Some writers likely know their theories are bunk, yet nevertheless sell out the truth in trade for career success. It’s important, for their careers, they be thought of as “smarter than thou.” Their fantasy theories do perform the critical function of making the writers look “smarter than thou” (and also look stylishly edgy).

I read an article, maybe 18 months ago, about the importance of social networking to modern day American artists. A talented modern American artist - if his/her social networking skills are limited - is likely to be ignored in favor of mediocrities who understand the political game. The art world is more like a subjective episode of Survivor, and less like an objective judge of artistic skill. The death, in the art world, of belief in objective standards, only hastens the “Survivor” effect.

Anyway, something like this could easily be the case in a writer’s world in which few believe in, or are able to identify, objective talent. Subjectivity would then neccessarily rule the day. Whether or not you are perceived as “smarter than thou” might easily be more important than any objective writing talent you possess.

Hmm. With the following proclamation, I announce the beginning of my career as a major American writer:
.
.
.
.
…………..”Bush sucks!”

When I first read this some twenty-odd years ago, I thought it hyperbole. I do not think so now.

Carr was a writer of detective stories with a strong interest in history. He “solved” a mystery from the time of the Restoration and cast it in the form of a modern ‘analytic’ detective story (The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, out of print but available). I’m satisfied that a prosecutor today could get an indictment on the evidence. In another story, he introduced a fictional character who had been thrown out of some historical society for doing just that!

Carr was uneven; his best mysteries are among the most clever written but he couldn’t cover a weak story the way Christie or Marsh could. He was a member of the Detection Club along with Christie and Sayers, who both praised him in print.

In his later years, he turned to historical fiction and historical mysteries, introducing colorful elements like the Bow Street Runners and the Blind Judge. I suspect he wanted to pique readers’ interest.

The assertive ignorance of history that people show even to what they saw in their own lives convinces me now that Carr was right, that we need to actively learn, remember, and recount what has gone before, and that those who do it well are keeping us alive as individuals and as a civilization.

This resonates with the foundation thesis of Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles, that our identity as a civilization or nation is forged from our knowledge of our history. (Amazon just showed me a price under $24 for the hardcover; hint, hint). “Who controls the past controls the future.”

Nicely written. I came to a similar conclusion many years ago after watching Celebrity Week on Jeopardy (the TV game show).

I dunno–since you moved, I think your insights and writing have really taken off.

I am fascinated by how often the ‘elites’ turn out to have feet of clay and heads to match!

One must realize and understand the disaster of the First World War and the horrid Depression that followed to get to the core of the polarizing forces that impacted writers of that time, good and bad, profound and comfortable. The very widespread anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-Black, anti almost everything on the one hand, and the feigned delight in shades of Pink to deep Red on the other grew out of that confusion. Remember, Henry Ford had a signed picture of Hitler on his office wall in Michigan while FDR was struggling to get the Nation back on its feet and The Daily Worker was a very popular newspaper. But the Nation was shocked into reality by Pearl Harbor and responded as only America could. The irony for our time is that more Americans died on 9/11 than did at Pearl Harbor, and the irony is that the realization of the real struggle for today remains confused and disjointed.

Not a Writer: The people in the Nazi’s army have never heard of you.

Writer: What do I care?

It always works!

Might want to really work on a good metaphor or simile for Bush Sucks, maybe work in the word ‘teat’. Just a thought.

Keeps one in touch with reality, you know… the real world, with variuously well-adjusted people in it, instead of an incestuously self-reverential clique.

On the other hand, creating your own reality in words can be pretty entrancing. I am currently writing a long complicated trilogy about the German colonies in 19th century Texas - much of it is set in the town of Fredericksburg. I have taken a great deal of trouble to work from an original town plat and an 1850s census in describing where peoples’ and business werehouses were, and working from contemporary sketches and descriptions of them.

It is really disconcerting to visit and walk around Fredericksburg today with my 19th-century version in my mind - especially when I encounter the one or two buildings which have been preserved just as they were. “Oh! here is the Arlheger place - exactly where I put it and looking exactly as I described!”

Writing is a solitary, insular pursuit. No wonder writers seek out members of their tribe for socializing, and affect the beliefs of the tribe. Hemingway’s crowd affected the hard bitten cynicsim of the disillusioned ex pat. A later generation played at communism. A later still, beat niks. And so it goes.

I’m with W.F. Buckley. Id rather be governed by the first 200 names in the phone book than the Harvard faculty.

I don’t know about infantilism. this reminds me more of the disillusioned adolescent - who, encountering the adult world, suddenly discovers that grownups are all “hypocrites.” Some people learn that this is the way of the world. Others never get over it.

My experience is that while they do fine work in a one with one clinical setting, when they extrapolate their supposedly more sophisticated psychological knowledge to larger issues, they sound just like your garden variety Blue State liberal, dressed up in portentious jargon.

Anyway, I hope they all go to Activist Heaven when they die.

Why do they all want to save me from ‘fascism’ if they hate me, my beliefs and my middleclass-ness?

They support us blighted ‘proles’ in the same way leftists ’support the troops’….

Furthermore, as Neo touched on, in their private lives, they are just execrable human beings. I can’t stand to be lectured to about war and morality by privileged atheist weirdos with a few wives and several mistresses!

Sergey is right–if your find-and-replace ‘fascism’ with ‘growing up’, it becomes clear what they want to save themselves from.

This has a lot to do with the increasing assaults on free speech. To a farmer, a machinist, or an electrical engineer, the difference between *words* and *actions* is pretty clear. To a word person, though, words *are* actions.

I’ve identified three reasons.

1.) The Freudian Explanation — intellectual “nerdy” kids get picked on, and kids who are picked on take up solitary pursuits. Either way, they wind up identifying with the outsider, and often this continues into adult life. See Ted Rall — he pretty much admits he hates Bush because he was beat up in high school, which if you think about it is amazingly pathetic.

2.) The Herd Explanation — for whatever reason, most “intellectuals” of the past century have been liberal/leftist. This means that there’s a selection bias. Conservatives with brains go into the sciences or business because they loathe the “intellectual” milieu, while liberals are drawn to it even if they really aren’t all that bright. Over time the self-selection has become more and more extreme.

3.) The Power Explanation — being an “intellectual” is based on being smart. On knowing stuff and thinking about stuff. They tend to be attracted, naturally, to political ideologies which privilege the intellect. Marxism claimed to be “scientific” and as much as said that intellectuals would be running things, and its modern descendants continue that trend. Liberalism is government of the people, by and for the intellectuals. What’s not to like, if you think you’re an intellectual yourself?

Needless to say, there’s overlap among the three, and people can be motivated by more than one. If you grow up alienated and join the intellectual herd, they reinforce one another. Then taste the prospect of unearned power by simple virtue of being an intellectual — that’s hard for anyone to resist.

This is interesting in that American pop culture at large venerates outsiders. Reagan and his supporters in the media recognized this and successfully marketed the previously oxymoronic concept of the “rebel conservative.”

As a result, many American conservatives now cling jealously to the notion that they are outside the mainstream, often without acknowledging the irony. The myth of a ruthlessly liberal academia and media are part of this pose.

Traditionally, conservatives have argued that their values represented the mainstream and, rightly so, as they originated in a free country among free people and, therefore, represented triumph in the free market of ideas.

That’s been foresaken for the idea that some sort of unspoken inchoate conspiracy is holding down conservatives in the academia and media. It’s virtually impossible to have a conversation with an American conservative these days without them clearing their throat with “I know it’s not popular to say, or I know you won’t hear this in the media, or, I know it’s politically incorrect…” as if the unpopularity of conservative ideas somehow adds, rather than diminishes, their credibility.

I would certainly agree that historically, liberals have identified with outsiders. But since the 1980s, American conservatives have had spectacular success in using the mainstream corporate media they largely own to portray themselves as the put-upon victims of an undeserving majority.

The emergence of the Internet, including certainly sites like this, are helping melt away this myth, but it remains one of the most frequently repeated memes within the mainstream media.

Very interesting post. I think you hit on many interesting points. I especially can relate to the statements by Kundera. While what he said applies more to those on the extreme left, I think that it also can apply to those on the extreme right, though not as much or in quite the same way.

I too have long thought that much of the problem with many of the leftist intellectuals, be they writers, professors or ‘activists’ is that they have no grounding in simple reality. By that I mean what Kundera refers to when he says about his grandmother, ” …she knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of…”

I suspect that this lack of ‘real skills, the skills that are needed to survive on a most basic level cause a deep seated feeling of inadequacy. This inadequacy and the accompanying denial & self loathing that often seems to come with it, I suspect causes many so called intellectuals to compensate. The embrace the abstract generalizations over the reality of their own eyes. (Sorry, but I can’t resist playing the shrink here, though it is better left to professionals like yourself)

I also agree with Gray’s comment when he said ,“Furthermore, as Neo touched on, in their private lives, they are just execrable human beings.” That has also been my observation of many, though not all such folks. Witness behavior from Arthur Miller’s treatment of his son Daniel to Ted Kennedy’s dealing with the tragedy at Chappaquiddick. They embrace these abstract ideas about humankind to compensate for their own lack of humanity.

I remember back in ‘79, I was hitch-hiking from Great Falls Montana, to Seattle. I was outside of Spokane on a hot afternoon trying to catch a ride when a freshly graduated from medical school student (Yale undergrad) stopped to pick me up. He was going to Seattle to begin his residency. Our conversation eventually turned to politics. He was a strident leftist. He knew all about the poor and downtrodden. You see, he had worked at a clinic in Harlem one summer. I found it amusing that his one summer ‘down amongst ‘em’ had made him clear of conscience so as to enable him to go on to what I am sure would be a lucrative career in time. I also thought it funny that he came from an upper middle-class family, his dad being a contractor who made much money helping to construct ICBM silos. Though at the time, I was one of those poor, my views were not valid. I let him have his say since I needed the ride. I suspect many that the lefty activists preach to do the same, for similar reasons.

Later, in the 80’s in bush Alaska I would see Legal Services lawyers from the national office in DC come to spend two months in rural Alaska. By the end of that time, they were experts in native culture and ways, just ask them. Their arrogance and condescension knowing no limits, they proceeded to tell folks who had lived there for years, decades, some who were even born there, how things really were. Thinking that they were so superior, they never noticed that they were being manipulated by folks who were not nearly the bumpkins that the lawyers assumed they were. We used to joke about how once they had been to a fish camp and shown how to cut up a salmon, they were instant experts. A friend of mine and I nick-named them LSH’s (last sensitive honkies).

I noticed that often when such folks got around real working people that they would all of a sudden use profanity and use it to excess and try and act hyper-macho. Trying, no doubt to act like they fit in. Sometimes I found it embarrassing, for them.

Finding the real world somewhat uncomfortable, they a prefer the ‘imagology’ Kundera refers to, even over the evidence of their own eyes. I also suspect that many of these folks lack the courage to face reality when it conflicts with their imagology.

One of the reasons I have more respect for someone like Emma Goldman is because after spending two years in the Soviet ‘worker’s paradise’ after being deported in 1919 during the Palmer raids, Emma Goldman and her companion, Alexander Berkman left Russia in December of ‘21. Why? Because as was stated in an “American Experience” program about her life, “she did something that many of us find damned hard to do. She realizes she’s been a fool. She realizes she’s been wrong. She’s realized she’s made an error. Not just a casual error, but an error of huge awful magnitude to support the Bolsheviks. And she turns and she accepts that. She accepts it totally… Revealing the truth about the Bolshevik regime became a crusade for Goldman and Berkman. Their old enemies on the Right praised their analysis of a revolution gone wrong. Old comrades on the Left condemned them.”

You don’t see too many on the left today saying anything like that, about the aftermath of Vietnam, the success of the surge, or anything else.

Link

Let’s unpack a little of JB’s comment here:

- First, note the sloppiness typical of so much “liberal” thought in the reference to the so-called “mainstream” — what “mainstream” would that be, exactly? Mainstream media? Mainstream academia? Mainstream culterati? Mainstream middle class? “… historically, liberals have identified with outsiders” — and what “outsiders” would those be? The Masses? the middle class? the Common Man? — those “outsiders”? Or are those the people or groups of people that conservatives identify with? Any clues, Jackie?

- Second, let’s pause for a chuckle over the chutzpah of referring to the “ruthlessly” (!) liberal bias of academia and the elite media as a “myth”. The bias has been amply demonstrated with studies showing the percentages of academics and mainstream media employees who self-identify as liberals and/or as Democratic Party supporters (I’ll give it to you as an exercise to look them up, Jackie, if you really think the bias is a myth).

What this means, obviously, is that the simplistic “mainstream”/”outsider” dichotomy JB is working with is too crude to be useful — but we could start to get somewhere if we distinguished between a cultural elite, that, for a number of historic reasons, has come to dominate academia and the mainstream media primarily, and everybody else. This would help explain a number of things that Jackie finds puzzling, including the simple fact that conservatives manifestly are out of a “mainstream” as defined by the culturati, while still representing large numbers of the actual populace. The emergence of the Internet, then, rather than “melting away” any myth, has actually been a significant factor in changing that situation, and in eroding the dominance that the liberal elites have so long enjoyed. And that, more than any other single factor, is what accounts for so much of the sound and fury emanating from the slowly shrinking ranks of the liberal left these days.

By the way, there’s something particularly enjoyable about Jackie’s observation that it’s “… as if the unpopularity of conservative ideas somehow adds, rather than diminishes, their credibility”. In the first place, as we’ve seen, it isn’t that conservative ideas are “unpopular” generally, but rather that they arouse such hostile “passionate intensity” among the besieged liberal elite, and, of course, among their easily lead herd of followers. Which herd is what makes his observation humorous — like so many of the type, he really does seem to think that the credibility of ideas is measured in terms of their popularity, but you don’t often see so clear an expression of that sort of sheep-like sentiment. Why, if JB were a politician, it would almost qualify as a gaffe*!

(*”a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth”, Michael Kinsley)

I’ve noticed the Left is obssessed about popularity.
And that they love to claim being in the majority on whatever issue they’re prattling about.

How many times have we seen them refer to conservatives as 32%ers.. as if the legitimacy of our ideas is a function of Bush’s approval rating.

One would think that a group of people who purport to be oh-so-concerned about the protection of minorities by a majority wouldnt appear to be a state of almost bloodlust when they find themnselves in the positiion of majority (or perceive themselves to be)

The sexual promiscuity is part of the core disfunctional desire to pretend that fantasy is real. Real happiness can only come thru sexual faithfulness.

Whenever anyone says: “This might not be Politically correct, but”

You can guarantee the next thing they say will be boilerplate politically correct leftism–witness that Bill Maher’s show “Politically Incorrect” is in lockstep with politically correct Hollymediawood leftist ideas!

Now to Tim P’s point:

And she turns and she accepts that. She accepts it totally… Revealing the truth about the Bolshevik regime became a crusade for Goldman and Berkman. Their old enemies on the Right praised their analysis of a revolution gone wrong. Old comrades on the Left condemned them.”

You don’t see too many on the left today saying anything like that, about the aftermath of Vietnam, the success of the surge, or anything else.

Like Neo. That’s what makes this blog so interesting to me.

Emma Goldman and her companion, Alexander Berkman left Russia in December of ‘21. Why? Because as was stated in an “American Experience” program about her life, “she did something that many of us find damned hard to do. She realizes she’s been a fool.

Paleoneocon?

It fascinates me ‘cuz I’m not a Neocon. I’m just a ‘con’. I never went through a liberal phase.

In Highschool, I was in ‘Gifter Classes’ (God help me, I traded those in for JROTC after a year). My ‘mentor’ had me read Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky. After reading them, I realized these aren’t good people!

I realized that they loved their ideas more than people and they didn’t care that their ideas, if follwed as written, led to mass graves.

My Dad told me: “You’re wise to realize that–the people preaching equality, peace and love will be the first to shove you to your knees and put a bullet through your head.”

I’ll never forget that:

’socialized medicine’ is you being eaten by rats in a dirty bed.

‘Social Justice’ is a bullet through your head.

‘Sustainable economy’ is using your faeces to fertilize your meager garden.

“Social Progress” is political indoctrination.

‘Political Correctness’ is censorship.

“Leftism” is Tuol Sleng http://www.tuolsleng.com/history.php

I was in 5th Grade… 1985. Miss Malabarbra ..

For some reason she was really somber one day. and she looked at everyone in the class and said

“Pay attention to me…. when you all are older , everything that is wrong in the country is going to be blamed on one group of people… white males”

Me not being aware of politics at such a young age, I’m not sure where she was on the political spectrum though I would guess she’s a Leftist. That was like the only time she was political with us.. I think I was one of the first people in high school to point out the new phenomena of Political Correctness.

It’s difficult to assess with any precision what degree of chilling effect that had on America’s free marketplace of ideas, but we can be sure it was significant.

By comparison, there has never been any kind of purge, or blacklist or chilling whatsoever either in the American news media or universities. It just hasn’t happened. Sure, there will always be the odd incident of unfair tenure–be it for political leanings, sexual favors, cash or what have you–but there has never at any time in American history been a purge of conservatives within either the media or academia.

To the extent that anyone buys into the idea that academia is stacked with liberals, they really ought to be asking themselves why conservatives can’t succeed academically.

As it happens, I attended a university that was unabashedly right-wing and Christian. (Pepperdine). There was no hesitation by the school administration nor most faculty to present their right-wing Christian worldview to students, nor, even to censor other views in media they controlled such as the student newspaper.

I don’t think that’s the healthiest intellectual environment but I, like most other students there, freely chose to attend and have no compunctions about acknowledging that the founders and administrators of Pepperdine have every right to stunt their intellectual environment by insisting on a right-wing Christian bias.

The question I would ask the resentful conservatives here is, why aren’t there more Pepperdines? Why is it the rare exception?

The same goes for the news media.

America is thriving with tens of thousands or more millionaires and hundreds or more billionaires. Many of these are conservatives. Why can’t they create a successful conservative media?

Conservatives claim they are rational, intelligent, capable and so on. If that’s the case, why have they failed to produce a successful news media?

My view is that conservatives have produced a successful news media and have used it very effectively to promote their political causes.

What they have failed to do is to eliminate all liberal viewpoints from media.

So it is that the New York Post is a thriving–albeit subsidized–newspaper presenting unabashedly right wing views, competing with the New York Times for readers, advertisers and so on.

Why does it fail? There is no conspiracy, no HUAC, no COINTELPRO or dirty tricks campaign preventing Rupert Murdoch’s from beating out newspapers like the New York Times.

The problem is, there is simply no mass conservative readership for a major metropolitan daily newspaper. Nor is there a significant conservative viewership for TV news.

On most issues, most Americans skew liberal.

That doesn’t mean they are right, or that conservatives should be silent or shamed. It simply is the only rational explanation for why a free, wealthy, free-thinking country like the U.S. cannot has failed to produce news media that satisfies conservatives.

I’m a product of American academia, but an unexemplary one, as I was a mediocre student. I’d never blame that on my right-wing professors, though. The opportunities were there for me and I simply failed to grasp them with any vigor.

American academia is the envy of people around the world and continues to draw the elite from every corner of the planet.

It’s just pathetic that conservatives keep whining resentfully that America’s university system is some kind of cesspool of morons or miscreants or “execrable” people. Anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of all totalitarians.

You apparently believe that McCarthyism completely swept all leftists out of American society. Do you have any proof of this? Try an experiment: go to a college campus, pick a faculty member at random, and ask what party they support. Odds are about 9 in 10 you’ll find a liberal.

Your claim about media is somewhat muddled and incoherent. You say that there aren’t any liberals in media and anyway the media are liberal because everyone agrees with them except the people who don’t because they’re all a bunch of rich conservatives. Or something like that.

Again, try the experiment: go to a national media organization and ask around. Again, 9 in 10 chance you’ll be talking to a liberal.

Now, you seem to think that the “only rational explanation” for the lack of conservative media is the lack of conservatives in America. How do you account for the fact that a conservative got elected, then re-elected, President? Surely enough people to deliver an Electoral victory, then a popular one would be enough to support some national media, yes? Unless, as we’ve been discussing, the people in the media profession are generally biased, creating a hostile atmosphere for conservatives and discouraging them from entering the field.

Any examples, Gray, or are you just making it up as you go along?

I neither said that, nor meant it Tri. Go back and read what I wrote.

I wrote: “It’s difficult to assess what chilling effect that had.”

My point was simply that there was never a purge of any kind undertaken against conservatives or rightists or fascists.

Tri suggests I go to the “national” media and start asking around about people’s political affiliation.

That wouldn’t really prove anyting about whether or not the press itself is biased, only what their background is.

Consider the Wall Street Journal: it’s editorial board and columnists are among the most rigidly conservative commentators in America. Yet the paper’s reporters take the same angles as their counterparts in Wapo and NYT.

I’d love to hear Tri’s explanation of how that happens. Does that mean the newspaper–owned and operated by avowed conservatives–won’t hire conservative reporters?

Then there’s the empires of Murdoch, Black, Sinclair and so many others.

Tri seems to think these people are somehow liberal. That if I went to their national media, I’d find nothing but a pack of liberals.

Sorry Tri. The data are in: conservatives have more than their fair share of representation in the media. They complain merely because the top of the profession–as recognized by readers and publisher alike–doesn’t parrot GOP talking points the way Fox does.

Note as well the proliferation of right-wing sites like this one that ban all liberals.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until I get blocked. A lot of conservatives hate it when someone intrudes on their little bubble of presumption and cant.

Any examples, Gray, or are you just making it up as you go along?

Here are some good Chomsky quotes:

““The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains.”

Property belongs to the masses!

“Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.”

Into the fields with the bourgeoisie!

“The free market is fine for the third world and its growing counterpart at home. Mothers with dependent children can be sternly lectured on the need for self-reliance, but not dependent executives and investors, please. For them, the welfare state must flourish.”

Into the Fields with The Rich!

“”Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time.”

Down with modern industrial civilization! Everyone into the fields!

“We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”

We’ll follow those ‘good ideas’ into the killing fields….

Catch that smell? That smell of overturned earth and Year Zero? Smell the bodies of the ‘rich’ and ‘class traitors’ rotting in the rice paddies?

That wouldn’t really prove anyting about whether or not the press itself is biased, only what their background is.”

It’s still pretty left:

“If newsrooms have moved slightly rightward, the research shows, however, that journalists are still more liberal than their audiences. According to 2002 Gallup data in “The American Journalist,” only 17% of the public characterized themselves as leaning leftward, and 41% identified themselves as tilting to the right. In other words, journalists are still more than twice as likely to lean leftward than the population overall.”

http://www.journalism.org/node/2304

The data are in: conservatives have more than their fair share of representation in the media.

Bzzzzzt! You lose. Thank you for playing, please try again.

Communist goals in 1963

Noted in U.S. Congressional Record on January 10, 1963, and quoted in “The Naked Communist” by Cleon Skousen.

Current Communist Goals:
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.”

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [”]united force[”] to solve economic, political or social problems.

Chomsky isn’t a communist and never has been.
His critique of capitalism, some of which is reflected in the quotes cherry picked by Gray, is that it is unevenly applied and often used as ideological camouflage for kleptocracy.

Chomsky has never advocated the replacement of capitalism with communism, nor a violent revolution to overthrow capitalism.

And as for press bias, here’s what the link Gray himself provides actually says:

“In the most recent survey, 40% of journalists described themselves as being on the left side of the political spectrum (31% said they were “a little to the left” and 9% “pretty far to the left”). But that number was down notably, seven percentage points from 1992, when 47% said they leaned leftward.”

Well whaddya know there Gray?

Your own stats say only a tiny minority of journalists say they are “pretty far to the left.” A larger minority say they are a LITTLE to the left.
More important, the number of journalists who are “a little to the left” is outnumbered by “middle of the roaders” and insignificantly larger than the number who indentify themselves as “leaning toward the political right.

From the book review Gray cites:

“The percentage of “middle of the roaders” moved up slightly to 33% in 2002 from 30% in 1992. And the number of journalists identifying themselves leaning toward the political right also inched up to 25% from 22% a decade earlier (20% “a little to the right” and 5% “pretty far to the right”).”

Moreover, the political disposition of journalists does nothing to demonstrate that their reporting is itself biased. If you think for a nanosecond that reporters significantly deny the will of publishers, you’re in dire need of a reality check. Only a tiny percentage of top journalists are talented enough to write whatever they like. The vast majority of scribes follow the template set by the editor, passed down from the managing editor from the publisher and owner.

Sorry Gray, looks like you reached for the buzzer before reading the material you cited. Maybe that’s why you dropped out of the Chomsky course as well. Seems you’re in the habit of criticizing things you don’t know about.

And…

Strictly for the purpose of discussion, suppose I concede that there is a liberal media bias–that still leaves Gray and others here to answer the question of how that happened.

Were conservatives purged from media companies?

Nope.

Do newspapers and TV stations have a loyalty to liberal principles oath that employees are required to take?

Nope.

Are conservatives banned from starting their own Murdoch-like media megalith empires?

Nope.

Do the top mainstream newspapers refuse to hire openly conservative commentators?

Nope.

Then why can’t conservatives produce a news media that they find satisfactory?

I note that just this month, the New York Times hired Bill Kristol as a regular columnist.

Come to thing of it Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and every single one of their ilk hires unabashedly conservative columnists.

Here’s some homework for you, Gray. Go to The Drudge Report and look at all the columnists listed there. Virtually all of them are card carrying members of the mainstream media. Then ask yourself why MOST of them, not some, not a few, but MOST, are unabashed conservatives.

Then get back to me about why you think a liberally biased media prefers to put unabashed conservatives in the most coveted, influential, politically measurable positions.

I note that just this month, the New York Times hired Bill Kristol as a regular columnist.

Well, you’re beginning to get it, JB — even the New York Times is starting to realize that its survival may depend, ironically, upon “diversifying” its political viewpoints. The Times, they are a-changin’, huh? Whether it’s IN time enough to save it remains to be seen, of course, but it’s nice to note that the dominant liberal media in general might be slowly coming to the realization that there are alternative viewpoints, and that their mission might be to reflect them rather than convert them. These things take time, though — as in, generations.

As to why cultural elites form and cohere in the first place, that’s a little more complicated, but it has to do with achieving a dominant and controlling position in training centers that feed the elite in the first place, which is what the left managed to do in higher education after the traumatic events of the sixties. For now, they remain completely ensconced there, and their skew on the rest of the culture remains significant, even as it slowly erodes. Eventually, however, as the Boomers retire and/or die, I think there are encouraging signs that some real “diversity” of ideas will be achieved in academia as well.

What might a media not dominated by a cultural elite look like? Well, have a listen to talk radio. Or, even better, continue to read political blogs like this one. If you act like a common troll, of course, you might find yourself banned from commenting, but not from reading. And hey! You can always start your own blog for free, and then you can hardly fail to attract that vast audience hungry for yet more left-lib pablum. Can you?

You trot out the two common arguments trying to “prove” that mass media aren’t liberal-dominated. First, that they’re owned by big corporations/rich people, and therefore must be conservative; and second, that some papers publish conservative editorials.

First point: since when are rich people conservative? The wealthiest people in America donate heavily to the Democratic party. In the last election the Democrat candidate was a billionaire. Being rich is not a guarantee of political affiliation. As to corporations — they have no politics, but they do know which side their bread is buttered on. They support whoever’s likely to win.

Second point: editorial page opinions and news reporting have almost no connection. The editorials are the work of an entirely separate group of people at most papers. If the Wall Street Journal publishes conservative editorials, that doesn’t change the fact that most journalists are liberals. Nor does it change the fact that the journalists most people see and hear from are liberals.

Come on, Jack: do you think we’re stupid? Or do you actually believe that people in the media aren’t biased? How else do you explain the fawning coverage of Democrat candidates, the game of hide-the-party when a Democrat official does something wrong, and the mass of unexamined assumptions that colors all reporting?

I’ve heard many people say the WSJ News Journalists (as opposed to the Editorial board) are just as Left wing and if not, then even more, than any other newsroom/staff in general.