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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Aug 2, 2004 8:59:54 GMT -5
In order to illustrate, I'll ask Mary these questions, if I may:-
1. Have you been called unpatriotic by right-wingers, either in life or on a current events board at the old RS?
2. Are you unpatriotic?
3. As a left-winger, do you feel truly represented by Clinton, Kerry and their ilk?
4. Do YOU think the media is generally left-wing?
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 9:02:42 GMT -5
The left have not 'created' the issue. Nor do they whinge, especially. The right constantly infer that the left lack patriotism, and win public confidence on issues like defence and national security (as well as immigration and asylum) by using tough and uncompromising rhetoric. You know, lefties are pinkos, burn the flag, lack values, hate their own country. THAT sort of rhetoric. When this is challenged, the left are portrayed as weak, in favour of cutting the armed services (which is why soldiers generally vote right-wing), suspect on defence, weak on immigration. It's the same in Europe. Then when the left point out that the right wing understanding of 'patriotism' is actually a nasty little nationalistic mindset that preys on stoking fear and xenophobia in the populace, the argument invariably becomes fiercer and even less constructive. It goes way further than the patriotism issue too. The right in the US and the UK has done a great job of making certain words - socialist, liberal, tax, redistribution, green - dirty, vote-losing words, with the help of all their powerful media allies. The final lie or spin is then to harp on about the media being left-wing, so then of course the cowed media becomes even more compliant with right-wing, establishment, authoritarian agendas. It's left the left-wing marginalised in both nations, and their representatives in office have to dress themselves in uselessly moderate clothes. The bias of the media is something that you and I will NEVER agree on (although I'd say that the BBC reports that the 9/11 report ripped Bush a new one is another example of you're being wrong on that issue) so I'll skip over that. I agree with you that the right is seen as more pro-military, for the reasons you cite. The right tends to favor beefing up the military, and the left tends to favor cutting it in favor of social programs. But that's not a perception that has been created by one side. That's a perception that's been established based on votes and overall ideologies. Certainly I recognize that there are people who are right leaning that view support of the military as a direct reflection of a person's patriotism. But I don't see those people as people like George Bush, John Ashcroft, and Rush Limbaugh. I see those people as regular joes. So why blame Bush, Ashcroft, Limbaugh, etc? Further ... you're not going to shake the perception just by saying "We like the flag too". No question that both sides like the flag! I remember during all of the re-count, the Daily Show had a "flag count" going, mocking the number of flags that both the Gore and Bush camps kept adding behind their podiums. The only way to shake the perception that the right is stronger on military issues is for the left to start taking the position that the military cannot be weakened in favor of social programs. |
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 9:04:17 GMT -5
In order to illustrate, I'll ask Mary these questions, if I may:- 1. Have you been called unpatriotic by right-wingers, either in life or on a current events board at the old RS? 2. Are you unpatriotic? 3. As a left-winger, do you feel truly represented by Clinton, Kerry and their ilk? 4. Do YOU think the media is generally left-wing? How does this illustrate anything? Do you truly want me to believe that if one lefty feels it, it MUST be true? I mean, if I ask Stratman if he things the media is generally left-wing, and his answer differs from Mary, what have we established? |
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 9:05:56 GMT -5
Also FTR JLLM, I've been called unpatriotic for disagreeing with dissenters / protestors. So again, what has this established? Nothing that I can see, except that perhaps the word "unpatriotic" is thrown around too loosely.
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Post by Mary on Aug 2, 2004 9:07:24 GMT -5
Oh come on. All it takes is a brief perusal of frontpagemag.com or freerepublic.com to see conservatives ranting and raving on a daily basis about a "third column" of "anti-American" leftists who hate everything that this country stands for. And these accusations are hardly only attached to some minority of ultra-radical lefties who are way outside the mainstream Democratic "left" - my god, I just surfed over to frontpagemag and the very first image I was presented with was a picture of John Kerry with the text "John Kerry: Anti-American War Hero" plastered across his image, with a link to a corresponding article about how anti-American Kerry is.
And yesterday when I checked frontpagemag.com, one of the headlining articles, there was an article exposing how "The Democrats Embrace Al-Jazeera" - based on the fact that Al Jazeera, along with hundreds of other news networks, were given a space to cover the Democratic Convention on the air: "Despite Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry’s assertion that as President, he would “use every available resource to destroy terrorists and deny them sanctuary…and new recruits,” one of the invited guests at the now-concluded Democratic National Convention was an organization that has served as a terrorist recruitment tool, a communications conduit for al-Qaeda in general and Osama bin Laden in particular. This network has repeatedly described Palestinian suicide-bombers as “martyrs.” High above the platform and the sea of “Kerry-Edwards” placards, covering the convention from a skybox towering over the Fleet Center floor was Arabic network al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite news agency whose allegedly “factual and accurate” news coverage has been blatantly anti-American."
Speaking of Al Jazeera, David Horowitz himself wrote an article comparing Al Gore to Al Jazeera, and writing:
"In fact, it was Gore himself and Jimmy Carter who broke the consensus when they attacked Bush days after he went to the U.N. to seek what became a unanimous Security resolution on Iraq, thus launching the partisan battle over the war that has consumed the domestic political debate for the last year and a half, and sabotaged the war on terror in the process."
Indeed, just doing a search at frontpagemag.com for "Democrats hate America" turns up 10 pages of article titles. The brief snippets on the pages - "Kerry's new Hate-American Man" and "Face it, Michael Moore hates America" and "The Democrats hope Americans will forget how much they hate the military and long to see America humliiated" and "They just never stop, this hate-America/hate-George-Bush crowd of sniveling liberals and Democrats" and "look where all this hate-Bush, hate-America rhetoric has taken them" - is surely sufficient to expose how frequently very public, well-known, ubiquitous conservative commentators accuse Democrats and leftists of being unpatriotic America-haters. Indeed every single protest I went to in the leadup to the Iraq war was counterprotested by a group of flag-waving pro-war activists holding up signs saying things like "If you hate America so much, why don't you leave?"
I'm not saying this commentary exhausts conservatism, or that the Bush administration has fully embraced it... or that I even give a shit which party has a better grasp on the "flag" (I don't even know what that means and I certanly don't care) but to pretend that Kerry has mostly fabricated the idea that there is a steady stream of conservative commentary in all media outlet suggesting that Democrats are anti-American and Republicans have a monopoly on patriotism is just ludicrous.
M
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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Aug 2, 2004 9:10:54 GMT -5
On the media, I think the TV media are more 'establishment' than right-wing, to be fair. The way they portray people like travellers is pretty disgusting, and the things they choose to show on bulletins are very loaded in favour of authorities. The BBC coverage of the 1982 miners' strike in the UK, for example, has since been uncovered as hopelessly one-sided. Every bit of edited reportage left out any questionable, provocative or heavy-handed police action. The miners were shown in the worst possible light night after night on the news, and public support for them totally drained away. Since then many things have come to light that the BBC and ITN suppressed because, apparently, they had to make "editorial choices". So maybe it's an innate conservatism in the broadcast media over here rather than a right-left bias, but the right always trot out the "left-wing media" line ad nauseum, until it's become an accepted truism. As for the 9/11 report - the BBC and C4 simply looked at what was implied, as well as what was plainly stated. It's true the BBC plainly hates Bush, but that's not a left-right thing either. That's just Bush. All Europeans dislike Bush. Except, amazingly, for Tony Blair.  |
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 9:12:23 GMT -5
Mary, citing Frontpagemag as a voice of the conservative mainstream, or the Republican party is about as logical as considering Michael Moore an official spokesperson for the Kerry campaign and the Democratic party. I'm not talkign about the hate mongers on BOTH sides of the fence. I'm talking about the people who represent conservative and liberal thought. When KErry and Dean talk about "taking back the flag", they're not citing the names Horowitz, Savage, and Coulter. So don't use THOSE names as the resaon to justify such rhetorical BS.
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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Aug 2, 2004 9:15:59 GMT -5
but to pretend that Kerry has mostly fabricated the idea that there is a steady stream of conservative commentary in all media outlet suggesting that Democrats are anti-American and Republicans have a monopoly on patriotism is just ludicrous - Mary That's what I was trying to say, basically. I just went off on one about the media, 'cos I'm right thick. 
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Post by Mary on Aug 2, 2004 9:20:56 GMT -5
Here at Berkeley, the most famous conservative student magazine is called "The Patriot". I have yet to see a single issue of the paper that did not run an article exposing how much leftist professors loathe America.
And it is not some extremist right-wing rag that has been disavowed by mainstream conservatives. To the contrary, the California Republican Party has repeatedly praised its editors, it's been covered favorably by Bill O'Reilly, David Horowitz, and even Time Magazine, and it receives massive amounts of funding from private conservative organizations. It was the same thing when I was at Dartmouth, and the Dartmouth review, the conservative student paper there, similarly constantly ran articles trying to expose the unpatriotic America-hatred of campus leftists - and William F. Buckley Jr. served for decades as an adviser to this paper.
How many such examples do we need before we conclude that these aren't isolated voices in the dark, but part of a systematic ideological campaign to smear leftists and Democrats as unpatriotic??
M
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 9:24:48 GMT -5
Just one Mary ... one that comes from one of the mainstream sources that John Kerry and Howard Dean cite when they make the claims. Again as I said ... the right can't claim tha the rhetoric of Michael Moore is the voice of the Democratic party. So why are you giving the Democrats a free pass to do just that with the right?
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Post by Mary on Aug 2, 2004 9:28:04 GMT -5
I fail to see how many of the commentators at frontpagemag are so far outside the mainstream. David Horowitz brushes elbows every year at his own conservative conference - Restoration Weekend - with numerous Republican politicians, including prominent congressmen (oh yeah, and Zell Miller...) This year, in addition to the always-charming Zell Miller, the conference (run by Horowitz' organization, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) will also include senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Sessions.
Anyway, frontpagemag.com includes links to articles by conservatives in dozens of different newspapers - ranging from major magazines to tiny campus editorials. So I honestly don't understand how you can dismiss everything at frontpagemag as some kind of representation of the radical right - it's just a compendium of recent conservative commentary all over the media, from dozens of different commentators, selected by its editors. It's not just David Horowitz and Ann Coulter.
I have to teach a class now, but afterwards I'll look over the text of some speeches by Rush Limbaugh, whom you seem to think doesn't belong in this category. I used to watch his syndicated television show and I seem to recall him very frequently - almost daily - suggesting that Clinton Democrats hated America. But I will check and see what I can find in a few hours.
M
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 9:32:53 GMT -5
How do I fail to consider Horowitz to be the conservative mainstream? Because I consider myself to be of the thinking of hte conservative mainstream, and more often than not when Melon posts articles by Horowitz, I find myself thinking "Whoa, pull back there fella" Now who knows ... maybe I'm actually a liberal and none of us have ever discovered it. But when I see a person's conservative thoughts as being rather extreme, then I tend to push them beyond the mainstream.
Now, I will concede that Rush Limbaugh's rhetoric, while not as extreme as someone like Ann Coulter, can certainly get outlandish at times. His claims Democrats don't want the economy to improve so that Bush isn't re-elected would be an example of that. But even that does not explain this, given that his is not the only name being cited by Kerry and Dean. So, I still have to ask, how are George W Bush and John Ashcroft declairng people who disagree with them to be unpatriotic?
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Post by PC on Aug 2, 2004 12:16:33 GMT -5
It's funny...many conservatives think lefties hate America right now since they generally don't like the Bush administration. But what about when Clinton was President? Right-wingers really hated the Clinton administration, but somehow that didn't make them "anti-American" in 1998.
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 12:19:07 GMT -5
It's funny...many conservatives think lefties hate America right now since they generally don't like the Bush administration. But what about when Clinton was President? Right-wingers really hated the Clinton administration, but somehow that didn't make them "anti-American" in 1998. How many of the conservatives who post on these boards would you say fall into the "lefties hate America' mindset? If there is nothing else that you guys can take from interacting with us crazy conservatives, PLEASE allow yourselves to open your minds to thinking that maybe, just maybe, the extremes of the thought process don't represent most of us! |
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Post by chrisfan on Aug 2, 2004 12:24:12 GMT -5
This does have me thinking though ... perhaps the mere notion that so many non-conservatives seem to believe that the extremes of conservative thought are the only representatives of conservatives, or at least the majority, perhaps that illustrates just how much liberalism DOES dominate our media. You just can't find exposure to mainstream conservatives unless you really seek it out!
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