Fair, Balanced and Classy
Fox News, unhampered by decency, free from the travails of civility.
posted by JRB at 10:05 AM
A Forum for the Fellas, their Friends and Families. The Fellas are a cohort of brothers whom the Lord saw fit to draw together in friendship and adventure in His Kingdom.
posted by JRB at 10:05 AM
8 Comments:
Oh, please Jeff. Easy on the hyberbole lest your head accidentially explode.
That was a stupid statement just like a hundred other stupid statements coming from the mouths of commentators--both liberal, conservative, and truly moderate--this campaign season.
Indeed, we've seen racial demagoguery joined this presidential election year with gender (toward Hillary) and age demagoguery (toward McCain).
Some has been more subtle but all is typical (though, some of the gender discrimination directed toward HRC was especially revolting in the Dem. primary).
Anyhow, I'd probably save the claims of indecency and uncivility for something a little substantive than a rogue guest among the thousands of commentators.
You know, like Olbermann.
It wasn't the pundit. It was the banner, not rogue, not unscripted. In fact, it was a script, written, edited and directed.
Context is everything.
Hey, it's your blog, so you should certainly pontificate however you see fit regardless of how consistent it may not be.
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by "how consistent it may not be." What I see here is JRB's attempt to show the dissonance between the slogan "fair and balanced" and the uncouth headline reading "Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama's Baby Mama!" Surely the inconsistency is there. That clash of self-determined slogan and intentional, edited headline seems to be a comportment problem for this particular news association, at least in this particular case.
Let's not let the conversation on this blog become devoid of epistemic virtue, lest we fall prey to the very lack of decency that seems to be at the root of the particular and unfortunate case of the banner referenced in the original post.
First of all, JRB and I regularly spar in sarcastic terms here at the law school. So, comments like "heads accidently exploding" shouldn't be taken too seriously.
On the specific issue, my point is that singling out Fox News (which I don't watch--I focus on CNN) is an overly narrow focus if the commentary is about media decency and civility in general.
Now, if his comment was a singularly addressing this instance, then--yeah--it was a dumb move by Fox. However, my impression from reading it was that it was more of a general comment using this specific instance as an example.
If that's the case, then casting stones at one, sinlge media source these days is myopic.
After all, MSNBC has essentially become the Fox News for the left with Olbermann himself making especially uncivil and outrageous statements regarding politicians.
Yet, I noticed no outraged blog entries when K.O. was telling the U.S. President to "go to hell" or opining that HRC was subhuman for awkwardly, yet accurately, referencing RFK's assasination as an unexpected event that happened well into the primary season.
Anyhow, I've had several conversations with this blog owner about ideology vs. partisanship and the merits of the former over the latter.
Of course, I remember awhile back what happened to the guy who expressed a different viewpoint on this blog. He certainly wasn't witnessed to.
Eric is a co-owner of this blog.
That last comment was from me, JRB, not jduckbaker, who incidentally also is a co-owner of this blog.
Eric interprets the post as I intended it.
No surprise there, of course. We've been interpreting each other for fifteen years this month.
Post a Comment
<< Home