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Pat Caddell is mad… — 31 Comments

  1. it is time to start war on those who have made war on us: the media.

    Let go America. Show them.

  2. Caddell has a bit of a rose-tinted view of what the media used to be (if he wants to see them go into crucify mode, just wait until Romney is inaugurated). That being said, he’s right in his larger point, and it’s hard not to admire his integrity.

    One thing that boggles my mind is that the public approval of the media is so low, while at the same time they remain so receptive to their propaganda. What exactly don’t they like about the media?

    My guess is that it’s something like this. Almost all Republicans hate the media for obvious reasons. Almost all Democrats say they hate the media, when what they mean is conservative media. That is, they’re expressing in general terms what is actually a specific gripe they have with conservatives getting some space in the public square. And then, finally, Independents say they hate the media because they don’t like what they perceive as acrimony and “not working together to get things done.”

    Taken together, that would probably leave us with about 8-10% expressed approval of the media. BUT, it also means that in reality about 55% of people are still quite receptive to whatever Big Brother chooses to relay (Democrats + many Independents).

    I’m not sure Caddell is ready to admit that his side of the aisle doesn’t really hate the media, and aren’t disillusioned with it as he is. Indeed, Pat Caddell on Fox News is more than likely what Democrats mean when they say they “hate the media.”

  3. Caddell is obviously right when he, apparently reluctantly, admits that the MSM has now become a direct threat to our Republic; it is now our enemy and the enemy of freedom and democracy. It has become the Left’s “Ministry of Truth” that Orwell warned us about and predicted would come. It has forfeited its position of honor and trust.

    The “Press”–now the much more effective, much broader Mainstream Media, with much more penetrating power–was given special protections by the Founders, because they viewed and envisioned the Press as the primary guarantor of our liberties and Democracy.

    It was their role to ferret out the news, and to report it fairly and completely to the citizenry of our Republic, in order for our citizenry to make the critical, informed judgments and decisions without which our Republic would fail.

    Now, that Press has turned against us,deliberately blinds and blinkers us, and reports only what supports the Leftist regime they favor and are, now, an integral part of, regardless of its effect on us. and it supports the Leftist regime’s destruction of our Republic and our freedoms.

    Thus, it is time to denounce and discard the MSM as inimical to our interests, independence, and freedom.

  4. kolnai Says:

    “One thing that boggles my mind is that the public approval of the media is so low, while at the same time they remain so receptive to their propaganda. What exactly don’t they like about the media?”

    I think this is a correlation is not causation thing. People that distrust the media do not buy its message… instead they just get less info. So; they just don’t catch info about issues like this.

  5. Easy, Curtis. Why dump on someone who is actually coming into the light? Many such someones can be valued allies; examples — Bernard Goldberg (still a liberal but who sees through the MSM smoke) and David Horowitz (no longer a leftie but a rightie). Both these gentlemen have provided telling glimpses of what it’s ^really^ like behind enemy lines, both are terrific.

  6. Kolnai,

    I suppose you are right about the left hating the “conservative media”.

    To us though I do see the conservative media giving liberals a fair shake on their networks.

    It kills me to watch Bob Beckel and Juan Williams and other sometimes but I’m truly glad they are there.

    I’m so glad it’s not Hannity and Colmes anymore.

  7. kolnai isn’t just coming to the light. He’s an extraordinary mind who already knows.

    But you’re right. Not everyone, even them who know deeply of what is happening, should be held accountable for their knowledge. Only those history will speak well of.

  8. How much hatred for conservatism must be fed into the minds of journalism graduates for this level of dereliction of duty to be reality. It really boggles the mind at how nearly the entire industry is now infested with people without a conscience at best, or mentally deranged at worst.

  9. Btw,

    The Des Moines Register knows who to endorse and that is the Republican for the first time in 4 decades.

    As far as I know Ann Althouse still doesn’t know. It’s just so hard to decide….

  10. Benghazi is looking like the watershed moment for American media. This story that made pravda blush.

  11. With the Usurper’s administration, the lightning has flashed; and we see that the valley is crawling with armed Orcs.

    AS for the wilful blindness problem: read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.

    Hoffer was a stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s who wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer became a best-seller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest televised press conferences.

    Brilliant, dense with insights, written in crystalline clarity. Example: those who adhere to Movements like Communism and various fanatical religions are looking, not to fulfill their individual promise, but to escape themselves, having no hope of achieving distinction on their own. Thus they are immune to the appeal of the rational, pragmatic, liberty-minded man.

    “When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows, and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action that follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

  12. History note: We, Bloggers and Commenters, are the modern analogue of the Committees of Correspondence in Revolutionary times.

    “The Committees of Correspondence were formed throughout the colonies as a means of coordinating action against Great Britain. Many were formed by the legislatures of the respective colonies, others by extra-governmental associations such as the Sons of Liberty in the various colonies. In any case, the members of these organizations represented the leading men of each colony. It took some time, and finally an act as dramatic as the Boston Port Bill, to coordinate the colonies in action against Great Britain.”

    All of a sudden, I feel my heart lift.

  13. The media has alwyas been biased but there are two things that have made it worse in recent years. 1) While reporters have always leaned left, a lot of publishers used to lean right. Not the NYT and WaPo of course but many newspapers outside the Northeast corridor had conservative Republican editorial pages e. g. the Chicago Tribune and LA Times. They were founded by entrepreneurial self-made men with a natural affinity for free enterprise. Now they are run by heirs who never had to work a day in their lives so they are all guilt-ridden liberals. 2) The ideal used to be to report *facts*. Maybe honored in the breach sometimes (hello Walter Duranty) but that at least was the stated goal. In the post-modern era facts take second place to stories and “narratives” and you know which way that is going to go.

    Finally even with all this they’ve gone completely off the cliff because of Obama. He is their wet dream, a superficially elegant, progressive black man with an international third-world background. They would sooner be fed into a wood chipper than report on him objectively.

  14. thomass –

    I’m pretty sure you’re right. It comes down ultimately to “rational ignorance,” i.e., most people just leading their busy lives without much time or obvious incentive to peel away the onion, so to speak.

    What I’m questioning, however, is this statistic I’ve seen Caddell and others throwing around stating that only 8% of the public has a favorable view of the media.

    Now, that is bizarre, especially if rational ignorance is pervasive. Logically, at least, if one doesn’t take much of any interest in politics, and therefore doesn’t really consume much media, then one should be skeptical or neutral but not antipathetic. Obviously there must be some social pressure pushing people to give the “acceptable” answer.

    What I keyed on was just a hypothesis, but one supported by my (anecdotal) personal experience and reading, namely, that the key factor is the partisan attitudes to the media.

    Conservatives (rightly) despise the media for being outrageously mendacious about their leftist agenda. Leftists (wrongly) hate the media because they think it’s not monolithic enough. They think most publications conservatives despise for being leftist (while pretending to be objective) – such as, say, newspapers like the LA Times and Washington Post – are too moderate and don’t take on conservatives forthrightly and sharply enough. They also have this bizarre Chomskian narrative they’ve imbibed since college about “corporate media,” which is an opulent collection of gems of stupidity and madness, but never mind. They believe it.

    Lastly, if you talk to self-identified Independents, all you’re likely to hear is a bunch of weary sighs about partisanship, polarization, and extremism.

    Given all of that, everyone has their social “oomph” for saying they dislike the media.

    But we then have to square that with the findings of people like Tim Groseclose (and what we know to be true from simple observation), that a significant chunk of people are swayed to the left by the major media outlets and their framing of the issues. E.g., if NBC, ABC, CBS, the big newspapers and magazines, etc., treat Benghazi like a nothing-burger, a lot of people will swallow it.

    That is important to note. They will not be neutral. They will not say, “Hmmm… this is the media I supposedly hate, so let me be skeptical here.” They will swallow it. This must be explained, and it can’t be traced to mere rational ignorance, for, as noted, the logical attitude to take then is skepticism or neutrality until one does one’s own research.

    My point is that people swallow it because many, perhaps most, who claim to “hate the media” actually don’t. Democrats love it and get all their info. from the MSM. Independents, or a good deal of them anyway, just swallow what’s fed to them from the surrounding informational aether, so long as it’s spoken in dulcet tones and doesn’t broadcast it’s partisanship.

    Only conservatives (and libertarians) truly loathe the media and approach every story with a critical, doubting eye.

    I think common sense, in essence, tells us that this “8%” number can’t be right. If it was, then our media would already be significantly different. Instead, what we have is a robust conservative counter-MSM that reflects OUR (genuine) hatred of the MSM, because there was a demand for it, and, on the other hand, the MSM that reflects the Democrats’ contentment with it and the Independents’ love of the Siren Songs of calm-seeming pseudo-objectivity.

    In sum, I agree that the ground of all of this is rational ignorance, but the full cause is, as one might say, “Rational ignorance-plus-social pressure.”

  15. Wolla Dalbo –

    What you said.

    I once took a class with a certain conservative professor I will not name, and our first assignment was to read the Federalist Papers and then the Pacificus/Helvidius dispute between Madison and Hamilton. The question the professor asked us to ponder – again, a conservative prof teaching mostly conservative students (so this was not a prompt to respond, “racism!”) – was what, if anything, did we think Madison missed or overlooked or didn’t fully grasp the danger off.

    The most common answer was that the informal underbelly of the Constitution, particularly the freedoms explicitly enumerated in Bill of Rights, would eventually be seized upon by the disgruntled and demagogic, and then pushed through the education system, and from there to the public, and from there to government officials, to the Courts, and eventually to the Constitution itself. Thus minority faction, if it seizes upon the key institutions securing self-government (such as the press), gives rise to majority faction, and voila – we have a permanent, majority interest opposed to the common good.

    My reply was that Madison understood all of that perfectly well, and the solution he offered was to say, in effect, as Ben Franklin did when asked what kind of government he’d helped design: “A republic, if you can keep it.” There’s no way to design rock solid safeguards against majority faction without negating the very purpose of forming majorities. And Madison knew that, as did the other Founders.

    At some point, the laws have to taper off and life has to begin, and the wisest statesmen are wise because they have a knack for seeing where to tie the knot between law and life, thus fostering as best as can be done – that is, not perfectly – what used to be known as “ordered liberty.”

    (I’m not disagreeing with you, Wolla, just amplifying your comment).

    The whole point of a free society is that it must be maintained freely, precisely via the “informal underbelly” of the Constitutional system. We either exercise our rights and duties responsibly or not. Beyond providing some structures and incentives for that, a Founding Father cannot go without negating the free society he aims to foster. A nice dilemma, indeed.

    I suspect Madison would look at us today and simply say, “You chose poorly.”

    And thus we have our media and our schools.

    Time for us to choose wisely.

  16. Getting back to the “Pat Caddell phenomenon” for a moment:

    It’s also been interesting (and encouraging) to watch Kirsten Powers for the last four months or so. She’s emerged from her own cocoon and is showing a lot of independent thought; sometimes even some “Caddell-esque” outrage.

    That said, it’s clear that the MSM is going to do all it can to run out the clock on this story. And that the Romney campaign has decided to let them get away with it.

  17. One path Barry may try: I told them to ‘stand down’ and did not want to endanger more lives in a rescue attempt. Lame, but if the dinosaur media can’t run out the clock before the election, he may try it.

  18. I detest the main stream media and I agree with Pat C. that they are a threat to our democracy.

    What can we do about it? FIGHT, dammit FIGHT.

    As a start, go to:

    http://www.zazzle.com/the+media+is+lying+to+you+gifts

    Buy some of the stuff on that page…get more items for your friends…start a revolution against the press. Boycott the MSM. Write to their sponsors and tell them of your displeasure with how their networks are handling the news and that you no longer will buy their products if they keep advertising on that network.

    We can KILL the MSM if we work at it and not just bitch about it.

  19. I think everyone here is agreeing that the national media has become the problem. Everyone want to fight big media so some of you propose writing to sponsers or boycotting. These are important and useful but in the end they’re only tactics. What is required–ladies and gentlemen–is a strategy. To formulate a strategy we need leaders. That’s who formulates and emplements strategies. Without a leader we’re just a bunch of ants wandering around in random directions.

    Overall, the strategy must isolate big media from their vendors, their clients, and their audience. We must put the MSM in a metaphorical “rear-naked-choke” and hold it fearlessly, long after worried bystanders are starting to pry at our arms. Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

    Questions we need to ask the next reporter we see.

  20. My prediction is … if Obama loses th election the media will turn on him to save their @ss.

    They’ll ofcourse dog Mitt but also say LOOK we ARE doing our job!

  21. One additional point not mentioned here yet is that we are herd animals. People may despise and distrust the media for any number of reasons mentioned above, but the bottom line is that the media (whether “reporting” or advertising) influences us by implying that “everybody’s doing this,” “everybody’s believing this,” therefore you should, too.

    How often have any of us been confronted with a salesman’s offhand comment that “this is the model that everyone’s buying.” The implication is clear.

    This also factors in to to the narrative of Barack Obama’s (and earlier Hillary’s) “inevitability,” as well as to the concept of a preference cascade; keep each individual from knowing what the herd believes. When the herd discovers its herd belief then the preference cascade begins, like a flock of birds swooping in the air or a school of fish in the sea.

  22. Further thoughts on the herd.

    IMO this is why great leaders are great leaders, they can somehow focus the belief of the herd and they convince the herd to agree with them. The entire concept of the “anti-hero” in films like Cool Hand Luke is the antithesis of precisely this idea; the loner who stands against the herd.

    Obama showed the potential to be a great leader; he was able to unite 53% of the electorate behind his candicacy. Sure that was with the help of a compliant media, but that’s precisly what great leaders do, they use the tools at their disposal. (Didn’t FDR use the media with his “fireside chats” and selective feeding of stories to a compliant media that just happened to agree with the ovewhelming perspective of the American people?)

    But Obama squandered his opportunity. Rather than discerning what the herd mentality was, he decided he knew what it should be and he tried to imprint his beliefs on the herd for his own ends. That’s not a leader, that’s a despot or a con artist and now, enough of the American elecorate has seen through his charade so as to make a second term unlikely as of this post. Remember that 47% of the electorate already recognized this charade in 2008 and that is a very encouraging indication about the future of this country.

  23. Pat Cadell has been on the media’s case for quite some time and although he’s a Democrat, he’s given some of the most damaging comments against this administration I’ve heard on Fox.

    I and he (I guess) stand corrected…of course, we are supposed to have a republic…not a pure democracy. I was using the word “democracy” in the general sense that we vote to choose our governmental representatives…not the exact structure of how we do that.

    (Texans need no instruction on states rights.)

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