“Facing a 16 percent reduction in its budget, the BBC World Service said on Wednesday that it would close 5 of its 32 language services and reduce its work force by about a quarter, cutting around 650 jobs over the next three years. “BBC to Trim World Service and Lay Off 650 – NYTimes.com.
Journalism
Politicization of Arizona Mass Murder Shows Progressive Mentality at Work
The mass murder at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s meet-up with her Arizona constituents just over a week ago was immediately politicized by progressive politicians and media figures. That’s the way things are done when progressives have any power to reach the public: everything is political. It was in fact politics as usual for the progressive borg. That way of doing things is derived from the foundations of the progressive mentality, which assumes that all things should be made fully subject to the rule of experts. In the present case, an atrocity was used as the pretext for arguing that progressives should be given even greater and more explicit control over what people can say in public. That’s the reality of what happened on that weekend and throughout the week. The process began, tellingly, with the New York Times, the newspaper of record among the nation’s progressives. It sets the agenda for the nation’s legacy media, deciding what will be considered news and what angle the coverage should take. Less than two hours after the news broke, Times columnist Paul Krugman did the dirty work by asserting that “this was political.” You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship
Notable Quote: Frank J. Fleming on the Liberal Fear and Loathing of the Constitution
We are all aware that liberals want the Constitution to be a living document, like if Geppetto wanted Pinocchio to become a real boy so it would be easier to strangle him to death. They want it living so they can render its words meaningless. To them, the Constitution is this cryptic document only the most educated Ivy Leaguers are able to interpret. Recently, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein even stated that “the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago.” And then we have all these court decisions — much longer than the document itself — that find all these hidden rights not mentioned in the Constitution and explain away the ones that are clearly stated. And don’t argue with liberals on the subject, because they’re really smart and the only ones able to understand what they’re talking about. Fleming’s Pajamas Media article — “Why Liberals Hate the Constitution” — is here.
‘New York’ Magazine Critique of Libertarianism Has Positive Unintended Consequences
A recent New York magazine article has raised a bit of a ruckus on the right. In his long article on libertarianism, Christopher Beam appears both fascinated and puzzled by the odd phenomenon under his microscope. Anyone at all familiar with libertarianism will recognize that his characterization of the movement and the philosophy behind it is something of a caricature, but there is a serious critique to be found in his article. That critique is seriously wrong, as it happens, and understanding just where Beam goes wrong could go a long way toward helping libertarians, conservatives, classical liberals, and others on the right better understand the foundations of our thought and the opportunities for a mass movement it may afford. Too often we tend to argue as vigorously over our differences with one another as we do with those whose big-government policies are the real adversary. What we share, however, is the foundation for a truly American mass political movement. Beam, for his part, understands that the movement has developed a strong following among more than just fringe types in recent months: There’s never been a better time to be a libertarian than now. The right is still railing against
“Birtherism”: Is It Contagious?
by Mike Gray Kyle-Anne Shiver, confidently asserting (without proof) “I do believe that the president was born in Hawaii,” nevertheless expresses perplexity and suspicion concerning the recent emergence of “birtherism” among liberal Democrats, specifically media pundit Chris Matthews and Hawaii’s newest governor Neil Abercrombie: If you ask me, this folderol of reincarnating the “Birther” issue by two prominent liberal Democrats just smacks of orchestrated political psy-ops. Hoping to get a prominent and public rise out of Republicans and/or conservative pundits, these two utterly loyal-to-the-president guys — Abercrombie and Matthews — are simply creating a diversion in the hopes that their party can regain some of the traction it’s lost over the past 2 years. Even so, Shiver admits: “No presidential candidate of the past 30 years has been permitted the level of secrecy and non-disclosure that President Obama received” — and then adduces a laundry list of undisclosed records of information that the president has jealously and inexplicably guarded with millions of dollars going to legal myrmidons, concluding: In my opinion — as a civics-minded citizen — Obama’s as yet unreleased original long-form birth certificate from the state of Hawaii is merely the tip of a mysterious iceberg when it comes
Author/Philosopher Denis Dutton Dies
Dennis Dutton, an American author and philosopher who moved to New Zealand and served as a professor of philosophy, has died. Dutton was the founder of the excellent website Arts and Letters Daily. Story here.
Can Conservatives Win Back the Arts? – Andrew Klavan – National Review Online
“Despite the Left’s best efforts, conservative and American values are actually coming back into the culture,” Andrew Klavan writes.
The Media’s Infatuation with Justice Stevens
What makes the media so credulous when it comes to reporting on liberal progressives who would readily muzzle them and deprive them of their First Amendment rights if they said the wrong thing? Lester Jackson, on Accuracy in Media, thinks he knows: The media reports only one side, not out of ignorance or incompetence, but because it is largely populated by those who know that their unpopular values cannot be achieved in open democratic debates and elections, but must be imposed in the dark by unelected and unaccountable judicial activists. Of whom the prime example may be Justice John Paul Stevens, often referred to as a “moderate” even by self-designated “conservatives,” but who is anything but: The other side of the story has barely been mentioned, leaving unreported critical facts and unrefuted misleading statements (recently, even by Stevens himself). This is of great significance. Media misrepresentation and outright concealment of shocking truths about the Supreme Court is an essential requisite for enabling any five justices to usurp the democratic process and impose their own values upon the American people, against their wishes. Jackson reports Stevens’s true record on vital issues like the death penalty, free speech, and the proper purview
Climate Scares and Media Lag
On Pajamas Media, Art Horn informs us that there’s a definite and documented correlation between actual terrestrial climate change (a real phenomenon) and the major media’s “climate catastrophe reporting” that goes back at least twelve decades: . . . when one looks back at the history of climate reporting, you find a remarkably consistent and recurring theme. The global temperature has cycled from cold to warm to cold to warm again over the last 120 years. The media cycles of impending climatic doom mirror the climate cycles themselves, but with a roughly ten- to fifteen-year lag. It seems whenever the world warms, the volume of global warming stories increases to match the trend. Conversely, when the climate cools the major media outlets pull on their long johns and warn us of the next ice age. However, it takes many years for the media to catch up to what the climate is actually doing. Horn adduces mainstream media scares from 1895, 1912 (the Titanic was on everybody’s mind), 1923, 1929, 1933, 1959, the 1970s (“an ice age is a comin’!”), and the most recent media saturation of alarmist reporting on “global warming” as a threat to mankind. He notes three things
A Multi-Modal, Media House of Mirrors
That’s not a bad summary of this blog post, which shows Ann Althouse listening to a podcast of Rush Limbaugh speaking on his radio show about a blog post she wrote the previous day about Limbaugh’s radio show from that same (i.e. the previous) day. I like the Althouse blog post that started it all, as well as the house of mirrors feel of the whole exchange – watching a thought turn into a conversation that reverberates across time and media.
‘New York Times’ Editor Lauds Readers’ Stupidity
“I’m sure glad our readers are stupid!” says a New York Times editor, though in different words. Forbes reports:
Mitch Albom’s Stupak Stupor
Stupak was swayed by the adoration of his voters and the promise by the president made in the national spotlight, was subsequently spanked by the public and couldn't muster the fortitude to run for another term.
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