television?
Yes, and I’m aware of it. I choose to spend the time I have available for gaining information with other sources, and I realize that it leaves me ignorant to a point that it appalls my friend Robert, as I described above.
But if I spent that time with television, I’d be ignorant in another way. We have to choose; time is finite.
The New York Times and the Economist may be useful windows into how liberals in America receive their beliefs from the high priests of Big Media, but their inaccuracies and heavy reliance on presumption makes them only occasional sources of facts, and the Economist is too stale to contain news.