Thank God we have the right wing media network to alert us to every asshat that might appear in Greene County, Georgia….

Let the perpetual outrage machine roll on!

It’s called balance…if the right-wing blogoshpere wasn’t calling attention to every asshat on the Left, it wouldn’t be reported at all.

Perpetual outrage? Yeah, I’ll admit to it. I am perpetually outraged by every liberal idiot who disparages our soldiers.

If it were truly just an isolated incident here and there on the Left, my outrage would be considerably less…but it’s not isolated. This principal is just another in a long, long line of anti-military, anti-Bush, Liberal bullshit.

So, the Left get’s to stay perpetually outraged because they think we only went to war over WMDs (since they haven’t read the other 14 resolutions authorizing the attack on Iraq…the ones that have nothing to do with WMDs)…and they get to stay perpetually outraged that a nation founded on the principals of Christianity…a religion still subscribed to by an overwhelming majority of its citizens…is trying to hold onto those principals. And they get to stay perpetually outraged that there are rich people in this country, and that they can’t find a way to take all their money from them and redistribute it to the ‘needy’ (themselves).

The Left has their outrages. I’ll hang onto mine, thanks.

Is there _any_ realistic comparison to the actions of the Principal of Anita White Carson Middle School and the actions of the President of the United States leading us into war?

The purpose of the Malkin-Boortz-Reynolds network is to offer a steady stream of affronts to rightwing sensibility regardless of their impact on the readers’ lives. With the GOP’s lockdown on power in Washington it has become necessary to look for transgressions in faraway corners to explain why the world isn’t fitting their expectations. And if their isn’t a college professor at State U. that we can blame maybe there’s still time to pin it back to Clinton or the protesters of the Vietnam War.

An easy rule of thumb might be if you’ve never heard of the person before they aren’t worth the outrage.

Well, here’s a new article from the NY Times which was also posted on front page AOL about this very subject. Not exactly an unknown backwoods outfit which is kinda known to cater to the left wing (tongue in cheek).

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html

Well damn the link didn’t work. Need to google parents military recruiters NY Times I guess or maybe Robbie can fix it somehow.

I’ll begin with my obligatory refutation of liberal bias at the institution that championed Whitewater and pipelined Ahmed Chalabi’s faulty intelligence through Judith Miller.

Really, I’m not sure where conservatives would have people get information anymore: the more comprehensive and informative a media outlet is the more likely it is to be charged with ‘liberal bias’. PBS, NPR, BBC and the New York Times are the few places to get in depth coverage of current events. The network news offers about 5-7 minutes of ‘hard news’ and cable news is largely opinion.

But anyway.

The NY Times piece suggests that the problem of recruitment goes beyond your typical ‘unpatriotic liberals’:
“A Department of Defense survey last November, the latest, shows that only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent in August 2003.”

I can understand parents not wanting their kids to risk their lives in a situation like Iraq or any war. However, I do not agree that the military should be restricted from visiting schools because parents don’t agree with the war nor do I think the military should be restricted because parents think it’s a dangerous profession. There are other dangerous professions as well such as police, firemen, even contact sports. Should their representatives be restricted too?

How far are we going to go in sanitizing our schools and kids? Are we going to raise young people to be adults or are we raising a bunch of weanies?

I’ll begin with my obligatory refutation of liberal bias at the institution that championed Whitewater and pipelined Ahmed Chalabi’s faulty intelligence through Judith Miller.

You mean the same one that so over-hyped Whitewater that it ended up not hurting Clinton at all? I could write an entire essay on the Left Wing Media Conspiracy geniuses who came up with that tactic.

Media bias is always this: they will go for what sells. The president being involved in shady dealing with multiple prosecutions is always gonna sell, no matter who the president is. Frankly, the theme for the Clinton administration was chosen in the primaries with Gennifer Flowers and Sister Souljah: he was the Scandal President. And they ran with it.

Anti-celebrity bias will always trump Liberal bias. You can probably point out certain reporters like Miller (and why the Iraq WMD story is considered right-wing is beyond me, since it was espoused by Clinton and his White House while he was president and even after the David Kay report came out). But that’s not proof that liberal bias is a myth. I can point to hundreds of examples in Google News right now in supposedly non-partisan newspapers. And there are countless more unexaminable examples in what they won’t tell you. And it’s not just in political stories. It’s in the restaurant reviews and fluff stories. It’s endemic.

PBS, NPR, BBC and the New York Times are the few places to get in depth coverage of current events.

Preston, think about what you just wrote. “In depth”? Who decides what’s in-depth, and what’s merely the fluff? Do you anything “in-depth” could ever be unbiased?

“In-depth” is another term for storytelling journalism. It’s impossible for someone to tell you everything, but they’ll go “in-depth” chasing the point of view they believe and want to convince you to believe, too.

As a final note, it should be noted that The New York Times has identified itself as a liberal newspaper through its public editor.

[I]t’s one thing to make the paper’s pages a congenial home for editorial polemicists, conceptual artists, the fashion-forward or other like-minded souls (European papers, aligned with specific political parties, have been doing it for centuries), and quite another to tell only the side of the story your co-religionists wish to hear. I don’t think it’s intentional when The Times does this. But negligence doesn’t have to be intentional.[...] On a topic that has produced one of the defining debates of our time, Times editors have failed to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires. This has not occurred because of management fiat, but because getting outside one’s own value system takes a great deal of self-questioning.

Of course, even “balanaced journalism” is just a catch phrase that implies only two sides to every issue. It’s an impossible ideal. Once we get that into our heads, we can move forward, admit our biases, and stop pretending the MSM isn’t slanted to the left.

“You mean the same one that so over-hyped Whitewater that it ended up not hurting Clinton at all?”

That’s an interesting theory. Then I suppose focusing on Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair implies that the media is conservative- trying to insulate Nixon and Reagan, respectively, from their law-breaking?

“Media bias is always this: they will go for what sells… Anti-celebrity bias will always trump Liberal bias.”

I totally agree.

“and why the Iraq WMD story is considered right-wing is beyond me”

Ahmed Chalabi was using Judith Miller to put false claims into the American press. What did he care about the truth- he’s back in Iraq with a cushy Oil Ministry position (skirting those indictments for fraud in Jordan).

“But that’s not proof that liberal bias is a myth. I can point to hundreds of examples in Google News right now in supposedly non-partisan newspapers”

Let me pull a recent quote from the ‘liberal’ CBS:
“But all the economic news released Thursday wasn’t good. Labor costs, a key factor influencing inflation rates, rose sharply over the past six months.”
Notice anything strange about that? For whom is increasing wages a bad thing? Tell me again whose perspective the media reports.

“Who decides what’s in-depth, and what’s merely the fluff? Do you anything “in-depth” could ever be unbiased?”

I’m not sure what your alternative is- are you arguing that ignorance is as good as knowledge? Granted we have a President who claims not to read the newspaper but most people are inclined to believe that the more you know about something the better decisions you can make regarding it.

“As a final note, it should be noted that The New York Times has identified itself as a liberal newspaper through its public editor.”

Mr. Okrent also left his one-year tenure as the Public Editor by slamming Paul Krugman for being ‘loose with the facts’ yet was unable to provide substantial evidence for this claim. He is a hack. (and incidentally not affiliated with the Editorial Staff- so his claim of the Times’ partisanship is as meaningful as yours)

“Media bias is always this: they will go for what sells… Anti-celebrity bias will always trump Liberal bias.”

Actually, I’ll go further with this. The focus on celebrities to the exclusion of news is _evidence_ of a media satisfied with the status quo ie conservative. It is only through information that the electorate can implement populist goals: if they do not know that the tax rates for the rich have fallen 9% in the last 25 years while rates for the middle class have gone up 1% and they don’t know that for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162, they will be in no position to consider these issues.

After September 11 the public was more or less easily persuaded to go to war with Iraq: did that public know that Saddam was secular? Did they know that Iraq is composed of 3 ethnic groups/sects that could break out into Civil War? Probably not- but they knew who won American Idol.

Of course the masses didn’t know much about Iraq and I’ll include myself in that group. But, the real question is…did Congress know? They should have and they gave Bush the go-ahead. Dean is now calling for getting tougher with Iraq and N. Korea. What does that mean? What do I know about Iran and N. Korea…not much except they’re dangerous and a serious threat. What could I do about it even if I did know the particulars?

The masses, again including myself, don’t and can’t influence war-time decisions. What the masses know is we are threatened and we depend on our elected officials to make those life and death choices.

American Idol is a great show…lol

correction: getting tougher with “Iran”.

Indeed, they are *elected* officials. If Americans misunderstand a problem that faces our country those officials can only use their better judgement if they are willing to risk the wrath of their constituents. (Assuming that they themselves have all the facts they need. They do, afterall, read the same papers and watch the same stupid newscasters we have. And nowadays they barely have time to read the bill before the vote.)

For what it’s worth- I don’t think that voters have to be Einsteins to do their job effectively. For most issues a simple ‘are you better off than you were 4 years ago’ will do. But as the most powerful nation in a complex world I’m afraid that our decisions have an impact beyond our own experiences. For those questions I feel like our media have been gravely neglegant.

Here’s a problem I’m having with this issue…. In Iraq, I didn’t care about politics, or think “hey, the kids back at home would love to make this a career!”. I can not find the words to tell you how it felt to serve among such excellent human beings. Every soldier/airman at our base – from the lowest enlisted troop to the one-star general exhuded the highest honor and most of all, the purest form of “get it done” attitude I had ever seen.

All this Principle probably knows is a daily drone of back-stabbing, teacher lounge whining, “It’s my hill” existance. I feel a little pity for her, being stuck in such a slumbering journey. The travesty is that some of it will be passed to the children – a sobering thought. My stomach tightens a little on the thought that these kids are one step closer to repeating the mistake that many in our generation made – forgetting that freedom isn’t free.

I am damned honored to have seen the true excellence of these young men and women. The thought that I actually commanded some of them puts a lump in my throat. I can’t even talk about that around others because I get too choked up.

The day I returned to my civilian job, I just sat in my cube for about ten minutes, in bizzare, silent reflection of the experience.

Hanging next to my computer is a picture of our troops, taken on election day, and an unused Iraqi ballot. Whenever someone calls panicking about a late peer review, or that some budget was overrun, I look up at that picture, and then look over the ballot, and remember that it’s all OK. I remember seeing the torture rooms up north, where unknown Kurds had scratched their last wills and testiments on the walls with nails and rocks. I remember the faces of troops heading out the front gate every day, some who would die downtown that afternoon. I remember the daily delivery of coffins to the base morgue, passing soberly in front of my duty section.

Those that were not there will never really understand – but that’s OK – I do.

Jim