In the comments to my post on establishment motivation, Steve writes:
There is a maxim that one should never ascribe to malice what can equally well be attributed to ignorance. That seems to apply here. A lot of these people just don’t have the faintest clue about Social Security.
That point is central to my argument. Establishment media types are innumerate. I doubt that more than a quarter could estimate the US GDP within 35%. The details of pro-Social Security versus anti-Social security arguments, or austerity versus expansionary arguments, are completely lost on them. (It’s possible that I am not as conversant with these arguments as I should be myself, though I think I am reasonably conversant, to be honest with you.)
So they gravitate towards whichever position is more in line with some fuzzier, more qualitative world view; that world view is often that the American middle-class is spoiled and needs tough love. They don’t want to starve the middle-class, they feel they owe it to them. This is about more than making money. I doubt Ruth Marcus or Joe Klein would lose their jobs or suffer a pay cut if they stopped fluffing Paul Ryan. I also think that they genuinely believe that the American middle-class needs to suffer. I am not attributing any malice to anyone here, quite the opposite.
It’s striking that so many economists — even conservative ones like Greg Mankiw and Martin Feldstein — supported the stimulus, albeit with caveats about how it wasn’t perfect and so on, while non-economist pundits were generally critical of it. This happened because economists were more likely to consider the quantitative details while punditubbies (EDIT: h/t) thought gubmint should tighten its belt when Real Murkins do.
I also don’t think establishment media types supported the Iraq War because they wanted to see Iraqis and American soldiers die (with some exceptions, Tom Friedman has explicitly stated that he wanted to tell Iraqi civilians to “suck on this”). They didn’t understand the complexities of a potential war, so they went with what felt good — spreading freedom, keeping America safe, showing the Muslim world some tough love, etc. In some cases, crass careerist or circus dog motivations came into play I am sure, but I bet some of these people honestly thought it was “the right thing to do”.
I wish that more people would understand that most of the journamlism we see from establishment pundits is baseless musing that only reflects their own world views and life circumstances, and that their world views and life circumstances are very different from those of most middle-class Americans.
schrodinger's cat
No hat-tip/credit for punditubbies? I have made it my mission to popularize it on Balloon Juice.
Kthxbai
MarkJ
In light of this I’ll slightly rephrase what I wrote on the last post: The Village constantly mistakes lack of integrity for genius, but they generally don’t have bad intentions at heart.
schrodinger's cat
@MarkJ: You know what is paved with good intentions, right?
geg6
Perhaps you don’t attribute malice to them, but I do. This is like an abusive husband beating his wife with a baseball bat while screaming that she MADE HIM DO IT.
Fuck that. It’s because he’s a selfish, self-involved asshole who sees everyone in his family as chattel and nothing more. Which is exactly how the Friedmans, Bobos, Joe Kleins, and Ruth Marcuses of the world see us.
MarkJ
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m familiar with the expression – but their motivations are pure so that makes it OK for them.
ornery
DougJ: “I wish that more people would understand that most of the journamlism we see from establishment pundits is baseless musing that only reflects blah blah dee blah blah whatever.”
‘Establishment’ media musings reflect the corporatist agenda that purchased their plastic phony asses.
Really, calling it the “Establishment media” should be your first clue, historically speaking. Maybe you need a break, DougJ, you seem to be a little close to the problem. It’s not that hard, you’re spinning sophistry. GET IT ALREADY.
Jenny
Stick a fork in Mittens, he’s done. Newt is leading Florida 41-17. Ouch.
schrodinger's cat
Upton Sinclair could have been describing the Punditubbies otherwise known as Villagers, in his quote above.
schrodinger's cat
@Jenny: I had no idea that the evangelicals hate Mormons that much. Of course according to the Bobo punditubbie it is because Romney is an elitist and not populist enough. He cannot acknowledge the bigotry of the base of Republican Party. The base is truly base.
seanindc
+2 rep for the judge smails reference
Poopyman
@schrodinger’s cat:
Um, Hitler?
I tend to come down on geg6’s side on this, with a heapin’ helpin’ of @schrodinger’s cat:/Upton Sinclair. If it were honest journalism 99% of them could (and in a perfect world would) be accused of professional malpractice. The fact that they are incapable of understanding the things they’re supposedly “reporting” is inexcusable. Or would be, if enough consumers gave a shit.
gnomedad
To say nothing of the general populace. Maybe someone should compose a brief litany of basic figures to be ritually recited at public functions like the Pledge of Allegiance. Or maybe as a second verse of the National Anthem.
Poopyman
@schrodinger’s cat: If they weren’t going to acknowledge the bigotry of the Rethugs during the whole Kenyan Mooslum debacle they’re not going to acknowledge it now. My guess as to when they’ll acknowledge it remains pegged at “never”.
Cheryl from Maryland
I can’t be so charitable. Their job is to be informed and then help us be informed. Sorry if it is too hard to read stuff, understand it and explain it; if they can’t make the effort, they should find a new job. Which will be much harder.
As for this feeling state that the American middle class is soft, they are peddling a less obviously horrible form of conservative thinking, to whit, if we are virtuous, then we will have cakes and ale. So they think, if I can get all of you people (not including themselves of course) to just toughen up, all will be well.
I hate this message when it comes from Westboro Baptist, I hate it from Mr. Gingrich, and I hate it from Bobo and his ilk. It’s false and dangerous.
Satanicpanic
Green balloons! You’re putting way too much thought into this
The Dangerman
@Jenny:
The Florida GOP is nucking futs (see Cain winning straw poll, etc.)…
…that said, I’m just shocked that the not-not-not-not-Romney (who tied himself in not’s on Fox yesterday) is polling under 20 (ok, margin of error and all that). Will Mitt go hard negative on Newt? Dude has all the money to do so.
/checking popcorn supplies
IrishGirl
Dougj, you’re missing something incredibly important though….even if there isn’t “malice aforethought” doesn’t mean what they are advocating is ethical or the way in which they advocate it is ethical. Just because their intentions are good doesn’t cut it.
Since they’re reporting on these issues and these things affect the lives of literally millions of people, they have an ethical obligation to learn and understand as much as they can on the subject. Otherwise they need to STFU. At best they’re being lazy and negligent and at worst reckless, either way its wrong.
With all due respect you’re starting to sound like a lawyer…split those kinds of hairs in court, not in the real world where public policy can significantly affect the quality of life for Americans (and in some cases can affect life and death).
IrishGirl
@Poopyman: A-effin-men!
ericblair
Establishment media are part of the Elite. The function of the Elite is to protect its own status and wealth by any means necessary. Arguments that they perceive protect their status are accepted. Arguments that they perceive threaten their status, by taking some of their wealth or putting the lower classes on a more secure footing and therefore better able to challenge the Elite, are rejected.
Bipartisanship sounds great to them. It minimizes the possibility of destabilizing conflict by demanding that the parties (or more specifically the party Elites) agree to everything, so assures that they, the people on top, will stay on top without interruption.
schrodinger's cat
DougJ@top
May be you should offer a class aimed especially at the Punditubbies, as a social service with detailed lessons in long division. Sometimes I think all the math they can do is count until 20 using their fingers and toes.
ornery
I wonder why this post is pushing the idea the media has some kind of ‘absence of malice.’ I have questions.
Why sugarcoat the catastrophe that is our national media? Evil is banal. They’re doing it for the $$$. So why apologize for the disasters they have engendered, by claiming they accidentally sorta whatever something maybe well gee huh.
Why was THIS a chosen topic to push? Is there some positive direction to go in after letting media off the hook for it’s crimes?
Who are pundits and why are they there? Why can they be innumerate and still be placed in such powerful rhetorical posts? What is their qualifications for being there?
Culture of Truth
I agree with this post; it’s in line with my own thinking on this, but I would also add, in regard to this:
That when it comes to war, journalists/pundits living as they do in a Defense company town, are likely to be in favor, add to that a fear of seeming unpatriotic, and add to that a post-9/11 fear/desire of being anything less than totally pro-America (which means war fervor, a phenomenon not unique to the USA.)
tomvox1
Ignorance is not really much of an excuse when all you have to do is surf the Net for a few hours to examine the informed opinion of actual experts in the field upon which you are about to comment. The facts and statistics are out there. So shouldn’t the facts and statistics also inform opinion writers’ opinions?
For example, if I could know at the time that Colin Powell’s “aluminum tubes” speech at the UN was complete and utter bullshit, how could Tom Friedman not know that?
Ignorance, my ass. Laziness and the unjustified need to pontificate and lecture us on our “moral duties” is more like it.
JGabriel
DougJ:
I think there’s malice also, too.
Edited To Add as Supplementary Material: What geg6 said.
.
Capri
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, they do hate Mormons that much. Just spend time in someplace like Idaho Falls for a few months. The evangelical hate for Mormons is deep and constant. I spent a summer there and it was what I imagined Northern Ireland at the height of the religious unrest was like.
I had a conversation with someone whose children were taking piano lessons. She gave me this pointer: Check the publisher of the sheet music. If they are based in Salt Lake City, don’t buy it because it’s from a Mormon outfit.
schrodinger's cat
@Capri: If they hate Mormons that much dare I ask how much they hate Jewish people, Catholics and Hindus and God forbid, Muslins.
Steve
I am not sure I disagree with Doug, but I am not sure what he’s saying here is exactly the same thing as “they enjoy fucking the middle class over.” The latter sounds pretty malicious to me.
If there’s a narrative that the broad Establishment is buying into, I’d say it’s the narrative that it’s simply not possible for everyone to have nice things. It’s just not possible for us to guarantee health care to everyone; if we don’t let some people go without, we’re certain to just end up screwing it up for everyone. I don’t know what makes people think this way but it’s a comfortable narrative for those who are comfortable. Social Security is destined to fail, not because they’ve actually looked at the numbers, but because we just know a program that tries to help everyone out just can’t possibly succeed in the long run.
Culture of Truth
An idea can be false and dangerous and still come from comfortable well-paid ignorance. Just because it’s ignorant doesn’t make it ethical.
I don’t think it’s a question of having a good intentions – they don’t. And yes we are splitting hairs. So I would put it this way – they have, ultimately, selfish intentions, and view the world through such a narrow prism that their advocacy for national belt-tightening can described as much through ignorance as through malice.
They were hired and promoted for the blinders they wear, and there they remain, handing them out to new arrivals to the Beltway.
daveNYC
This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. Heck, I probably couldn’t do that off the top of my head. The the problem is that they’ll then go ahead and argue whatever point they want to make using either the number they made up in their head, or just try and make their point using ‘qualitative numbers’. Being ignorant is one thing. Arguing from ignorance, and then doubling down on the ignorant point is the real problem.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cheryl from Maryland:
That’s the civics class answer, which has no bearing in the real world of the dog-eat-dog media marketplace.
Their job is to provide content that sells product. Period. Be it subscriptions, newsstand sales, ratings, whatever. The 60’s (the era of “prestige journalism”) is long since gone. It’s about how much profit the news division can bring in, how many papers the content sells and how much can be charged per column inch/page for advertising. Even Murdoch, who runs various operations as loss leaders, needs an overall positive bottom line for all his various enterprieses. Sure, the NY Post loses a ton of money, but he makes it back up in other divisions.
Culture of Truth
Take that back!
DougJ
@Steve:
Tough love. Pundits owe it to the middle-class to make them suffer so that they can learn their lesson.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not to mention “secular humanists”, their intellectual and moral superiors in every way that is it is possible to imagine.
schrodinger's cat
@daveNYC: I think a bigger problem is that they don’t understand percentages. They will compare the growth in China’s GDP to that of the US, not realizing that since they don’t start from the same base GDP comparing their growth rates doesn’t make much sense.
i.e. Going growing from 1 to 2 and 10 to 11 is quite different in percentage terms, though in both cases there was a growth of 1 unit.
patrick II
@Poopyman:
I don’t think they are incapable of understanding. They deliberately remain ignorant so they can remain “neutral”. If David Gregory studied and tried to understand the detail of the CBO report on Obama’s stimulus he would have to accept the fact that jobs were created as a result of the stimulus. If he doesn’t “know” that he doesn’t have to confront McConnell the next time McConnell lies and says no jobs were created.
Deliberate ignorance is a defense against responsible discussion and conflict with the establishment.
handsmile
When did “pundits” become so prominent a feature of the American corporate print and broadcast media? Asked another way, when did opinion/analysis begin to trump direct reporting?
I’m prepared to do my own research on this matter, but I wonder if there are readers/commenters deeply knowledgeable about US journalistic history who might advise.
In my own forty-plus years as a media consumer, I have always been aware of regularly-published individual columnists in newspapers and news magazines. Sunday mornings have long presented sermons from leading politicians and mainstream journalists. Also, from younger days I recall that television station managers would occasionally opine editorially on pressing local matters.
But in the past twenty years of so, opinion columns or broadcasts and the personal celebrity of pundits have assumed a dominant role in public awareness and comprehension of news events. Reporters’ bylines used to be recognized and evaluated by consumers; now it is pundits’ musings that determine newsworthiness.
Is the advent of cable television implicated in this proliferation of the punditocracy? I understand some of the economic rationale: similar to the development of reality television programming, it is cheaper for news organizations to pay pundits’ salaries than to maintain news bureaus or a slate of reporters.
The triumph of the well-compensated punditocracy, a class evidently insulated from journalistic standards or accountability, is one more feature of the comprehensive failure of the American corporate media.
El Cid
__
By this point, we’ve pretty much defined “malice” away as pertaining exclusively to mustache-twirling, top-hatted cackling genocidalists.
If thinking something’s the right thing to do, and would be better for people, somehow, at some point, is the dividing line between good & ill intentioned, then we need to pay no more to intention in thinking about politics.
Because who cares? Who cares what someone intends?
BGinCHI
You know what pundits were called before television was invented?
Neither do I. Because they weren’t called anything. They are creatures of the medium.
And please don’t reply that they have always been there in newspapers, because they haven’t. That’s a different medium and a different type of punditry. Mass media has altered that completely. Maybe on the radio you have a cognate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth:
It’s really easy to be in favor of a game that you (and your children) have no skin in.
My experience is that people who have actually served are pretty leery of going off on some marvelous adventure involving explosions and shit, under non-Range-controlled conditions.
Twits who have offices in the Empire State Building, on the other hand, think that it’s just grand. Seeing as they’re nowhere near to the front lines where you can look over at your buddy one second, turn your head, then turn back, and there’s nothing but a bloody mass of goo where your buddy used to be.
Chris T.
It’s weird how the two Mormons in the race have one wife each, while the Catholic [Edit: the leading Catholic, I forgot about Santorum] is on his third already…
Calouste
@schrodinger’s cat:
I have the impression that it is not widespread knowledge amongst Evangelicals that Newt has converted to Catholicism, and that if it were, his poll numbers would be different.
Culture of Truth
From an evidentiary perspective, it’s worth investigating when the veil of stupidity slips. Are there times when they are not ignorant, but well-informed? Or times when they are not malicious, but compassionate and fair? And if so, when does this happen and why?
Maude
@schrodinger’s cat:
You shouldn’t use big word like percentages when talking to the pundit class. They don’t know what it means.
A goodly part of the media ignorance about what is going on is that it doesn’t have any effect on them. They are close to the 1% and don’t care about the rest of us.
There also seems to be a moral factor at work. If the middle class is suffering, it did something immoral.
It would be good to spend time deciding what circle of hell they belong in and how to get them there ASAP.
Steve
@DougJ: Doug, did you see this editorial last week? It made me so angry I wrote my friend at the Strib and was like WTF.
pharniel
“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from Malice”
daveNYC
@schrodinger’s cat: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little knowledge and a column in the Times is a very dangerous thing.
El Cid
If I think we were better off when lots of elderly Americans were suffering from malnutrition, does that make me well-intentioned if I push for that in my policies?
If so, what do I have to do to be ill-intentioned? Shoot ’em?
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: From the anyone but Romney nature of the polls, its seems like the GOP base would be quite comfortable with a theocratic state, where everyone who is not a Protestant has to wear the equivalent of yellow star.
El Cid
@pharniel: That’s awesome.
Often, though, we call it negligence, sometimes sociopathic. I.e., not only do I not know what harm my actions may have on others, I don’t even give a shit what their view of “harm” might be, because it isn’t my view of harm at that moment of decisionmaking.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
This is why Dick Cheney’s constant striving to be a better Bond Villain is so amusing.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ: But don’t Pundits pretend to be middle class or have lower middle class roots themselves? Russert and Tweety come to mind.
Roc
The problem is an air of moral superiority that allows them to ascribe virtue to their ignorance.
That is: they think they can see right from wrong precisely *because* they haven’t the faintest clue about what they write.
So everything becomes a morality play to them. They try to find a moral ‘story’ to every issue and define the ‘right’ position.
But you can’t make a rational decision from an analogy. And you sure as shit can’t do it from a flawed analogy that you spun from whole cloth based on no information about the actual situation at all.
But what you *can* apparently do, is sell a lot of newspapers or get a lot of clicks, from other people who ascribe virtue to their ignorance. And judging from the number of people who seem to value “outside opinions” on every issue, that’s a surprisingly large chunk of the country.
pluege
SHORTER POST:
most Americans are too effing stupid to care about, or know their own interests.
Pundits are disingenuous, deceitful morons only to glad to blab on things they know nothing about.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roc:
Mission accomplished.
There is no other reason to them to get their six to eight figure salaries, but this.
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est: But what if Dick Cheney thought his actions would somehow or another be better for people someday? The Iraqis included? That would now make him a moral actor with a perhaps callous approach to fact-gathering or projection.
FlipYrWhig
Pundits like to talk about morality and they don’t like to talk about math. They talk about the things they think they understand better than us. It’s very similar to the way that sports commentators talk about “leadership” and “character” and “momentum” and who “plays the game the right way.” They feel like they know those things, and that those things are crucially important. Numbers are just facts and don’t require insiderdom and anecdotes to explain.
ETA: Roc’s comment came through while I was writing mine… Curses!
Redshift
@schrodinger’s cat:
Another example: Citing statistics about spending and taxes “as a percentage of GDP” while being oblivious to the fact that GDP goes down during a recession, so without taxes or spending changing at all, they go up “as a percentage of GDP.”
Benjamin Franklin
Not to further enable our Meedia professionals; I think it is difficult to be an instant expert in anything. Even more so, the Financial alterverse where down is up (shortsell) and a cornucopia of shell games wherein even the normally wary, are caught in the nude embrace of credit default swaps and derivatives.
Who the F*** understands this carp?
schrodinger's cat
Aren’t more than half of WashPost columnists the architects of the torture regime put in place by the last administration.
If that is not malice, we need to change the definition of malice.
Chuck Butcher
I suppose I’m repeating myself from the previous thread, but the Status Quo is sacred. It is the natural inclination of humans to avoid change. If you’re selling a product, that is your market – not the niches that embrace change.
The current status quo has been created by about a half century of GOP propaganda. That it flies in the face of empirical data doesn’t change the fact that it is today’s status quo. Pres Obama couldn’t have won by meaningfully attacking the status quo and even here direct attacks on the status quo will get serious negative reaction.
This or that can’t be done – well, because it can’t. It isn’t open to debate, it is just dismissed for the simple reason that it is too far from the status quo. The protection of the status quo is enthusiastically participated in right here with dismissal. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if it is “your side” that passed something that is no more than nibbling around the edges, if you don’t criticize it as pointless nibbling and unacceptable as corrective action you have supported the status quo, you have continued the process.
I may vastly prefer Obama to any of the GOPers, but that doesn’t mean I have any real enthusiasm for the position and making that clear makes a tiny push against the status quo. Yeah, you get my vote as NABA (Not As Bad As) but I think it sucks to do that and by extension you suck. You are not a hero, you’re a nibbler and nibbling won’t do. You were head and shoulders above the last field, and that isn’t saying spit – either.
The more voters who make that clear the more impetus there is to do things differently. It won’t happen because … “reality” which is just another way of saying “status quo.” This economy and society is the outcome of status quo and it is the status quo – evidently it doesn’t hurt enough for the pain of change to be outweighed by the pain of staying the same.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes, but _their_ working-class roots confer upon them the vicarious virtues of hard work. Today’s suffering middle-class people don’t _really_ work hard like Papa did at the arsenic mine or wherever, so they haven’t really suffered _enough_ to deserve sympathy, and they can gain from their distress a deeper understanding of the power of virtue and sacrifice.
It’s usually something like, “I know about sacrifice, because my family did it, and that’s why you lot need to sacrifice, because I know it’ll turn out to be good for you.” Other people do the suffering, other people do the sacrificing, and in the middle are the pundits who explain why it’s morally just.
Holden Pattern
I will attribute malice to the aristocracy that runs the country. Some are numerate, like the piggies at the FIRE trough, and know EXACTLY what they’re doing — that’s Snidely Whiplash levels of malice.
Some are innumerate, but they don’t care enough to become educated even though it’s their damn job, but instead blather about markets and freedumb and belt-tightening and shared pain. That’s malice too — a malicious indifference to the suffering of others. They don’t know how their blathered preferences will hurt others, and THEY DON’T CARE. It makes THEM feel good and self-righteous to blather on like this, and that’s all that matters.
So unless you’re saying that the kind of sociopathy on display there doesn’t qualify as malice (and I don’t think we’d say the same thing if they were just going out and torturing kittens because it made them feel good, and they’re indifferent to the kittens’ pain), I have a hard time understanding how you can say these people are not malicious.
schrodinger's cat
@Chuck Butcher: I think Obama had a real chance for change as the economy teetered on the verge of collapse but we missed that opportunity.
El Cid
It’s kind of funny when it just so happens that the innumeracy or lack of grasp by influential media professionals overwhelmingly favor wealthy and powerful elites.
Because if it were just bland factors like innumeracy, wouldn’t those errors and lack of understanding favor all sorts of political arguments, many of which thus supporting, say, more money for middle class Americans?
MikeJ
@Steve:
Cynicism wins every argument. You reduce your opponent to a childlike status and render all argument moot.
“You don’t really think the government will give you any social security, do you?”
“You don’t really believe wouldn’t kill us first if they could?”
“He’s got a record a mile long. He must have done *something* illegal even if he didn’t commit *this* crime.”
It’s the easiest thing in the world.
Redshift
@schrodinger’s cat:
Everyone in America thinks they’re middle class. I can’t remember who it was who wrote that you can tell people like Bill O’Reilly are lying when they talk about having a “working class background” because actual working people don’t call themselves working class, they call themselves middle class. Similarly, no one thinks of themselves as upper class, because there’s always someone richer than they are; they’re just middle-class people who did well for themselves.
I don’t even think most of them are knowingly lying to themselves. They really do believe this, which is part of what leads to a lot of misconceptions about how tough other people have it.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift: They’re hopeless on economics. I think it’s because they trust on economics the same people they trust with their personal investments. That’s why it all comes down to tax rates for the wealthy and the gloomy prospect of inflation/higher interest rates.
gnomedad
@pharniel:
This. Some ignorance can be excused, but when you cultivate it …
Benjamin Franklin
“media professionals overwhelmingly favor wealthy and powerful elites.”
Back in the day, journalists were poorly paid iconoclasts who saw how the other half live, and this created some empathy.
Now, the ARE the Status Quo, and they over-archingly strive to preserve their perch in the catbird seat.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
I think the entire “so?” quote can rule out anything Cheney does as anything but malicious.
He doesn’t care how many lives he destroys in the pursuit of his goals, whatever they might be. Shotgun in the face? Not his problem.
DougJ
@Benjamin Franklin:
They still are at the local level.
FlipYrWhig
@Benjamin Franklin: Real working journalists aren’t living the high life. There’s an upper tier that has it made, but there are plenty more who don’t. Notwithstanding, the values of the profession feel more and more skewed towards the already-powerful and already-wealthy. That’s not the same as blatant self-interest. It’s actually much more disheartening than that.
Culture of Truth
Are we still talking about Dick Cheney?
Chuck Butcher
@schrodinger’s cat:
Nope, despite the campaign slogan that isn’t what was being run on or elected to do. And … that isn’t what is supported and it isn’t acceptable to push at the political class to actually do something in the face of the plutocratic establishment.
The opportunity you’re talking about would most likely involve actual fury rather than disappointment and a bit of fear. If you want an actual opportunity, you need to elect Newt and sizable Teabaggery majority in Congress – fillyblustery proof. Two big problems with that – it would really suck to be the victims and good choices might well not be made.
Bill Arnold
@pharniel:
I believe that there is some actual deep malice, localized to the smarter architects of the arguments and propaganda, though many/most of them may justify their malice with utilitarian arguments (including some religious arguments). But yeah, much of the shallow, casual malice is of the “sufficiently advanced incompetence” variety. (Deliberate ignorance is self-inflicted incompetence.)
Chuck Butcher
@Bill Arnold:
Malice is a funny word, there is plenty of hate out there that qualifies, but then there is the deliberate action in the face of evidence for self-interest that qualifies as what? There are plenty in the GOPer hierarchy that know good and damn well what ails this country’s economy (for ex.) and promote policies directly in opposition to that for their own self-interest.
Makewi
Most journalist self describe as liberal, and yet I am confident that you would deny that fact as playing any part in how they report something. I base that on you mocking the idea that MSM is liberal on a fairly regular basis.
HyperIon
DougJ wrote:
Bad example. Why should I care about this number?
However, there are many obvious reasons why I should and do care about the details of social security.
handsmile
@Benjamin Franklin:
As I tried to make clear in my comment above (#36), a distinction must be drawn between pundits and reporters, both in terms of compensation and influence. Reporters’ bylines on news stories are generally little noticed by readers/viewers, but pundits’ “analysis” of these stories too often determines the extent of news consumers’ comprehension and awareness.
The triumph of the punditocracy in the American corporate media is concurrent with the wholesale dismantling of news bureaus in cities/states/overseas and the considerable downsizing of news room staff.
Those who remain recognize their vulnerability and are more likely to minister to the economic self-interest of their employer. But it is the baleful predominance of the pundit class, enjoying prestige and authority far disproportionate to their merit, that should be condemned and combatted.
Berial
@DougJ:
What ‘lesson’ is the middle-class supposed to learn though?
‘Shut up and let your betters rob you of any chance to get ahead in life.’
‘Government is only supposed to work for the rich.’
What?
Benjamin Franklin
” a distinction must be drawn between pundits and reporters, both in terms of compensation and influence”
I, too failed to distinguish between print and broadcast. Although there is some elitist print journos, the bulk of my derision falls on Entertainment Media,
I’m showing my age here, but the whole thing began to fall apart with the sound byte which augers to the Network sense of time. Immediacy is more important than accuracy. The impatience of the consumer has been key in this transition.
Thereby, even broadcast types don’t deserve all the blame. They’re just free marketers giving their customers what they want; easy, cheap, fast.
Ruth Marcus' Weird Clitoris
I doubt Ruth Marcus or Joe Klein would lose their jobs or suffer a pay cut if they stopped fluffing Paul Ryan. I also think that they genuinely believe that the American middle-class needs to suffer.
I also think that if you asked them if they “genuinely believed that the American middle class needs to suffer” they would tell you no. And then they would say something to someone else that directly contradicts that belief.
That’s how fucked up stupid and vile these assholes are.
jefft452
“Establishment media types are innumerate. I doubt that more than a quarter could estimate the US GDP within 35%. The details of pro-Social Security versus anti-Social security arguments, or austerity versus expansionary arguments, are completely lost on them.”
Malice it is then
Look, if youre stranded in a lifeboat, and the only guy who can give you first aid is a traveling anvil salesmen, then it’s not the anvil salesmen’s evilness that results in you not getting state of the art medical treatment
But if said anvil salesmen bursts into an operating room, announces that the surgeon isn’t doing it right, pushes the surgeon out of the way and starts cutting – then yeah, he’s evil
DFH no.6
@Steve:
This is it exactly. You have expressed it perfectly.
It’s the impetus behind the pejorative “bleeding-heart liberal”, and the received wisdom amongst rightwingers that the sacred free enterprise system demands that there be winners and losers.
Among the many conservatives I work with here in Sheriff Joe Arpaio country it is axiomatic that using any sort of collective (i.e., government) action to not only ameliorate suffering, but even just to create conditions for a more widespread prosperity, are wrongheaded and counterproductive.
Yelling “Soshulism!” is the more concise and dramatic way of saying “it’s simply not possible for everyone to have nice things”.
“I got mine, fuck you” and “Devil take the hindmost” are the foundational, bedrock tenets of the Makewis of our world.
And yeah, in my book that’s fucking malicious.
Mack Lyons
@DFH no.6:
But it’s just fine to utilize collective action to spread widespread misery to those deemed deserving by these people. Ugh.
johnnybegood
My father-in-law, who worked as a journalist, once slowed down his car in an extremely affluent neighborhood ouside DC and said: “This is what being a blowhard will get you.” Then he told me that’s Chris Matthews house–a massive castle of a home.
There are a lot of reasons why there is so much shitty journalism in the major dailies and television news. The biggest reason by far is that journalists working at those outlets are paid exorbinant salaries. It really isn’t that complicated.
liberal
@Makewi:
LOL. I love that right-wing shibboleth.
Most right-wingers like yourself are too stupid to understand that the nominal political orientation of the employees (here, reporters) isn’t determinative; rather, it’s the political orientation of the bosses/owners.
liberal
@BGinCHI:
I highly doubt that’s true. Walter Lippmann was the ur-pundit, and while I can’t find info on the web as to how much of his career depended on televised appearances, I doubt it was very much.
RickD
It’s worth considering the Paul Newman film of this name. The phrase “absence of malice” is clearly used as a shield that journalists have even when they are clearly acting with reckless disregard of the truth.
At this point, I cannot forgive journalistic incompetence and recklessness solely on the notion that these poor, confused people aren’t as malevolent as they seem, simply because they’re too dim to know better. It’s not like there’s a lack of media criticism that these pundits could read, appreciate, and learn from if they had half an inclination towards fairness and journalistic ethics.
Look – we just had a war where we invaded a country that had done nothing to threaten us, and this war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Our leading pundits never made any serious challenges to the lies that were being spread around in order to justify the war. It’s really hard for me to swallow the notion that all of these people were so dim-witted that none of them could figure out that Iraq wasn’t attacking anybody, had no WMD program, and had no ties to Al Qaeda. I have to think that a good number of these people were quite content to be willing participants in the Big Lie.
dangermouse
Malice isn’t exactly what I’d call incompatible with stupidity.
DougJ
@johnnybegood:
Here’s to your father-in-law and real journalists everywhere.
Mr Blifil
I have a simpler explanation. These pundits mission is to stroke the sensibilities of their aging subscriber base. Their every sentence is crafted around the notion that “things should be like they once were.” That’s why you hear scoffing about poor people with cable TV and kids who use cell phones to share profanities. This kind of craziness wouldn’t have been possible in Grandma’s day, and getting the middle class to suffer drastic reductions in public services would be just the ticket to getting everybody to wake up and smell the coffee. And then we could all go back to reading Ann Landers’ column.
R Johnston
There’s a very basic problem with the “maxim that one should never ascribe to malice what can equally well be attributed to ignorance” as applied here. Telling people how to live their lives and telling government what policies it should institute while acting in a state of willful ignorance is inherently malicious, and if you think that the ignorance at issue here isn’t entirely willful then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
Failing to attribute malice to an act just because that act is motivated by ignorance is a fundamental logical error. Ignorance and malice overlap more often than not.
El Cid
@R Johnston: I’ve grown more and more curious as to what people think would be evidence of, if not “malice,” then at least “ill intentions” in policymaking (etc) in this versus other nations, and when different types of people benefit or lose from those decisions or discussions.
If it turns out that what would be enough to make someone suspect ill intentions in a foreign government’s elected representatives (i.e., something done by some Muslim Brotherhood candidate, or any other identifier which might prompt Americans to begin with a lack of trust) is not sufficient to be seen as ill-intentioned in a U.S. politician, then it’s conformist ideology.
If the same sort of activity or discussion or ignorance etc arouses suspicions when it’s a local politician doing something which benefits his or her poor constituents, but not when it’s a powerful politician benefiting the super-rich and his or her peers, then it’s conformist ideology.
brantl
Repubs revoked the fairness doctrine for a variety of reasons. Two are:
1. Regular people, who don’t fact check stuff, are gradually swayed to your opinion set.
2. People who comment on stuff, withour research (pundits) are also swayed to your opinon set, further swaying the people in reason #1.
Rinse, repeat.
Also, now that journalism is now “People” for more staid people, nothing is ever disproved, it’s he said, this other guy disagrees with no fact checkinig. This favors the group that thows the most consistent, homogenous shit into the ether. Who is that? The Republicans. Period.
You want to kick these guys asses? Bring back the Fairness Doctrine.
Paul in KY
@BGinCHI: They’ve been around since the days of Thomas Nast. Seem to have more influence today.