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April 29, 2011 12:59 AM UTC

Drowning Reason in the Bathtub

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Food for thought from Politico:

President Barack Obama’s appearance Wednesday in the White House briefing room to present a documented rebuttal of suspicions that he was not born on U.S. soil was more than just a surprise. It was a decisive new turn in the centuries-long American history of political accusation and innuendo.

By directly and coolly engaging a debate with his most fevered critics, Obama offered the most unmistakable validation ever to the idea that we are living in an era of public life with no referee – and no common understandings between fair and unfair, between relevant and trivial, or even between facts and fantasy…

“There are no more arbiters of truth,” said former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We’ve crossed some Rubicon into the unknown.” [Pols emphasis]

We can think of all kinds of places, both national and local, where that last comment from Robert Gibbs is applicable. From discredited rumors about President Obama’s citizenship and “death panels” to the rote insistence by many Colorado Republicans that new protections on oil and gas drilling caused the industry to “flee,” or illegal immigrants are swinging our elections, or impending gun confiscation…”thousands of Amazon.com jobs lost…”

You really can’t deny it. It’s the same mendacity at work, and the same irresponsible factlessness going more or less unchallenged in the media: whether the press considers refuting nonsense over and over beneath them or some other reason, plainly absurd and even libelous ravings don’t get called out as such. Too often they are allowed to fester, and be repeated without any fact-checking or even a counterpoint, until they assume “legitimacy” out of sheer inertia.

In the service of people who, be assured, know better–just like the “death panels,” people who know perfectly well what the facts are stand ready to benefit politically from widely-held nonsense that goes unrefuted. Political calculation, from Fox News and talk radio all the way down the messaging food chain, is now more important than the facts. Or even shame.

It’s not hopeless, but if you hit bottom this hard as a culture, you’re supposed to take note.

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17 thoughts on “Drowning Reason in the Bathtub”

  2. Blogs.

    Newspapers and network TV used to keep this crap off the frontburner of public discussion.

    Now Drudge, Breitbart, and WorldNetDaily pound this stuff into shape for Fox to broadcast.

    People on this site like to bitch about the MSM, but sometimes the MSM got it right too.

  3. to get the managing editors and/or publishers of the MSM (e.g. NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN, NYT, WP, LAT)in front of a big audience to discuss Gibbs’ remarks and explain themselves.

    At some point, I expect public demand would come up.  If viewers are talking or asking about an issue like Obama’s birthplace, do they have a responsibility to discuss it?  Even after they have thoroughly debunked it?

    I recall those outlets typically prefacing the issue with something like “Though Obama’s birthplace has been indisputably confirmed by independent experts…”  Was that enough?  Should they have even addressed Trump’s comments on the issue, etc?  In the past, if someone said something outrageous on the campaign trail, the MSM would report it too – but the result was that guy getting laughed at.  

    I think what really moved Obama to engage was the poll numbers.  If 33% of America isn’t 100% sure of your birthplace, it becomes a distraction and an election liability. (And it’s that so many actually had doubs that is the saddest part of all this).

    So – if the MSM press is reporting the news fairly and accurately, what more responsibility to they have?  They are fighting the sum of websites, blogs, talk radio, etc to claim authority over the ‘truth.’  The internet especially is informing more people than ever and misinforming more people than ever.

    I understand and agree with most of the arguements about the individual responsibility of the consumer, but what is the MSM supposed to do?

    1. Unless the news piece is laid out in a way that makes it clear that continued belief in this stuff is grounds for disqualification from office, no.  At some point in time you have to agree to help kill it off, at least by starving the beast and at best by sticking a few more forks in it.

      Of course the other side is, as IO’R points out above, that there are blogs out there who have enough of an audience to keep the conspiracy alive – and then the MSM looks like they’re part of the conspiracy.

      Still, I think you have to starve it of a voice.  While it’s still being covered as news it will still look like the matter is unsettled, unless it’s crystal clear.

      If you have to, write it up as “Donald Trump continues to push discredited theory on Obama’s birth certificate” and whenever you come to a point being made that’s factually wrong, spell it out nice and clear just why.

  4. tell the truth and move on. It’s the art of the debate that’s taken the big hit. My sister mastered the new form at a ridiculously young age.

    She who is loudest is right. Having watched quite a bit of Trump on the birther issue, I’m feeling the frustration of every reporter. “No, these are the fa..” “BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, LADIDODIDAY!” Oddly, I agree with 20ME, at what point can the media stop saying, “Dolphins still missing. Film at 6”? Two years ago this thing was debunked. People still “knew!” he was born in Kenya/on Mars.

    This isn’t media’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem. Media, much like government itself, is not a building that goes around doing shit. It’s us.

    … Some of us more than others. But us.

    How do you cover actual news when people are DEMANDING to see bullshit 24/7?

  5. #2 – 300 people due to storms in the South.

    Nowhere to be found on the front page – civil war in Libya and civil insurrection in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain.

    Also no where to be found on the front page, joblessness still a national crisis.

    1. The most clicked, or “popular” as of 9:32 are:

      Death toll in Southern storms nears 300

      Quest: 7 moments not to miss at the wedding

      Forget iPhone 4 and 5. What about 6?!

      The American’s guide to the royal wedding

      The video is the wedding. The stupid, pointless wedding (so says this UK Parliament junkie). The “guide” for us is a sub-story. It’s number four.

      Forgetting iPhone is on the “Latest News” sidebar, below:

      Latest news

      Clock ticking for Obama’s security team

      Shuttle astronauts want to keep flying

      Garridos plead guilty in Dugard case

      Suspect held decades after kidnapping

      New men, new mission at Pentagon, CIA

      Ticker: Trump’s ‘racist’ comments

      Trump’s long history of helping Dems

      Opinion: Pawlenty uncool, but real deal

      Opinion: Conspiracy theories die hard

      What’s next for ‘sideshow’ over Obama?

      CNN is a business. It’s giving us what we clamor for.

      Oddly enough the first story on bbc.co.uk is about our storms and Obama’s reaction. There is a special section for the wedding toward the bottom of the page. Only a single story about Prince William greeting people is displayed rather inconspicuously in the middle.

      Sad really.

  6. Did the Germans invade Poland in September 1939? Not according to some, who bought the German cover story that the Poles had attacked first.

    The Big Lie has been around forever.

  7. of HAVING to give equal time to opposing points of view in order to be considered non-partisan.

    “Gravity, it works . . . and now for an opposing view the Rev. Ike Johnson, president of the Psychic Levitation Society.”

    Global Warming . . . Evolution . . . Biology . . . Cosmology . . . Monetary Policy . . . Taxation . . . Governing Priorities . . . they all get the same nonsensical “equal time” treatment to the detriment of thought, reason, education, study, and science.  (BTW, you know science is nothing but another belief system? . . . Gawd!)

    In one sense, I thank God for FOX, because they’ve made the “fair and balanced” and “we report, you decide” taglines such tremendously ridiculous jokes that you would think by now that truly legitimate news outlets would have unburdened themselves of having to give a panel of Nobel laureates equal time offset by some beejish fool with a magic ideology.

    How we got here, I’m not sure.  But, I do know for certain we need to get away from this crazy place.

    1. They’ve just discovered that this form of entertainment, presenting opposing views, even if only one is credible and the other is juicy though backed by absolutely nothing, as though they are equally worth  listening to and arguing over, sells well.  

      Why, for instance, have we had “serious” journalists opining that Obama should just shut this down by producing the long form certificate as if that has any higher standing for any official purpose than what he did produce? It doesn’t. It’s a non-issue and should have been mentioned only for the purpose of debunking by any serious journalist.

      Why didn’t they point out that the whole argument over where he was born, silly as it is considering he had already produced a perfectly satisfactory document, wouldn’t  change a thing, regardless? He was born to an American citizen mother.  No one disputes that. That makes him a natural born American citizen as qualified as any other to run for President so WTF?  Once again, a non-issue that should have received attention only to point out that there was nothing to it beyond some very silly people trying to make trouble over a  complete misunderstaning of the law.  

      There was  never any need to allow these silly people to make their cases as there was never any credible case to be made. Just because somebody claims something doesn’t mean they deserve to be given a forum on the news. What’s next? Allowing people who think Obama is a vampire to spout their nonsense on the NBC evening news and then insisting Obama needs to prove he’s not?

      It’s show biz, even on what used to be the sensible evening news, not any requirement, philosophical or regulatory, that drives this fact free swill and it’s a disgrace.

      1. I never meant to suggest that the “burden” was imposed by regulatory requirement, but rather that it’s become a expectation of evenhandedness.

        You make the better point — the bastards have learned that ginning up controversy draws attention; nothing sells like a fight.

    2. If Secretary of State Gessler (. . . are we going to have to list the titles for all his other prospective jobs too? . . .) stops guessing and actually takes a little time to count all those names in his phone book, it will come to well more than 11,000 people.

      BS answered . . .  

    3. If I recall correctly, the list was of non citizens, not illegal aliens. Those are not synonymous terms. And if I recall correctly, nothing had been said about how many of them voted, or what party affiliation they might have had.

      This particular GOP lie, one of many, was that illegal aliens were swarming the polls to vote Democratic. These registered non citizens, who we must presume are all here legally since they most likely registered to vote at the DMV, doesn’t support this lie in the least.

      1. It was a list of people who got their driver’s licenses with non-citizen ID, without regard to whether they became citizens after they got their driver’s licenses.

        McCarthy had a list too.  Like Gessler’s list, it was complete bullshit.

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