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The Perspective Gap and Fox News

March 2, 2014 by Kurt

My long absence from GayPatriot, has been brought on by a few factors, chief among them that I’ve been taking some classes in the evenings and haven’t had much time for blogging, and what little time I have had to spare has been consumed by more going on socially than in the recent past.  But beyond that, there has been my general sense of what I wrote about in this post, and called either Obamalaise or Obamanomie, that feeling of depression and listlessness that comes when I consider the sad state of a country that elected Obama not once, but twice and seems more interested in bread and circuses than in seeking actual, workable solutions to the difficult problems that face our country.

Naturally the online leftist rag Salon can’t understand why anyone would feel upset or bothered by the direction of the country in the era of the glorious Obama, and so one of its contributors, Edwin Lyngar, has written a laughable piece about “elderly white rage” which places the blame on that favorite bogeyman of the contemporary left, Fox News.   I learned of the article when various liberals and leftists I know–including one I’ve taken to calling a MINO (a moderate in name only)–linked to it on social media.  I just glanced past it until one of them approvingly quoted one of the more ridiculous passages from the article.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I am not elderly, nor am I viewer of Fox News.   I mostly avoid the whole TV news genre, preferring to get my information from other sources.  The full title of the article reads: “I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria.”  The author, who describes himself as “overeducated in the humanities” with both an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University (not exactly a bastion of conservative thinkers) and an MA in Writing from the University of Nevada, Reno unwittingly demonstrates the way shallow generalizations count as somehow being deep thought by those who advocate a politically correct perspective.

As I don’t care to be guilty of the same intellectual offense, I’d like to highlight and  unpack a few of the article’s more ridiculous claims and observations.  Let’s start with the opening paragraph:

Old, white, wrinkled and angry, they are slipping from polite society in alarming numbers. We’re losing much of a generation.  They often sport hats or other clothing, some marking their status as veterans, Tea Partyers or “patriots” of some kind or another. They have yellow flags, bumper stickers and an unquenchable rage. They used to be the brave men and women who took on America’s challenges, tackling the ’60s, the Cold War and the Reagan years — but now many are terrified by the idea of slightly more affordable healthcare and a very moderate Democrat in the White House.

Of course GayPatriot readers can see what he’s doing there, but just for the sake of argument, let’s illustrate that he opens by offering a caricature and a generalization about elderly Fox News viewers, conflates Fox News viewers with the Tea Party, accuses them of being filled with “rage,” and then ends by trying to ridicule them as being “terrified by the idea of slightly more affordable healthcare and a very moderate Democrat in the White House.”  Say what?  That last clause is contains so many misrepresentations and non-sequiturs that it is really rather stunning.  Barack Obama is only a moderate Democrat if you are so far to the left already that you can’t see how far his administration has shifted the political status quo towards statist goals.  And just because Obamacare was given the Orwellian title “the Affordable Care Act,” doesn’t mean it has anything to do with making healthcare more affordable.  Far from it, just ask the many people dropped from insurance who find that their health insurance costs have gone up and their deductibles are now much higher than they were previously.  Even those who haven’t had to change insurance are getting less for more costs.

The article continues with an anecdote about the author’s father and an exchange where the writer tells him he shouldn’t watch Fox News:

I enjoyed Fox News for many years, as a libertarian and frequent Republican voter. I used to share many, though not all, of my father’s values, but something happened over the past few years. As I drifted left, the white, Republican right veered into incalculable levels of conservative rage, arriving at their inevitable destination with the creation of the Tea Party movement.

When I finally pulled the handle for Obama in 2012, my father could not believe how far I’d fallen. I have avoided talking politics with him as much as possible ever since. Last week, I invited him to my house for dinner with the express purpose of talking about po

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Arrogance of the Liberal Elites, Big Journalism, Civil Discourse, Climate Change (Global Warming), FDS (Fox Derangement Syndrome), Liberals, Media Bias, Misrepresenting the Right Tagged With: Arrogance of the Liberal Elites, Big Journalism, civil discourse, Climate Change, fox news, Liberals, media bias, Misrepresenting Conservatives, Misrepresenting Republicans, Misrepresenting the Tea Party

Is Its Smear Campaign a Sign of Democratic Disarray?

June 21, 2013 by B. Daniel Blatt

Democrats and their allies in the legacy media keep telling us that the GOP is in dire straits.  And I’ll grant that my party has work to do.  But, I do wonder if the president’s party is not in straits even more dire than that of is political rival, its problems papered over by the strong support Barack Obama enjoys in some segments of society (especially in the various newsrooms that dot America’s coasts).

If the Democrats have such an appeal with the American people — and are so confident in their message, why must they regularly resort to dishonest demagoguery, misrepresenting Republican stands on issues and regularly calling their partisan rivals “extreme.” Bear in mind that Barack Obama did not win reelection running on his record but by demonizing Mitt Romney, airing over a quarter-billion dollars of attacks ads — before the party conventions.

Saw two examples of this yesterday on Facebook:

Screen shot 2013-06-20 at 7.18.58 PM

Ms. Gillibrand is trying to advance her own cause by misrepresenting her partisan rivals — and stirring up fears among African-Americans.

Look  likes Ms. Gillibrand’s dishonest, mean-spirited rhetoric has earned her an interesting admirer: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Civil Discourse, Democratic demagoguery, Misrepresenting the Right, Obama Hopenchange, Republican Resolve & Rebuilding Tagged With: Chris Coons, Democrats, Kirsten Gillibrand, Misrepresenting Conservatives, Misrepresenting the Tea Party

Defining the Tea Party by its fringes

June 3, 2013 by B. Daniel Blatt

Earlier today on Yahoo!, we saw another headline manifesting the mindset which made Michele Bachmann the media face of the GOP and Tea Party.

Screen shot 2013-06-03 at 9.26.54 AM

Now, although Mrs. Bachmann was an elected public official, she was neither a leader among her congressional colleagues nor successful in her attempt to break into double digits in political caucuses with real consequences in the GOP presidential contest.

And the left-wing writer linked on Yahoo!’s homepage decides to define the Tea Party’s supposed “mental midgetry” by referencing one obscure Tea Party representative and a crackpot state representative (representing a jurisdiction of approximately 38,000).  And then proceeds to engage in a string of insults:

The crap the Tea Party peddles is nothing new. The ideas behind the Tea Party are nothing new. The world has been plagued by mental degenerates since the dawn of time and we might as well accept that demanding cogent arguments from them is going to change anything.

This was little more than an angry rant dressed up as an opinion piece.

By this writer’s methodology, we should define contemporary liberalism by the mean-spirited signs hoisted at San Francisco rallies, imagery which Zombie routinely posts on pjmedia.

(Has Yahoo! ever linked Zombie on its home page?  And yes, this is a real, not a rhetorical question because I don’t know.  I don’t recall seeing such links, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.)

Filed Under: Media Bias, Misrepresenting the Right, Tea Party Tagged With: Misrepresenting the Tea Party, Tea Party

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