Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

“Fake News”

4 Comments

No, the real problem is dumb news:

Media is a product. Firms that provide this product are servicing a need, and we’d only be kidding ourselves to claim news consumers desire only to be informed. This isn’t a matter of simple bias confirmation. News outlets have begun to cater not just to partisans but the minimally informed for whom fleeting and shareable controversies provide a sense of feeling informed. What media consumers reward outlets for are rarely deeply reported stories on matters related to consequential items of public policy. What takes off are emotionally stimulating stories that don’t require of their readers any background knowledge to fully understand them and to opine on them.

This kind of entry-level politics is not a new phenomenon, and its victims are bipartisan. Colin Kaepernick, the Black Lives Matter movement, college-age adults devolving into their childlike selves, or pretentious celebrities politicizing otherwise apolitical events; for the right, these and other similar stories masquerade as and suffice for intellectual stimulation and political engagement. The left is similarly plagued by mock controversies. The faces printed on American currency notes, minority representation in film adaptations of comic books, and astrophysicists insensitive enough to announce feats of human engineering while wearing shirts with cartoon depictions of scantily clad women on them. This isn’t politics but, for many, it’s close enough.

These are emotionally gratifying confirmations of tribal moiety. They provide readers a chance to affirm and demonstrate clannish loyalty. They are attractive to media organizations because they allow them to forgo the five sentences of exposition that are required to understand any subject of objective policy relevance—sentences that, in some cases, news outlets literally cannot afford.

This is a continuing product of our failed public-education system and academia. But then, perhaps it’s not a failure — it might be exactly what people running those institutions have been trying to achieve.

General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Real War On Science

20 Comments

Yes, it comes from the Left and (as with racism) always has. And when they accuse the Republicans of it, it’s simply the usual projection from them. I’ve offered to debate Chris Mooney, too, but I suspect he knows he wouldn’t do well.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from Judith Curry. And I agree with her that Mooney’s Storm World was (surprising to me, after the polemical Republican War On Science) a good book.

[Update a while later]

This seems sort of related: The global warming “consensus” falls strongly on the side of skeptics:

Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.

One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’

I’ve often written this, but anyone still using the “97%” number is either a demagogue, or ignorant. And when they use it, it’s a strong signal that their opinions can be safely ignored.

[Early afternoon update]

Thoughts from John Tierney himself, where he briefly discusses the unwillingness of the Left to debate him.

General Science, History, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Animals Living In Our Houses

17 Comments

Why is it happening?

As that great philosopher Homer J. Simpson once said, “Animals are crapping in our houses, and we’re cleaning it up. That’s not America! It’s not even Mexico!”

Seriously I’d say that we domesticated dogs, but cats (along with grass) domesticated us. And it’s worth noting, which the article doesn’t, that cat’s haven’t really been domesticated; they too have been tamed, and generally require taming from birth. Feral cats, after a certain age, regardless of their ancestry, will generally remain wild.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Trump, And Anti-Semitism

3 Comments

Yes, like Bethany Mandel, I’d take them a little more seriously if they’d ever shown any concern about it when it comes so abundantly from the Left:

The increased focus on anti-Semitism has, of course, only been borne out of the fact that the supposed offender and his supporters have a capital R after their names. Would the media have been so concerned about an outbreak of hatred against a religious group had it originated out of a Democratic campaign? Given the water-carrying the media has been willing to do for Democrats who on one hand breathlessly warned about a “War on Women” in 2012 while still eulogizing Ted Kennedy, a beloved Democrat who killed an actual woman in 1969, it would be a good bet to wager that maniac supporters and a few campaign dog whistles would’ve been hastily ignored from a different party.

Also:

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Sauce For The Goose

10 Comments

No, Republicans shouldn’t let the Democrats filibuster the Supreme Court picks.

As has often been pointed out, Democrats in power behave as though they’ll never lose power again. Make them pay for it.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Related, sort of: Democrats are starting to realize that Obama led them into a cultural cul de sac.

[Update a couple more minutes later]

This sea of red shows how devastating the electoral losses of the past six years have been for Democrats.

I’m still angry that the media somehow made red the color of the Republicans, instead of the Marxists.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

How Did Trump Win?

116 Comments

Thoughts from Clive Crook:

two things seem to loom large. First, that Hillary Clinton was an objectively bad candidate. Second, that having chosen so poorly, Democrats came up with yet more ways to repel a large segment of the electorate. If I’d been asked to advise them on how to lose an election to a manifestly unqualified opponent, I’m not sure I could have been much help: They had it covered.

From the outset, many voters were clearly fed up with Washington and all its works. Up and down the country, the political establishment was cordially detested. Step forward, Hillary Clinton, wife of an ex-president, champion of the downtrodden, somehow wealthy, trailing scandals, friends in all the right places, anointed after a rigged nomination — in short, the complete representative of politics as usual. Yet if Clinton was a bad candidate, Trump was so much worse. Even many of his supporters acknowledge his unfitness. And remember, the election was close. Something else (aside from the design of the Electoral College) was needed to put Trump in the White House.

The crucial extra ingredient, I think, was the way the case against Trump was framed. Clinton’s goal should have been to detach a slice of his support. The best way for her to do that, issue by issue, would have been to acknowledge the particle of truth in his claims, if any, and say why her approach to the problem was better. Instead, she and her supporters refused to grant the validity of any part of Trump’s pitch. Even that wasn’t enough. Trump was a racist and a fascist, they said. Support him, and you’re no better: Either that, or you’re an idiot for failing to see it.

Apparently it takes more than four years of college to understand this: You don’t get people to see things your way by calling them idiots and racists, or sorting them into baskets of deplorables and pitiables (deserving of sympathy for their moral and intellectual failings). If you can’t manage genuine respect for the people whose votes you want, at least try to fake it.

I don’t really want to concern troll Democrats and give them good advice, but really, if you want to believe that this was about racism and misogyny, you just keep telling yourself that. And you just keep continuing to become electorally irrelevant:

Republican Map

[Late-evening update]

Lefties’ arrogance elected Trump. It’s the classic Greek tragedy of hubris, as exemplified by Obama’s upraised chin and Greek columns, and then the fall. As Glenn says, it was (ironically, but not surprising to people who have long seen the projection of the Left) a culture of hate. And as I said, the best reason to vote Trump (besides the fact that he, unlike her, could be impeached) was to issue a giant EFF YOU to the Left, and the media. But I repeat myself.