Posted by: ed ||
11/14/2005 17:58 ||
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Very little mention of the peers of the gangsters, that is, the anarchists, skinheads, etc., who share their domain.
The comparison is important because these vaguely-Muslim young men have more in common with anarchists and other street punks than they do with Islamists. For them, Islam is an affiliation, not a culture. They take from it a few symbols, and appreciate the license and misogeny it offers. It is like their "gang colors".
What they know of disorder is learned from others on the street, their peers and their mentors.
For more than two weeks, France has faced rioting in the downtrodden suburbs of Paris. Disgruntled youth took to the streets and set fire to cars and buildings, vandalized public transportation vehicles, assaulted police officers and firemen â even firebombed a subway. While it appears that the worst of the violence has dissipated, the problems that led to this eruption still remain. Many have chalked up the rebellion to a failure on the part of the French government to provide enough jobs for these youths (who are mostly the children of North African Muslim immigrants). Unemployment is rampant in this demographic (reaching as high as 60 percent in some regions), but the idea that this civil unrest is the result of an economic failure on behalf of the French government doesnât see the full picture.
More accurately, this is the result of an economic failure coupled with a social and cultural failure on behalf of the French government as well as French society. Despite the massive influx of immigrants to the country, the French government has made no effort to assimilate or integrate these immigrants into society. To the contrary: There have been several agreements between European governments and the Arab League guaranteeing that Muslim immigrants to Europe would be in no way compelled to assimilate into the society of their new homes.
As Abraham Lincoln once said: âA house divided against itself cannot stand.â France cannot survive with a separatist minority within itself, especially when the birth rate of that minority surpasses that of the native French. With the French economy stagnant and unemployment already above 10 percent, the French government is not in a position to promise jobs to native citizens with college degrees, let alone the children of immigrants with less education. The government should focus on assimilating and integrating those minorities who wish to do so, while expelling those who do not. The cause of these riots goes far beyond economics, and the sooner the French government admits that, the sooner â and more easily â the situation will be dealt with. Thereâs no simple, pleasant solution to this situation, but the alternative is much worse.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/14/2005 08:05 ||
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France Canât Survive with Separatist Minority
Interesting statement in light of the history of the Bretons in NW France.
How many cars have the Bretons torched this week? This year? Ever?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/14/2005 15:46 Comments ||
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There have been several agreements between European governments and the Arab League guaranteeing that Muslim immigrants to Europe would be in no way compelled to assimilate into the society of their new homes.
How do I appease thee? Let me count the ways.
Complete and total raving morons. Begging for societal implosion could not produce more damaging results.
I don't believe that the current riots in France are about Islam. This puts me to the "left" of a great many conservative Nostradamuses who've prophesized for quite awhile that France's North African and other Muslim "immigrants" were going to bring jihad to the home front. I don't think their predictions are necessarily wrong: it's just that this is at best a dress rehearsal.
I put "immigrants" in quotation marks for the simple reason that most of the rioters are no such thing - they were born in France and hold French passports. Their parents were from former French colonies. But the French establishment - a term I use in the most Catholic sense possible so as to include Katie Couric and her colleagues - has had a very hard time coming up with a useful vocabulary to describe these events. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister, came out of the blocks with "scum" but the uncharacteristic nuance didn't go over well in a culture which has always believed there are two sides of the story for every murderer, never mind window-smashers.
We seem to have settled on "youths," which is as correct as "Muslims" and marginally more accurate than "immigrants," but it will hardly do. It's not as if airport screeners are going to keep a keener eye on young blond Frenchmen named Jacques because a bunch of guys named Abdul and Hamid looted the local brasserie. And then there's the fact that there's very little evidence that these "youths" are particularly pious Muslims. I don't mean to say that a devout Muslim would never break the peace - I think that theory has been sufficiently falsified in recent years so as to be inoperative.
Rather, these "youths" appear to be closer to nothing than any specific something - except of course rioters. And it's in the rioting that these kids get meaning. Rioting is how they appear on the Gallic radar system. They aren't les Muslimerables so much as les invisibles.
The Islamic leadership in France would clearly and dearly love to have this be a Muslim riot so that they could then stop it and become true Left Bank Arafats, able to fire up a rent-a-mob whenever convenient so as to shake down the government for one concession after another. That's why the French government is so desperate to prevent the imams from becoming middlemen. If they stop the riots, these will become Islamic riots even though they didn't start as such. And once Islamified, the conservative Nostradamus scenarios kick in and we can all get ready for talk of "two-state solutions," the need to make Paris an "international city," etc.
The reason the youths are invisible is undoubtedly in part because they are Muslim, but also because the French are snobs and racists (but excellent dancers). And, unlike in America, where snobbery, racism and anti-Muslim bigotry can all operate independently of each other, in France they're always served as a menage a trois. If a resume arrives at the patisserie with the name Hamid on it, it gets trashed without the recipient wondering whether he was unfair to a Muslim, a black, an immigrant or even a French citizen.
But they are invisible for another reason. The French "social model" which pays wealthy, educated, people not to work much and prevents poor and desperate ones from working at all, simply has no solution for what to do with these surplus Frenchmen. So they get shunted off to the Islamic Bantustans surrounding the capital where social pathologies fester.
The fact that France is more likely to embrace Velveeta as the national cheese than fix this system spells long-term disaster for France. Sarkozy had the right idea calling the rioters scum not only because rioters tend to be exactly that, but also because calling them much of anything else would politicize the rioters into "rebels." The long-term problem is that history shows that if you treat people like the invisibles like scum long enough, they'll become rebels. And that's when the battle for Gaulistan will truly begin.
Examiner columnist Jonah Goldberg is editor at large at the National Review Online and a syndicated columnist.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/14/2005 07:55 ||
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They are manipulable street "scum" to be used by an elite: "scum." The link between criminality and Islam, a favorite in our prisons, justifies all manners of mayhem in the name their deity. This is how you do it when you do not get the Saudi checks. You get them out on the street through the net, word of mouth besides this fun. The Frenchman the Arab; can you can't tell them apart?
The War Party is going bonkers That's the San Francisco Clown-boy's reference to Republicans, these days â maybe it's the indictment of Scooter Libby. Or the way the war itself is going â badly. In any case, the war's proponents seem to be in a downward spiral of what can only be described as utter craziness. Why else would this administration â or, at least, the office of the vice president â be openly pushing to exempt the CIA from U.S. laws against torture?
America, from the "shining city on a hill" to the dark dungeon of sadistic torturers. What a comedown! Abu Ghraib, we were told, was an "aberration." Now they want to make it a policy. How low can we go? So just after the massacre of Arab women, children, and menfolk at a wedding, Raimondo's first commentary is one that equates us with the Islamist murderers.
We're supposed to be spreading "democracy" and "freedom" throughout the Middle East, according to this administration and its Washington amen corner, but how is human liberty advanced by frying Iraqi civilians with incendiary phosphorous bombs [video]?
If that isn't a war crime, then nothing is.
Check out the whole video, produced by the Italian station RAI, here â and you tell me if we haven't descended into barbarism. It is hard to descend into something that you're already mired in, according to Justa Rastaman's own previous writings. In "Hiroshima Mon Amour", Raimondo called Americans barbarians for the A-Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent celebrations of those actions that ultimately saved hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of American and Japanese lives.
What strikes me about the Italian video occurs in an interview with two American soldiers â witnesses to this horror â in which one of them describes his orders to kill "anything that moves" in the Fallujah free-fire zone. That's what a free-fire zone entails, idiot.
What the U.S. government is doing in Iraq is precisely what Milosevic was accused of in Kovoso: targeting a population for near-extermination and dispersal, i.e., "ethnic cleansing." Fallujah, as this video proves, was "cleansed" in a phosphorescent lake of fire.
The administration and its supporters continually refer to the insurgents in Iraq as "terrorists" â but if we're using a napalm-like substance to bomb population centers like Fallujah, then what are we? See, we're the terrorists or we're just like them.
The warlords of Washington aren't exporting "democracy" â they're exporting terrorism.
Not only is this monstrous, it's incredibly stupid: is this how we're trying to build support for "democracy" in the wider Arab world? We might as well keep Karen Hughes at home. The poor woman already has an impossible job â but that video of burnt Iraqi women and children, the skin hanging off their bodies, their melted faces coagulating into a grimace of universal sorrow, makes her a moving target. ...
If you can manage to wade through the rest of this mental excrement, then you've got real guts.
Posted by: The Happy Fliegerabwehrkanonen ||
11/14/2005 08:11 ||
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Note that the nutjobs leave out an important detail about Fallujah: the US gave civilians a month to clear out of town.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
11/14/2005 9:18 Comments ||
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For an excellent look into the dark soul of Raimondo, take a look at this guy's page:
Posted by: Floating Stone ||
11/14/2005 9:22 Comments ||
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The video Raimondo is talking about has been well debunked as bullshit by now. That should be the consentration on arguing against this sort of thing. He believes the strawman but it is a strawman anyway and a strawman that will make its way into the public belief if people give it an inch.
#4
Hey, it's just one sad sap's rant. And not a very good one. That he gets it published and gets paid for it - more power to him. If these papers want to lose circulation and go out of business because they can't produce quality work, then what do we care? Nobody but the blind believers are listening anyway. Reminds me of one of those guys who stands on a soap box, ranting on about the end of the world. Repent sinners, repent! And hey, you, really stupid guy, give me some money.
From psychology blogger "Dr. Sanity." Read the whole thing; this is just a taste:
. . . The number of things that Bush has been blamed for in this world since 9/11 (even acts of God like Tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters) is the stuff of major comedy. You name the horrible event, and he is identified as the etiologic agent.
He is blamed when he does something (anything) and he is blamed when he does nothing. He is blamed for things that ocurred even before he was President, as well as everything that has happened since. He is blamed for things he says; and for things he doesn't say.
What makes Bush Hatred completely insane however, is the almost delusional degree of unremitting certitude of Bush's evil; while simultaneously believing that the TRUE perpetrators of evil in the world are somehow good and decent human beings with the world's intersts at heart.
This psychological defense mechanism is referred to as "displacement".
One way you can usually tell that an individual is using displacement is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger) is all out of proportion to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with the actual reality. Instead, by using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger, but it is directed at a less threatening target than the real cause. In this way, the individual does not have to be responsible for the consequences of his/her anger and feels more safe--even thought that is not the case.
This explains the remarkable and sometimes lunatic appeasement of Islamofascists by so many governments and around the world, while they trash the US and particularly Bush. It explains why there is more emphasis on protecting the "rights" of terrorists, rather than holding them accountable for their actions (their actions, by the way are also Bush's fault, according to those in the throes of BDS). Our soldiers in Iraq are being killed because of Bush--not because of terrorist intent and behavior. Terrorist activity itself is blamed on Bush no matter where it occurs.
It isn't even a stretch of the imagination for some to blame 9/11 on Bush. This is the insane "logic" of most psychological defense mechanisms. They temporarily spare you from the painful reality around you and give you the illusion that you are still in control. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
11/14/2005 06:03 ||
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Love the summary: As long as they focus all their energy on hating Bush and act like the whiny petulant and angry child, who expects daddy to instantaneously make everything better-- or else they won't like it; then they don't ever have to act like mature adults and cope with reality in a mature fashion. It is soooo much easier to blame everything on daddy.
Funny isn't it? The failed ideas of the baby boomer generation combined with their inability to grow up and start acting like responsible adults - has spawned a whole new generation of baby boomers - literally.
#2
He also links to this similar explanation, which sums up many I know:'
This level/breadth/degree of denial and misinformation is TYPICAL of the Left, who continue to propose statist and isolationist remedies for social ills even thought they have been completely discredited by recent history. The desire to prop up their long held MISBELIEFS is a central motivating factor: Rather than admit that they were wrong about Vietnam, welfare, the Cold War, disarmament, OSLO/Arafat, Free Trade, low taxes -- in short: nearly EVERYTHING Hayek proved and which Reagan and Thatcher accomplished -- they respond defensively with false, hypocritical, irrational and hostile attacks - this is classical psychological DISPLACEMENT, fueled by reaction formations, and cognitive dissonance.
This flailing-out and scapegoating (of their own failure) is typical of people who know deep down that they're hitched up to a worthless ideology, and ideology which the marketplace of ideas is rapidly driving toward a well-deserved extinction. Good riddance. The sooner the better.
Having sacrificed itself for us on the altar of Rathergate, Jayson Blair, and so many other such travails of journalism, the MSM now claims the right to be our final arbiter of moral authority. Mo Dowd of the New York Times, for example, declaimed that the unglued Cindy Sheehan had "absolute moral authority" to say anything about the Iraq war in which her son gave his life. The MSM would, of course, deny Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's moral authority to argue for changes to the broken Senate confirmation system, even though he survived his 1991 pubic-hair-on-a-Coke-can confirmation. It falls to us to give Justice Thomas his due.
Last Friday, in a speech to law students at the University of Alabama, Thomas said that former clerks and other lawyers often tell him that they aren't interested in being nominated for judgeships because of the "bruising" confirmation process. Thomas argued for a less intrusive and -- inferentially -- shorter process. He added, in words that will surely haunt the Democrats, that "I think we all should be honest with one another that the only issue, the central issue in all of this, is abortion....The whole judiciary now is being held, in a sense, hostage to that one issue." And, to the Senate's utter shame, more than the judiciary is being held hostage to a confirmation process that resembles a Hunter Thompson re-write of Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution. To the nominee -- and to the president who needs people confirmed in key posts to carry out his policies -- the process has degenerated to little more than fear and loathing on the confirmation trail.
Take Gordon England. After two successful careers in industry he entered public service and has -- since 2001 -- been confirmed first as Navy Secretary, then Deputy Homeland Security Secretary, and then again as Navy Secretary. In May 2005, he was nominated to succeed Paul Wolfowitz as Deputy Secretary of Defense which -- last I checked -- is a non-trivial job.
Having been easily confirmed three times, you'd think England would skate through the process. And you'd be wrong. England immediately ran afoul of the SASCompoops. The Senate Armed Services Committee imposes a rule unknown elsewhere on the Hill or in the executive branch. If you want a job in DoD, and you have a pension from a company that does business with the Pentagon (England has two), you have to buy an insurance policy to cover the value of the pension in the event the company goes broke and can't pay the benefits. Which was no big deal until the insurance company that had been writing those policies decided to raise the price through the roof. The SASC in effect demanded that England purchase the DEPSECDEF job for the tens of thousands of dollars the insurance would now cost. The Pentagon insisted that the rule be lifted, the SASC refused, and there things sat until September when the SASC blinked, and England was about to be confirmed without buying the insurance policy. Enter the RINOs.
First, Sen. Olympia Snowe (RINO-Me) put a procedural hold on England's nomination because she was upset. Not with him, but with the Base Realignment and Closing Commission's findings about Maine shipyards. When that seemed to be resolved, Sen. Trent Lott (RINO-Mars) took a break from blaming his Republican colleagues for everything but the Great Chicago Fire to put another hold on England. England is still acting DEPSECDEF, unable to employ his powerful voice on the Hill and in the media -- as did Paul Wolfowitz -- to help accomplish Defense Department goals. (Anyone not confirmed is kept under wraps to avoid giving offense to the Senators who are holding the nomination hostage.) How long will Lott's hold last? Probably until the president gives England a recess appointment because Senate Republicans don't have the guts to force Lott's hand.
To the Defense Department, and Lord knows how many other executive agencies trying to do their jobs, the Senate's approach is irresponsible, harsh, and unyielding. Which is exactly what the Dems want it to be for judicial nominees. If you didn't see Howlin' Howie Dean on Meet the Press yesterday, you should have.
Dean gave redundant proof of the theory I have been propounding for months: that the opposition party in America is not the Democrats, who are intellectually bankrupt, but the mainstream media. Dean -- when pressed by Tim Russert on the Dems' agenda -- admitted that they don't have one because, not being in control of the House or Senate, they aren't responsible for one. He promised that an agenda would be developed in time for the 2006 elections. (Vote for us: we have a secret plan to save America from conservatives.) Most revealingly, when Russert asked Dean about the Alito nomination, and whether the Dems should filibuster, he recited the guidance the Dems were given Sunday by the New York Times.
A Sunday Times editorial declaimed: "Judge Samuel Alito has been working hard to win over moderate Democratic senators. But just as it would be irresponsible to reject his nomination to the Supreme Court without giving him a full hearing, it is unwise to embrace it -- or rule out the possibility of a filibuster -- until more is known. The Alito nomination is a defining moment for the country, and for the Democratic Party. Given the sharp divisions on the court, the next justice could decide the scope of reproductive freedom, civil rights and civil liberties, and environmental and workplace protections that Americans will live with for years. Although many questions remain to be answered, there is reason to believe that Judge Alito could do significant damage to values Democrats have long stood for." (Emphasis added.)
Russert didn't ask about the Times editorial, but Dean went right to it. He said, "I must say I rarely read editorials and I rarely agree with the ones I read. But the New York Times ran an editorial today which I think is very instructive for the Democratic Party. This could be a defining moment. Judge Alito is a hard-working man, a good family man, but his opinions are well outside the mainstream of American public opinion." Dean continued -- adopting another talking point from the Times piece -- saying that because Republicans denied Harriet Miers an up-or-down vote they had forfeited the right to object to Dems filibustering Alito. (The Dems should just cut out the middle man and run the NYT editorial board for office. Mo Dowd would be a perfect running mate for Hillary in '08.)
The Times is right about the Alito nomination. It is the Dems' defining moment for 2006 and 2008. And the Senate's. The Dems have to try to block Alito because their brain -- the Times -- told them to and because their biggest donors will. By the time the Alito hearings begin in January, every big-money pressure group the Dems answer to will join the MSM in full cry, and the pressure on the Dems to block Alito will be bigger than it has ever been for any Supreme Court nomination, Bork and Thomas included. If the Senate hasn't by then confirmed Gordon England and if the McCain Gang of Fourteen doesn't vote to stop a filibuster of Alito, the Republicans may well lose control of the Senate. And, in truth, they should.
#1
I don't think the Republicans should change the rules to stop filibusters. I would rather see them return the filibuster rules to what they once were, so we can watch Ted Kennedy read the Boston phone book hour after hour on C-SPAN. Fringe benefit - it would shut down the Congressional spending machine for a little while.
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Are there any dangers to this game of rhetoric masking reality? Plenty. It is now old, tiring, and predictable. The American people are on to the fraud, and probably don't much care for another free trade agreement with ingrates who slander what benefits them. They are tired of NATO and want it to nobly die on the vine and allow utopians to get a taste of the real world they so disdain. And wisely or not, they are not too fond of the Middle East and pretty much want those whom Iran immediately threatens to deal with it on their own and count us out. Our critics forget that American foreign policy is ultimately simply a representation of collective will. Nations are simply people, and thus subject to emotional urges that often trump reason.
by Mac Johnson
Every once in a while, a manâs mind retreats from the banal details of daily discourse to dwell instead upon the âbig questionsâ of existence: Where did we come from? What is God? Are we alone in the universe? And, of course, Why is talk radio so overwhelmingly conservative?
My guess would be because people also listened to the alternatives. Briefly.
The mainstream media dwell on this question endlessly, whenever the subject of their broken stranglehold on all public debate is brought up. Whatever caused the rise of conservative talk radio, they are pretty sure it is a malevolent force, almost certainly conspiratorial in nature.
I was in on the original conspiracy, y'know. The courier from the Illuminati was wearing a cape and a domino mask, and he arrived at 3.30 a.m. There was a secret knock at the door of our secret hideout, and he had to utter the secret password before we let him in, and then he had to give the secret handshake. I can't tell you what happened next, 'cuz it's secret...
But, alas, as my medication has finally convinced me, there are very few conspiracies in the world, and we have to look to more organic forces to explain most trends and events.
Can I still keep my cape?
Many factors account for the rightward tilt of talk radio, such as: radio is listened to in cars and at work, both of which are not frequented so much by the unemployed clients of the welfare state that would constitute the natural audience for liberal talk radio. OK, that was a cheap shot and not entirely true, but I couldnât resist. Iâll move on now and try to be good.
Oh, go on. You're on a roll...
Another, more serious, factor is straightforward: America is, essentially, a conservative nation on most issues. Liberalism is an attempt to change the nationâs culture more than an attempt to accurately represent it. So the audience for conservative radio is naturally larger than that for liberal radio.
Another factor is that (upper case L) Liberalism is much more about feelings than it is about facts. Unless you're a family member or a close friend, I'm not much concerned with how you feel. And once you've told me how you feel, what do we talk about next? We've got the makings of a 5-minute radio show there, don't we?
A second factor is that talk radio is slightly cheaper than dog poo to produce and is often made locally. This created the potential for a great deal of diversity in talk radio during the âdark agesâ of television news, when America got all of its news from three identical sources, ABC, CBS and NBCâall of which were essentially the Cliff Notes version of whatever the New York Times had to say that week. I say âpotentialâ diversity because, for many years, it was not realized. Talk and news radio merely aped (blindly, one might say) the style of television news, radio having accepted a role as a medium on the same uplifting level as television intellectually, but without any informative pictures.
It's hard to recall the pre-80s world of radio, before Rush Limbaugh. I can recall long drives with nothing coherent on the dial but Larry King or Jim Bohannan in the wee hours of the morning. The alterntive to that was Prophet Jones, broadcasting from Detroit, or whatever music happened to be playing, which I believe was exclusively either disco or Mexican.
But consider the number of radio stations in each city, and the number of cities in America, with each station producing programming and fighting for local market share. The potential for something different to arise was vastly greater in radio than in television. And compared to television, âsomething differentâ could only mean something more conservative. Thus, when something different did arise, it had a ready-made audience in the millions of people that were sick of the left wing axis of drivel, ABC-CBS-NBC.
Among the early talk radio shows was Mort Sahl, whom I thought a pretty funny fellow when I was 19 or 20. Either I was easily amused in the heady days of my youth, or Mort was pretty predictable and not particularly logical by the early 80s. "Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen," he said, convinced he was being hilarious and iconoclastic. My boredom meter pegged and I switched to a Mexican station.
So talk radio became conservative because it could, and because there was a market for it when it did. Dan Rather helped create Rush Limbaugh.
I'd say Larry King had more to do with it. His show was actually pretty successful. Limbaugh took the format and made it interesting, which was more important than the ideological bent. Mort Sahl made a living being an "iconoclast," but Limbaugh made a career goring actual sacred cows.
Essentially, the process was purely Darwinian. Radio had a larger, more diverse population of programs and a higher rate of âreproductionâ of these programs, so radio naturally evolved into the unfilled niche of conservative programming before it could be filled by television, which was (in evolutionary terms) a rare asexual organism reproducing by infrequent budding.
Hmmm... I'm not too sure about that. The radio of my youth was Top 40. It was done in by FM radio and by the fact that rock 'n' roll begat disco â how much of Donna Summer and the Commodores could you stand on a long drive? â and that subsequent iterations of rock 'n' roll became antisocial â how much of Sid Vicious could you stand on a short drive?. There's not much talk radio on FM, it's an AM phenomenon; that's because when Top 40 died it was left with nothing to do but farm reports. There was a brief rise of all news radio, but repeating the same news over and over again every half hour's almost as boring as the Commodores. But having listeners give their opinions on the news adds a bit of spice. So I'd call it a natural evolution, indepedent of the teevee.
But it wasnât just television pushing talk radio to the right. It was also the fact that the government, in its eternal and unlimited wisdom, had created a huge government-funded monopoly of extremely liberal opinion radio, a.k.a. National Public Radio. NPR has something like 20 million listeners per week. It offers a standardized left wing programming package with high production values and little interruption by advertising. It pretty much sops up whatever market for left wing talk radio there is and leaves the remaining radio market disproportionately conservative in outlook.
I've been forced to listen to NPR on a few occasions. I really have a hard time believing there are that many sophomores in this Great Nation of Oursâ¢. The advantage used to be that when it wasn't feeding us "news" it was often playing classical music. I believe that format's mostly changed now to Music Nobody Listens To, since classical music is European in origin.
Thus, any commercial radio outlet seeking to offer a liberal talk show would find that his natural listenership had its ears already suckling at the electromagnetic teat of government, or something like that. I can drive from Baja to Bangor and never be outside the broadcast range of two or three NPR stations along the way. Thatâs hard to compete with if you have nothing but a tiny local station and have to sell anti-fungal foot powder every ten minutes. So radio stations inevitably found conservative programming more profitable. Nina Totenberg helped to create Laura Ingraham. You see, sometimes quality programming really is inspired by NPR listeners like you.
Nice zinger, that one...
NPR is also, by the way, one of the two major reasons that âAir Americaâ radio is such a steamy pile of failed programming. (The other reason is that Air America stinks.)
I'd call that the primary reason Air Amerikkka is in a state of perpetual trainwreck...
Air Americaâs natural audience is already in a very long-term relationship (a civil union, really) with NPR.
But they don't have NPR's health insurance...
To compete with a government-subsidized behemoth like NPR, Air America would need so much funding that they would have to steal the money or something.
Oooh! I like this guy!
Together, the twin forces of biased television news and socialized radio nearly ensured that commercial talk radio would become conservative.
I actually don't agree with that. Intelligent, witty discussion of the issues from a liberal point of view would be competitive. There's a guy named Frank di Filippo who joins mostly conservative Ron Smith on our Baltimore station. Frank's a liberal in most instances, but he's also intelligent and well-informed about state politix. If he had his own show, I'd listen to it and only occasionally holler obscenities. But he's a rarity. What's usually trotted out is somebody like Victoria Whatsername, who was on WMAL in Washington for awhile. Listening to her was like listening to a parrot.
It was not, as is often implied, the result of some secret Rovian conspiracy in which political ideologues funded by billionaire megalomaniacs sought to propagandize listeners to their political agenda. That would be Air America.
Damn. I guess I'll have to take this cape back to the store.
Interestingly, this same sort of market-driven evolution can now be seen at work reshaping two other areas of the media. The proliferation of television stations via cable and satellite has finally created enough variation in news networks to allow viewers to select a non-liberal format from the mix: Fox News. Judging by Foxâs success, there is probably room for other such stations. One wonders why MSNBC insists on remaining CNN Jr.
We've gotten really comfortable with the knowledge that Fox News is there to present an alternative to the predictability of the rest of the newsworld. I'll be really happy when they have some competition, since until they do we're a single hostile buyout away from the stultifying sameness of yesteryear. I'd welcome UPN News, or NBC Rite, or something like that.
And in the greatest example so far of low-production costs and diverse content knocking down a market-insulated monolith, the internet is busy destroying the newspaper business.
Which'd be a bad thing if it occurred...
Eat my digital dust, New York Times Corp.
Well, that'd be okay, I guess...
The Internet is somewhat more evenly split between liberal and conservative, however. But hopefully, the government will create National Public Internet News soon and destroy much innovation on the leftward side of the web as well.
What the internet does is allow us to analyze the news in much the same manner as talk radio. They can give us the news, we'll give them our opinions on it, and we'll call bullshit on it when it doesn't make any sense. There's actually a crying need for raw news collection â that's why we use so many different sources here on Rantburg. The newspapers take the news and mix it with their editorial opinions, not only on the editorial pages, but also on the news pages. That can come in statements of fact, or in which stories they put above the fold, how they write headlines, even in the order of the paragraphs. But if they all read the same, then it doesn't really matter which newspaper you read. If you watch the broadcast network news, then it doesn't matter if you read any newspapers at all.
In the end, the proliferation of new, more diverse, media will likely become so successful that it could do the unthinkable: create a niche for liberal talk radio.
Not unless they can come up with somebody who can discuss facts, rather than chasing conspiracies...
When conservatives have so many internet and television outlets that they are no longer artificially concentrated into the talk radio market, some experienced talk stations will find it more profitable to switch to a left-wing format. But by then, the programming will all be in Spanish anyway. Viva Chavez!
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2005 14:01 ||
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#1
To compete with a government-subsidized behemoth like NPR, Air America would need so much funding that they would have to steal the money or something.
Which is why the Republicans failed, failed miserably to actually sell NPR to the AA folks to begin with. Instead of watching one pathetic death we could have watched two. Much more popcorn time.
To compete with a government-subsidized behemoth like NPR, Air America would need so much funding that they would have to steal the money or something.
Um, they did. Boys and Girls Club, remember? Still didn't work.
"whatever music happened to be playing, which I believe was exclusively either disco or Mexican"
Jeez, where did you live? All I was ever able to get was country. The old-fashioned, twangy, whiny kind. :-( I'd have loved to get some disco. Or Mexican.
One wonders why MSNBC insists on remaining CNN Jr.
This one doesn't. Those clowns truly believe it's more important to be "right" (or, in their case, left) than to be profitable. Anyway, profits are so right-wing. Doesn't "clean" money just grow on trees? And why should they cater to the ignorant great unwashed proles anyway? They know what's best for the rest of us - just ask 'em.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/14/2005 23:10 Comments ||
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Hmmm - go figure that Air America 's listenership sucks. "Why should I arise from my crack and alcohol slumber to hear Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo andRhandi Rhodes say unfunny shit.?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/14/2005 23:36 Comments ||
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Posted in full. Link to pdf file â page forward to page 17.
Sony Pictures got upset about a âbadâ word. They demanded it be taken out of the title of a movie. The word is âMuslim.â Give me a break. Do we have to be that sensitive? Or fearful? The movie is âLooking for Comedy in the Muslim World.â The writer and star of the movie, Albert Brooks, says he made the movie because he was concerned that, in the wake of 9/11, Americans hated even the word âMuslim.â
âA part of me always thought,â Brooks said, âwhat are there, a billion-and-a-half Muslim people on this planet, and I never thought that all of them wanted us dead.â Brooks thought he could put his professional skills â heâs a comedian â to work on the problem. âI thought, what could I do to make a movie in ... my style to sort of soften this subject.â He imagined himself given a special assignment by the U.S. Government: âMaybe the only way to really understand somebody is to see what makes them laugh,â he is told. âGo to India and Pakistan, write a 500-page report, and tell us what makes the Muslims laugh.â
Whatâs controversial about that? The movie is a comedy about humor and cultural differences. Brooks performs his stand-up routine in India: âWhy is there no Halloween in India? âCause they took away the Gandhi!â The audience doesnât laugh. Says Brooks: âI steered clear of religion in this movie. Thereâs no mention of the Koran â the whole point of the movie is looking for comedy, not looking for God. I was allowed to film in the biggest mosque in India, and when I told the imam the plot of the movie, he started to laugh.â
Sony officials liked the movie, too, Brooks told me, and planned to premiere it last month. âPosters were made, trailers were made, and then about three months later, on a Monday morning, I get this phone call, we canât release the movie with the title.â The call came shortly after a Newsweek story claimed that soldiers at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet, and rioting broke out in the Middle East. It turned out that the Newsweek story was wrong. They retracted it. And it turned out that the rioting may have been a previously planned anti-American demonstration that had nothing to do with Newsweekâs story. But Sonyâs president still said he wouldnât release a film called âLooking for Comedy in the Muslim World.â How cowardly. Hollywood used to make lots of big-star, big budget movies about Arab terrorists, like âExecutive Decision,â âRules of Engagement,â and âTrue Liesâ ... but not after Sept. 11. Tom Clancyâs best-selling novel âThe Sum of All Fearsâ is about Palestinian terrorists, but Hollywood morphed them into European neo-Nazis.
You see, the rules of political correctness are very clear: No oneâs allowed to associate Muslims with anything bad. Even âThe Siegeâ â which said repeatedly that Muslim American leaders were patriotic, featured a heroic Muslim FBI agent, and put more emphasis on a federal elite inattentive to individual rights than on the threat of terrorism â was the victim of an âeducationalâ campaign by the Council on American- Islamic Relations. âThe Siegeâ dared to say that a few Muslims are, in fact, terrorists. And it came out before Sept. 11. And now Sony wonât even use âMuslimâ in a title. Even CAIR doesnât object to the movie, although I bet theyâll object to this column. The Los Angeles Times points out that Sony is the same company that pushes movies packed with crass materialism and sex, films that are much more likely to offend Muslims than Brooksâ film would. I wanted to ask Sony why its sleazy movie âDeuce Bigelow, European Gigoloâ is good to release, but âLooking for Comedy in the Muslim Worldâ wasnât, but they wouldnât talk to me about that. Fortunately, Warner Independent Pictures has agreed to release the film with its title intact.
John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC Newsâ â20/20â and and the author of âGive Me a Break.â
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/14/2005 07:46 ||
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If you're looking for comedy in the muslim world, start with the "religion of peace" claim. Or anything from cair. It's all ridiculous.
#2
Follywood never gets anything right--well, maybe except for make believe such as The Wizard of Oz, etc. Anthing to do with politics, war, or firearms, forget it.
#4
I wish someone would construct a timeline of things that are prohibited or required in Hollywood. One thing is certain, in society as a whole censorship comes and goes, but it is a constant in Hollywood.
The banned list is far larger than you might think, and would take a lot of effort to figure out. For example, when was the last time you saw a mini-skirt in a recent movie or television? Even non-formal dresses are uncommon. Other clothing, both men's and women's, are strictly controlled.
While certain minorities, especially hispanics and orientals, are allowed to be shown, they must not exhibit any *old* stereotype, but *must* exhibit *new* stereotypes. And, of course, conservatism is right out. Conservatives are mistaken, ignorant or evil.
Villains in non-historical settings are only permitted to be corrupt government and military officials or corporate businessmen. No person of a non-American nationality may be a villain, unless he is strongly outnumbered by others of his nationality who are good guys.
Pants cannot show zippers, unless they are in the plot. The same with toilets and televisions.
Adults are usually not shown to be smarter than children, and unless they are oppressed, children have very materialistic environments.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
