It's Time to Change The Tone of Our 'Politics' Coverage

[WillowTree]

In May, I made an appearance on "Hardball with Chris Matthews," one of MSNBC's political shows. The segment's main focus was the current state of the Republican Party.

When the segment ended and I walked off the set, I knew that that would likely be my last appearance on "Hardball." I had decided that I would not accept another invitation to appear on the program, should one come.

For those of us who enjoy following politics and are interested in the news, there are fewer and fewer options on television. The Sunday shows and PBS programming - "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," for example - remain, and there are a handful of others worth watching elsewhere (e.g., "Morning Joe" on MSNBC is fun, informative and thoughtful, and CNN and C-SPAN have their moments). But too often, caricature and vitriol have replaced reporting and analysis.

and furthur down

Chris Matthews is a smart, politically astute observer of politics, but my last appearance convinced me that "Hardball" has evolved from a straight political news program with quality guests to one that has more in common with its network's prime-time slant. Like most of the evening programming on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel, "Hardball" has become a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view.

During the show on which I appeared, Matthews referred more than once to Republicans as "Luddites" and took every opportunity imaginable to portray them as crackpots. The show's topics inevitably pander to the most liberal Democratic viewers and present Republicans and conservatives in the least flattering of terms.

and do we still wonder about why we are divided welldowehuh?






RealClearPolitics - It's Time to Change The Tone of Our 'Politics' Coverage

 

[Agnapostate]

So...you've finally conceded that the FNC is "a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view"?

 

[WillowTree]

So...you've finally conceded that the FNC is "a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view"?

I believe the article addressed the writers treatment at the hands of Chris Matthews.. pigpostate.. I have conceded nothing.

 

[Sinatra]

So...you've finally conceded that the FNC is "a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view"?

 

[Agnapostate]

I believe the article addressed the writers treatment at the hands of Chris Matthews.. pigpostate.. I have conceded nothing.

Damn, donkeyface, that sludge that you call 'brain matter' is working a bit worse than usual today.

Do you not see his mention of the FNC as such?

 

[WillowTree]

I believe the article addressed the writers treatment at the hands of Chris Matthews.. pigpostate.. I have conceded nothing.

Damn, donkeyface, that sludge that you call 'brain matter' is working a bit worse than usual today.

Do you not see his mention of the FNC as such?

yes I did, pigsazz dosen't mean I concede anything. donkeydung!

 

[WillowTree]

still wondering why we are divided???? wellareyahuh!





it's the tone,,, it's the tone,, change yer ringtone!

 

[Coloradomtnman]

So...you've finally conceded that the FNC is "a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view"?

I'm beginning to believe that you are going out of your way to over-zealously condemn Agna as a pedophile because you are trying to rid yourself of any guilt for similarly unethical predispositions, SINatra. Methinks you protest too much.

 

[WillowTree]

I still don't know what a "Luddite" is??? very vewy perplexing donchyathink?

 

[Nik]

still wondering why we are divided???? wellareyahuh!


it's the tone,,, it's the tone,, change yer ringtone!

Your protesting the tone of what Chris Matthews did, but you don't see anything wrong with Fox and you don't feel the need to say that the tone of calling someone a child molestor is perhaps a bit much?

Alrighty then. The problem, more than anything else, is people being unable or unwilling to see opposite points of view. You exhibit this more than most of this board so the idea of you condemning the tone of politics is fairly ironic.

Coincidentally, a better writer than me has recently spoken on this. The statement is one that you would no doubt let pass, but any similar statement by a leftie you would condemn vociferously. Without further ado, Hilzoy:

I am trying to figure out what would possess Erick Erickson to write something like this:
"You only thought leftists got excited when American soldiers got killed. As I’ve written before, leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider because they view the loss of life as a vindication of their belief that they are right."

"Some" leftists, perhaps: there are a lot of people on the left, as there are on the right, and thus I imagine you could find members of either group who do any number of loathsome things. But Erick Erickson didn't write "some leftists." He wrote that "leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider" [sic]. All of us.


Even those of us who are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who have family or friends there. Even those of us whose family or friends have died. We all got excited. We celebrated. Each and every time a soldier died.


Duels have been fought for less.


I'm not interested in 'explanations' like: he's on the right, so of course he says idiotic things. Treating his opponents as one big undifferentiated cartoonish mass is part of what makes what Erick wrote so objectionable, and I have no interest in following his example. Nor is hyperbole a good explanation: it's not true that everyone on the left is happy when soldiers die, but that we don't go so far as to celebrate.


I think we can rule out the possibility that he believes this in good faith: that he asked himself, before writing this, "Is this really true?", thought about (for instance) the 44% of military voters who voted for Obama, liberals presently serving in combat, or the liberals on VetVoice, asked himself whether they actually celebrate when one of their own is killed in combat, and answered: "Yes."


He might be a pure hack, like those expert witnesses that the tobacco companies used to trot out to testify that nicotine is not addictive. But I suspect he's not.


The alternative is that he believes this in bad faith. Maybe, for him, writing blog posts has become a game: you score points when you can, and whether or not the things you write are actually true has ceased to be a concern. Or maybe hatred has got the better of him, like the person C. S. Lewis describes here:
"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." (Mere Christianity)

If you give in to "the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible", it's easy to see how you could end up thinking things about them that it is implausible to think about any group of human beings: for instance, that when a nineteen year old who enlisted because he wanted to serve his country gets blown up by an IED, your enemies think that that's cause for celebration. Your opponents become cartoons in your mind, and the normal duty to be charitable and generous, or even realistic, in your views about other people seem not to apply to them. You stop thinking of them as fellow human beings, and start thinking of them as enemies.


I suspect that this is the state of mind in which people laughed along with Rush Limbaugh when he said that Chelsea Clinton was "the family dog." No one who laughed at that could have been thinking of Chelsea Clinton as an actual adolescent girl whose looks were being ridiculed by the biggest talk radio host in the country. Had they done so, Limbaugh's sheer cruelty would have been obvious, and the only people who would have laughed are the kind of people who would laugh if they saw a dog being set on fire.


But Chelsea Clinton wasn't a human being; she was an opponent. And Limbaugh was scoring points. And the thought that an actual girl, and one who had never asked to be in politics, was being made fun of on national radio probably never crossed their minds, any more than the thought of actual human beings who are liberals and who are, or care about, soldiers, crossed Erick's.


No one -- not liberals, not conservatives -- should forget that their opponents are human beings. And no one can afford to start down the road Lewis describes, in which you allow yourself to be disappointed when your opponents aren't as bad as you first thought, or want them to be as bad as possible. And no one should get so wrapped up in political fights that in focussing on the mote in someone else's eye, they lose sight of the beam in their own.

Obsidian Wings: Fighting Words

 

[WillowTree]

the choice is yers,, change the tone or remain divided..

 

[Oddball]

I guess all the lefty deflectors missed the interview on CNBC (hardly a propaganda arm of the VRWC), that Bawney Fwank stomped out of, when MARK HAINES -of all people- wouldn't let him change the premises of the questions being asked.

Nope...Gotta deflect and change the topic to Fakes News!!!...Oh, to laugh!!

 

[Nik]

I guess all the lefty deflectors missed the interview on CNBC (hardly a propaganda arm of the VRWC), that Bawney Fwank stomped out of, when MARK HAINES -of all people- wouldn't let him change the premises of the questions being asked.

Nope...Gotta deflect and change the topic to Fakes News!!!...Oh, to laugh!!

Speaking of deflection, what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

 

[WillowTree]

just pointing out the little throw down hissy fits democwats have when someone disagrees with themm is all!

 

[Oddball]

Speaking of deflection, what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

Plenty.

I guess you hadn't heard that both Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli were called to the carpet and slapped down for having the unmitigated audacity to criticize the Mulatto Messiah, had you??

The entire NBC/Universal/GE franchise is a defacto propaganda arm of both the DNC and the administration, and all you hack-in-the-boxes can do is whine and cry about Fakes News.

Friggin' priceless.

 

[Nik]

just pointing out the little throw down hissy fits democwats have when someone disagrees with themm is all!

Really? Is that true of all Democrats?

So you want to change the tone, and yet you want to paint Democrats with broad brushes and overgeneralize?

 

[Nik]

Speaking of deflection, what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

Plenty.

I guess you hadn't heard that both Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli were called to the carpet and slapped down for having the unmitigated audacity to criticize the Mulatto Messiah, had you??

The entire NBC/Universal/GE franchise is a defacto propaganda arm of both the DNC and the administration, and all you hack-in-the-boxes can do is whine and cry about Fakes News.

Friggin' priceless.

Sure they are. By the way, I got a bridge in brooklyn you might be interested in...

 

[Oddball]

Wouldn't surprise me....Dems are famous -or is that infamous- for selling bridges and snake oil.

 

[WillowTree]

just pointing out the little throw down hissy fits democwats have when someone disagrees with themm is all!

Really? Is that true of all Democrats?

So you want to change the tone, and yet you want to paint Democrats with broad brushes and overgeneralize?

who said all,, show me?? and change the tone??? Never happen,, you don't have it in you..

 

[Nik]

just pointing out the little throw down hissy fits democwats have when someone disagrees with themm is all!

Really? Is that true of all Democrats?

So you want to change the tone, and yet you want to paint Democrats with broad brushes and overgeneralize?

who said all,, show me?? and change the tone??? Never happen,, you don't have it in you..

Generally when you say something the presumption is that its all, unless you use another parameter. Just how the english language works.

And no, the tone won't change, but if you are going to bitch and whine about it, the very least you can do is not contribute to it. But then consistency never was your strong point, was it?