Currently viewing the tag: "Media"

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me 20 Times… Stockholm Syndrome!

by Metavirus on 22 September 2010
Paul Krugman scratches his head at something I wonder about all the time: why do people keep worshiping  the same chosen slice of the punditocracy, even after they have been proven wrong over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?
Suppose you had spent the last five years actually believing what you read from the usual suspects — the WSJ opinion pages, National Review, right-wing economists, etc.. Here’s what would have happened:

In 2006 you would have believed that there was no housing bubble.

In 2007 you would have believed that the troubles of subprime couldn’t possibly spread to the financial system as a whole.

In 2008 you would have believed that we weren’t in a recession — and that the failure of Lehman was unlikely to have bad consequences for the real economy.

In 2009 you would have believed that high inflation was just around the corner.

At the beginning of 2010 you would have believed that sky-high interest rates were just around the corner.

Now, we all make mistakes and get things wrong — although it’s striking how often the trolls on this blog feel the need to accuse yours truly of saying things I didn’t. But after this string of errors, wouldn’t you at least begin to suspect that the people you find congenial have a fundamentally wrong-headed view of how the world works?

Guess not.

Short knee-jerk answer: There are a lot of people on the right who don’t care about facts or truth. They are in constant battle mode and the only thing that matters in a pundit is saying things that piss off those liberal elites. Message effectiveness (i.e., pissing off liberals) and high levels of vituperation are primary. Substance, facts, truth and content are secondary.

{ 1 comment }

The Key Things I Hate About Our Country, Media and Government – In One Cartoon!

by Metavirus on 11 September 2010

Thanks to lockwooddewitt for finding this absolutely perfect Tom Tomorrow cartoon.

{ 3 comments }

Quote of the Day: Cole on the Media

by Metavirus on 10 September 2010

Awesome quote from John Cole at the end of another well-deserved screed against the media:

I’m seriously convinced that the last words uttered before the Republic will explode will be “for a different viewpoint on whether this armageddon device could actually destroy the whole continent…”

{ 1 comment }
Metavirus filed this under: ,  

Surprise! New Evidence That Opposition To Islamic Center is Driven By… Anti-Muslim Bias!

by Metavirus on 9 September 2010

Wow, what a shocker.  We now find out that most of the people that are ginned up about the Islamic community center in downtown NYC are primarily driven not by “sensitivity” for the white Christian victims of 9/11, but by blatant anti-Muslim bias:

We now have clear evidence that there’s a direct link between public anti-Islam sentiment and public opposition to the construction of Cordoba House, a.k.a. the “Ground Zero mosque.”

The evidence can be found in the internals of the new Washington Post poll on Islam and the planned center, and it was provided to me by Post polling director Jon Cohen. The numbers directly contradict the claim by opponents that public opposition to the project is not linked to broader anti-Islam sentiment, and is only rooted in a desire to be sensitive to 9/11 families or to respect Ground Zero as hallowed ground.

The poll’s toplines show that 66 percent of Americans oppose the Islamic center. Separately, a plurality, 49 percent, has generally unfavorable views of Islam.
But it’s the intersection of these numbers revealed in the internals that proves the point.

Here’s the rub: According to the internals sent my way, opposition to the “Ground Zero mosque” is overwhelmingly driven by those with an unfavorable view of Islam:

* Fifty-five percent of those who have favorable views of the religion say it should be built.

* Meanwhile, among those who have an unfavorable view of Islam, an overwhelming 87 percent say the project shouldn’t be built, with 74 percent strongly opposed.

As John Cole put it in his “Another Entry From The “No Shit” Department” post:
In other words, bigotry is the motivating force behind the anti-mosque sentiment. I’m shocked to learn this.
But yet the mainstream media will churn on and on in its “all sides have something valid to say” charade.

And the wheel of imperial decline rolls downward, ever downward…

{ 2 comments }
Metavirus filed this under: , , , , ,  

New Republic Editor: Muslims Undeserving of First Amendment Protection

by Metavirus on 7 September 2010

Never be bamboozled into thinking that power and status are gained through wisdom and intelligence.  Proof?  Here’s The New Republic Editor-in-Chief Marty Peretz on the Islamic community center baloney:

Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

{ 2 comments }
Metavirus filed this under: , , ,  

Table 14. Why thinking with the gut is problematic.

by Metavirus on 1 September 2010

On the heels of my latest McArdle FAIL post, I thought you might enjoy a little illustration I put together to show why McMegan’s preferred style of “thinking” can be problematic:

{ 2 comments }
Metavirus filed this under: ,  

Megan McArdle Loves to Stamp and Splutter; Scream and Shout and Whine and Mutter

by Metavirus on 1 September 2010

I am really starting to enjoy the bountiful cornucopia of blog posts detailing what an overly excitable, fact-challenged fraud Megan McArdle is constantly proving herself to be.

Here’s McMegan getting really worked up about an author’s comparison of humans to bonobos:

“For example, like a lot of evolutionary biology critiques, this one leans heavily on bonobos (at least so far). Here’s the thing: humans aren’t like bonobos. And do you know how I know that we are not like bonobos? Because we’re not like bonobos. There’s no way observed human societies grew out of a species organized along the lines of a bonobo tribe.” (emphasis in original)
Here’s the author’s retort:
Got that? Humans aren’t like bonobos because we’re not like bonobos. No way! So there! Case closed.

In addition to this somewhat embarassing “reasoning,” it’s pretty clear Ms. McArdle hasn’t read even the first half of the book very closely. Pages 77 and 78 contain a table listing some of the major similarities between humans and bonobos, many of them unique to these two species. Hard to imagine how she managed to miss that. In the discussion of her article, she flatly states that chimps are genetically more closely related to humans than bonobos are, which is not only just plain wrong, it’s something we explain very early in the book (along with a graph, no less, on p. 62).

Agree with our thesis or disagree with it, nobody who knows anything about primatology would argue that chimps are genetically closer to us than bonobos are (they’re equidistant) or that humans and bonobos don’t have a great deal in common—particularly in terms of our sexual behavior and anatomy. (The table appears below.)

How anyone continues to take McMegan seriously is beyond me.

{ 12 comments }
Metavirus filed this under: , , , ,