New York Times reporter makes lame attempt to explain why reporters never cite Noam Chomsky

“Shocked” is the most appropriate word to describe my initial reaction when, scouring the New York Times today, a headline caught my eye that began, “Noam Chomsky’s Video Plea to…”

Like all forms of mainstream media, the Times doesn’t pay Chomsky much mind, despite the fact he is one of the most cited authors today, and was the most cited living person for a twelve year stretch, particularly in the realm of United States foreign policy in addition to linguistics. That’s because Chomsky’s body of work in the former field constitutes a voluminous and unyielding assault on the conventional way of thinking about American power and international relations.

In accordance with the propaganda model put forth by him and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky’s opinion is almost never solicited by any “reputable” news organization, including the New York Times. So for that split second when I saw that reporter Robert Mackey’s blog, The Lede, on the Times website was citing Chomsky, I was stunned. But then I read on:

“Noam Chomsky’s Video Plea to Iran on Behalf of Detained Americans.”

Given that Chomsky is calling on a so-called enemy of America to release Americans, it becomes simpler to understand Chomsky’s rare inclusion here. But if this were a plea from him asking the Israelis to free any of the of the numerous but ultimately unknown number Palestinians they’ve kidnapped and are detaining, including a member of parliament, or a plea to the American government to close Gitmo or to put pressure on Kuwait to release US citizen Gulet Mohamed, you can be pretty sure Noam Chomsky would not have found his way into the New York Times today.

But the most interesting aspect of Mackey’s posting can actually be found in the comments section, where, funnily enough, Chomsky’s (non)exposure in the Times was pointed out by one commenter, Josh in New York, who accurately and respectfully observed,

“It is very rare and unusual for the New York Times to cover the human-rights activism of Professor Chomsky. His books analyzing U.S. foreign policy, for example, are routinely ignored by your publication even when they make the top 20 list and even though Professor Chomsky is, according a NY Times reviewer, ‘arguably the most important intellectual alive’ and among the top 10 most cited of all living authors.

“It seems as long as Chomsky by pleading for release of the American hikers is making the Iranian government look bad the NY Times has no difficulty covering him. So it seems the present coverage in not inconsistent with decades’ long NY Times policy.”

Then came this telling inquiry from Owen in Washington D.C.:

“Robert [Mackey] - I have submitted two comments, neither of which was posted on this page. They were both on-topic and not abusive. Are there other criteria that they did not satisfy? If you let me know I will conform....”

Mackey responded with a comment of his own,

“There are several other reasons that comments are not posted here, since we make an effort to lightly moderate the discussion, but in this case I chose to call a halt to the off-topic discussion of whether or not The Times coverage of Mr. Chomsky’s work and activism is extensive enough.

“The reason is that this forum is not the place for a general discussion of The Times and most of my attempts to challenge the more outlandish and extreme statements people make here on that subject fail to convince readers whose minds are made up[,] that reporting is a considerably more complex and nuanced job than they realize.”

(I inserted that comma because without it, Mackey’s words have are somewhat confusing. So in that sense, yes, reporting can very nuanced.)

Apparently, asserting that Chomsky is not sufficiently covered by the Times is, ipso facto, evidence that one does not understand the complexities of reporting, whatever that means.

Chomsky’s general exclusion from the pages of the paper has nothing to do with the complexities and nuances of reporting, and everything to do with sourcing. Everyday, the Times runs stories that feature expert sources that are essentially interchangeable with other experts in the same field. In other words, there are innumerable experts whose opinions could be solicited on a given topic. If a reporter needs an expert analysis on the role credit default swaps played in the financial crisis, there are thousands of financial analysts he could call. If the story is about greenhouse gas emissions, there is a plethora of reputable atmospheric scientists who’d be happy to render their opinions. And if the story is about say, the American role in the Middle East “peace process” involving Israel and Palestine, there are plenty of independent experts—ones that are not government officials from any of the above nations—a reporter could call or email. (I have interviewed Chomsky and I assure the media that he responds to emails very promptly and thoughtfully). But on a consistent basis, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media forgo consulting Chomsky who has written many books on the subject, has debated other intellectuals (such as Alan Dershowitz) about it, and is invited to speak around the world.

Notice how Mackey doesn’t elaborate on his odd insinuation that Chomsky is largely absent from the times because of how reporting works. He is saying either (a) Reporters don’t ask for Chomsky’s expertise because reporting is complex—meaning reporting is hard, (which doesn’t make sense), or (b) Reporters don’t ask for Chomsky’s expertise because reporting is complex—meaning there exist editors and advertisers who don’t want the input of a such a subversive voice.

I’m going to go with (b) as the most plausible explanation, which is expounded upon in Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky is absent from television as well, and as to that reason, I will leave you with an invaluable explanation from the man himself.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

Sarah Palin's justifiably unjustified egomania

In nearly two years of posting and over 200 posts, I have written two pieces in which Sarah Palin was the primary focus. And one of those was a rather terse mocking of her reality show. Beyond these, I haven’t given Palin much thought because I assumed she would gradually fade from the spotlight. After all, resigning midway through one’s term as governor of one of the least populous states is hardly the move of a person who wishes to be considered a serious figure in American politics.

Alas, my optimism has been misplaced. Nearly two and half years after she was desperately thrust onto the national scene in a Hail Mary tossed by the tired arm of political journeyman John McCain, Palin somehow remains aloft. Much of this is her own doing, of course. She has written two books, has her own television show, is a Fox News contributor, and gives innumerable speeches to anyone willing to cough up a $100,000 speaking fee plus airfare. For that price, Palin will lecture an audience for 45 minutes about the honest and industrious nature of Real Americans, the virtues of American Exceptionalism, and the necessity of lowering corporate tax rates. She will manage to talk about these subjects and more, while managing to say hardly anything at all.

Then there is the media—both liberal and conservative—which tells us on a regular basis just how important Sarah Palin truly is. Fox News cannot get enough of their darling political dynamo, and neither can MSNBC and the Huffington Post for different reasons altogether. Truth be told, the latter outlets and their ilk have done more to keep Palin in the limelight than anyone else. Her critics are so numerous that an entire industry has been built around her ridiculousness, which provides an ample supply of malapropisms and other buffooneries to fuel its forever-burning furnaces. The thing about Palin-bashing is that it is so easy even a politically aloof person with barely a shred of common sense can partake. If I had the stomach for it, I could update this site daily using only Palin’s Facebook page and Twitter feeds as my inspiration. But there wouldn’t be much fun in that.

The same can be said for her speeches, though I imagine she bears little if any personal responsibility for their content, however superficial it may be. A case in point: this recent video is both a defense of her vague use of gun-related rhetoric and symbols, and an attack on those who suggest a relationship between that and the recent mass shooting in Arizona. Ever the victim of the “lamestream media” which she loathes but nonetheless profits handsomely by, Palin accused her accusers of engaging in a “blood libel” against her. Few contexts would provide a more inappropriate and might I add, bizarre venue for this term, which refers to the belief held by some medieval Christians that Jews murder gentiles in order to use the blood of their victims in ritual sacrifice.

Palin has encountered some harsh criticism for her use of the term, and she ought to have. But personally I doubt she even knew what the term meant, and it was probably written into her speech by someone who is paid to write her speeches. We may even see Palin eventually admit that she was not actually the one to author that line so as to deflect some of the blame.

Of course, people should not be as surprised by her “blood libel” remark as they actually are. Since bursting onto the scene Palin has been a wellspring of imaginative metaphor and dramatic rhetoric. For her, such an oratorical approach is necessary to obscure the obvious reality that there is very little substantive thought going on in her mind. This works to her advantage since, were it not for gems like, “blood libel,” “mama grizzlies,” “death panels,” “refudiate,” etc., there would hardly be any reason to pay her much attention. But every colorful new term she utters has the surely anticipated effect of keeping her in the spotlight for another week more. And if the publicity takes the form of a castigation from Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, that’s just as well, because the Real Americans Palin appeases figure that if the liberals be against her, how could god-fearing people like themselves not be with her?

The natural consequence of all this is a Palin-Mainstream Media dynamic that is continuously reinforcing itself. Palin provides the gaffes. The media reports them, with the liberals doing so derisively. And in turn Palin wears these lashings like a badge of honor to show her fans how they persecute her so. It is not entirely clear whether Palin actually suffers from the sort of persecution complex suggested by her rhetoric or not. Either way, she has become very adept at portraying herself as the target of an unceasing medley of malicious mockery. She is partly right. The liberals in the media do mock her, but the mere act of doing this—especially on a such a constant basis—is an implicit declaration that she actually matters. There is one problem with this, however.

She doesn’t.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com

What do you call it when 152 out of 153 passengers die in a plane crash? A miracle!

The Gospels may have taken some liberties in describing the “miraculous” powers of Jesus.

Over the weekend, yours truly happened to leave a frighteningly prophetic comment on the website Totally-Useless in response to a post alleging the existence of miracles. The post highlighted the recent story of a baby who got a pencil stuck in its throat mere millimeters from the carotid artery. Subsequently, this was deemed a miracle because the child suffered no serious injury. In my comment, I wondered why the alleged miracle-maker didn’t prevent the pencil from getting jammed in the kid’s throat in the first place and at one point I made the following remark:

“All this talk reminds of people who, for example, point to the sole survivor of a plane crash as proof positive of the existence of miracles, while at the same time they ignore the other 300 people who weren’t so fortunate. What was wrong with them? Were they not miracle-worthy?”

At the time, I hesitated to posit this scenario since I couldn’t recall any major plane crash in which there was just a single survivor. After all, usually everyone dies in a plane crash, unless it’s a crash on a runway or some such thing and there are several survivors and fatalities alike. So even though my statement made its point, I wasn’t sure how realistic it was. That was until this morning when I read that a Yemenia Airbus had gone down near the islands of Comoros in the Indian Ocean. You may have guessed where I’m going with this. That’s right, rescue crews pulled a single fourteen year-old survivor from the water. As expected, the media has been using the word “miracle” ad nauseum to describe this improbable outcome, but the truth is, calling this a miracle is downright sick. Here’s a sampling of headlines about this disaster:

Miracle at Sea: One Person Rescued from Deadly Jet Crash (ABC News)

“Miracle child” rescued after plane crashes into Indian Ocean (Associated Press)

Miracle: Child found alive after Indian Ocean plane crash (CBS News)

Imagine the lack of cognitive dissonance required to believe this garbage. And yet, in the coming days we will hear all kinds of crazy pontificating in the media about the heartwarming tale of a plane crash that sent 152 people to their untimely deaths while one person somehow defied the odds and lived. That's a death rate of 99.3%. I love a happy ending, don’t you?

If the people who toss around the word “miracle” so readily stopped to think about the implications of what they’re saying, we might be on our way to ridding ourselves of this useless term. To be sure, the concept of a miracle falls completely apart upon even superficial analysis.

As far as I can tell, “miracle” is used in two senses. First, there’s the Humean sense. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume wrote, “A miracle may be accurately defined as a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.” (Chapter X) Philosophically, this definition is far from perfect, but it will suffice for our purposes at the moment. There has never in the history of humanity been a documented, proven instance of a law of nature being suspended or altered in any way. (Sorry Christians, the magic tricks of your snake-oil salesman messiah don’t count. See above.) While credulous, weak-minded individuals are all too happy to attribute this fourteen year-old’s survival to divine intervention, rationalists know better. Although the details are unclear, reasonable people logically assume that for starters, there was probably something about the position of the girl’s seat inside the plane that insulated her against the undoubtedly violent impact, making her less vulnerable than her fellow passengers. Also, perhaps she happened to situate her body in a way that was somehow favorable to survival under the circumstances. Furthermore, it is almost certain that she had a relatively easy way out of the fuselage so she could escape before it sank. While these are just guesses, they are totally plausible. And as investigators gather more information, we will have a more accurate picture of what happened to the plane and how this girl was able to live through it.

Even if we were unable to develop a satisfactory explanation for an unlikely outcome such as this, this does not mean that the causes are divine. Indeed, which is more likely given a mysterious and improbable event: A supernatural divinity intervened in human affairs for some reason? Or there is a perfectly natural reason, but one which we have yet to ascertain? If you chose the former, stop reading this immediately and get yourself sterilized.

The second sense in which people use the word “miracle” is to describe not a suspension of natural law, but an event that while physically possible, is so unlikely and improbable that they nonetheless regard it as evidence of the intervening of a deity or “some invisible agent.” But notice how “miracle” is used only to describe improbable outcomes that are regarded as favorable. No one says that a miracle has occurred when some unlucky son of a bitch gets struck by lightning, not even people who believe in miracles. Why not? It was extremely improbable, wasn’t it?

You see, in ascribing such improbable positive outcomes to the handiwork of a deity, believers in miracles must ignore the lightning strikes, car wrecks, bear attacks, autoerotic asphyxiations gone wrong, and other freak incidents in which people are said to have been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Although miracles are always invoked as evidence of some benign deity or force, one can just as easily point to all kinds of improbable and crazy and horrible shit to advance the opposite case for a god who’s a total asshole.

Also notice that “miracles” almost always arise out of calamity. The plane crash. The man who survives a lightning strike. The woman who’s diagnosed with cancer and is given a 5% chance of beating it and does. A child who gets a pencil lodged in its throat millimeters from a major artery and recovers just fine. If these are indeed actual examples of miracles directed by a benign force, then why doesn’t the benign force just prevent the calamities from happening in the first place? That would seem a lot more benign to me. Why go through all that trouble? Does the deity want to show off? I hope that someday some miracle-believing mental invalid will be able to explain all of this to me because clearly I just don’t get it.

Until that day comes, I will define “miracle” as I always have: a word gullible people use to describe a highly improbable outcome which they happen to like.

- Max

Michael Jackson Dead at 50. Nauseating Media Frenzy To Ensue

Jackson leaves a strange and unparalleled legacy

Farrah who?

The death of Michael Jackson is the media’s version of the perfect storm. Here we have arguably the greatest musical icon of the twentieth century, combined with a knack for the whack, including bleached skin, nose jobs, and an unhealthy interest in children. Throw in an untimely death possibly brought on by a diet of prescription meds and Jesus Juice, and you have yourself a Category 5. If you thought the media’s extravagant nonstop coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death was rough, brace yourselves for the oncoming Hurricane Jacko.

In these next few weeks, Jackson’s death will be reported as if it’s an ongoing event. It will be everywhere. News channels, MTV, VH1, E!, radio, the internet, newspapers, magazines, Food Network, you name it. There will be no rest for the weary. Anything relating to Jacko’s death that can possibly be reported, will be reported, no matter how insignificant or factually specious it might be.

Speaking of factually specious, after several television stations had initially reported that Jackson had died, they retracted their announcements and said they couldn’t be sure whether he was dead. Thus, for a few moments, from the viewers’ perspective Jacko had gone quantum—he was a real-life Schrödinger’s cat, existing in an indeterminate state where he was both dead and not dead. This superposition, however, was lost when the networks reported that they had opened the box to find that Jackson had indeed died.

While the King of Pop can only die but once, his public charades will be replayed ad nauseum by the perpetually celebrity-obsessed media. How many times can the public be shown a clip of Jackson dangling his baby son off a balcony? How much discussion can there be about his music legacy, his legal troubles, and his rocky personal life? Who will get custody of his kids? Just how much coverage can the death of a single person possibly garner? The answers to these and many other questions will be revealed in due course, whether we want to know them or not. Unless you plan on avoiding all forms of media for the nest few weeks, as well as coworkers, friends, and relatives, prepare for a Michael Jackson overload. If you don’t know a whole about the man right now, you will soon enough.

Despite his amazing achievements and unmatched success, Michael Jackson was obviously a sad figure in many ways. Pushed further and further into the entertainment business by an abusive and overbearing father at a very early age, Jackson was robbed of a normal childhood. Building his “Neverland” ranch was a strange and futile attempt to regain what he long ago had lost. Although Jackson’s interest in children was downright creepy and possibly led him to inappropriate and illegal behavior, we can’t say for sure. After all, the parents who accused Jackson of molesting their children turned out to be total scumbags in their own right.

Reclusive in life, Jackson will be ubiquitous in death. At least for awhile. His talents, his antics, and his sudden death will make sure of that. And although every story doesn’t have to have a lesson, perhaps Jackson’s does. Kids today are under so much pressure to do well in school, to participate in sports they don’t care about, and to engage in all kinds of structured activities designed to build “character.” The truth is, unless a child is a total hellion, he or she is best left receiving as little supervision as possible. But instead, there are parents who freak out because they have little grade-schoolers who are hyperactive, and so they take them to see prescription-happy doctors who diagnose them with ADD, ODD, RLS, or whatever the fuck is the disorder du jour.

Having a domineering parent probably won’t make a kid grow up just like Michael Jackson, but over-parenting can have lasting negative effects. You see this in overachievers who are miserable and never satisfied with their lives, forever trying to gain approval from mummy and daddy, even after they're dead. You see it in underachievers too for the same reasons. Parenthood is inherently tyrannical, but it need not be totalitarian. It’s possible that had Jackson’s father not forced him and his siblings on the music scene, we might not even know the name Michael Jackson. He might have been a mechanic instead of a musician for all we know. Since Jackson plainly admitted to being miserable and lonely in his later years, it’s perfectly legitimate to ask whether he would have traded in his millions and his musical successes in exchange for life as a happy and content commoner who had that childhood he never got.

-Max

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Tweets

“Let the hate flow through you.”

- Emperor Palpatine

Fuck Twitter.

The American media is presently engaged in a shameless ganghumping of Twitter for its alleged role in stoking the flames of freedom in Iran. CNN, which sucks, has been the most self-indulgent participant in this orgiastic exhibition of pseudo-journalism and minutiae-peddling. Minutiae that may not even be accurate, to boot. Not only is CNN intensively reporting that Iranians are using Twitter to coordinate protests, it is reporting Twitter tweets from Iran as breaking news. And not just tweets. “The most trusted name is news” has also seen fit scour the pages of Facebook and MySpace for newsworthy information generated by users in Iran. Although CNN admits that pretty much none of these stories can be verified, the station continues to report them anyway.

At this point I have one very important question for CNN. What the fuck? I know you don’t have reporters on the scene, but in all seriousness how fucking lazy can you be? If your go-to sources for breaking information on the Iranian shit-show are Twitter and Facebook, then what do we need CNN for when we can just fire up the internet and guess with the best of them? And believe me, it is a guessing game. Tweets that report “eyewitness” accounts of the protests from “Naseem in Tehran” could for all we know actually be coming from Ted in Cincinnati.

As I was reading up on this Twitter bullshit in the New York Times the other day, I happened to notice a piece about good old Ray Bradbury. It turns out that the curmudgeonly old writer, now eighty-eight, spends his days traveling to cash-strapped libraries to help them raise the money necessary to stay afloat. You remember the library, right? That’s that vast repository of books and accumulated knowledge and insight available free to anyone who cares to concern themselves with such things. Although both Twitter and the library deal in information, the library is the exact opposite of Twitter.

Having already realized that the coming self-imposed hell of ours will be arrived at on a road of tweets, upon seeing the article I suddenly remembered Bradbury’s very stark warning in his 1953 futuristic classic, Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury’s mouthpiece for this prophetic admonition was the Orwellian Captain Beatty of the book-burning fire department. Beatty explains to fellow fireman and protagonist Montag why book-burning is so necessary:

“Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.” (p. 61)

While Twitter is not the only networking medium that lends itself to banality, in many ways it is worse than its peers. Twitter is the only “service” that prominently advertises itself chiefly as an intermediary for the transmission of hopelessly useless information. It is a tower of triviality. Indeed, it appears that most tweets are so unimportant that it would be considered impolite or even presumptuous to send their content via any other means, including text messages, if you can imagine that. In fact, there’s a good slogan. “Twitter: When your words are too unimportant to text.” To text!

When I went to the Twitter website for an explanation as to just what in god’s name those people think they’re doing, I was expecting to read all about it. Silly me. No reading. Instead, I watched a video telling me that the point of Twitter is to ask what people are doing at any given moment in their quiet lives of desperation. I thought, isn’t this just too much information? Twitter was prepared for this question: “No, Twitter solves information overload by changing expectations traditionally associated with online communication.”

Huh?

“At Twitter, we ask one question, ‘What are you doing?’ The answers to this question are for the most part rhetorical. In other words, users do not expect a response when they send a message to Twitter.”

Users don’t expect a response? Then what the fuck is the point of this horseshit?

“On the receiving end, Twitter is ambient—updates from your friends and relatives float to your phone, IM, or web site and you are only expected to pay as much or as little attention to them as you see fit.”

First of all, your average Twitter user doesn’t know what ‘ambient’ means. Second, I don’t know about you, but the only time I really give a shit about what people are doing is when I want to make plans with them. In which case, I call them on the phone. And you know what’s great about the phone? It doesn’t limit what I want to say to 140 characters. One hundred forty characters. As if our language hasn’t been vulgarized enough, Twitter is helping to raze our discourse to the base level of hoi polloi jargon and jive-talking. How did we get to this point where everything is abbreviated, nothing is unabridged, and expediency reigns supreme over substance? I’ll let Captain Beatty handle this one also:

“Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending…Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column...

“...Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in midair, all vanishes! Whirl a man’s mind around so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary time-wasting thought!” (pp. 54-55)

I am by no means a Luddite. My problem is not with technology, but with people who use it for harebrained purposes, such as disclosing the utterly insignificant to all those unfortunate enough to receive their vapid tweets.

This month Harvard University released the results of a study conducted on over 300,000 Twitter users (or Twits, as I’ll call them). It turns out that 90% of all Twitter content is generated by 10% of the users. Furthermore, the results showed that a huge portion of Twits use Twitter simply to follow others instead of tweeting themselves. After a lot of number-crunching, the study found that the median number of tweets per user in an entire lifetime is one.

Naturally, this means that there is a relatively small group of staggeringly pretentious douchebags out there who think they’re so important as to subject their toolbag followers to a daily farrago of frivolities, inanities, buffooneries, and outright absurdities. Let’s have a look at some sample tweets, shall we?

“Taking a shit at Starbucks.”

“I really like avocados.”

“Shaving my grundle.”

“Where’s that J I just rolled?”

Brilliant. Anything else you’d like to tell us, you pompous asshole?

“I’m tweeting.”

Go fuck yourself, you philistine.

-Max

The American Media Sucks

As a rule, the American media generally does not allow the inconveniences of reality to get in the way of a good story. Nor is it reluctant to make or report, with the most serious of faces, claims so ridiculous that they would incite side-splitting laughter in those individuals inclined toward rationality and logic. But in the United States the number of people who can muster a good chuckle at the reporting of the American media is scant. The rest have allowed themselves to be taken in by the constant farrago of political treacheries, religious duperies, cultural ribaldries, and idiotic punditries which bombard their unsuspecting minds under the guise of news and information.

The extent to which the media allows public debate to be manipulated by those in the government would strain the credulity of any person unacquainted with the American press. No claim, no matter how ludicrous, absurd, or downright stupid, is beyond receiving a legitimate portrayal if it is made by a high enough ranking American official. Thus, when former President Bush would say that the rather weak philosophical argument of “intelligent design” should be taught alongside Darwinian evolution in the nation’s science classes, the American media dutifully reported his imbecilic idea as if it were a perfectly valid suggestion. I am thankful he never asserted that the Earth is at the center of the solar system. Surely the next day’s headlines would have read: “Opinion Divided on Heliocentricity of Solar System.” In the media’s defense, a large segment of the population agrees with him on “intelligent design,” and so it stoops to the level of many of its consumers, which of course, makes good business practice.

There is a common belief held by many conservatives and even some sheepish liberals, that the American media exudes a left-wing bias, and has for some time. But if this is correct, the bias has not rubbed off on the American people. A Republican has won five of the last eight presidential elections. With the 1994 midterm elections, Republicans took control of the House for the next twelve years. The Senate followed in 2002. In addition, the Supreme Court presently has a conservative majority. If the media is in fact and in general a left-wing institution, it has been so incompetent in attempting to advance its agenda, it is a wonder why conservatives feel compelled to complain about it at all. As for the Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections, those happened because of the sheer ineptitude and craziness exhibited by the Republicans, who thought they could keep fucking most Americans in the ass without eventually getting shit on.

-Max

Bill O'Reilly Is An Asshole

Asshole

Bill O’Reilly is an asshole. I’m sure you already knew that because it would be hard not to know. For the last thirteen years he has hosted the O’Reilly Factor on Faux News, where he likes to masquerade as a hard-hitting politically independent “journalist” with no agenda. But in reality, O’Reilly is a douchey, blowhard, partisan hack whose shallow and deceptive “reporting” gives a one-dimensional picture of how he sees things. In this twisted world as envisioned by O’Reilly’s warped mind, he is the righteous defender of “traditional American values” against the evil machinations of college professors, Hollywood actors, and George Soros.

If you don’t believe that Bill-O thinks of himself in this way, peruse his latest piece of shit book, Culture Warrior—that is if you can tolerate reading it for more than eight consecutive seconds. (Don’t buy it, though. You’ll only encourage him.) I barely could myself. From cover to cover, O’Reilly has stuffed Culture Warrior with self-promotion and self-pity, making himself out to be some sort of living martyr for the “traditional values” cause. He even refers to himself and those who share his views as—you guessed it—culture warriors, or traditional warriors. Now, I don’t get queasy very easily, but the book’s sheer lameness combined with its overall holier-than-thou attitude had my stomach doing cartwheels. Needless to say, when I browsed Culture Warrior in Barnes & Noble, I nearly vomited all over the “New Fiction” section, which is exactly where this steaming turd should have been.

One of O’Reilly’s favorite hobbies is railing against “far left” figures, which for him means anyone who regularly advances liberal positions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—a very mainstream Democrat—is far left according to O’Reilly. So is venture capitalist extraordinaire George Soros. Objectively speaking, anything to the left of moderate is “far left” as far as O’Reilly is concerned, and so he ends up using this phrase as much as he uses the word “the.” As a result the words “far left” mean virtually nothing when they come from the bullshitting mouth of this professional prick.

A favorite tactic of O’Reilly’s is to demonize liberalism by repeating some offbeat lefty quote or argument advanced by a totally marginal public figure, and present it as proof positive that the country is in a liberal-guided moral decline. Take O’Reilly’s latest syndicated column written in his usual pedestrian prose. Right away he has a warning for us: “With America moving left politically and socially, it might be wise to take a moment and consider what might happen to kids if the drift continues.” Sounds serious, Bill. What, pray tell, would come of this continued leftward drift?

“The result is grim. Children in a dozen states have been charged with child pornography for ‘sexting’— sending nude pictures of themselves or others using cyberspace. A published study last December claims that 20 percent of American children had participated in some form of ‘sexting,’ including the extreme act of kids actually photographing themselves having sex.”

First off, can we all just admit that it is absurd to charge kids under child porn statutes because they sent racy photos of themselves or even others on cell phones? I’m not going to say there’s nothing wrong with some of what O’Reilly is describing, but it’s ridiculous that a kid could be convicted on child porn charges and have to register as a sex offender for the next thirty years. But O’Reilly isn’t interested in this angle of the story; for he has bigger and more liberal dragons to slay.

According to Bill-O, there has been insufficient negative reaction to the sexting phenomenon. In fact, he is appalled to find that somebody is actually saying that sexting is relatively innocuous. Who is it? Is it our Democratic president? The liberal Speaker of the House? Maybe it’s lefty Janeane Garofalo? Nope. It’s Peter Cumming.

I know what you’re thinking. Who the fuck is Peter Cumming? It’s a good question, and not one we’d easily be able to answer, but thankfully Bill-O saves us from this research project by telling us. Somehow, he got his ogre paws on some comments made by Cumming, who as it turns out is an obscure Canadian academic who delivered a paper at an equally obscure symposium. What did Professor Cumming say that got O’Reilly’s sagging Irish face all rosy red? Well, first the professor stated that sexting is no worse than old-fashioned spin the bottle, which actually makes sense because spin the bottle requires physical contact and can easily escalate to sexual activity. Anyway, Cumming also said,

“In Bush’s America, [sic] is there no middle ground between child pornography, sexual assault, abuse and exploitation on the one hand and children’s ‘abstinence’ on the other? When, in Western culture, did nudity become pornography, did children’s sexuality become perverse, and when and how and why have we forgotten children’s participatory rights as sexual beings?”

Now this is O’Reilly quoting Cumming, and if you watch Bill-O’s segment on the Non-factor about this, he repeats Cumming’s words, but they are slightly different. This suggests that O’Reilly has either intentionally tweaked Cumming’s words, or was too lazy to make sure he quoted him accurately. Either way, O’Reilly is aghast that other academics haven't come out against this professor, ostensibly demonstrating that academia lacks moral sense. But this would be to assume that people actually know who Cumming is, which they don't, professors included. In any case, O’Reilly proceeds to accuse him of espousing the philosophy of NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association), failing to recognize that the very sexting he’s been talking about is teen-to-teen interaction, and not teen-to-adult. But if you're O'Reilly, why stop to make this distinction when you can imply that some liberal academic is a pro child-fucking creep of the first order?

Unfortunately I was unable to find a copy of Cumming’s paper, so I don’t really know what his exact point was. I think it would be fair to say, however, that the professor was saying that Americans have a very puritanical attitude towards sex, and that nudity in and of itself ought not to be considered pornography. Consequently, the professor seems to be courageous enough to extend this principle to teenagers amongst one another. For O’Reilly to suggest that he’s in a league with NAMBLA based on these remarks is unbelievably dishonest. Because O’Reilly wants to convince people he’s right, he sets up a false dichotomy where people must choose between his position and NAMBLA’s. Given this choice, how could he not be right?

So that’s a neat trick from O’Reilly, but too bad his little anecdote about Cumming, which is the crux of his argument, is totally irrelevant as far as Bill-O’s thesis is concerned. Recall his opening statement: “With America moving left politically and socially, it might be wise to take a moment and consider what might happen to kids if the drift continues.” And how did he “consider” what might happen? By citing the remarks of, and lack of outcry to, Peter Cumming, an unknown, constituent-less, Canadian professor who teaches at a Canadian university, and who delivered those remarks at a symposium held in Canada. And so apparently this is somehow indicative of a moral decline in America, according to O’Reilly. Wow Bill, you really knocked it out of the park on this one. Shithead.

-Max