Why we should thank Andrew Breitbart...despite his buffoonery

Andrew Breitbart, that conspiracy theorist who believes everyone has a political agenda and that the media is a liberal whore, recently stepped in another pile of bullshit by publishing a video clip of a USDA employee supposedly making a racist remark to the NAACP.

Being ever-ready to jump the gun on any sort of "gotcha moment," Breitbart proceeded to advance the notion that the NAACP is full of racists.  He did this all within the context of trying to prove that NAACP is racist and since they are racist it gives the Right cover to be racist also...despite the ludicrous reasoning behind such a proposition.



Such a position is logically and rationally untenable yet, Breitbart subscribes to the faulty assumption at the foundation of Fox News and MSNC, viz., since everyone has an agenda, then it's perfectly acceptable to double-down on a particular worldview as a filter for facts and call it "news".

My position on Fox News (who incidentally took Breitbart at his word and ran with the story without doing appropriate background...probably because it fed into their right-wing slant) and MSNBC, is that such assumptions about an inherent slant in every news source is faulty; it does nothing but undermine journalistic ethics and professionalism.  

We have a name for that type of journalism and it rhymes with "mellow".

For example: If you had a choice of information between a source that felt entitled to color the reporting according to their own agenda 

OR 

you had a source that freely admitted innate, human, biases, but made a concerted effort to reduce those biases and report the facts---which would you choose?


I, for one, choose the latter.  Going even one step further, I tap multiple sources for the same information, pitting bias against bias so I can get a better picture of the facts.  

Some, Breitbart being one, prefers the arrogance of their own self-important worldview--even when it lays bare the laziness of the media and their own willful ignorance.


This, my friends, is why we should thank Andrew Breitbart:

Not only did he show himself to be the ideological and attention-seeking whore that he is---again.


He shined a light on the laziness and lack of professionalism in the media--more particularly of Fox News.  

Thank you Andrew Breitbart!

Climate change is undisputed. Deniers are liars.

For all you climate change deniers out there, I'd like to provide you with a link to a study that shows just how stupid your asinine recalcitrance has become.

I suspect that climate change deniers (liars?) prefer sticking their heads in the sand because to admit error is tantamount to becoming a liberal.

For those of you with the spine to read the study, I half expect you to shoot the messenger by claiming it's some vast intellectual conspiracy.

For those of you afraid to critically examine the evidence, I suspect you'll believe the pseudo-intellectuals in the media who agitate and lie about a leftist plot to destroy the free market.

Either way, you're being an idiot unless you use your brain.

Study indicates our tendency to ignore news that conflicts with our worldview.

Studies like this one underscore the necessity for reading or viewing a number of media sources instead of relying on one or two.

As we age, the danger of viewpoint ossification increases. We seek certainty. When a news story contradicts our particular worldview, then chances are good we'll minimize its value, criticize its source, or seek out other stories to offset the perceived threat to our cozy little worlds.

The Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, were acutely aware of this natural tendency, despite having no name for it. Jefferson felt so strongly about the dangers of narrow-mindedness and simple-mindedness in the electorate that he donated all his books to start a library (University of Virginia). Along with the other founders, Jefferson noted that the dangers of a free press were far outweighed by having no press at all.

We find ourselves in an awkward situation today. Our media strives for profit. Profit motive fuels the tendency of the media to feed consumers what they want instead of what they need, viz., real news and conflicting stories.

My prescription: Read many sources, take them all with a grain of salt. Don't parrot some bozo who makes his or her money from maintaining an audience instead of actually adhering to a code of journalistic ethics.

Media fallacy in pursuing "balance" spelled out.

Here's a link to the description of the fallacy I referred to in a previous post about the media's attempts at "balance."

This explains the fallacy in plain and simple terms.

The middle is not always correct.