Posted on 10/07/2007 12:22:58 AM PDT by Soft Bigotry
AFTER the 2004 elections, religious conservatives were riding high. Newly anointed by pundits as “values voters” — a more flattering label than “religious right” — they claimed credit for propelling George W. Bush to two terms in the White House. Even in wartime, they had managed to fixate the nation on their pet issues: opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.
Now with the 2008 race taking shape, religious conservatives say they sense they have taken a tumble. Their issues are no longer at the forefront, and their leaders have failed so far to coalesce around a candidate, as they did around Mr. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
What unites them right now is their dismay — even panic — at the idea of Rudolph W. Giuliani as the Republican nominee, because of his support for abortion rights and gay rights, as well as what they regard as a troubling history of marital infidelity. But what to do about it is where they again diverge, with some religious conservatives last week threatening to bolt to a third party if Mr. Giuliani gets the nomination, and others arguing that this is the sure road to defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That said, there is another bias that exists therer--cultural bias.
It is still 14 months before the election, and I am neither going to be stampeded into anxiety by NYT nor told who to vote for by Dr. Dobson et al. Have a blessed weekend, SB.
vaudine
“It is still 14 months before the election, and I am neither going to be stampeded into anxiety by NYT nor told who to vote for by Dr. Dobson et al”
You don’t care who the nominee is? You’re not going to vote in the primary?
I didn’t say it didn’t exist;
I just happen to find the kneejerk “bias!” response to be boring and intellectually lazy.
How about reading the article and then criticizing it?
It isn’t an editorial; it’s discussing real things that are happening right now.
I just think the NYT is writing this with glee and hoping to stir up a worse controversy. Most of the people at NYT couldn't care less about the Christian right except as a target for speculation, exaggeration, and trivialization.
Christian conservatives are not one big block of people with one mind who are all going to come to the same conclusion about the best nominee. However, NYT's writers do see us that way--a block of fairly stupid, easily led nonentities. If they sense a splintering of the group(s) they are going to aid and abet such splintering by piling on and keeping the pot stirred..
vaudine
The biggest tumble the “values voters” are going to take, is that in their absence, almost certainly Herself, the Cold and Joyless, will eke out a win, and the inability to get out the Christian agenda will be many times greater than it now seems.
There is an outside chance that an appeal may be made to Rudy Giuliani, and he would make some accommodation with these voters. But expect exactly ZERO response from Herself. Most of the other potential candidates on the Republican side have at least lukewarm support for the agenda of these evangelicals, even Mitt Romney, whom these same evangelicals despise with a passion because they think his Christianity is somehow not “pure” enough.
But the remainder of the field of candidates presented by the Democraticans has less sympathy for the “values voters” than even Herself, if that is possible.
Talk about appointing yourself to having “no place to go”. Some 95% of the woe in this world is self-induced, as much by inaction as by bad behavior.
” stampeded into anxiety by NYT”
That’s a good observation, accurate too, I agree. I’ve noticed most articles about the right are gloom and doom predictions. Never a positive about anyone on our deep presidential bench, just echos of Hillary’s sure fire lead over all comers on both sides. It’s as if we might as well fold our tents, along with her democrat primary opponents, because no one can beat her.
Didn't read the entire article as I won't register with NYT. However, the parts that are posted reveal the article is not only clearly an editorial but it is dripping with liberal smugness. It's a concern that you would post something without being able to recognize this.
Play devil's advocate for a moment; wouldn't the people at DU say the exact same thing you just did if a Fox News or WSJ article were posted there?
Isn't it telling to anyone else that the only thing the left and the right have in common is a distrust of the media? At some point, people are just people - once you start embracing conspiracy theories about entire groups of people, you're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from being a "9/11 Truther" or a JFK assassination kook.
whaddaya expect from the new york times? it’s all intellectual poo-poo.
I'm always amused when a Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, or Wolf Blitzer take comfort in getting hate mail from both political sides. They say that proves they are fair and balanced. What it really proves is what whores they are to pick and choose stories they can cover which allows them to pander to either side, and they do that for ratings, not out of political principle.
Back during the Carter Administration, I subscribed to the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report. It documented journalistic bias, and was able to do so ad nauseum.I learned that the bias exists - a fact which I am now almost astonished to learn that I ever didn't know - but quickly became bored by the interminable telling of examples of the self-same phenomenon. The question quickly became not is there "bias in the media" but why is there "bias in the media?" I allowed my AIM Report subscription to lapse, and have spent the succeeding generation of time analyzing the latter question.
Shortly after 9/11 I started a thread, Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate, to document my findings. And I have continuously updated that thread ever since. The short answer to the question why is there "bias in the media" is a couple of other questions - "what is "the media," and why do people think it should not be "biased?"
"The media" is a generality to include journalism (topical nonfiction) and movies and TV shows (fiction). I stipulate that movies and TV shows do have socialist tendencies embedded in them, but IMHO it's ridiculous to call that "bias" because there is actually no even colorable argument that the writers of those entertainments have any obligation to avoid expressing their own viewpoint. What would be the point in fiction which had no POV?
So the burr under our saddle is not so much fiction as it is journalism. But there are local freebie newspapers today which don't feature news at all. They are mostly vehicles for local advertising, and their articles are not written to inform about distant matters but about what is happening in the county in which they operate. They are mostly weeklies. They operate on a human scale, and their operators are accessible. And that is the way all newspapers were in the founding era. Some of those newspapers did not even have deadlines at all; they were printed when the printer was good and ready.
So the founding era newspapers were far more accessible, far more humble affairs than the big-market papers we are accustomed to today. Hamilton and Jefferson sponsored competing newspapers in which to wage their partisan battles, and neither pretended to be anything but the opinion of human beings. Printers of newspapers generally didn't have access to news from Washington, New York, or Europe any faster than the local shopkeeper did.
The difference between Founding Era journalism and modern Big Journalism is "the wire." The difference is the telegraph and the Associated Press. That is what accounts for the homogeneous nature of modern journalism, and that is what accounts for journalism's self-proclaimed "objectivity." Journalism's self-proclaimed objectivity was developed to answer the concerns which naturally were aroused by the advent and aggressive expansion of the AP. Because the dangers of monopoly news reporting were patent when that AP reporting was transmitted via individually edited newspapers, no less so than when it is transmitted by government-licensed broadcasters.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the AP was able to monopolize the rapid and efficient transmission of journalism reports. Before the telegraph, that was utterly impossible; with the telegraph rapid transmission was possible but expensive, and efficiency was paramount. With the advent of the Internet, efficiency is no longer an issue; a blogger or FReeper anywhere in the world can report to the entire world at large.
So in logic, the AP is a dead man walking - a gatekeeper when the walls are down. It is taking time for the word to get out, and for habits of thought to change, but eventually the conceit that it is necessary to defer to the superior "objectivity" of someone just because they have access to "the wire" will be seen for the patent fraud that it always was. FreeRepublic is a "wire" unto itself, accessible to all, and willing to carry the reports of all who do not claim that journalism is objective, and are therefore evil (in the sight of the AP) "conservatives."
Nice analogy...
BTTT
Thanks for posting this article. It seems to do a very good job laying out the problem that we are facing. Also, I agree with you that people should actually read the article before screaming that the New York Times is biased. The paper may often be biased but this seems to be a well researched and accurate article.
Rudy, however, will never rise above 30% and is already dead in the water.
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