How to Read Without Reading August 24, 2009
Posted by Joshua in Health Care Reform, Political Commentary/Statements, The Daily Show.3 comments
According to a recent Time Magazine poll, Jon Stewart is now “America’s most trusted newscaster.” To account for this phenomenon, I would choose two ways to basically state the same point: 1) Not to take anything away from the brilliant Jon Stewart, but it probably says more about the pitiful state of the cable news media than it does about Stewart himself. 2) It is the result of Stewart and the Daily Show often managing to offer more substantive journalism than cable news actually does, ironically as Stewart and co. are primarily mocking cable news.
It’s really a brilliant thing, and I personally think Stewart is doing great and hilarious work. And I think a fine example of why Stewart has gained such trust is his recent interview/debate with long time health care reform opponent/career misinformant, Betsy McCaughey (pronounced mac-coy). (Unfortunately, the full episode cannot be embedded it seems. But it can be viewed in full here. Go to the the second section – the 8:00 minute mark – on the episode to see the interview from the beginning. Two clips of the extended interview are also available at thedailyshow.com).
The interview is really worth watching closely, because it stood out to me as almost a microcosm of the mainstream media discussion of health care reform overall. While watching, think of McCaughey as somewhat representative of the loud opponents of reform in the conservative media, and think of Stewart as representative of progressives that desire reform and are sympathetic to the current effort.
Notice Stewart, during the interview, is saying things like, “No, that’s not what the bill says, and you can’t make it mean that. Can we please just have a rational discussion about this?” Then consider McCaughey, on the other hand. She claims the house bill is “dangerous” and “cruel.” She even shows up with half of it in a binder, I guess as an attempt to give herself some legitimacy. Yet, if you watch closely, you’ll notice that she never actually reads from the bill, despite Stewart repeatedly requesting this. In fact, even though only a few pages are the main point of discussion here, she did not have those sections bookmarked (as Stewart jokingly points out) and was clearly not prepared to read them.
Watch her hands and eyes throughout. It is agonizing to watch her stumble through the bill, point out key pages over and over only to not read from them, and then totally lose her place a couple times after all that hunting anyway. It finally gets to the point where Stewart says, “Well, get it!” referring to the oft-loosely mentioned pg. 432. Then he eventually takes the binder to read that part of the bill after a commercial break.
What McCaughey chooses to do throughout instead is simply claim what parts of the bill say and what she thinks it all means or will mean. In other words, rather than, ya know, actually read the bill to us, she would rather play the part of the authority and holy keeper of the bill. So she simply says she’s read it all, and seemingly expects us to accept on faith her interpretations and predictions regardless of the actual language of the bill.
This is an example of why the so-called health care debate has become so confusing and toxic. What McCaughey does here is actually the common trend among reform opponents in the conservative media. The main problem is not that these folks are just simply lying and making stuff up. No, it’s even more insidious than that. What they are doing (thanks largely to McCaughey) is latching on to certain provisions in house bill 3200 and manipulating the intent or interpreting the language to mean what they want these provisions to mean.
What I think is happening here is folks like McCaughey, Limbaugh, et al, are willfully exploiting the high level of political and legislative illiteracy we have in this country. It seems that McCaughey and her ilk are operating on the assumptions that a) the majority of people will not have read any of the bill, and b) even if they have read or will read any of the bill, the language will seem vague enough to make scary interpretations seem plausible, particularly lacking outside context. So then, McCaughey and others are more than happy to reference certain sections and exact page numbers of a bill all day long (without actually reading from them most of the time), and then make assertions about what they say or provide for. Yet, if they are discredited based on what the bill actually says, they then ignore the actual language and resort instead to baseless proclamations about what the language “actually means” or will “logically” lead us to.
It’s difficult to calculate just how poisonous these tactics are. But, I fear the end result is all too often this: once the interpretative spin is put on the bill provisions, by the time the bill is actually read by those who are partial to this spin, the bill is then useless. At that point, it doesn’t matter anymore what the bill actually says, because the language has already been interpreted to say something it doesn’t actually say, or mean something it doesn’t necessarily mean, or baseless speculations have been made about future consequences.
As a result of all this, the fear and hype then quickly goes far beyond a rational discussion of the actual bill itself, and all trust in and the purpose of the language given has been successfully destroyed. This leaves us with a situation (actually this is just part of a bigger problem we have) where people essentially can and do believe whatever it is they want to believe based on their own personal selection of “trusted” sources and selective interpretations.
But Stewart granting McCaughey all this airtime raises a key question of the moment: how are people like McCaughey best approached, if at all? Perhaps it is worth it in the end to have McCaughey on The Daily Show to lay bare her unfounded claims, but would we often be better off by ignoring and talking past the McCaugheys out there, rather than giving them the attention they crave? Or must they first be discredited like this before more rational discussion can begin? Is that effective? But then, is getting everyone distracted away from more important aspects of reform with the need to spend valuable time discrediting misinformation in this way a major strategic point of such misinformation in the first place? It’s quite a dilemma.
But more importantly, I hear you ask, what cable news source can we possibly trust in for the next 3 weeks while The Daily Show takes vacation? May I recommend the Rachel Maddow show on msnbc. I just recently discovered it via the Interweb, and it’s been quite top notch of late.
Stop Talking Award – For Excellence in Projection and Unintentional Irony August 13, 2009
Posted by Joshua in Gibberish, Health Care Reform, Right Wing Radio, Rush Limbaugh, Stop Talking Award.add a comment
It looks like I might have written my most recent post criticizing Rush Limbaugh a bit too soon, because he really seems to be pulling out all the crazy stops in the call to massive resistance over health care reform. I have made the case on a few occasions that Limbaugh is blatantly hypocritical and has little to no respect for reality, the truth, or for his own audience. This has probably never been more true than at the present, so I thought it’s about time he received a coveted Stop Talking Award. He’s certainly earned it.
Limbaugh has been one of the leading voices blatantly misinforming about things that are in the House bill (HR 3200), and peddling some of the more disgraceful, fear-mongering lies about the health care reform proposals, such as the whopper of them all: forced euthanasia for the elderly. Now, as Rush cheers on the town hall “tea party” disruption/protest craze – which has largely been manufactured and fomented by the steady stream of disinformation from industry lobbyist insiders and people in conservative media outlets like Limbaugh - he is upping the fear/anger/hate/distrust ante from calling Obama a “Marxist” and a “racist,” with direct attempts now to compare Obama and the health care “plan” to Hitler and the Nazi Party.
His talk, then, has reached an unacceptable and incredibly irresponsible level…I mean, even more so than usual. It seems like Limbaugh’s favorite tactic these days is to stir people up and get a lot of attention with inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation, but then when others in the media or in government call him out for this, he points the finger like a child while saying the equivalent of, “Did not!,” or “I know you are, but what am I?,” or “But you started it!” Then, he attempts to justify further amping up the inflammatory rhetoric, by always childishly claiming the other side started it. So, in some ways, this is also getting to the point of laughable, unintentional parody.
Don’t get me wrong. At the end of the day, I don’t think what folks like Limbaugh are able to get away with on the public airwaves is a laughing matter at all. It’s a disgrace, really, and now, it frankly seems to be getting dangerous. But if we stop and think for a moment about the profitable, commercial, and manipulative nature of what people like Limbaugh do, we can see just what an illuminating joke it all is. While parts of this country are in dire straits, and Limbaugh and others are working to fuel the fear and anger and direct it towards the president, guys like Limbaugh profit hugely from such conditions. In fact, they couldn’t be in a better situation right now as far as money, ratings, and publicity go.
So while Limbaugh’s language does often suggest he is just seething with hatred for Barack Obama, I have to think, that deep down, he just loves the presence of such a figure, on whom he can and does project all of his own anger, hate, racism, inconsistencies, and personal character flaws, while getting gobs of the attention he loves in the process, and laughing all the way to the bank.
Consider the following projecting statement Limbaugh made about President Obama after his press conference on health care reform. Note that every word of this perfectly applies to Rush Limbaugh, himself, or at least to his radio shtick:
“What we had last night was arrogance on parade. You have to be arrogant and full of hubris to think you can actually go out and tell those kinds of lies and have them believed. You must have a really, really high impression of yourself. You must really believe the people in your audience don’t care what you’re saying, they just marvel that they’re in your presence and listening to you. We’re talking about an ego here that has no boundaries.” 1
This one’s good too:
[Obama] is an utter, cold, mean-spirited, partisan liar. A man who has to lie about his agenda in order to get people to support it. Because he can’t be — this is why the Democrat Party will eventually implode and fail. They cannot be honest about what their intentions are. They cannot be honest about policies at all. They have to lie. 2
Limbaugh has also recently insisted that he “respects” his audience, thereby earning their trust, and that he is not at all elite, just a totally regular guy. Right.
But then, there’s these two chart-toppers on the oblivious to the incredible irony of your statements chart. First, Limbaugh said this about electing Barack Obama:
And there are people in this country who are Americans who have the same view of totalitarianism that all the worst regimes of the world have had. They just are a minority, or have been a minority, and they have to be stealth to get anywhere because who’s gonna vote for torture? Who’s gonna vote for tyranny? Who’s gonna vote for dictatorship? But we did. We did, and it’s — you see it’s slowly encroaching. 3
Yeh, you know, after he supported the Bush administration for 8 long years and defended, you know, the real torture that was happening, Rush should know all about this.
Secondly, and lastly, check out what a caller had to say about certain Democrats the other day and then Limbaugh’s response:
CALLER: I don’t like to be lied to. I can tell you I can take just about anything, but do not lie to me. I don’t like to be lied to. And I want to tell these people something. The reason we’re fired up and we’re going to these town hall meetings is not because we’re some bunch of riffraff or troublemakers. And the reason people are exploding like this is because we’re tired of being lied to.
RUSH: Amen, sister. You are tired of being lied to, plus you have read the bill. You know what’s in it. 4
And yet, she listens to Rush Limbaugh. No wonder she’s so angry.
Congratulations Rush. You’re commitment to “cutting edge” disinformation, projecting your own narcissism and lack of integrity onto others, and consistently offering entertaining in the form straight-faced ironic statements has finally earned you the highest award this little blog can give. Please except it, then do the United States a huge favor and stop talking.
Medi(s)care September 3, 2009
Posted by Joshua in Conservatism, Health Care Reform, Political Commentary/Statements, Progressivism.1 comment so far
The little dust up over health care reform, and especially the role Medicare is playing in it, calls to mind this quote by G.K. Chesterton:
Particularly relevant to this quote is the way Democrats have emphasized simply expanding our messy patchwork system of health care coverage, and finding overall “cost savings” at the same time, while Republicans have jumped at this as an opportunity to posture as the concerned guardians of Medicare. Republicans recently put forth a “Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors,” which claims that Medicare will be fatally “raided” in order to pay for the Democrats’ “government-run health care experiment.” Thus, Republicans are now declaring that “we need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of health-insurance reform.”
It probably isn’t necessary to point out just how disingenuous and purely opportunistic Republicans are being here. But I will anyway. Republicans, after all, have a history of opposing, seeking to scale back, and wishing to reduce dependence on social entitlement programs like Medicare. Seriously, if Republicans and conservatives had had their way, there wouldn’t even be a Medicare for them to talk about “protecting.” It is largely because of Democrats that we have programs like Medicare in the first place.
In fact, pick pretty much any social program or progressive agenda over time – be it Social Security, Medicare, or every attempt for universal health care – and you will find the same fearful conservative/Republican opposition arguing that such programs would present a “slippery slope” to “socialism.” So the really amusing part of Republicans now talking about “protecting” Medicare from some “government-run health care experiment” is that before it was enacted, Medicare was for them just such a scary “experiment” that had to be stopped.
When the idea of Medicare was first proposed in the early 1960s, for example, Ronald Reagan warned,
Right. Those sunset years that are now often longer, healthier, and less likely to be impoverished thanks to things like Medicare?
Now, it is true I think that when most programs like Medicare are enacted, they are the end result of compromises of larger progressive ideals. So they are limited, and progressives often do hope to strengthen and expand them over time. Yet, in spite of limits, shortcomings, and initial scare-mongering, it turns out that such social programs fill such an important need and become so popular, there is little political support to scale them back.
But the really great irony comes when the popularity of such a program can be used as a wedge to maintain the current status quo and oppose more progressive legislation. This is the incredible irony we’re seeing now. Senior citizens, as a group, are the most opposed to the present health care reform proposals. Yet, while the rhetoric of opposition consists mostly of cries about the dreaded “evils” of “socialism” and “government-run health care,” what the elderly seem to be most fearful of is the possibility that their own, very popular “government-run” health care will be negatively affected.
How can such contradictory thinking persist, you might ask? Well, as Slate has been reporting, there is some question about how many people fully realize Medicare is actually government-sponsored, single payer health care coverage. As one citizen infamously, and hilariously, said to a congressman in a South Carolina town hall, “keep your government hands off my Medicare,” apparently without a hint of irony.
Many Republicans, it seems, have been more than happy to shamelessly exploit such dissonance, as well as exploit the anxieties of the elderly, in order to fight the reform effort. I don’t know how else to describe that but as the dark side of shameless opportunism for short-term political gain. I don’t doubt that it all-too-often happens on both sides, and Democrats have certainly voiced similar loud opposition over proposed Medicare cuts in the past. But Republicans, particularly, have been going off the deep end in finding just about any reason to oppose/criticize everything. And in this instance it seems clear, if the circumstances were not a wider reform being put forward by Democrats, Republicans would be saying precisely the opposite, decrying Medicare’s unsustainable path and wanting to cut its costs or advocate for some kind of diverting scheme.
Instead, because of immediate political considerations, Republican leaders are ironically defending leaving a current entitlement totally untouched and indefinitely leaving the fiscal problems we face in this area for some other day (even as they rant and rave about “out of control” spending and deficits, yet reject ever raising taxes to pay for anything). Beyond this being quite irresponsible, shortsighted, and contradictory, some have pointed out it doesn’t even make long-term sense strategically, and might end up backfiring against other conservative goals. As Matthew Yglesias writes,
But, if there is any kind of actual strategy to speak of here, I think there are a couple cynical ways to understand what Republicans are doing. One, they must stir up a ton of opposition to just about anything the Democrats propose, because they do not want the Democrats to get any meaningful, and potentially popular, reform through in such a key area. Two, Republicans fear that said reform could possibly open the door to more popular social services that they don’t want the government to have to pay for. With that in mind then, they likely feel that temporarily defending Medicare is the lesser evil to ending up with anything beyond it (see RNC chairman Michael Steele, who argued we need to “protect” Medicare, but then later cited Medicare as an example of why “government cannot run a health care system”).
I personally do not think, however, that the Republicans have much desire to make Medicare sound for the future. I don’t think they’re terribly worried about us enacting future “giant tax hikes” either. I think they will simply go on hoping they can “starve the beast” by continually hammering away at the already weak political will to raise taxes and properly fund services, and by encouraging privatized, market solutions. Remember, back in the mid-1990s it was Republican, Newt Gingrich, who expressed his hope that they could make traditional Medicare “wither on the vine” by drawing recipients into a “free-market plan.” Hmm, sounds kind of like some other Republican’s recent plan for Social Security too.
The point is, that is just the way the GOP, and especially the “conservative movement,” thinks about government and social welfare in general. So, if I were 65 or older, I would be completely suspicious of this sudden Republican concern for my welfare and benefits; lest I forget that those 65 or older would not even have a right to such benefits, nor such a social commitment to their welfare, if it had been left up to Republicans.