Mistermix’s post on a Daily Dish writer’s credulity was quite damning: the National Review piece on Pigford got the most basic facts of the case wrong in a way that can easily be checked, yet the Daily Dish writer gushed about the fariness of the piece because it was written in a high-brow way (on a less important note, he might want to stop gushing about how adventurous Dennis Prager is).
It’s much the same way with the late, lamented Public Interest that Bobo et al. are always mooning over. Its editor (Irving Kristol) admitted he only argued in favor of supply side economics because he thought it was good for conservativism:
“The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority–so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.”
All too often, the role of “reasonable” conservatives is to heh-indeed high-minded right-wing propaganda, while “courageously” distancing themselves from the most egregious conservative craziness. Whether this is because they too dumb/lazy to fact check the high-minded stuff or whether they’re knowingly pushing lies, I can’t say. But it’s one or the other.
Elvis Elvisberg
Rough post for a Monday. Welcome to the working week, indeed.
Our discourse is completely screwed up in many ways, but that’s a big one. No one who waved a sign saying “BUSH = HITLER” could ever have gotten a Congressman to take his phone call if his life depended on it. Republican congressmen trip over themselves running out to rile up people waving “OBAMA IS A FOREIGNER MUSLIN SOSHALISM” banners.
And we’re treated every Sunday to David Gergen warning us of the perils of the extremes of both sides.
One party is insane from top to bottom, doesn’t even bother crafting policies that have any relationship to reality. The other party is more or less sane. The media can’t report it.
Redshirt
It’s all a con. Like at the carnival, selling snake oil. You’ve got the pitchman, but you’ve also got an “honest member of the audience” who might be a bit skeptical of the cure, but gosh darn it, does it work! You should all try it!
But writ large, of course.
Ash Can
On an individual basis, sure. But on a collective basis, it’s both. The falsehood-pushers are saying things that the dumb/lazy faction wants to hear, so dumb-and-lazy has no motivation to blow the whistle on the bullshit. It’s a mutually-reinforcing problem.
freelancer
Mistermix did an awesome job, but TNC came down on him with the weight of a disappointed father, without the love. It’s quite fetching if you want to see one of the greatest writers on the web just go, “(sigh) Son, I wish you hadn’t gone there. It’s not like you’re the first to do so either, so I’m just shakin’ my head right now as to why you’d be so damned stupid.”
gbear
There’s also the fact that they’re rich enough to be (mostly) immune to the consequences of their actions. It’s not that they’re either dumb or lazy, they just don’t have to care.
Svensker
Wasn’t Irving Kristol one of the original neo-cons and a believer that lying in pursuit of the “right end” was perfectly hunky dory, so long as it was the ruling class doing the lying? I’m to lazy to google (h/t Connor).
DougJ®
@freelancer:
I read it as him praising Conor for criticizing other conservatives.
A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum)
Sometimes I wonder if Conor F isn’t just a David Sedaris spoof to see if anyone is paying attention. Conor’s writing has a je ne sais quoi about it that I just can’t believe any Very Serious Person who also happens to be a conservative actually possesses.
Svensker
@A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum):
How old is Conor? He sounds like a university student, to me. Earnest and full of joy at discussing the tough philosophical issues of life, but a bit jejeune, Nothing that a few years and some knocks about the head wouldn’t cure.
freelancer
@DougJ®:
See I read it as conceding the criticism, but nudging him along as a colleague to say, “You have enough promise to do this better. Step it up.”
Maybe I need to reread it. I just see a subtext in the writings of the good Atlantic writers and the horrible ones, like they’ll call out mediocrity, but if it’s in house, they rarely address it, and if they do, it’s always with kid gloves (but made from real kids).
Stillwater
I’m starting to think that conservative water-carriers are alot like that picture of the old lady that spontaneously changes to the young girl, then back again. They’re both. We just can’t get our minds around it.
Warren Terra
@DougJ®:
I read T-NC the same way – though while T-NC notes that Friersdorf points out that Wingers are more upset by Black folks allegedly committing fraud than by decades of government mistreatment of Black folks, an implicit accusation of racism that T-NC calls by name but Friersdorf notably does not, T-NC does not (in that post) notice, let alone attempt to reconcile, the fact that the same Friersdorf who recognized the Wingers’ racism nonetheless assumed their numbers were accurate. Now that’s the “our team” dynamic in action (in Friersdorf, not T-NC): even recognizing that the National Review writer is at best merely pandering to racists, Friersdorf still assumes him to be credible.
IM
I think the title alone is pretty clear:
Somewhere, Someone Black Is Getting Away With Something
And for once I will say that Friedersdorf is stinking of white privilege if he says, why oh why have americans have never been told of this case?
Black America has been well informed on the Pigford case since the year Friedersdorf was born.
El Cruzado
Why can’t it be both?
Warren Terra
I wouldnt say I know the case well, but I know the rough outlines, and I’m sure I learned something of it on NPR. Middle class people who pay attention ought to know about it. People getting their news from Brokaw, let alone people relying on the Fair And Balanced folks at Fox, are less likely to know anything about it – but then, they’re unlikely to know much of anything about anything. Sure, some of that’s racism (if the Dept of Ag had systematically screwed Scots-Irish farmers in recent years to a similar extent, there’d be more noise), but mostly it’s just that Anericans Are Ignorant.
Of course, I probably read aboutthe case in The Nation and The American Prospect, but they really don’t count at all – at least a fair number of millions listen to NPR.
IM
I read first about the problem in the early nineties in the economist. But I am pretty sure that in black, as far as is exists, media the problem was always better covered.
kth
What is “Welcome To the Working Week”? Elvis Costello for $800, Alex…
To get on TV as a liberal, a pundit is expected to periodically punch hippies. To get on TV as a conservative, a pundit is expected to periodically fluff wingnuts. Funny how that works.
El Cid
@IM: The phenomena was studied since at least the 1950s. And found as a problem by US government studies since at least the 1980s.
IM
@El Cid:
That is my point. And still C. Friedersdorf is ignorant, more ignorant then me. And I am a very implausible candidate for expertise on black rural america.
Why is that so?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
MREEOW! HISS!
ppcli
@Warren Terra: I agree – Friersdorf has made an observation that is well-worth making (that had eluded me, so I’m grateful to him). And what Friersdorf points out is pretty damning. Sometimes adding “and this means there’s racism afoot!” makes the message less forceful than a spartan statement of the facts would be.
daveNYC
Fixed.
The Atlantic is pure village chummyness.
SpaceSquid
Well, John Cole’s point about whether this is a genuine dichotomy notwithstanding, I’ve begun to wonder whether it’s really a distinction worth making anymore. Just as with “Republican X: Evil or Merely Stupid”, it’s a question that arguably lets these people off the hook, at least in part.
There’s a conversation in Iain Bank’s Complicity (and this is a slight spoiler) about what constitutes evil, or at least malevolence. One character argues the description can cover those who do accidental damage, provided said damage was caused through catastrophic negligence. If it is someone’s job – their specific reason to draw a paycheck – to ensure something doesn’t happen, and then it does because they weren’t doing the job they were supposed to do, then how much of a difference does it make that they didn’t intend the damage they caused?
The example given in the book is about a doctor who fails to diagnose a condition that ends up claiming someone’s life – a failure that in the opinion of one character was due to somebody clearly incompetent pretending to know what they were doing in order to get paid. I would submit a similar thing can be said regarding a great deal of Republican officials and Conservative pundits. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know the difference between ice cream and blue ice, or they do and are pretending not to. It matters only that the whole justification for their positions – the only reason we are supposed to listen to them/vote for them – is that they’re supposed to know, and they’re supposed to tell us. “Vote for me, I know the score!” “Read me, I’ll tell you what’s going on.”
This is a responsibility they have asked for. It is a role they have agreed to play in exchange for the money they rake in. As far as I can see, all that really, truly matters here is that they are failing in their responsibility, and they quite simply couldn’t give a shit.
Matt
Kristol’s bit is just another reminder: at what point will the American public wake up to the fact that we don’t have two parties in this country – we have one party that’s pretty tepid, and another “party” (really more of a gang) that is hell-bent on looting everything of value out of the country and then skipping town. Sure, they wave flags, hate fags and lurve Jeebus, but they’re like a gang that starts a religious revival just outside of town so their accomplices can burgle all the houses while everybody’s off singing hymns.
Jonathan
@Svensker: You might be looking for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noble_lie&oldid=358123232
There’s been a fair amount of activity on that page lately, too. Removing bias, my bottom.
JFitz
Malkin Award Nomination in 4… 3… 2…
El Cid
I think that it’s kind of cool that there’s yet another reasonable conservative voice which I don’t have to encounter outside the reactions here.