Full disclosure: I watch MSNBC.
Not all the time, but I certainly watch MSNBC more than FOX News and CNN and I’ll be the first to admit that they’re as biased as FOX News. I just happend to agree with them more. I still try to check in on FOX News (and CNN) because living in a vacuum concerns me. As evidenced by the fact that I live in Los Angeles…
Who’s paying attention?
Anyway, I try to hear all sides. But, as I’ve mentioned previously, ultimately it all winds up sounding like a lot of noise.
I don’t really go to cable for “the news”. Does anyone go to these networks for the news? In varying degrees a lot of these folks, on every channel, are obnoxious. But a lot of my friends are obnoxious too. To a certain degree it’s a lot like having a conversation with your asshole friends in a bar. A one sided conversation.
While I know Chris Matthews gets on some people’s nerves, I have to admit I’m more charmed by his brand of patriotism than say, Sean Hannity’s. I’m not saying one is “better” than the other. I’ll leave the measuring of patriotism to Fox News.
Lately though, much of MSNBC’s attitude has been much more reactionary. They’ve always been the antedote to FOX News, but they’re really making a point of stepping up that message and in doing so continuing this silly trend of news networks covering and analyzing not only the way they provide news but the way the other networks do it as well.
So in short, valuable time that could be used to further inform the public about stuff that actually matters, precious segments are spent on, say, what O’Reilly did with a particular piece on his show. To make things even more absurd, O’Reilly often does this himself on his own show.
Essentially, a great deal of the news on the networks is about the news networks themselves. It’s nonsense. It’s professional wrestling. Of course, so is American Politics.
Occasionally I actually agree with what Bill O’Reilly says, perhaps as I often as I disagree on certain points with Rachel Maddow. I miss Tim Russert. Not because he was necessarily above the fray, I just liked him more. When he passed away, I must admit, I got a little misty eyed.
Speaking of misty eyed, have you seen Lawrence O’Donell in his MSNBC “Lean Forward” spot? I think he’s misty eyed – at the very least, his eyes are bloodshot. Either way, he appears to be in the back of the VFW from the Deer Hunter lamenting the state of things.
Then there’s Ed Schultz in the coffee shop down the street from where you live, talking to…well, it kinda looks like he’s talking to himself actually.
They’re indignant. The system does indeed seem broken. And they’re just regular guys. In the coffee shop on Main Street.
I think they mean it. But as “real” as it looks, it still just feels like theatre.
At least Matthews’ spot has him overlooking the White House. While no less “theatrical”, I buy that backdrop a little more. I don’t know why.
Then there’s Rachel Maddow in the hard hat in front of the Hoover Dam.
These are all bright, media savvy people – Someone had to have realized that sticking Rachel in front of that thing was going to be about as effective as sticking Dukasis in a tank in terms of convincing people on the other side of their argument.
Or maybe not.
I’m kind of puzzled why Ms. Maddow upsets the right…or rather I should say I’m puzzled why she upsets them so much. I guess MSNBC isn’t in the business of trying to win the independent voters. Both networks are just preaching to the choir. In the vacuum.
But none of these people are wrong all the time. They’re not right all the time either but…
Rachel loves infrastructure. The self proclaimed “geek” is fascinated by it and it’s fascinating to me that a tech boom or real estate bubble, of which the only remnants that remain are devastated retirement funds, is a perfectly acceptable short term economic solution, but repairing a nation’s infrastructure, which would be a huge boon, though possibly only temporary, is met with such contention. At least we’d have some roads and bridges left over. Our power grid needs some work too from what I understand.
Of course, infrastructure requires federal involvement.
Whether it’s simply a “governement bad” or a “how are we going to pay for it?” philosophy, I believe Rachel’s point is that we managed to get our shit together in the middle of the fucking Great Depression.
However – a lot of immigrant labor, low wages, safety violations, environmental issues – Let’s face it: No one gave a shit about the environment back then, so a lot of ugly stuff was going on back then too. Depending, of course, on your definition of ugly.
“YEAH!” My friends on the Right will exclaim. But the rich were getting taxed far more when Eisenhower was building the nation’s interstate system.
Point is: There was compromise. On both sides. But I think the difference today is that some things seem mutually exclusive.
I think it always “seemed bad”. But I have to say, it feels worse now. Because there isn’t a Dam, a Highway System. A man on the moon.
We have an internet. That’s nice. And we’re all involved. So I guess we hang our hat on Facebook? The very thing that distracts so many of us from actually working?
These big projects of old that built the country we live in were built on the back and with the blood of a lot of workers and the sad truth is that a lot of these things, from the Railroads to the Dams, probably wouldn’t get done today due to all the red tape. But that red tape is as much blue state as it is red.
That’s the disconnect that I think both sides tend to ignore. And it’s that gray in between the blue and red where the solutions seem to live.
I don’t know if our world is more complicated now or not, but it’s complicated.
Note the way the GOP lot takes Rick Perry to the turnbuckle because he thinks children should be educated, vaccinated and insured.
That sonofabtich.
It does, however, seem like we do need to be more active now. And wouldn’t that require all of us to be better informed as well?
I read a piece recently that Google actually has an algorithm that searches based on your preferences, taste, and beliefs. This is based on things you already searched for (provided you don’t clear your history, etc.) – As a result, people essentially find “like minded” information.
In short – Rachel Maddow’s search results about “Greenhouse gases” would most likely differ from Sean Hannity’s.
And this is scary. No wonder everything is slanted.
But we have eyes doen’t we? And brains?
Slant is natural. I’m slanting right now. And let’s be frank, it’s because I don’t have all the information. But let’s take an example:
The shifting of the blame for everything that went wrong during the Bush Administration to the current one is kind of ludicrous.
We can absolutely argue that the Democrats did the same political jockeying that the republicans are doing right now
at the end of W’s administration. Fair enough. But here’s a bench test:
How’d the country look in 2000. Objectively speaking?
Your stock portfolio? Our Budget Surplus? New Orleans? Lower Manhattan?
I’m going over well covered ground, I realize that and to be clear, I’m not assigning blame, merely citing things that occured while W and the republican’s were in charge.
How’d things look in 2000? How’d things look when he split?
What steps were taken to solve these problems? Off the top of my head, 2 wars that weren’t paid for, a real estate bubble and tax cuts.
This is what was done. These are the facts. There certainly is some information that I’m leaving out, nuance, if you will. But these are the broad strokes.
MSNBC argues that this wasn’t effective. FOX argues this was the only course of action.
I’ll be the first to tell you, right now looks more like 2008 than it does like 2000 – but come on. We need to move forward and “keep doing the same stupid shit” just doesn’t sound like a solid game plan to me.
As with most things, I think one grows up and you realize that thoughtful investigation of any information that’s neatly presented can often lead to further illumination. The operative word here is thoughtful. Not “aggressive”, not “paranoid”. Reaching your own conclusions somewhere in that thin valley between blind acceptance and extreme suspicion can often amount to more than a small increase of common sense, a commodity that the multitudes have been lamenting a scarcity of for quite some time.
I’m certainly not the first to mourn the death of old school journalism. Though I don’t think it’s necessarily dead as much as it’s just evolved. I’m not the first to argue that either.
No one is forcing us to watch this stuff. Though we do seem to prefer to sing with the same choir.
I’m of the opinion that by and large, most people are decent and just going to work and trying to do a good job. But both sides are trying so tenaciously to claim the higher position at the expense of common sense, for us to solve these very real problems, we’ll never reach that higher ground if we don’t somehow discover common ground.
And perhaps if news stopped “leaning” for just a few moments, maybe we could actually move forward.
C I P R I A N I 
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