There are some days when it almost seems like the national press is making a conscious effort to prove Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent gospel. If the national commercial media really did exist solely to perpetuate the attitudes of the political elite, and to create phony debates around unthreatening policy poles, endlessly pitting a conservative/reactionary status quo against an “acceptable” position of dissent — if that thesis were the absolute truth, then you’d see just what we’re seeing now in the coverage of the health care debate.I have a heartbeat's hesitation about criticizing Matt Taibbi, because I often find him a fine and entertaining writer with an eye for the absurd that is quite plainly lacking in today's media . . . landscape, but I find it impossible to let the above pass without comment. What proved "Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent gospel" was Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, and the fact that the reality he observed, documented, and marshaled as proof in that book comports with the reality he observed, documented, and marshaled as proof in that book isn't exactly surprising. Is it? From Taibbi's own books and other writing, it seems clear that he would be otherwise inclined to pooh-pooh MC as another conspiracy theory, even though it is anything but. The national exists solely to perpetuate the attitudes of the political elite. This was in question?
-Matt Taibbi
Taibbi goes on:
So this is where the “debate” is being framed. One side argues that the public option isn’t anything to write home about. The other “side” argues that a bill without the public option won’t be a disaster after all. Of course if you’re paying attention these are both actually the same argument, arguing the same side.Taibbi could revisit the manipulation of attitudes and expectations for Iraq and observe the same. How did something other than full and complete withdrawal become the default liberal position? How did "the surge" become a self-evident success? Etc.
I get that the public option isn’t a cure-all and I also get that it would be nice if they passed a law preventing insurers from denying patients with pre-existing conditions. But what strikes me the most is how the instant the public decides it’s fed up and really wants something, all these arguments suddenly appear in the press showing why they are unreasonable and uneducated and should take a more “nuanced” (God, I hate that word) view of things. It seems to me that if you pay careful enough attention to the underlying theme of a lot of these articles, the pundits’ biggest concern about the public option is that their readers are demanding it in spite of what they are being told. Me personally, I think the time to consider what good stuff might be in a public-option-less bill is after you’ve lost that battle, not before.
Maybe I'm being uncharitable in my reading; maybe Taibbi didn't mean to imply as he does that there is something questionable about Chomsky's thesis. But I don't think so, and so I commend to Matt, and to The Internet, and to You, the World, this general rule of thumb: your conviction that it just can't be so is not evidence that it isn't so.
64 comments:
Just a note: Manufacturing Consent was co-written with Ed Herman.
Yes, I should've mentioned that.
Taibbi, Yglesisa, Klein and the rest are pure elite cock-suckers, who pull out people like Chomsky just to signal to their corporate/political johns that they are REALLY on their side....
I don't read this as impugning of MC. The setup to me reads as a validation of Manufacturing Consent and a hint that Taibbi may have previously underestimated its utility in the first paragraph.
Anyway, dropping a reference to this framework is refreshing in the lefty blogosphere that never tires of asking why oh why we can't have a better press, why the media is not working, etc. etc. etc.
Like Justin, I didn't read it that way. I've read Taibbi's books and many of his articles, and one of his themes is how the ability to discuss major problems and solutions to those problems has been suppressed by an elite media which gets to define a narrow concensus. I read it more as, isn't it funny that someone like Chomsky is viewed as a loon by the press mandarins, but then they turn it around and prove him right. That's the kind of savagely ironic thing that he likes to point out.
I never thought I'd say this, but I suddenly want to read some Chomsky.
I don't think that's fair to Taibbie, Solar. He's in far better company than that.
Justin and Nony 12:20 - your reservations are why I picked the hedged language.
Mentioning Ed Herman makes Berube totally lose his shit.
and here was the debate over the stimulus package:
"we must give corporate america trillions of dollars no strings attached."
"no, we must give corporate america trillions of dollars no questions asked!"
Monseiur,
Have you by any chance been following the mental crackup of little Yggy le Glesias these days? He had been getting increasingly commissarish since the election but the failure of SuperJesusBlackReagan to deliver universal health care after ten minutes of trying seems to have completely burned out his sensors. His strident shouting the other day, I believe in an Afghanistan post of all things, that 2006 and 2008 had clearly "improved governance," whatever that means, and that we needed to continue delivering more and better Democrats was a notably low point, though his shlling for Geithner and Bernanke's "recovery" in the face of our near-guaranteed economic doom in the autumn is also impressive. On the other hand, he seems to be finally becoming dimly aware that politics does not consist of a playground for Harvard's best-and-brightest to enact their little plans, but a Hobbesian free-for-all of competing interests where winning is everything. In other words, a big fucking game. You really need to check it out if you haven't...my mere words cannot express the pleasure of watching his wheels grind themselves down....
Hey Fellow Dick - mentioning Mondale would make the Prof. lose it.
Nah, Taibbi isn't sneaking Chomsky into the mainstream. He's shoving him back under the bus. "Gospel"? "Absolute truth"? Neither of those things has thing 1 to do with Chomsky, as Taibbi either knows (if he's actually read the work) or ought to know (in the more-likely case that he hasn't).
And it's also setting up a straw man (at best) to say that Herman and Chomsky argue that the MSM "exist to" frame the political debate. (To say nothing of "exist solely to" do so...)
They plainly argue that the MSM is a collection of large corporations, each of which exists to extract profits for shareholders by delivering eyeballs to other corporate marketers. The effects on political debate framing, while massive and decisive, are entirely incidental to the raisons d-etre.
This is beyond basic. Taibbi does two harms for every good he achieves. To wit: In this comment, he dishonestly/illiterately trashes Chomsky and also paints reasoned, evidence-based media criticism as totalitarian "gospel."
Of course, all this is exactly what MC would predict about how one keeps a political reporter's job at Rolling Stone.
"On the other hand, he seems to be finally becoming dimly aware that politics does not consist of a playground for Harvard's best-and-brightest to enact their little plans, but a Hobbesian free-for-all of competing interests where winning is everything. In other words, a big fucking game."
I think you are too kind. I don't think he (or the proggle in general) is getting it, at all. they are aghast that a townhall protester brought a gun to the general vicinity of the townhalls. one side brings guns, the other boycotts a niche upscale grocery store. end fucking game.
Taibbi's post was so sloppy it left me wondering if he was content to read a wiki entry on "Manufacturing Consent" and watch the movie trailer.
SuperJesusBlackReagan?
It's like concentrated, entrenched power is some kind of conspiracy theory.
Newbiecus O`Neal,
SuperJesusBlackReagan = Obama
you can search the blog for its origins.
Reading that post, I rather doubt Matt Taibbi has ever read the dust jacket to Manufacturing Consent, let alone the book. Chomsky and Herman are very clear that what they are describing is not a conspiracy but, in their words, a "guided market model," in which corporate, for-profit media institutions inevitably align their content with the interests and ideologies of their corporate parents and advertisers, to make more money.
As for Michael Berube, anyone to the left of Paul Krugman sends him hyperventilating into a paper bag.
That's what she said.
I think you are too kind. I don't think he (or the proggle in general) is getting it, at all. they are aghast that a townhall protester brought a gun to the general vicinity of the townhalls. one side brings guns, the other boycotts a niche upscale grocery store. end fucking game.
Hard to tell. I think he (they) are absorbing it in the flaccid abstract but are fundamentally paralyzed. It's like the spoiled only child who was told all his life that he was destined for greatness and ended up on dope & Xbox first bump in the road.
Example: Hatch is specifically asked a question about Kennedy’s possible incapacitation, simply ignores it, and then goes on to lie to totally mischaracterize the public option debate. And on some level, why not? It’s all in the game and Hatch is playing to win. But that means progressive legislators need to play to win, too, not let procedural obstruction prevent them from passing good bills. (http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/hatch-and-kennedy.php)
Well...alrighty then.
Scroll up from there for "Bernanke saved us but has to go" and "No president surveilled his political enemies prior to GWB"
Maybe I was naive, but this pwoggie shit from the last 7 or 9 mos. gets me down. A lot of these guys wrote a lot of solid shit during the Bush years and I kinda assumed unreflectively they and I were on the same page. The regime changes and...lo, there be morons! I mean...Jesus. Where can I find the rock they crawled out from under c. 2003 and dig in down there with my stash?
Progressive careerism is an ugly thing, especially when it is built on the theft of radical analysis, exercised on fascists, and then turned against socialists.
I don't know, your reading of Taibbi seems to me like if someone read something you wrote and interpreted it as meaning that, say, Obama really is SuperJesusBlackReagan. He was pretty clearly being sarcastic, I thought.
It's like the spoiled only child who was told all his life that he was destined for greatness and ended up on dope & Xbox first bump in the road.
Are you seriously trying to say that a life of dope and Xbox is not one of greatness? I pity you, fool.
You know depresses me? The will by people like us to excuse crap like Taibbi's Chomsky-dump, that's what.
Taibbi's not being an ounce sarcastic. He's saying that current reality tempts him to believe Chomsky's unthinkable dogma.
And why in the world would Taibbi indulge in pro-Chomsky double-sarcasm? That simply doesn't make sense. Taibbi never mentions Chomsky as a touchstone of his thinking, and his readers would absolutely not get the double-entendre.
Ironic that you praise Chomsky and oppose unions Ioz..heh. But oh my, heaven forbid someone disagree with Chomsky! I don't really care one way or the other if Taibbi likes him or not.
I don't "oppose unions."
Jenny, I believe the issue is not about whether one "disagrees" with Chomsky, but rather that no mainstream writer/journalist/commentator will even engage with anything he's ever said to begin with, choosing to dismiss him with a roll of the eyes and a twirling of the finger near the temple, more or less. It's disappointing to see an otherwise good writer with good instincts like Taibbi do the same thing, that's all.
Jenny, this isn't about disagreeing with Chomsky. It's about mangling and marginalizing him.
This is actually one of the major anti-Chomsky tropes, this notion that Chomsky readers are Chomsky's mindless slaves. It dismisses the possibility that the apparent personal loyalty is actually dedication to truth-telling and accuracy, and genuine appreciation of breakthrough work.
Yeah, Taibbi's plainly mentioning Chomsky ironically. He just couldn't work the parody forehead slap and 'Doh!' into that paragraph.
-- sglover
anti chomsky tropes? Oh fucking hell.. Can't we just drop it? If we can forgive the head of Whole foods, can't we forgive Taibbi??
one side brings guns, the other boycotts a niche upscale grocery store. end fucking game.
So you admire the people who bring guns to a town hall meeting because they're effective? Like health care "reform" wasn't a pre-ordained package of goodies for the insurance industry because Max Baucus and the Democratic leadership are bought-and-paid-for tools of the insurance lobby, oh no, it all went to shit because some jackass brought his AR-15 to the party.
Hey hey hey hey!
Taibbi is a solid guy who writes a lot of solid pieces. This particular article just shows him getting his eyes opened to something perhaps for the first time - the exact same thing that happened to all of US on this issue. Just because it happened to us earlier than Matt is no need for sniping at him :P
It's not as if MC was brought out of whole cloth, clearly the book's title is referencing the old masters themselves, Edward Bernays and Walter Ivey who actually (proudly!) developed the business plan of MC.
And why in the world would Taibbi indulge in pro-Chomsky double-sarcasm?
Well, for one thing, I don't see how it's double-sarcasm rather than just regular sarcasm. As for your question...maybe because he's a sarcastic writer? Always?
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not as familiar with Taibbi as the rest of you guys. But what I've read of him (mostly just since all of this Goldman stuff) doesn't indicate to me that he's remotely on the same pitiful level as Yglesias, nor does it indicate to me that, as ioz said, "he would be otherwise inclined to pooh-pooh MC as another conspiracy theory". He's spent the last few months describing in detail the continuity between the fiscal policies of the Bush and Obama administrations as well as ridiculing the coverage of these issues in the mainstream press. He may not refer specifically to Chomsky frequently, but he doesn't strike me as opposed.
And, again, when I read the original post, it didn't even occur to me that he was being anything other than ironic. It seemed so obvious to me that the "it's almost as if"s weren't meant to be taken literally that I honestly didn't even think about it. Seeing ioz's post here kind of startled me, and then reading the comments startled me even more. I'm starting to think I must be wrong, but I'm still pretty confused.
Regardless, the moral of the whole story ("your conviction that it just can't be so is not evidence that it isn't so") is an excellent and useful point that always bears repeating. So, good.
I didn't read Taibbi's article, nor have I read Chomsky's books (though I did see a debate he had with Foucault. But what Justin said made sense to me. Events are unfolding in a manner transparently similar to what Chomsky wrote.
The feeling that some behavior is only explicable if its actual purpose is to be self-discrediting is not unique to Taibbi.
God, what a trainwreck!
Yes, "Jenny," aka FBI, Chomsky is dismissed out of hand, much as you'd like to pretend you're actually hip and in the right for not thinking about that.
Let's see you're web links, "Jenny."
As to the juniors weighing in on behalf of Taibbi's disgusting bash of Chomsky, read and come back after you know what you're talking about.
"some behavior is only explicable if its actual purpose is to be self-discrediting"
Translation?
Yes, "Jenny," aka FBI, Chomsky is dismissed out of hand, much as you'd like to pretend you're actually hip and in the right for not thinking about that.
Let's see your web links, "Jenny."
As to the juniors weighing in on behalf of Taibbi's disgusting bash of Chomsky, read and come back after you know what you're talking about.
You're far more generous with Taibbi than I would be, IOZ. I can't recall a Taibbi essay where I read it and thought, "this guy sees things clearly."
Instead what I usually think is, "this guy is a Democrat who pines for a progressive Fed Govt, and since the progressives and the Democrats are engaged in a huge charade and fraud, I'm afraid Taibbi is deluded."
++++++++++++++++++++++
@ Michael Dawson -- "Jenny" is a troll. "Jenny" trolls many sites where "Jenny" feels that insufficient obeisance is being paid to "progressive" causes. It is possible that "Jenny" is the same author as "Col Jenny Sparks" who was/is a Chip Berlet stooge.
This is why we have no real rebels. All these TV-plus-Harvard babies have swallowed their own BS.
Read Chomsky, then tell me what possible objection you have.
All Chomsky bashers, left and right, share one thing -- ignorance of their supposed target.
Tabbi is outraged by the charade, not deluded (although you could say he's deluded because he's outraged). That's the tragedy of the proggy: right response, wrong answer.
Taibbi always struck me as. . .slight. like a temporary tattoo. he goes down the right path, and then at the last second wilts left when the conclusion he faces would lead someone with sense to jump ship. instead, he reaches for a bigger, more better paddle. it all seems a bit wankish to me.
IOZ is Chomsky with gay butt secks jokes. (Chomsky with dick jokes) and the Lebowski script on his desktop.
Gosh, who's going to win the "more radical than thou" contest? It's all so exciting!
My guess is that it's going to be the first person to suggest that Chomsky himself is a pwoggie, because he told people to vote for Kerry in '04.
just a thought:
you don't have to agree/disagree with everything somebody says in order to agree/disagree with something they say.
one doesn't have to agree with everything Chomsky, (or IOZ!), says. although, you're deluded if you can't see truth in most of it.
depends on what you're looking for. I mean, I read a Taibbi article a while back and was JRA (just reading along) and the next thing I know I'm being told that we need to Vote or Else or some such thing, because it's important. JUST LOOK AT WHAT W BUSH DONE DO.
that kind of killed it for me.
it's like reading Yglayseeass and expecting him to veer from the typical liberal script he has in front of him. every once in a while he'll share some new insight, but almost always veers back to his previously held position. cause. what have you.
you're all just here for the completion massage anyway. own up to it.
As for Michael Berube, anyone to the left of Paul Krugman sends him hyperventilating into a paper bag.
Uh, well, at least two of his frequent commenters are pretty definitely to the left of Paul Krugman, so he hides it well. And I've always considered Mondale someone I'd like to hit with a pie. Oddly, there's not a uniform "left of the left," where once one is past Paul Krugman, it's mandatory to blubber about poor innocent Milošević. Occasionally, there aren't any good guys.
you don't have to agree/disagree with everything somebody says in order to agree/disagree with something they say.
Indeed. Be it Chomsky, the Monsieur, The Monolithic Left, Radley Balko, or Taibbi. (For some reason, I'm visualizing a photo of certain leftists genuflecting to their Noam icon, with the caption "Libertarian Socialism: You're Doing It Wrong." And yes, the words would be spelled correctly. It's Chomsky.)
Good thread.
To recap.
Someone compared IOZ to Chomsky. Much as I enjoy the work of both, I see very little similarities in style or form.
Someone identified double sarcasm amd I have no idea what that means. Is that when you are sarcastic about being sarcastic? So you say something sarcastically, but you are being sarcastic about that sarcasm, meaning you actually find the overt target of sarcasm plausible. I spent more time trying to figure this out than anything else in this thread.
Several people confessed to reading Matt Yglesias.
Jenny was accused of being an FBI agbent provacetuer, I think.
Just sayin, like an American at a French dinner party (and having not read the Chomsky canon--the list is endless), that I tend to be highly impressed when new data hews spot-on to physical models. Following the script of a behavioral model is really something to leave a body wide-eyed.
I'll trust the happy commentators' opinions on Taibbi's use of the words "solely" and "absolute," however.
IOZ is Chomsky with gay butt secks jokes. (Chomsky with dick jokes) and the Lebowski script on his desktop.
Who needs the script?
Chomsky was basically the Riemann Sum of the good of the blogosphere before there was a blogosphere. The dude read everything, anyone, quoted extensively from primary sources, and mercilessly savaged the talking heads, pundits and some parts of the media by showing the discrepancies between what they said was true and what was actually known to be true from academic studies, historians and journals, human rights reports, and in some cases governments themselves.
For all those folks here who havent bothered to read anything by him, in my view his most important/relevant works include Manufacturing Consent, Fateful Triangle, Pirates and Emperors, The Political Economy of Human Rights, American Power and the New Mandarins, A New Generation Draws the Line, Failed States, Hegemony or Survival, and Understanding Power. The last one, Understanding Power, has a phenomenal set of footnotes. I found about 60 books to read from and there were about 60 more that I would have read if life wasnt so short.
Lastly, IOZ is not like NC. IOZ is like The Dude if he read Chomsky. I mean that as a high compliment.
Well, there isn't a literal connection, Dude.
My translation: Have you heard the theory that the Iranian election was rigged not to ensure Ahmadenijad's victory but to make it obvious that the authorities would not accept a reformist and were willing to cheat and crack down? Like that, but with the possibility that the Washington movers'n'shakers along with the Emm Ess Emm are riddled with Chomsky-fans who want to send out the message that Chomsky is right.
There's a Schoolhouse Rock-esque version of Pirates and Emperors here.
it's mandatory to blubber about poor innocent Milošević
Oh, the rich, satisfying odor of burning straw.
Where did Foxtrot and Michael get the idea I'm an FBI agent. Out of all the things they could accuse me of being, they chose an FBI agent? As for Chomsky, why the strong reaction? Is it really a sin for someone to personally disagree with a Chomsky theory? Is it?! I'm personally neutral on him,but slightly disagree with his moral truism way of the world.
Jenny, it would help mightily if you could display some evidence that you actually know "a Chomsky theory."
I'd wager a very large sum you don't.
So, you publicly dismiss leftism without actually knowing it. What's not FBI about that?
Jenny, I'm beginning to accept the characterization of you as a troll, because it's already been explained to you that the problem is not one of disagreement (which is fine) but of using Chomsky as an all-purpose scarecrow to symbolize the America-hating far left without engaging anything he actually says. It should be obvious that calling it the "Manufacturing Consent gospel" is a way of trashing it by suggesting it's an article of faith to a cultlike audience. I have no idea to what degree Taibbi agrees with him on this or anything, because he doesn't say -- he just throws that line out there, it would appear, as a way of making sure you know he's an angry leftist, but hey, he's not like that guy...
And once again, Taibbi does a lot of good work and is right on most of the time. I enjoy reading him too. It's just a shame to see him embody that instinctive fear of being associated with the actual left wing.
Nobody is perfect and Chomsky certainly has his flaws and blind spots, but I find it quite telling that Chomsky still continues to be marginalized and mocked by even the supposed "progressives" in America even while his analyses and critiques of the American power-structure have pretty much been proven correct, again and again, and especially most recently after the last 8 years of the Bush administration.
Is there anyone who has been more correct and prescient about the current domestic and foreign woes America faces than Chomsky?
By now though, Chomsky's ideas and critiques have been more than validated, whether it's his railing against the greed and corruption of the American political and corporate elites who repeatedly put their interests over the interests of the general public; or his critique and analysis of the institutional and structural flaws in the American corporate media structure that have the end result of disseminating government and corporate propaganda to the general public rather than speaking truth to power and serving the general public; or his critique of American foreign policy and of the dubious motivations and reasons given by the American government for American military aggression throughout the world, and the misuse of American economic and military power.
And of course, Chomsky has been right all along about Israel, long before it became even marginally acceptable to criticize Israel even the slightest. Most American liberals and "progressives", either out of cowardice or out of crypto-racism, shunned Chomsky precisely because his criticisms against Israel were very unpopular, and now that he has been proven correct, these same American liberals and "progressives" have been exposed as the opportunistic, unprincipled cowards and crypto-racists that they are.. and so instead of admitting they were wrong, they demonize Chomsky even more.
Oh, wait. I get it. I read Taibbi as saying "the media is proving MC [to be] gospel", as in, what they're doing proves the thesis. Others are reading it as "the media is proving the MC gospel", as in, people treat MC as revealed Godly truth and I'm making fun of them for that. I have no idea which one Taibbi meant, but at least now I understand why you're pissed about it.
Willful misreading, or mental impairment? That, that is the question.
Taibbi was trashing Chomsky, and watching you Pwogs try to get him off that hook, or justify the hanging, is quite something. Not surprising, but quite something...
Anybody got any other harebrained ways of mashing it all up?
Oh my god, shut up.
To be fair, Chomsky was off by 8 years on the escalation of violence in Afghanistan. It took a Democrat to do that...
Haha. Fish wins.
Michael Dawson, are you the same Michael Dawson whose response to Andrew Gelman's analysis of the 2008 election is up at Boston Review now? Gelman is one of my favorite social scientists, and both his stat blog and The Monkey Cage are good reads. I don't remember encountering you at either one. Come to to think of it, I can't remember reading any references to Chomsky there.
...Chomsky has been right all along about Israel, long before it became even marginally acceptable to criticize Israel even the slightest. Most American liberals and "progressives", either out of cowardice or out of crypto-racism, shunned Chomsky precisely because his criticisms against Israel were very unpopular, and now that he has been proven correct, these same American liberals and "progressives" have been exposed as the opportunistic, unprincipled cowards and crypto-racists that they are.. and so instead of admitting they were wrong, they demonize Chomsky even more.
Agreed, for the most part. Berube for instance appeals mainly to the gonzo-lite crowd of KOS and DU types (and CT)--frat boy demos who can't handle Chomsky ripping into great liberal heroes like the Clintons or Pelosicrats along with the repugs. Sort of ruins the par-tay--and BerubeSpeak depends on the par-tay.
Wow boys and girls, not to invalidate virtually everything discussed, but lets parse the actual sentence:
"There are some days when it almost seems like the national press is making a conscious effort to prove Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent gospel."
What he's literally saying is that the media, as opposed to inadvertently proving Chomsky's point as he explained in Manufacturing Consent, is being so blatant that they must be purposefully trying to prove his point. Comically saying where they once acted unaware, things have gotten so over-the-top, surely they must be self-aware. He's cheekily suggesting his own conspiracy theory in place of Chomsky's well argued idea.
Post a Comment