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.

Relax, Campaign Finance Laws are Only to Protect Incumbents

(Update below)

Don’t worry about decisions such as Citizens United.  Politifact of the St. Petersburg Times says that Obama exaggerates when he claims that foreign companies will influence American elections.

As the Times points out, we already have laws preventing foreign corporations from doing so. So a Supreme Court decision that now has incorrectly equated corporations with individuals, and given them the ability to spend unfettered on behalf of a particular political candidate — thus essentially also equating speech with money — won’t open this up at all.

But unlike in the case of individuals, corporations are often not wholly denizens of one country alone.  Many of our corporations are in some very relevant ways, multinational. Thus after this decision, there is, on a practical level, no way to prevent it.

Moreover, corporations — though their interests by definition must be narrowly, and self interestedly tailored — now have the same “free speech” rights as individuals, via the expenditure of money as their sole basis for voice, no less. Even in so far as to trump the individuals’ rights to speak out on election matters, without being drowned out by a sea of self interested corporate expenditures where the right to speak becomes defined by the corporate ability to acquire dollars. Inherent rights now somewhat equal $$.

That’s the Bill of Rights according to our somewhat radically right wing Supreme Court, and the equally corporate loyalist CATO Institute — which seems to confuse unfettered corporate power that can be in conflict with individuals, with “individual liberty.”

But relax. As Roger Pilon of the CATO Institute so convincingly suggests, “there’s no more corruption in states with minimal campaign finance laws.”  So Pilon sees the issue as one of corruption?  Not of undue, by definition self interested, and purchased with money influence upon our elections, not by individuals, but by amalgamations of individuals united for a singular purpose (normally the making of profit, but not always) who therefore are not longer acting as individuals, and can not act as individuals.  Not that issue?

Dear Mr. Pilon: If the issue of corruption were the main problem with this decision, it wouldn’t be as problematic to begin with, since corruption, so long as our other processes are working properly, can at least sometimes be discovered. It also does not normally arise from opinionated or advocacy “speech” whether voluntarily offered, or voluntarily purchased with money.

But perhaps by corruption, Pilon meant corrupting influences, or compromises to election information integrity.  And if so, since such “influences” are now protected by our Supreme Court’s radical decision as “speech,” now by definition they are not  ”corrupting” or compromising influences.”  If they were, it wouldn’t be “free speech.”  By protecting such speech, we can’t know if there is “corruption” under this very loose definition, because any corrupting influences is in the speech itself.  In other words, the issue with this decision is not corruption, as traditionally defined, but undue monied influences over actual speech.

But Pilon’s reasoning really spirals out of control when he suggests that such laws prohibiting corporations from spending, unrestrained, are really just to protect incumbents; not the actual free speech of the citizens comprising our Democracy from  being drowned out, manipulated by, or undermined by excessive monied interests and influences.

And that’s because the real reason we have this campaign finance law is not, and never has been, to prevent corruption.  The dirty little secret — the real impetus for this law — in incumbency protection.

In other words,  corporations are zealously anti incumbent, since incumbents are never looking out for corporate influences.

All that money spent on lobbying by corporate interests as it is? Not enough to overcome the intense anti corporate prejudice of our elected officials, apparently.  And those laws designed to prevent corporations from now unduly influencing election results directly themselves, via the known, and direct, correlation between influence and money? Nothing to do with protecting true free speech, but everything to do with protecting incumbents from the “truth” that corporations, by the happenstance of “money equal right” political speech, will no doubt now be able to bring to the populace directly on behalf of their favored candidates (and incumbent candidates) themselves.

And if one looks carefully at the Bill of Rights, one will see, right in between Amendments I and II, that little old Amendment IA.  ”Corporations are people too.”  Just ask John Oliver.

Pilon is not the only CATO Institute Fellow in support of Citizens.  Here’s the normally very thoughtful  Julian Sanchez, being too cerebral by half, and seemingly missing the conceptual differences between money and speech; money purchased speech and non-purchased speech; corporations and individuals; corporate and individual purpose; corporate, purchased, speech and individual purchased speech; along with the free speech interests in maintaining some form of protection from what is by definition non individual motivations and everything that money can buy speech influence, as opposed to equating everything that money can buy — including what is by definition non individual motivations — with full unbridled individual free speech itself.

Here’s Pilon also:

The First Amendment is not a “loophole.”  It’s the very foundation of our democracy, and we are the stronger today for this decision.

See?  The First Amendment doesn’t always guarantee the right to free speech, it guarantees the right to corporate profits, and then to spend those profits in the self interested corporate pre election advocacy on behalf of candidates who will further the goal of achieving those profits. Or of ideological interests.  So whoever has the most money, wins.   Thats certainly “free speech.”  Not to mention,”one person, one vote.”  Except here,just substitute “dollar” for person; and with this decision, we move closer to that brilliant “foundation of our democracy” First Amendment principle.

Update: From the New York Times, January 31, a commenter, recommended by eighty readers and counting, writes here, in a Times highlighted comment:

Actually, Obama completely and inexplicably misrepresented the SCOTUS ruling by saying that it allowed foreign companies to pay for ads when the ruling did not in fact allow them to do so. Alito shook his head softly and silently mouthed “that’s not true.” He did not “say” anything, let alone “you lie,” and again Obama was in fact not speaking the truth. But yes, I know. He should have sat motionless as the most powerful man in the world told a bald-faced lie about his work while standing 10 feet in front of him.

Maybe this commenter, and the eighty readers who recommended this, can show us how a Congress that can not even pass a simple health care bill that makes sense (or any bill) is going to effectively disentangle the now inextricably multinational dimensions of most of the world’s most powerful companies.  Or how even an effective Congress could possibly do so.

As noted above, this comment was also highlighted by the NY Times comment editors.  Highlighting, according to the Times, means “a selection of the most interesting and thoughtful comments, which represent a range of views.”  Perhaps the Times can answer the question put just above.  Along with how falsely claiming that Obama “completely and inextricably misrepresented” and “told a bald-faced lie” — over something that was as a practical matter essentially not only true, but an extremely important point — is “interesting and thoughtful.”