Mike the Usurper wrote:

Perhaps it's because the mainstream media are too timid to declare the difference between right and wrong. Imagine if journalism consisted of more than a collage of conflicting talking points. Imagine the difference it would make if more brand-name reporters broke from the bizarre straitjacket of "balance," which equates fairness with putting all disputants on equal epistemological footing, no matter how deceitful or moronic they may be.

There's a market for news that weighs counterclaims and assesses truth value. It just hasn't kept up with demand. No wonder Jon Stewart has such a loyal audience: He has a point of view, and it's rooted in the reality-based — not the ideology-based — world.

Good call from Marty. Less "balance," more "fair," meaning make a damn call.

no i disagree completely
it is for journalists to report points of view not judge
reaity based? whose reality yours or mine or theirs or Bush's etc
u talk about reality or truth as if it is obvious or self evident and not open to debate
if u can say accurately where your idealogy stops and reality begins then u are very wise
u talk about idealogy as if u had none and its just the others who are prisoners of their idealogy
my idealogy tells me - my liberal bias - says let reporters report in as balanced a manner as they can and let we the jury decide

fine let people do opinion pieces
most of what i recommend on memestreams are opinion pieces but we let the lines blur at our peril
i don't want some journalist telling me al Qaeda are a bunch of fascists - i see what they do and i listen to their justifications - i don't need someone to tell me what they are since i am quite capable of making up my own mind
what i want are facts labeled as facts and opinions marked as opinions that gives me the freedom to choose
abandon balance abandon minority opinions abandon contraversial opinions
let the journalists decide and the editors and the men who hire the editors ---- let the news magnates decide let Rupert Murdoch -- it's quite bad enough already -- this is a solution?

noteworthy wrote:
Martin Kaplan writes in today's LA Times:

We've had plenty of shouting matches on the war; what we need are better leaders and more capable media.

So I guess, by Decius's First Law of Political Leadership, he is implicitly asking for things to get worse in Iraq. I don't know if I like that idea ...

You're kidding, right? I don't mean to suggest a causal relationship. Frankly, I don't think Iraq is tractable. Unless Iran wakes up tommorow and decides that their top priority is regional stability or the Sunnis decide they don't need any oil afterall its going to be bad as far out as the eye can see no matter how much "leadership" you throw at the problem.

Decius wrote:

You're kidding, right? I don't mean to suggest a causal relationship.

Really? In a recent thread, Scott asked:

Where is that great leader with vision and fortitude and resolve? Cuz I can't imagine things much more fucked up than they are now.

And you replied:

Be careful what you wish for. You'll have him, but things aren't near fucked up enough yet.

That sounds at least a little bit like suggestion of a causal relationship.

noteworthy wrote:
Decius wrote:

You're kidding, right? I don't mean to suggest a causal relationship.

Really? In a recent thread, Scott asked:

Where is that great leader with vision and fortitude and resolve? Cuz I can't imagine things much more fucked up than they are now.

And you replied:

Be careful what you wish for. You'll have him, but things aren't near fucked up enough yet.

That sounds at least a little bit like suggestion of a causal relationship.

I'm not saying that you get interesting times by wanting great leaders. I'm saying that great leaders aren't something you should generally pine for because they usually come under the worst circumstances, and in fact it is the circumstances that define their greatness. This is an observation on America. Wishing for great American leadership is the same as wishing for great American catastrophies. The Space Program is the only real exception I can think of but in reality that was the height of the cold war. America meets a critical prereq for this observation in that it actually is a nation with an actual national idenity that doesn't excude any of its citizens.

Iraq is a different story. Its already fucked, and yet that leader hasn't arrived, because Iraq is a map fantasy and not a nation, and there is no natural leader for it. No one cares about Iraq. Iraq is three nations. Each of those has their great leaders already, but their leadership is never really appreciated but in retrospect, and there is no end game here. There is no stable state without a brutal dictator binding the unbindable by fear. If you wanted Democracy there you'd have to bring in a sort of benevolent dictator who was still ruthless, but taught people to see themselves as servants of a nation rather than as servants of him and his sons. Pinochet. Then you could slowly boil in democractic reforms until things reached a state where you could walk away and it would be fine. You can't just fucking whack the dictator and set up a polling both and expect everyone to buy into it. Nation building is hard and it requires long term thinking.

Perhaps we should be pulling out. Perhaps we can't install a dictator on our own watch, and we can't be the dictator either, because we're not local, as Britain proved over and over and over again. We have to be able to pretend it wasn't our fault that it happenned, while brokering the arms deals on the back end that put our particular bastard into power.

Of course, thats who Saddam was supposed to be. He fucked it up. Thats why they wanted him out. Because he was their boy, but he didn't boil in the democratic reforms as promised. He got greedy.

Maybe the real reason we're down there is to send a message to our own dictators that they have a long term job to do and they better not fuck us.

Decius wrote:

Maybe the real reason we're down there is to send a message to our own dictators that they have a long term job to do and they better not fuck us.

Dictators emerge
the CIA or whomever may pick a particular candidate (one bully amongst an unsavory selection) as a potential dictator but the individual still has to have what it takes and will, by the very nature of being on the initial short list, be inclined to follow their own path. As you have noted before Decius any leader in Iraq won't be tolerated by many Iraqis if they are perceived as an American poodle.
Consequently, despite arms deals and the rather large assumption that American money can build an army and impose any sort of order to suit American tastes in the short or medium term in the context of the chaos America has produced and where America's own military has failed to achieve that same order, over the long term it is likely there will be prolonged conflict and the CIA will fund a number of potential candidates and thereby fuel the fire because none of the candidates are entirely viable from an American viewpoint. The CIA will argue the case for not having all its eggs in one basket, and where the only stability on offer may be Iran centered to which they will clearly prefer ongoing slaughter.

It strikes me as an example of American arrogance and hubris to pretend you can just install a dictator -- the CIA has been playing that game in Central and South America for years and generally made a monumental mess of it.

You mention Pinochet seemingly in the context of a benevolent dictator and as an example of when America got it right -- suffice to say i think that is contentious.
I think many people in the rest of the planet would be rather pleased if the bungling morons [the US government and the CIA] would butt out and leave people to run their own affairs and make their own mistakes. Planet Earth is not America's private domain and quite a few of us object to it being treated as such.
A more multilateral approach is I would argue both in America's and the world's best interests. Yes America is forced to deal with the likes of Iran and North Korea in a world of instability and weapons of mass destruction but that is the land of grown ups where we must all learn to live together. It is not America's destiny, in my view, despite what some Americans appear to think, to be our planet's unilateral policeman. No policemen without representation, I say.

Good policing is ultimately a product of consent. Consent can be achieved though force, which has failed in Iraq, or a combination of force together with perceived moral authority, America didn't win the latter argument in Iraq. In the wider world, well specically in the west, authority is perceived as being derived up from the people through the conduit of elections. In Iraq authority it would seem derives from family, tribe, sect and religion. If the US had followed the Powell doctrine and begun the first phase with a more stable Iraq, avoided the early chaos and looting, then the results of getting rid of Saddam and establishing stability would possibly have paid a moral dividend in the form of winning consent, perceived moral authority and legitimacy.

Regardless lets deal with facts on the ground and leave that to historians. What is the way forward? More dictators? America has rediscovered that an unpleasant stability is perhaps preferrable to an unpleasant chaos however re dictators the sorcerer's apprentice really ought to stop because Mickey Mouse is doing a lousy job. I actually think an Iranian hegemony is actually the preferred option.

noteworthy wrote:
Martin Kaplan writes in today's LA Times:

We've had plenty of shouting matches on the war; what we need are better leaders and more capable media.

So I guess, by Decius's First Law of Political Leadership, he is implicitly asking for things to get worse in Iraq. I don't know if I like that idea ...

But I did like this turn of phrase on the upcoming primaries:

... the scene of multi-candidate cattle calls in which entrants will moo canned messages ...

If that wasn't enough to make you see Kaplan more as a comedian than a man of nuanced policy, the article loses all sense of seriousness when we get to this:

Newt has been calling for a series of Lincoln-Douglas debates across the nation. I'd like that. I'd also like a pony, an end to racism, a cure for cancer and a date with Scarlett Johansson.

Speaking of Scarlett, did you know she has five films on tap for 2007? Now there's a hard-working woman in show business. Do you think after that, we could get her to run as a VP in `08?

Here's his pitch for civil war in Iraq:

Maybe we don't need a national debate. Maybe what we really need are leaders with more character, followers with more discrimination, deciders who hear as well as listen and media that know the difference between the public interest and what the public is interested in.

I really like that last thought there, but it's incredibly difficult to achieve through the contemporary model of a "free" press forever at the mercy of fickle, demanding advertisers. If more people were willing to pay their own way for news they didn't want, but, like vegetables and fiber, knew they should have, then perhaps the products of that press would be more useful.

Echoing Kaplan, Mike wrote:

Less "balance," more "fair," meaning make a damn call.

adam wrote in reply:

I disagree completely; it is for journalists to report points of view, not judge. My ideology tells me -- my liberal bias says -- let reporters report in as balanced a manner as they can and let we the jury decide.

The issue is one not so much of the reporter as of the editor. In any newspaper of significance there is room for a variety of content, from "just the facts" basic street beat repo... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]