READER COMMENTS ON

"The Triumph of Mass Disinformation, The Historic Shame of Utter Mainstream Media Failure"

(28 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... Billy said on 9/10/2010 @ 7:27 pm PT...





If you really want to make this point effectively, all you have to do is produce a video matching up the Beck/Teabagger with clips featuring Teabag royalty. There's no shortage of footage featuring well-respected Teabaggers making equally insane comments about things like death panels and multi-billion-dollar grants for ACORN. Next to people like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, and Dick Armey, the people featured in the Beck/Teabag videos look like informed citizens.

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... Ernest A. Canning said on 9/10/2010 @ 8:32 pm PT...





Loved that opening --- "separation of God and church."

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 9/10/2010 @ 10:05 pm PT...





Billy - The difference is, those people know better (well, maybe not Palin), but the rest of the Fox 'News'/Tea Bag Royalty know exactly what they are lying to their dupes about. And they don't care.

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... Jon in Iowa said on 9/11/2010 @ 7:12 am PT...





I like the guy in the middle, suggesting that gay Oregonians move to Ohio if they want to get married.

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... Jon in Iowa said on 9/11/2010 @ 7:15 am PT...





Er, Californians. I don't know where the Oregonians came from.

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... karen said on 9/11/2010 @ 7:18 am PT...





The media fails, no doubt, but I think this falls on fertile ground. Either you are someone that wants to know the truth, will be curious about your world, and will change your mind when facts contradict your first thoughts, or you are not. While the country's opinion on the war in Iraq, Iraq's connection to 9/11, and the war in Afghanistan has evolved overtime as more facts have slowly seeped into their consciousness. I heard the same arguments W made as they did, butI saw them as rotating bites at the apple and lies from get go, and I didn't need to search far to find out yellow cake thing had been proven false over and over again, the Saddam might have a few lethal weapons stashed somewhere but he was no real, imminent theart etc....others could have done the same quick checks and expressed the same skepticism I did, plenty of mainstream sources, like McClatchy had hard, convincing info to contradict W. I think people want to be lied to, want their biases to be reinforced, so when they get an anonymous email that says HCR has a put seniors on icebergs provision, they are pretty sure Obama and Pelosi want to do that and do not question it

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... vivian Warkentin said on 9/11/2010 @ 1:13 pm PT...





No the ms media has not failed. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in distracting people into keeping their eyes off the ball. They bait us with stories about Muslim mosks and Obama being a Muslim. That causes the duped left to defend him. They do not want us to cotton on tho the fact that he works for the same corporations that the Republicans work for. And he authorizes drones and he keeps War going on.

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... Carp said on 9/12/2010 @ 10:34 am PT...





For God's sake, why doesn't someone do a poll that asks the simple question, "Given that constitution says {Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...} and many if not most Americans believe that ours is a Christian nation, do you believe that our constitutional form of government should be replaced by a government which is directly based on the holy bible?" This question will show that at least one in seven of our citizens (far more in southern states) are subversives.

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... Lora said on 9/12/2010 @ 10:59 am PT...





I will argue that the rest of the mainstream media (what I call the Mouthpiece Media) has also, if not so blatantly as Fox, deliberately misinformed as well, or at the very least, highlighted certain news and ignored, minimized, trivialized, or suppressed certain other news. I think we all are guilty of wanting to hear "facts" that support our own set of biases and prejudices, and we tend to gravitate toward those voices that we agree with. I don't think it is quite fair to say that the disinformed tea party ralliers want to be disinformed any more than we want to believe whatever left-leaning blogs and news reports we read that contradict the right-leaning ones. In the end, unless we ourselves are on the ground seeing with our own eyes, we have to believe someone. Their people are telling them one thing and our people are telling them something else. Only when we ourselves or someone we know and trust has a different story to tell, can we begin to open our minds to a different truth. So if you live in Tea Party Land and you want to be willing to dig for facts that are different from what Fox and the rest of the Mouth Piece Media are telling you, you have to A) fight against your natural urge to listen to voices that you what you think you know, B) stop believing sources that you have trusted or have been told to trust for years, C) start digging in places that believe the opposite of what you think you believe, and D) try to verify (which, unless you are on the ground, means trusting brand new sources) these strange and upsetting new facts. Small wonder that the rank and file tea partiers sound the way they sound.

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 9/12/2010 @ 12:53 pm PT...





Lora ~ re: teatards not wishing to stay ill-informed - It's a nice thought, but in my experience it's simply not true. Tho' you're very gracious to give them so many unearned credits for functioning intellect. As I've mentioned here before, I have an Aunt Sue whose brain was eaten by Glen Beck circa 2008. Last year, in order to support one of his completely erroneous, fallible, crazy positions re: the defense of the secret security state: she sneered at me (a 9/11 WTC recovery worker), "Jeannie - do YOU remember 9/11?!?!" I worked at Ground Zero for 4 months. She knows that. When confronted with any facts / background she dismissed me completely with "Well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree"...

...like you can do that with hard facts.

That was the day our relationship ended. This is not a rational minority of people who can be reached through the logic centers of the brain. Reason can not be transferred. They are not us and can not be compared to us because no matter what slanted thing we read and want to believe, we still have the bulk of our critical thinking skills. They don't. They are not us. They will never acknowledge a fact (still relatively verifiable) that conflicts with their forced narrative...as we have seen here in The Brad Blog threads too many times to begin to want recall. If anyone has any proof (even second-hand) that Teatards have any interest, whatsoever, in learning any of the FACTS of all they "didn't care to know anything about" before Obama's election, I'd love to see some... In the meantime, I really, really really can't express how sick I am of them eating up all the oxygen in all my news and driving every narrative everywhere. It's so very, very disheartening. After writing a gazillion letters / making a ton of phone calls, I'm tapped. Deciding to streamline my news diet with a focus on international online channels (Russia Today)/ cheesecloth strained local news and my trusted, on the ground yahoo election groups. No cable (except Stewart and Colbert) / no newspapers / no blowhards / no diatribes / no yelling / less opinion / all facts / less Teatarded prism co-opts and multi-leveled, obsessive analysis and evaluation of their stupid, misplaced rage. Teatards ruin *everything*.

That's no longer news to me.

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 9/12/2010 @ 1:01 pm PT...





...wanted to add that I loved Carp's question (#8). Righto. Get the nutties on record as nutties. Then every time they open their pie-hole like they deserve a voice on anything - we mention they're on the record as subversive nut-jobs and then turn off their mic. They can scream all they want to, off in a corner, de-megaphoned. Great comment.

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... Lora said on 9/12/2010 @ 1:25 pm PT...





Jeannie, Sounds like you restrained yourself admirably by not doing anything more severe than ending the relationship with Aunt Sue. I hear ya...I have an Aunt Ann...truly a lovely lady, but she has drunk the koolaid along with the church sermons. And, guess what. If Pastor says so, she ain't gonna be swayed by a godless unbaptized liberal intellectual such as myself. I don't even have a ghost of a chance. I think it's largely the influence of the churches, at least in my experience --- my in-laws are die-hard Repub/tea party types and they are dyed-in-the-wool Baptists. Makes it that much harder to combat. It's depressing and discouraging. To give up is to welcome in serious theo-fascism, so I try to keep fighting the Hydra. WWHD (What Would Hercules Do?)

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... Ernest A. Canning said on 9/12/2010 @ 1:45 pm PT...





"Teatards" is catchy, Jeannie Dean, but I'm afraid it unfairly links those who are merely suffering from a mental deficiency with those who are certifiable. Given some of these people may capture seats in Congress, my real concern is that we will have lunatics running the asylum.

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 9/12/2010 @ 1:51 pm PT...





@ Ernest - tEehheee! Good point.

and

o!...me,too. Me, too. Fitful sleeps.

Soldiering on with much less joy.

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 9/12/2010 @ 2:08 pm PT...





...and thank you for the warm empath, Lora. So sorry to hear about your Aunt Ann! FWIW, I'm finding that every single one of my friends has a family equivalent - someone who they all describe as once being a very sweet, good-natured person - now so ramped up by fear they can't be invited to family functions without a choker that delivers small electric shocks. There's real pain associated with their these losses. But, since there is no magic button we can push to save their brains...they gotta either promise to stay on the newspaper when discussing Cap n' Trade, or they need to stay locked in the bathroom when company is over. They're not allowed to collectively piss on our rug every time they get a little urine-jumpy. Not when that rug really ties the room together...

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... Soul Rebel said on 9/12/2010 @ 9:11 pm PT...





Jeannie and Lora... Glenn Beck got hold of my mother, through her now-deceased boyfriend who didn't believe in evolution and believed that me, my wife, and my children were going to hell because we don't believe in the christian god (as if my children are of any age to make personal decisions on such a matter.) My mother and I do not speak, and it is likely that she will go to her grave without the opportunity to develop a relationship with her grandchildren. (Needless to say, she and I don't speak.) Some may say I have taken that separation a little too far. I say that I am protecting my children from potentially contagious insanity. As for Carp's observation on religion vs. Constitution, there are four states in our union that have written in their constitutions statutes that deny the holding of elected office or the participation as jurors to those who do not affirm the existence of aforementioned christian god. Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina. No surprise there, perhaps. I'd like to take that to the SCOTUS though.

COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... Carp said on 9/13/2010 @ 12:45 am PT...





There is disinformation because the system of MSM news is one of profit, not truth. Follow the money. Where is the money raised by the parties spent? That's right, in the media. The MSM has a vested interest in controversy. Controversy stirs passion, passion turns into political donations which is spent, in turn, buying time in the MSM. In 2008 the progressives were passionate and the media, except for Fox, catered their reporting in the direction of the money. Now, although the Dems are still out-raising the Reps, the trend is in the opposite direction and the reporting has turned, except,of course for MSNBC. The victim of this corrupted system is the truth.

One would expect the MSM to report it when lies are told but why should they when a candidate, in order to rebut the lies, will be forced to buy air time on the MSM to get the facts out. The present system results in the MSM being paid NOT TO DO THEIR JOB! The result is gross deformation of what should be plainly seen as right and wrong.

EXAMPLE #1 A person has the right to speak from his soap box on the steps of city hall but someone can set up a multi million dollar sound system right beside him and drown his right to "free speech" out because the Supreme Court has ruled that the speech wealthy people and corporations is more equal than that of the average citizen.

EXAMPLE #2 The unearned income of the children of the uber wealthy is untaxed when "Daddy Warbucks" passes on because that money has "already been taxed". Unfortunately the poor fellow who digs the grave of the uber rich decedent must pay income tax on what he was paid for his hard labor even though his pay comes from that same pool of already taxed money.

My god, the righties see the town of "Deadwood" in the late HBO series as something to aspire to, then our progressive leadership are to timid to point it out and the few that do can't get airtime. Unless Obama can find his voice again he's gonna find himself going the way of Jimmy Carter, then God help us all.

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... JimCT said on 9/13/2010 @ 7:17 am PT...





Hilarious that the lady finds her free speech is taken away by the free speech rights of others to criticize her. So it's free speech for ME then cover your ears. I was hoping to find out who's giving the constitutional law class in October that shewill be attending. Would that be John Yoo or Professor Beck?

COMMENT #19 [Permalink]

... Savantster said on 9/13/2010 @ 11:30 am PT...





"If Pastor says so, she ain't gonna be swayed by [anyone]" A recent study proved that the part of the brain responsible for critical thinking actually _shuts off_ when people are listening to a speaker they consider an authority figure. The words go in and become their reality, without a thought.

COMMENT #20 [Permalink]

... KatieB said on 9/13/2010 @ 12:54 pm PT...





My mother succumbed as well to the right-wing lunacy. But I still see her and talk to her frequently. We just steer clear of politics and focus on the kids, the weather, sports, etc. Her transformation all started with the church as well. It was very frustrating at first as she would initially try to evangelize her positions to me (and my brothers, all of whom she is convinced will burn in hell someday). A book I found really helpful in understanding her better is "Thinking Points" by George Lakoff. He presents a frame of reference that compares the "Strict Father Model" of upbringing to the "Nurturing Parent Model". My mom definitely falls under the former as most people her age will. But I give her credit for the fact that all her kids, including me, have adopted the "Nurturing Parent Model" and we are, by and large, not religious. So she prefers to believe what her pastor and friends (and FOX) tell her rather than us, but we accept that and move on. Our model of thinking does not work for her and support her to fulfill her needs the way the idea that a "father" is out there who can tell her what is right/wrong and guide her life. As the population ages and the older people are replaced by the young, and as the memory of 9/11 fades, some of the most extreme beliefs will die out. Youth for the most part does not watch FOX or mainstream media outlets. They are somewhat apathetic due to their age, but this may change over time (as things get generally worse). I have some hope for the future. And I think we should probably not worry about these tea people too much. They are a small minority of the population, albeit a vocal one. We need to focus on ways to fight for the causes that the majority believes in without these endless distractions. Once people start to realize that the aim of the MSM is to keep us distracted and docile to maximize profits, the population at large may come around. We just need a charismatic leader who can be true to his/her ideals. Obama had a huge groundroots following. It's a shame he is not genuine.

COMMENT #21 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 9/13/2010 @ 1:12 pm PT...





Woah, Savantster! That's really, really interesting! Makes perfect sense / lines up perfect with (our) lab experiments on these authoritarian susceptibles. The implications of that study as it might apply to Beck's rallies (where he's going more God, less Country) can not be understated. Chilling. I'm very interesting in studies like this because it confirms what I've long suspected: the rational rest of us are going to have re-frame the debate / shift it to focus on ways to "deprogram" them instead of ways to "educate" them. Like...NOW, we should be having that discussion. We're so far behind where we think we are with these folks, folks. They're stockpiling guns.

We're figuring out how to get them to improve their reading comprehension. They're driving the media narrative (everywhere - even here) and we're too busy rubbernecking, or justifying rubbernecking, and writing about them (and TO them) in thread after thread, to organize media blackouts on such nonsense. They've got the million dollar backing, all the nation's mighty megaphones, and we blog and tell two friends...and they tell two friends... In our collective rush to flash mob them with facts they won't acknowledge anyway, we amplify their message in small, critical ways. This doubles down our majority influence, btw, as it also inflates their egos / sense of entitlement in not-so-small, critical ways...

...making us all their unwilling, captive audience. Lora (xoxo!) is fond of asking "What would Hercules do?"...I think he would take out FOX NEWS for starters. Replace it with Mr. Rogers so the Teatards can catch up to the rest of us, learn to play nice.

COMMENT #22 [Permalink]

... Jeannie Dean said on 9/13/2010 @ 1:17 pm PT...





...which, btw, I keep thinking was the whole point of the Holy Bible. Why is the Golden Rule always lost on Christians? I guess there are no more Sermon on the Mount Christians left. All Armageddon / Revelations types now who want their wars. All of 'em the 'it's okay to drink and screw as long as we feel guilty about it' kind of Christians who're all certain Jesus is coming to get them... ...I *really* wish he would, already.

COMMENT #23 [Permalink]

... Dennis said on 9/13/2010 @ 2:44 pm PT...





Americans need to wake up the fact that Glenn Beck is simply another opinion pushing charlatan who is a product of mormon cult theology and he mixes this with his personal make up as a dry alcoholic. And for the record, he is a Mormon and not a Christian. As someone with a graduate degree in religion, I can say with all qualifications that Mormonism fits all parameters of a cult and has none of the parameters of a religion. A cult is any group (regardless of its size) that interprets the doctrines of a religion in an unorthodox fashion. The problem here is the fact the most Christians do not understand the difference and they easily fall for the lies of Mormon missionaries when they come to one's door. On Beck's radio show and Fox Network program he consistent demonstrates all the unstable behaviors of a dry alcoholic which include grandiosity, judgmentalism, intolerance, impulsivity, ADD and indecisiveness. Alongside that reality, Glenn Beck does not possess a single ounce of journalistic integrity, has no college degree, has no qualifications and he is definitely not a true conservative. But then, what can anyone expect from someone who can't find anything filthier than their own personal reflection. Since people like Beck cannot survive on the basis of any personal merits, they survive by putting others down with lies and half truths in order to feel good about themselves. The truth about Beck is that he a dry mormon alcoholic who never got the counseling required for alcoholics. To further complicate things and confuse people, Beck flippantly throws around Christian terms like "God", "Jesus","Holy Spirit" as well as voices of other so called "Spirit Powers" on his radio talk show. Beck is a mormon in active standing with the mormon church and is not a Christian. Mormonism teaches many gods, that the god of the earth was once a man who attained godhood status, there is no trinity, the cross of Christ means nothing and that Jesus Christ and Satan were brothers. Because Beck does not possess a single ounce of journalistic integrity, he is the perfect abortion poster child for Fox Network. The people who love what Beck says are no different than the impressionable sheep who loved every speech made by Adolph Hitler in his early years when he brought Germany into an era of economic prosperity These same sheep also blindly followed Hitler into one of the darkest chapters of world history. Beck and the Fox Network both cater to the same lowest common denominator of demagoguery. Beck would not know the first thing about God as he is a mormon. Someone should ask him which of the many mormon gods he kept talking about during his argument with himself on Saturday on the square in DC. Like a typical dry alcoholic, Beck even lied on national television when he spoke about holding a document signed by George Washington. That event never took Place. Unfortunately, people who love being led around by the nose do not realize that Beck is talking about a different god than that of Christianity, Judaism or Islam and that he has been a product of mormonism cultism from the day he started doing a radio talk show as an opinion pusher. You don't have to have a degree in psychology to see that he exhibits all the signs of a dry alcoholic. The only reason this unstable impressionable idiot fell into mormonism was because the woman he wanted to have sex with would not do so unless they got first got married and from that point, they joined the mormon cult. Glenn Beck is as big a charlatan as Josephs Smith or that 5th grade graduate (Charles T Russell) who started the Jehovah's Witness cult. This is Glenn Beck in a very accurate and concise nutshell. Considering the fact that Becks personal views are extreme Marxist Libertarian, his form of patriotism is false and he is a person who has no real substance or depth. It will not surprise many of us when Beck’s next big thing is to come out of the closet and announce his homosexuality to the nation. Simply put…he is just another predatory neocon who is pushing the buttons of very ignorant & impressionable people who love being told what to think and believe. We live in a period of history where it has become socially acceptable to be stupid and follow extremist idiots like Glenn Beck, Adolph Hitler, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. Chicanery and lies are their middle names.

COMMENT #24 [Permalink]

... Dean Jackson said on 9/14/2010 @ 6:28 pm PT...





The first person interviewed was actually right in her first ruminations on the issue of church and state: There is no SEPARATION in the Constitution. Amendment 1 to the Constitution says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Constitution says that Congress is prohibited from establishing religion, not that the two can't mix. Any other interpretation means that the second half of the establishment clause(prohibiting the free exercise thereof) is nonsensical! Sam Seder gets a failing grade for spewing popular mythology on the establishment clause.

COMMENT #25 [Permalink]

... Gakarian said on 9/15/2010 @ 10:16 pm PT...





It's not just Fox News, though. Yesterday I heard Rachel Zernike of the New York Times defending the Tea Bag ignorance on WNYC. In fact, she was going out of her way to defend them and make them seem credible. Also, on another segment, a number of New York journalists got defensive when challenged about calling GOP gubernatorial primary victor Carl Paladino a "wacko." Not a single one would state his record of mailing bestiality or overtly racist anti-Obama videos, his extremist statements about jailing poor people, and so on. NOT. A. SINGLE. ONE. They fell over themselves NOT to state why anyone would think this man might be a "wacko." It is not just Fox News, but the entire corporate media who are to blame for the grotesque ignorance not only of the Tea Partiers, but of a wide swath of Americans, who can surely tell you which celebrities are dating or cheating on each other, which NFL teams won or lost, which songs are atop the charts, but are clueless about our republic, our Constitution, or our current government and its policies and politics.

COMMENT #26 [Permalink]

... Gakarian said on 9/15/2010 @ 10:17 pm PT...





I'm sorry, that should be KATE Zernike of the New York Times....

COMMENT #27 [Permalink]

... Jeff said on 9/17/2010 @ 1:54 pm PT...





Dennis is on the left wings payroll. He has posted his same rant word for word across the internet using different names in an attempt to slander conservative voices.

COMMENT #28 [Permalink]

... Jeffs Daddy said on 9/17/2010 @ 8:32 pm PT...

