Media Bias...Obama's Advantage

[Some Guy]

If its something that will get ratings, they run with it. Round the clock coverage of celebrity deaths? Yup. Kid gets gunned down on the street? Lucky if the local press cover it.

It's about ratings over everything else. The people have as much if not more of an influence on the media than the media does on us.

That has always been the case. Stuff of more interest or with more emotional connection to more people--Elivis dying for instance--will get huge coverage while a relatively unknown person will ger relatively little - UNLESS it can possibly be a rightwing motivated 'hate crime', then it doesn't matter who it is. It will get tremendous coverage. Not so much if it is a leftwinger committing a crime against a rightwing group or person. And therein is the bias and dishonesty in the treatment.

Let Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney commit a major gaffe on the campaign trail, and it will be front page news for a day or two along with as many negative comments about it as they can find people to say. And if it is Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin or any of the other lightning rod figures, it will be on the Review and merit intense scrutiny and attention by all the MSM.

Let Joe Biden accuse the Republicans of wanting to put a predominantly black audience in shackles, and it is laughed and shrugged off as, "Oh well, that's just Joe. He didn't mean it like that.

And THAT is how the MSM gives Obama/Biden a huge advantage by quickly skimming over their gaffes, issues, and missteps while giving glaring intention to anything their opponents say that can any way be made negative.

You will not get an honest or accurate account of most controversial sociopolitical issues by using only the MSM as your primary course. Add in Fox News or conservative talk radio, however, and you will get both sides of the issue and and will be able to then form an informed opinion.

Definitely. Look at different outlets and the same stories are often presented, just in what type of manner.

Covering the whole "you didn't build that" speech from Obama could easily be presented as just another speech if the reporter comes out saying "President Obama came out today stressing the importance of infrastructure in today's economy and noting how important it is that we work together as a country to help each other succeed." Maybe that's what they heard, maybe that's just how they wanted to present it. Whatever the reason, you simply can't deny that, in general, the mainstream media will present a story in a way that favors liberals. You can not mention something important, lessen it's impact, explain it away or just plain distort.

There was a time when reporters acted on behalf of their consumers, basically reporting news, asking tough questions, being inquisitive and cynical. Now, it's basically most people getting whatever they want out of something and presenting it as fact in a way that supports their viewpoint. Relying solely on one source or a host of like minded sources leads to being a robot in the tank for one side or another. As much as lefties hate Fox News and righties hate MSNBC, they're both needed, really.

 

[ItsjustmeIthink]

I often wonder if this is because people see a News agency being critical of a party's actions and then say, "oh look at how biased they are."

MSN and Fox would be the exception I think.

 

[Foxfyre]

I personally don't see main stream news to be as biased as fox and msnbc. However I agree, people should never get their news from just the conservative or liberal side, but be open to both to get a more accurate picture.

Actually media analysis groups have found Fox to of course be blatantly conservative in most of their editorial approach, but as balanced and non biased as any news organization in their straight news reporting. Leftwingers see it as biased because they don't cast the right in as negative a light as possible while casting the right in as positive a light as possible. The mainstream media does. This is not done obviously, of course, but is engineered for the maximum emotional effect.

I might buy that, but you have to then take into account that most of what they run is opinion.

Fox News Channel controversies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes it is just as most of what CNN and MSNBC run is opinion. But Fox is slanted right in their editorial opinion, CNN left of center, MCNBC extreme left of center. But you will find a bias as described in CNN and MSNBC's straight news reporting. Just check their coverage of the Family Research Council shooting as opposed to their coverage of anything that might make a conservative look bad or guilty for instance.

Fox is less biased in their straight news reporting. And they all three do about the same amount of straight news reporting.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Well, not exactly a huge revelation...

but.. what the heck, shall we talk about the fact that Democrats always have an unfair advantage when it comes to the media or just accept it, laugh and move along..?

---------------------------------------


Just 22% of voters believe most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage of Election 2012. Only nine percent (9%) think most reporters will try to help Romney win, while 51% believe most will be trying to help the president.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll - Rasmussen Reports™

Media bias in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At least in 2008 they were
44 - Study: Coverage of McCain Much More Negative Than That of Obama

 

[JoeB131]

One recent example of media bias in this past week.

A volunteer at a gay and lesbian center goes to Chick-fil-a, picks up a sack of sandwiches, and proceeds to the Family Research Council offices in Washington D.C. --yes Chick-fil-a's critics had condemned Chick-fil-a's owner for sending a contribution to Family Research Council among others. Anyway, the volunteer proceeds to pull out a gun. announces that he doesn't like their politics, and shoots the guy who was greeting visitors at the door. He had fifty rounds of ammunition on him suggesting he had much mayhem in mind. The wounded man, despite being shot in the arm, tackles and wrestles the gunman to the ground and holds him until police can arrive.

How many of you have seen this on your evening news? Prominently displayed in your local newspaper? How many of you have heard of it at all from the media? (If you listen to conservative talk radio or watch Fox News, you probably do know about it. Otherwise, not so much though a brief cursory mention was provided at CNN, ABC, CBS et al. And then silence.

Is anybody posting on this thread willing to argue that the media would have treated it any differently if it had been somebody from the Family Research Council who had gone to the gay and lesbian center and shot the volunteer there? Can you imagine it would not have been thoroughly reported along with panels and 'informed opinion' on all the television networks? That it would not have been front page news in all the newspapers? That we wouldn't have had a dozen threads started about it at USMB?

Here's the key thing on that incident...

No one died.

And it was on the news as soon as it happened, and forgotten pretty quickly because, hey, again, no one died. One person was hurt, but that's his job, and the individual involved was clearly disturbed.

And the political/social implications in it were 100% completely ignored by the mainstream media. No suggestion that it was rhetoric or media condmenation of Chick-fil-a or protests by the gay and lesbian community or prejudice or any other factor was involved. Quickly reported without commentary and they moved right on.

Can you think of ANY news story over the last three years in which a possibly rightwing person was accused of any crime, assault, or insult against a leftwing group or person that was not covered extensively with interviews and commentary and in depth exploration of the sociopolitical implications and factors?

Can you name a specific incident where this was done where there were only slight injuries?

Usually, if there is a lot of naval gazing on an issue, it's because something serious happened. What I noticed is that discussions of the implications of the Wisconsin shooting vanished a lot faster than the Colorado shooting, even if by the theories you set, it should have been more because the shooter was involved in a hate group.

But less people died, and they belonged to a minority group, so we kind of stopped caring.

Just like we care more when it's "White Women in Peril" than we do if a minority vanishes.

 

[Foxfyre]

Here's the key thing on that incident...

No one died.

And it was on the news as soon as it happened, and forgotten pretty quickly because, hey, again, no one died. One person was hurt, but that's his job, and the individual involved was clearly disturbed.

And the political/social implications in it were 100% completely ignored by the mainstream media. No suggestion that it was rhetoric or media condmenation of Chick-fil-a or protests by the gay and lesbian community or prejudice or any other factor was involved. Quickly reported without commentary and they moved right on.

Can you think of ANY news story over the last three years in which a possibly rightwing person was accused of any crime, assault, or insult against a leftwing group or person that was not covered extensively with interviews and commentary and in depth exploration of the sociopolitical implications and factors?

Can you name a specific incident where this was done where there were only slight injuries?

Usually, if there is a lot of naval gazing on an issue, it's because something serious happened. What I noticed is that discussions of the implications of the Wisconsin shooting vanished a lot faster than the Colorado shooting, even if by the theories you set, it should have been more because the shooter was involved in a hate group.

But less people died, and they belonged to a minority group, so we kind of stopped caring.

Just like we care more when it's "White Women in Peril" than we do if a minority vanishes.

Something serious like the Chick-fil-a owner supporting traditional marriage? Or a brief altercation between a Cambridge Professor, who happened to be black, and the police?

But you're right. After days of coverage of the Chick-fil-a controversy when NONE of the mainstream media was sympathetic to Chick-fil-a, and a couple of weeks devoted to that Professor incident, a gay (?) guy from a gay and lesbian center marching into the Family Research Council and shooting the attendant on duty and having enough ammunition on him to kill dozens isn't news at all. At least to the left leaning mainstream media. (Fox hasn't gone overboard, but at least it has given it the coverage that it deserved.)

Again, if it had been somebody from the Family Research Council going to the gay and lesbian center and shooting that volunteer in the arm, we would still be hearing about it from every leftwing media organization.

 

[JoeB131]

Something serious like the Chick-fil-a owner supporting traditional marriage? Or a brief altercation between a Cambridge Professor, who happened to be black, and the police?

But you're right. After days of coverage of the Chick-fil-a controversy when NONE of the mainstream media was sympathetic to Chick-fil-a, and a couple of weeks devoted to that Professor incident, a gay (?) guy from a gay and lesbian center marching into the Family Research Council and shooting the attendant on duty and having enough ammunition on him to kill dozens isn't news at all. At least to the left leaning mainstream media. (Fox hasn't gone overboard, but at least it has given it the coverage that it deserved.)

Again, if it had been somebody from the Family Research Council going to the gay and lesbian center and shooting that volunteer in the arm, we would still be hearing about it from every leftwing media organization.

Since the latter didn't happen, let's stick to the two examples you gave.

Okay, Chik-Fil-A. The thing is, Mr. Cathy and his views have been on the national radar for a while. This is not something that just started. What put it into the news was that Mike Huckabee in an act of shameless self-promotion, decided to promote a "Eat at Chik-Fil-A" day. So the uproar about Chik-Fil-A was really a talk radio host trying to get himself on the radar.

Kind of the same thing about the Cambridge thing. It was the Right-leaning media screaming that Obama was attacking law enforcement because this cop decided to bust a respected professor for "Contempt of Cop".

So your complaint about things getting attention are attention that the right media draws to things, not some conspiracy.

 

[Swagger]

The mainstream media has been steadily steered towards sympathising with left-leaning ideology worldwide since the early '90s. The reason behind this shift can be broken down into several factors.


1. Right-wing politics and sympathies are largely rooted in instinct and experience. Relying on instincts has been progressively rubbished by left-leaning academics for years now, who are more in favour of progressing society on the strength of theory and hypothosis. The majority of right-wing voters don't hold college degrees, and have to a certain extent over the years been silenced by their own percieved inadequacies in the face of these supposedly superior intellectual minds who've patronised them into a corner, fearful of being made a mockery of by the herd audience who've also been browbeaten into silence by these elitist intellectuals.

2. The accusation of racism has been firmly taken possession of by the left-wing. And they've done a meticulous and exemplary job of it, too. Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, the left systematically stigmatised any right-wing agenda - be it fiscal or social - as racist. So much did they bombard the public with this label, people took it seriously. Indeed, Winston Churchill once said: "If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough and often enough, the people will believe it." For instance, prominent right-wingers have so often been compared to the Nazis, that other, less prominent right-wingers have come to accept that lie (how often do you see the media remind people that Che Guevara, the leftist icon so often seen on clothing, was reponsible for murdering countless innocent people?). This is also compounded by the fact that right-wing policies are often nationalistic (and rightfully so), and seek to put citizens first, as opposed to illegal immigrants, who the left often label as helpless in the face of white, right-wing "bigotry". The working classes who staunchly support right-wing ideology, such as "rednecks", are then unfairly stigmatised as ignorant, slackjawed bigots who marry their sisters. Who wants to be labelled as allegedly incestuous? I don't. Nor would I wish to risk that kind of association by outlets I'm powerless to counter.

3. The threat of litigation. To be fair, this isn't entirely the work of the left. They've just capitalised on the fear of litigation more than the right. The left has poured support over organisations like the ADL, SPLC and ACLU that they've become the attack dogs of the left. Respected and legitimised across the board due to the disproportionate amount of praise and recognition they've received in the left-leaning press over the last twenty-odd years, they've manifested themselves into an object of fear, who'll pounce on anyone who goes against the grain of the agenda they've harrassed the public into believing is virtuous and supposedly unassailable. They're bullies, in other words.


But through the internet, they're facing an unexpected challenge. Since the inception of social media like YouTube, message boards, blogs and media articles' comments sections, people waking up to the fact that they aren't alone in holding beliefs that run contrary to the mantra propagated by the overwhelmingly left-leaning media. Ask yourselves this, right-wingers. Do you honestly believe that movements like the Tea Party would've attracted so much support without the internet? I don't think they would have.

 

[swizzlee]

But are the winds about to shift?

Since Ryan was picked, I sense a growing change in the political winds with the O clearly playing defense.

While Mitt and Paul have been pounding away on Medicare in a very positive and upbeat tone , we begin to see some subtle and not so subtle hints that the media in all its shapes and forms may be going in for the kill, so to speak.

The O, after just a mild clamor by the press about his absence, seems to have been pressured and suddenly appears for a press briefing.

And now we hear of not one but two negative articles about the Obama campaign being disorganized and "testy" [e-book] and the other about the failings of the O's term in office [Niall Ferguson's Newsweek article]

These two media insertions will more than likely keep the O on defense while Mitt and Paul cruise into their convention.

 

[JoeB131]

But are the winds about to shift?

Since Ryan was picked, I sense a growing change in the political winds with the O clearly playing defense.

While Mitt and Paul have been pounding away on Medicare in a very positive and upbeat tone , we begin to see some subtle and not so subtle hints that the media in all its shapes and forms may be going in for the kill, so to speak.

The O, after just a mild clamor by the press about his absence, seems to have been pressured and suddenly appears for a press briefing.

And now we hear of not one but two negative articles about the Obama campaign being disorganized and "testy" [e-book] and the other about the failings of the O's term in office [Niall Ferguson's Newsweek article]

These two media insertions will more than likely keep the O on defense while Mitt and Paul cruise into their convention.

Um, no, not really.

This week, Ryan and Romney are going to have to spend time trying to define what "legitimate rape" is. This is not what you want to be talking about six days ahead of your convention. Nor is trying to draw some distinction between "legitimate" and "forcible" rape, like HR 3 does, which Akin and Ryan co-sponsored.

Now, Romney might have a good week next week. But it will probably be his last one.

 

[Vidi]

One recent example of media bias in this past week.

A volunteer at a gay and lesbian center goes to Chick-fil-a, picks up a sack of sandwiches, and proceeds to the Family Research Council offices in Washington D.C. --yes Chick-fil-a's critics had condemned Chick-fil-a's owner for sending a contribution to Family Research Council among others. Anyway, the volunteer proceeds to pull out a gun. announces that he doesn't like their politics, and shoots the guy who was greeting visitors at the door. He had fifty rounds of ammunition on him suggesting he had much mayhem in mind. The wounded man, despite being shot in the arm, tackles and wrestles the gunman to the ground and holds him until police can arrive.

How many of you have seen this on your evening news? Prominently displayed in your local newspaper? How many of you have heard of it at all from the media? (If you listen to conservative talk radio or watch Fox News, you probably do know about it. Otherwise, not so much though a brief cursory mention was provided at CNN, ABC, CBS et al. And then silence.

Is anybody posting on this thread willing to argue that the media would have treated it any differently if it had been somebody from the Family Research Council who had gone to the gay and lesbian center and shot the volunteer there? Can you imagine it would not have been thoroughly reported along with panels and 'informed opinion' on all the television networks? That it would not have been front page news in all the newspapers? That we wouldn't have had a dozen threads started about it at USMB?

Here's the key thing on that incident...

No one died.

And it was on the news as soon as it happened, and forgotten pretty quickly because, hey, again, no one died. One person was hurt, but that's his job, and the individual involved was clearly disturbed.

And the political/social implications in it were 100% completely ignored by the mainstream media. No suggestion that it was rhetoric or media condmenation of Chick-fil-a or protests by the gay and lesbian community or prejudice or any other factor was involved. Quickly reported without commentary and they moved right on.

Can you think of ANY news story over the last three years in which a possibly rightwing person was accused of any crime, assault, or insult against a leftwing group or person that was not covered extensively with interviews and commentary and in depth exploration of the sociopolitical implications and factors?

Nope...not one.

But then if the media didnt cover it, how would I have heard about it hmmm?

 

[mamooth]

At least in 2008 they were
44 - Study: Coverage of McCain Much More Negative Than That of Obama

That's because McCain ran a sucky campaign, was always losing, was an unlikable grouch, and picked a trainwreck for a VP. If the media had not reported more negatively on McCain, that would have indicated a record-level wild conservative bias.

Our nutty conservative media will work hard to support the GOP, but they can only take it so far. It was impossible to put a shine on the turd that was McCain's campaign, and it's just as hard to do it for Romney.

 

[swizzlee]

I'm afraid not..................

Romney and Ryan have already distanced themselves from Akin. Todd Akin will be a 10-minute soundbite. Don't get yourself too deep into the weeds trying to find a way to hurt R&R with this silliness.

Smith and Lipinski were the sponsors of HR 3. There were 173 co-sponsors from both parties.

At least you agree R&R will have a good next week. That's more than the O has had for a while.

Just remember - one has to show evidence of leadership to win a race. So far not one thing in the O's quiver of arrows has had any substance whatever.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

At least in 2008 they were
44 - Study: Coverage of McCain Much More Negative Than That of Obama

That's because McCain ran a sucky campaign, was always losing, was an unlikable grouch, and picked a trainwreck for a VP. If the media had not reported more negatively on McCain, that would have indicated a record-level wild conservative bias.

Our nutty conservative media will work hard to support the GOP, but they can only take it so far. It was impossible to put a shine on the turd that was McCain's campaign, and it's just as hard to do it for Romney.

No it was not, listen to yourself and re-read what the media did.

 

[Bfgrn]

The mainstream media has been steadily steered towards sympathising with left-leaning ideology worldwide since the early '90s. The reason behind this shift can be broken down into several factors.


1. Right-wing politics and sympathies are largely rooted in instinct and experience. Relying on instincts has been progressively rubbished by left-leaning academics for years now, who are more in favour of progressing society on the strength of theory and hypothosis. The majority of right-wing voters don't hold college degrees, and have to a certain extent over the years been silenced by their own percieved inadequacies in the face of these supposedly superior intellectual minds who've patronised them into a corner, fearful of being made a mockery of by the herd audience who've also been browbeaten into silence by these elitist intellectuals.

2. The accusation of racism has been firmly taken possession of by the left-wing. And they've done a meticulous and exemplary job of it, too. Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, the left systematically stigmatised any right-wing agenda - be it fiscal or social - as racist. So much did they bombard the public with this label, people took it seriously. Indeed, Winston Churchill once said: "If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough and often enough, the people will believe it." For instance, prominent right-wingers have so often been compared to the Nazis, that other, less prominent right-wingers have come to accept that lie (how often do you see the media remind people that Che Guevara, the leftist icon so often seen on clothing, was reponsible for murdering countless innocent people?). This is also compounded by the fact that right-wing policies are often nationalistic (and rightfully so), and seek to put citizens first, as opposed to illegal immigrants, who the left often label as helpless in the face of white, right-wing "bigotry". The working classes who staunchly support right-wing ideology, such as "rednecks", are then unfairly stigmatised as ignorant, slackjawed bigots who marry their sisters. Who wants to be labelled as allegedly incestuous? I don't. Nor would I wish to risk that kind of association by outlets I'm powerless to counter.

3. The threat of litigation. To be fair, this isn't entirely the work of the left. They've just capitalised on the fear of litigation more than the right. The left has poured support over organisations like the ADL, SPLC and ACLU that they've become the attack dogs of the left. Respected and legitimised across the board due to the disproportionate amount of praise and recognition they've received in the left-leaning press over the last twenty-odd years, they've manifested themselves into an object of fear, who'll pounce on anyone who goes against the grain of the agenda they've harrassed the public into believing is virtuous and supposedly unassailable. They're bullies, in other words.


But through the internet, they're facing an unexpected challenge. Since the inception of social media like YouTube, message boards, blogs and media articles' comments sections, people waking up to the fact that they aren't alone in holding beliefs that run contrary to the mantra propagated by the overwhelmingly left-leaning media. Ask yourselves this, right-wingers. Do you honestly believe that movements like the Tea Party would've attracted so much support without the internet? I don't think they would have.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

The Destruction of Language

Since around 1990, conservative rhetors have been systematically turning language into a weapon against liberals. Words are used in twisted and exaggerated ways, or with the opposite of their customary meanings. This affects the whole of the language. The goal of this distorted language is not simply to defeat an enemy but to destroy the minds of the people who believe themselves to be conservatives and who constantly challenge themselves to ever greater extremity in using it.

A simple example of turning language into a weapon might be the word "predictable", which has become a synonym for "liberal". There is no rational argument in this usage. Every such use of "predictable" can be refuted simply by substituting the word "consistent". It is simply invective.

More importantly, conservative rhetors have been systematically mapping the language that has historically been used to describe the aristocracy and the traditional authorities that serve it, and have twisted those words into terms for liberals. This tactic has the dual advantage of both attacking the aristocracies' opponents and depriving them of the words that they have used to attack aristocracy.

A simple example is the term "race-baiting". In the Nexis database, uses of "race-baiting" undergo a sudden switch in the early 1990's. Before then, "race-baiting" referred to racists. Afterward, it referred in twisted way to people who oppose racism. What happened is simple: conservative rhetors, tired of the political advantage that liberals had been getting from their use of that word, took it away from them.

A more complicated example is the word "racist". Conservative rhetors have tried to take this word away as well by constantly coming up with new ways to stick the word onto liberals and their policies. For example they have referred to affirmative action as "racist". This is false; it is an attempt to destroy language. Racism is the notion that one race is intrinsically better than another. Affirmative action is arguably discriminatory, as a means of partially offsetting discrimination in other places and times, but it is not racist. Many conservative rhetors have even stuck the word "racist" on people just because they oppose racism. The notion seems to be that these people addressed themselves to the topic of race, and the word "racist" is sort of an adjective relating somehow to race. In any event this too is an attack on language.

A recent example is the word "hate". The civil rights movement had used the word "hate" to refer to terrorism and stereotyping against black people, and during the 1990's some in the press had identified as "Clinton-haters" people who had made vast numbers of bizarre claims that the Clintons had participated in murder and drug-dealing. Beginning around 2003, conservative rhetors took control of this word as well by labeling a variety of perfectly ordinary types of democratic opposition to George Bush as "hate". In addition, they have constructed a large number of messages of the form "liberals hate X" (e.g., X=America) and established within their media apparatus a sophistical pipeline of "facts" to support each one. This is also an example of the systematic breaking of associations.

The word "partisan" entered into its current political circulation in the early 1990's when some liberals identified people like Newt Gingrich as "partisan" for doing things like the memo on language that I mentioned earlier. To the conservative way of politics, there is nothing either true or false about the liberal claim. It is simply that liberals had taken control of some rhetorical territory: the word "partisan". Conservative rhetors then set about taking control of the word themselves. They did this in a way that has become mechanical. They first claimed, falsely, that liberals were identifying as "partisan" any views other than their own. They thus inflated the word while projecting this inflation onto the liberals and disconnecting the word from the particular facts that the liberals had associated with it. Next, they started using the word "partisan" in the inflated, dishonest way that they had ascribed to their opponents. This is, very importantly, a way of attacking people simply for having a different opinion. In twisting language this way, conservatives tell themselves that they are simply turning liberal unfairness back against the liberals. This too is projection.

Another common theme of conservative strategy is that liberals are themselves an aristocracy. (For those who are really keeping score, the sophisticated version of this is called the "new class strategy", the message being that liberals are the American version of the Soviet nomenklatura.) Thus, for example, the constant pelting of liberals as "elites", sticking this word and a mass of others semantically related to it onto liberals on every possible occasion. A pipeline of "facts" has been established to underwrite this message as well. Thus, for example, constant false conservative claims that the rich vote Democratic. When Al Franken recently referred to his new radio network as "the media elite and proud of it", he demonstrated his oblivion to the workings of the conservative discourse that he claims to contest.

Further examples of this are endless. When a Republican senator referred to "the few liberals", hardly any liberals gave any sign of getting what he meant: as all conservatives got just fine, he was appropriating the phrase "the few", referring to the aristocracy as opposed to "the many", and sticking this phrase in a false and mechanical way onto liberals. Rush Limbaugh asserts that "they [liberals] think they are better than you", this of course being a phrase that had historically been applied (and applied correctly) to the aristocracy. Conservative rhetors constantly make false or exaggerated claims that liberals are engaged in stereotyping -- the criticism of stereotyping having been one of history's most important rhetorical devices of democrats. And so on. The goal here is to make it impossible to criticize aristocracy.

For an especially sorry example of this pattern, consider the word "hierarchy". Conservatism is a hierarchical social system: a system of ranked orders and classes. Yet in recent years conservatives have managed to stick this word onto liberals, the notion being that "government" (which liberals supposedly endorse and conservatives supposedly oppose) is hierarchical (whereas corporations, the military, and the church are somehow vaguely not). Liberals are losing because it does not even occur to them to refute this kind of mechanical antireason.

It is often claimed in the media that snooty elitists on the coasts refer to states in the middle of the country as "flyover country". Yet I, who have lived in liberal areas of the coasts for most of my life, have never once heard this usage. In fact, as far as I can tell, the Nexis database does not contain a single example of anyone using the phrase "flyover country" to disparage the non-coastal areas of the United States. Instead, it contains hundreds of examples of people disparaging residents of the coasts by claiming that they use the phrase to describe the interior. The phrase is a special favorite of newspapers in Minneapolis and Denver. This is projection. Likewise, I have never heard the phrase "political correctness" used except to disparage the people who supposedly use it.

Conservative remapping of the language of aristocracy and democracy has been incredibly thorough. Consider, for example, the terms "entitlement" and "dependency". The term "entitlement" originally referred to aristocrats. Aristocrats had titles, and they thought that they were thereby entitled to various things, particularly the deference of the common people. Everyone else, by contrast, was dependent on the aristocrats. This is conservatism. Yet in the 1990's, conservative rhetors decided that the people who actually claim entitlement are people on welfare. They furthermore created an empirically false association between welfare and dependency. But, as I have mentioned, welfare is precisely a way of eliminating dependency on the aristocracy and the cultural authorities that serve it. I do not recall anyone ever noting this inversion of meaning.

Conservative strategists have also been remapping the language that has historically been applied to conservative religious authorities, sticking words such as "orthodoxy", "pious", "dogma", and "sanctimonious" to liberals at every turn.

 

[Swagger]

I'm well aware of what I'm talking/writing about, as I'm sure you well know. And all your lengthy screed serves to illustrate/prove, is that there's an ongoing semantic tug-of-war between the right and left. That's hardly news, to either conservatives or liberals.

 

[Bfgrn]

I'm well aware of what I'm talking/writing about, as I'm sure you well know. And all your lengthy screed serves to illustrate/prove, is that there's an ongoing semantic tug-of-war between the right and left. That's hardly news, to either conservatives or liberals.

The problem is liberals are not participating. They are losing badly because of their own beliefs that facts should stand alone.

Even the one of the top conservative rhetors admits liberals don't have any.


Frank Luntz

Pollster and communications specialist

The 11 Words for 2011

Words matter. The most powerful words have helped launch social movements and cultural revolutions. The most effective words have instigated great change in public policy. The right words at the right time can literally change history.

Most of you know me as a wordsmith. From time to time my memos and language guides have appeared on these pages -- sometimes with my blessings and sometimes against my will. I realize that my work is often controversial, and often you like to attack the messenger, but it's the message that matters.

...

These are 11 phrases that will be shaping the public discourse over the coming year. You won't find a similar list from a liberal wordsmith -- there aren't any -- so you might as well use these. And if you want the other 89 words and phrases that really matter, you'll just have to buy the book.

 

[swizzlee]

Please don't get carried away............

The GOP is not represented by just one man

Is Joe Biden the face of the Dems?

Just remember - there are 77 days to go and NO incumbent since FDR has EVER won reelection with a very stagnant 8+ UE staring him in the face.

Todd Akin won't change that fact.

 

[swizzlee]

But biased or not, can the media........

overcome this one important fact?

We now have 77 days to go and no president since FDR has ever won reelection with a very stagnant UE of 8+ percent.

 

[Foxfyre]

When you have the majority of the media in your corner, however, and Obama does, there is always the danger of an 'October surprise' that the Obama campaign can turn into a positive for just long enough to swing the election. And if you have a media all too willing to play it up and suppress any extenuating circumstances, it is a dangerous thing for the Fourth Estate to be picking winners and losers.