Posted on 08/31/2011 11:36:29 AM PDT by opentalk
I’m seeing so much biased bullcrap coming out of Politico these days, I thought it might be useful to revisit Journolist — the listserve of liberal journalists and leftist thinkers who work together to form a narrative and push it into the mainstream media. The ultimate goals: 1) Make conservatives look stupid and 2) help President Obama or the liberal du jour look fabulous. Read background here.
If you think their coordinated efforts are a thing of the past, think again. On Twitter, it’s very easy to follow the Genesis of a liberal meme and to see that coordination is necessary to elevate it. For example, when Markos Moulitas and Matthew Yglesias, and then, dull-witted useful idiot David Frum, pushed forth the outrageous and malignant idea that Sarah Palin was responsible for the Arizona shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, it caught like wildfire throughout the same old group of lefties. They were none too subtle.
Other talking points are coordinated. You’ll see the same phrases, probably focused grouped by the White House, in every piece about a topic. The current issue the White House is pushing: Green jobs. Expect all sorts of lavish praise for them.
The current negative issue: Get rid of Rick Perry. So, while Obama has made repeated promises about transparency and failed, you’ll be reading lots of pieces from different folks on Rick Perry’s transparency. The “transparency meme” takes the place of the old leftist meme about how Texas jobs aren’t real jobs, etc. And that story took the place of crazy religion wingerdoodles and creationism and, you get the idea.
The leftist press just doesn’t stop. You may be left scratching your head wondering why you even like these accomplished conservatives. That would be the point.
Meanwhile, what you won’t be hearing about: 9.1% unemployment, Obama’s horrible poll numbers, how Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, the double-dip recession, how consumer confidence has bottomed out, how President Obama would rather play golf or fundraise than lead, how manufacturing is leaving America, how the Obama administration is targeting political enemies, how it’s helping political friends. You won’t hear much of anything about these topics.
The goal is to Protect Obama At All Costs.
Please know that when you read most of what passes for Journalism these days, it’s agenda-driven. These Gatekeepers at the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, and elsewhere work together with the goal of making conservatives look stupid. They hate conservatives ideologically. They hate liberals only to the extent that liberals are ineffective.
The liberal press is not upset with Obama in substance — everything from Union malfeasance to project gunrunners serves a Machiavellian purpose — they’re just frustrated at the perception that Obama is weak and ineffectual. They want more liberalness from him. They want more autocracy! Thus, any displeasure at Obama they convey is for those reasons.
Some key Journolisters were (are, if it doesn’t exist in another form I’ll eat my shoe) [Full list here, some add-ons here]:
Paul Krugman — Moron Economist for the New York Times
Ezra Klein (Founder and keeper of Journolist) — Moron
Economist blogger for the Washington Post
Mike Allen — POLITICO
Jonathan Chait — The New Republic
Eric Boehlert — Media Matters (SEIU hush money, Soros funded)
David Corn — Mother Jones
Brad De Long — Moron Economist at Berkley
Kevin Drum — Mother Jones, Washington Monthly
Dan Froomkin — HuffPo, Washington Post
James Fallows — The Atlantic
Chris Hayes — The Nation
Joe Klein — TIME
Robert Mackey — New York Times
Peter Orzag — Office of Management and Budget Director for President Obama
Michael Scherer — TIME
Nate Silver — 538, now, New York Times
Ben Smith — POLITICO
Jeffery Toobin — CNN, The New Yorker
Matthew Yglesias — Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
I just pulled some more well known names. There are at least 160 + known Journolisters.
Liberal scholars who get quoted in the aforementioned articles as impartial experts are on the list, too. Learn their names. Nearly everything read at every one of these publications must be interpretted through the lens of bias and agenda. These folks are not truth-seekers. They are ideology pushers. Some are more subtle than others. Some, like Krugman, get more Out-Of-The-Closet flagrant as they get more comfy/old/senile.
Know that they are working with the White House. Remember, Rahm Emanuel (former White House aid, current Mayor of Chicago), James Carville (political strategist, Bill Clinton assistant, foreign elections consultant, commentator), Paul Begala (Clinton assistant, political strategist, CNN, Law professor) and George Stephanopoulos (former Bill Clinton comms director, ABC News This Week)have their daily phone-call confabs and they then pass orders to the Journolisters.
It’s an efficient system that benefits the whole. Like the Borg.
Journolist and the Leftist narrative machine is as strong as ever. As the election year rolls around, they’ll be out in force propping up President Obama and denigrating every single Republican hopeful. If they can undermine every Republican by using the opposition research fed to them by all the different campaigns, they’ll do it. It ultimately serves their goal, anyway — weaken all the Republicans so that none of them can beat Obama.
Don’t be duped!
JournoList is still out there, but now more underground, and probably more secure and determined in discussing their agenda.
Outstanding post.
Thanks!
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
bflr
No, Peter Orszag was NOT part of Journolist. The author is incorrect.
And Eric Boehlert claims he was mistakenly added for signing a letter that was circulated on journolist then circulated outside journolist.
jourbalists
are like
gerbals running around in their cages for their masters.
I’vce said it before and I’ll say it again, stop using the word “meme.” I hate that meme. Nothing is to be gained by it over old-fashioned alternatives like, oh, I don’t know, “idea”?
As an example of the latter, Journolist works primarily by developing a thematic political idea and then spreading it through the various media by means of loaded words or phrases - ones that incorporate hidden biases and assumptions. In this manner, mere assertions suddenly become "news" and in effect, tools of mass propaganda.
“I find ‘meme’ to be a useful word, because it implies more than an idea, but rather a cultural idea or symbol that is intentionally imitated and propagated (’virally’ transmitted).”
That’s what ideas do, too. They are transmitted. They change form, and change into or link up with other ideas. More is needed to justify a whole seperate word, in my opinion. Or maybe a new word is fine, only pick one that’s not so stupid.
We say “meme” for “viral” idea because they reminded someone at some point of genes. But ideas are not like genes. If they are passed on evolutionarily and undergo mutations, it is only in a metaphorical sense. It has nothing to do with biology, though, and as such the comparison is misleading or so thin as to be trivial.
“Journolist works primarily by developing a thematic political idea and then spreading it through the various media by means of loaded words or phrases - ones that incorporate hidden biases and assumptions”
And if you, or anyone else, thinks this has anything but the slightest connection to genetic mutation and inheritance, they aren’t worthy of being listened to.
By the way, I realize that “meme” does not mean strictly “idea;” it refers to all non-genetic means of transmitting things, what I guess we can call cultural things, from human to human. This can include fashions, beliefs, customs, etc. At best they’re a crude form of sociobiology, or a silly attempt to sidestep the nature/nurture debate and subsume culture under evolutionary science. But if culture is evolutionary, it is not so in the same sense as genes. Pretending they operate according to the same rules is stupid.
Ideas, customs, whatever are not discreet like genes. It’s not possible to quantify them or pin down how they’ve changed like it is with the actually physically existing genetic codes. It’s not always easy, and sometimes impossible, to tell one idea from another, nor to tell whether an idea has mutated or simply changed in aspect, nor to tell when one idea is standing in for another, nor when to tell when an idea that seems to match another is actually sui generis. Such questions are for discplines of their own: philosophy, literature, politics, entertainment, sociology, tv/movie/music/internet “studies,” or simple common sense. Not for cultural psuedo-science.
There is an entire field of study devoted to the propagation of behavioral characteristics, and by extension, of the language and images used to express societal norms and values, as well as their effect on those who use and transmit them. Symbology is a related discipline.
My fellow New Hampshirite, Dan Brown has incorporated some of this work in his books, including The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. There is certainly abundant controversy among those who study this field, as with any scientific endeavor, and I would suggest you might consider researching the subject, which at least some of us find both fascinating and enlightening.
“Are you familiar with the linguistic provenance of the word ‘meme’? Hint: it is in fact related to the study of evolutionary genetics, albeit indirectly. Further hint: the English word is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘imitation,’ and does not require an ‘idea’ as its subject, but also images and icons.”
Why don’t you try actually reading people’s posts before you respond to them.
“as with any scientific endeavor”
Ah, but you see, it’s not science. It is the illusion of science. I don’t care who you are, Richard Dawkins or Bozo the Clown, you are not allowed to notice that ideas/beliefs/customs/symbols pass from human to human, dub them “memes,” and call it science. If that counts as a scientific discovery, it is the most banal discovery in the history of the world.
“Meme” is a buzzword, is what I’m saying, and it didn’t help us learn anything about what humans non-genetically transmit between one another that we didn’t know before the word popped up in the 1970s. Whatever use there is for such (I hate to call them discplines) schools of study as “symbology” is as teeny, tiny areas of interest within such larger discplines as history, anthropology, sociology, archeology, etc.
Even then, I don’t think they deserve recognition by neologism. Symbols, ideas, beliefs, fashions, customs, and everything else that passes from human to human has been studied to death and ad naseum for centuries before anyone ever heard the word “meme.” If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, so I’ll continue to call them symbols, ideas, beliefs, fashions, customs, cliché, trope, catch-phrase, etc.
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