President Obama's recent visit to India was a symbolic gesture to cultivate an atmosphere of goodwill as well as to celebrate the announcement of business deals that will create over 50,000 American jobs. However, Obama's tour to solidify quality relations with what could become America's closest financial and industrial ally in the 21st century was immediately met with a smear campaign of misinformation from the conservative media machine.
Now, I know this is not too surprising, but bear with me while I explain how this event is a symptom of a greater problem.
The rhetorical shenanigans on Obama's trip reached a deafeningly absurd level when, during an interview on Anderson Cooper 360, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann stated that the President's trip across Asia was costing taxpayers more than $200 million dollars a day. When asked to substantiate this claim, Bachmann responded with the adorable vapidity of a Pixar princess: "These are the numbers that are coming out in the press."
The "press" Bachmann referred to was, of course, an anonymous Indian official that no one can seem to track down.
Not only was Bachmann clearly intent on breaking this unsubstantiated tidbit to the American public, but she was so overeager to blurt "Obama Bad!" that she couldn't even wait for the appropriate moment to discourse all over herself on national television. Here was the opening of Cooper's interview with Bachmann:
COOPER: Republican Paul Ryan has suggested sharp cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Are you willing to make cuts there?
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R), MINNESOTA: Well, I think we know that, just within a day or so, the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He's taking 2,000 people with him.
Aaaaand scene. Thank you for watching Tourettes Theatre, goodnight. I like turtles.
If you asked a co-worker a question and he or she responded by going off the rails on a point you didn't bring up in the first place, you would think that person:
A) Didn't hear your question correctly.
B) Must be another one of your supervisor's cousins who got to skip the HR interview.
C) Was running for political office, had no substantive answer for you, but yet was bold enough to completely insult your intelligence with a comically transparent straw man argument roughly equivalent to shouting "LOOK! A BEAR!"
So this $200 million/day falsehood, non-fact, bugaboo, or lie (whatever you want to call it) was quickly debunked, right? Well, not before Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck all broadcast it to their audiences as further evidence of how appalling it is to have Barack Obama, and any Democrat associated with him, in a position of political office.
Even sadder is the fact that The White House and The Pentagon had to address this fallacy. In two separate press conferences, officials made statements meant to put to rest this rumor touted as truth by prominent conservatives in the media who had very little interest in that mystical, pagan art of "fact-checking."
But what's the big deal here, really? After all, the whole thing $200 million myth was debunked, right?! Go ahead and ask 5 people today if they heard how much Barack Obama's trip to India cost. I think you'll see that a poorly-publicized correction can do very little once the damage has been done through a well-coordinated effort of collusive media bombardment. It's the equivalent of your drunk friend nodding off while holding the bottom of the ladder you were on and then bringing a box of discounted Whitman's chocolates to your hospital room.
Now, many talking heads in the media simply follow the elephantine rhetoric and jack-asinine soundbites of the political parties they subscribe to. However, our country's right-wing media personalities and politicians are no longer even pretending that they actually think for themselves. At this point, conservatives have exposed the fact that they subscribe to a network that distributes a single, consistent idea which, in turn, and not coincidentally, becomes what every single one of them thinks, believes, and says. It's a unified, manufactured front.
See, the problem with this is that true analysts, journalists, and politicians will always have differing opinions on social issues, even if they subscribe to similar schools of thought, because their ideas are not processed on an assembly line. If Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin really were thinking for, of, and by themselves, then they should have at least slightly different opinions about which cubby hole they want to put their mittens in. One can subscribe to a political methodology and still hold distinctly differing opinions on certain matters with others who are under the same ideological umbrella; this is how healthy discourse is created.
Am I the only one who finds it kind of odd (and more than a little disturbing) that whatever viewpoint is expressed on FOX news becomes, nearly verbatim, the across-the-board party, media, and social line for anyone with a right-leaning mentality? And the fact that this act of hive-minded regurgitation is then repeated over the radio, TV, the Internet, and in print, is an undeniable red flag that this manufactured front is being created in an ideological factory as if it were a commodity no more unique than rat feces-infused dog food.
Variance in opinion and a desire to encourage healthy debate is how we can recognize those who are truly concerned about our country as opposed to those who are power-hungry panderers who would do anything to reach the spotlight. The nature of selectively and irresponsibly reporting news in a day and age where information is as cheap as a two-dollar Alaskan governor, is to deceitfully and deliberately impose a dangerously myopic view upon one's audience; and thus, any pretense at uncovering truth must be recognized as an absolute sham.
It's actually fairly easy to identify the pundits whose greasy hands are thick with dogmatic snake-oil. If a politician or member of the political media appeals to your intellect with well-contextualized, factual information, then they're probably giving it to you straight.
However, if someone attempts to theatrically manipulate your anger and emotions by identifying with you as a chum, a pal, or just another fellow victim of the status quo, then they're doing that to make up for their lack of hard facts and logical rationale.
In short, if someone in the political media acts like the two of you are buddies, they have another agenda in mind.
Nobody in the political media is your friend.
And they shouldn't be. After all, it's not their job to be your friend. Their job is to report the truth.
I'm actually convinced that conservative pundits have such a large audience because their methods of stroking anger and insecurity play well to a growing segment of our population that is socially anxious and very lonely. However, I have no facts to verify that statement, so I'll retract that right here.
Or maybe I'll just throw it out there and wait and see if The Pentagon will denounce it for me.
Follow Edward Murray on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WeCanBeatEczema
When will enough be enough.....
....the bottomline:
THERE WAS NO CORRECTION!
....and that's it.
That why your co-workers will still play the 200Mill. number. There is NO other number.
And YOU did not pony up either and gave us a guess or ballpark-figure. If the Obama Administration wants to debunk these things, the only thing they would have to do is put some skin in the game, but there was nothing.
The number came from the Press Trust of India and not from what you call "conservative pundits".
That the white house states:
"The numbers have no basis in reality"
and
"they are wildely inflated"
....does not tell us ANYTHING.
This president told US ALL that we can hold him accountable, that he would be different.
I don't want talk. I want facts.
I don't want to know how much you have spend on security and how much on 5Star Hotelrooms....just give the public a round number and every "conservative pundit" has to shut up!
It's easy...or?
Is Barack Obama "the president of the people", that he promised us he would be or has he turned out to be the arrogant Harvard Elitist, those 'conservative pundits" told us we would end up with??
Both the Pentagon and The White House stated that they don't talk specific numbers as a matter of security. How much it costs to keep the President safe abroad has never been an issue before, to state a specific number is to respond even further to a lie.
"The number came from the Press Trust of India and not from what you call "conservative pundits"."
I know where it came from, and I said where it came from in this essay. Apparently, you didn't read it very well. And the number that lacked a factual base was then spread relentlessly by conservative pundits. No quotes needed.
"Is Barack Obama "the president of the people", that he promised us he would be or has he turned out to be the arrogant Harvard Elitist, those 'conservative pundits" told us we would end up with??"
This has nothing to do with anything stated in this piece. If you want to talk that, go troll on an article that states that he is the President of the people, because I never certainly said that, nor intimated anything even remotely close to that.
And you don't need quotes around "conservative pundits" if you're not actually quoting what I said. That's what the people who I mentioned are.
Also, just for fun, if your rationale for being "elitist" is based on the school someone graduated from, can you name the last President who didn't graduate from an Ivy League school? Without google?
Oh, actually, it doesn't matter, go ahead and google it.
Oh, actually, it doesn't matter where someone went to school because that has nothing to do with whether or not they're an elitist or not.
Keep on trollin'!
>Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who supposedly form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight or those who view their own views as so; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.<
wiki
.....read it and compare it...and than build your own opinion if it fits for him or not...
....out of my head I could come up with 5 other presidents who came from Harvard....I wouldn't call any one of them an elitist.....
I don't care what side of the political spectrum they fall on, instances like this are the dangerous stuff of dystopian fiction. I just hope there are enough people like us in all degrees of the political spectrum that can point these things out when they happen and relate that information to others (again, regardless of political affiliation) when things do get out of control. Because you're right, this stuff is getting out of hand.
and the beauty of the self sustaining world they all live in is that none of what you said matters:fact checking orgs.,newspapers,journalists,facts,figures,videotape,polling data-none of it matters if it isnt approved by FNC,or AM radio....anything not approved by FNC or AM radio is immediately dismissed as part of the "liberal media"
this strategy is not only used by random bloggers,or the Becks and Hannitys of the world.The sad/scary aspect is that this is the way that a majority of elected Republican officials operate as well.
and as far as FNC specifically?....regardless of the amount/indisputable nature of proof provided,those who continue to insist that not only is FNC an actual "news" org., but that it is "fair and balanced",will inexplicably fall back on two talking points
1)FNC has Juan Williams and Doug Schoen and Joe Trippi and Mara Liasson on air all the time-ignoring the fact that they ONLY bring on conservative D's who spend most of their time agreeing w/ the cons. beside them....and ignoring the fact that the cons. who appear are of the extreme variety in nearly every instance-Palin,Gingrich,Santorum,Morris,Ingraham,Rove etc etc....
and 2)"RATINGS"........FNC has the highest ratings,which means that people watch because they are the best,most honest journalists.
Which leads me to this - FOX = MSNBC. They are both guided by corporate profits with political personalities doing their dirty work. This article only goes half way.
Not intellectually honest to call out FOX when MSNBC made their profits during Bush Regime doing the same thing.
The only difference between Fox and MSNBC is the combination of letters.
If you have a problem with Obama, there's plenty to point out... there's no need to fabricate issues. However, we're past the point of people using facts to justify their opposing stances, and every instance where it happens, on whatever network should be called out.
FNC ran wild w/ the gossip and rumors of the far right blogs/AM radio hosts w/out bothering to check the facts(which is what actual news orgs. used to do),and then never bothered to correct the story,they simply dropped it and pretended they never said anything untrue....which is exactly what they did w/ the ACORN "pi mp" story and "climategate" and many others....
MSNBC and CNN covered the fact that cons. media lied about the trip,which is actually an improvement upon the way they usually ignore the FNC/AM radio lies,however....
the real problem,the sad fact of it all is that none of them will be doing any serious reporting on the substance of the trip,or very little....
this is a huge deal,and will have a serious effect on our economy-long and short term....but most of the "reporting will likely revolve around the politics of it,and who shook hands w/ whom etc etc....
All one needs to do is observe the behavior of the right-wing attention-seekers on this site...they ALL spew the Fox News/RNC/Limbaugh/Rove/Drudge/Breitbart talking points, verbatim, regardless of factual basis.
Their predictable responses are almost Pavlovian in nature. The Borg-like quality of the modern right, where critical, independent thinking is shunned in favor of letting false prophets like Beck and Limbaugh TELL THEM what to think, is deeply, DEEPLY disturbing.
Nailed it in its terrifying truth.
Oh wait... actually, that's the bad news.