The disparity in media coverage between what right wingers get anywhere anytime and what lefties have received over the past decade is so huge that when I reach for reasons I tend to get more paranoid about news organizations than I usually am. It's hard not to see it as a deliberate decision from the top. Ignore the protesting hippies.Among the high-hit-count "progressives", Duncan Black is by far the most heterodox, even if the fair portion of his output seems to consist of one-line links, bad taste in music, and open threads, but this sort of thing explains why he can nevertheless be counted on, come electiontime, to hector everyone to suck in their guts and vote Donk, lord help ye, lest the evil Republicans take a greater percentage of charge.
-Atrios
The constant fondling of this particular media bias fetish is unimportant exact as an object lesson in the existence of left and right political categories as nothing more than neat arbitrary distinctions--shirts and skins playing a rough-and-tumble game of pickup basketball in the same prison yard under the same watchful eyes of the same guards. There are no lefties and right wingers; there is no "liberal" or "conservative" media bias. The premises are flawed; the categories are erroneous.
The media bias is in favor of Ownership. It is in favor of Power. It's in favor of Capital. This is why citizen-subject level observers from "both" left and right can view mass infotainment media as inimical to their interests at the same time. It is inimical to their interests at the same time. It serves the interests of the owning class. That it reflects preferences the left-to-right political spectrum at all is really just a matter of coincidence: whomever, left or right, coverage favors, it favors because that favor serves power.
71 comments:
Okay, but explain to me why there was 195.53 hours of coverage of Glenn Beck's Washington, DC shindig and only 12 hours spent on the Netroots Nation conference! Ioz, you're so naive!
Maybe it's because Glenn Beck is simply the particular mouthpiece of Power that appeals to the masses of poor conservatives who do the work, pay the taxes, cast the votes, and rear the cannon fodder that makes this American Empire go 'round. As long as the Apple Pie lotus-eaters keep working, paying, voting, and fucking, the wheels of the Machine will continue to turn.
Eh, even given that everything you may say is true, IOZ, I think there's still a discrepancy. And that discrepancy comes BECAUSE what you say is true - right-wingers, at their core, support the powerful. Left-wingers, in America, occasionally every now and then make some half-steps towards trying to maybe think about doing something vaguely in support of the powerless. The former are celebrated by the power-oriented media, the latter are ignored or mocked by the same.
Which leads to a feedback loop where, in order to be taken "seriously" by the media sycophants, people in power who, for a half-second, realize that they might be able to have a shred of human decency and toss a bone towards the powerless, get shut down.
It's worth noting that while Alice Cooper is now a member of the Rock Hall of Fame, Phil Ochs committed suicide, possibly helped by the CIA but probably not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rni9Cwoe6g
Any news organization that reports market indicators along with weather and traffic forecasts is pretty fucking biased.
Just because some hear "National Palestinian Radio" while others hear "National Petroleum Radio" doesn't change the fact that it is in fact "National Portfolio Radio".
The media bias is in favor of Ownership. It is in favor of Power. It's in favor of Capital.
The media have great power. Do you expect them to tell you not to believe them? Striking at other powerful interests is almost equally unlikely. Do you expect Matty Woodchuck to tell you Harvard is still a seminary? Do you expect the NYT to tell you race preferences are racist?
What "power" do you expect "the Media" to attack? Oh I know: corporations ("unaccountable!"), and the military ("bloated", "dangerous", "ineffective"). The only two organized social systems still outside of the progressive consensus. Interesting.
As for ownership: property exists in any imaginable human society. There's state property, and private property, and mixtures of the two; but so long anything is scarce, there will be property of some kind. So you're really not saying anything there. For the media to support Ownership is roughly as daring as for them to support Gravity. (They are pro-Gravity, I guess.)
With "capital", you are at least saying something. And you're right if you mean the media support "capital" where "capital" means "state-owned capital". The media were all for the GM bailout. They were all for nationalizing Freddie and Fannie, and thereby, the entire mortgage market in the USA. (Yes -- socialism in our time! USG owns 9 mortgages out of 10!) And I can predict with confidence that the media will support any other nationalization that may erupt out of any crisis.
If by "capital" you meant "privately-owned capital", you're just wrong. The media are left-wing (duh!), and have very faint grasp of the goodness of capitalism. Lacking such understanding, they have no use for capital.
Does Gravity need a giant, violent state to enforce it?
There is no such thing as privately-owned capital in the sense you mean it, Leonard. The phenomena you mistakenly apply this label to are, over-generously, akin to long-term tenancy.
From an anarchist perspective, the most amusing error in the Road-to-Serfdom worldview is its resolute conviction that it functions as prophecy rather than history. The thing you fear has already happened; the public forms your worship are Senates in a post-Augustan age.
With "capital", you are at least saying something. And you're right if you mean the media support "capital" where "capital" means "state-owned capital". The media were all for the GM bailout. They were all for nationalizing Freddie and Fannie, and thereby, the entire mortgage market in the USA. (Yes -- socialism in our time! USG owns 9 mortgages out of 10!) And I can predict with confidence that the media will support any other nationalization that may erupt out of any crisis.
Did your subscription to the Journal lapse, Leonard? Because they'll let you take it home from work at the end of the day.
There are so many odd little beliefs in the above paragraphs - the idea that "state-owned capital" and "private capital" have this clear dividing line between them, especially at the level of international corporations; the idea that defending a bailout makes one "left-wing" while cutting corporate taxes makes one "right-wing," despite the fact that they have the same result to cash flow - that I'm not even sure how to respond. If to respond.
The best I can do is point out that the anti-bailout articles in the Wall Street Journal and the pro-bailout articles in the New York Times had one thing in common: the best interests of large corporations chock full o' jobs and advertising dollars at heart.
The news media is about profit, nothing else.
You forgot Slaveship Earth in your labels.
The profit media is about news, else nothing?
The media bias is in favor of Ownership. It is in favor of Power. It's in favor of Capital.
Fascinating, do go on.
The nothing media is profit, else news!
About. Fuck.
You win.
You know, IOZ....that is pretty darned good.
It's brightened my day so much, I think I'll go out and buy another pair of Etonics.
--the Real Donny
Damnit IOZ, if you take away the football, you've got to give the people something else to kick.
@3:27 PM
That is the one thing I never get used to in anglophone TV News : does anybody has the time to take in all those streaming factlets and blinking stock market databits and flashing colors while dividing your attention between two to five feature windows? And still be able to sort out the Arthur Laffer from the Samuel P. Huntington? Absolutely un-fucking-watchable.
Sniff...sniff...Did someone mention power? Is someone pouring gooey man-batter over the sizzling skillet of flailing and hyper-sadistic late empire? Mmmm, powercakes.
i like NPR because they scrupulously give equal time to both sides of every debate.
recently they've presented both cases of how the catastrophe in Japan isn't really a catastrophe and doesn't reflect on the safety of nuclear power, that it shouldn't slow nuclear energy development at all; AND that despite the catastrophe in Japan, which we should definitely learn from, nuclear power is still the greenest, safest, potentially most economical way to meet electricity generation demands in the near term.
The NYT, never met a war it didn't like or a strike that it did.
There is no such thing as privately-owned capital in the sense you mean it
In other words, everything is in a sense state-owned capital. We are all socialists now.
Well, good that we're clear on that. Still, you're a smart guy. You know, or at least ought to know, that this is a untypical (although I'll admit defensible) use of "capital". So why use it that way? Ah yes, I can guess -- to appeal to the progressives that frequent this site. "Capital" is eeeee-vil! We can all agree on that! (You, meaning "private wealth"; I, meaning "socialism".)
As for your take on the Road to Serfdom, we agree. But you know, I find the most amusing error in the idea that serfdom is an destination; it's the road itself. There are many roads, and many kinds of road, thus many different serfdoms. The common direction of these roads is left, that is: socialism (i.e. what you refer to above with "Capital"). Hayek was recapping the road that Nazi Germany took. The Soviet Union took a similar road to Germany and ended up with a similar socialism. We took a kinder, gentler highway, to, well, here. I'll take Smiley-Face Cruise Liberal Socialism any day, if I must pick a leftward road.
the idea that defending a bailout makes one "left-wing" while cutting corporate taxes makes one "right-wing," despite the fact that they have the same result to cash flow - that I'm not even sure how to respond. If to respond.
Another one ducked! Good, good.
Look, if you're not sure how to respond, might be better to say nothing at all. Just makes you look ignorant. OTOH, if you really care to take the gloves off, go ahead. Define your terms and lay into me. I can take it.
A bit of fisticuffs to get you started: a bailout and cutting taxes are entirely different things. How so, Leonard, I hear you ask? Aren't they the same thing because both involve giving unearned tax money to eee-vil corporations? No.
For one thing, failing businesses are unprofitable (duh!) and thus pay no taxes. They don't get "negative taxes". By contrast, successful businesses do pay taxes, but they don't need bailouts. Now, why should this matter? It matters because, at least in right-wing thought, giving money to ("rewarding") success is thought to be a good idea, whereas giving money to failure ("pissing it away") is a bad idea. Anything you subsidize, you get more of. Do we want more failing companies, or more successful companies? I am right-wing on this issue! So what do you think? Other things equal, do you prefer failing companies, or successful companies?
A second distinction: in terms of corporate control, the results of bailouts and taxation are entirely different. In a bailout, the government ends up controlling the company, de facto at least. If no bailout happens, the company bankrupts and its remaining capital ends up controlled by other private parties. In taxation, ownership is unaffected. This matters because, at least in right-wing thought, state ownership of the means of production ("socialism"), is a bad idea. Whereas private ownership of said ("capitalism") is a good idea.
But all that is just foreplay, my dear. The real difference between left and right is not found within definitions. Certainly there are core beliefs of the left and right. But these are not the heart of the matter. At core, left and right are social networks, that is, groups of people who know each other, or at least know of each other. As such, you can never know for certain which camp a particular issue will fall into.
I love that IOZ occasionally actually engages Leonard. So funscinating!
Anxiously awaiting Totalitarian Tuesdays, though not as much as Freiwirtschaft Fridays.
Totalitarian Twat Tuesdays!
Start with like the Unfogged whores, sort of Stepford wives of blogdom. They're a big part of the problem with online Snitchness.
Like, consider that skanky attorney aka LizardBreath, and the texass techie slut, "Heebie"--as with most unf.regs (including that crypto-klansman McManus) piss-poor writers and centrist Hillarycrats at best.
What are the real names?? Post em.
Part of Totalitarian Twat Tuesdays!
Other things equal, do you prefer failing companies, or successful companies?
Trick question: the converse of "failing" isn't "successful", it's "too-big-to-fail". Welcome to the fuuuture!
"In other words, everything is in a sense state-owned capital. We are all socialists now."
No we are all capitalists now, in so far as corporate interests and those of the state are the same.
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato.
BLAWG!
As for ownership: property exists in any imaginable human society.
Property is a latecomer to human experience. **Very** late. When you say "imaginable", what you really mean is, imaginable to you.
-- sglover
I.W.W. "Wobblies" Wednesdays
"The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease."
— Helen Keller, IWW member, 1911
Even the wee little ones in the Ron Paul Revolution are a little more sophisticated about the nature of large corporations and their top beneficiaries in the current political economy than the Glibertarianism your arguments tends towards...
In just what "Free Market" did these "successful" corporatist-actors generate "their" capital?
[Bonus: the enclosures!]
Free Market Base or Superstructure: An Open Inquiry Regarding Resultant Political Economies & the Moral Culpability of Current Beneficiaries
A Brief Essay by Ross Miller Kenyon
While libertarians reject the provision of corporate welfare there is disagreement about just how deeply such welfare is rooted. Building off of these basic attitudes is our willingness or unwillingness to tolerate the existing distributions of wealth and how we feel about the people who win and lose under the economy’s current framework.
I. The Traditional Model
The traditional libertarian narrative frames the base of the American economy as free enterprise which unwillingly supports a parasitic superstructural class of regulators, moochers and bureaucrats. It also sees the emergence of capitalism as occurring primarily through natural and legitimate market means and not through illegitimate state action. The resultant perspective on the distribution of wealth (political economy) espoused by libertarians utilizing this model can be described as traditional. It views society’s existing wealthy and successful market actors as those who are productive in spite of the state and all those who oppose any aspect of their property rights, democratically or otherwise, as looters of varying degrees of evil and/or stupidity.
II. The Revisionist Model
Left-libertarian and some radical Rothbardian traditions are generally far more critical of the aforementioned model and view the state as the base of the existing economy with some free market sprinkles on top. They acknowledge that capitalism’s historical emergence required massive amounts of state power in order to catalyze the Industrial Revolution and create a reliable and dependent working class.[1] It notes that the basic economic rules which have virtually always been and continue to be in place worldwide generally favor the status quo elite who control the political machines in order to further concentrate their wealth and power.
This revisionist ideological foundation leads to a far more skeptical and radical approach toward American political economy which finds as much in common with modern progressive and leftist movements as it does with any fair weather free marketeer conservative tradition.
I didn't know that Helen Keller was a Wobblie. Thanks for that!
-- sglover
That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure played a mean class war!
Mistakenly underestimating the Left/Right construct in this connection comes from thinking that because it's all about the money, ergo corporations are "conservative", and Big Media can't possibly be biased Left.
It IS all about the money, but that means a divergence from one big fat branch of conservatives right off the bat. Rank and file conservatives are about religious-based, coercive morality, and while we all know money isn't quite anathema there, it's a means to an end not the end itself. Corporations, however, are amoralistic, not moralistic. Money conservatives join the social conservatives to the extent Judeo-Christian and capitalistic "ethics" serve them with lower taxes and helpful economic and foreign policy. Big Media pays obeisance here too, but only to the extent necessary to ensure its continuation.
Here's the distinction: unlike social conservatives, money conservatives and megacorps such as Big Media don't give a tinker's damn about traditional morality for its own sake. They are about consumption first and foremost, and if anything a hedonistic, libertine population is best for their purposes. Big money would welcome no restrictions on sex, drugs, and rock n' roll whatsover---more spending, more pleasure-seeking---if the social and political climate could embrace and hold it. Big Media (big anycorp) is about maximizing consumerism and consumption, and championing subjective--or elective---morality, to the full extent the State will back it and still protect them. This ain't Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, or Bill Buckley.
nutellaon toast, ..i like commas and humming .. are you dating anyone ,.,.
Helen Keller, Wobbly: =here,
I hate commas and prefer singing. Keep fishing.
PS it's "all walls are great if the roof doesn't fall"
,i already have a fish ,. just amused by your blogger ,. / and i wasn't quoting ,. you fellows aren't as bright as you look ,. .
Inky at 7:02pm, that was pretty good.
Though I'd argue that at bottom Wm F Buckley Jr would happily watch profits grow in 2011 thanks to unbridled, "amoral" society, even while hosting an embalmed Firing Line in which he attacks the corrosion of "traditional morality."
And I'd note that Leonard finely encapsulates the modern "leftist" (cough cough) "progressive" (cough hacking cough) "liberal" mindset in his posts in this thread... yielding a very similar, and well-excused end result.
It's the Love Blog.
Great.thanks for taking the time to walk us through the process it was great to see this amazing post.
C"mon zzzzzzozzzzz! why you don't leave us some open threads like the nice pwoggiebloggies? Doesn't your community merit as much?
I've accomplished more than most men, and without the use of my legs...
"Vulgar libertarianism"
Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar libertarianism," a phrase that describes the use of a free market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy," which Karl Marx described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions [existing in economic life]."[19]
Carson writes that:
Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article in The Freeman arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because "that’s not how the free market works"--implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations on the basis of "free market principles."[20]
Free markets vs. capitalism
Unlike some other market anarchists, Carson defines capitalism in historical terms, emphasizing the history of state intervention in market economies. He says "[i]t is state intervention that distinguishes capitalism from the free market."[14] He does not define capitalism in the idealized sense, but says that when he talks about "capitalism" he is referring to what he calls "actually existing capitalism." He believes that "laissez-faire capitalism, historically speaking, is an oxymoron" but has no quarrel with anarcho-capitalists who use the term and distinguish it from "actually existing capitalism." In response to claims that he uses the term "capitalism" incorrectly, Carson says he is deliberately choosing to resurrect what he claims to be an old definition of the term in order to "make a point." He claims that "the term “capitalism,” as it was originally used, did not refer to a free market, but to a type of statist class system in which capitalists controlled the state and the state intervened in the market on their behalf."[15] Carson holds that “Capitalism, arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the Middle Ages, was founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege without which its survival is unimaginable.”[16] Carson argues that in a truly laissez-faire system, the ability to extract a profit from labor and capital would be negligible.[17]
Carson argues that in a truly laissez-faire system,...
Ah yes, no true Scotsman. Heck, I've argued much the same at times, myself.
All societies have a mixture of state ownership and private ownership. So how can you analyze anything? Are the successes of capitalism "really" socialism? Are the "failures" of "capitalism" really socialism? Judgment is required. Judgment is inescapable.
Carson is another IOZ. Or perhaps more the reverse. Anyway, both run from the defense of actual existing capitalism, tainted though it is with socialism.
Why do they do that? Trying to appeal to the left. I.e., trying for impact on policy. I.e., trying for power. A losing game, that. The left knows its own, and anyone calling himself a "free market ..." ain't it. You can get power from the left, but to do so you must be of the left. And thus you must partake of the left's destruction of traditional Western society. Capitalism is part of that society. Or you can resist that destruction, but you will get no power from the left.
The clouds part. The veil is pierced. Of course! That's what this blog was about all along... "trying for power"! And we commenters danced right along to the obscene music of his sinister little puppet show...
Well, you did, anyway.
True enough, guess I just didn't have the grit to think of opening a guerrilla front on in ioz' own comments section. Go Wolverines, etc.
Damn, anne, and I'm positively retarded looking. This is a problem.
Well, at least Leo answered the historical question as to whether "we" "the West" or whathaveyou live more-or-less under a system he calls "capitalism" or if the political-economy of the US-dominated international state system is one much more fundamentally state-corporatist
for this is, ultimately, a question of what is "actually existing" rather than what you call it...
defending it can seem nothing but perverse when the freedom of the individual is the perspective from which it is viewed, or the freedom of exchange, or of association...
defend what you will, but the side of the status quo is the side of statism and unfreedom, described by Carson accurately enough as a historical reality of "capitalism"...
these "socialist" (corporatist) states of the West have been scarcely tainted by a real free market, a revolutionary development that would indeed render the ancien regime untenable
In 1966, Murray Rothbard wrote:
For some time I have come to the conclusion that the grave deficiency in the
current output and thinking of our libertarians and “classical liberals” is an
enormous blind spot when it comes to big business. There is a tendency to
worship Big Business per se ... and a corollary tendency to fail to realize that
while big business would indeed merit praise if they won that bigness on the
purely free market ... in the contemporary world of total neo-mercantilism
and what is essentially a neo-fascist “corporate state,” bigness is a priori highly
suspect, because Big Business most likely got that way through an intricate
and decisive network of subsidies, privileges, and direct and indirect grants of
monopoly protection
Anne, are you on LSD or am I?
I can't wait to meet him.
who are you ,.,and meet who,.
whom am I?
while big business would indeed merit praise if they won that bigness on the purely free market
Murray, why would that merit praise, mere bigness?
Seems The K Rothbard had some perspective flaws of his own.
new new new GRETEST thread ever!!
It's not the mere bigness of the ship, but the motion of the ocean.
,the ocean , yes,.,.( feeling a little kate bushy in her voice ,. of justin in my bedding ,., .. pretty fly for a white guy ,.,. .,
,toasty, are you suggesting that you are in san franny ,. and are going to look at the paintings this weekend that he's left on display there ,., ?,.,.i'm letting him sleep in here ,. ,.,wings you know.. ,
The paintings in San Franny are fine, I guess, but they're nothing like the graffiti in Oakland.
The Graffita in Oax is nice, but nuthin' like the abandoned subdevelopments in Manteca
,comment deleted ,.,.. love that name ,. / ,. of the finger painting ,.,are you meaning ..rat enjoying some uncle grampa ?
Are the abandoned developments in Manteca done by Banksy? He does great work with subdevelopments. It speaks to me, the message in convincing hundreds of people to leave lives of comfort just to conform to an arbitrary set of rules. really speaks to our current situation. A potent metaphor.
Did I spell his name right? did I spell anything right? I guess I'll ask the rats. Once they're done with grampa. He's so nice, to be in on that letting them eat him. He's really into online poker and fixing up old expresso machines, but he's taking time out to help struggling performance rats. Nice guy. He says soon he'll help with my spelling but with his schedule, I'm not holding my breath. Not that I blame him. Spelling isn't as improtant as it once was.
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