Arkady
President
Here's another good demolition of that absurd AP piece I posted about:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/fact-ap-unclear-on-definition-of-fact.html
It's particularly interesting because it properly identifies the REASON the AP came out with something so ridiculous. It's a central article of faith, among the mainstream news media, that all problems are attributable to both parties in roughly equal proportion. The more the facts diverge from that premise, the more ridiculous the media must be in asserting otherwise.
So, for example, in the mid-80s, the media could have played that "plague on both your houses" angle without seeming quite as dumb, when discussing the deficit. Sure, the big ramp-up in the deficit had been definitively triggered by the Reagan tax cuts and military spending growth. But the Democrat-controlled House had gone along with both. And Reagan did, in fact, compromise a bit, as the years progressed, with some deficit-fighting tax increases.
But if you take the same "plague on both your houses" approach to the recent debt ceiling standoff, you end up looking like a liar or a moron. The crisis was triggered entirely by Congressional Republicans, and Obama and the Democrats bent over backwards looking for a solution. What they offered up as a ransom, in an attempt to end the economic hostage crisis, is amazing. In exchange for what had always previously been a routine vote for which nobody had to trade anything, they offered up massive deficit reducing efforts, tilted wildly in favor of spending cuts over revenue enhancements. There's just no way to look at the way that crisis dragged on and see it as anything other than entirely the fault of the Republicans. But if you have a religious dogma that says both parties are always roughly equally at fault for every problem, you have to take a position contrary to anything observable in the real world.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/fact-ap-unclear-on-definition-of-fact.html
It's particularly interesting because it properly identifies the REASON the AP came out with something so ridiculous. It's a central article of faith, among the mainstream news media, that all problems are attributable to both parties in roughly equal proportion. The more the facts diverge from that premise, the more ridiculous the media must be in asserting otherwise.
So, for example, in the mid-80s, the media could have played that "plague on both your houses" angle without seeming quite as dumb, when discussing the deficit. Sure, the big ramp-up in the deficit had been definitively triggered by the Reagan tax cuts and military spending growth. But the Democrat-controlled House had gone along with both. And Reagan did, in fact, compromise a bit, as the years progressed, with some deficit-fighting tax increases.
But if you take the same "plague on both your houses" approach to the recent debt ceiling standoff, you end up looking like a liar or a moron. The crisis was triggered entirely by Congressional Republicans, and Obama and the Democrats bent over backwards looking for a solution. What they offered up as a ransom, in an attempt to end the economic hostage crisis, is amazing. In exchange for what had always previously been a routine vote for which nobody had to trade anything, they offered up massive deficit reducing efforts, tilted wildly in favor of spending cuts over revenue enhancements. There's just no way to look at the way that crisis dragged on and see it as anything other than entirely the fault of the Republicans. But if you have a religious dogma that says both parties are always roughly equally at fault for every problem, you have to take a position contrary to anything observable in the real world.
