Re: Media bias part 2. Talk radio.

Post #44,462 by wharris2 7/4/02 1:38:44 PM Reply	Re: Media bias part 2. Talk radio. Media bias? At least people like Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy are reasonbly honest about their bias. When Dan Blather frequently says "Conservative (this), conservative (that)" but never says "Liberal (this), liberal (that)", that is a symptom of bias. (Maybe I should say "almost never", but I've never heard him describe anything as liberal.) You'd probably call me a flaming conservative, but I do find it hard to sit through more than five or ten minutes of Limbaugh at a time. Too much "I am always right, I know it, you know it, I told you so" blah blah blah. Liddy is more entertaining, at least; for instance, he used to have Lanny Davis on for interviews, and has a lot of other interviews as well, some of which actually are on pretty neutral subjects. And he makes no secret of being a flaming conservative. Sean Hannity is another pretty conservative talk show guy who doesn't blindly go along with party, Congressional, or Presidential spin. But as was said elsewhere, there's a reason there's few or no national liberal talk shows. They just don't sell. It's not as if Clear Channel or whatever your media conglomerate is would refuse money; if shock jock Howard Stern can get on the radio, surely a flaming liberal could, if he made money for whatever network he was working for. Famous last RPG quotes: "I'll just shoot this fireball down the dungeon passageway..."
Post #44,492 by Ashton 7/4/02 8:38:05 PM Reply	Scratch "Politically Incorrect" too - for 'budget' reasons! Hah.. in a pig's eye. Surely you've seen the 'frequency' data re the prepending of Liberal- vs Conservative- [or NO prepend] on various countless pieces of news bafflegab? I don't recall Who it is that collects such stuff - but I am sure that these data appear somewhere regularly. Too lazy to do a search. I dunno What you listen to, but I am not so much impressed with actual count as with ratio, and what you cannot escape - in a country with One party having Two Right Wings is: That 'Liberal-' is Always used in these contexts as a tacit pejorative. 'Conservative-' is both less often prepended (in my experience - don't click a tally each time, natch), but it is spoken asif "Conservative" were some synonym for: 'Moderate? Sensible? Popular' as if to suggest: "Well that's what the Loonies think - now here'e a more Responsible POV". Then too, most often the NOT-'pre-pended' next introduced POV IS: "the Conservative one": (whateverTF That word is currently supposed to mean, from one speaker to the next -- like bein 'Christian' n'such..) Yes, I can see how you just might Not Get This, though. It's so ez to overlook context, pauses in speech - placement within a thesis. Hard to collect in a nice neat Boolean Table and all.. Lastly - I doubt the Difference is even noticed at all, by most passive listeners. Like the fish in the bowl: it's just always There. There ain't no Liberal Party in the USA today, fershure; don't even dare suggest such a thing might be the 'Democrat' Party (or Greens and other One-Issue congregations). A mere "Moderate stance" is what the Conservative mindset (whatever any one of those thinks C. means) always means by 'Liberal'. Further 'left' (what?!? do That mean, either, now?) would be deemed Radical. another pejorative which utterly misses the Point that: radical means! 'to go to the root of a problem, not it's mere spun appearances' yada yada See - once you allow Language to be fucked-with to the extent we have: there's hardly even a place left for decent argument: nobody knows what the slogans even mean, currently: Liberal Conservative (What happened to Reactionary) (What happened to Moderate) Labor? where is Ours, as in most civilized countries? Socialist? " " " Republicrat/Democan - what do they Stand for? - which any three people might ever agree upon??? Left Right Up Down Charmed Top Bottom Pshaw. ..never mind. Ashton
Post #44,540 by wharris2 7/5/02 9:45:14 AM Reply	I don't know about liberal/conservative Washington anyway People living/working/abusing Washington - hell, people living/working in New York - are almost totally isolated from the rest of the country. Politicians - they almost inevitably get so caught up in Washington politics that they somehow seem to forget there's a world outside DC. Anything to get re-elected, so they pay some attention to pulling pork for their immediate voters, but beyond that - naaaah. Something similar seems to happen in New York - Dan Blather walks down Wall Street (or wherever he walks, if he does) and starts thinking that's "normal" America. Maybe he never walks anywhere and has a limo, and just goes to his health spa five times a week - almost the same thing. Both sets of people start to think they're "normal" when from Pennsylvania to Washington State, things are completely different. (I'm not going to include California, because I don't think anyone understands them.) Damn, whatever you think of Jerry Pournelle, at one time he built a beautiful two-dimensional political matrix that was a hell of a lot better at describing the political spectrum than the brain-dead straight-line left-radical - liberal - moderate liberal- moderate conservative - conservative - right-radical stuff most people think in terms of. Famous last RPG quotes: "I'll just shoot this fireball down the dungeon passageway..."
Post #44,549 by Brandioch 7/5/02 12:21:18 PM Reply	I still prefer mine. Individual's rights/responsibilities vs Society's rights/responsibilities Pure anarchy vs Totalitarianism And all the shades in between. But you MUST recognize that with Rights, go Responsibilities. And you do not have a Responsibility, without a Right. You got a link for Jerry's chart. And I think you're right on being out-of-touch. And the traditional labels not meaning crap today. (There's no way a "liberal" President would ever have approved the "Defense of Marriage Act" in this age.)
Post #44,575 by wharris2 7/5/02 8:50:38 PM Reply	Unfortunately, no. You got a link for Jerry's chart. Unfortunately, no. I first saw it on his GEnie forum (geez was that a long time ago, long enough that we were debating what should be in the "Contract with America" for a year or so before it actually formed a platform for the 1994 elections). He's got a web site nowdays (sigh, doesn't everyone) and I've Emailed a couple of requests for him to repost it, but either he can't find it himself or it's way low on his list of priorities. (He still writes science fiction/fantasy and is working on at least a couple of books.) I've probably still got it somewhere on a 5 1/4" floppy backup. :=(

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