Sunday With The Lamestream Media (DU mentioned!)

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7290

Sunday With The Lamestream Media
by Timothy Gatto | May 6 2007

The Lamestream Media talk show hosts are asking the question; If the Democratic Party compromises with the Bush administration, won’t that alienate the left wing of the party? The left wing, the left wing, just who is the left wing of the Democratic party? Move On? They have been mentioned more than once. Daily Kos? They have been noted for portraying the principles of the left. The Huffington Post? OpEdNews? The Smirking Chimp? Of Course, they do actually represent the left...sort of.

What about the Democratic Underground and the Democratic Party's own website? How about the polls? When 73% of the people polled think we are running our country into the ground, it’s not a left wing complaint anymore. When 59% of the people support the pullout that the Dems sponsored, it was many more people than the ones that are tuned into the left. The Lamestream Media is trying to portray this as a left against everyone else’s problem. It isn’t just the left that want us out of Iraq anymore. Even families that have military people serving in Iraq, the majority, something like 71% want us out of there. (CBS NEWS)

So why is the onus being put on the left? It’s an old psychological trick. When the news media identifies people against the war as being “leftists”, the word has really bad connotations to those in the middle. It brings up memories of leftist governments that eventually allied against us in the cold war. It brings to mind totalitarian communist states, memories from the hangover of the Cold War. Nobody wants to be labeled as a communist or a socialist. Left is a step toward those labels. Of course we that are on the left know that the thinking behind those ideas is flawed. I’m a retired military man and I’ve always leaned a little to the left. The left is just a label. It differentiates us from those on the right. Some people on the right aren’t Nazi’s. When you talk about the extreme right, now you are talking about something else. The same goes for the extreme left.

Still, these are still labels. Labels are put on different groups to help people understand where groups are actually coming from in their attitudes towards domestic and international issues. Sometime labels are useful, other times they obscure an argument as in this case. It isn’t the liberal left base that the Democrats need to keep on their side. It’s the 59% of ALL the people that believe that we need a change of direction in Iraq. This isn’t a right or left debate at all, no matter how the Lamestream media try to make it so. Ron Paul, a Republican candidate for President wants us out of Iraq. Is he a leftist? I don’t believe he is. Wes Clark wants us to rethink Iraq, is the General a leftist?

The media must take labels out of an issue that involves 59% of the population. There are Republicans that want us out of Iraq. There are people on the right that want us out. It isn’t just the liberal left of the Democratic Party. The Lamestream Media should cease trying to make it just a liberal/left issue, because it’s not. This is why American are simply getting tired of their reporting. This is why they are getting their information from the internet. It’s also a good idea. Watching them, you have to be careful about what to believe. They are not always telling you the truth. Sometimes they are not just trying to report the facts, but trying to influence what people think about what they report. That's also bias, and there is no place for that in news reporting.

[MADem]

1. If everyone who wants out of Iraq is a leftist, well, this teeter totter is stuck where it's at on

the playground of the national political stage!!

Unless of course, the GOP finds a spare kid to stick on their end and skew the results....

[TwilightGardener]

2. To me, the "Left" of the party wants us out of Iraq, by defunding, NOW!

That's not me, so I must be to the middle or right. I don't want the "lefties" to put so much pressure on the Dems that they would actually consider defunding--I think defunding would be a big mistake. There are rebuilding, security, and terrorism issues we will still have to address in Iraq, even when we do start withdrawing, and I fear that Republicans will exploit MoveOn's childish "Let's just go home and forget this" sentiment and paint us as weak and unrealistic on defense and foreign policy.

[Pyrzqxgl]

3. I think more than just the lefties want us out of the Middle East.

I think you and only a minority of the Republicans (the ones with the bucks to be made mostly) want us to stay.

[TwilightGardener]

5. Nope, don't misunderstand, I want us out of the ME. I want the war to

end, I want the soldiers to come home, the war was a huge immoral blunder from the git-go--don't assume that someone who is against de-funding is somehow FOR the war--you'd be including most Democrats in office, and Hillary and Obama as well, in that assumption, and it's false. Defunding is essentially "buying" the end of the war, and all responsibility for the inevitable bad outcome or any troop deaths that occur. I consider it an extreme solution, and only advocate it if we are still there 6 months or a year from now with no withdrawal plan--I am not there yet, and neither are most in Congress.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

4. K&R