Tag: Jacob Weisberg

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Voices of Moderation Strike Again

Readers of this blog may remember the post in January re some of the opinions expressed immediately after the shooting in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  The worst were those, by people like Slate’s Jacob Weisberg and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who attempted – before anything was known about the shooting – to link it to right-wing political rhetoric.

Though it turned out that the shooter, Jared Loughner, was just another nutjob with no discernible political interests (it’s always so embarrassing when that happens), people like Krugman and Weisberg carry on, unchastened.

So whereas, re the Gifford shooting, Krugman said: “Even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those that pander to that desire.  They should be shunned by all decent people,” he is now saying, in columns about the debt ceiling and possibility of default, things like:

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being.  “Has the GOP gone insane?” they ask.  Why, yes, it has.  But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades.  Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye….

The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse. 

Meanwhile, Jacob Weisberg, whose emanations within hours of Giffords’ shooting included a piece titled “The Tea Party and the Tucson Tragedy: How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism made the Giffords shooting more likely,” is now saying, re the debt ceiling deal:

Some of the congressional Republicans who are preventing action to help the economy are simply intellectual primitives who reject modern economics on the same basis that they reject Darwin and climate science….

At the level of political culture, we have learned some other sobering lessons: that compromise is dead and that there’s no point trying to explain complicated matters to the American people.  The president has tried reasonableness and he has failed….

A Congress dominated by mindless cannibals is now feasting on a supine president. 

One sometimes wonders what certain people were like as children, but with Weisberg and Krugman we don’t have to wonder because they’re still children.  As such, they aren’t even worth talking about, especially as there are people on the right who are every bit as juvenile.  But the difference is that the right-wingers don’t occupy such lofty, and so-called “mainstream,” positions.

For all practical purposes Paul Krugman is these days the face of the New York Times, and though Jacob Weisberg is employed by a considerably less noteworthy organization, Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co., as “mainstream” as it gets.

Like those high-frequency sounds that only dogs can hear, few people will be able to detect the value in the opinions of commentators who have such contempt for them, a thing that ought to be of concern to those people at news organizations whose business plans count on mainstream Americans as current or prospective subscribers.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Tucson and the Media

Never mind for a minute the opinions of those outside the media.  People, for instance, such as Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who sees in the Tucson massacre the need for a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.  Or Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who in 2007 called on the NTIA to reexamine whether broadcast facilities are creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes, and who now says: “The shooting in Arizona reminds all of us that the coarsening of our public discourse can have tragic consequences.”  Or Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), who Broadcasting & Cable reports is “working on a bill to make it a crime to use ‘language or symbols’ that could be interpreted as inciting violence against a member of Congress.”

Never mind even the astonishing comments of the ubiquitous Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a man who, far from being just your everyday lawman, is a political philosopher and soothsayer as well.

The most disturbing thing about the coverage of this affair is the reckless and, in some quarters, even shameless commentary produced by people in the media.  Witness, for instance, Jacob Weisberg at Slate (“How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism made the Giffords shooting more likely”); or Michael Tomasky at the Guardian (“In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time.”)

But the man whose editorial contribution to this tragic affair represents the absolute nadir of journalistic integrity is The New York Times’ Paul Krugman.  In a blog posted just hours after the shooting, and in a Times piece titled “Climate of Hate,” Krugman relieves himself of opinions that are as poisonous as they are unfounded.  Here’s but one example (among many) of the wisdom and high-mindedness of the gentleman: “So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to GOP leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual,  and go on as before?"

To their credit, and the country’s benefit, Paul Krugman and Jacob Weisberg are not the only people employed by The New York Times and Slate. Those organizations also employ Jack Shafer and David Brooks, whose comments about this matter stand in stark and towering contrast.

Still, it’s one thing when politicians propose restrictions on freedom of speech, and something else when journalists and commentators do so.

One might be inclined to dismiss this kind of commentary if it were an anomaly, a one-off event unconnected to other threats to freedom of speech.  But it’s not.  Early in this millennium the United States has arrived at a time when there is scarcely a special interest or single-issue group in the country that does not employ speech police with direct access to the media.

It’s a time when the latest edition of Huckleberry Finn will substitute the word “slave” for the “n” word.

It’s a time when, as reported here, journalists who break ranks and say something politically incorrect – whether on the record, off the record, while having dinner, whatever – are summarily fired.

Where will it all end?  There are two ways this nation could lose its freedom of speech.  It could happen by laws or regulations promulgated by government, but at the end of the day that would also require that the federal courts go along, something that, given the strong case law in opposition, is unlikely.

But the other way it could happen would be if uninhibited speech is strangled in the crib by political correctness, not only practiced but positively enforced by the political culture as reflected by and in the media.  It is this that is happening today, and the question going forward is how much further down that road will we travel before passing the point of no return?
                                               
The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Fox News and Its Critics

Criticism of the Fox News Channel by the Obama Administration is neither inexplicable nor unprecedented.  But the response to this flap by the press is all of that and then some.  From the near-total silence of most, to the blinkered and self-righteous response of a few, the affair casts an unflattering light on the mindset and pretenses of much of the Washington press corps.

Take, for instance, Jacob Weisberg (please).  Here’s a gentleman who, when not inflicting his shrill and politically marginal opinions on the three or four people who still read Newsweek, presides over Slate, an online magazine that counts, among its reporters and editors, precisely one (out of 57) who voted for John McCain in the last presidential election.

It’s with these credentials that Weisberg wrote the following on Oct. 17: “Whether the White House engages with Fox is a tactical political question.  Whether we journalists do so is an ethical one.  By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations.  Respected journalists … should stop appearing on its programs.”

The very idea that “respected journalists” might advance journalistic ethics by ostracizing another media company solely because of the perspective that company brings to the news of the day — as though other news organizations were value-free vessels of the purest objectivity — is hundred-proof claptrap.  That this corrosive idea is the brainchild of a journalist says much more about him, and about journalists generally, than it does about the facts at issue.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the great disconnect in our national dialogue (and the reason for the popular success of Fox News) is that the press corps, and the journalism they produce, skew center-left in a country that is overwhelmingly center-right.  It is (fortunately) true, as Marxist and other leftist critics are wont to complain, that the media are to the right of them.  However, the media are most assuredly not to the right of the electorate, but to the left, and that’s a problem — first for the country, and also for media companies themselves.

Still, it’s one thing to have mainstream journalists who are out of sync with, and resented by, millions of people, and another thing entirely to have journalists who are unwilling to rally around a news organization under assault by this or any White House.  Worse still, of course, are those, like Weisberg, who actually join the assault and invite others to do likewise.