BOGSAT
(Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around a Table)
This is apparently the most prolific venue for news intake by the average American. A bunch of [usually pasty], and nearly always fluffy, guys in suits pontificating and arguing about things they really have no experience in other than where it supports a particular political ideology.
The media tends to amp up this otherwise dreary paradigm by compelling that these doughy keyboard commandos somehow maintain polar opposition in their positions.
I gave up watching that crap years ago. Weirdly, I found myself agreeing too much, and it got boring.
ReplyDeletePolitical tv is political porn, just tune the the channel based on whether you have a rightwing or leftwing fetish...
I myself am a rightwinger, but I'm not a cheering squad. Reading is much better for you and allows you to digest arguments better.
For the record, I do think FOX news does a good job bringing different sides to the table, including libertarians like Judge Napolitano.
Agree completely. I seldom watch any TV or cable news anymore...but my bookmarks links are a mile long. I'm rather lucky to have a job where I can usually get through all of my daily news gathering each day.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that I agree about Fox. I see them bringing Democratic milquetoasts to the table more often than not. I'm not a liberal, but I can name more than a few leftists who could cogently argue their side, rather than the Beckels', Brazilles' and Colmes's. For that matter, it's standard operating procedure that everything must be seen to have two sides, but in reality, those two sides aren't but an ant trail apart.
I'd watch more cable news if they had a far larger swath of positions aired. I'll give Fox Napolitano and Stossel, though the Judge is just about batshit crazy on more than one issue.
I recently wrote about Crichton's Gell-Mann Effect. It applies here too.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, Fox News gives a far better balance than the others.
Re: Fox..if you mean the talking points of both major parties, perhaps. I'm not going to watch anymore of Fox than I already am forced to, to find out.
ReplyDeleteI still believe that in many cases, their hired 'opposition' is far more tepid and timid than the GOP line. Remember, this is the network that FNC VP of Programming calls 'the voice of the opposition'. When a cable news network has an obvious agenda, the opposition is going to generally be window dressing.