New York Times Blindly Plays Right into Tea Party Rhetoric, Media Abandoning Principles Contributing to Problem

(Updated below)

In a feature piece yesterday by David Barstow, the New York Times blindly plays into Tea Party rhetoric. And then in yet another display of ridiculous “false balance,” highlights the very first comment to the piece, which itself plays into the rhetoric far, far more zealously:

What a great article — very informative…

…These people, though, if they are the way you describe them, seem much more progressive in their views toward individual rights vs. government than any of the self-proclaimed “progressives” of whom I am aware.

I will start paying much closer attention. I might have just found a new political home.

In stark contrast, consider these recent questions regarding the same Tea Party movement:

The funny thing is Tea Partiers say they are for more freedom, but most of the real threats to freedom — creeping authoritarianism; an expectation that people are the same or similar; distrust of differences; condemnation of different views as unpatriotic, or, worse, as “traitors;” an increase in unchecked governmental power over citizens; an increasing governmental intrusion into both privacy and the morality of individuals; a continual evisceration of privacy rights and of course calls for a national ‘Id’ card, etc.; an increasingly powerful, creeping corporate oligopoly; an abominable and somewhat radical recent Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the dollar purchased speech rights of private citizens plus even more at the expense of actual, meaningful, individual free speech; sweeping security checks and procedures based solely upon religion or race; etc. – are advocated or supported by a majority of the so called “Tea Party” movement.

At least the newspaper didn’t block the following comment (like voodoo climate author Steven Levitt’ did on his Times blog column as noted here), one that raises a question that still begs an answer: Why was the following ridiculously misleading reference, among others, included in the Times piece?

“Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer — strict adherence to the Constitution — would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member.”

That rings a little hollow. I have yet to meet a Tea Party member who doesn’t seem to despise the ACLU. (Though I am sure there are some.) The unrecognized hypocrisy is only scantily referenced by the note on the “relative passivity” through the Bush years, a far more imperial, more autocratic, far more intrusive, and a far more constitutionally violating, presidency than the current administration.

And Glenn Beck? That’s who you note many Tea Partiers are getting their information and spirit from? Maybe one of the biggest propagandists in the Western world since Benito Mussolini, and at any rate one of the most profoundly misinformed, wildly misleading, and exceedingly inflammatory voices of the modern age?

The real questions that need to be asked of and about the Tea Party movement, where a lot of well meaning people may be being mislead, a lot of rhetoric is exceedingly far from the reality, all while there is a lot of misplaced anger and misinformation brewing. (Just see link above about Beck lest you have doubts, as obviously, many who listen to Beck must.)

Some may argue that the Obama Administration is not “far more constitutionally violative,” just “more constitutionally violative.”  But the points above all stand.  As do perhaps some of the potentially more chilling points made by yet another Times reader:

Is the tea party movement just a folksy grass-roots movement or is there something more dangerous brewing here? Apparently tea party activists are motivated by a fear that the federal government is too big and too intrusive. Many tea-partyers are libertarians and some are attracted to the militia movements. The events at Waco and Ruby Ridge are often mentioned.

It’s interesting that this movement was quiescent during the eight years of the Bush administration, when the federal government clearly violated people’s civil rights. It was only after the first black president in history was elected that this movement, which exclusively attracts white people, really got going.

Think back to 1995, when the deadliest act of terrorism prior to the September 11 attacks was perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was a member of a militia, he was partial to libertarianism, he blamed the federal government for just about everything wrong with society and guess what? The events at Waco and Ruby Ridge were major motivations for his act.

Or think back even farther. In the 1920’s there was a certain political party that started out in Bavaria. A grass-roots party when it started, it attracted people who hated the federal government, and who were partial to conspiracy theories especially ones about Jews. It had no clear leadership until an enterprising fellow named Adolf Hitler came along. The rest, shall we say, is history.

Unfortunately many times more people will read author David Barstow’s false balance and far right kowtowing Tea Party fluff piece, than some random comments.  And that fluff piece is in the New York Times:  ”Fair and balanced” coverage of the Tea Party movement disconnect between assertion and actual fact is often worse elsewhere.

A few things to add here:  First, it is not only a black president, it is a moderate, rather than right or far right wing President (not withstanding that Tea Partiers are convinced he is a “socialist”) who also just happens to be black, and, even less coincidentally, a Democrat.

Second is that these are loose, and potentially somewhat unfair connections, by and of themselves. The real problem is the excessive rhetoric, and its often enormous disconnect with reality. This is something that the media, as exemplified by this leading Times story, is not serving as a check upon, but often as a simple parroting stenographer for.

Third, is a statement I would again reiterate, famously made by the late Louisiana Governor Huey Long.

Fascism, shall come, in the name of Anti Fascism.

As the Times piece noted (emphasis added):

That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance…

Glenn Beck. Here (again, see middle portion) is just a synopsis as of last summer (Beck’s gotten even worse since) of some of the profoundly ignorant, outrageously hypocritical, highly inflammatory, and incredibly misleading assertions an obviously spintastic Glenn Beck has foistered upon both himself, and an increasingly angry listening public – not angry at Beck for misleading them, but angry at others, and other things, real and, often imagined, because of Beck.

That Person.  The person who expresses more anti Fascism fervor — almost everyone who disagrees with Beck is a “Nazi,” by the way — than perhaps anybody in America. And who exhibits many of its underlying tendencies.

Refer back to the famous quote by Huey Long, above, “fascism shall come, in the name of anti-fascism.” Consider last comment block quoted just above. Apply.

Many Tea Partiers are no doubt well meaning, and very earnest, and maybe not always radical right wing folks.  But when the gap between rhetoric and reality gets as large as it is becoming today, and the biggest purveyor of that gap in the United States becomes the de facto leader or “inspiration,” it should be a wake up call to Democrats, Liberals, Independents, Moderate Republicans, and in particular the media, that something simply has to be done in this country to start to lessen the growing gap between rhetoric and reality. A vibrant and secure democracy simply can not function this way.

Maybe it would be helpful, if instead of a kowtowing fluff piece, the New York times engaged in actual journalism, and did a real piece on the issue. But then, some suggest (including myself), it is the breakdown in our media’s role as a Fourth Estate check that, more than anything else, is enabling this increasingly large disparity between rhetoric and fact in America today, and which is, in many ways, starting to become a mirror of it.

It’s not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said that given a choice between having government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, he would “not hesitate” to choose the latter. And he was not talking about simply shouting out in the village square — a vital and separate right also guaranteed by the First Amendment.  (And which today, in its modern technological equivalent, is reflected in the increasing prevalence of Internet “information and opinion” sites and reliance, that ironically enough, because of its ease and immediacy, is serving as a further threat to the media itself) . But it has no check upon it.

As I noted here (also on the New York Times site):

People shouting out in the village square is a key part of democracy, and clearly protected under the First Amendment. But it’s not journalism, and it’s not a substitute for the Fourth Estate.

Despite the fact that the Internet does bring excellent access to information (both correct and incorrect), it is still really nothing more than the modern high tech version of the village square.

And as such popularity and popular will and opinion are in effect tending to serve, more than anything, as the determiner of what is “right” or correct, even when it comes to objective facts — whereas in reality, popular opinion is often wrong, and can not serve as a check upon itself. It is why a fourth estate was so vital.

As these two – a fourth estate merging into just a more sophisticated if not as polarizing version of a parroting stenographer, and a (Internet) popularity arbiter of what is news and what is important and what gets read — merge, we are gradually losing the essence of this critical Fourth Estate check that Thomas Jefferson once thought even more important than government itself.

We are beginning to see the results of this:  With people who say they are for less government intrusion, more individual liberty, yet who actually tend to despise the ACLU; who say they want strict adherence to the “Constitution” yet in most cases supported a Bush Administration that was not only imperial, highly secretive, and completely lacking in accountability, but which employed an extreme “Unitary Executive” theory of the Constitution which gives the Executive the Unilateral Discretion to do whatever he/she wants in the name of “national security,” obviating the basic reason our Constitution was designed in the first place, and exactly what our Founders feared in motivating them to create it; people who say the are for individual liberty and less government services, but who suddenly only rose up in outspoken, and often demonizing anger, after a far right administration left the White House, and was replaced by a moderate Democratic Administration. People who in many cases, are taking up arms, and supporting militias. Not against an autocratic governmental regime, but because what was an increasingly autocratic leaning government regime, has just been replaced by a far more moderate one.  Whom a certain individual has nevertheless convinced many people is “coming after” them.

People who are being led by one of the most manipulatively misinformed, misleading, demonizing, and inflammatory voices in a long, long time. Glenn Beck.

With this person, another world class expert in rhetoric and little else, as their Keynote speaker.
____________

Update: The Cato Institute continues to sometimes kid itself: A few days ago, Vice President Gene Healy writes:

Anyone who’s been to a Tea Party rally knows this is no Astroturf movement. These are ordinary citizens, rightly furious that the federal government has sold the country a junk mortgage on its future, sticking America with an unsustainable debt.

They may be “ordinary citizens.”  But with Glenn Beck as perhaps the prime instigating force — as even the fluffy New York Times article above supports — and with Sarah Palin perhaps not far behind, these are ordinary citizens who have been greatly mislead and have a lot of illusions regarding political processes in America.

Government debt is what they say is a lot of the “fury;” but which programs are they advocating to be cut? And they are more furious about “pork”?  In the middle of the night several years back, after the Bush Administration’s Medicare Administrator (Tom Scully) threatened the program’s chief actuary if he shared his true cost estimates with Congress, one of the biggest corporate handouts in the history of the world was occasioned. At taxpayer expense.

That medicare “prescription drug plan” within just fourteen months of its original passage, was expected to cost well over a trillion dollars.  Most other pork complained about is barely even noticeable in comparison, combined.   Where was the outrage over a one trillion dollar giveaway — count to a thousand, that is how many billions are in a trillion — to corporate interests, at taxpayer expense. Where was the outrage?

To make matters worse, the Bush Administration did it by misleading Congress, as even some leading Republicans have complained about. Where was the outrage?  Where were the Tea Parties?

The closest thing we had to Tea Parties before today — one could call the outrage leveled against the Clinton Administration the tea party precursor — was during the Clinton Administration — an Administration that inherited absolutely gargantuan budget deficits, and enabled by favorable productivity gains due to the widespread implementation of computer technology along with sensible fiscal policies, left the incoming Bush Administration with a surplus.

Whether it is a good idea or a bad one (thought most economists fully urged this action), the current spending at least had the stimulus angle and a belief that this country was in dire economic times.  Where was this outrage when the Bush Administration was doubling our historical outstanding national debt at a time when total military and national security spending was still lower (percentage wise, the only measurement that matters) than during any decade but one in the past half a century?  When the Bush Administration was literally shredding the basic preventative purposes of the Constitution, rendering it void at the Executive’s discretion and thus Articles I and II essentially voluntary?

In the second paragraph Healy does briefly note at least part of this seeming “oddity.” (Which, if one understands the tea party, and the true motivations and mis-perceptions behind it, is really no oddity at all):

Yet there are those who doubt the new activists’ sincerity, asking, in effect, “Where were you when George W. Bush was spending faster than Lyndon Johnson?” It’s a fair question.

It’s also one, among others, that Healy never answers.

The answer can be found, in the post above.  And in the ravings of Glenn Beck, and others.  And in the media kowtowing to this, with, title aside, absurdly fluffy pieces, and the even more inane mainstream media liberals’ blinding dismissal of it all.

I’ve emailed Healy and invited him to comment on the above post, including this update.

Jon Stewart, Torture Advocate John Yoo, and the American Media Today

Perusing through the daily blog posts at the Liberal “American Prospect,” one sees that they don’t get many comments, typically. Whether that is a good or bad thing, is not suggested here. But one very recent post that DID get a lot of commentary was on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show interview with former Bush Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

Several of the comments were interesting, to say the least. A few examples:

Sadly, this blog post says more about the American Prospect and Adam Serwer than Jon Stewart. Very disappointing. How about the Prospect doing an in-depth profile and interview with Yoo in your next issue, and doing a better “job” than Stewart could in 8 minutes on a comedy show?
Posted by: Kay Leigh Hagan January 12, 2010 4:26 PM

True that.   At the same time, the Daily Show reaches millions; the American Prospect reaches a small, very largely self selected group that on average is likely going to be highly skeptical of Yohn Yoo’s theories. Thus, instead, how about the American Prospect do an in depth profile interview as suggested in the comment above, and work on turning it into mainstream news?

I think that giving John Stewart a pass because he is “just a comedian” is a bit of an unfair double-standard. When he makes a good point, we don’t give him less credit because he is “just a comedian”. Take Glen Beck for example. He says the most insane things you can imagine, but then qualifies it by saying he’s just a clown, etc, and that you shouldn’t listen to him. At no point does he really expect anyone to not take him seriously. I think it is the same with John Stewart.
Posted by mike January 12, 2010 5:50 PM

Stewart is more than just a comedian. He covers timely news events, and news interviews, all while doing so with, humor, insight, and often additional knowledge.  On the other hand — and often underestimated by those who dismiss Beck as obviously “full of it” — Beck has one of the most popular radio talk shows in America; a news punditry show, with an occasionally funny weird twist, not comedy.  Beck also has a daily news punditry show on “Fox News,” a 24 hour, round the clock news channel – and the most watched cable news channel in America.  Stewart  has a daily comedy show on the 24 hour, round the clock comedy channel.

Stewart may or may not have done a good job going toe to toe with John Yoo on the Constitution.But it’s not like he wildly mislead viewers. He just failed to do a much better job asking, following up on, and getting answers to, tough questions, than most others in the media.  This next comment however, right or wrong, suggests he still did a better job than the general media.

Stewart did a much better job with Yoo than any other so called journalist. Let’s see Yoo on Face The Nation or The Situation room, compare and contrast.
Posted by: John D’oh January 12, 2010 3:38 PM

He asked more than Congress or the Obama Administration has asked.Stewart isn’t a lawyer. And a comedy show isn’t the kind of place where you can try to pin down a slippery and practiced opponent. That’s better done in a court of law.
Posted by: clbrune January 12, 2010 3:41 PM

I agree with most of the people here saying that Jon Stewart is a comedian and that it’s a failure of real news channels that we rely on him so much to get to the real answers. I disagree when the author says the Jon didn’t question Yoo when he said that the outlines of torture had never been addressed by the US – he tried to get Yoo to clarify that multiple times. Yoo did what a lot of politicians do which is broadly acknowledge the questions without really answering them. I’ve definitely see Jon be more combative in interviews however so I’ll give you that.
Posted by: Susan January 12, 2010 3:48 PM

Another echoed this a bit further:

Cripes, people! You can’t expect Stewart to be a one-person truth squad for the nation! He can’t do it alone! As long as network window dressing like the George Stephanopolis’s and the Chuck Todd’s of the world fail to do their job the media will continue to fail us all. We need gutty, intellecutally curious journalists to challenge this sort of thing. What we get is “Herb Tarlek” with a microphone.
Posted by: Mark B January 12, 2010 3:22 PM

A vibrant democracy can not rely upon a one person truth squad. It needs a robust Fourth Estate to serve as a mainstream, non polarizing, non insular, non self selecting, check upon misinformation, group-think, rhetoric run amuck, and government. But for the past ten years (perhaps even fifteen, ever since Glenn Beck’s “Fox” came on the scene), America has been seeing less and less of that, and more and more simple stenographic copying of what people in, or with, power (or microphones), are saying.

Using the specific media examples given in the last comment, here are some facts and context behind former Major Rudy Giuliani’s appearance as a terrorism expert last week with Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America, from some random, unknown, and likely audience self selecting blog.

Here is what you get from watching Stephanopoulos himself conducting that interview.[Also note, Giuliani spends most of the time, as if he is one of the writers for the hit Fox TV counter-terrorism series"24," talking about how 30 hours is nothing for an interrogation, and what one "typically gets" out of "30 hours." Perhap's its just me, but, depending upon what led up to it, I'm thinking I could get a lot of information out of Giuliani, or even a caught red handed terrorism suspect, in probably ten hours of total actual questioning.  But there is nothing from the interview to suggest that all questioning of Abdulmutallab has ceased. And if Giuliana has inside information that this is so, he does not share it.]

Here is what you learn about John McCain’s foreign policy expertise during the 2008 Presidential election, from that same random, unknown, blog. Here is what you get from listening to the media and NBC’s Chuck Todd on John McCain.

Jon Stewart, comedian; and in the form of comedy and satire, occasional savior of truth.

But while close, in some eyes, to a one man truth squad for the nation, no match for John Yoo: Apologist for and proponent of state sanctioned torture, and primover behind the theory of Executive Unilateral Discretion regardless of existing Statute or Bill or Rights, in the Executive’s unilateral view of “national security.”

Meet the Press’s Thoughts, Today

Last night, on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (10-08-09),  the host of the nation’s top news show made a seemingly run of the mill statement, that is anything but. Unfortunately, it’s an all too common one on the part of partisan politicians.  And as asserted by host David Gregory, it illustrates how the level of thought being expressed at the top levels of our media is often helping to further misinform our national debate — when it is supposed to be doing the exact opposite.  

Here is how the conversation went:

Jon Stewart:  How has it changed in the last eight months. I mean, really, in the eight years that preceeded that, were very similar. I mean, these bailouts were begun under the Bush Administration, he had a huge Medicare program, 1.3 [trillion dollars], it seems like when they say we want limited government, it means we want government limited to the guy that we want. 

David Gregory:  The president, this president, has expanded government, we know that; some of it was inherited. But he’s got to go out there and say “government  is the solution.”  He doesn’t have any choice now, he’s [unintelligible] as big government change, and have that fight with Republicans, who are going to say, ‘no, government is the enemy, government can’t get this done.  That is the fight that needs to be had.

Is “big government change” really Obama’s motif, or did Gregory, as a matter of declarative fact, just spin this the way Obama’s opponents have?

But more importantly, Americans won’t get it through their heads that “the government”  is us — with the only pertinent questions being “in a free and independent country, what do we have to sensibly try to address collectively, and how do we do that” – if the media won’t get it either. 

In the interview, Gregory also stated: 

We have an obligation to talk about what’s fact, what’s fiction, what’s real.

The ideas of “government” being the “solution,” or “the enemy” are abstractions that when applied as a generality to the real world (as Gregory just did), are fictional. Yet Gregory repeated this fiction, and helped propagate the misunderstanding that contributes to it.

If government is the enemy, we should have none, and thus have anarchy. If government is the solution, we should – probably far worse than anarchy – have communism.  Both are preposterous, or simply scary. ( The latter is probably more so than the former, and our system of democracy, which essentially lets people live their lives while coming together to do the things that we can’t do individually, essentially realizes that.) 

Also note that one of the biggest complaints that some of those who are “against” ostensible “big government” have is on matters relating to the environment.  Yet the environment, along with national defense, is one of the two things that on a practical level, we have to share. And it presents a series of issues, for reasons that have been documented in thousands of papers going back to the original “Tragedy of the Commons,” that can not –without some oversight — be sensibly addressed only by a purely economc system where billions can literally be made and sheltered before far too late, after the fact, and often just theoretical, liability even attaches. (The third natural area for government is not one which we have to collectively share, but one which by its definition increases liberty, rather than impinges upon it, and that is justice). 

To the extent Gregory’s sweeping statement is referring to specific issues – although he is clearly playing to a broader “debate” notion about the role of government — the same reasoning applies.  The argument against government involvement with respect to any particular issue, is that this impinges upon liberty, is inefficient, leads to excessive bureaucracy (and so forth and so on), not that “government is the enemy.”  Al-Qaeda is the enemy. Calling our “government” the enemy, even as a term of art, and playing into the debate being framed in such misleading fashion, only furthers the current high level of misinformation and confusion. It also furthers a lack of grounding in the actual facts which Gregory himself ironically points out that the media has an obligation to share. It’s true that underlying notions of distrust (or trust) of government involvement play a role, but they are necessarily subsumed in the broader reasons why. This idea of “government” being the enemy (or the solution) spins this on its head.

There are countless easy examples. Let’s take a difficult one:  One where some of the consensus, at least, seems to be, incorrectly, that the only issue is whether or not to have “more government.” Namely, health care: 

Putting aside Social Security, our government currently spends more on health care than anything apart from national defense. And it now imposes an amazingly complex and burdensome system of rules, regulations, and almost comically high paperwork requirements. (Yet neither you nor I, preposterously, can simply walk into a laboratory to get our cholesterol levels checked, thanks to “government” protecting us from our ignorances:  which Party promulgated that series of rules that makes health care costs stratospheric, while impinging upon individual liberty in an otherwise almost unheard of manner?)  We could have health care reform that lowered government involvement, and/or lowered cost.  But if government was going to be more “involved” in something specifcally, shouldn’t it be in seeing that underprivileged American children have proper access to competent health care? 

Yet how does a country have this kind of discussion, when it is instead framed in the ridiculous terms of government being the “solution,” or the “enemy”?  The answer is, we can’t. 

And we have not, this decade, on almost any issue, thus far.  Even ideological debate cannot have much meaning when the basic underlying facts defining the debate’s parameters are not known or are constantly miss-expressed, and the debate itself is repeatedly being stated in ridiculously skewed, and highly misleading, if not quite backwards, terms. Terms that the host of the country’s leading news show just played right into, and applied himself.