Was The Economist always this left-leaning?

I used to read the Economist much more diligently than I do today.  Back in college, it was in my mind the “right-leaning” publication I read to keep balanced.  Later on, it was the business-centric publication that I read to keep an eye on foreign affairs.  I let my interest lapse and I haven’t regularly read the magazine (or “newspaper” as they call it) for a few years.

Until this weekend.  I was on the train to my choir dress rehearsal when I realized I’d left my Kindle at home.  (AAUUGGGHHH!  Nightmares!!)  Peeved, but resigned, I stopped by CVS to buy an Economist for rehearsal downtime and the train ride back.

As I read, I was at first amused, then surprised, then astonished by the continuous leftward slant.  The first two sections yielded gems such as:

- “What’s more, the parts of the world where populations are growing fastest are also those most vulnerable to climate change, and a rising population will exacerbate the consequences of global warming — water shortages, mass migration, declining food yields.”

- “Only Chinese-style coercion would bring [population growth] down much below [8.5 billion]; and forcing poor people to have fewer children than they want because the rich consume too many of the world’s resources would be immoral.”

- “Falling fertility may be making poor people’s lives better, but it cannot save the Earth.  That lies in our own hands.”

- “One of the aims of imprisonment is to give miscreants a shove in the right direction, through job-training, Jesus or whatever does the trick.  Allowing prisoners to vote will not magically reconnect them with society, but it will probably do more good than excluding them.”

- “Serving prisoners are not numerous enough to swing many elections.  But once a government uses disenfranchisement as a sanction, it is tempted to take things further.  Consider those American states where the suspension of prisoners’ votes has morphed into a lifelong ban; in Republican-controlled Florida, for instance, nearly a third of black men cannot vote — enough to have swung the 2000 presidential election.”

- (in envisioning a poor farmer industrializing and moving towards greater wealth/lower fertility) “Now imagine you are a bit richer.  You may have moved to a town, or your village may have grown.  Schools, markets and factories are within reach.  And suddenly, the incentives change. [snip] Perhaps the state provides a pension and you no longer need children to look after you.  And perhaps your wife is no longer willing to bear endless offspring.”  (Really?  The only way to have retirement wealth is to be pensioned off by the state?  And the only reason you have fewer children is because your wife finally put her foot down and stopped popping them out?)

- “The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born.  The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.”  (Thanks.  Thanks so much.)

- “Japan and southern Europe have clung to older ways, discouraging women from working and frowning on single-parent families; there, fertility has stayed low, presumably because women resist what they see as unwelcome social pressure by having fewer children.”  (That is quite a presumption.  Me, I’d assume that having one working parent versus two working parents encourage fewer children because you’re got fewer people earning money to support them.  No, they never provide any sort of reasoning or backup for their statement.)

So what gives, folks?  I used to think The Economist was perfectly middle-of-the-road.  Now, to my eyes, it has a conspicuously leftward slant.

I know that in England even the Right leans Left.  But has this slant increased in the last few years?  Or is it just that I’m looking with new eyes?

Thoughts on “hate crimes”

“Hate crimes” –  yet another area where I’ve changed my opinion as a result of migration to The Dark Side.

Ten years ago I was in favor of hate crime legislation.  My young, dewy-eyed self earnestly wished to protect “victimized” groups such as gays, bisexuals, people of color, etc.  I thought that members of such a group were endangered simply by who they were, and therefore deserved an extra measure of protection from a society that had failed them.

As you can tell, I see things differently now.  I think that hate crimes legislation creates favored groups, the members of which are placed above the ordinary members of society.  Why is it worse to sucker-punch a black man than to sucker-punch a white man?  Why is it more evil to rape a lesbian than a heterosexual woman?

Why is more evil to beat up a fat woman than to beat up a skinny woman?

Tell me how, exactly, the victim was “discriminated against” for being fat.  Some poor excuse for a woman beat up Marsha Coupe while screaming “Fattie.”  True, I didn’t see that the perp was arrested and charged, but do you really think that has anything to do with Ms. Coupe’s size?  Or do you think there’s a rampant culture of thuggery in which bullies do not get punished?  (Or at least, they rarely get punished, and then whine about it.)

Furthermore, how does one tell if the perpetrator did so with “hate” in his/her heart, foremost?  What if she did it out of rage?  Out of depression?  Out of greed, or lust?  Out of laziness in selecting what looked like an easy victim?  Would it be less of a crime if the perp screamed “Gimme your wallet!” while beating Ms. Coupe?

True, we do try to divine intent when a crime is committed, but that is to differentiate between accidental and non-accidental incidents.  A woman who accidentally hits her neighbor with a car is very different from a woman who has studied the neighbor’s habits, has a schedule of his entry and exit from work, and who trailed him for three blocks before making contact.

So there are my thoughts on my subject.  It boils down to this:

Why is my life and person less worthy of protection than someone with darker skin or a different sexual orientation?

(Breda had similar thoughts)

You people suck.

Bias?  What bias?

In a nutshell — they carefully zoomed in on the AR-15 so that you couldn’t see any (black) skin of the owner, then complained about white racists packing heat.  Sweet!

(h/t Hot Air)

I guess not everyone likes Michelle as much as I do

I peeled my hard-boiled egg, sprinkled a paper towel with garlic powder and salt for dipping and clicked on Michelle’s website for my normal breakfast-at-my-desk browsing.

Only to see this:

Aw, drat!  They’re finally taking away all of our political blog access!

Hmmmm.  ALL of it?

 

As Mike commented, “But those are moderate, legitimate news sources!”

Snort.

P.S.  Four hours later Michelle is up and running.  I wonder what happened?

We interrupt this barrage of levity . . .

. . . with a small interlude of gravitas.  If you’ve been enjoying the warm-and-fuzzy posts, please feel free to skip this one.

Ace replied recently to a comma about media bias, saying

“It does seem absurd to constantly bash the media. It is as pointless as arguing with glaciers.

But as futile as it is, it is simply too big a part of blogging/alt media to ever give up. . The media is, for better or worse (worse mostly), our principal vehicle for fact. Everyone relies up on it, even conservatives. It is too important to make sure they’re not lying and to point out when they are to “just deal with it and move on.”

There is also a catharsis aspect here. The media pisses people off, including myself. Part of the appeal of blogs and blog-commenting is the shout-at-the-tv aspect, that is, when you’re tired of shouting at the tv and want to say it “to the world,” as it were. That may be kind of an illusion itself, but is, for me and a lot of people, an appealing illusion.”  (end quoted response)

I have to admit there is a certain cringe factor in me, just out of the sheer numbing repetitiveness of it, when I write my sixty three billionth post on media bias. A lot of readers are probably less than thrilled to see a not-so-fresh addition to the ever-growing oevure.

Here’s my take: 

1) Easy blog fodder should never be turned down.  (Duh!)

2) This is an issue that NEEDS 63 billion posts.  Look, for every one person out there who is sick of the Name-That-Party game and rolls his/her eyes at ANOTHER media bias post, there are probably five who are like I was and DO NOT SEE the media bias at all.

As I’ve written before, I was a PoliSci major at Ye Olde Liberal Arts College.  I am quite confident that I spent more hours per day reading more different types of news sources than the average bear.  And I was NOT ABLE to see the blatant bias that was being fed to me, day after day, week after week, source after liberal MSM source.

That’s two reasons.

3) I have a half-remembered quote struggling on my keyboard; something to the effect of, “In the time it takes for the truth to come out, the lie has circulated a hundred times round the world already.”  Today’s example of that comes courtesy of LGF and Confederate Yankee; the backup quoted below is from LawHawk:

The video shows two men working over the body of a victim. One of the men giving chest compressions while the other fiddles with the monitor and appears to put EEG leads on the victim. They declare him dead.

If that was the end of the story, it would seem fishy enough, because you don’t give chest compressions to the victim’s abdomen as the guy on the right was doing. You also don’t fiddle with a monitor that isn’t hooked up to the victim although there’s several rough cuts in the video so that you can’t exactly tell the order of the footage.

And now CNN has sent the video down the memory hole without explanation.  I may be quite confident that it was a fake, every doctor or media or Ambulance Driver or CPR trainee may be quite confident it was a fake, but in the meantime CNN has broadcasted that damning video to the farthest corners of the earth.  It’s too late.  Without 24/7 apologies explaining exactly how they screwed up (snort), there are now millions of people who will accept this video as gospel truth. 

(For a stellar example, take a half hour and go through the Second Draft site about Mohammed Al-Durah.  When I first did I was gobsmacked, flabbergasted, horrified, shocked, disbelieving, incredulous and knocked on my ass.  Now I look at it cynically and think, Yeah, big surprise there.)

Because my awakening to media bias was such a huge part of my political conversion to The Dark Side (wink), I don’t think there CAN be enough documentation on this issue.  Remember, a lot of people on the leftward side of the spectrum think the media is overwhelmingly biased . . . . towards the RIGHT.

For those who don’t have a grasp of numbers or statistics, it’s important to give us as many examples as possible of media bias.  I don’t remember names, numbers, dates or sometimes even centuries, but I remember STORIES.  Keep the stories coming, so I can help do my part to combat MSM bias.

Teaching – ur doin it rong.

I found it via Michelle and it’s been linked to eight-gazillion sites already, but just in case you live on the moon and haven’t come across it, go here for the original story.

To sum up: A mean, nasty elementary school teacher polled her students for their presidential candidates, responded to two McCain fans with “Oh Lord, John McCain!” and “Oh Jesus, John McCain!”, put a little girl whose father was in the military on the spot and almost made her cry while declaring “It’s a senseless war!”, and was very pleased when her classroom voted Obama in a mock poll.

Cue the chorus:  “What, exactly, did that have to do with reading, writing and ‘rithmatic?”  Answer:  “Nothing, of course!”

Oh, and also, her grammar was atrocious.

I had a discussion once with a friend (let’s call her Betty) whose life passion was to become a teacher for underprivileged children in big cities.  She was very very specific about the fact that she did NOT want to teach rich children in cushy private schools, even though it would have given her a better standard of living and saved her from years of graduate school.  (Because of the more strict regulations/requirements for public school teachers, many graduates of Ye Olde Liberal Arts College began teaching in private schools the year after they graduated.  She refused that route.)

I have never failed to admire her passion, her dedication, her willingness to devote her life and forego her comforts in order to follow her calling.

What I couldn’t agree with was her equally passionate belief that her job was to change the minds of thirty children a year and by doing so change the world.

She believed it was her job to teach children to be less greedy, to share their belongings, to realize that the world is one big village, that people can be BETTER than capitalism.

It will shock readers of this blog that I did not agree with Betty on this point.  (Not.)  Here I have to give Betty massive props — we had a long and involved discussion comparing our points of view and she was more than willing to have her assumptions challenged, which I as usual did with all the delicacy and sophistication of a sledgehammer.  Brava, Betty!

What I thought, and tried to convey, was that it was not her job to bring a particular politician discourse into the classroom.  I pointed out that her view — that capitalism was bad, that children could have higher aspirations — was clearly on the left side of the political doctrine.  I asked how she would feel if a teacher began instructing her children, or her friends’ children, to favor stereotypically “right” points of view — that homosexuality was evil, that poor people deserved to be poor, that atheists were destined for hell, etc.  (Note – I said “stereotypical”, and I specified that at the time.  That’s not what I consider actual conservative viewpoints — it’s what liberals incorrectly think are “right” viewpoints – and I specified that too.)

She agreed that she wouldn’t like the flip side, but she was not real happy or comfortable with the resulting conclusion.  As Betty put it, “But if that’s not my job as a teacher, then what have I sacrificed all this for?”

I could never be a teacher.  I do not have the requisite patience nor sufficient ability to explain concepts that just “click” with me.  That’s why I admire Betty, and others like her, so greatly.

But I remember the best teachers in my life, starting from my first grade teacher (Mrs. Montgomery), my third grade teacher (Mrs. MacMillan), especially my sixth-grade teacher (Mrs. Turak), and a number of junior high school and high school teachers.  I remember their passion for teaching and their absolute devotion to my learning grammar, history, math and the rest.  The best teachers managed to make their lessons so dramatic and interesting that STILL, to this day, I owe Mrs. Turak my sketchy knowledge of Thermopolae and the Battle of Marathon, as well as Watership Down and Scipio Africanus.  Oh, and she’s the only reason I memorized the first part of the Declaration of Independence.

Here’s the other thing I remember about those greatest of my teachers: I have absolutely no idea whether they voted Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal.

I owe them a great debt and I will never forget them or stop being appreciative for their gift of teaching . . . WITHOUT any political bias, of either flavor.

And that is how it should be. 

(P.S. Please mind the usual disclaimer — I may not share her politics, but so what?  Betty’s a friend of mine, and a good one.  Diss her and you get the sledgehammer. )

Through the looking glass

An entertaining glance at the fictional veep candidate Sarah Biden:

In what has now become a disturbing pattern, the Alaska governor seems either unable or unwilling to avoid embarrassing statements that are often as untrue as they are outrageous. Recently, for example, in an exclusive interview with news anchor Katie Couric, Palin gushed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ” Apparently the former Alaskan beauty queen failed to realize that in 1929 there was neither widespread television nor was Franklin Roosevelt even President. [snip]

Palin may have had some experience in Alaskan politics, but at times the former small-town mayor seems unaware of the pressures of running a national campaign in a diverse society. For example, Palin — who has had past associations with reactionary groups — caused a storm earlier when she characterized Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama in seemingly racialist terms: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Such stereotyping suggested that the Alaskan was not aware of the multiracial nature of American politics — an impression confirmed when in her earlier gubernatorial run, she had once suggested that to enter a donut shop was synonymous with meeting an Indian immigrant.

(For anyone unfamiliar with the context — those, and many others in the article, are actual gaffes by Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate.)

Sadly, it’s BFD.  As Jonah Goldberg so memorably wrote,

Biden could shout on “Meet the Press,” “Get these squirrels off of me!” and the collective response would be, “There goes Joe again.” But if Palin flubs the name of the deputy agriculture minister of Kyrgyzstan, the media will blow their whistles saying she’s unprepared for the job.

Exit question: Mike’s looking forward to the SNL skit on the Veep debate at least as much as the debate itself.  Do you think the Biden-actor will actually scream, “Get these squirrels off of me!” ?

Compare!

What liberal bias?  It’s just coincidence, surely . . .

Note that The Corner is NOT liberal media; the above is a roundup of campaign headlines for the day, and I’m criticizing the headlines not the compilation.  Compare the words used:

McCain:  “Stumbles” “Laboring” “After Many Years of Opposition” “Dems Hit”  (“Blackberry” is also negative if you’ve heard about that gaffe)

Obama: ”Looks” “Looks” “Raises Millions” “Lashes Out” 

It would have been equally accurate to write something like “Obama Struggles to Regain Momentum,” you know.  But that wouldn’t fly at the WaPo.

What liberal bias? 

 . . . and don’t call me Shirley.

It’s like that game of Telephone

Y’all remember Telephone, right?  A group of kids sit in a line.  The first person whispers to the second person, who whispers to the third, etc., etc.  Variations on the game allow each person to change one word, or alternately to change nothing but disallow whispering the phrase more than once.  At the end of the line, the last kid says out loud what s/he heard, and everyone laughs at how different it was than the original phrase.

It won’t surprise any of the politics-junkies here, but Newsbusters runs down a real-live game of Telephone: Start with “Bush: 8,000 US troops to leave Iraq” and end up with “Bush to Keep Iraq Troop Levels Steady Until After He Leaves Office.”