08.23.07
Discussions on politics
I have a running email conversation with a buddy of mine who I occasionally send stuff too from my blogroll. (No worries, parental units, it’s personal email.) Right now the discussion has degenerated to his argument that “if I sent him stuff from traditional media, he’d be more likely to read it”. Also, I should apparently also find stuff to counterpoint my stuff, so that he doesn’t have to do any work.
Anyway, I’m throwing up the conversation here because I think it’s interesting, and I’m also curious as to how people think I’m presenting my arguments. Of course, I know that there are those who feel I’m way to harsh, but it’s hard to find the balance because being to soft doesn’t end up presenting a different opinion. It’s sort of the same trouble the democrats have had: how to stand up for your opinion and hopefully change someone’s mind without being wishy-washy and just reinforcing their viewpoint.
A little background. He had pulled the “traditional media, blogs don’t count, blah blah blah” stuff at work.
So I sent this:
Exercise: Find me a place where traditional media either
1) Doesn’t claim that democrats are investigating too much OR
2) Sites a poll by a reputable pollster (any traditional media except fox would count, also gallup) to support the claim.
Glenn Greenwald on democrats and investigations.
His reply:
Why does fox get thrown out the window?
Me:
Tell you what, let’s turn on fox on of these days, and I can sit there and tell you why they’re bullshit all day every day.
Him (you have to remember, he’s not comfy have a real discussion for an extend period of time, so he occasionally tries to “lighten things up”)
I guess this article is bias…pfft.
Me:
No, actually that article doesn’t do a bad job.
You’ll note that it was an AP story picked up by fox, however, so it’s not actually fox content.
Also, I never said that fox was incapable of not doing the occasional stories correctly.
If you keep your ear to the ground on this story, you’ll actually hear a lot of pundits and stories claiming that this is proof that people don’t like congressional investigations.
Glenn Greenwald (same article)
Rebuttal on that point here.
All things considered, though, this isn’t bad. The real problem with stories like this is that, while they quote the poll, they don’t link to the poll so that if you’re curious as to method, actual questions asked, and other answers NOT sited in the poll, well, you’re still SOL. I don’t like that. I like my citations, because sometimes I like to be able to check whether they cherry picked the questions they reported on, or whether the questions they asked were leading or not, yada yada.
Him:
My whole point is that if you were to send articles from national traditional news orgs then you would get a better response from me. It took me 5 mins to find this one on Fox. Also, you should go out and read articles from Fox and other conservative leaning news orgs because it would give you an understanding of the point from the other side of the fence. I would just like to point out that I am not ultra conservative by any stretch of the imagination; I am conservative leaning. I like discussion that you bring but the e-mails with links to liberal bias blogs and whatnot are just getting deleted. I would like to see you send an article out from a conservative site and rebut it with your ideas and possibly sighting articles from traditional media. That kind of e-mail would bode well with most.
Me:
1) Fox is ultra-conservative. Their TV is worse than their web, because their web at least gets pickups from relatively neutral (if lazy) news services like reuters and AP. So, even if YOU are not ultra-conservative, your viewpoints will be if you’re watching fox.
2) Traditional media does not address issues that concern me; that is one of the major reasons that I don’t pay much attention to them. Traditional media spends a lot of time on celebrity’s and hair styles, and very little on substance. I’m not going to waste my time looking through all the shit to find something that tangentially discusses an important issue just to shelter you from a viewpoint you’re not used to getting.
3) Unless and until you find a factual or logical fallacy in anything I send you, the only reason you have to not read it is that you disagree with their conclusion. I.e., you want to shut out a point of view that you’re not familiar with and that may cause cognitive dissonance.
Apologies for the spam.
him:
Note: This is from the LA Times, a well respected newspaper, not a internet blog.
me:
Actually, did you read this piece? This isn’t the one I thought it was. This is one cracking on the guy who wrote the one I thought it was. Both out of the same paper.
Of course, no retraction will be printed. It’s “just opinion”, so the complete factual vacuum in the article doesn’t matter, right?
Him:
What issues do concern you? Most bloggers write about things that go on in this country; mostly political. Does “traditional media” not report on politics? You tell me what you are concerned about and I will go out and find articles about those issues from traditional media sites. Now, those sites will probably not fit into the liberal agenda that you send out but it might help you understand what most people are hearing and reporting about. I believe that you think Fox news is ultra conservative because it does not fit into your idea or has an opposing idea of how you think this country should be run. I believe it is conservative but not to the level of like a Rush or Michael Savage. Anyway, I care about both sides of the fence and it seems that you only care about what the liberal ideology cares about. If you want to make points to conservatives use their stuff against them, i.e. site an article from their blog them find an opposing article that explains the other side and let us make our own decision. Just a thought, and if you want to take me off the list that is okay.
me:
Actually, I read a bunch of tech blogs as well as political blogs. And you can find someone blogging about anything. So “most bloggers write about x” is as bad as that skube piece, both logically and factually challenged.
When I send out stuff, I’m sending out an argument for my point of view. I’m sending you a piece of information. It is your job, if you disagree with my side, to represent your own opinion. If you haven’t made an opinion on the topic yet, but you feel there is something wrong with my take on things, then it your own job to educate yourself as to why. Simply because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t correct.
There are two major myths running around, propagated mainly by the traditional media. First is that the modern media represents a full spectrum of debate - it doesn’t. Traditional media manages to capture the “center” to the “far right”. Second is that there are “two sides” to every debate. Bullshit. There are as many sides to any given debate as there are people participating. To try and reduce it to one side or the other is dangerous oversimplification.
I send stuff out because I represent a substantial portion of the population of this country that doesn’t have a voice in traditional media, and doesn’t tend to have a voice on military installations, meaning you guys don’t hear it very often. I want to present to you guys a point of view that is different from one that you tend to hear. I’m not trying to provide you a fair and balanced viewpoint. I’m trying to show you that there is more out there than “the president’s side and the vice president’s side”, as Stephen Colbert once so aptly put.
If you want to stick your fingers in your ears, that’s fine.
If you want to have an honest debate, and counterpoint what I find, that’s fantastic.
But I am not going to go out for you and find a side of the issue that I don’t agree with just to satisfy your need for “the other side”. I’m not going to have the entire discussion for you. If you want to participate in the discussion, I’ll talk all day long. I’ll read everything you send me, and if I disagree with it, then I’ll be able to tell you what parts I find factually or logically challenged. If you don’t want to participate in the discussion, as clearly you don’t, then I’ll just leave you out.
What I will not do is your research for you.
Have an opinion? Support it. Not able to support it? Then you probably shouldn’t hold it so strongly.
prairiewolf said,
August 24, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Well articulated. What you are proposing is a discussion, a debate. If “him” wants to participate, great. True advances are formed with a meeting of the minds. I agree: not your job to argue his side of the topic. This is not high school debate. MSM presents the (now) 5 corporate masters point of view. There is not a progressive among them. TPM and dailykos (Huffington) come close. So, continue the good fight. Most neocons don’t think, that’s why they are neocons. Much more comfortable to follow than to question.
Gaia gardener said,
August 25, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I’m currently reading a book that may interest you, Mary Pipher’s “Writing to Change the World”. While the first half or so is about why people might want to write to change the world, and then some basic “how’s” about writing in general, the second half is an analysis of how to be most effective as you try to influence other peoples’ opinions through writing (and speech-making).
She has a chapter on blogs. While she mentions the fact that there is no one policing the web, and therefore you have to be very careful about the content that you access on the web, she also makes the following statements:
“Blogs offer some things that more established media don’t….[they] can serve as watchdogs on media, challenging stories, and suggesting stories that are being missed. Especially ‘A-list’ blogs - the most credible and the most widely read blogs - are a new force in American politics. This is heartening, because not just the rich and powerful but anyone eloquent and passionate can have influence. We can all be pamphleteers - modern-day Tom Paines.” (p. 217-218)
“Bloggers report on the stories that major news media do not cover - not because these stories are insignificant, but because they are too politically loaded.” (p. 218)
“Many American soldiers are writing home from Iraq with very different accounts than those we see on the front pages of our newspapers…. [A Washington Post reporter] reported that blogs like this are becoming so influential that they are subject to military censorship.” (p. 219)
“Social activists of all stripes have discovered the power of blogs as electronic calls to action….” (p. 220)
“Blogs are conversation cafes and technological speakers’ corners They offer people of the world voices in a great dialogue that could help build communities, sometimes international ones….
Blogs offer us zero degrees of separation from people anywhere and everywhere. We can ‘hear’ the voices of ordinary citizens reporting their stories. With blogs, we can build I-thou relationships with people very different from ourselves. Over time, blogs will continue to connect us, teach us empathy, and perhaps even save us from ourselves.” (p.221)
Pipher is a well known psychologist and therapist who has written 7 books on topics that reflect “how American culture affects the mental health of its people.” (Quote from the bio blurb on the back of “Writing to Change the World”.) Incidentally, I picked up this book because I was impressed by the ideas in several other of her books.
qkslvrwolf said,
August 29, 2007 at 5:11 pm
@PW: Thank you. :-)
@Gaia: I am very interested in the book, especially as a corollary to “Don’t think of an elephant”. Or perhaps a peer. Maybe I’ll steal it from you this weekend. I really like her take on blogs. At the last Drinking Liberally I went to, I was discussing the influence of blogs with a more regular activist, who was of the opinion that blogs don’t really matter in the real world because “they’re only read by politically minded people”. What he didn’t realize, and what I intend to attempt to prove to him at the next DL, is that the “politically minded people” who read blogs also are activists in the real world, and that they’re better informed, connected, and armed than traditional activists.