Because politicians are scared of their constituents, and they won’t want to risk the wrath of the very same homophobes who want to strike down gay marriage at every opportunity. Any Congressman who supports overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is going to believe he’s risking his career on an issue that he probably doesn’t feel all that strongly about and that will gain him absolutely nothing by supporting.
That’s why.
PAD
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I agree with you on this point. I think people are missing something very important in all this. The name calling! Hurling insults about ones sexuality is the number one favorite thing that soldiers like to do to one another. In the past soldiers could make fun of blacks, women, jews… but with allowing all these groups into the military the “PC POLICE” quickly shut down using racial or sexist remarks in the ranks. Now roughly 98% of insults deal with people being queer, nancy oy, taking it up the rear, Andrew Lloyd Weber lovers and kids who enjoyed Jem and the Holograms over Thundercats.
What would happen to our military if gay people were allowed to come out and feel like an equal person to their heterosexual comrades? What insults could be used then? What is left to train men to invade other counties and kill?
I’m sorry but I stand firmly in supporting dont ask, dont tell.
So you’re position is that gays should not be treated like full human beings because it would deprive soldiers of their favorite insults?
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I can’t tell if you’re making a hilarious joke or an absurd position.
Neither, he’s making a pragmatic observation.
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And as someone who disagrees with PAD on most political issues (but not this one), I think he’s got a very valid point. I’m not sure it’s going to be the deciding one, but it’s certainly a very big factor. (Pardon the pun.)
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There really is not much of an upside for politicians on this issue.
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J.
It was a joke and thanks for thinking it was hilarious. My brother in law is in the army and he says that while actual homophobia is not a real issue, homophobic insults and jokes come up every few seconds.
It’s not a pragmatic observation. The idea that our military will be unable to train soldiers if the worst thing they can call each other is “s&$^head” is silly.
Okay Chris, thanks for the clarification. As Jay Tea illustrates, there actually are people willing to say stuff like that to support a position that has no actual proof.
Must be an Army thing then. I never heard any of that in the Air Force.
1282 characters, 214 words
A Congress of career politicians will never allow us to constitutionally term limit them by an amendment. But we can IMPOSE term limits on them by taking these steps in the coming Congressional elections (‘2010, 2012, 2014):
1. Don’t reelect your Congressman or Senator. Get friends to do the same.
2. Always vote, but only for the strongest challenger ,regardless of party .
3. If your incumbent runs unopposed, vote for his strongest challenger, regardless of party. Especially, never reelect an “unopposed” incumbent!!
If Congress has not passed a term limits bill by 2014, repeat this in 2016, 2018.
Our only intelligent choice is to NEVER REELECT any of them! They will definitely get the message, sooner or later.
The only infallible, unstoppable, guaranteed way to get a truly new Congress, AND a new politics, is NEVER REELECT ANY INCUMBENT! DO IT EVERY ELECTION until term limits is ratified. In other words, don’t let anyone serve more than one term until Congress passes a term limits bill!
The number of ‘good guys’ left in Congress is negligible. If we threw out ALL 535 members, we would be better off, by turning Congress into a bunch of honest, inexperienced freshmen.
NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS. DO IT EVERY ELECTION! … until we have term limits.
Who came up with this dûmbášš idea anyway, even the name is stupid. If they can make it through the training and shot halfway straight who cares. This rule, law whatever should be dropped.
It was a compromise between Clinton and the heads of the military. They thought it would make things better, but it made things worse. I think it basically boils down to “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
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It’s worth noting that one of the original supporters of it, Colin Powell, has released a statement saying that he believes times have changed and he supports what Admiral Mullen is suggesting.
It was Bill Clinton. He was looking for a way to please Democrats, Gays and Republicans and instead wound up pleasing no one.
Since the Republicans are still in power and the Democrats and the President are powerless to pass…anything. I agree with Mr. David, there seems little hope.
Republicans are still in power…? By what margin of victory do the democrats need to have before they can be considered in power? 75-25? 100%?
Haven’t you heard? With Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the GOP now has a 41-seat Senate majority. Nothing can get passed unless the GOP allows it.
The Republicans aren’t in power, but that’s beside the point. Notice that in news coverage, it was all Republicans who were advocating not changing the law. But the Democrats are already running scared and they’re not going to line up on the side of an issue that’s going to divide them from their constituents and likely cost them their gigs when their GOP opposition makes hay from it in the next election. I bet you’re going to see a lot of Democrats who already were in favor of changing the law backpedaling. They’ll prefer to take the hit of flip-flopping on the issue than having the issue used against them in an election against the Gay Opposition Party or, as they’re more commonly known, the GOP.
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PAD
I’ve seen some Democrats standing up for it in news coverage.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#35227339
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The interview is in the last half if you want to skip of the news review.
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I even saw something during one of the Senate sessions that implies that the Democrats don’t have to be united on this. One of the Senators suggested that they don’t need 60 votes, they only need 40. They just have to slip something into the next military finance bill (which nobody is ever willing to vote against) and it would take 60 votes to amend that section out.
Gay Opposition Party? Do you consider the Log Cabin Republicans akin to Pink Nazis?
“Democrats are already running scared”
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When did they ever stop?
Any reason Obama can’t just issue an executive order, like Truman did (Executive Order 9981) when he desegregated the armed forces? Like Truman, Obama would be giving the order in his capacity of commander-in-chief.
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Yes, Obama would take a lot of political hits for issuing the order (as Truman did), but it would only be him taking those hits, not various members of congress. And the order would have been given. All that would remain would be to determine how quickly it would be put into effect.
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Or has the president’s ability to give executive orders regarding the military been curtailed since 1948?
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Rick
The problem is that Congress wrote Don’t Ask Don’t Tell into law some years back. Executive orders can do a lot, but they can’t strike laws from the books. So right now Admiral Mullen is discussing the things that *can* be done without the law being changed in addition to asking Congress to strike down the law.
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This issue is becoming truly ignorant. We’re kicking people who possess skills we need overseas out of the military and we’re throwing out decorated soldiers for no reason. Even the standard talking point of the Right that says that having homosexuals in the military is bad for morale is constantly and easily disproved by the fact that any soldier who is booted out for being gay usually has an entire troop of soldiers saying that they knew and that it didn’t matter.
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And John McCain looked completely arrogant and two-faced the other day. I never subscribed to the idea that he was a far left of center RINO as so many liked to paint him, but he was once a relatively honest man who was somewhat respectable. These days he just comes off as a bitter, hack partisan. The sooner he leaves office the better.
And no one will call him on it in the press. His “flip-flop” is described as an “apparent shift in position”.
I really wouldn’t call it a flip flop either. He was supporting DADT then and he’s supporting it now. His position on the issue hasn’t changed at all, just the lame justification that nobody really believed to begin with.
Jason, what he’s flip-flopping on, isn’t his support of DADT. It’s his oft-cited “listen to our generals” speech, that we all heard so much of.
Well, PAD, I am afraid that, at least for me, you are wrong.
While I was a supporter of Prop. 8, I have no problem with allowing gays to have full access to the military. They have just as much right to fight and die for our country as any other patriot. The basic, real, problem, will be how will they be treated by their straight comrades, especially in the barracks and latrines. Unfortunately, that will probably have to be worked out slowly, as appropriate mores and behaviors evolve to deal with any problems. There will be mistakes, and scandals, but in the end, they will work it out.
Charlie
In what way do you think that PAD is wrong? He’s not suggesting that DADT shouldn’t be overturned, he’s saying that he doesn’t think it will be in the near future because of the political landscape.
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Read a bit more closely. He said that PAD was wrong in regards to him and PAD’s statement that puts the anti-gay marriage twits in the same crowd as the DADT crowd. Charlie was pointing out that, yes, he was for prop 8 but, no, he is not for DADT and that the two crowds don’t overlap as easily as some might think.
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Charlie, it’s already been worked out. There ave been a number of gay soldiers who got kicked out because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” who were “outed” because of something outside of the military but who had fellow soldiers that they served with every day who already knew that they were gay. This is really a case were the law and the “moral” minority are so far behind the military and the soldiers’ day in and day out routine that it’s not even close to being funny.
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Just end the dámņëd law already.
Exactly, Jerry,
It only needs official sanction for the ball to get really rolling, and things will work themselves out. Existing regs about harassment and relationships will keep things on an even keel. Some guys will be hassled about being gay, just as others are hassled about being short, overweight, tall, skinny, black, white, muslim, baptist, etc!
Charlie
Jerry,
What exactly did McCain say that has you so disgusted? because the only time I’ve seen him reference the issue in the past week was in an interview with Greta van Susteren last night, where he said he basically would take everything into consideration, but the thing that would carry the most weight is what military leaders said.
Here’s a chance for Mccain to show his true mettle. He is in a potential tough fight in the primary and taking a pro-gay stance could hurt him but he is on record as saying that he will follow the advice of the military and Colin Powell in particular. So does he switch his position, do the right thing and take a potential hit…or does he take the safe way out?
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I am cautiously optimistic about the potential for the law being canned but it depends on republican military men and lawmakers standing up and making their voices heard.
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“Here’s a chance for Mccain to show his true mettle.”
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He had that chance the other day. He used that chance to display anger and scold the military commanders in front of him for not getting Congress’s opinion on the matter.
Considering that John McCain’s wife has come out in favor of gay marriage just a couple of weeks ago, he might already be up a creek on this issue, no matter what he says or does.
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Quite a few years ago the idea of getting rid of DADT was brought up and McCain stated he would consider removing the DADT law when the military commanders came to him and said that it was time. It wasn’t, he said back then, the place of politicians with political agendas to make that decision. He also cited Colin Powell’s stance on the matter as a strong factor in his POV.
.Back at the beginning of the week they held hearings on DADT where the military commanders told congress that the time has come to get rid of DADT. They pointed out that it is doing more harm than good. Some testimony on the subject also covered the fact that a majority of the soldiers in the field feel that it’s time to end the policy.
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It was also pointed out that the military was undertaking a long range study to see how to best handle the removal of DADT and to have the integration of soldiers who are fully open about their sexuality into the system. Some comment was also made about the fact that 24 (I think the number was 24) of our allies have already taken this step quite some time ago and the impacts on their military forces have been far from negative.
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McCain blew a gasket. He wagged his finger at them and scolded them for daring to make such comments, suggestions and plans without first consulting with Congress on the matter. DADT was a law and that made it Congress’s territory and the military should not be doing a study on how things would work when DADT is removed.
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Oh, and Colin Powell has also said that the times have changed and that the military is in a different place than when DADT was created. He thinks that it should go based on what he’s been told by the troops and the military commanders.
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But McCain is still just sputtering on.
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That interview you referenced with Greta van Susteren last night? Goes back to the arrogance and the two-faced nature he’s displaying on the matter. He’s in an interview and being “rational” and “reasoned” and paying lip service to his “what military leaders say” talking point several days after telling the military leaders that they should be consulting him and the rest of Congress on the matter.
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So, yeah, he’s acting like an arrogant, two-faced ášš right now. He had a position that was somewhat respectable. He claimed that he would listen to the military on the matter. A proper position as they would know what the internal feeling was more than anyone else.
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But now that the military says that the policy should go we see that McCain was using that position as a cover for his position. Now that the military says that DADT should go we see McCain scolding the military commanders for not getting his and Congress’s POV on the matter.
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So, basically, he lied all those years ago and he lied last night to Greta van Susteren and her viewers. We saw a flash of the anger and the bitterness of McCain the other day that showed the truth and showed where his position on the matter really fell.
Just when Obama was really becoming the disappointment many predicted he would be, John McCain reminds me all over again why I voted for Obama.
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Yeah, but why does it feel like we’re being reminded that we passed up shooting our big toes off rather than shooting our own thumbs off?
Well, you have to go with what you’ve got. Now just why our political class consists of so many mediocrities is a question for another time. It’s interesting though, there was a time when Obama and McCain were considered two of the best we had. time has done a lot to bring out each man’s lesser qualities.
The easy way to get Senators and Congressman to stop being afraid to lose power is to take it away from them. If we had term limits on these clowns then they would be free to do what’s right not what will get them re-elected. Until such a time .. we’re screwed and held hostage by 8 term old men/women who just want to keep their job. It’s sad.
I’m fully in favor of DADT being overturned. It is sheer discrimination, refusing men and women the ability to serve their country in the armed forces because of a part of their life that has *nothing* to do with the aforementioned service. (I’d rather be protected by a gay man or woman who can shoot and fight (or translate Arabic, as one translator was booted for DADT) than by someone who’s less able to shoot and fight but does date the opposite gender.)
I hope that PAD is wrong, in that the political climate is less homophibic than in year’s past. There have been more advances in gay rights (the marriage struggle continues, but ask George Takei how things are now compared to Clinton’s term) and I don’t think gay rights are the third rail of politics they once were. At least, I hope not. Plus Obama went on the campaign trail promising to repeal DADT, and when the military needs as many qualified members as possible, ending a policy that dismisses them makes sense.
Ben Rosenberg,
“The easy way to get Senators and Congressman to stop being afraid to lose power is to take it away from them. If we had term limits on these clowns then they would be free to do what’s right not what will get them re-elected.”
Right. Because then, like in California, we’d have a bunch of people with no idea how to get things done and NO leaders, since anyone with any clout can simply be waited out.
Plus, your argument makes the assumption that most politicians DON’T vote for what they feel is right WITHOUT term limits.
Which is absolute bûllšhìŧ.
Rick Santorum came into office when conservatism was at an apex. His beliefs and views played well. 12 years later, the tide shifted and he was out of office. Because, amazingly, he was voted out without term limits! But in all that time, whether you loved him or hated him, he stod for certain principles. Knowing he had a tough fight in 2006 did not make him reflexively and convenient;y less pro-life or less supportive of the Iraq war or prevent him from pushing Social Security Reform.
And you do not have a monopoly on what is “right”. If a Senator like casey, for example, were to vote the way you like, many would accuse him of pandering to the Democratic base and not voting for what he has for years felt was right.
And getting re-elected means the people like what you’re doing. If they disagree or are apprehensive about something, it is the job of a leader to persuade them why he is voting a certain way and why he feels it is the right thing to do.
Not ram it down their throats because an elite few think the masses are too stupid to have their thoughts or feelings taken into account.
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Yeah, I tend to agree on the term limits thing. I think that’s one of the dumbest “issues” that gets brought up. We have term limits now. It’s called the vote. It’s not the fault of the system that every other voter out there thinks that all politicians are bad except theirs.
I would have been more in favor of term limits a few years back, when it seemed as though it was getting very difficult to unseat an incumbent. Too much money, too little media exposure. The internet has changed that. You CAN get the message out, you CAN raise the money. Scott Brown, whether you like him or not, points to a far better working democracy than what we had before.
Michigan established term limits for state offices in 1992, and in many ways it’s been a disaster. There’s no longer any institutional memory in the State House or Senate. And it’s been said that just when you’re really getting to know how things work in the capital, it’s time to go. And for that matter, how much of a state representative’s or state senator’s final term is spent doing the business of the people vs. time spent looking for his or her next job?
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And these are lifetime limits. If we must have term limits, I’d rather elected officials be required to spend a set amount of time (say a decade) out of office before being eligible to run for that office again. That way we’d have both new people coming in every few years and the possibility for some degree of institutional memory if previous office holders were to come back later.
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But again, I said if we must.. I agree with Jerry. The vote is probably the best way to have term limits. On both the state and federal level.
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By the way, when I was in high school, one of my history teachers made the following suggestion concerning the president’s term (I don’t recall whether he personally advocated this, or was just providing us with something to ponder): The president serves one six-year term. The rationale? The president spends his or her first year getting to know the job; years two and three being president full time and year four running for re-election. And then if re-elected, he or she can spend that four years focusing on being president, because that’s it. So why not combine what are effectively two years of being a full-time president from the first term and four years from the second term into a single term of six years?
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At first glance, it seems logical, but I suspect there’d be a number of drawbacks. Would the president be a lame duck from the start? If Obama’s re-elected (especially by a large margin), that should provide him with a lot of political capital to get his programs passed in his second term. “The people have spoken.” But if he were serving a single six-year term, the best he could hope for would be to be succeeded by someone who shared his vision and proceed along the same lines with regards to goals for the country.
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I am not, by the way, in favor or repealing the 22nd amendment. I think the presidency should definitely be term limited. And so, too, did most presidents, apparently. FDR was the first to run for a third term. Yes, Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term in 1912, but that was after having left office in 1908. It wasn’t a third consecutive term. I believe Roosevelt himself pointed out that he’d never promised not to run at some point in the future when someone called him on breaking his promise that he’d not to run for a third term. In fact, he kept his promise. He didn’t run again in 1908.
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Rick
I don’t think Gay rights really costs anyone that many votes nowadays. And unless I’ve been misinformed, a firm majority of the populations thinks Gay soldiers should be allowed.
I guess the difficulty is convincing the politicians of this. They’re often amoung the last to know when popular opinion shifts because they spend more time talking with activists and pundits than regular people.
Repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ would cost a Congressman some votes, not repealing it would do the same. I guess which constituency matters most depends on the Congressman. But I doubt it would make that much difference in any election. Most voters care more about other issues.
The idea of slipping it into a more popular bill sounds like it could work. I’ve also wondered if it could be put to a voice vote, but I don’t know the rules for when voice votes are done and when they aren’t. But with a voice vote, a Congressman always has deniability.
I don’t think Gay rights really costs anyone that many votes nowadays. And unless I’ve been misinformed, a firm majority of the populations thinks Gay soldiers should be allowed.
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Yes, but for the most part whenever a gay rights issue winds upon being voted on, it usually goes against gays. Which would seem to indicate that the anti-gay-rights crew is the firm majority when it comes to casting ballots. You’d be hard pressed to find two more typically or progressive states than California and NY. Yet California is the home of Prop 8 while a gay marriage bill got shot down in the NY legislature a couple of weeks ago.
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PAD
Or maybe it means that in states like California, when being polled, homophobes deny their homophobia. Because they also believe they are in the minority.
Thus, the majority remain anti-gay, but opinion polls tell everyone it’s a pro-gay state.
I firmly believe that so long as politicians are campaigning 24/7, true change is going to be impossible. Term limits would ensure not only that a politician has at least one term in which he is free to do as he desires without having to pander to the vocal minority, but would allow a greater chance of new people, with new ideas to get into office.
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The problem is that many people are ignorant. And, I don’t mean that in the “I don’t like your opinions” way, but in the “you didn’t really research your opinion, did you” way. A lot of people vote based on name recognition because they do not know the issues, and that usually give the incumbent the advantage.
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Having two new candidates every 12 years would ensure that each new generation of voters would have the opportunity to witness the actions of the incumbent and digest the promises of the challenger. Because, a person would be 12-24 when the sitting Senator was up for re-election.
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Even better, an aspiring politician could prove himself in the House for two terms of two years each, and then go to the Senate for two terms of six years. That is 16 years for a career politician who aspires to the Presidency. Two terms of four years there would be 24 years, max.
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This means that if the voters continue to vote by name recognition, then the best way to become a politician would be to be good at something newsworthy. We could see a Glenn Beck, or a Lewis Black take their political views and opinions and actually make them matter. And, I think that would be a good thing because even though I strongly disagree with one of them, at least they have demonstrated that they know the issues and have formulated an opinion. I can’t say that about all of the sitting Senators we have today.
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Jerome worries that term limits will lead to inexperienced and ineffective politicians. But, I submit that to be a step up from experienced ineffective politicians. I can hope that an inexperienced person might accidentally be effective at least some of the time.
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Theno
“I firmly believe that so long as politicians are campaigning 24/7, true change is going to be impossible. Term limits would ensure not only that a politician has at least one term in which he is free to do as he desires without having to pander to the vocal minority, but would allow a greater chance of new people, with new ideas to get into office.”
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There are two problems with that.
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Someone in a lower office with political ambition is still likely going to be campaigning 24/7 to a degree because they’ll have their eye on the next, bigger political ball. They’re still going to be campaigning, just not in the way you mean here.
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The other problem is that you take away the incentive to do good work. In political positions where you do have term limits you often hear the term “lame duck” thrown at politicians who are in there second term or the second half of their only term. And very often you see politicians who live down to that moniker and do less and less as the end of their time in office is coming up.
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So… We should make everyone an automatic lame duck from day one? We should tell everyone that it doesn’t matter if they do a good job or a bad job because we’re not letting them keep the job even if they’re the best politician to come along in a generation or more?
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Nah, just don’t see it as a good thing.
A Congress of career politicians will never allow us to constitutionally term limit them by an amendment. But we can IMPOSE term limits on them by taking these steps in the coming Congressional elections (‘2010, 2012, 2014):
1. Don’t reelect your Congressman or Senator. Get friends to do the same.
2. Always vote, but only for the strongest challenger ,regardless of party .
3. If your incumbent runs unopposed, vote for his strongest challenger, regardless of party. Especially, never reelect an “unopposed” incumbent!!
If Congress has not passed a term limits bill by 2014, repeat this in 2016, 2018.
Our only intelligent choice is to NEVER REELECT any of them! They will definitely get the message, sooner or later.
The only infallible, unstoppable, guaranteed way to get a truly new Congress, AND a new politics, is NEVER REELECT ANY INCUMBENT! DO IT EVERY ELECTION until term limits is ratified. In other words, don’t let anyone serve more than one term until Congress passes a term limits bill!
The number of ‘good guys’ left in Congress is negligible. If we threw out ALL 535 members, we would be better off, by turning Congress into a bunch of honest, inexperienced freshmen.
NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS. DO IT EVERY ELECTION! … until we have term limits.
Shocking as it may seem, I am not sure about the issue of an openly gay person serving in the military. While I am not at all in favor of gay marriage, this issue is different. To start with, women now serve in a very visible way. I don’t think they bunk in the same place as the men, but it is probably no different than a college dorm these days. So the issue of someone being gay and living with straight guys is different than 30 or 50 years ago.
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PAD is probably right about politicians of both parties. No one will probably stick their neck out — at least right now. But on this issue it is only a matter of time. Whether I agree with it or not, our culture has changed. And gays serving in the military is the least of our problems.
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Iowa Jim
Out of curiosity I did a quick (and, I think pretty accurate) list of countries which do not permit homosexuals to serve in the military:
Cuba
China
Egypt
Greece
Iran
Jamaica
North Korea
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Singapore
South Korea
Syria
Turkey
Venezuela
Yemen
those which don’t allow them to serve openly:
United States
And those which accept openly homosexual soldiers (although in the armies of a few of these countries (Bermuda, Italy legal acceptance has not translated into personal acceptance):
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bermuda
Brazil
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Lithuania
Luxembourg
The Netherlands (since 1974)
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Philippines
Romania
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Uruguay
And Russia is wishy-washy on the issue so I wouldn’t count it either way.
So all of our allies do, and the countries we’re most likely to criticize for being restrictive when it comes to human rights don’t.
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That is a fascinating list. Thanks for putting that together.
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PAD
Interesting exchange on Fox news here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW0_rbR2cK8&feature=player_embedded
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Basically, The Fox military analyst calls it an idiotic policy, one of the newscasters agrees (calling it absurd), and they get a few good shots in on McCain for his flip flop.
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This seems like a great time to push hard for this.
Fox agrees with me. In related news, pigs fly.
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PAD
I’ve noticed that usually when I hear something sane from FOX News, it’s coming from somebody I’ve never heard of before. So it’s not Glenn Beck or O’Reilly making sense, it’s anchorman Joe Whatshisface.
Jason,
Well, yeah. The major personalities are going to get the lion’s share of the attention. But a major reason I watch them is they do put people on the air who simply can’t get airtime anywhere else and have very interesting viewpoints.
One of my favorite Fox commentators is Ralph Peters, who is a military analyst who really gives the perspective of someone from the military regarding strategy, political decisions on morale, etc. He favors a take-no-prisoners approach to war, but is far from a warmonger. He simply feels the lives of our service men and women are not something to be used for pawns for cheap political gains by either side.
He supported a lot of what Bush did, but hardly gushed. He said his main strength was never appearing to waver in giving the perception to our soldiers, allies and foes that we were not going to leave until the job was done.
Howebeer, he also harshly criticized Bush for not making the nuts and bolts of what we were doing, why we were doing and what we should expect. And he absolutely loathed Rusfeld, saying in one column that the lack of trust most of the military in him superseded that of the level they distrusted Bill Clinton. He also said that Rumsfeld had done the impossible : He made McNamara’s actions in Vietnam look good.
By the same token, he has harshly criticized Obama for the delay in his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, but even more sharply criticized the military leaders for limiting the options they gave to Obama.
Interesting, insightful stuff – and a big reason why I watch Fox.
I just get the feeling that if anyone at FOX News wants to have a point of view that doesn’t match the approved narrative, they get hidden away in the least watched hours of the day. The guy who criticizes Bush will probably get a lot more airtime at 12:47pm than at 8pm.
Jon Stewart can explain it better than I can. Skip to 4:15 for the part I’m referring to.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-29-2009/for-fox-sake-
Now it’s true that the Daily Show’s primary job is jokes, but his logic is sound on this one. The people who are front and center for FOX News are not considered news even by FOX, despite the fact that they’re in all the commercials saying how “fair and balanced” FOX is. The people who actually have any scrap of fairness are basically as important as the salads that McDonalds serves so they can claim to have healthy options on the menu. They exist, there are people who sample them, but it’s a pretty insignificant part of the company’s overall business.
Eh, I recommend not skipping any of the video in that link, Jason.
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It’s The Daily Show at it’s finest: taking the words of complete hypocrites like Cal Thomas and shoving them back down their throats.
Jason,
“I just get the feeling that if anyone at FOX News wants to have a point of view that doesn’t match the approved narrative, they get hidden away in the least watched hours of the day. The guy who criticizes Bush will probably get a lot more airtime at 12:47pm than at 8pm.”
Sorry, Jason. It just ain’t so. Peters, the guy I mentioned in my post, usually appears on “The O’Reilly Factor”, the network’s top-rated show that is first-run between 8-9 PM and that airs repeats twice after that. Greta Van Susteren has more than a “scrap of fairness”. Heck, when she was hired a lot of my conservative buddies were criticizing Fox because they thought she would be too liberal. I would hardly call her a rock-ribbed conservative. She is pretty fair. And she has been kicking butt in her time slot for years now.
Even a Lefty columnist like Mike Lupica for the New York Daily News, who believes “Obama can still be a great President” chastised him for making Fox News out to be this evil force that is responsible for thwarting his Administration. He cited Shepard Smith’s reporting on Katrina as an instance of good, solid, honest reporting and said, “If you think Shep Smith was in the tank for the Bush Administration, you’re nuts.”
Bottom line. Fox is crushing CNN and the joke that is MSNBC, is attracting more and more independents and Democrats every day.
Why? Because when President Obama makes a claim in the State of the Union that is demonstrably false and uses the claim to basically chastise the Supreme Court and Judge Alito merely shakes his head and mutters “not true”, the focus the rest of the nation gave the public was that somehow Alito’s response was more newsworthy than the false claim that was done in an arguably classless manner that he was referring to. They tried to make it into a “You Lie!” moment, which itself was exaggerated. The average person can not only see through such utter bûllšhìŧ, but they are seeking to avoid it. In droves.
The average person can not only see through such utter bûllšhìŧ, but they are seeking to avoid it. In droves.
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Then no sensible person would turn to Fox News.
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Remember, it wasn’t all that many years ago when the Republicans were screaming about ‘activist judges’… and who was right there in the chorus? Yep, Fox News. That video Jason posted was spot-on. So spot-on that Fox News should be embarrassed to have the word “news” in their name.
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And you’re right, they do have a good one in Shepherd Smith. Too bad he’s not the one they advertise all the time as giving actual *news*; rather, they claim “fair and balanced” with all their people who give *opinions*. It’s completely disingenuous on their part, just as it is on your part to claim that people would go to Fox News to avoid bûllšhìŧ.
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Shep Smith…
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Wasn’t about a year or so ago (I think during the presidential election) that Shep went of the Fox News script and found himself getting slammed by various Fox News personalities and found himself the focus of fairly sizable Fox viewer generated mail and emails to fire him for saying things that wasn’t party line and wasn’t what the Fox News viewers wanted to hear?
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The Fox News faithful can say whatever reasonable sounding thing they want, but the simple fact is that most people who tune in to Fox News tune in to hear what they want to hear. The highest rated shows on Fox are not news programs, they’re all opinion programs. And pretty much every one of those programs, even while claiming that they’re not pro any particular party, almost always push for the election of Republicans in various elections and have a message of “Democrats=Bad and Republicans=Good” in every discussion.
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But at least they give the other side an opportunity on those high rated shows to point out when the Fox News message is off base, right? Well, not really. Any time I see Beck he almost always has guests on who agree with him. The times I’ve seen him get someone on who disagrees with him he talks over them and, in cases like the time he had the head of the AARP on to discuss healthcare reform, borderline shouts over and insults them and then has a follow up guest to discuss how wrong headed and evil the guy is.
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O’Reilly has fewer guests that disagree with him (and, ironically for a self described independent, those are almost always people from the left) than he does guests that agree with him. And it’s not really “Fair and Balanced” when you give someone less than five minutes to talk, you shout over them for more than half of that five minutes and then follow that up by having someone else come on afterwards to discuss how wrong the person was. Oh, and of course there’s the magic of the edit. O’Reilly does his show bits taped. He doesn’t like to do it live. It’s easy to make both your side and yourself look good when you control the editing process.
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And Hannity? It’s not even worth wasting the bandwidth on that piece of disingenuous garbage.
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And we could probably fill several large small print novels listing the documented and proven lies, distortions and Right Wing spin presented as fact said by them or their guests on their programs.
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And then there’s the intellectual dishonesty of Fox News as a whole. Fox News spent several days trashing a pole that came out of the Daily Kos that presented results that weren’t very flattering in describing what the majority of conservatives believed insofar as things like whether Barack Obama was born in the United States or not. Fox had a field day trashing the Kos pole and talking about how worthless it was.
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Well, here’s an interesting bit. The pole was actually done by Research 2000. That was never mentioned by Fox News personalities and I never heard it mentioned by the news readers. Research 2000 have been around for a while and also done poles for people like the Wall Street Journal. The other interesting thing? Fox in the last few days touted some pole results showing that Palin is the most popular pick as the Republican to run as POTUS in 2012 amongst conservatives and some independents. Was this a Fox News pole? No. It was a Daily Kos pole done by Research 2000. But this one, favorable to a Fox News favorite, wasn’t reported as a Daily Kos pole. It was reported as a Research 2000 pole and treated as fact by the commentators.
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http://www.dailykos.com/statepoll/2010/1/31/US/437
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Gee, nothing hypocritical or disingenuous about that. They just trashed a pole by “Kos” (done by Research 2000) for a couple of days and talked about how nothing they say is reliable and then turn around and promote the results of a “Research 2000” pole (commissioned by Kos and posted on their website) as big news and the real deal.
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Fox News has recently reported on the Book Game Change. Their coverage has been about as “Fair and Balanced” as their reporting on the Kos pole.
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Various Fox personalities have reported on things in the that are negative towards Clinton and Obama as though it’s just the unquestionable truth. Even if it isn’t verifiable, you know that it’s probably true because you know that that’s what those bad people are really like. But where the book quoted McCain staffers in a way that put Palin in a negative light? That was just lies, rumors and garbage that didn’t have the least bit of truth to it. Oh, and those guys like O’Reilly, Beck and Hannity that Fox viewers are turning to for “the full story” on things? They lied about what was in the book in order to attack it.
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There’s a bit in the book that Fox News discussed as an example of the smears, lies and hate directed at Palin. They discussed a one bit in particular where a McCain staffer discussed how they knew they were in trouble with the debates and the Palin interviews because Palin didn’t even know that North and South Korea were two separate countries. How ridiculous! What an unbelievable slander! How could anyone take an accusation like that seriously?
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And I would agree that the statement was far fetched as well if that was actually what the book said. It wasn’t though. The book stated that McCain staffers had said that she was not aware there was a major fundamental difference between North and South Korea, what they were or why exactly they were two countries. A somewhat more realistic charge since past poles/studies have shown that she wouldn’t exactly be alone amongst the American citizenship in that specific ignorance. But, while what the book says about Obama that is negative must be true, anything bad about Palin must be a lie and attacked as such.
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Really fair and balanced.
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To be fair, they may have had a bad copy of the pre-release notes. However, other news agencies (and some Fox News contributors with their own outlets elsewhere like Alan Colmes) have reported the passage accurately since Fox’s initial reporting and no one on Fox who attacked the false version of what was in the book has corrected their reporting. Some, like Hannity and O’Reilly, have continued to reference the Fox News lie version even after it has been correctly sited elsewhere.
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Hey, why worry about the truth when it gets in the way of the narrative?
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The people who are regularly watching Fox are tuning in because the advocates on Fox tell them what they want to hear. Sad but true. They want to be told and believe that Obama won’t use the words “terrorism” or “terrorists” in major speeches or when responding to things like the underwear bomber even when the video evidence shows otherwise. But even though they can see the video of the speeches for themselves, they can actually see for themselves that they’re being lied to, Hannity said so and Fox News is telling them the truth.
Jerry Chandler,
First things first. It’s “poll”, not pole. Not trying to be a tool, just as a writer misspellings really stand out to me.
Without going into your latest post in detail, let me just say everything you’ve said in it does not explain the fact that more people in general are watching Fox News; more liberals are watching Fox News; and a lot more independents are watching Fox News.
My parents are a perfect example. They just started watching Fox News this year? Why? Because the CNN and the other networks are not only biased, they’re boring. It’s like an old movie where you can guess what happens next an hour in advance. The same faces and the same points of view dominate. And to a lot of people, the news from Cronkite to Couric has ALWAYS come from a worldview that seems alien to them. You want to bìŧçh about Fox News, at least they go to different LIBERAL voices on a regular basis, rather than going to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for their opinions on everything regarding race, since they consider them “black leaders”, which many blacks find insulting.
Really, ask yourself the last time the MSM had a story about U.S. soldiers’ bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan? Where was the video that Fox showed of Iraqis thanking America on the MSM? When is the last time you saw the story of ecoterrorists being played up? Who among the MSM described George Tiller as one of the few abotrtionists willing to do late-term abortions in America? Why did Katie Couric or basically no one ask Sarah Palin atv least one question about her accomplishments as Alaska governor? They don’t have to throw her softballs like Hannity, but come on.How many times did we hear about Sotomayor’s life story and not her judicial rulings? When is the last time you saw one story where a crime was stopped because someone had a gun?
In summary, many Americans view everyone else as being as biased as you claim Fox to be and the victims of group think? They want to see different stories and hear from different people, from S.E. Cupp to Juan Williams to Michael Eric Dyson.
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“First things first. It’s “poll”, not pole.”
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Eh, big deal. I usually spell it correctly when posting. Loads of overtime have me tired tonight and spellcheck doesn’t catch the wrong words spelled right.
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Oh, and I like how you took the time to point that out, but completely ducked the fact that Fox took one result of a poll and claimed that nothing about it or from the people who took it could possibly be legitimate and then took another result from a poll from the exact same people, while failing to mention that it was from the same people, and trumpeted the findings because they liked that poll result.
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“they’re boring”
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See, there’s a big one right there. Roger Ailes had an accidental moment of honesty a few weeks ago while defending Fox’s BS on This Week where he said that he’s not in the news business. No, he was in the ratings business. News, actual news, is not entertainment. You don’t tune into the six o’clock news hoping to have had a real popcorn entertainment ride by the end of it. You tune in to see what is going on.
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Even the old opinion shows tried to keep things low key and more fact based. Way back when before the entertainment aspect took it over you tuned into something like Crossfire and saw several people discussing things in a neutral and respectful manner with a room that was basically nothing but them, the chairs they sat in, a table and a black background. Not these days. News has to be entertainment more than it has to be fact based and that’s one lesson that Roger Ailes certainly learned and learned well.
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“The same faces and the same points of view dominate.”
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And, of course, Fox News has new people on every other week. Oh, wait… They don’t. Fox News has people signed to exclusive contracts as Fox News contributors just like CNN and MSNBC do. So you always see the “same faces and the same points of view dominate” on Fox week in and week out.
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But barring the exclusives to each network you have little difference. Everyone else that’s out there does the press circuit by hitting every channel and almost every show. so, really, that statement of yours is nonsensical. You see the same faces on Fox that you see everywhere else unless they’re in an exclusive contract with Fox. In that case you see the same faces on Fox night after night every night just like you do on CNN and MSNBC. The difference with the majority of the Fox News exclusives? More often than not they present a POV that the majority of Fox viewers want to hear.
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“And to a lot of people, the news from Cronkite to Couric has ALWAYS come from a worldview that seems alien to them.”
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Well, here’s a little fact to burst some of the Fox News belief system bubble. You know how O’Reilly likes to boast about his ratings and bang his chest about how they’re so big and so great and means that more people tune into Fox for their news than anyone else and how no one is watching the MSM? That’s bûllšhìŧ.
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Fox has higher ratings than the other cable news shows, but the ratings of any one 6:30 network news broadcast, even the one hosted by Couric easily beat the highest rated Fox program in the ratings. All three combined kill Fox in the ratings by a huge margin.
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A hëll of a lot more Americans tune in to those news programs, programs that according to Fox News talking points no one is watching anymore, than tune into Fox. The mainstream American appears to be closer to that “alien” world view than Fox News talking points like to make out.
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“You want to bìŧçh about Fox News, at least they go to different LIBERAL voices on a regular basis, rather than going to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for their opinions on everything regarding race, since they consider them “black leaders”, which many blacks find insulting.”
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Are you trying to make it easy to knock your points over? The two highest rated shows on Fox turn to Sharpton as a “black leader” in America every single time there’s anything race related breaking in the news. There are weeks when racial issues are the big story where Sharpton practically camps out in O’Reilly’s studio.
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And Jackson doesn’t really show up that often anywhere anymore, so citing his absence from Fox most of the time of late is meaningless.
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As for Fox getting in “different LIBERAL voices” to discuss things like race… So? So does CNN and MSNBC. In the last two big flaps on race, the monkey cartoon and the response to the AG’s comments, I saw a whole lot of faces on MSNBC and CNN that didn’t belong to Jackson or Sharpton (or either of their organizations) discussing race and racial politics from the black perspective. And there were days when it dámņëd sure looked like Sharpton was on O’Reilly and Hannity more than he was on either MSNBC or CNN.
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“Really, ask yourself the last time the MSM had a story about U.S. soldiers’ bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan?”
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Just the last few weeks actually. Although your question does nothing to defend Fox News against the points that Fox News is (A) pushing as an organization a predominantly Conservative Republican agenda, (B) promotes opinion pieces over news coverage for a majority of their reporting day and (C) lies a lot more than either MSNBC or CNN.Your question basically falls under the concept of “Fox News tells the feel good stories that we want to hear more often than those other news channels.”
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“Where was the video that Fox showed of Iraqis thanking America on the MSM?”
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ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, HLN, PBS, etc. Well, maybe not the video that Fox showed since you didn’t specify which one you’re talking about. However, even while discussing the negative reactions we received from many Iraqis, pretty much all of those news agencies did show video of Iraqis thanking American soldiers at one time or another.
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Not showing something isn’t quite the same as not showing something as often as you would have liked them to. And, honestly, when it came to stuff like that Fox News sort of backed themselves into a corner with having to make the Iraq war look like it was going really, really good. Before we actually invaded Iraq they were the channel that had more hosts advocating for the thing than any other network. Wake to Fox and Friends and see the hosts talking about the need to invade Iraq and call anyone who thought that wasn’t a great idea “sympathetic” to Saddam or the terrorists. Neil Cavuto? Push for war. The 8PM to 10PM “news” block? Push for war by anyone not named Alan. Fox News Sunday? Lets talk about smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds.
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Seriously, what did you expect them to play up once the war started and it wasn’t as quick, easy and pretty as they were hoping for? They told feel good stories to justify why we were there.
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“When is the last time you saw the story of ecoterrorists being played up?”
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September or October of last year they were discussing ELF’s taking down FM towers out in Washington on CNN and the networks’ evening news shows. Saw some stuff on ELF on MSNBC last year a well. Didn’t really pay it much attention to be honest with you. I get more information on those subjects than they discuss (or often know) on the news in law enforcement only briefings. But, yeah, they report on it. Why, when was the last time Fox News as a network “played up” stories on eco-terrorism? I make a point of watching Fox three days a week and the last time they talked seriously about it that I saw was when they were discussing the FM tower story that the other channels were discussing.
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“Who among the MSM described George Tiller as one of the few abotrtionists willing to do late-term abortions in America?”
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First, the word is spelled abortionists.
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Pretty much everyone discussed the fact that he was targeted because of the fact that, amongst other forms of abortions, he provided late term abortions. But, hey, what the hëll.
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Chris Matthews: “we all grew up with this in our later years, which is the fight over culture and values in this country. Now it‘s come to violence. George Tiller, a doctor who is well known in the country for performing late term abortions, killed at church.”
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As a matter of fact, if you Google “late term abortions” and Tiller’s name you get lots of news hits from lots of sources that fall under the MSM umbrella where the transcripts or newspaper write ups mention that he was one of the few doctors who did late term abortions. Yeah, I know that Fox News said that no one else was talking about that, but this is the same network where host after host and contributor after contributor claimed that Obama never used words in various speeches that you could actually hear him use when they bothered to run the live speech on Fox News. And then faithful Fox viewers went out and repeated that falsehood as gospel on various blogs like this one.
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By the way, one of the reasons he was “one of the few” is because 37 states prohibit some abortions after a certain point in pregnancy. There are also fewer abortion doctors trained to deal with the procedure than there are early term abortions.
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But, why not turn that question around for a minute. How many networks allowed hosts, top rated and heavily promoted hosts, constantly report on Dr. Tiller while calling him “Tiller the Baby Killer” or “Dr. Killer” during the majority of their “reporting” rather than using his name? How many networks gleefully chasing ratings allowed network hosts to spend four years describing his works as “the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union” and “Nazi stuff” in a “death mill” while frequently and baselessly suggesting that the clinic was covering up for child rapists (rather than attributing teenage pregnancies to teen sex) since he performed abortions on teenage girls?
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O’Reilly even went as far as to link the idea into his support of Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline when he was facing a tough election against Paul Morrison. O’Reilly said to his audience, “Now we don’t endorse candidates here, but obviously, that would be a colossal mistake. Society must afford some protection for viable babies and children who are raped.”
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June 12, 2007, O’Reilly, “Yes, I think we all know what this is. And if the state of Kansas doesn’t stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands as the governor does right now, Governor Sebelius.”
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So, yeah, how many networks allowed there top anchors to make šhìŧ up, name call like a third grader and continually use language designed to incite anger if not violence?
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Just one that I’m aware of.
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“Why did Katie Couric or basically no one ask Sarah Palin atv least one question about her accomplishments as Alaska governor?”
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Gee, maybe they would have had more chances to do that had the McCain campaign not pulled her from the interview circuit and she actually gave more than a handful. Hey, maybe they were just trying to be nice to her since every time she mentioned her credentials from running Alaska she showed that she had zero clue what she was talking about.
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“How many times did we hear about Sotomayor’s life story and not her judicial rulings?”
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And, given that the same networks that discussed her life story, including FOX News by the way, did discuss her record… This question isn’t meaningless how?
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“When is the last time you saw one story where a crime was stopped because someone had a gun?”
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Not long ago on Countdown’s Oddball segment actually. They covered a foiled gas station robbery that looked like the robber was trying out for an Abbott and Costello remake. But as serious news? Not very often on the national level even on Fox News. Most local crime news gets covered by local news. And the last time I saw Fox news covering as story like that was them trying to make a hero out of a guy in Texas for leaving his house to shoot in the back fleeing suspects who were trying to rob his neighbor’s house while they were out.
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“In summary, many Americans view everyone else as being as biased as you claim Fox to be and the victims of group think? They want to see different stories and hear from different people, from S.E. Cupp to Juan Williams to Michael Eric Dyson.”
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No, I don’t just claim that Fox has is biased. I point out that their top hosts have more documented lies to their names than entire other networks. CNN has it’s share of biased hosts. No question there. CNN has also had hosts let slip a “fact” that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. MSNBC is likewise stocking up on opinion hosts rather than news reporters and some of them have the occasional disconnect from the reality based community as well. But hands down Fox News has more hosts, not just guests, but actually hosts, who distort, spin and flat out lie than any other news network out there. And Hannity, their #2 rated show host, can’t seem to make it through the day without telling at least one whopper.
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But Fox News viewers don’t care. He tells them what they want to hear. He’s giving them the “full story” or the “other side” of the story. It just doesn’t matter to them that the other side to a truth they don’t like is often by nature an outright untruth.
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If you actually look for facts, Fox News is a joke. If you actually know facts about what the average Fox Host is talking about they’re a bad joke.