i must respectfully disagree with my coem'ly. her recent post cited a certain website, peakTalk, as being "fair & balanced". upon perusal of said site, i see a post entitled bush goes north which reads as follows:
George Bush is going to pay an official visit to Canada later this month and his hosts, rather than thinking through important bi-lateral issues, are now focused on discussing the risk of certain members of parliament heckling Bush during a speech he might give in the House of Commons. The conservative opposition is at pains to avoid this and are calling on the potential troublemakers to think through the consequences of interrupting and jeering the US President. A typical Canadian reaction: let’s try and keep things nice. I completely disagree. If Bush ever wanted to score a publicity coup in Canada and reveal how depraved and clueless the anti-Americans in parliament are, then there’s no better way than to let them make fools of themselves during what will surely be a smart and well-crafted speech. Bring'em on!this does not seem "fair & balanced". this seems like the usual patriotic(tm) demagoguery.
do we support the president? do we support his agenda? do we think those who are opposed to the policies of the republican government jeering the president to be "depraved"? do we think they are "clueless"?
nice.
peakTalk might say things that don't offend liberals on some occasions, but i don't see how that establishes them as "fair & balanced". "fair & balanced" isn't "only sometimes offensive".
6 comments:
well that's what you get for being a centrist; reviled by the left and also by the right.
oh the day after law school open bar...
in any case, my point is, it's fun and good to read margaret cho, oliver willis, etc. reading those sites make me feel energized and say stuff like "fuck yeah!"
however, one doesn't learn anything by listening to one's own cheerleaders all the time. when you say the site only "offends liberals sometimes" it just proves my point. the site, i'm sure, offends neocons sometimes as well. and any other people who are so stuck in their own ideology that anything that contradicts their beliefs is deemed "offensive." however, i tend to use the term "offensive" sparingly and only for sites that are truly offensive, like "little green fascists."
in any case, to each her own.
you might be interested in noting that peakTalk is now discussing our discussion of whether their site is "fair & balanced"!
your observations are fair enough. i didn't mean we shouldn't read it. rather, i didn't see a variety of voices on that website. i was struck by the fact that the writer referred to people in other countries who oppose george bush as "depraved and clueless". this, to me, seems Not Very Centrist.
there is this notion floating around after the election that liberals have to give up their positions on social and economic issues, to pander to those who oppose liberal issues (and, in fact, use liberal as a slur, such as the president did during the debates). i don't accept that, and while the post i challenged might have a reasonable explanation behind it i found it annoying.
i do agree that websites that provide an orgy of cheerleading, which we might call the 'goateed-spock LGFs' websites, can be counterproductive and isolationist and cause excitability. i also think w4d can have angry moments. we all have angry rants here.
my compromise has limits. i'm not a politician. i'm interested in websites that have reasonable views on political issues, but those views - for me, anyway - should take into account the fundamental notions of our republic and of a modern, secularist government. if peakTalk turns out to have those over the long run, then it's going to be something i read. as it stands, i was turned off.
i'm not canadian & i can't speak for the political dialogue of our sister country. peakTalk's link to colbycosh's comments demonstrate a complex issue was brewing - namely, a Liberal stripped of her party - but on the whole i remain sceptical of 'centrist' sites because i am not a centrist. i am interested in dialogue, not compromising my desire to not have my rights stripped away from me, and that is the direct course we are on here in the united states.
i hope that w4d or other websites aren't just "crossfire" rehashed. i want dialogue. i participate in dialogue on websites where even the fact that they are trying to be progressive results in endless attempts to subvert that progressive status, such as muslim wakeUp! - the very process of liberal and democratic ideals, of basic feminist rights, are discussed on that site constantly.
i guess that's all my rambling for now. sum = i am willing to discuss, but so much of what i am unwilling to compromise on because it infringes on my rights or the rights of others seems to be at the very center of this red/blue split, and hence i am cranky.
also, i must confess: the phrase "fair & balanced" is like a slap in the face to those of us who suffer faux nudes, and i prolly had a strong emotional reaction to that.
okay i see your point. i will admit that i only read a few older blog entries from peaktalk, and from what i read, it seemed that the author was taking a centrist view. how about i amend my conclusion: that i can read the slightly right skewed entries *without* wanting to throw leaden objects around in disgust, and although i disagree on certain points, i don't feel cornered, attacked, or even annoyed like i usually do. instead, i go "oh, that's interesting" or "hmmm... i see your point." it's similar to the feeling i get when i read volokh. sometimes, it's all about the delivery. plus, reading opinions from someone familiar with canadian/european politics is always interesting.
yeah i noticed we were linked. (hi there!)
and as for w4d, yeah we do go on vicious rants, and i think that's part of our charm. :) i know i've lost it at certain points, especially after the election. [emily1 had to tell me to chill out, and when you get told to chill out by the queen of fabulous uber-rants, you know you've lost it. :D] blogging can be therapeutic, and sometimes, you just gotta shit it all out, no holds barred.
i guess my point is [getting back to the original point] sometimes i like to read things that are a little different from what is inside my head, and sometimes, as a result, i stand corrected on what's in my head, or i continue to disagree but lose the anger that used to be in my head. know whut i'm sayin'? i will also admit to being a closet fan of a small victory, not because of the content per se but because the author has been willing to explain her viewpoints to those that disagree with her rather than unloading a barrage of hate (which i admit to doing on occasion, because well... i'm obnoxious). i remembered the first time i went to that site and saw michele ranting off about "the left" and i decided to write a snarky (an understatement) comment in response. i immediately received an e-mail telling me that the term "the left" was not meant to encompass all liberals but the "far left." after giving the blog a chance and reading her blog for a while, it became clearer that she wasn't a right wing nutjob. she used to be a card carrying LIBRUL(tm)! who has moved to the right on certain issues. however, she is pro-choice (albeit grudgingly) and pro gay rights (which has gotten her a lot of negative comments from some of her less openminded readers). [if you do decide to go to her blog, let me put in a caveat that she is rather passionate in some of her posts, and some of them might rub some liberals the wrong way at first.] anyway, i was struck by her willingness to explain *why* and *how* she came to believe the things that she believes rather than just saying "you're a dumb liberal. praise bush!"
anyhow, i don't know exactly what i'm trying to say, but yeah... i think you get the general gist of what i'm saying, and i do thing we have come to an agreement: dialogue be good.
i guess i'll make a final point. i'm not saying you should agree with everything you read on a particular blog (or even agree with me), and some of what is offensive to you may not be offensive to me, and vice versa. allow me to go on a tangent: i was never really offended with the whole asian-themed abercrombie t-shirt brouhaha, for example, but many of my peers were livid. i actually bought one of the t-shirts, because i thought it was outrageously funny. a friend caught me in possession of one of the t-shirts and looked at me with extreme disappointment and said "oh no you di-uhnt!" so i lied about my reasons for owning it, "oh, i was just so offended that i had to buy it!" which seemed to placate her, although the reasoning, in retrospect, makes absolutely no sense. anyway, i have no idea why i said that. probably because i felt cornered and didn't want to seem like i was betraying the race. and i remember posting some anti-abercrombie tripe all over my former site. yeah, i wimped out. [note: the t-shirt thing is distinguishable from the employment suit, which i felt had some merit] anyhow, the point is, on issues of being offended, the only way to deal with it is to agree that people are not offended equally.
blah i'm rambling, and i can't see out of my right eye. until later!
"and as for w4d, yeah we do go on vicious rants, and i think that's part of our charm. :)"
well, it has become 'that blog' for all of us.
"i know i've lost it at certain points, especially after the election. [emily1 had to tell me to chill out, and when you get told to chill out by the queen of fabulous uber-rants, you know you've lost it.:D]"
well, i'm sort of here and there these days. i've had an attack of the hating hate hates -- see my recent posts. i'm willing to listen to other points of view, but there are a core set of issues on which i simply see no real 'compromise.' to compromise would go against my core values. there is much going on in the world that offends my core values. i frequently bitch about that. i will continue to do so.
"blogging can be therapeutic, and sometimes, you just gotta shit it all out, no holds barred."
amen.
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