Sunday, March 30, 2014

Today In Both Sides Do It, Ctd.



When you build a national cargo cult out of the biggest and most pernicious lie in American politics, you end up with drivel like this --
The Both Sides Now weekend radio show exchanges ideas, not rants or monologues. Because we hear from both sides, we sharpen differences or even bridge them so that listeners decide for themselves. Hosted each week by Mark Green, we have some of the best commentators Left & Right anywhere on radio and TV. You’ll hear from Ron Reagan, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Eliot Spitzer, Bob Shrum or Jonathan Alter lining up with Mary Matalin, Erick Erickson, David Frum, Rich Lowry orTorie Clarke. They debate, you decide.
-- being sludged out of Progressive talk radio.

In American governance, this is The Big Problem.  Everything else comes in a distant second.  Period.  Full stop.
In the early aughts, fighting battles with the righteous assurance of scientific consensus made happy warriors of leftists. It was fun to poke holes in creationist talking points; while frightening, there was a motivating urgency that came with yielding the newest evidence for man-made global warming. While it was apparent, even then, how stubborn science skeptics could be, it hadn’t sunk in yet how resistant to rational persuasion they would prove to be. The endurance of people like Ken Ham to Marsha Blackburn—forever repeating the same pseudo-rational “objections" with unjustified confidence and unbothered smiles—boggles even the most cynical liberal. Decades of proof, the prognosis worsening by the year, and what does the rational world have to show for it? Nothing.
This has given way to a profound sense of frustration and exasperation...
And to whatever extent the media pretends that the GOP's psychotic break with reality is not The Big Problem, that is the extent to which  the media is lying to you...for money...about a matter of life-and-death.

8 comments:

BlindRobin said...

Arrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

BlindRobin said...

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

JerryB said...

I'll tell you who has become the Lord High Master of the Both-siderisms. That's Jon Stewart. He got smacked pretty hard in 2012 about being a tool for the left and ever since he's gotten progressive worse about saying Dems too.

He's a funny mother fucker but I had to stop watching.

Monster from the Id said...

It's Edward Bernays's world; the rest of us just live in it.

Anonymous said...


god we are so fucked.
Please tell me why we are not so fucked....please...

CM said...

**He's a funny mother fucker but I had to stop watching**

Me too. His false equivalencies were too much to handle particularly after his boneheaded rally to restore sanity.

marindenver said...

What BlindRobin said. Another 3 or 4 times.

Kathleen said...

What JerryB and CM said. I'm with you completely. Stewart is brilliant at eviscerating the "low hanging fruit" (Fox, CNN), but most of the time fails to dig much deeper, ie, attacking his buddies at NBC/MSNBC. Colbert is fearless and a much sharper satirist in my opinion.