Asymmetrical Information

By writing this post you have demonstrated yourself to be a partisan shill, nothing more. Sullivan is rightly criticized for labeling people traitors to their country before the fire at ground zero has stopped burning, and you and he now both say that -- as a result of that criticism -- the phrase "fifth column" must be inappropriate in all circumstances. This is utter rubbish. Gore did not unjustibiably question anyone's patriotism, which is what ueberpatriots like you tend to do. He was criticizing a profession for violating its own principles. Saying that NASA folks who favor manned flight and oppose the NASA director's policy of pushing cheap, unmanned flights represent a "fifth column" may seem harsh to those NASA employees, but it is not questioning their moral values, their loyalty, or their fitness to be a part of this society. Sullivan was doing just that. Can you really not see the difference?

Considering that "fifth column" means a secret group of people who attempt to covertly destroy a regime from within, I'd think referring to anyone as a "fifth column" is a moral judgement. But the point was never that Gore was making a moral judgement. The point was, that he was making an ass of himself...again. Anyone who thinks the media is and has been a tool of the GOP, and still gets every bit of Left-wing idiocy that falls out of their mouth published, has blown most of their logic circuits.

Off-topic, if "ueberpatriot" were anything resembling a word, it'd be spelled überpatriot.

Thanks for the German instruction, but "ue" is appropriate usage if the umlaut symbol is not available. "ae" and "oe" are also appropriate usages. Stick to the topic.

You are arguing by mischaracterizing Gore's argument. He was talking about Fox and Rush specifically, not "the media." Anyway, I don't want to get into an argument about whether the media is right-wing or left-wing. The point is that the phrase "fifth column" may have a literal definition, but it can easily be used in nonjudgmental contexts, just as Gore used it. It doesn't matter if you quote the dictionary to me. He simply wasn't accusing anyone of being disloyal to this country or having personal moral failures. You would have to do more than read between the lines to conclude the opposite.

Given the negative reaction by, almost exclusively, rightwingers and Republican hacks to Gore's comments, it just reinforces how accurate Gore was in his description.

Painfully accurate for the "fith columnists" in the media who are actually traitors to the objective dissemination of news, and instead shill for the Republican party.

Gore's point is not hard to understand...unless it gets obfuscated by the very dishonest "fifth columnists" he was talking about.

Talk about irony.

Nice circle, Hesiod. We stand in awe.

Ok, not really. It's a circular argument. Because people are calling Gore an idiot for saying this, why of COURSE it MUST be true! Hey, by that logic we can say UFOs certainly exist because some people are very busy denying it.

Amita, since you chose to respond to my off-topic, I'll respond back. Überpatriot, regardless of how it's written, isn't a word in German or English. You just made it up. And you made it up that Jane's posturing as more patriotic than thou.

On-topic, I think I understood Gore very well. He attempts to make the point that the RNC and its purported lackey, Fox, effectively and regularly subvert the rest of the media as well as the entire population. How else do you explain this:

And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these R.N.C. talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist.

Discarding Gore's misuse of a German word here (Hey, it's a pet peeve), what he's asserting that the RNC all by itself (ok, with some help from its lapdog, Fox) pulls the wool over the collective eyes of the rest of the media (which, of course, is politically neutral) as well as the rest of America. Controls what they and we believe.

If you buy that that's an intelligent statement, it must be what the RNC wants you to think, mustn't it?

I accept that "Ueberpatriot" may not be an actual word. But I don't think I'm the one that made it up. It's a colloquial thing; I've seen it used before. I may occassionally make up an English word, but I've never made up a German one.

Funny how this argument has turned into a mirror image of the-media-is-liberal argument. I agree that the right-wing media (nor the left-wing one for that matter) controls what we think. But it does influence it. See the Daily Howler's excellent piece on the Gore's alleged assertion that he invented the internet.

Oooh. It's 11:00am. Diane Riehm is talking about this very topic. Anywaey, I've goet woerk to do, since I'm aet the oeffice.

Correction: I meant to say "I agree that the right-wing media do *NOT* control what we think." David, I'm admitting to both my subject-verb mismatch and the omission of the word "not."

I knew what you meant :)

I just picked on "ueberpatriot" because I don't think that's where Jane comes from and thought I perceived a nasty tone. Which was rather unpleasant of me, I admit.

Still, I find the idea that a relatively small segment of the media can not just affect public opinion (and that of the rest of the media) but can do so outside of our control. This sort of talk bothers me for two reasons:

1) Where's the concern that the liberal parts of the media are doing the same thing?

2) How come we don't get credit for a little ability to think for ourselves? If the idea's got some merit, who really cares where it came from?

Which brings me back to the whole "fifth column" complaint. It's a load of manure. If all there is is some ideas from the Right floating around in media, so what? Does Gore think these ideas should be suppressed? Or that they are somehow so persuasive (without actually being correct, it goes without saying) that people are adopting them against their own will?

And then there are those on the Left who point and hoot at the Right, saying how stupid we are, while simultaneously accusing us of being evil geniuses bent on world domination. It just makes no sense. Bush is a moron, yet he's got some evil agenda so carefully crafted that we're all in immediate danger of losing life, liberty, and the pursuit of cable soft porn.

Okay, since we're backing off rude remarks, I shouldn't have called Jane an uberpatriot (sorry Jane), though I do feel her patriotism is a little, shall we say, aggressive.

Not to belabor the point, but I think you've expanded the topic quite a bit. My experience is that it is highly suspicious that Rush Limbaugh reads talking points faxed to him from some Republican congressional office, then finds its way to the Washington Times and finally to CNN. It is pattern that I feel, and many on the left feel, is too common. Though I certainly agree that reporters tend to be liberal, thus slanting their reporting, I have seen no cooperation between the Democrats and the media. Indeed, I think election 2000 -- with all the press's out-and-out lies about what Gore allegedly lied about -- demonstrates that the press, though perhaps made up of liberal individuals, was quite anti-Democratic. It also treated Clinton quite harshly. Now it's piling on Kerry for his fancy haircut.

But for the sake of argument, let me concede all of your points ... about people not being robots and being able to make up their own minds and all that. Are you prepared to use exactly the same arguments against the tired accusations of a liberal press?

Sure. Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that what Gore said loosely describes how the media already works for the left. This is a rather frequently-expressed position of those on the Right. I don't know if it's true or not, although sometimes it appears that it is. If you watch enough Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, you can tell that they're much more friendly to guys like Gore than they are to guys like Bush. Now, I don't get all exercised about it because, after all, that's freedom, isn't it? Certainly those on the Right bear an equal responsibility for figuring things out on their own as those on the Left do. No one should rely on the media for their opinions, and certainly no one should swallow whole what comes out of Indymedia or its Right-hand (seriously, I can't picture what this might be) equivalent.

I wouldn't paint Rush Limbaugh as being representative of the entire Right if I were you. No one I know actually listens to the guy, although I know OF some people who do. Obviously he has his audience. But it's not as if he's got 20% of the country marching lockstep, opinion-wise. But he's like most other public personalities whose job relies on popularity. He's got a schtick. It works. He uses it. Everyone I know or talk to realizes this. If you think about it, the only function guys like Rush have is to generate advertising revenues. Period. From time to time he may say something interesting and worthy of consideration, but frankly I don't have the time to sit and filter it all out.

You speak of the Limbaugh/RNC connection like it's commonly accepted. Care to toss me a link or two pointing to any connection whatever; any substantiation at all for the flow of ideas from the RNC to Rush's ears and thence out into the airwaves? This is the first I've heard about it. I'd be surprised, though. Rush is smart enough to think up his own material.

What did have me a bit off-kilter was that Gore accused the Right of having some access to the media. Like that was a bad thing. It's ok for us to do that, but no fair! when you do. To give Gore a little credit, though, maybe he was just poking the anthill.

And the "journalistic fifth column" bit doesn't find much agreement over here. If journalists are supposed to be truly neutral, they are already subverted. If they're not supposed to be neutral, why should a leaning to the right or left cause any more of a stir than a Cleveland Browns victory does?

So, I guess to recap: Yes, you have a valid point regarding "liberal press" accusations. And certainly, freedom of speech being what it is, either side of the political fence (as well as other factions) are completely free to point out when media opinion is becoming overly biased. But remember, Gore was not making specific accusations of bias, but general accusations of bias. This constitutes a complaint rather than a substantial argument.

I'd have to disagree with you on the press treating Clinton harshly. I think the major networks effectively gave him a bye. And Kerry's haircut? Please. Remember how the press mercilessly hammered Nancy Reagan? All of that is rather inconsequential, though. When the press repeats over and over statements to the effect that George Bush wants to put arsenic back into your drinking water, thinking people have to wonder just what in the hell their agenda is. It's hard to just attribute things like that to stupidity.

Sen. Kerry should consider himself lucky: After all, his hoity-toity haircut is no less symbolically revelant than was George Bush the First's alleged marveling over a supermarket checkout scanner during the 1992 campaign.

The New York Times ran the supermarket tale on its front page, and the contrived story (the reporter wasn't even present, he got it from a pool report) was oft-repeated by journalists as a small but revealing detail proving Bush didn't know how the real world worked. Kerry is going through a milder version of the same thing.

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