House of Eratosthenes

If there were any readers of this blog, which of course there aren’t, they would recall a long-standing tradition here of noticing how our media outlets pretend their techniques are perfectly objective while they are actually anything but. This is our fault. As Americans, we tend to do a dandy job of understanding the impossibility of trusting what has not been questioned, but we do a very poor job of cataloguing what we need to question.

That last sentence has a high density factor. Go back and read it again if you have to.

Still confused? I’ll give you an example in the form of our Number One Contentious Issue: Iraq. There is a “pro-war” side and an “anti-war” side, and we’re now starting our fourth straight year (before the invasion as well as after) debating what is right and what is wrong about invading Iraq. Our media steers clear of improperly promoting viewpoints about this that would be entirely personal, by sticking to reporting the facts. And it is accountable to us when it deviates from fact and drifts into falsehood, especially to the blogging community.

But which facts does it report?

For the media, the world is just a big playground here. The United States has done some things that fall short of the high standard of civil behavior we have set for ourselves; our enemies have done things that fall short of any standard of civil behavior whatsoever. What will our media talk about? They get to decide this on their own.

You simply can’t get in trouble with the public for ignoring something. Other editors, sure. Anybody who has channel surfed during a news hour, knows this to be true. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX all talk about Abu Ghraib at the same time; they all talk about Reagan bombing the evil empire at the same time; they all talk about the weather at the same time, and they all talk about a family of really cute duckies holding up traffic on a two-lane road at the same time. The rigidity of the template is a settled matter. But the public? Stupid readers and stupid television watchers, they get excited over anything. One guy gets mad at you for not talking about Palestinian terrorists bombing Israelis, you just ignore him — until you can’t, and then you print a letter from a guy who’s mad you didn’t talk about Israelis bombing Palestinians. Print the two letters next to each other, and you look perfectly centrist.

In other words, an opinion that the media should have discussed something, that it didn’t, is exactly that: An opinion. You can’t “nail” the media for not doing their jobs, with an opinion. And there’s something proper about that, but there’s something improper about allowing ourselves to be entirely defanged in this venue. If our media ever fails us spectacularly, as some believe it did before September 11, 2001, it will fail us by refusing to talk about something important. And even with the advent of the blogging community, we have no checks against this.

That’s one way they can hose us. Here’s another. In addition to enjoying unlimited latitude in choosing facts to report, they can choose to ask whatever questions that they want.

There’s a great example of this in the abortion issue. There is a pro-life side, which believes the baby’s right to life overrides the right of the mother to terminate her pregnancy, and there is a “pro-choice” side which believes the opposite. Certain questions have a potential to splinter-up, and thereby take power from, one side or the other. Question A might be “should a woman have the right to terminate a pregnancy after a rape, or when her life is in danger?” and this splinters-apart the pro-life side. Some folks on that side will answer yes, and some folks will answer no. The pro-choice side of the line stays united, the other faction is intellectually broken apart.

Question B might be “should a woman be denied the alternative of abortion if she is blatantly and repeatedly using it as a method of contraception?” This would have the opposite effect. The pro-life faction would stay united, the pro-choice group would come apart at the seams.

You hear Question A asked quite a lot. You very seldom hear Question B. That’s an example of persuading people toward one side over the other, while pretending you’re not doing it. That’s what our media does to us.

I’ve found it is an educational exercise, and quite an amusing one, to use this technique on intellectually lazy camps of thought that have yet to self-destruct into smithereens even though they cry out for the chance to do so. And there is no camp of thought more deserving of this, than the anti-war camp. They could be busted up six ways from Sunday by the right question, but within the media and without, they seldom have to address the question.

Well, I have freedom of speech like anyone else, and therefore have been inviting noisy anti-war zealots — who in turn show little-to-no reluctance to accept — to more precisely define the stance they want to take. This is great fun. These people really do think, as they narrow down their intellectual position, that their bedmates from coast to coast are actually along with them for the ride, on every single word. After all, they are so righteous. No man alienates his own allies in a battle for what’s righteous, does he?

Which Is It?

1. Saddam Hussein’s regime was not dangerous, and we were wrong to do anything.
2. Saddam Hussein’s regime was not dangerous yet, and we should have given it time to get dangerous before we did anything.
3. Saddam Hussein’s regime was dangerous to other people, but not to us, and didn’t care about us, and it wasn’t our place to do anything.
4. Saddam Hussein’s regime was immediately dangerous to other people, and would have been to us someday, but not at the time we overthrew it so it wasn’t our place to do anything.
5. Saddam Hussein was trying to become dangerous to us, but we struck too early and now we have no evidence, which has resulted in an alienation of our allies.
6. Saddam Hussein’s regime was dangerous to us, but because we bungled the invasion we let all the evidence go missing and now we got nothing.
7. Other?

I’m positive that with a little work, that list of options could be greatly expanded.

But it’s more than just a fun exercise to ask the anti-war camp to stipulate where exactly they stand as individuals. It is our sacred duty. If we are going to safeguard our liberties by vigorously questioning controversial positions taken by our fellow countrymen, we need to vigorously question all the controversial positions, not just the ones the powerful elites in our media don’t like.

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Have Fun With ThemTuesday, November 1st, 2005

Have Fun With Them
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005