Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Byron York writing in the Examiner:
If you look at a year-long graph of public attitudes toward the national health care law, you’ll see that the last time a majority of Americans supported the Democratic plan was July 2009 — before there actually was a Democratic plan. Once voters found out what was in Obamacare, they opposed it.
:
One obvious answer is that it’s a bad law. But that, of course, is unacceptable to Democrats who staked their careers on it. So they’ve come up with other explanations.First they argued that voters disliked the law because they were unfamiliar with it — see Nancy Pelosi’s famous “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” remark. Then they argued that the public actually likes many parts of the law and will ultimately like the whole thing. Finally, they argued that people have been misled by Republicans and the media, particularly Fox News.
Now, they’re doubling down with a new study that gives an academic sheen to their case, as well as a “fact-checking” analysis that purportedly proves GOP dishonesty.
The study, “Misinformation and the 2010 Election: A Study of the U.S. Electorate,” came out last week from a group at the University of Maryland called WorldPublicOpinion.org. The report’s authors say they found “strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the issues prominent in the election campaign.” One of those issues was health care.
York is going after the study where it is most vulnerable: The motive. After all, was anybody puttering about the kitchen in the early morning hours, feeding the cat and making the coffee, wondering “hmmm, are Fox News viewers well informed or under-informed?” No, pretty much everyone had one answer or the other already gelled in their heads, or else solidly didn’t care.
When we picked on the same study we went after the methods and how questionable they were. The bad motives represent a source for the bad methods, so as is usually the case with York’s work, we’re left thinking “gee wish I thought of that.” On the other hand, it is useful to highlight bad methods, since we’ll be seeing them again and again and again — the bad motive may or may not be so easily and so starkly proven out during the next cycle of “studies.”
The bad motives and the bad methods are both problematic. Neither factor contributes to the settling of questions or to the acquisition of knowledge. Neither one is helpful.
What’s broken? Who needs to fix something? Not PIPA; they’re advancing the agenda they want to advance. Not the University of Maryland; they’re acting as a mouthpiece, for the propaganda they think worthy and fitting.
Blame the electorate. We have communicated the message that we will support bad solutions if they make us look scholarly. If a plan will thicken the bureaucracy and rejuvenate the tort system rather than the private sector, and make it harder to access medical care instead of easier — but make us look cool and sophisticated in some way if we support it — most of us will support it.
We won’t support some other plan that restores profitability and control to the private sector, lowers costs, makes it easier to afford procedures and therefore coverage…if it makes us look like, say, an average housewife from Alaska who drops the ‘g’ off the ends of her words. We’ll reject that in a great big hurry, even if we know the alternative violates the letter and the spirit of the constitution.
And so we’ve left the door open for some enterprising fox to take up the job of guarding the henhouse. Naturally, the foxes are lining up. You’d have to think there’s something wrong with ’em if they didn’t.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blame people who still think anything that comes out of the American university system has merit.
Folks who have never been to college and don’t know anyone who has been to college are exempt. I was like this — the first member of a blue collar family to enter the ivory tower — and I thought the university was full of dedicated scholar-priests continually searching for Platonic, capital-T Truth. If you haven’t been exposed to it, you can be forgiven for thinking that words like “hegemony” and “praxis” and “Othering” actually mean something.
People with degrees, or who know people who have degrees, have no excuse. Anyone who’s been within rifle range of a university knows that what you learn in college is 50% useless, 40% malicious propagandistic bullshit, and 10% actual skills. And what’s more, for lots of people — i.e. the non-math types — the useful 10% doesn’t come from classes; it comes from dealing with hostile, labyrinthine bureaucracies (it’s good preparation for dealing with the feddle gummint).
Of course a university “study” is going to find that conservatives are uninformed. Compared to modern colleges, medieval schoolmen arguing over the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin are models of free and open inquiry. There’s a reason why those professors who are always quoted on the talking head shows produce books like “Transgendered Hemophiliacs in Oregon Territory, 1845-1847: A Marxist Reappraisal.” When you rule out upwards of 75% of the western intellectual tradition — dead white males, dontchaknow — circular reasoning is about all you have left.
- Severian | 12/26/2010 @ 16:28