In response to this entry on Creed's website:

(Reposted after being deleted):

Well, ElDude, you just have to remember that these people have been inculcated by the conservative punditocracy (which they consume almost exclusively, without counter-point) that any news medium that doesn't regurgitate administration talking points or make Republican apologism central to its coverage is, therefore, liberally biased. Remember, to people like Creed, the job of the media is to assist Repbulicans further the social conservative agenda. If they fail to do this, well, "They are liberally biased! Why doesn't everybody see that!?" *Sigh*

As you mentioned, it is utterly ridiculous for these people to complain about the liberal media boogey-man when Fox News and conservative talk radio exist, drowning out in volume and magnitude all the other supposedly liberal bias in the media. It makes even less sense when you consider that the supposedly liberal media employ more openly partisan conservatives on the op-ed panels and news desks than there are liberal counter-parts.

But really, how can anyone take the average social conservative's view on media consumption seriously? Without fail (Creed included), these people argue that "Liberally biased news coverage is a an unjust bane on the American populace, but demonstrably MORE biased conservative media, like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, is A-OK!" These people are so willfully uneducated, detached from reality, and hypocritical that it boggles the mind. They aren't seeking fairness, they are ultimately seeking a greater, but opposite, UNfairness.

And what's equally ridiculous, creed, is all this bemoaning you do about the average American not understanding conservative politics, because they aren't exposed to them. I am sorry, but as I have said before, this is utterly incorrect. Republicans and the results of their politics have dictated news coverage for the past two election cycles. The fact that non-stories like Obama’s connection to Billy Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Obama’s citizenship dominated news cycles is a testament to that. Liberals, and the American public in general, have rejected neoconservative philosophy, because they were exposed to it. We do understand what your philosophy entails. We have rejected it, because it has been an unmitigated, uninhibited disaster over that last 16 years. We just don't want it. It’s a crappy product.

Plus, liberals are much more willing to expose themselves to opposing thought than conservatives are. Not only has every study on media consumption I have ever seen concluded that liberals are more informed about and exposed to conservative ideology than is true for the inverse. Hell, I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s talk radio programs daily, watch Fox News more than all the other major news networks combined, and read conservative leaning publications like the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. This media consumption pattern is pretty common for all my liberal friends as well, because watching your media clowns unending inability to convince people that your ideology is viable is so enjoyable and cathartic for most liberals. Plus, again, the mere existence of Fox News and the 26is% of the general public that still approve of Bush illustrate the social conservatives’ ability to insulate himself from reality and any and exposure to all opposing thought. Nobody should support George Bush at this point in time. Nobody even remotely conscience of John McCain's temperament, his voting record, Sarah Palin's qualifications, or their proposed policies should have seriously considered voting for that ticket in the wake of the last 8 years.

Hell, when the chief of the RNC states in a private memo that the Republicans are in major need of an overhaul, are "out of ideas", are “addicted to ideology”, and have failed at providing Americans with viable solutions to their problems over the last 8 years, the conservative ideology has some serious problems. And let me tell you, those problems aren't the result of nasty prose in supposedly liberal publications like the New York Times. When conservative economic guru Allan Greenspan testifies before the Congress that the current economic crisis is the direct result of conservative ideology rolling back regulation on the markets and other financial institutions (THE cornerstone of Reaganite, neoconservative economic policy) the conservative ideology has some serious problems.

But seriously, you people just keep blaming the media for all your problems. Keep vying for moronic, unqualified, rural rubes for candidates in national elections. The sane American people have caught on to you. You're just making my job, and the jobs of other Democratic strategists easier (and our post-election pay checks a whole lot fatter, too).

Now, for some additional criticisms about the specifics of your post:

1.      A Rush Limbaugh quote, sliced and diced out of context, is one of the typical run-of-the-mill distortions foisted upon the unsespecting (sic) and affirming the convinced.

Provide examples of when the media or liberals have inaccurately portrayed a Limbaugh quote. The guy is about a subtle as a bag of bricks or a sledgehammer; it’s really hard to misinterpret anything the man says. In fact, I can’t recall a single instance where the media has reported an inappropriate remark by Limbaugh that still wasn’t utterly indefensible when viewed in context.

2.  "Conservative" thought is often served up in bite sized chunks marked "The Surgeon General Warns...". In Medieval times the chunks would say "Dragons be in these here parts lad. Don't ya be gettin' close for the second hand smoke from the nostrils be even worse lad."

Oh my god…You are still doing this? Are you really this stupid Creed?

First, unless you are claiming that surgeon general warnings are dubious, the logical structure of your paragraph makes no sense. Are you seriously disputing that exposure to first or second hand smoke has deleterious health consequences? Are you clinically insane? It’s not that difficult: second-hand smoke is a concentrated toxic, carcinogenic chemical cocktail, so being continually exposed to it is not good for one’s health.  

Intellectual non-conformism is one thing, but what you have shown yourself in your posts is a rebel against scientific reason and reality. It’s not just the surgeon general who has concluded that second hand smoke causes cancer, it’s literally every single major scientific body in America and the world that has independently researched the effects of second hand smoke exposure. See, information generally doesn’t get propagated by the surgeon general unless it is essentially a scientific fact (until Bush and other Republicans politicized the position, at least).

So, let’s do a little experiment! Get one of your smoker friends and have them blow three cigarette’s worth of second-hand smoke into an airtight plastic bag every day. Three cigarettes is the amount of second-hand smoke studies have indicated most people in urban areas inhale daily. If you can inhale this quantity of smoke daily over the next 15 years and not develop a cancer attributable to cigarette smoke, I will not only repay you the money you spend on supplies and video tape to document the authenticity of the trial, but I will give you an additional 10,000 dollars. I mean, you only have a projected 30% chance of dying within that time, but you are so good at being certain about this issue.

And think of the glory! You would be featured on Limbaugh and Glen Beck, trotted out by all the smoking lobbyist Republicans whose conservative ideology you revere, and disprove this “post-modern” scientific inquisition process that continuously pumps out findings that are offensive to your irrational religious and political views. Of course, you will not have disproved anything, you would have just been lucky that none of the carcinogens primed the mitotic machinery in your cells to go haywire and turn cancerous. I am just trying to think irrationally, as you do.

 Let’s put your wellbeing where your mouth is!

Secondly, do you really believe that medieval oracles throwing bones on the ground and discussing dragons is scientifically equivalent to the tens of thousands of double-blind studies that have concluded that exposure to second-hand smoke is dangerous to one’s health? Really?! How can you people use your television’s remote controllers, take prescription drugs, or live in the comfort that American society affords you as a direct result of these scientific principles that you have such utter disregard and skepticism for? The conclusions that anthropogenic global warming is occurring, exposure to second hand smoke is deleterious to one’s health, and all these other scientific findings are fact. They are not politicized Democratic talking points to spread fear for election victories in and of themselves. The facts themselves are non-political, scientific truths that have been affirmed by liberal researchers, conservative researchers, and everything in between.

Who would have thought that somebody fundamentally opposed to science and the scientific process in general would be incapable of understanding and applying social science studies appropriately? Color me surprised!

It's still absolutely incredible to me that you can put something like an IPCC report in front of these people, which is one of the largest, most compelling, and most thorough scientific studies in the history of humanity; yet, they will frequently dismiss it based on the most ridiculously skeptical, uncorroborated premises imaginable. Then, when they are trying to formulate their own arguments to substantiate their conspiracy theories (which often aren't even possible at face value), they readily leap to nearly unimaginably extreme conclusions with little to no direct evidence whatsoever. I can't even count the number of times that I have run into, "GLOBAL WARMING A LIE PROPAGATED BY THE LIBERAL ACADEMIC ELITE, BECAUSE BIG SCIENCE PROFITS FROM THE MASS HYSTERIA (BUT I CAN'T EXPLAIN WHY OR HOW)!". To these people, that argument is logically superior to "Here is an indisputable, methodologically sound study compiling the uniform results of multiple independent inquiries by multiple international bodies composed of the most distinguished specialists in the field. Furthermore, these results have withstood rigorous scrutiny for roughly a decade in the international peer review process. The results still remain accepted by the enormously overwhelming majority of published experts in the field and prove that your position is irrefutably wrong with a >95% probability.".

You would think that a reasonably well educated adult would apply a uniform, process-driven approach to reality, which essentially boils down to: 1) identify phenomenon/problem; 2) observe phenomenon/problem; 3) think critically; 4) formulate hypothesis to explain phenomenon/problem; 5) gather data and evidence; 6) assess what the most likely explanation for the phenomenon, or explanation to the question is; 8) generate an evidence-driven conclusion; 9) determine if initial hypothesis was correct; and 10) if initial hypothesis was correct, accept it and add it into your existing body of knowledge; or, if your hypothesis was incorrect, reformulate a more viable hypothesis to retest. Their logical approach, however, is an ends-driven-approach, meaning that they determine what conclusion they want to reach, then build their reality around that conclusion. They formulate a conclusion, then seek out conducive evidence that bolsters their conclusion while rejecting contradictory evidence that weakens their argument.

I just don't understand the selectivity of this mental behavior. I mean, I understand what drives it (an unwillingness to consider that their ideology is incorrect, which is a framework for their mental reality), but how can these people sustain themselves in the real world with this mental approach? How do these people manage to run companies, or fix their mowers, or complete TPS reports, or even purchase quality products with this line of thinking? How do their brains not sheer in half under the mental exertion of assessing reality under such an inefficient, flawed, unfruitful mental process? Wouldn't the consistently negative results they experience on a daily basis (or, god forbid, during scientific or political arguments) be enough for most people to switch to something more effective? I suppose that since this line of thinking is so intensely associated with their religious and political beliefs that they can't really alter it for fear of losing something important to them, but the prospect is still so completely alien to me.

Obama's Impact on Minorities (and Other Musings)

As someone who helped run a DNC campaign for six months in highly Hispanic/African American areas in Texas, let me be the first to tell you that Obama's victory will impact the Hispanic and African American communities and race relations in general for decades in numerous profound ways. It's been written about extensively in several publications already, but before this election, the Hispanic and African American communities were largely disenfranchised with the electoral process and American politics in general, which understandably led to a lot of anger towards many whites and the government in general. This election, however, we saw 95-100% African American turnout in incredibly important electoral precincts in states like Virginia, Missouri, and Florida this year. That's not just an unheard of turn out, that was unimaginable 4 years ago, and it indicates that Obama's selection during the Democratic primaries and subsequent election as POTUS has effectively galvanized the largest (and fastest growing) population of voters in the history of American politics. And these people aren't just voting. They're actively participating now. 80% of the minority volunteers in my campaign are now full-time staffers on post-election campaigns, working to find sustainable solutions to the problems they care about that are facing their community. We are seeing similar numbers like that across the country, because many of these disgruntled individuals have finally realized that if they want better schools, better representation in government, more fair taxation, etc., they have to get involved and work for change, not just hang their heads in disgust and separate themselves from the process.  And it was Obama that inspired these realizations and gave many of them the hope necessary to get more involved. As I often tell people, Obama has already likely had a more profound, lasting positive impact on the lives of minority Americans than Bush ever had in his entire presidency, and Obama hasn't even taken office yet. 

But to tie this back to your question, I think a direct result of all this excitement, effort, and engagement on the part of minorities, as well as the progressive taxation efforts and social programs Obama is discussing, is that there will be a dramatic improvement in race relations in this country. They will get schools closer to or perhaps equal to the quality of schools enjoyed by many white students, resulting in more equal employment and lifestyle opportunities; they will have someone in office that is sympathetic to their needs, resulting in more effective economic plans to deal with the problems they face every day; and the hurt that many African Americans still endure from being one generation removed from segregation or even slavery will put this country on the fast track towards healing those old, fettered wounds. And accepting this fact has nearly nothing to do with “white guilt”, as much as the objective historical and economic reality of our country is that African Americans haven’t been able to recover from 300 years of slavery and 50 years of quasi-slavery in less than 50 years.

But yeah, if Obama's Administration governs even remotely effectively (almost certainly will), the Democrats continue acting on behalf of the middle and lower classes (most certainly will), and the DNC continues building its national infrastructure (most certainly will), we will likely not be losing another national election for at least 20 years, particularly since Democrats now get to redraw the electoral map in 2010 to be more representative of the highly populated states and urban areas than it currently is. 

This election really, really hurt the Republicans in so many ways, the most important of which aren't really even discussed in the media. I really can't imagine them recovering from it with those horribly inept social conservatives at the helm of their party. That's what is so delicious to me about their current predicament. These people created a Frankenstein monster of a party built around active disengagement with reality whether it was on scientific issues like evolution, the evidence of WMD's in Iraq, or social issues like the dangers of homosexuality or gay marriage. It worked for awhile politically, but certainly not in application over the last 8 years. Now, they have exhausted all their political capital, and the electorate has caught on to them and overwhelmingly rejected their philosophies. They likely won't be able to fix their party, because so many of the major individuals that this conservative movement was built around are intellectually incapable of looking at objective reality, which is essential to critically analyzing yourself as an individual, or as a political party. I mean, there are still plenty of brilliant people working for the Republicans as political architects and planners, but they are having increasing trouble at reigning and controlling their political puppets.  

But, you know what, they deserved every bit of the crushing we laid down on them, and every agonizing second of their precious coalition's likely future implosion. They didn’t just lose because they were a party of unmitigated fuckupery over the course of the last 8 years, but we (the Democrats) just plain beat the shit out of them in this campaign. It's not boasting, it's a quantifiable fact, whether you are looking at volunteer numbers or fundraising amounts.

And after enduring the conservatives celebrating after victories in 2000 and 2004 before going on to do tremendous damage to the American way of life as we know it, let me just say that this election was one of the most personally rewarding and cathartic experiences of my life. Yet, while the 4th will be tough to beat, I have a feeling that November 4th, 2012 will be pretty great as well.

What Liberal Media?

Here is an expanded response that I posted on this Creed_of_King's update. My argument, which highlights several frequently occurring faulty conservative assumptions concerning media coverage, was swiftly deleted under the false pretense that he doesn't allow anonymous posters to comment on his site. Even a cursory viewing of his recent updates shows that he has no problems with anonymous posters, provided they are lauding his updates, agreeing with his ideological philosophy, or are easily defeatable liberals of the Limbaugh-esque, mouth-breather variety. 

How do you know that I didn't identify myself if you didn't read my response? Please, you read it, and you didn't like what it said, so you deleted it like a coward, just as you always have done when you fear that you are losing a debate. Who I am is completely irrelevant to anything I have posted. Your response should focus on the post and its content. Reposted: