Great Letter to President Obama

[stebo0728]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... titialskip

Hope Im not beating you to the punch AZ, but had to post out this letter Jon Voight wrote to Presbo.

[mattblancarte]

Jon's letter is rather hyperbolic, but I'm on board with the overall message.

[IBCoupe]

Oh, oh, ew, gross!

You made me click on that moonie rag. I forever hate you. Now I need a shower to get the cult off of me.

Suffice it to say, I didn't actually read the letter once I noticed it was in the Washington Times.

[audtatious]

Must feel as dirty as when I see a NYTimes, WashPo or HuffPost article.

[IBCoupe]

Probably not. I lived among the moonies when I was at university.

The school only stopped taking money directly from the Church three years prior to my arrival, but most of the people running the school, including the President and his family, were members of the Unificationist Church.

Has nothing to do with political stripes, just creepy Korean cults finding their way into American journalism and policy.

[mattblancarte]

Must feel as dirty as when I see a NYTimes, WashPo or HuffPost article.

HuffPost... I find it painful sometimes to finish articles on that site. The comments readers leave there are even worse.

[telcoman]

Must feel as dirty as when I see a NYTimes, WashPo or HuffPost article.

HuffPost... I find it painful sometimes to finish articles on that site. The comments readers leave there are even worse.

Try here

http://www.dailykos.com/

Telcoman

[audtatious]

Damn, I forgot one....

[mattblancarte]

I rarely go Daily KOS, and if I do, it's through links on other sites.

As much as I despise some branches of the media, I like to get a good mix of everything to make sure my perspective is objective. I fit the INTJ personality type to the letter, I guess.

[IBCoupe]

I used to try and seek out a wide variety of news opinions, but that got tiresome. Now, I mostly listen to NPR when I drive. Between DailyKOS, and WorldNetDaily, NPR's quite moderate, and, if nothing else, sane. For those moments that I do want a grab-bag of someone-else's-opinion, I'll just hit up FARK.

There are a few programs to avoid. Faith Middleton is unabashedly liberal, and her show reflects that. On the Media has an agenda, but it seems to be more authority-skeptical than left or right. I've developed a good rule for predicting what, in the mainstream media, is worth paying attention to:

The prominence of the host's name in the title of the program enjoys an inverse correlation with the amount of reliably informative news one will hear from the program.

Thus, CBS's "Face the Nation" can be expected to be fairly neutral and informative, while "The Chris Matthews Show" cannot. "The Faith Middleton Show" is as biased as "The Glenn Beck Program" or "The O'Reilley Factor," though her particular style makes her persona more soft than the other two.

I get the feeling that this happens for a pretty simple reason: if your ego is so large that you have a show named after you (or, maybe the relationship is reversed: you have a show named after you, so your ego inflates), you're going to insert your opinion in higher quantities than a show that presumes to provide information first. The more someone thinks they're a celebrity, the more likely it is that they're going to favor their opinion over fact.

This works pretty reliably for TV/Radio, but newspapers and websites need their own rule. I'm working on it.

[audtatious]

NPR has quite a bit of left leaning content, much more than right. There are no real news sources today that simply present the news without coloration.

[IBCoupe]

NPR has quite a bit of left leaning content, much more than right.

Like what?

[audtatious]

Like, my opinion.

[IBCoupe]

Your opinion is on NPR? And it's left-leaning?

Or were you trying to say that your argument was nothing more than your opinion? Which somehow means you don't have to explain it? If that's the case, I'm well aware that you were stating your opinion. The reason I asked for clarification was because I don't know what you base your opinion on. Telling me that it's your opinion is absolutely meaningless at this point.

[audtatious]

Don't care to pull articles showing liberal bias of NPR thus you can simply dismiss it as IMO and go about your day.

[IBCoupe]

Alright. I have no doubt that there are programs on NPR that have a liberal bias (I named one of them), but, after applying my rule and ignoring programs like those, it becomes a much better picture.

When FoxNews is on TV, I've found it to be fairly neutral. Its anchorpeople can have a fairly conservative bent (and one anchorwoman in particular pissed me the hell off, as they were looping footage of clear police brutality and she made a point of confronting both of her guests, one "liberal" and one "conservative" when they both told her that the cop went too far), but it doesn't usually get in the way of actual information until you get to the shows where the host's name is in the title.

[audtatious]

Fox news is more right wing leaning than not. They do seem somewhat more "fair and balanced" than msnbc and others.

[AZhitman]

I switch off between Fox and CNN, and I listen to our local talk radio a lot (KTAR).

CNN and Fox both have anchors who wear their positions on their sleeve, but for the most part, they seem to do a good job of letting the interviews and reporting go where it should.

[audtatious]

Even Hannity and O'Reilly allow both sides to state their cases.

[AZhitman]

Decent letter, BTW. I don't think it matters who publishes it, as they're simply a reporting medium.

Suffice it to say, it's not a stretch to question his position on Israel, given the fact that Obama has called Rev. Wright his spiritual mentor, his moral compass and his sounding board, and spent 20 years attending his services, while he spewed anti-Semetic viewpoints and anti-Israel invectives. Oh, and the troubling matter of his close ties to Soros, another notable Israel-basher... I could go on, but this topic has been beaten to death (and ignored by the media)...

I choose to believe that his behavior (as well as the people who he surrounds himself with) speaks much more loudly about his feelings on our only democratic ally in the Middle East than his carefully-crafted speeches, giving lip service to American-Israeli relations.

[srellim234]

I generally agree with the letter but I hope people argue the merits of each point of view.

I find it interesting when I hear the generalization from conservatives that every liberal actor has no credibility because he/she is a whacko nutjob from Hollywierd. That somehow Hollywood destroys their sense of reality. Yet, when one of them takes a more conservative tack, actors expressing political views are great. Can't have it both ways.

Remember that the next time we see or hear another left-leaning opinion out of Hollywood.

[IBCoupe]

Wait, wasn't Soros a Jew who survived the Holocaust by pretending to be a goy, even going so far as to join the Hitler Youth?

Maybe there's merit to the criticism of Israel, and we shouldn't be casting aspersions on people simply because they don't share a whole-hearted belief in our international political ties.

I'm all for remembering who our allies are, but even I, a Jewish American, am not willing to let Israel always dictate our policy for us.

[AZhitman]

Nor am I.

But if that's your position, spit it. Don't play phoney.

I know, that's the nature of politics. But wouldn't it be refreshing to hear a politician say, "I'm all for remembering who our allies are, but I am not willing to let Israel always dictate our policy for us."

[szh]

Your opinion is on NPR? And it's left-leaning?

Most certainly leaning that way, yes!

A good example was the radio show on Monday morning about ratification of foreign treaties. When in office, President Bush was given a hard time by the media that he was not doing much to ratify the many foreign treaties that come before the government.

When the guest on the show pointed out the following facts:

1. During the first 24 months in President Bush's term, 22 treaties were ratified.
2. During the first 18 months in President Obama's term, only 1 treaty has been ratified.
3. During the last 24 months of President Bush's term, an amazing 92 treaties were ratified - the most in the history of the US by any President.

Yet, the host of the show kept trying to make the guest say that it was the Senate's fault (since they have to endorse it for the White House to proceed), so the the guest made the following points (some direct, some implied):

1. It is the responsibility of the White House to push the Senate to make these endorsements happen.
2. This is Democrat majority Senate in office ... and a Democrat President in office - he should be able to get the Senators to do their job better.
3. President Bush was given low marks for foreign policy matters, and President Obama was said to be "better" on foreign policy matters and keeping other nations happy ... yet they are more annoyed with President Obama because of the lack of timely progress.

In the end, the facts made the host finally gave up trying to make President Bush look bad and he stopped giving excuses for President Obama's poor performance ...

Z

[IBCoupe]

Not having heard that program (or being aware of which program you're talking about), I can't speak to it. The morning news I get on NPR never has guests, at all, let alone guests whose statements are challenged by the host, so what you might have heard was a more locally-oriented program.

Typically, though, when programs like On Point or Talk of the Nation bring on a guest, that guest receives questions that challenge the guest, no matter what. Unfortunately, your single data point is not enough to draw a conclusion that NPR has a left-leaning bias, when there's literally nothing presented to suggest that it's an actual preference on display.

One alternative interpretation was that was just one of many examples of a news outlet doing what it's supposed to be doing.

[srellim234]

The content of the treaties and the need for the treaty negotiation process to accomplish those treaty goals is likewise very important. Making treaties or not, just for the sake of making treaties, is not a winning argument in comparing any administration to another.

It's like claiming that I am a great customer of Chevron because I filled up there 28 times last month, only putting in 1/2 gallon a day. Actually I wasted my time and money and cost the company more than if I filled up only once, putting in 14 gallons. And if I happened to have a 30 gallon tank on my truck I didn't need to fill it up at all.

Quantity does not equal quality. I'm not defending the current weak administration; I'm only pointing out that your argument is not a comparison of quality and effectiveness.

[IBCoupe]

I wasn't intending to criticize the actual example for its internal merit, but since we're headed that way: there may be something to the challenge that, "Isn't that Congress' job?"

You point out that it's a Democrat[ic]-controlled Congress, but that doesn't strike me as a compelling argument for ability to get a coherent movement out of Congress, even without a political climate as unstable as the one that exists now. As a whole, the Democratic Party is not as cohesive a group as the Republican Party (two words: "Blue Dog"). I've often said, "The closest thing we will ever see to a viable third party is, at any given time, half of the Democratic Party."

For the past few years, Republicans have organized themselves into lock-step to a much greater degree than the Democrats could ever hope.

And one other thing: it's a Democratic majority and Democratic President. Please don't be that kind of a douchebag.