Category Archives: Politics

Fair and balanced, my ass!

Yes, my ass is fair and balanced. At least as fair and balanced as Fox News. I opened up Google News today to check the goings-on, as I usually do at lunchtime, and discovered a section at the top of the page regarding this week’s “likely” announcement of Al Gore as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As usual, Google picked up headlines from a variety of sources.

CNN offers us Gore to learn whether he’ll win Nobel Peace Prize.

CBS News offers the somewhat more leading (and perhaps slightly biased in its own right — er, left) Could Nobel Prize Spur Gore To Run In ’08?

And, good ol’ (boy) Fox News gives us a commentary from some guy named Greg Gutfeld (great name, BTW) with the interesting headline Does Al Gore Deserve to Win the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, does he? Let’s see what Mr. Gutfeld has to say on the matter:

Al Gore is a heavy favorite to win the Nobel Peace Prize this Friday. The reason: His relentless nagging about the environment — as well as his awesome backrubs, which he performs shirtless.

Um, yeah. That’s great. And it just gets more ridiculous and offensive from there. But the bottom line for me with such flippant global warming denial is this: why are you fighting so hard to deny that this is happening? What’s in it for you? Even if the situation is not as bad as the more alarmist end of the spectrum paints it to be, there are still plenty of reasons why pollution is bad for the environment, and bad for us. This utter disregard for the planet we live on and its sustainability for future generations is abhorrent. Not to mention the fact that we’re going to run out of petroleum in this century anyway, so there’s more than one reason to move beyond our reliance on fossil fuels.

So is this stupidity the extent of Fox’s coverage of the story? I checked their home page to find out. Turns out this commentary didn’t bubble up to the surface (yet somehow it attracted the attention of Google’s news aggregating algorithm… and yes, Al Gore did invent the “Al Gore Rhythm” [sorry, I couldn’t resist]), but the following items did:

I’ll leave it to you to pursue the matter further. I’m already feeling dirty. It’ll be interesting to see how my search engine placement is affected by so many links to Fox News, though.

OK, StarTribune, enough already!

I know I’ve already ranted about Katherine Kersten in the past. I’m still not sure what masochistic compulsion drives me to read her column. I guess as much as I don’t want aggravation, I just can’t turn away when it’s staring me down, even when it comes in the form of a right-wing shill, a shameful hack of a “journalist.”

And so, today she’s at it again, this time railing against the “serial law-breaking mob” known as Critical Mass. I knew someone back in Atlanta who participated in Critical Mass, and even though I’m not a regular bike rider, I do choose public transportation for my daily commute, and I commend their efforts to wake up their fellow citizens to the multitude of ways that our gas-guzzling lifestyle is damaging the planet and, well, our lifestyle (if you need to put it in selfish terms to be motivated to care).

The real crime here is that a supposedly respected publication like the Minneapolis StarTribune continues to devote ink and paper, and even worse, money, to such predictably offensive drivel.

Have we learned nothing?

Before I was even in elementary school, I learned from Mr. Rogers to “take my time and do it right.” In short, it’s better to take a bit longer to do something, and do it well, than to rush through just to get it done.

And yet, based on this Washington Post article, MnDOT seems not to have learned a similar lesson.

Teams of designers and builders are racing to meet a dawn Wednesday deadline for showing they are qualified to bid on the bridge replacement project, which the state has put on a fast track.

I can understand putting the project on the “fast track,” but to me that simply means giving it priority over other projects, not adding undue haste to the project itself.

State transportation officials hope to award contracts next month, with the goal of having a new bridge standing at the end of 2008….

Erecting such a bridge would ordinarily take about three years, even if the design and building phases were overlapped to save time, said Bill Cox, owner of Corman Construction Inc. in Annapolis Junction, Md., a road and bridge construction firm.

So not only are we moving so fast as to have a “dawn” deadline, less than a week after the collapse, to get initial proposals in, but we plan to have the bridge up and operational in less than half the time an accelerated schedule would normally require. (Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t overlapping the design and build phases necessarily mean that they’d start building it before it was completely designed?)

I hate to say it, but I’m already reluctant to drive on that new bridge.

Are you a liberal and you didn’t know it?

I found this report on America’s “Progressive Majority” interesting. I’ve long held a sneaking suspicion that Americans aren’t as conservative as they think they are (or as the media tells them they are), but it’s nice to see some data reinforcing that point.

Some of the sections are a little fuzzier than others, and I noticed a few of the graphs were designed somewhat misleadingly, but the overall message is on. Americans lean to the left, even if they think otherwise. The final section is especially useful in this regard. It discusses the flaws in commonly cited polls that ask respondents to self-identify. The problem is, most people just aren’t that ideological, and they’re not really sure what “conservative” or “liberal” even means. But when you have Fox News talking heads barking at you 24/7 that liberals are Satan incarnate, it’s hard to have a (pardon me, I can’t help it) fair and balanced view of the issue. As the report states:

(A)t a time when the parties are more ideologically distinct than ever, one-third of the public can’t name correctly which party is more conservative. If this bare minimum of knowledge is unavailable to such a large proportion of the population, it is fair to say that their self-placement on ideological scales will not be a particularly reliable guage of their actual beliefs on issues.

…

In 1967, Hadley Cantril and Lloyd Free famously observed that Americans were “ideological conservatives” but “operational liberals.” They didn’t like the idea of government, but they liked what government does and can do.

This last portion really resonated with me: I have an online acquaintance who’s a proud member of the Libertarian Party, and who rails whenever possible against the evils of big government. Yet, he was the same person who, when his family hit a rough patch and needed some financial support, became frustrated with the limited availability of public assistance and healthcare.

Which all leads me back to a potent quote from an unlikely source: I’m sure Ayn Rand is rolling over in her grave that I should be using her words in my argument. Unfortunately I think she failed to follow this maxim herself at a fundamental level, but it still bears repeating:

Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Fair and balanced journalism: let every idiot with an uninformed (if not willfully ignorant) opinion have a voice!

I have to admit it, I’m a glutton for punishment. While I may not be able to tolerate watching the narcissistic twentysomething drivel that’s on MTV 25 hours a day (what happened to music videos?), I do seem to be strangely drawn to that which I loathe in the media. It’s kind of like holding your hand over a burning candle or eating a habañero pepper: an endurance test. So occasionally I’ll turn on Fox News or flip the car radio over to the blowhards on KTLK, and just see how long I can stand it.

Such is the case with Katherine Kersten, a “writer” for the Minneapolis StarTribune, whose “column covers a range of topics reflecting her experiences and interests, with a special emphasis on American culture, politics, religion, family life and education” according to her bio blurb.

What are her qualifications for twice-weekly space in the state’s most widely circulated newspaper? Beats the hell out of me, but clearly I’m not the only person who’s asking the question…

1 … 2 … 3 … 4 … 5 … 6

And that’s just out of the first 10 results that came back on Google. (Of the other four, two were official Strib pages, one was an article she wrote for that bastion of fair and balanced journalism, the Wall Street Journal, and the other was for an anti-public education think tank.)

Suffice to say, Kersten’s empty-headed regurgitation of every imaginable right-wing talking point is scarcely worth dissecting, but that leaves unanswered the greater question of what possible qualification she can have for this job. Perhaps it’s just a sad reflection of the state of journalism in the U.S. today that so little attention is paid to getting the facts, as long as “both sides” (yes, there are always two—and only two—cut-and-dried sides to every possible issue) get their equal share of airtime and/or column inches.

And, of course, since the left has been and continues to be grossly over-represented in the media (just ask Rush Limbaugh… or Sean Hannity… or Bill O’Reilly… or— hmm…), it is now every TV, radio station and newspaper’s duty to graciously cede as much time and space as possible to any random Joe or Jane Redstate who has a larynx or basic typing skills.

After a little more digging to try to find any hint of Katherine Kersten’s journalistic credentials—specifically, changing my Google search from Katherine Kersten to "Katherine Kersten" biography—I came across this blog. (Yes, it appears that just about the only place online where her existence is acknowledged, besides at the Strib’s own site, is on blogs complaining about her appalling Strib column.) I’m still not any closer to her résumé, but I thought this blog was worth linking to anyway. It’s not easy to nail down exactly where this writer stands politically; unlike Kersten’s hackwork (and probably mine as well, but I’m not on the payroll of a major newspaper) his writing seems to be well-informed and reasoned, and removed enough from direct opinionated rant to allow the reader to form his or her own opinion.

Well, we have this unbiased source (check the URL), which identifies her impressively as such: “Katherine Kersten is Director of E-Pluribus and Distinguished Senior Fellow for Cultural Studies at Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.”

Hmm… fascinating. I’m not really sure what “Director of E-Pluribus” means (or even might possibly mean), and I also don’t know what it takes to become a “Distinguished Senior Fellow for Cultural Studies” at a think tank no one I know has ever heard of, even though it’s based right here in town, but I’ve just found a nice and tidy list of companies to boycott.

I harbor a secret fantasy: I truly want to believe that Katherine Kersten is part of the same realm of subversively parodic entertainment as the Weekly World News or professional wrestling. Perhaps she really belongs with the likes of Phil Hendrie (or to a less covert extent, Stephen Colbert). Maybe I’m just taking her too seriously; I’m not in on the joke. But sadly, I don’t think it’s a joke. Or if it is, it’s not a very good one.

The quest for truth continues. If anyone out there happens to know what Katherine Kersten did prior to writing for the Strib, particularly anything that might actually qualify her to write for the Strib, please let me know!

Scott Anderson is Director in Extremis and Distinguished Senior Fellow for Something Something Blah Blah Blah at Center of the Known Universe, a wondrous place that only he knows about.