Dear Winston, third edition
Dear Winston,
What can we do about the cowardly corporate media?
Disgusted in Detroit
(This letter is a cut down and altered version of this reader submitted note)
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Dear Disgusted,
How about shipping large chunks of the corporate media off to China? I mean, why should the People’s Republic settle for our manufacturing jobs, when we have so much more to give?
On a serious note, intelligently discussing the sins of the major media, both in terms of its cowardly failure to challenge Bush & Co.’s lies and more generally in its unmistakable drift rightward is a challenge. This is a subject that cuts a broad swath that runs from grand old media outlets (ABC News) that have knuckled under to corporate pressure in subtle ways, to your standard substance-free — defend the status quo at all costs — inside-the-Beltway-Broderism, all the way to purebred right wing outlets epitomized by Fox News. And while they have all committed sins in support of Bush & Co., especially in echoing the drumbeat to war, they don’t all neatly fit into the same bucket. This can make the corporate media a hard skunk to get your fist around.
And to be fair — it’s a perpetual flaw of we liberals, you know, this obsession with fairness — but to be fair, the major media isn’t even universally right wing. As Eric Alterman has pointed out, reporters actually trend slightly left of center on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and the like. It’s when we get to bread and butter economic issues, such as the nation’s growing economic inequality, the pro-corporate viewpoint tends to reign supreme. And given that money means power, this is a very big deal.
What to do about it? Well, it would be nice if we could grow a few more liberal billionaires, or at least convince the few we have to invest heavily in media outlets, but I wouldn’t count on it. Taking over a major holding from a multinational corporation is easier said than done. So even if George Soros were to get it into his head to buy up some national media outlets, it’s far from clear he could pull it off (remember all the fuss it caused when he tried to buy a tiny percentage of a baseball team).
No, I’m afraid we’re going to have to do this the hard way — building from the bottom up. It’s the stuff we’ve talked about again and again at the Last Chance Democracy Café, about growing a liberal infrastructure of think tanks, advocacy groups, media sources and maybe even silly little Internet cafes. And it’s also about giving the media hell when they do act like right wing shills. Fortunately, these are both things the progressive community has started doing much better lately.
And one other thing: When the major media does do a good job, say the way the old Knight Ridder honorably refused to join the pro-war press stampede during the buildup to the Iraq war, we should let them hear about that too: First, because it’s the right thing to do and, second, because it will give us more credibility when we read the riot act to less deserving outlets.
And rest assured that we will have many occasions in the years ahead to do just that.
Sincerely,
Winston
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Dear Winston,
Don’t you think we should impeach Bush preemptively? I mean, if we can have preemptive wars, why not preemptive impeachment?
Mighty Mad in Michigan
(This letter is a cut down and altered version of this reader submitted note)
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Dear Mighty Mad,
Thanks for the clever letter, but actually, no, I don’t agree that Bush should be preemptively impeached: Preemption implies action taken before an offense is committed, whereas Bush has already committed a large bundle of impeachable offenses. He should be impeached for the crimes he’s committed, not for the ones he’s likely to commit in the future.
Of course, neither thing will happen. Impeachment is, after all, a sanction reserved for lying about blowjobs, not for trivial things like lying about wars leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries.
Oh, and if I sound bitter, well, get used to it. I am.
Sincerely,
Winston
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Dear Winston,
If Fox News is as biased as you liberals like to claim it is than why do so many Democratic leaders agree to appear on it? And why have the Democrats agreed to let Fox host a debate among the Democratic presidential contenders?!
Pissed off in Peoria
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Dear Pissed Off.
You’ve got me this time. Frankly, I haven’t a clue.
Sincerely,
Winston
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Dear Winston,
I know I don’t pay as much attention to these things as I should, but can you tell me why liberals are so concerned about the current membership of the Supreme Court?
Mystified in Milwaukee
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Dear Mystified,
Do you remember how back in 2000 the United States Supreme Court, in probably the worst decision in the Court’s history, effectively stole the presidential election for George W. Bush, who, coincidentally, then turned out to be probably the worst president in American history?
Well, that Court was much, much less right wing than the one we have today. So, yeah, we’re scared. We’re scared silly.
Sincerely,
Winston
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Dear Winston,
As an atheist, I’m getting sick and tired of people belittling my right to participate in politics. With all the talk about faith and values these days, it’s almost as though the two concepts have merged in the public mind. And that’s not fair. I’ll happily place my humanist values of honor, tolerance, decency and compassion up against the values of so-called religious leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell any day of the week — including Sunday!
I have nothing against religious liberals like Jim Wallis, but I do get angry when they imply that their faith somehow makes them better than I am.
So, how about it, Winston, am I out of line here?
Heretic from Houston
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Dear Heretic,
You won’t like everything I have to say, but hang with me (because faith-based liberals won’t either).
I’m an agnostic myself. My friend Horace, who is both devoutly religious and devoutly liberal, gets a big kick out of this: He says it’s the only time he’s ever known me to sit the fence on anything.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with him. I’m not sitting on the fence at all. It just so happens that I have a deep and abiding faith that no one, myself included, has the slightest clue of what the true state of divinity is — or for that matter isn’t.
Here’s where I piss you off a little: To be honest, I’ve pretty much decided that liberalism’s faith-based and secular halves need marriage counseling. I sit here on the sideline, luxuriating in my glorious uncertainty, watching a few prominent representatives from both camps battle it out. In the far corner, we have people like you who constantly feel belittled by people like Jim Wallis (Wallis is far from the only leader of the religious left but we’ll use him as an example for purposes of discussion). In the near corner, we have Jim Wallis constantly accusing liberals in general of being antagonistic to religious faith.
Well, here’s my advice to both camps: Get a fucking grip. Contrary to the more hysterical elements of the non-religious liberal community, Wallis (who isn’t uniformly liberal) has never said that faith based liberals are “better” than secular liberals. He has said that liberals in both camps should speak in terms of moral values — most importantly when addressing the issue of poverty (where Wallis is consistently on the right side). So what’s not to like?
Does Wallis think faith is the way to go? Sure, he’s a religious leader. So naturally he thinks he’s right. He’s also a little annoying to some other religious liberals, by the way, in his clear preference for singing the praises of evangelical Christianity over liberal mainline Protestant churches such as the United Church of Christ. But he’s evangelical. So, again, naturally he thinks he’s right. I mean, don’t you think you’re right? But that isn’t the same thing as denigrating others.
On the other hand, Wallis is out of line in constantly alleging (or at least implying) that liberals tend to be anti-religion, or at least hostile to people of faith. That’s a crock. Sure, there are a fair number of individuals out there, many on the Internet, who are virulently against all forms of religious expression, but they’re completely outside the liberal mainstream.
So here’s my advice to both faith-based and secular liberals: Try following the scripture of Rodney King, ”Can’t we all just get along?” Because I’ll let you in on a little secret: Neither one of you will ever have the political pull to regularly win without at least some help from the other.
Now, in fairness (oh-oh, there I go again), I can see how to you as an atheist the recent polling that seems to show that people would be more willing to vote for a killer bee for president than an atheist has to be discouraging. But just keep talking about the values that are important to you. You’ll probably never be in a position to convince the entire American public they’re being unfair: But you can sure make a dent in the religiously inclined folks around you. Show that you respect them; demand that they respect you. And remember many of the greatest minds in human history traveled the exact same path you are on today.
Sincerely,
Winston
More updates of Dear Winston will be coming. Feel free to post questions to Winston in the comments.
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March 1st, 2007 at 8:27 am
Hear, hear, Winston! Especially on the Heretic from Houston one. Atheists and theists on the left need to be fellow travelers on the important stuff. And on the Mystified in Milwaukee one. A far-right-wing Supreme Court (especially if they get one more Justice) does scare me silly. Too bad P.O.’d finally stumped Winston!
March 1st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Winston says, “It just so happens that I have a deep and abiding faith that no one, myself included, has the slightest clue of what the true state of divinity is — or for that matter isn’t.” To me, the burden of proof is always on the one who asserts a fact, in this case, that there is a God, that He created the heavens and the earth, with a purpose in mind, and the He is immanent in the world. Until I see proof that there even is such a thing as a “state of divinity”, I will remain an atheist.
Winston and RJHall are certainly correct that leftist theists and atheists need to work together, that “we need to be fellow travelers on the important stuff.” We first of all need to agree that when it comes to public policy, matters of faith do not count, period, are not part of the important stuff. What do we, as a society, need to do, and how should we go about doing it? If I think something is a good idea, like universal health insurance, and you do, too, then let’s get to work. It makes no difference to me why you think it’s a good idea. So, yeah, get a fucking grip, as Winston said, and let’s get to work. Times awaistin’.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:30 pm
“Disgusted in Detroit” reminds me of one of the jokes of my grandfather, who lived in Detroit almost all his life (except when he was staying with our family), and who told a lot of very bad jokes and puns, some of which were very forced.
I think his very favorite joke was if a person had a sore throat or laryngitis, then that person was sick in Detroit. (I.e. sick in the throat.)
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:39 am
Dear Winston,
I keep reading stuff about how narcissistic we have become, especially young people. Things like Myspace, Facebook and YouTube (and commeters at blogs) are always cited as examples of this dangerous phenomenon that threatens the very foundations of society. It seems to me that these things are symptomatic of the opposite - a craving for connection, commonality and community. What do you think?
Signed, Curious in New Mexico (where the chiles are hot and the women are hotter)
March 12th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Dear Winston,
I think this is the way to go
Don’t you think we should impeach Bush preemptively?
per Mighty Mad in Michigan
April 2nd, 2007 at 7:55 am
Dear Winston,
As one who has argued against both sides of the Theist debate (three if you add your own agnosticism), I am continually perplexed that the most irrelevant (to me anyway) points are the most argued about, and the most relevant seem to be the least discussed.
At the time most of the Bible was written, common thought and science was completely in line with what they wrote. If there had been a prophet who talked about each star as a sun like ours, possibly with planets when no one could even get their mind around the idea of their own planet, or all of human history as less than a hundred thousandth of history, much less DNA, germs, etc., or their implications, the chances are not good that his work would have gotten much of a vote at the councils of Nicene.
On the other hand the failure to find a critter with God (like) powers, combined with being a few thousand years behind in science, as an excuse to argue those points, or reject all religions (especially when there are other religions that assert neither weird science or Deity) strikes me as a failure of thoughtfulness on all sides.
There are many mental structures that do not reflect actual reality, but are very useful in understanding concepts, sometimes as analogy, sometimes as simplification, sometimes as illustration, sometimes as mental framing.
Those structures can be educational and thoughtful, or can be sophist and propagandistic, and it can even be both at the same time. But a discussion at that level is far more useful than scientific correctness, unless it is scientific correctness that is asserted, and then that is usually an easy takedown, and often off the actual subject.