Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Welcome to Ought Seven

Hi-ho, back from the hustings. Too many things to think about - dead President, dead Godfather of Soul, dead Frankenstein, dead Dictator. So I'll just pick one thing.

I have enjoyed at the year end the recounting all of the horribly inaccurate predictions made by many right wing talking heads. Unfortunately, it came in the context of the question: Why is anyone still listening to these morons? They still show up on the Op-Ed pages, and on Sunday morning TV shows. Why is there so little interest in talking to people, like Howard Dean, or James Webb, who Got It Right? I don't understand the media's fetish for the High Priests of Bad Calls.

Like Bill Kristol, who in late November 2005, said:
Pelosi's endorsement today of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq makes the House Democrats the party of defeat, the party of surrender. Bush's strong speech today means the GOP is likely to be--if Republican Congressmen just keep their nerve--the party of victory. Now it is possible that the situation in Iraq will worsen over the next year. If that happens, Bush and the GOP are in deep trouble. They would have been if Pelosi had said nothing. But it is much more likely that the situation in Iraq will stay more or less the same, or improve. In either case, Republicans will benefit from being the party of victory.

This is only one in a long line of "the internet is a fad" -type idiocies courtesy of Mr. Kristol.

Or commentator Mark Steyn, who dropped this beauty on us in mid-2005:

I think Iraq is on the wane as a domestic policy issue in the US. American troops will be there for some time, but increasingly in a supporting role to the new Iraqi forces.

My bet is that enough of the American people are made of sterner stuff, and that Democrats who continue to argue for retreat – and thus defeat - will find the anti-Iraq drum has less and less resonance. . .


Oops!

Would it be so hard for the news shows to do a little research and then ask these guys what's up?

"Um, Mr. Kristol, you have an amazing track record for coming on this show and making predictions that have turned out not to be the case? I understand that you said what you believed at the time but the fact is, you were wrong, were you not? So why should your predictions continue to have any credibility? Why should we even have you on?"

(I can dream, can't I?)

2 Comments:

Blogger cuznate said...

"News" pundits have become the same as entertainment pundits (e.g.sports media figures, british royal followers and hollywood gossip colunists), they sell a product and that product is themselves. They sell the concept that they have some authority and/or insight into divining "what's really going on" and they need to continue selling their own brand of insight constantly. And with the news, that usually means that they brand themselves one way or another and live their lives as a "conservative pundit" or "liberal columnist." Which is odd, because shouldn't someone we listen to analyze current events be fairly neutral?

All this is to say, yes, I agree, it boggles my mind how badly some people get things wrong and are still listened to. But I would simply point to John Madden, quite possibly the least insightful football commentator out there (yes, John, we all understand that linemen need some amount of girth and when they hit something it might go 'wham'), and yet one of the more entertaining to listen to. People want to be entertained by current events, not to understand them.

All of life is a play, isn't that the line? Or as Madden would say, all of life goes wham!

(p.s. great time over the holidays, very glad you joined us)

12:41 PM  
Blogger Ish said...

Likewise!

Current events shows like Meet the Press etc., to say nothing of cable news, have completely ceded any claim to providing a service. They are entertainment. And they constantly conflate balance with objectivity. To whit:

Balance:

"Dem X said something.
Repub Y responded with something else.

In sports news..."

Objectivity:

"Dem X said something supported by facts.
Repub Y said something that was completely divorced from reality."

The same works in reverse if Dem X is full 'o' shit, too.

3:29 PM  

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