Well, I almost feel like I know Kevin now ;)
But until about 48 hours ago I knew not his name nor of any of his /personal/ organs (NuPac et al).
I was drafting a response to a post made elsewhere, about the general topic of the media. I was interpreting this other poster's position to be of the 'left-is-controlling-the-media' genre and sought to give examples of where the media could be said to have promulgated inaccuracies that suited or shadowed the policies/philosophies of the 'right'. (Not that I think the 'right' controls the media, just that the media is humanly flawed and IMO, screws up fairly equally between advantaging the 'right', and the 'left'.)
/And/ I had heard Kevin's radio interview only a couple of days before, so his espousing (both as a non-official rep of this fledgling AC3 group and as a vociferous, little-known [?] Repub player/mouthpiece/PR flak/foot-soldier/whatever) such an inaccuracy was a timely 'exhibit C' for my case.
I recall vividly, hearing the interview go down: I was listening to CBC in my kitchen when the interview was broadcast on Friday and stopped in my tracks upon hearing what Kevin had said - not stopped for having heard his words but instead so as to hear how the interviewer would respond.
Thankfully CBC radio publishes their broadcasts on the internet and I was able to confirm what I had recalled hearing and thus provide solid, credible, citable evidence.
It may be telling that the CBC publishes their works (the expression 'of record' comes to mind) and the station that Kevin broadcasts on leaves no such trace.
See, it would be interesting to have an opportunity to review Kevin's previous broadcasts to see 1) how prevalent was his prior use of the demonstrated fallacy, and 2) what else does Kevin say that ought be equally scrutinized? But with no published record of what Kevin has dispensed OTA (over the air) we can't.
I suspect he likes it better that way. Less embarrassment perhaps.
So do I "[dis]like him very much"?
Well, since I appear not to be a fan of Americans in general and particularly the ignorant ones, you may surmise that I would care not particularly for him.
At least.
I had never before posted to FR so my choice of this username was related purely to the fact that I was pointing out some evidence related to the question that my username asks.
So /is/ Kevin a mere rube or something more sinister?
Consider Newt having made the a similarly fallacious statement as Kevin did. Are these guys drinking the same kool-aid or what?
Is Kevin a *victim* of this myth (innocently having read/heard it and mindlessly parroting it)?
Or an intentional *perpetrator* of the falsehood?
Given both his position as a quasi-representative of the Repubs and Newt's inarguable position as a senior one, and both of them grossly inaccurate ... is the dissemination of this this falsehood intentional or accidental?
And if it's accidental, what does it say to the level of scrutiny that these (quasi-)leaders (of the Repubs) apply to the information that consume, believe and finally repeat? What does it say to the rest of 'their story'?
And that's partly why I'm so publicly pillorying Kevin. Given his position and involvement and what one would presume is the incumbent responsibility that is enjoined with participation in the national public stage of political discourse, does accuracy matter to him? Truth?
I can't say for sure but I can look around him and see what he's about, to help me assess his intent.
He's a not-infrequent poster here at FR, going by the username KevinNuPac.
But what I found particularly interesting was his oped peers at the radio station (
http://www.wdtkam.com/oped.html). Half of them seem to write for WND and the whole cabal seems to be politically active and conservatively oriented ... with a full daytime lineup (week-days, at least) of similarly rightist-leaning hosts it would seem to be one of those reputed 'conservative talk radio' stations we hear about, up here.
But wait, the station calls itself "News Talk".
So today I listened a little. The OTA broadcast news consisted of a canned, 5 minute news bit, broadcast on the hour, apparently originating from an organ called "SRN News" (presumed
http://www.srnnews.com/) ... which bills itself as "Christian Radio's Definitive Source for News".
The homepage for the radio station has a news ticker where today at least 100% of the content is credited to CNSNews.com - a website that I have previously examined and determined to be sufficiently specious so as to not be worthy of my taking the time to refute the re-posted stories from them that I encounter from time to time.
The whole of the radio station seems to be more about polemic, partisan talk than news, to the point that I'd pity anyone who got no other source of news or information. But this does seem to explain why so many Americans have a differing view of reality than others more broadly read ... those dopes too drink from the fountain of Kevin's Kool-Aid.
So yeah, I think that I have to lean to thinking that he is conscious of the problem of which he is a part and *chooses* to participate, knowingly, by means that can be arguably described as deceptive, misleading or outright untrue.
(As well, how Kevin reacts to having expressed as fact, this fallacy, and not even backing down when confronted ["Actually that, that's been reported" was his 'response' when the interviewer corrected his speaking the falsehood] goes to his cred. If he publicly advertised his gross mistake and takes it upon himself to educate himself, his listeners (correcting their possible belief in this fallacy) then he gets good marks for adding to the integrity of the well of knowledge. By sitting on his laurels he can be seen to be satisfied with the turd of untruth floating within and hot caring enough, or having enough integrity, to dispel it.)
BTW, add one more ribbon to Kevin's lapel:
---- Vice-President of Hollywood-Hero (www.hollywood-hero.us)
(per:
http://hollywood-hero.us/Hollywood-Hero%20Press%20Statement-The%20Debate%20Show-FINAL.htm)
Part of what makes so egregious this transgression of truth, both by Newt (who at least retracted [though it's hard to ignore the pink elephant belonging to the ambassador of your longest-border neighbour and largest trading partner]) and by Kevin, is that you would think that as people involved in national-level policy debate, that they'd have some freaking clue about how the 19 (not 13 there Kevin) 9-11 ne'er-do-wells entered the country. I mean it's not like it hasn't been in the legitimate news! Does Kevin read?
We're not asking these guys to dredge up the name of the 1984 Oscar winner for best directer here - this little factoid (the means by which the 19 [not 13 there Kevin] entered the USA) should be on the tip of the tongue for any national-level poli player.
My /biggest/ annoyance is with national-level gross stupidity and ignorance more than those who individually succumb to, or proselytize, it. It takes two to adopt a falsehood - the seller and the buyer.
American seems to have an ample supply of both.
Maybe there are those out there who *want* to see some analysis of what they're reading (from FR, the GOP, CNS, WND, Kevin et al).
This link might elucidate a little:
The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/Report10_21_04.pdf
So back to what King said, eh?
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
IMO Kevin is outright dangerous and deserves to have a record of his falsehoods exposed so as to mitigate the damage that he/they might do.
Let this CBC-interview incident comprise chapter 1 of his record.
But no, it's not about Kevin per se: it's about what Kevin did in the general sense, and that Kevin's not the only one doing it.
And on Friday, Kevin made himself out to be a poster-child for the issue.
*Ignorance* is the issue, since ignorant people make ignorant decisions and in the case of the USA, these decisions effect the world.
scott; canada
PS: I don't know if this post crosses the FR line of 'personal attack' since I'm not usually a FR visitor (this Kevin issue is a true exception) and thus don't have any experience with where exactly the line is drawn, but if Kevin is going to publish and participate in the national policy debate ("National Political Columnist for the RNC", etc) then by golly, I think that he opens himself up to logical, cited criticism of the veracity of what he says ... even (and perhaps most importantly) if it's unflattering.