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Bravo New Left Media!
Mar 21st, 2010 | 10 responses
If health care reform passes today, I’m giving some of the credit to this:
No, I’m not referring to a backlash reaction to the circus atmosphere and offensive epithets that we have learned do characterize Tea Party protests. I’m pointing to New Left Media…
Chase Whiteside, Erick Stoll, and a camera. We are currently students at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
Better even than the celebrity commentators found on cable and broadcast TV (and an attractive, grass-roots, new Left alternative to the lavishly-funded Fox News) these young advocacy journalists fade away and let the people speak for themselves. Yes, they are talented editors, too. And that is a legitimate part of the craft.
Congratulations Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll. Your classy work gets an A+ in my grade book!
10 Responses to “Bravo New Left Media!”
I love the fact that they pointed out the blindingly obvious and those folks still couldn't understand. Every single conservative who talks about the length of the bill completely ignores that any bill that is going to deal adequately with an extremely complex subject like our health care industry just can't be a short and simple document. Short and simple documents can only deal with small scale simple issues. There aren't a lot of those in a 21st century U.S. with almost a third of a billion people.
WoW! This is great work! I have to give those people credit for saying they don't know and they only know what Fox and Beck tell them.
Can't say that I see anything 'new' or 'brave' here. The same technique was used about half a dozen times with Obama voters who had no clue what his actual policy positions were.
Can't say that I see anything 'new' or 'brave' here. The same technique was used about half a dozen times with Obama voters who had no clue what his actual policy positions were.
I agree. I also think there was no less of a circus atmosphere around the Obama rallies.
This is the internet… Link, people, link! Not that I doubt you.
And I didn't see anyone call the New Left Media piece brave. I applaud it as a fine piece of authentic grass-roots advocacy journalism.
“circus atmosphere around the Obama rallies.”
You mean they had signs lynching McCain at the Obama rallies? And sock puppets? They had pictures of McCain's wife with a lip plate? People were walking around carrying guns, too? Guess I missed seeing all that.
vey (and JWindish) I'm not going to get into an argument on whether the right or the left has a more circus-like atmosphere, and I'm not going to defend any racist acts or comments. I listened to many Obama campaign rallies on Sirius POTUS radio and my impression was that they were just as wild and noisy as the tea party rallies. It was a fairly regular occurrence for people to faint in the aisles. There were videos of people exclaiming how once Obama was elected they wouldn't have to worry about their house payments any more. Maybe you are using a different definition of a circus atmosphere.
I could come up with images of liberals with signs wishing death to GWB but I don't see the point. I condemn both liberals and conservatives that resort to such hyperbole.
There was a similarity between the Tea Partiers and many Obama supporters in that both had trouble articulating specifics. Many Obama supporters wanted “change” but often couldn't say much more than that, the Tea Partiers want smaller government but offer few specifics.
Nothing new or brave — but they probably believe their naivete' and ignorance is cool because of new media.
(Different media or tools, same message, same quality or lack thereof)
The ugly behavior of some in the recent Tea Party news, which I first posted about on this site, has no excuse. Nor is there any excuse for using this to mischaracterize the whole Tea Party group (similar to the Perot people years ago) or the mainstream which rejects government excess (which is the problem the Dems' misconduct created for itself with this health care issue, after a year of overreach), which doesn't choose to join the current left-wing hype and frenzy (and “discovering” the value of this legislation they have hated up to now, and stampeding to support it now).
Re: my 'brave' comment- sorry, my bad- I misread the title as “Brave New Left Media” (in fact was chuckling to myself about the apparent unintentional ironic allusion to Huxley's Brave New World.) But I see now that it was my mistake.
Since you asked for links to the videos that displayed ignorance among Obama supporters, here are a few:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgfA2b9YSag&feat…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5YrS2pLfMs&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xod9wV6NKeg&feat…
Here's an actual 'fair and balanced' one showing the general ignorance of a lot of voters.
Point being, the selective interviews of dumb voters from one particular group are part of a time worn propaganda technique to imply superiority of the opponents of that group. Does anyone believe for a minute that the interviewers in these cases selected the interviewees randomly? That there weren't some more intelligent responses that ended up on the cutting room floor?
And what you can really see coming through in these videos is the degree to which media narratives drive the ignorant voters in one direction or another (in the “How Obama Got Elected” clip, you see that when people didn't know the answer to a question they based their assumptions on which candidate's narrative was the best fit- Sarah Palin was the dumb one so she must have been the one who made the “57 states” gaffe, and they couldn't possibly guess that Obama had entered the political scene using some pretty bare-knuckled political tactics (getting his opponents thrown off the ballot), or that Biden was actually the dishonest one who'd been caught plagiarizing.
This is the scary part (that once a media narrative takes hold, it means that people are not only ignorant but their opinions become easily malleable), and this is why people who are informed (and I'd count most everyone at TMV in that category) should avoid propagating the myths of uninformed voters being representative of one group or another.