Espressopundit Greg Patterson emails:
How’s this for an example of bias from the Associated Press?
WASHINGTON (AP) Republican Legislators did not rebel against George W. Bush when he justified the Iraq war with false intelligence information. Neither did they do so when they learned that the NSA was spying on American citizens without warrants.
But an apparently insignificant measure provoked a mutiny in the ranks: authorizing a Dubai company to manage the operations at six US ports.
That’s straight out the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. What’s it doing in an AP report? Why have the bloggers who make a living dissecting media bias not descended on the AP? Because the only format in which that AP story appears looks like this:
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Los legisladores republicanos no se rebelaron contra el presidente George W. Bush cuando justificó la guerra en Irak con informes falsos de inteligencia. Tampoco lo hicieron cuando se supo que la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional espiaba a los ciudadanos sin orden judicial.
Pero una medida aparentemente de poca importancia provocó un motÃÂn en regla: autorizar a una compañÃÂa de Dubai a manejar las operaciones en seis puertos de Estados Unidos.
Yassar Arafat used to say wonderful things about promoting peace and working with Israel when he was discussing issues in English, but the US diplomatic corps realized too late that he wasn’t saying the same things in Arabic.
The AP has learned that they can tailor their articles to their audience as well.
Western liberalism, under the stewardship of its media elites (and some of its quasi-socialist host states) seems determined to undermine itself—and I’ve been tempted of late to conclude that they’re doing it just to see if they really can.
How else to explain this obsession with helping our enemies (be they the Iraqi “insurgents” or al-Qaeda, if there is even a distinction to be drawn)—and totalitarian regimes in general—by trying to frame the current US administration as the enemy of freedom and a threat to all the kite-flying children of the middle east, most of whom just want to read story books and dance and sing? And (once properly educated) drive Israel into the sea?
I tend to ascribe it to a form of self-loathing. These “elites” know how morally bankrupt and intellectually devoid they are. They reason that any society that actually places them in positions of importance and influence has to be either evil or incompetent. Plus, they don’t think the American people are smart enough to catch them. Add to that the leftwing brainwashing they underwent in college, and their inability to resist it, and they can’t help but parrot anti-american drivel at the drop of a hat.
Wow. Who knew so many dumb cliches of both language and thought could be stuffed into so few sentences?
OK Josh, care to answer Jeff’s question?
¿Dónde están las mujeres blancas?
So Josh,
Are you looking for a fresh new way to describe the tired, dumb cliche that is liberal media?
A few submissions:
“Don’t look at me it was like that when I got here.”
“You don’t like George Bush? I don’t like George Bush. Now can I touch your boob?”
“I was there man. In the shit…..Oreos flyin’ all over the place. Fuckin’ aye right!”
“Rather committed the Cardinal Sin of broadcast news; he let it become about the news.”
Hit a little close to home did I Josh?
TW: Typical leftwing reaction attack style, engage in ad hominen, and ignore the issue at hand.
I tend to think it’s because we’ve been too successful. Most people in western liberal democracies have never known serious hardship. I mean, the depression babies are all retired and dying off, and the baby boomers think hardship is when you have to buy domestic butter. No one seriously believes that the “radical” poses they strike might have any consequences, so they all try to outdo each other.
In the short term they may be right, but I fear for the long term.
¿Les molestarÃÂa a Uds. si bailamos con sus novias?
¿Usted importa de si bailamos con sus fechas?
Why no, not at all. We were just…LEAVING!…
Just further evidence that the msm is part and parcel of the opposition political party in the US. But then you knew that, and so did I.
What I find amazing is that the msm still attempts to retain its legacy ability to dictate what is “news,” wholly oblivious to (or uncaring about) being caught passing off political propaganda as news reporting.
A some people wonder why newspaper circulation continues to decline.
Forbes – If I could wrap the dog’s poop in the internet before disposing of it, I wouldn’t need the freakin’ newspaper AT ALL.
And speaking of which – after wrapping a dog turd in newspaper, does the newspaper’s value actually INCREASE? I think it might.
Debe ser: La Zona de “No Vuelta”, o, mejor, La Zona de Ninguna Vuelta.
Dunno. Was going for something like “The No Spin Zone”.
ad hominem means attacking the person, rather than their claims, gahrie. I simply posted out your substance-free string of freeper cliches and said nothing about you as a person. Try again.
Don, Jeff’s question is premised on highly debatable and ideologically loaded assumptions.
1) Oppositional Defiant Disorder can continue into adulthood as a “functional” status in certain professions, such as academia and media, where enough of the “work community” share the disorder to make it “acceptable,” or even considered normal.
2) Sadly, the social aspect of this particular disorder has allowed the defiance to “gel” in a particular direction, partly because of the “calcification” of the “rebel set” into a left worldview during the 60s and early 70s, a “legendary” period for rebellion and leftist politics, memories of which have become the “sacred texts” of the American left.
The Media and academics see themselves as “rebelling against the power elite” without understanding that they are, in fact, just another power elite trying to impose their own view. They’ve stared into the abyss too long.
3) This seems to be either a grossly cynical attempt at manipulation of a linguistically isolated minority by either activists within that community (La Raza-style extremists within the news media) or by multilingual Wonder-Bread Che-worshipping radicals within the media.
In other words, some pathetic commie-holdover stooge from Berkeley in the bowels of AP, dreaming of insurection against the Man! Well, against that other Man, anyway.
TW: The progressive, closed mind, that sadly dreams no more new dreams, only dreams of glory past.
Hello Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
A self-rebutting post. Isn’t it nice how the moonbat trolls come in nice, prepackaged bundles now?
TW: Josh doesn’t have the sense to know when to shut up.
TomB, please point out something in gahrie’s first comment that is not standard right-wing cant so as to save your post from self-rebuttal.
Two more cliches for the list, one freepy, one not. Both unimaginative.
TW: At least try to make your insults original.
Josh – I take it your point is that it’s a Bad Thing to meet standard Kossack talking points (“false intelligence information,” “NSA was spying on American citizens without warrants”) with Freeper talking points?
Or is it that only one side of the political spectrum is allowed to be accused of using hackneyed talking points?
Because if that is how you all roll in the “reality-based community,” then I will cheerfully bask in the glow of the VRWC, knowing that we may be ideologues, but at least we are not bullshitting ourselves 24/7.
Josh:
So far you have written three posts, and contributed nothing to the discourse. All you have done is point fingers and call names. That is pretty much the definition of a troll.
JD, you have the edge of the thing, but you need a slightly more detailed analysis.
In order to offer criticism of $IDENTITY-GROUP, you must be a $IDENTITY-GROUP. And your criticism is not effective unless you are an authentic $IDENTITY-GROUP.
The way you establish your bona fides as an authentic $IDENTITY-GROUP is to repeat, without alteration, the self-identification phrases and mantras of $IDENTITY-GROUPs.
Since only the mantras of $IDENTITY-GROUPs can be used to criticize $IDENTITY-GROUPs, and any deviation from the mantras establishes the deviator as inauthentic, it follows that no valid criticism of $IDENTITY-GROUPs can occur. Your post is not cast in cant; it is therefore meaningless gibberish, unworthy of analysis, let alone rebuttal. It is sufficient to repeat the cant-description: “freeper talking points”. That is, your very statements reveal that you aren’t even a $IDENTITY-GROUP, let alone an authentic one, and have nothing to say about it.
The cant-description has a secondary function, which is to assign you to membership in a different IDENTITY-GROUP which operates by the same laws. Since Josh has no mental construct corresponding to “debate” or “criticism”, he assumes that you don’t either and are chanting the mantras of $IDENTITY-GROUPs (yours, that is). This further establishes that you can’t criticize.
Appeals to “reality” and “objective conditions” fail in two ways. First, they don’t match the cant and are therefore inauthentic and thus inapplicable. Second, “reality” is constructed by the individual based on the mantras of $IDENTITY-GROUPs. It isn’t “reality” unless it conforms, so anything that doesn’t conform is invalid as a basis for criticism.
Executive summary: like so many of the “liberal” posters here, Josh’s head is so far up his ass he has to open his mouth to watch television.
Regards,
Ric
Ric: Brutal.
It’s what I do.
Why waste originality on so banal a mind?
1st sg.: hablo
1st pl.: hablamos
2nd sg.: hablas
2nd pl.: habláis
3rd sg.: habla
3rd pl.: hablan
Josh: hablablablablah
Very professional, Mr. Locke.
Which is to say, better than I could have done.
Ric:
You just left a smoking crater where Josh used to be …
Wouldn’t write Josh and company off too quickly.
This is possibly Dowdism evolving.
Ric does have a great point about bad group-think.
Ric is a great example of the cliched mindset too prevalent here. Identity politics and authenticity have nothing to do with whether gahrie’s comment was a string of cliches, but that’s a mode of discourse Ric is comfortable in because Jeff has provided all the buzzwords, so he spews a bunch of cant in response to a comment criticizing rightist cant. I don’t have to assume people are parroting rightist cliches – the evidence is right there. I mean look at JD – nobody brought up “false intelligence information” or Daily Kos but he pretends it’s relevant because he can’t think of anything else. C’mon guys, I’m just trying to help you put a little more thought into your posts so you’ll give me something more than “librul elitist MSM hates america helps terrorists.” I’m confident you can do better. Well, maybe not Ric or JD, but I bet some of you can.
Still waiting for Josh to post something of substance…<checks watch, shakes head>…
Wow, he just doesn’t get it, does he? Even in the FACE of obviously manipulated, obviously agenda-driven reporting, he still passes off anything conservative as… cant, is it? While… you know… he’s…
Well, you get it, THE HYPOCRISY and all that.
There’s really not a lot you can do against a commenter THAT self-absorbed, lads. He thinks he’s found a “GOTCHA” and will do nothing at all that can lose him that piece of moral high ground, ESPECIALLY addressing Jeff’s post.
Now I am convinced Josh is not a troll, rather he is just intentionally obtuse. However, for the edification of His Obtuseness, I will provide the quote from the news article that Jeff referenced in this post:
Translated:
That wasn’t in an opinion piece, not an editorial. It was a news piece out of the A-fookin’
en Espanol.
Each of those assertions (’false intelligence information,’ ‘spying on American citizens’
is also a Kossack talking point. Which is placed in first-graf position in a wire news story. Distributed by a U.S. Based newsgathering organization but in a foreign language, the translation of which is not available in the English language variant on the same service.
Jeff noted the obvious parellel of Arafat’s history of saying one thing in English and another in Arabic. You then state that “Jeff’s question is premised on highly debatable and ideologically loaded assumptions.” You, of course, accuse anyone else’s assumption to be rote talking points, but invite us (silently) to assume yours evidently are the product of careful and precise concentration on the issues.
Josh – not to mix metaphors or anything, but when at the bottom of Ric’s smoking crater, it’s much better to stop digging.
JD, since you seem to have trouble locating the question to which I was referring (apparently the two question marks weren’t obvious enough), I’ll spare you the burden of introducing more pointless irrelevancy and reproduce it for you.
A bit like asking if one still beats his wife, rhetorically speaking.
OHNOES, I labeled only a few responses here as cant. Please learn to distinguish between “anything” and “a few” and kindly save your mighty caps-lock key for other men of straw.
*Yawn*
Oh, sorry? Were you bringing up anything substantial?
I don’t care what I said before, look at what I say now. For anything that was said before was, like, before. All I know is that you people cannot talk to one another without cant and have no substance, whereas I write in a truly flawless and cantless prose that is not subject to parsing or fisking, and I am right. Don’t look at the substance of the article in discussion, damn you! I’m right, don’t you see?!?
Josh – Your description of Jeff’s question, as being “premised on highly debatable and ideologically loaded assumptions” is, in itself, accusing Jeff (and others) of the selfsame rhetorical trap you cheerfully stumble into later in the thread:
While you were focused solely on Jeff’s commentary, and finding it to ruffle your rhetorical feathers a bit, his conclusion is not out of line with the facts at hand, for there is no way on earth that anyone could conclude that the MSM has handled the coverage of the Gulf Crisis or the coverage of the current Administration in anything approaching an even tone. Further, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to imagine what would happen to those anti-Bush cheerleaders in the MSM should the Muslim way of life come to sway in the USA.
It is interesting that, when presented with the translation of a mainstream bureau news story that is absolutely as baldfaced an editorial hit piece as anything that MoDo could cook up during one of her “power surges,” you choose instead to dismiss it out of hand, deeming it a “pointless irrelevancy,” choosing instead to “help” us with your knowledge and expertise of net rhetoric, while not expanding the discussion on a factual basis one iota.
It must just suck to be you, Josh.
Jeff’s article is wrong because the idea that the news media is not covering the Iraq War fairly is pure wingnut cant!
And, besides, hurting the US isn’t the same as helping our enemies!
Anonymous coward, please learn how to distinguish between a post and a comment before commenting.
That’s all you got JD? Evil EmEsEm hates America, undermines war? Talk about wingnut cant.
Jeff, I’m absolutely with you on the media bias of AP—I’ve been pointing out their chronic anti-Israel and anti-American bias for ages –but my bullshit detector is going off. I can’t find the article in English anywhere, which leads me to believe that either the translator or his newspaper played fast and loose with the article, or that it isn’t really the AP.
A Google search turns up plenty of articles by Ken Guggenheim, but none in English with that subject, and I find it difficult to believe that the AP would put that in a Spanish-language paper only.
Having said that, if it’s true, and appears only in this one Spanish-language publication: What a weasel move.
Hehe… we lost that round, JD. We fed an idiot troll.