Wednesday, September 29, 2021

A recap of media political reporting templates

Just to be clear, from my years of watching news reports of budge battles and Government shutdowns:

  • If the Dems hold both the Senate and the House, with a Republican President, it's the GOP's fault
  • If the GOP holds both the Senate and the House, with a Republican President, it's the GOP's fault
  • If the Dems hold both the Senate and the House, with a Democrat President, it's the GOP's fault
  • If the GOP holds both the Senate and the House, with a Democrat President, it's the GOP's fault
  • If neither party holds both chambers, with a Republican President, it's the GOP's fault
  • If neither party holds both chambers, with a Democrat President, it's the GOP's fault

Just to bring us up to date, as once again we see the debt ceiling and budget talks being framed as more or less crashing and burning because of the Republicans.  

The only time this might change is, for instance, the budget battles during the Obama years in which Washington closed down due to stalled negotiations.  At that point, several media pundits pointed out that the same thing happened under the Clinton administration in the mid-90s, but that was because both sides, including Clinton, were belligerent. Unlike the always wonderful Obama.

Which, of course, stands in stark contrast to the media narrative of the mid-1990s, when it was exclusively the fault of the GOP and Newt Gingrich that the government shut down.  But then, that was ancient history, and the media can always count on a collective memory that doesn't begin caring about sins until at least 30 years ago. 

For some reason, many thought that the Internet would put an end to the collective amnesia the media has always relied upon.  A decade of the Internet later, I can see that such assumptions were a bit premature. 

6 comments:

  1. What Glenn Reynolds said: garbage people paid to lie for the Democratic Party.

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    1. I know. No party is perfect, but the BS that must be shoveled to keep in line with the Democrats is unparalleled.

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  2. I think people want to believe what they want to believe. And if you want to believe the GOP and those who support them are evil, then anything that confirms your bias is okay, true or not. The "genius", if you can call it that, of the Left is the demonizing of those not on their side and indoctrinating generations in education camps - er, schools. They give out lavish affirmations for people standing up for the "right" things and bully the ones who don't or speak out against. Human nature , being what it is, responds to positivity and social inclusion.

    The biggest problem over the years in addressing this was the naive belief that those on the Left acted in goodwill, misguided, but still good. When in fact, they were acting with malicious intent and have run roughshod over this country with zero scruples. Those on the Right haven't helped themselves by engaging in all the destructive family dysfunctions of the culture either. That has severely weakened both collective strength and credibility. We can't self govern collectively if we can't even self govern individually.

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    1. The greatest coup was the Left as wolf in sheep's clothing. The official cultural narrative when I was growing up - and not just in movies, TV and books, but even in college and textbooks - was that liberals and liberalism were always the good, kind, smart ones, and not liberals were where Nazis come from. Therefore, liberalism told Christians that one of the most evil things in the world was to tell people their religion is wrong and try to convert them. Meanwhile at the same time, they were ruthlessly telling Christians our religion is wrong and demanding we convert. And that's just one of a million examples.

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  3. As I've said for ages, the left is always guilty of the crime they accuse the right of committing.

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    1. It's because it isn't a crime when they do it. I think that's one of the appeals and why so many jump on board with the Left. It literally can say it's fine when they do it, wrong when everyone else does it.

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