The Gawd-Awful Video That Enraged The Gawd-Awful Islamists

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Since one of Dr. Lakoff's explicit aims is to help Democrats improve their "messaging,"...

Robert,

It is about as explicit as it gets. Lakoff is a God to the people in the Obama administration and he has had a huge impact on how they conduct themselves and "frame" things.

I, like you, find him wanting as a political psychologist, but he has excellent propaganda advice.

As a neuroscientist and political activist, he is pure Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. I have seen some of his videos online and they follow the weirdest damn pattern. First an interesting universal insight of some sort. (And by insight, I mean the real deal. Good stuff.) Then some mocking of conservatives. Then more insight. Then more mocking conservatives. Insight - mocking conservatives - insight - mocking conservatives - and so on.

Here is a small list of the books he has written on his Progressive propaganda backed up by science theme (and maybe I missed something):

Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think (2002)

Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives (2004)

Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea (2007)

The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics (2008-2009)

The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic (2012)

Lots of article during this time, too. Many giving propaganda advice.

Ironically, I got his book on metaphors, Metaphors We Live By (2003), and so far, I believe some of his theory is extremely important to epistemology.

Michael

[caroljane]

Do you see all public political discourse simply as competitive propaganda? Is there no room for objective truth at all?

Aristotle wept.

[william.scherk]

We should mention [that sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world is often done with broom handles, sticks, gun barrels and other objects like that.]

No. We shouldn't. [We should not mention 'sodomy for humiliation' (whatever that is) in the Arab world, unless we have some credible evidence that this is common, true, wide-spread, culturally-bound; nothing in this supposed fact supports the malicious claim that Ambassador Stevens was raped/sodomized for humiliation.]

Well, then I should.

For sure you should. If you are right then you of course should tell us more about sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world.

That was the challenge, Maestro. If you should (and if you should you must) tell about sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world, then tell it! We can't do it for you, since you have the knowledge. Whether I am some blue book fiend is besides the point. You have the floor on this point.

Putting me into a drawer or narrative category is all well and good and no-doubt worthy (we all need verbal corralling sometime, or at least a fierce sorting of enemy/friend drawers), but it still doesn't let any of us off the hook of reason.

Oh and as for the image Carol projects, I think this shot captures it perfectly for me. Carol on her way shopping, in winter gear. Properly anonymous on the cold-eyed streets of Canada's hideous social experiment, Toronto, but with a hint of old country widder lady Ms Whistler glam:

Edited September 24, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

We should mention [that sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world is often done with broom handles, sticks, gun barrels and other objects like that.]

No. We shouldn't. [We should not mention 'sodomy for humiliation' (whatever that is) in the Arab world, unless we have some credible evidence that this is common, true, wide-spread, culturally-bound; nothing in this supposed fact supports the malicious claim that Ambassador Stevens was raped/sodomized for humiliation.]

Well, then I should.

For sure you should. If you are right then you of course should tell us more about sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world.

That was the challenge, Maestro. If you should (and if you should you must) tell about sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world, then tell it! We can't do it for you, since you have the knowledge. Whether I am some blue book fiend is besides the point. You have the floor on this point.

Putting me into a drawer or narrative category is all well and good and no-doubt worthy (we all need verbal corralling sometime, or at least a fierce sorting of enemy/friend drawers), but it still doesn't let any of us off the hook of reason.

Oh and as for the image Carol projects, I think this shot captures it perfectly for me. Carol on her way shopping, in winter gear. Properly anonymous on the cold-eyed streets of Canada's hideous social experiment, Toronto, but with a hint of old country widder lady Ms Whistler glam:

You forgot my toque!

Like the Sacred Igloo talismans against the evil eye, though.

[Robert Campbell]

In reply we learned of a 'two-bit mullah' who thinks that Jews cannot be relieved of their moral corruption unless their hearts are cut out, the Director of Islamic Education at Al-Azhar, and now we learn the name: Isma'il 'Ali Muhammad, from Al-Azhar.

Noted that any whackjob with an internet account can issue a fatwa (religious decision), and that Tom Friedman quoted Ali Muhammad as part of his editorial: Yes, anti-Muslim video was awful, but radical Muslims say awful things, too

WSS,

I'm getting a couple of impressions here. One, that you really don't like Tom Friedman's editorial. Two, that you didn't read it carefully.

Great point to make. One made by many among Egyptian/Arab intelligentsia (Mona Eltahawy foremost).

Friedman introduces the MEMRI project, and notes the eruption of stupid from Ali Mohammad:

I asked MEMRI for a sampler of the hate-filled videos that appear regularly on Arab/Muslim mass media. Here are some:

[ . . . ]

Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, "a source of evil and harm in all human societies." Feb. 14, 2012.

As a Jew who has lived and worked in the Muslim world, I know that these expressions of intolerance are only one side of the story, and that there are deeply tolerant views and strains of Islam espoused and practiced there as well. Theirs are complex societies.

That's the point. America is a complex society, too. But let's cut the nonsense that this is just our problem and the only issue is how we clean up our act.

Yeah, it's an eruption of stupid—from a guy who heads a department at Al-Azhar. Not the top of the heap at that institution. Also not a guy that the top mullahs decided couldn't find his way to the bathroom.

By the way, I'm not sure you realize at whom Friedman's editorial is aimed. It isn't primarily directed at folks back in Egypt. They would more likely pay attention to Mona Eltahawy (although I don't know how much heed they usually pay to her). It's aimed at his American colleagues, including some who work for the Times, and I'll bet he's pretty steamed at them. Secondarily, it's aimed at his and their American readers.

So, we learn (or are told) by Friedman that a 'senior Al-Azhar scholar' made a hate-filled video that the prototypical demonstrating Achmed should watch. I agree. Except that the named person did not make a hate-filled video (but six articles on the Ikhwan website; stupid and hateful enough, but not as widely trucked as wildly-inflammatory Youtube videos).

Now, the Progressive Narrative Railroader question could be restated, "Why should Morsi give a shit about an online religious education series (rantings and threats) by Dr. Isma'il 'Ali Muhammad Tubitmula?"

Response: 1) Ali Muhammad wrote that "Jews cannot be relieved of their moral corruption unless their hearts are cut out. 2) He is the Director of Islamic Education at Al-Azhar —and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood

That's why, apparently. Apparently Morsi should keep track of all the senior scholars at Al-Azhar University.

Maybe that is true. Maybe of the 5,000 scholars Morsi should listen to the top. Maybe to the top guy at Al-Azhar, the Mubarak-appointed Grand Sheikh. Maybe to the second top guy, the Grand Mufti.

Friedman made a slip in his article. He should have referred to videos or other public media presentations. There are video clips on his list, but not everything on it is one.

Meanwhile, should the Grand Sheik and the Grand Mufti think ill of Dr. Muhammad and his presentations at Ikhwan, I presume they have the authority to get another mullah partway down the management chain to fire him. On account of his sending a terribly wrong message in his Islamic educational work, and all.

But Robert compared the "rantings of some Iranian Grand Ayatollah to the Iranian President" as if it were comparable. Any Islamic cleric can issue a fatwa, but in Egypt, there is an actual department at Al-Azhar, Dar al-Ifta, that takes care of such things. A department not headed by Mr Tubitmula Ali Muhammad. Tubitmula is not the equivalent of a Grand Ayatollah ... and so it does not parallel the circumstances in Egypt.

Any Islamic cleric, from the imam of a tiny mosque in the boonies up to the most venerable Grand Mufti or Grand Ayatollah, can issue a fatwa. But those from Al-Azhar carry a lot of weight, especially among Egyptian Sunnis.

This is likely true. But the idiot jew-hater translated by Memri is NOT able to give fatwas ... the most important fatwa from Al-Azhar came already, and was cited above in my last post.

My fault for mixing up two things—issuing fataawa, and expressing views that are taken seriously by Islamic believers in one's vicinity.

Unless Al-Azhar requires job applicants to sign a stament—"As a salaried employee of this venerable institution, I shall clear all fataawa with the fatwa department"—Dr. Muhhamad can still issue his own. But fatwa-issuance is not the main task of the folks over in Islamic Ed, and it's not what he's doing on the Ikhwan site.

Meanwhile, one can be a Grand Ayatollah and be marginalized or ignored by the present-day Iranian regime. As in the case of Ali Montazeri. Ali Khamenei has never made Grand Ayatollah, and is not even the highest Ayatollah in order of precedence...

I'd imagine Mohammed Morsi listens to whomever he pleases at Al-Azhar. I presume his government retains the power to make or influence appointments there. But even if some brand-new constitutional revision takes that power from his government's hands, he's got his own power base and he doesn't have to listen to the present Grand Sheik or Grand Mufti. His comments in his New York Times interview, as to whether a woman or a Christian would be fit to serve as President of Egypt, make all of that quite clear. If either of these Grandees should rule that a woman or a Christian may serve without displeasing Allah, would he fall in line? Or would he begin agitating for the appointment of more reliable Grandees?

The bigger point would be, is President Morsi at all bothered by the sayings of Dr. Isma'il 'Ali Muhammad, or of others like him? It's not like the Jewish population of Egypt is going to camp out in his outer office demanding that their complaints be heard. (For the same reason, there's no need for President Morsi to pronounce as to whether a Jew is fit to hold the office he now occupies.)

So, the two most important leaders of Al-Azhar come down on the side of reality, in the present day. As of today, we have not heard a word from Ali Muhammad — nowhere is he quoted commenting on the riots and destruction in Cairo. And nowhere is there a fatwa from Ali Muhammad, with weight or not.

And because no journalist (to our knowledge, as non-readers of Arabic, sitting in North America) has asked Dr. Muhammad to pronounce upon a certain craptastic 14 minutes on YouTube, or upon the wall-scaling and black shehada-flag raising at the US embassy, his manifold expressions of eliminationist bigotry are therefore irrelevant?

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you are right then you of course should tell us more about sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world.

That was the challenge, Maestro.

William,

You didn't get the point and this is the second time you have done this when the theme of sodomizing is involved, so I am beginning to sense a sore point that has nothing to do with rhetoric or discussion.

I have no problem sourcing, calling into question sources or analyzing spin. That's one thing and it should be done. But when something is discussed as much has it has been in the mainstream--and you (I mean you, William) keep popping up with an accusatory finger, inflamed impassioned rhetoric, asking where folks come up with this crap, as if they made it up, then something has moved beyond normal sourcing.

On your terms, I see no challenge whatsoever and no interest in playing that game. I gave it up after unwisely spending too much of my life talking to people who did that crap about Ayn Rand's honor.

Something gets widely discussed, say, like Rand's amphetamine use. Or her jealousy of Patrecia. Or her substantive rewrite of parts of We The Living, although she claimed the contrary Then out they come.

YOU!!!!

Where did Ayn Rand give evidence of that? How did you come to that conclusion? I have not seen this accusation anywhere. Hatred of the good for being the good.

And so on and so on (most often accompanied by massive amounts of nitpicking)...

It's a waste of time because the real issue keeps getting sidetracked while this neurotic urge to deny what's right in front of a person's face gets scratched.

I'm just not interested in "challenges" like that--where someone wants me to show where the obvious is discussed in the obvious places for all to see because that someone doesn't like the topic and is preemptively pushing a denial point of view on it.

Anyway, when you do play along, the kneejerk reaction is almost always, XYZ source is not credible so that one doesn't count. And ABC source isn't credible because it has an agenda, so that one doesn't count, either. And DEF source. And GHI source. And JKL source. And so on.

So that means it hasn't been discussed? Or that there is no common sense reason it is now being discussed? One that is not driven by an agenda to defame someone or some group's honor?

Heh.

Pure waste of time. I'm getting too old to piss my life away on that stuff anymore.

However, if the discourse is that someone or some organization is actively seeking to portray Arabs incorrectly and there are reasons for it, that is another subject and one I am happy to engage in. Don't forget that my own biological children are half-Arab.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

That's you?

I really like the dead animals!

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Do you see all public political discourse simply as competitive propaganda?

Carol,

Absolutely not.

But I do keep my bullshit detectors running.

Most though not all Pulitzerian journalism (this is Paul Weaver's term for the pseudo-objective style, most often employing the crisis-response frame, that emerged in the 1890s) is actually advocacy.

Because it is not presented as advocacy, it is dishonest.

And over the last few years, the American mass media have been doing a poorer and poorer job even of keeping up the pretense of objectivity. The latest Gallup poll shows that most people no longer trust them. As indeed they shouldn't. If you can't tell, after following them for a while, that the present mission of the New York Times and the Washington Post is to secure the re-election of one Barack Obama, you don't know how to read.

It's not just the American mass media, of course. I read The Economist, and appreciate the breadth of coverage, but I've learned the general slant, and can spot the specifics before I've finished the executive summaries. I don't get enough exposure to Canadian mass media to know what their house slants are.

Robert Campbell

[william.scherk]

Robert, I liked the Tom Friedman article, and the Memri article. They are both sobering, but what they report is not new to me. And here I sigh. I am no fan of religion, I really am not. Sigh. I liked who Friedman targetted as his audience (obviously, not a page four hit in Egypt). I wish he had more currency, and wish instances of ugly religious polemic was pitched back at any government official (MENA) who blabbed on about religious defamation ...

In the end, the President, the religious 'authorities' all said the right things about attacks on diplomatic missions, and so did not inflame. I am glad but not surprised they did. The cost of more serious unrest in Egypt or more flames is just not bearable right now. I wish America (or 'Western' values) had more clout in Egypt. Sigh. I wish Morsi could be confronted with his actual reactions to the inflammatory bullshit from Ali Muhammad. I wish he could be tasked to explicate it to somebody. But.

I think the kinds of materials collected for Friedman would make a perfect line of questions for Morsi, should he ever do US interviews!

I will leave it there. We agree all the way to the far boundaries on the greater issues, sigh sigh sigh. I will scuttle back to my usual habits. Thanks for digging up the parts of the background that make sense and need to be heard.

[Robert Campbell]

I have seen some of his videos online and they follow the weirdest damn pattern. First an interesting universal insight of some sort. (And by insight, I mean the real deal. Good stuff.) Then some mocking of conservatives. Then more insight. Then more mocking conservatives. Insight - mocking conservatives - insight - mocking conservatives - and so on.

Michael,

It's how he keeps his cred with intended clients—and with colleagues.

If George Lakoff wanted a Republican clientele, there would be a noticeably different pattern to his presentations. One that wouldn't be too well received by most of his fellow academics.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

In the end, the President, the religious 'authorities' all said the right things about attacks on diplomatic missions, and so did not inflame. I am glad but not surprised they did. The cost of more serious unrest in Egypt or more flames is just not bearable right now. I wish America (or 'Western' values) had more clout in Egypt. Sigh. I wish Morsi could be confronted with his actual reactions to the inflammatory bullshit from Ali Muhammad. I wish he could be tasked to explicate it to somebody. But.

I think the kinds of materials collected for Friedman would make a perfect line of questions for Morsi, should he ever do US interviews!

I will leave it there. We agree all the way to the far boundaries on the greater issues, sigh sigh sigh.

No problem, William. People do get het up about this kind of thing.

President Morsi is trying, in his own fashion, to defuse a tension or two. I'm sure he doesn't want endless rioting in the metropolis (though he also doesn't want to be seen as too vigorously protecting the US embassy). I'll bet he also doesn't want US subsidies terminated. What else is he is after will become known in time.

While many wait for this to become known, I don't blame anyone in the Coptic community who applies for a visa.

The Times interview was a good first step. There should be frequent interviews with other American media, but I have to wonder whether that would fit with either their management's plans, or with President Morsi's.

If Egypt ever got it together, there would be huge positive effects throughout the region. Including but not limited to providing a majority Sunni counterexample to Sa'udi Arabia.

Maybe some day.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

You get that impression because you can fit my statements into the Progressive Narrative, and when you can't, you say I "back off". Fair enough; I am progressive I guess, although I'm not technically sure how evil on your scale.

Carol,

I'm a lot less interested in whether you conform to some "progressive" model, than in your actual thinking about these issues.

You will of course have noticed that "liberal" and "progressive" are not often employed with a favorable connotation by other posters here.

I often put the words in scare-quotes, because "liberal" used to mean something different that I like better, and how "progressive" anyone really is might be held to depend on his or her notion of progress.

We're living in an era in which "liberals" are often, in any reasonable sense of the word, illiberal (e.g., Al Gore's demand that the Federal government shut down Fox News and other media outlets displeasing to persons like himself) and "progressives" go to the wall to defend what most would count as entrenched privileges (e.g., big defined-benefit pensions for members of AFSCME and the NEA).

In a general sense, I get that this is not how you view liberals and progressives. But often you venture no opinion about issues on which I'm reasonably sure you do have one. If you made your opinion known, it might emerge how you don't conform to any standard narrative after all...

Meanwhile, your frequent strong reactions against well-defined liberal bugaboos (such as religious Christian social conservatives and loud right-wing wowsers) and apparently reflexive defenses of well-defined liberal rallying points (such as the New York Times) invite readers to fill in the blanks, perhaps erroneously.

Now here's a loud right-wing wowser: David Horowitz. Probably just as big a wowser as when he edited Ramparts, but not on behalf of the same worldview.

My feeling about Horowitz is that if he puts some investigative reporting resources into an issue, he and his crew will often come up with something worthwhile. On the other hand, there issues where Horowitz is both highly predictable and usually full of it. I quit reading his campus handout newspaper (which used to be distributed where I work) because every issue not only contained a rant about "the homosexual agenda" (very often where all I could see was an equal-rights agenda) but a gratuitous slam or two at gays. On anything Horowitz says about an issue that elicits talk about "Judea" and "Samaria," I definitely want to see corroboration.

But this doesn't make Horowitz qualitatively different for me from the editors and most of the writers at the New York Times, or the producers and the main front-of-the-camera personnel at NBC News. I actively dismiss what they say, or look around for verification first, on anything that looks to affect the welfare of their main man Barack and his strenuous effort to attain re-election. For they really do identify with the Democratic Party as it presently stands, and with its most visible exponents.

Here's a timely example. Have you seen any "mainstream media" outlet report all of the following?

(1) Barack Obama recently gave speech in front of a convention of the AARP, which garnered frequent applause.

(2) Paul Ryan recently gave a speech in front of the same convention, which garnered frequent boos.

(3) The AARP worked so closely with the Obama White House in the, err, design of PPACA (aka ObamaCare) that its top officers were in regular email contact with Nancy Ann DeParle (Obama's health care advisor) and Jim Messina (now running his re-election campaign) and were the object of requests, even of entreaties, to lean on Democrats in Congress who the White House feared weren't going to vote for the bill.

(4) The self-same AARP leaders were cooperating closely with the Obama White House even though internal polling told them that their membership base was opposed to ObamaCare by up to a 3/4's majority, and during 2009 people were getting pissed off and quitting AARP by the thousands.

(5) The AARP dodged a major financial hit by negotiating to remove a "Medigap" cut that was once part of ObamaCare, and scored a significant financial gain by ensuring the retention of other favorable provisions. Net gain to AARP estimated as northward of $1 billion.

Now find a "mainstream" story that includes 1 through 5...

I predict the best you'll be able to do is a story announcing 1 and 2—while "helpfully" adding that the AARP is a "nonpartisan" organization.

Robert Campbell

[caroljane]

Robert, I don't "see" liberals and progressives as an entity necessarily. I am well aware of classical liberalism and the various definitions. I don't see conservatives as an entity at all. But you will admit, they have defined themselves through entities like the Tea Party, which contains very opinionated religious and one-issue groupsI I also assume that since the AARP is senior citizens, Ryan and Obama both made speeches about how their plans would make seniors' lives better. If I were an assignment editor, I would send someone to cover the speech but unless some new policy point or newsworthy quotes came from it, I would probably not feature it unless it was a very slow news day. An opinion columnist could cover the analysis angle.

I know little of Horowitz, but I remember trying to read Ramparts and giving up because it was incomprehensible. I guess his communication skills have improved since them.

[Selene]

But you will admit, they have defined themselves through entities like the Tea Party, which contains very opinionated religious and one-issue groupsI

So all those John Galt signs, Michael and Kat, myself at the Tea Party events proves that we are "...very opinionated religious..." individuals?

Really?

[caroljane]

But you will admit, they have defined themselves through entities like the Tea Party, which contains very opinionated religious and one-issue groupsI

So all those John Galt signs, Michael and Kat, myself at the Tea Party events proves that we are "...very opinionated religious..." individuals?

Really?

I said "contains", not "contains only". You could be considered part of the one-issue groups, in that you are concerned mainly with less government, at least as I read you. Am I wrong to think of the TP as a coalition of many single-issue voters? The pro-life lobby is very influential, surely, for one example.

[Selene]

But you will admit, they have defined themselves through entities like the Tea Party, which contains very opinionated religious and one-issue groupsI

So all those John Galt signs, Michael and Kat, myself at the Tea Party events proves that we are "...very opinionated religious..." individuals?

Really?

I said "contains", not "contains only". You could be considered part of the one-issue groups, in that you are concerned mainly with less government, at least as I read you. Am I wrong to think of the TP as a coalition of many single-issue voters? The pro-life lobby is very influential, surely, for one example.

Carol:

I frankly believe that the "media" that you are getting your intel from has no clue as to the make up of the Tea Party.

I will grant you that conservative folks who also are religious comprise a significant part of the movement. What percentage? No clue.

It basically concerns me when that is the first representation that you make.

No biggie.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In some of the Tea Party meetings Kat and I have gone to, I have heard people try to put pro-life on the agenda. (Lots of Catholics in Chicago.)

But they were told that this is not a Tea Party issue. Kindly, of course. But firmly.

Michael

[caroljane]

To be clear, I see the TP as a coalition, with a menu ...free market/deregulation/less government as the specialite de la maison, maybe...and members can choose one or two or all of the issues on the table. I don't know where the media sources I got my impression are, but one of them is OL. The latest one is Oonline, which is advertising a TP meeting today in New York featuring Pamela Geller as a speaker. I know she is a staple on the TP circuit, so I assume Islamophobia (sorry, "Anti-Sharia") is also on the menu.

[Robert Campbell]

I also assume that since the AARP is senior citizens, Ryan and Obama both made speeches about how their plans would make seniors' lives better.

Carol,

The AARP is a wealthy, powerful pressure group that has become a client of the Democratic party. Its members are ordinary old folks; its leaders are political operatives who I think can be fairly described as exploiting the membership for financial and political gain.

I think Paul Ryan would have been better advised not to speak in front of the AARP.

I doubt that he is seeking a spot on the schedule at the big next meeting of AFSCME, of Greenpeace, or of whatever the trial lawyers' association changed its name to.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Am I wrong to think of the TP as a coalition of many single-issue voters? The pro-life lobby is very influential, surely, for one example.

Carol,

No, Tea Partiers are not all single-issue voters. I wouldn't describe most that way.

And the pro-life lobby has been highly active in Republican politics since Roe v. Wade was handed down.

Treating the pro-life lobby as a dominant player in the Tea Party is like treating the various gun rights lobbies as dominant players.

Rather, gun rights groups are big in the Republican Party, just as they were for years before there was any Tea Party.

The Tea Party is not the easiest movement for media outlets to cover, because out of the various people and groups that claim to speak for it, none are recognized as legitimate by all Tea Partiers and some are recognized as legitimate by none.

And I suspect that some aspects of it are culturally so idiosyncratic as to be most puzzling to Canadians, to Brits, or to other Europeans.

However, the legacy mass media have no interest in actually covering the Tea Party. Their sole interest has been to make it out to be a simultaneously a fad and a bugbear, lest it pose any threat to their favored politicians.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Carol,

Here's a pretty fair net-out (from the Christian Science Monitor) of recent Gallup poll results on trust in the media.

http://www.csmonitor...ybody-surprised

[…] “negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for a presidential election year,” according to Gallup, which is “particularly consequential at a time when Americans need to rely on the media to learn about the platforms and perspectives of the two candidates vying to lead the country for the next four years."

There’s a definite political tilt to such findings.

Trust in the media – defined as having a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust – is very low among Republicans (26 percent) and independents (31 percent), considerably higher among Democrats (58 percent).

Paradoxically, Republicans are the partisan group most likely to be paying close attention to news about national politics, Gallup finds.

One way to understand all of this is that Republicans may not have tuned out Barack Obama's endless, repetitive speeches to nearly the extent that Democrats have.

Robert Campbell

[anthony]

Excellent! That one can find moral and courageous behavior where it is not expected.

For me, it is necessary to keep an eye on all the 'balls' in play, and not to rely on 'once-removed' reportage or analysis. What happens in Libya is of intense interest to Libyans themselves, of course -- and if we want to understand events, we need to be as informed as we can be, informed on the range of opinion and actions in that country -- as they pertain our (Western) alliance with the government in place.

We differ in approach, William. I do rate the ability to peruse and retain facts highly.

Probably because I am imperfect at it, due to poor recall, and inattention on my part.

Still, I think there comes a tipping-point at which more information - and more, still -

starts being counter productive, and obfuscating instead of revealing.

There are only two central facts in this "gawd-awful" matter: some people have been killed; then, other people offered a film as the purported cause of the killings.

Then follow some supporting secondary facts - but all the rest is peripheral.

Sooner better than later, it is the principles we should be matching to the facts - moral evaluations we should be making. Or else, what's the point? (If later information requires adjustments to those, then of course we honestly make them.)

My prime point is that nobody can know enough, and one should not wait until all the facts

'are in' - they never will be.

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

(and with apologies to TS:

Where is the information we have lost in data?)

Chasing down facts becomes obfuscatory in another way: when the sources of news may,

or may not, have directed agendas. Who to trust, amd when? is an exercise in frustration.

I spent some time in the news-gathering business, enough to respect its influence and necessity, but to disrespect its bias and partiality.

Only with the longest spoons should we viewers and readers be extracting principles from

the opinions of media commentators, of any stripe.

[Robert Campbell]

Here's Glenn Kessler giving Barack Obama 3 Pinocchios for a recent false statement about Operation Fast and Furious:

http://www.washingto...?wpmk=MK0000200

So occasionally, Kessler will actually do what is supposed to be his job.

Then again, Obama made this false statement about the Justice Department's Inspector General completed his report.

Maybe even Kessler's grace periods have an expiration date.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Carol,

Vis-à-vis the Tea Party, do you recall the allegations that, on the day in March 2010 that the final version of PPACA aka Obamacare was passed by the House of Representatives, Tea Party demonstrators chorused the N-word at John Lewis, Jim Clyburn, and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus as they accompanied Nancy Pelosi on her stroll with the giant gavel?

No audio recordings were ever produced to substantiate these allegations. Nor was any reference ever made in media coverage to the gerontocratic nature of the House Democratic leadership: after all, the average age of those making the allegation was around 70 (and by 70 nearly every human being is somewhat hard of hearing).

Yet the accusations have been periodically repeated in the legacy mass media.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Robert:

I believe that Glenn Beck has a detailed video, or, it might have been Breitbart which covers every step of that walk and had good audio.

It did not happen. So, the "proof" exists, if the legacy media wanted to access it. They will not though.

Adam