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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (7955)	12/27/2005 2:41:36 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541933

" "The real war on Christmas It's actually being waged by Bill O'Reilly and other right-wingers. I should know: It almost ruined my family's holiday dinner." Is hardly balanced, nuanced and sophisticated. It is itself strident and hostile. And it implies that O'Reily and those like him are indeed responsible for the situation at the dinner table. Responsible? I wouldn't use that word. I would say that the right-wing-radio shouting hyperbole fostered/triggered the polarization, the stridency, the anti-intellectual populism, and the hostility that has crowded out thoughtful debate. I don't know if they created a nation of dittoheads (small "d") or simply gave them voice but I find the result very unattractive. I would say more "gave them voice" then "created them". Its not as if most of the people listening to the less sophisticated, more partisan, less intelectual side of the political debate were participating in, or even listening to balanced, nuanced, intelectual multi-sided debate before. From the mass media they may have gotten debate between too parts of the more liberal view. There may have been less stridency, but that is to be expected if everyone involved is close politically and philisophically. But its underlying theme is the divide between independent thinkers (in the blog world you have them on all sides) and lock-step defenders (of either party position). It's a question of quality versus volume of and quantity in debate and how this shift has changed the way info is now processed and discussed in America — and over family dinner tables. Y no es bonita. That is more balanced then the the Wheaton article. At least its accusing both sides. I'm not sure how much actual change there has been over family dinner tables. Heated political debates at the table are nothing new, and to the extent they were avoided they where often avoided by not talking about politics at the table. What has changed is that the heat has become the norm in public political debate in the media. That isn't really new either, such heat always existed, and at other times it was also the norm, but I do agree that things have gotten more heated in the last several decades. Part of that is just more ideas being represented as I mentioned above, but not all of it. I think a big part is due to their being more outlets for such debate and the competition between them for ratings. Tim