07-06-2017, 11:37 AM
(07-05-2017, 02:39 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-05-2017, 01:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: While Bob complains about late night comics like John Oliver, the reactionaries are buying up our local TV stations. So the GOPPERS and Trumpistas will soon not only own the presidency, congress, and state governments, and the Supreme Court, but also our media. Thank God there's a few truthful voices around like John Oliver! To compare them to shitshooters like the NRA or trash like Rush and Hannity is sacrilege! This country is so far right (and owned by it) that the idea that there's any balance between blue and red in the media is ludicrous!
Tis easy to compare. Lots of groups will seek an audience of one world view or another, mostly blue or red. They have an agenda in mind, and push the agenda. Part of what they are doing is disparaging the opposite group. The NRA, John Oliver, other late night ‘comics’, Sinclair ‘news’, Fox ‘news’, the red pundit radio industry, and others have taken a side, adopted a style, and push it for all they’ve got.
Welcome to the 4T. It is necessary.
Quote:Oliver is very likely correct that Sinclair is spinning and propagandizing. I won’t go beyond that without actually seeing some Sinclair broadcasts. He uses a lot of truth, but all of the above propaganda groups will base their propaganda on fact. On the other hand, the late night comic school of propaganda can go fact free and get away with it. I sincerely doubt the existence of sunglasses wearing coyotes in the business of selling babies as a food product. If a late night comic wants to jazz his audience by disparaging reds, flush the facts, he will make up anything he likes, lie with impunity. Sure, much of it it is so off the wall you can’t take it seriously, but being on the receiving ends of that sort of crazy made up stuff day after day can tick people off.
He doesn't lie. He is magnificent. What he "makes up" is humor, which is honorable, and an honorable tradition, and necessary; and sometimes directed at liberals too. There needs to be someone putting out the facts, and making them easy to choke down. Blue = facts, Red = prejudice. Besides your (mistaken to some degree, IMO) view of gun rights and the NRA, I doubt you can even suggest an instance where the "red" side is based on facts.
Quote:The new media has so many channels available that if you want to immerse yourself in one world view you can. I will daydream about the good old days, when news departments separated themselves from the entertainment departments, when news was kept separate from opinion, and when it wasn’t a profitable gambit for a station to seek out an audience with a specific political alignment. Just a daydream, though. The genie is out of his bottle. Most any station, group or style of presentation can get caught up in extreme partisanship. The NRA did. Oliver did. Sinclair did. Lots of folks doing it. I don’t expect it to go away.
How does a viewer respond? Does one buy into one world view without question while rejecting the opposite blindly and ignorantly? Or does one became aware of the spin on both sides and attempt to take the spin into account? On the NRA ad, I’ll acknowledge the truth that blue folks did as said, but be very dubious that the average blue fits the impression the NRA gave or that the typical person is apt to run into the rare extremists the NRA portrayed. Thus, their end point that everyone should buy guns and be ready for the unfortunate necessity of shooting liberals is absurdly dubious. In the same way, I’m dubious about both Sinclair and Oliver. They are spinning. They have agendas. They have target audiences. What they all lack is integrity and respect. They are doing what they can to demonize, in both recent senses of the word.
To compare Oliver with the NRA, is to go crazy.
Quote:I for one will strive to acknowledge the facts and the values derived from the without becoming a hater, without insulting and falsely portraying whole cultures.
But insulting others you disagree with on a forum is OK, though?
Quote:Hey, I think everyone has figured out I’m not a Trump fan. Still, when he claims some aspects of the media are out to get him, I sympathize and agree.
They SHOULD be out to get him (not violently, as HE wants to do to his protesters). So should every thinking and feeling American. Drump is a disgrace, in every way.
The Republicans should go the way of the dodo bird, the same way the Whigs did in the previous domestic-centered 4T. Our whole current party system needs to go, in fact. It might. Our elected-king system needs to go too. Most democracies are parliamentary, because it's more democratic, and because it works. Our USA first and most-ancient democratic system is also the most outdated.