SYWFTexas

This morning, TM commented on a link from Reynolds about a Yale study of media bias. I had just finished reading Louis Black's interesting if unpersuasive op-ed in the Austin Chronicle bemoaning the tone of the Chron's letters to the editor. The interesting portion of Black's argument was that he sees an attitudinal trend in the procession of letters he receives and makes a comparison between wannabe Hunter Thompsons of previous decades and modern-day Rush Limbaugh wannabes. His prinicpal theme apparently was that the Left's critics project an air of confidence that he describes as a type of literary machismo coupled with an unreasonable level of certainty about the correctness of their politcal philosophy.

Regardless of specific ideology, we can all grant that all governments heavily slant information with deliberate shading, withholding, excessive control, and outright censorship. By setting up the straw men of liberal media and traitorous Democrats, the right positions this endorsement of propaganda as a courageous, patriotic act of independent thinking. Deeply fearful, this blatant authority-worship is necessarily coupled with disgust at different perspectives. Wrapped up in his own insecurities, feeling embattled and disenfranchised, Limbaugh brilliantly re-created the mainstream, blindly loyal, unquestioning conformist as a daring, oppressed, truth-seeking revolutionary. Now read the letters. end story

First, he's wrong about liberal media being a strawman; as Louis would say: "Go read the study." But I think I know what he means about the changing attitude of the public, he's just wrong as to the cause. When the American Left supported free speech (instead of speech codes), civil rights (instead of racial preferences), fairness for workers (instead of blind allegience to labor unions), democracy and freedom from tyranny abroad (instead of siding with tyrants ), and many more examples, it was easier to be seen as the good guys fighting the good fight and they could beat up on opponents with their sanctimony. It was also easy to recruit political support for underdogs doing the right thing -- fighting the man against the forces of greed and stubborn resistance to "progressive" solutions to social problems. The problem is that they blew it or at the very least, won on the important issues and are on the wrong side on those still remaining. In any event, those old arguments are losing ground.

This reminded me of an earlier Black op-ed bemoaning the loss of ground of "progressives" to conservatives and actually blaming the country's changing attitudes to wordsmith salesmanship.

"Class war" once concerned social inequity, damning the upper classes for their neglect of the poorest. Now it is used to deride those attacking Bush's tax cuts for favoring the very richest Americans. "Civil rights" and "a color-blind society" used to indicate activities by those determined to achieve equality by addressing the consequences of centuries of discrimination. Now this is the language used to dismiss affirmative action.

This is more complex than just the meaning and understanding of words. Liberalism has suffocated from a number of factors. Conservatives spent an enormous amount of time and energy thinking about how to sell their ideas to the widest community (while liberals took for granted their ability to do the same). But they were aided by the reality of America's post-Vietnam self-image, the staggering failures of populist social policies from school busing to public housing, and the nightmarish complexity and overwhelming public perception of the failure of the welfare system to address social inequality and correct social ills. Couple this with long-term liberal successes (of unions, for example), where the current negatives (corruption scandals and abuse of bargaining power) are noted while the causes that birthed them (horribly inhumane and deadly working conditions) are ignored.

Black sees it as a marketing problem -- not a substantive erosion of the Left's principles. Likewise the Democrats think that their problem is getting out their message. No... the problem is that the message is pretty clear and it isn't selling. A C-Span guest, politcal newletter author Rhodes Cook, said this morning that the Democrat Party has lost a million members in the past decade compared to 100,00 or so Republican losses. I guess it's not easy to recruit new voters (or more likely, retain mature voters) when you are on the wrong side.

Posted by ter0 at 2:26 PM