Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

(By the way, that chart slightly misleads by placing the "federal government" in a different bucket from "CPB and public broadcasting entities." It's not a problem from my POV, but the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is us - technically a nonprofit, but taxpayer-funded by congressional mandate.)

In the distant past (late 80s maybe), I regarded myself as a Serious Print Journalist. Even then, I don't think anybody truly believed in objectivity or neutrality; one was expected to try for at least the appearance of decorously attempted fairness.

These days I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to be neutral, or even how to seem neutral. But I know it doesn't mean that 50% of your articles make Democrats look bad and 50% of your articles make Republicans look bad. First of all, that's just stupid. Second of all, no one on earth will ever notice this false type of "balance," let alone praise you for it.

One can always fall back on quote-based reporting: Person X Said Thing Y. And fortunately, these days no one shuts up, ever, about anything. So matter what viewpoint you want to report as being out there, you can pretty much always find someone who has said it, no matter how unhinged. The resulting stories cannot be faulted, because the people really did say the things.

NPR will often bring two dissenting POVs which could basically be broken down to the right-wing position v. the left-wing position but I think that's a public service. As long as the neutrality means exposing listeners to a variety of opinions, I don't see the problem. Personally I appreciate hearing intelligent ppl with whom I disagree state their case (and get pushback from the interviewer or other guest).

There are plenty of people here who see Hillary Clinton as a right-wing politician, and if I saw Hillary Clinton as right-wing, surely I would see NPR as right-wing, too. (I don't.)

And remember, there are only two points of view on ANY topic. That's the American Way (TM)!

(also the MacNeil / Lehrer NewsHour way inherited by most "public" media)

personally, i think that either sanders or clinton, having secured the democratic nomination, stands a strong chance to stop trump in november, though i don't consider either of them locks, and i will definitely support and vote for whichever candidate wins.

as for the two points of view on any topic, a lot of it is by design- american political parties were created in significant part to marginalize outsiders. clearly that system isn't working particularly efficiently right this second.

I'm off today, so I had a rare chance to check out how execrable the Diane Rehm show is and she came through! She and the Daily Caller guy and Kathleen Parker agreed Sanders and Trump are "exploiting" the "same phenomenon" of discontent.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 14, 2016 3:48 PM (1 hour ago)

i remember listening to this a few months back and being appalled to hear rehm's whole chorus of "experts" for the day jocularly ridicule the idea that the koch brothers have any significant say in our politics and insist that it's all about pluralism, etc etc. this show is basically only listenable if the subject isn't politics.

i thought rehm retired. maybe she just announced it?

@mtaibbi Matt Taibbi
The election is about to turn into a giant Jerry Springer episode, w/different camps throwing chairs at each other.

Avi Bueno
‏@JasperAvi
@mtaibbi You have no idea how literally true that is, since @marcorubio was just accused of stealing a NH man's gf:

https://twitter.com/JasperAvi/status/709411291593576448

that's the nicest thing anyone's said about marco rubio in months

read that as a NH man's gif

o/u on whether the girlfriend is actually a hollowed out pumpkin

this is kind of hilariously boring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftf-i5_qFpw

God help me, but the way Marco handled his heckler made me like him a little. Which is only the case because Trump, but still.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/upshot/the-geography-of-trumpism.html

^^ interesting but mistitled i think. this is where it gets interesting:

The 10 Variables Most Closely Linked to a County’s Support for Donald Trump
A correlation of 1 means the variable is a perfect indicator of Trump support.* Negative correlations are shown in red.

(For no good reason, in my head I call it the "Ream Diane Show.")

this is kind of hilariously boring

now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs, on your, on your

wow @ christie as lickspittle interlocutor

wait -- a three-hour clip?

it's full.

xp No silly, it's only two hours long! But not a lot happens for the first hour - Trump and Christie come out past the hour mark, in the middle of Folsom Prison Blues.

lol:

"we win with evangelicals so big-league ... we won the evangelicals. we've been winning them all over. it's been amazing, the relationship. it's been-- well, i'm a good christian, i'll tell ya." [applause] "i'll tell ya. i'm a good christian. i'm a believer." [cheering]

adam i don't remember where you live

Atlanta, where we are blessed with identical NPR programming on two different FM frequencies ever since GPB ripped off a bunch of college students

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdhpIWXWAAA6la9.jpg

i'm not even sure the context of that, but i am laughing like a lunatic right now.

Adam, do you think tonally and editorially NPR and FOX are similar? Do you think Sanders and Trump are similar too?

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 14, 2016 12:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tonally of course both are completely different. both are comfort food for their respective markets. i don't think Sanders and Trump are similar, in fact the only reason i joined that convo is bc you brought up NPR using that line. it's typical of the soft liberalism of NPR.

i'm probably always using the wrong terminology here. my personal politics are far far left and i think the US in general is a right leaning nation and that includes NPR.

so what you really meant was that both media sources - while being totally different in tone, content, purpose, and coverage - are equally popular with their target markets. thx for the insight.

like I never would have guessed that they had different audiences, each totally dedicated to them! incredible. where do you come up with this stuff.

hey i just do it for the privilege of getting insulted on a daily basis by strangers. it really makes life worth living.

what are your personal politics? i get the sense of them as an amorphous discourse constantly shifting to the left in any given situation but w/ not fixed coherency. when you say NPR is right-wing, do you mean in the sense that any kind of reform or amelioration of the excesses of capitalism ultimately serve to reify its institutions and therefore only a full revolutionary agenda is sufficiently left-wing? in that sense as eephus says sanders is also right-wing since he's a reformer. or do you mean that any organization that considers right-wing positions as within the tent of legitimate speech is itself right-wing? but surely any real commitment to freedom of speech must agree that the right possesses that freedom as well.

i think the US in general is a right leaning nation and that includes NPR.

if we're shifting from disagreement to LOL NO DUH ADAM than okay but it's not like this is wrong, except maybe in its definition of "the US" (elite manufacturers of the_conversation vs the giant confused population that still wants single-payer)

*then

My personal politics are isolationist and socialist. i think we need to spend all the money we are investing in fighting and unwinnable war in helping the people that actually live here.

NPR can say whatever they want and it's a free country and I don't see why you brought that up. But i can call them corporate shills without having to defend against you imagining I want a complete revolution of the entire media structure.

i think the US in general is a right leaning nation and that includes NPR.

this is compared to other Western democracies. for instance national health care. or not dropping nukes on other countries.

you can call them whatever you want but i don't understand why you'd call them corporate shills

or not dropping nukes on other countries.

are you saying we shouldn't have nuked Japan in WWII

put two countries side by side.

one dropped a nuke on another country and firebombed its civilian population.

another did not.

which one is more right wing.

i think it's safe to say that fascist-era japan was more "right-wing" than any era of the united states

you can call them whatever you want but i don't understand why you'd call them corporate shills

― Mordy, Monday, March 14, 2016 2:18 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because i listened to NPR during the health care debates.

if we're talking about civilian deaths then yeah Joseph Stalin is Ronald Reagan

Imperial Japan more right-wing than WWII-era US, no contest

xxp

we have a thread fyi Hiroshima: necessary?

yeah that's a good thread

do we have one on nagasaki

put two countries side by side.

one dropped a nuke on another country and firebombed its civilian population.

another did not.

which one is more right wing.

the fascist one that built gas chambers for undesirables but couldn't get their hands on the bomb?

ok those are bad examples. that is a problem i have, i try to make a point and pick bad examples that then get picked at and before you know it i am arguing a point that is far removed from what i originally wanted to say. then i get called out for being inconsistent or incoherent.

but come on. the official approval of torture. the NSA spying. the drone program. the invasion of Iraq. a militarized and armed police. a higher prison population than China.

Todd Palin in snowmobile crash

Caribou Barbie cancels Trump FL appearance

but come on. the official approval of torture. the NSA spying. the drone program. the invasion of Iraq. a militarized and armed police. a higher prison population than China.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

None of these things is explicitly right wing.

there are plenty of right-wing elements to the US, and to the extent that NPR reflects a broad swath of political opinions one could say that they are participating in a right-wing discourse (though i think that's a silly simplification). but the reason you're getting picked at is because you are inconsistent/incoherent. i have yet to understand why you consider NPR right-wing except that apparently during the healthcare debates you were listening and didn't hear anyone talk about single payer (I definitely did), or bc it is a radio station in the US and the US once dropped nuclear bombs on Japan.