False Equivalency: Both Sides Do It! And Other Campaign Eye-Rollers

Image from source, MSN

In this ridiculous--and ridiculously long presidential campaign--there are still some old-school rules of thumb that are still in play. There is the media fascination with and desperation to maintain the horse race over substance. And in service to that, there is the need for "balance," accomplished by boiling everything down to "both sides do it," even if it takes a false equivalency to get there. Rarely are we dealing with apples and oranges. In fact, often, it's just Bad Analogy Theater.

Here's how it works. The media, naturally, will focus on whatever has just exploded into the news cycle, this time it's usually something outrageous that Donald Trump either said or did. Often, that something occurs at a time when something negative has happened to Hillary (or at least, the media thinks it ought to be a negative for her). The Trump story has more oomph, and gets more attention, and then Right Wing World starts squawking that the media is "in the tank" for Hillary, and only focusing on Trump's woes (ignoring, of course, the countless hours of free press Trump gets in that same media.

In an effort to try to balance things out though, the media will often play up the Hillary thing. Right now, one of those non-equivalent things is The Clinton Foundation vs. Trump Inc. One is a multi-billion dollar charity that helps poor people, and which has disclosed its donors. The other is a multi-billion dollar for-profit multi-national corporation, that pointedly does not disclose its business ties.

The Clinton Foundation has attracted scrutiny to the point of absurdity over its donors, with so far baseless accusations of pay-for-play access between the charity and the State Department, when Clinton was Secretary of State. Meanwhile, the Trump business has attracted far less focused attention, even though it is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and has even bigger financial ties to foreign entities, including the Bank of China. But it's the Clinton Foundation getting clobbered by innuendo, while Trump's businesses get passing mention.

That's par for the course this go-around though. There is so much going on in Trumpland that no one thing tends to stick, or get enough traction. With the Clinton side, it's a one-two-three punch of 1) Clinton Foundation, 2) E-mail "scandal," 3) Benghazi. Throw in a little "Mrs. Clinton has mystery diseases" rumor mongering, and you've basically got the counter-weight to the blizzard of Trump dumps. Donald calls group X a bunch of losers? Pick one of the above about Hillary, and pick at that as a counterpunch. Doesn't matter if it's baseless, pointless, or barely worth mentioning, just make sure it sounds bad for Hillary.

It's really no wonder that Hillary is keeping a relatively low profile these days. I wouldn't give a press conference either, when these old, stale topics keep getting dusted off and asked again. Everything has been asked and answered. Why risk giving a slightly different wording in an answer to have that dissected for three days, when Trump does something obnoxious daily? I'd keep my head down too. Though I'd be mightily pissed off at the double standard. And here we have--again--15,000 more emails. Doesn't matter what's in them, the insulation is that they were bad, and they were hidden. At this point, I really couldn't care less if one or six out of 15,000  maybe, could be interpreted as being classified after the fact. Sick. Of. It.

[Excerpt]

FBI uncovers 14,900 more documents in Clinton email probe

The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned. . .

Read more at: MSN

Right Wing World: Outrage Over Obama's Down Time

People are always trying to say that "both sides do it" whenever there is an argument with a political divide. Of course, there is often also false equivalence, where the preponderance of wrongdoing is on one side or the other. But there is one place where we have some similarity, and one of those would be: presidential vacations. At least for this and the previous president, opponents have bitched about how much downtime they take, what else might be going on, what else they should be doing, and how much it all costs.

Let 'em eat cake!

Did I complain about Dubya's vacationing, and traipsing around? Sure. I really, really, really disliked George W. Bush, and a high percentage of his administration (though I saved my hatin' for Dick Cheney). I don't even like seeing video of Bush, or hearing his or Darth's voice. Ugh. But I'm pretty sure it was fairly low on my list of grievances at the time. The only one that really stands out is the time Dubya was having cake with John McCain, and learning how to play the guitar with country singer Mark Wills, while Hurricane Katrina was bearing down.

So, yeah, I complained. But as far as I know, I didn't make shit up about it. I didn't exaggerate to a ridiculous degree, and then start to believe my own exaggerations. I thought Bush was a dolt, I thought little positive or negative of Laura, but I don't think my rancor--public or private--came anywhere near where the right goes on President Obama. The thinly veiled or openly naked racism, laced with pure hatred is really quite stunning. So, there is an area where "both sides do it," but one side does it much, much worse. Bush Derangement Syndrome may have been over-the-top, but Obama Derangement Syndrome is oh-so-very-low.

It ought to be pointed out that a) all presidents and their family get perks like travel, lodging, fine food, and other niceties; b) Obama's vacation and leisure time is not out of scale (and is actually less) than his immediate predecessor and most other presidents; and c) Michelle Obama has been trashed by the right--for no real (non-racist) reason--far more than any other first lady ever has.

Image from Wonkette

Here's an article from Wonkette, because a story this rancid can only be tolerated with a heaping helping of humor. This is proven often by The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and on a good day, Saturday Night Live. The article focuses on right-wing world's insane reaction to the Obamas' Valentine's Day, and is a prime example of the kind of thing I'm talking about.

[Excerpt]

Americans Very Angry King Barack And Ugly Wife Did Not Have Mac And Cheese With Cut-Up Hot Dogs For Valentine’s Dinner

. . .Yes, Barack Obama flew home from Atlanta in time for his dinner date with the beautiful First Lady, and Yahoo News commenters went full Victoria Jackson. (Because Barack Obama was not supposed to fly home from Atlanta, we guess, but should have either taken a Greyhound bus or stayed in Atlanta forever.) There are your usual comments about monkeys and heaping platters of baby back ribs and buckets of KFC, but those are to be expected, because “postracial. . .”

Read more at: Wonkette

Rachel Maddow Keeps Her Audience, Sean Hannity Loses Half His

As a follower of politics and pop culture, it stands to reason that I have an interest in cable news and talk radio. I listen to liberal radio at work--via computer, it's hard to find on the radio in most markets--and I watch MSNBC at home, mostly The Rachel Maddow Show, and occasionally Hardball or The Last Word. But I also watch a sampling of the Sunday morning shows, as well as often listening to whatever's playing on our local right-winger radio station. You have to have balance, and know what's going on outside of your own particular bubble.

Though it's pretty much been banished in our house, I used to watch a bunch of FOX "News," particularly Hannity & Colmes (now just Hannity). And as a person who's as interested in the business and behind-the-scenes of my pop culture, I'd follow the ratings too. What you'll find when you do that is, CNN and to a lesser extent MSNBC have viewers and FOX has fans. FOX fans are very invested in their fandom, to the point of rudeness to all that is not FOX (or some other section of Right Wing World). They take particular delight in skewering MSNBC and Rachel Maddow, though they are never, ever as clever, original or funny as they think they are. And when you get past the "Rachel looks like a dude" and lesbian "jokes" the big thing they like to talk about is FOX's ratings dominance and that nobody watches MSNBC.

As a person who is a fan of Maddow, and also a gay person, some of the idiotic put-downs can grate, but I'm pretty thick-skinned in that area. But I'm not a "fan" of MSNBC. I don't take it personally when someone slams them. I'm a blogger though, and part of my mission was to take on inaccurate information. It's inaccurate--particularly now--to say "nobody" watches MSNBC, and it's false equivalence to say that the channel is the mirror opposite of FOX "News."  Some of that may be beside the point soon, if trends continue. Because MSNBC is doing fairly well in the ratings lately, and FOX is in a long slide. Which is cool. And also kinda funny.

[Excerpt]

Why Sean Hannity Lost Half Of His Viewers, And Rachel Maddow Didn’t

In the world of TV ratings, the first few weeks following a presidential election are a comedown for any news outlet: Viewership spikes prior to the big event and falls off just as quickly when it’s all over. . .

Read more at: International Business News

Ted Koppel Takes Partisan Cable News to Task

"Is it me? It's him, right? It's him."

Am I Nathan Thurm?

That's a quote from Martin Short's old Saturday Night Live character, Nathan Thurm, the perpetually nervous and stressed attorney, who was always defending the indefensible.  But, that's how I felt watching Ted Koppel's report on Rock Center on Thursday night. Ted Koppel is of course from the old school of journalism, not quite Walter Cronkite, but close. And his topic was the hyper-partisan nature of discourse in the "news." All the while, I'm thinking, "False equivalence!" "But, FOX has 'news' in its name!" "But, FOX lies!!!"

And yeah, I get it. We are a deeply divided country, on seemingly every topic. One could argue that it began with Newt Gingrich back in the nineties. Oh, sure, there was partisanship before that, but Newt (and Lee Atwater and others) took it to a Whole. 'Nother. Level.  The political division grew, and flourished into the political coverage. And nowhere did it flower more brightly than at Rupert Murdoch's (and Roger Ailes') FOX "News," the first attempt at news with a point of view. 

As you know--though it lost millions for years--FOX was eventually very successful. And though it has taken rival MSNBC many years, they are finally nipping at FOX's heels, at least in recent weeks. And while MSNBC is demonstrably and admittedly from a liberal perspective (at least in prime time), there are numerous differences in their approach. You could maybe align Chris Matthews with Bill O'Reilly and Ed Schultz with Sean Hannity for bombast. But you won't find MSNBC running with debunked "some say" garbage for days on end. You won't find MSNBC claiming themselves to be an island of sanity in a sea of biased media (as FOX and its fans seem to believe every other outlet is liberally biased). You won't find a moron of Hannity's scale on MSNBC, and you won't find an intellect on Rachel Maddow's scale on FOX. FOX will never run a three-hours-per-day program headed by a former Democratic Congressman as MSNBC does with Joe Scarborough.

In short (I know, too late), there are differences. As reported here a couple of days ago, FOX "News" hires Romney campaign surrogates and SuperPAC people as commentators, and doesn't usually disclose this when they appear, commenting on the very races they are a part of. You don't see that anywhere else. As Bill Maher says in Koppel's piece, while both sides are guilty of sometimes being in a bubble, the left's is nowhere near the scope of that on the right. There is an extreme right, but there is no mirror extreme left. The extremity of the right has dragged the left toward the center.

But Koppel presented this as a he-said-she-said, pitting Maher against Ann Coulter's clearly (to me) alternate reality view. And I kept saying to myself, regarding Koppel's false equivalence. . . "It's not me. It's him, right? It's him."

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Obama, the iPhone and False Equivalency

That's not an iPhone anyway.
Image from Washington Times.

We talk a lot about false equivalency, and it's because we have to. Constantly, seemingly every single day, there is some sort of news nugget that screams, "bad analogy." Today's item is that President Obama can't work an iPhone. And so, it's the same as John McCain's cluelessness with technology in 2008 and George H.W. Bush's unfamiliarity with grocery scanners in 1992. And fine, whatever, have your fun, but. . .

The reason that this is a false equivalency is that Obama isn't clueless about technology. He is widely known to have been a Blackberry fiend on the campaign trail in 2007 and 2008, to the point of being restricted by the campaign. The iPhone came out in 2007, and the President had been in office for most of its lifespan. Anybody--tech head like me or not--will not know how to use the phone instantly upon first picking one up. I'm an Android user, and though I'm the only one in my office that can figure out how to load paper in the fax machine, change the ink in the printer, map a drive, and get the router online, I am unfamiliar with iPhones.

Beyond that, the core of Mitt Romney's base is old white people who are very likely, as a group, unfamiliar with how to operate an iPhone. But as I said, go ahead, have your fun. But you're not going to gain any voters with this one. And you know what? I'll bet that Mitt--unless he's being schooled right now--is unfamiliar with iPhones. . .or Androids.

[Excerpt]
 
Tech challenge: Obama has trouble with iPhone
 
On the campaign trail, President Obama is constantly talking about the importance of technology, but he met his match in an iPhone Sunday. . .
Read more: Washington Times

Captain Obvious: Sorting Out Sandusky

This post shouldn't have to be written. But the truth is, posts like it aren't written often enough. On Friday, Jerry Sandusky, the assistant coach at Penn State, was found guilty on 45 of 48 charges for sexually assaulting many, many boys over the years. His guilty verdict was cheered by many on the scene, and my immediate response to the news was, "good."

So, why a Captain Obvious post? Because though 99.999% of sentient humans take this news as a good thing, a goodly portion of those people equate Jerry Sandusky with ordinary gay people. He's not. Sexual orientation is a continuum of sexual attraction from heterosexual to bisexual to homosexual, with shades of grey in-between (and of course, the rare asexual, outside the scale). Pedophilia and pederasty describe a psychiatric disorder wherein a person is sexually aroused by under aged--and unable to consent--children. There are straight pedophiles and pederasts, and there are gay ones. Oddly enough, many child abusers often pick targets that are the opposite sex from their adult relationships. This is the case with Sandusky. Or perhaps not. Many predators just need prey, and Sandusky had access to boys. Who knows what his other predilections might be.

Good luck, short eyes. Image from LA Times.

So, calling Sandusky "gay," or trying to make him representative of all gay people isn't just wrong, it's hideously, unfairly and maliciously wrong. It is also dangerous, and I don't just mean to the gay people you're slandering. If you're got it in your head that it's the gays you've got to watch out for; if you're keeping your kids away from their favorite gay uncle because you can't separate concepts adequately. . .you may be letting your guard down to the actual predators. Married, family men, respected in the community like Sandusky.

Meanwhile, the idiots at FreeRepublic, the tea baggin', Palin-lovin' outpost of the interwebs, can be depended upon to take this wrong-headed thinking to its zenith (or nadir, depending upon your point of view). They run every pederast/pedophile/kiddie porn/you name it fetish under the badly named "homosexual agenda" portion of their stomach-churning site. When my conservative mother assures me that Republicans aren't homophobic, by-and-large, I think of FreeRepublic, and realize that Mom is hopelessly naive. Here are just a few of their comments. The asterisks mask a few words that they actually feel free to type out.

[Excerpts]

"Isn’t men liking men considered normal now? S/"

Editor: Boys, idiot.

"Jerry, Jerry, you're a fairy, A fan of banana and cherry, Go to jail, For a century! A little trick with Dick."
 
Ed.: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of "conservative humor."


"FNS and CNN anchors, both sex perverts, talking about another sex pervert committing anal rape of boys is too much."

Ed.: See what he did there? Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith are somehow equivalent to Sandusky. Nice. Now, for a doozy:

"Great. Now if they can just quit promoting in schools the idea that “sodomy is good” to the children, so they are less likely to be victims. Sodomites are twisted and have a sick reality, which knows no sexual morality. They misuse their body parts in debasing ways. There is no logic or morality—so age makes no difference. Pederasty and homosexuality has been intrinsically linked since Ancient Greece and the Samurai. It is a learned behavior. Schools intentionally promote Sodomy in Sex Ed (they teach anal sex) and by having “Day of Silence” and putting the word gay with “Pride”. Sodomy is a Vice and children need to learn Good and Evil by the Standard of the Bible—since our Natural Rights come from God, so they do not fall victim to these people who have no sexual boundaries and will use them. The homosexual reality is that debasing acts are “love”, which is the slippery slope to any debasing act-—even that with children—since “self pleasure” is their only criteria for “good”.

Get perverts out of the schools. -—like Kevin Jennings. Better yet, get your children OUT of public schools. They are promoting evil to children—to normalize the debasing and dysfunctional lifestyles which lead to a socialist state."

Ed.: The stupid. It burns! No, jackass, you're wrong about almost everything you've said. But the key chink in your screed is your "slippery slope" comment. You're not even smart enough to know that it is the name of a logical fallacy. One of the main ones.

"Wait a fews years as this nation sinks further into immorality....this behavior will become legal and protected."

Ed.: No. It won't. Rape and molestation are crimes on people against their will. The only time I've seen any otherwise rational person argue against protections against rape, it was Republicans trying to change it to just "forcible" rape, whatever that means.

"Just more proof that homosexual fa**ots have no business in leadership positions."

Ed.: See? Told you there'd be asterisks! Offensive, wrong and redundant. The FReeper trifecta!


"Or be able to adopt!"

Ed.: Okay, moron, Sandusky was a married heterosexual, as far as we know. How exactly would your knee-jerk reaction have stopped him?

And on that note, we have the lone, sane FReeper, who answered that last bit better than me. Credit where it's due:

"The problem with your statement as it pertains to this case was that there was no evidence that Sanusky ever lived an openly “homosexual” or “fa**ot” lifestyle outside of molesting young boys which was done in secret and not openly. Sandusky was never, as I understand ever interested in having sex with other adult men, only in having sex with children who happened to be male. A male pedophile who prefers having sex with female children is none the less still a pedophile and just as sick, twisted and evil.
Barring openly homosexuals from leadership positions would not have prevented someone like Sandusky from doing what he did as he was not an openly homosexual man who had sex with other adult men. He lived as a straight man, a pillar of his community, someone well respected in his community and someone that even his neighbors and close friends, some who are deeply religious, had no idea of his perversions, yet he was someone who secretly preyed on vulnerable children for years." --by MD Expat in PA

There is much, much more. But for once, I'm going to give a FReeper the last word.  Source.

UPDATE: For Dan, my friend at the conservative LasVegasBadger, I do not think that FreeRepublic represents all or most Republicans. But they are a very vocal, and unfortunately these days, heeded force, the core of the tea party. Dan, you keep me on my toes.