On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 12:45 AM, Kevin M. <drunkbastar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 11:45 PM, Wesley McGee <wesley.mc...@gmail.com> > wrote: > If Keith wasn't politically partisan, when Obama capitulated and > Americans ended up with a health care bill that helped nobody and > omitted a public option, why wasn't Keith calling for his immediate > impeachment and removal from office? Why hasn't he accused Obama of > war crimes the way he accused Bush? > Huh? I must have dropped a stitch somewhere in this thread. How is compromising on a Health Care Bill the same as violating the US Constitution and UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? It is quite likely I have missed something here (are you being sarcastic here in some way?), and I apologize if I have. But to take the above paragraph at face value for a second, it illustrates the point I have been trying to make. Forcing a false equivalence on the political discourse in this country results in absurd conclusions like this. You may or may not like Obama's Health Care Plan (extreme conservatives and liberals both tend to hate it, I think it still is the most significant piece of domestic legislation since Medicare) but there is no plausible basis for accusing Obama of a war crime, or committing an impeachable offense based on it. OTOH, while there were those who liked and disliked Bush's war and torture policies, there clearly was a plausible basis for accusing him of both war crimes and impeachable offenses. It simply is not true that liberals calling for the Impeachment of Bush for conducting an illegal war and authorizing torture are the equivalent of conservatives calling for the impeachment of Bush for signing an expensive Health Care Plan that enlarges the scope of Government significantly (or liberals who call for Obaman's impeachment for not signing a more expensive Plan that would enlarge the score of Government even more). I am not a defender of Keith, and not a fan of MSNBC. But it is just ridiculous to put them in the same bag with FN. Someone else posted today several examples of competent, respected media outlets that produce reliable and useful journalism even though they have a clearly ideological point of view (on both the right and the left). MSNBC is trying to be like The Nation. It is being criticized because too often it falls short of that mark, not because it is successful. MSNBC isn't too partisan or political to be a credible news organization, they are either too neurotic (Keith), too mainstream (the NBC News hands who slum on MSNBC) or too stupid and shallow (almost everyone else - except Rachel, who I think for the most part is a credible journalist). Fox News is not even trying to be like the National Review - and it is criticized for not even trying, not for trying and falling short. Fox News is more like a newsletter for the RNC. Keith actually is no huge fan of Obama - but that is besides the current point. What gets in the way of Keith being a fully credible journalist is not that he has a point of view, or that he donated money to a political campaign. His problem is that he is not as transparent as he should be all the time, and he is an arrogant egotistical thin-skinned asshole (who is also brilliant and funny and occasionally profoundly insightful). What keeps Sean Hannity from being a fully credible journalist is that he does not want to be a credible journalist - and he is not even trying to be one. Jon Stewart's problem is that he can't acknowledge that Sean Hannity is trying to be more like Jon Stewart than he is trying to be like Walter Cronkite. Equating Hannity (or the other clowns at FN) with Keith or Rachel helps give the the former the journalistic credibility they are not even really looking for, while it invalidates and marginalizes the latter unfairly - the equivalent of giving them the death penalty for stealing a car. ** -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
