Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes II received an appeal from the Defense Department, and eventually from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast -- given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq.
60 Minutes II decided to honor that request, while pressing for the Defense Department to add its perspective to the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison. This week, with the photos beginning to circulate elsewhere, and with other journalists about to publish their versions of the story, the Defense Department agreed to cooperate in our report.
Quote:
...Michael Moore has finished his latest documentary...
Moore doesn't make documentaries, he creates fiction out of footage from real life. There's a big difference.
Of course, that difference is wasted on liberals.
Scrat wrote:Quote:...Michael Moore has finished his latest documentary...
Moore doesn't make documentaries, he creates fiction out of footage from real life. There's a big difference.
Of course, that difference is wasted on liberals.
Danged liberals anyway! Differences wasted all over the place. Much preferable they get the goods on what is like what, and what isn't like what from Rush, who has just described the torture of Iraq prisoners as like "a college fraternity prank."
And let's be real. What happened was despicable, but forcing naked men into a pile and humiliating them is not "torture".
What happened was in fact very much analogous to a college prank; a bad one. College pranks shouldn't happen in a military prison. The idiots who did this screwed up badly, but they didn't "torture" anyone.
And let's be real. What happened was despicable, but forcing naked men into a pile and humiliating them is not "torture". Torture is what Saddam and his henchmen did; driving nails into someone's head, lowering people feet-first into industrial shredders.... I'm not aware of a single report that suggests anyone was physically harmed, even slightly. You and yours call it "torture" because of your bias, not because anyone was tortured.
Scrat wrote:
Quote:Quote:
...Michael Moore has finished his latest documentary...
Moore doesn't make documentaries, he creates fiction out of footage from real life. There's a big difference.
Of course, that difference is wasted on liberals.
What's the matter Scrat? Have you never heard of the New Journalism? Tom Wolfe, you know.....
Validity IS important, but it seems to me surely best achieved (even established) via a JS Mill 'marketplace of ideas' context.
But I'll wager you allow for some state controls on monopoly in business or technological development.
And though the desired end isn't diversity itself, it is diversity that forwards the liklihood of whatever ends you have in mind.
But it doesn't tell the whole story, because it doesn't acknowledge monopolies - or uniquely priviledged positions- which might function to reduce diversity.
If I correctly understand US and European government complaints against Microsoft, a part of those complaints pointed to the strategies MS had implemented which sought to place their products in a uniquely privledged position. Do you grant no substance to these complaints as regards likely negative consequences arising?
Dick Cheney gave a speech saying he didn't watch network news other than Fox, which, he said his experience showed, gave the most truthful rendition of things.
But, when you get to Alterman's book, you'll get a notion of how much money and design lies behind Republican/conservative moves to control TV, radio and print press, precisely because of their priviledged postion and influence.
Picking a morning paper to read, when your options are Pravda One, Pravda Two, Pravda Three and Pravda Four, isn't much of a choice.
You assume two things here: TV is less diverse than print, and the cause of this is a greater quantity of regulation over TV.
But it wouldn't be accurate at all to attribute that difference to regulations. Susceptibility to advertiser preference and demands, and the sound-bite nature of TV are the more proper culprits here.
blatham wrote:
Validity IS important, but it seems to me surely best achieved (even established) via a JS Mill 'marketplace of ideas' context.
I agree. And the last time I read him, John Stuart Mill advocated freedom of speech and the press, but not government regulation to enhance diversity.
blatham wrote:
And though the desired end isn't diversity itself, it is diversity that forwards the liklihood of whatever ends you have in mind.
That's false. The end I have in mind is that as many people as possible get to watch the news channels they like best. When Fox is locked out to make room for the diversity-enhancing Gay Tree-Huggin Terrorist Channel, the likelyhood of this end is not forwarded.
I agree. And that's why I disapprove of government institutions who meddle with the media. You cannot give the Canadian government the power to preserve the French part of Canada's heritage without also giving it the power to pander to their cronies Jeb Bush style.
You and I agree that it's despiseable if the Florida state government is giving Disney reason to think it will lose government favors if it publishes a critical Michael Moore film. The difference is in our solutions: Your solution is that the conservative bully be replaced by a liberal bully. My solution is to take away from the Florida state government the power to bully media companies with pork.
blatham wrote:
If I correctly understand US and European government complaints against Microsoft, a part of those complaints pointed to the strategies MS had implemented which sought to place their products in a uniquely privledged position. Do you grant no substance to these complaints as regards likely negative consequences arising?
I think there's a lot of substance to those complaints, and I frequently make such complaints myself. The problem is I don't trust government to make things better. Government is itself a monopolist which seeks to place its products in a uniquely priviledged position. Hence, putting government in charge of curbing monopoly power is putting the fox (no pun intended) in charge of the henhouse.
blatham wrote:
Dick Cheney gave a speech saying he didn't watch network news other than Fox, which, he said his experience showed, gave the most truthful rendition of things.
So Dick Cheney's has a different idea of what a good news channel is than you and I do -- and acted on this idea. What's the problem? How did that infringe on our right to ignore Fox?
blatham wrote:
But, when you get to Alterman's book, you'll get a notion of how much money and design lies behind Republican/conservative moves to control TV, radio and print press, precisely because of their priviledged postion and influence.
Now the question is, does government regulation of the press help or hurt this trend? From where I sit, it looks as though American legislators are using government power to strengthen conservative media monopolies, and I don't like it. But these are precisely the institutions you defend -- except that they're run by people you disagree with.
2) There's a lot of newspapers and TV channels out there. Even if Murdoch had 90% market share, which he doesn't, the other 10% would still leave liberals with plenty of news sources to choose from. If newpapers shift to the right, that's because people want to read more conservative newspapers -- not because liberal newspapers have become less available to those who want to read them.
And again -- newspapers and websites, where the regimen is practically complete laissez-faire, show much more diversity than TV, which is quite tightly regulated. What does that tell you about the relative desirability of the two regimens?
blatham wrote:
But it wouldn't be accurate at all to attribute that difference to regulations. Susceptibility to advertiser preference and demands, and the sound-bite nature of TV are the more proper culprits here.
Why not, and why?
Of course, even though a work such as On Liberty might contain seminal notions and broad truths, it isn't necessarily entailed that the work is either correct or complete in all eventualities.
Mandatory seatbelt legislation, for example, I thing results in more positive real good for the community at large than does the lack of it, reduction in choice (choice, we agree, is preferable) notwithstanding. How about curricula? Will students/education/your institution be better served with absolute choice in courses and in assignments?
Pandering to cronies is clearly not eradicated or even lessened by relying on the private sector.
By pure definition, conservative bully is a more coherent notion than liberal bully, though you likely won't buy that one. It's a tad like saying "he's an idealogue about open-mindedness".
I do trust government to help make things better. Well, I don't really 'trust' them to, but expect them to, and consider there is much evidence they can.
Ten or fifteen years into the twentieth century, New York city was a hell hole for most everyone living/working there.
It was government-established agencies and regulations which not only enforced humane regard for workers, but which (as these moved into the New Deal) ushered in the most productive and innovative period in american history.
People ought to be free to get what they want, absolutely? Craven wants nukes.
new corporate owners have demanded that the news portions of the enterprise contribute to income production in the same manner as a sit com. That was not previously the case.
No. Working conditions improved dramatically during England's period of laissez-faire, ca. 1840-1910.
Thomas wrote:No. Working conditions improved dramatically during England's period of laissez-faire, ca. 1840-1910.
I suggest, you visit the People's History Museum in Manchester :wink:
blatham wrote:
Of course, even though a work such as On Liberty might contain seminal notions and broad truths, it isn't necessarily entailed that the work is either correct or complete in all eventualities.
Yes. But J.S. Mill did cover the eventuality which you said matters here: monopoly power. Not in On Liberty, but in his economic writings. Economies of scale in printing newspapers were larger in his time than in ours. This suggests he considered the argument you made, and would have included it in On Liberty if he'd found it persuasive. He didn't.
Government intervention on paternalistic grounds can be fine with me if we know that government knows better what's good for the people affected than those people do. This merits some intervention on behalf of insane people and of children, but not of grown-ups acting of their own free will. That said, I reject your seatbelt example -- if grown-ups in cars think they are better off without seatbelts, and grown-ups in government think they're better off with them, I trust the car driver's judgment over the government's.
Your curriculum example is fine with me as far as it goes, if schools are run by the government. But I would prefer it if curricula were set directly by the schools, and if the parents had more of a say in it.
blatham wrote:
Pandering to cronies is clearly not eradicated or even lessened by relying on the private sector.
I think you have to distinguish between the state of being deregulated and the process of deregulating. The process of deregulating is ripe with pandering to cronies, because it allows the government to trade preferential deregulation for friendly coverage by the media companies being deregulated. By contrast, the state of being deragulated clearly reduces pandering because the government has nothing to pander with.
blatham wrote:
By pure definition, conservative bully is a more coherent notion than liberal bully, though you likely won't buy that one. It's a tad like saying "he's an idealogue about open-mindedness".
That would be a valid point if "liberal" still meant what it used to mean in J.S. Mill's lifetime. It doesn't anymore, and the trade-unionist, environmentalist, anti-globalization liberals strike me as no more open-minded than Rush Limbaugh. I really think you're succumbing to the fallacy of "bullies aren't bullies if they're on my side" here.
blatham wrote:
I do trust government to help make things better. Well, I don't really 'trust' them to, but expect them to, and consider there is much evidence they can.
As a German with a sense of recent history, I'm afraid I cannot agree with that.
blatham wrote:
Ten or fifteen years into the twentieth century, New York city was a hell hole for most everyone living/working there.
I don't buy that, given the millions of migrants who chose to settle in New York when they couldn't have settled everywhere else in the world -- or stayed at home, for that matter. This revealed prefeference is strong reason to believe that New York City was not a hell holes in the judgment of the people involved.
blatham wrote:
It was government-established agencies and regulations which not only enforced humane regard for workers, but which (as these moved into the New Deal) ushered in the most productive and innovative period in american history.
No. Working conditions improved dramatically during England's period of laissez-faire, ca. 1840-1910. They improved dramatically in America even before the Progressive Era, which was also close to laissez-faire. Safer workplaces are a consequence of technical progress just like faster cars and bigger houses, and they emerged independently of increased regulation. I challenge you to find evidence that working conditions increased more in countries with more regulations, other things being equal. I'd be very surprised if you found much.
blatham wrote:
new corporate owners have demanded that the news portions of the enterprise contribute to income production in the same manner as a sit com. That was not previously the case.
Maybe not in TV. But it has been that way in the press for at least 200 years, and the regimen has produced decent reporting for those who wanted to read it. This is reason to distrust your sources' reasoning