WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2023
A primitive, childish assessment: "We live in fictitious times."
So said film-maker Micharl Moore, as he accepted an Oscar for his documentary film, Bowling for Columbine.
Having said that, Hoo boy! Moore's fuller statement went like this:
MOORE (3/23/03): On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I would like to thank the Academy for this award.
I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on stage with us. And we would like to—they are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction.
We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live at a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons...
Moore went on a bit from there. But according to Moore, we already had "fictitious election results," even way back then!
Now we're engaged in a great tribal war, with Donald J. Trump continuing to insist that he won the 2020 election. Millions of people believe this claim—a claim for which Trump has produced nothing resembling evidence.
(Trump says he plans to do so next Monday, at least with respect to the way the election was stolen in Georgia. "There will be a complete EXONERATION!” the clownish, capitalizing crusader has now pledged on Truth Social.)
Trump's claim has been made during a time when we have a fully bifurcated set of news organizations. People who frequent conservative media are rarely asked to ponder the former president's lack of evidence in support of his sweeping claim.
Almost surely, that's what Liz in Chicago had in mind when she called C-Span's Washington Journal this Sunday. Millions of people still believe Trump's unsupported, widely-debunked sweeping claim.
As we detailed yesterday, this caller said we shouldn't televise Trump's federal trial concerning "2020 election interference." Some of her comments may not have made sense, but she got one point very right:
LIZ IN CHICAGO (8/13/23): Hi. Yes, I believe that we should not televise it, for several reasons. The first one being that, before, when we had things televised, it was a different world. We had a different news media, and we had no social media blowing things up.
I believe that if it does get televised, it will be chopped up into pieces and the bots will go after it, and social media will blow up and things will get too distorted, and the country will become even more divided, and that's the last thing we need.
So I think that, if they are going to tape it, maybe do the trial, don't televise it, and then, when people start complaining or whatever, put out the stuff that tells the truth, because we are having a real hard time telling truth from fiction.
I understand that is why everyone wants it televised. Unfortunately, we have other players in the game who are going to distort the truth for those who are not as educated, or who have only limited resources to see the news, like down in the South or whatever, where they only have a choice of one radio station.
"We are having a real hard time telling truth from fiction," this caller correctly said. The caller was certainly right about, but where can a person go if she wants "the truth?"
At the start of Sunday's program, C-Span had played tape of a statement by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who thinks the federal trial should be televised. As we noted on Monday, Cohen said that people might not get "the truth" unless they're able to watch the trial with their own eyes.
In the meantime, where can we go if we want "the truth?" Rep. Cohen, the long-serving Memphis Democrat, seemed to think he knew:
COHEN (8/5/23): We have seen our nation become more divided than any time, I guess, since the Civil War. It's totally divided, but it's divided now not on whether you are in favor of slavery or against slavery, it's whether or not you see facts and admit that they're the truth or not.
We have a problem just in seeing reality and the facts and working off the same song sheet.
We are siloed by cable television. If you watch MSNBC and CNN, you see a certain version of the news, which I think is the truth. And if you watch Fox or Newsmax or some of those stations, you see fiction...
But we need to make sure that the people can watch this [federal trial], and see it on their own, and not have to watch it through the eyes and ears of Fox and Newsmax, who would take Trump's position and tilt and switch the perspectives to be what Trump wants. And not the truth.
Rep. Cohen agreed with that Chicago caller. According to Cohen, some in our nation are having "a hard time seeing facts and admitting that they're the truth."
We're being siloed by cable television, he said—and there's little real doubt about that. But where can we go if we want "the truth?" The congressman offered this:
"If you watch MSNBC and CNN, you see a certain version of the news, which I think is the truth."
What you see on those channels is "the truth." What you see on Fox is "fiction." So said this progressive congressman.
We're focusing on this statement today because it's so childish—so primitive. Because it captures the super-simplistic, childish nature of so much of our ongoing national pseudo-discourse.
It's certainly true that viewers see and hear many things on Fox which can be likened to fiction. Certain types of crazy, unfounded—"fictitious"—claims will be allowed to pass on Fox without contradiction, challenge or comment.
That said, other material on Fox can't be dismissed in such a simplistic way. And much of what we see on MSNBC is perhaps super-simplified at this point in time too.
For our money, MSNBC's devotion to its one sole theme—Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!—has turned it into a made it a clownish imitation of a "news channel." Its multimillionaire stars talk about Donald J. Trump, prison and jail, and they talk about little else.
They don't talk about low-income public schools. They don't talk about America's massive health care costs.
They avoid immigration issues. They don't talk about income inequality.
They talk about Trump, and they talk about jail, and they talk about little else. And when it comes to Donald J. Trump, his jailing has been right around the corner on this blue tribe channel dating back to the days when Mueller was a pup.
Like Liz in Chicago, Rep. Cohen was identifying a major American problem. The rise in partisan news orgs has created an epistemic breakdown, in which members of our two major political tribes can't agree on even the simplest accounts of the most basic facts.
Rep. Cohen is a good, decent person, and he's also no dope. He could have said that CNN and MSNBC do a better job presenting "the truth" than Fox and Newsmax do. Instead, he chose to craft a child's tale. He chose to say that, in his view, our channels are presenting "the truth."
Alas! The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but "the truth" is quite hard to establish.
Vast amounts of what we discuss fall in the realm of opinion, impression, judgment, assessment. In very few such points of concern can we actually hope to establish something known as "the truth."
Most debates involve matters of judgment. Over here, within our blue tribe, we prefer a child's version of this complex conceptual matter.
"What is truth? Pontius Pilate once said. He was asking a very good question.
Cohen's formulation was that of a child. We're afraid that Candidate Trump may be enabled by such unimpressive behavior.
Tomorrow: Some things we blues don't hear
Bob’s daily dose of bullshit is not worthy of too spirited a debunking, he has been called out endlessly and doesn’t respond to challenges because he would only look more foolish. But a few quick things…
ReplyDeleteMicheal Moore, a humorist who can only loosely be called a documentarian, was bitching about two things: W’s EC win ( you know, where a candidate who gets less vote can still take office, especially aided by Supreme Court Justices appointed by the less votes winner’s father) and his false premise for taking the US to war. Said premise were shown to be indeed false. It’s called rhetoric, coming from a guy who has no power as an office holder, who has indeed turned his rhetoric on Democrats many times, as progressives often do. It was not lies that were used to cruelty harass people Bob believes deserve no consideration because they are not white.
Bob returns to “Trump Trump Trump.” In other words, people are just making too much over a nutcase trying to use any means necessary to stay in office after, as he had in every contest he has entered, he didn’t get the most votes and lied about it. Bob has consistently demonstrated he is just too fucking stupid to grasp the ramifications of that. But as when he threw up his hands at the Jan 6 committee (too partisan) he realizes he has no arguments to bring to the table. And a person like Willis is simply not his equal, so Bob can get away with not giving her serious consideration.
The Courts, where truth still has a fighting chance, have consistently ruled on the CNN/MSNBC side (for all their faults), while the Trump/Somerby side loses again and again. Fox has been proven liars with zero comment from Bob, for lying about the election and having to pay out three quarters of a billion, with more to come.
See you in Court, Trump/Somerby.
"It was not lies that were used to cruelty harass people Bob believes deserve no consideration because they are not white."
DeleteIt's hard to parse this sentence, but the overall sentiment is clear: Somerby believes non-whites do not deserve any consideration. This sentiment is an ugly defamation which cannot be found in anything that Somerby has written.
Shane Moss and Ruby Freeman, utterly invisible in Bob’s account of the situation. Probably yours too, Dogface. Stick it.
DeleteMichael Moore is one of the most famous and accomplished documentarians in film history.
DeleteFew things are clearer than that Somerby is an unrepentant racist; while rarely making a direct declaration as such, the context of his posts make it undeniable.
DeleteIf someone chooses to have blinders on about this aspect of Somerby, so be it. Nothing hinges on an ignorant commenter misunderstanding Somerby’s dark nature.
Remember the time Gore attempted a coup? I mean both tribes do it.
DeleteMichael Moore is not the most famous and accomplished documentarian. Go back and look at the list of "Best Documentary" awards given by the Motion Picture Academy over Moore's working lifetime. Michael Moore has won 1 oscar, for Bowling for Columbine. Al Gore won an oscar for An Inconvenient Truth. That was the best recent documentary, in my opinion.
DeleteRegular tantrums of toxic , defensive obsequiousness here are why people think Americans are a joke.
DeleteIt's ironic that he sets the simple condition for believability as anyone who has "power as an office holder," when the very enemy he's citing (Trump) satisfies to this condition.
Criticism of parties doesn't have to make you feel personally upset. That's a normal part of political discourse. It's an unfair condition to set especially on the media from the public.
Bob's argument here is not that we should ignore Trump. He's arguing that there needs to be a broader cultural effort to stop the political misinformation and distrust that allowed him to step on the backs of ignorant people in the country and become president.
"...within our blue tribe, we prefer a child's version of this complex conceptual matter. "
ReplyDeleteThe inevitable Somerby double down.
Yes, as opposed to Bob’s complex take on the situation: “Trump Trump Trump”.
DeleteRuby Freeman and her daughter put a human face on what has been happening nationwide as poll workers and vote counters were targeted by Trump's army of extremists and received death threats and other harrassment at Trump's urging. These are public servants who didn't do anything wrong and didn't deserve to be treated badly. This is a very direct and literal ATTACK on our democracy, not only by Trump but by Republicans engaging in politically motivated violence.
ReplyDeleteTrump has no shame about this, but Somerby acts as if it never happened.
Pew Research in 2014 had an educated take on this:
ReplyDeleteTheir summary: conservatives are tightly clustered around Fox and *distrusted*
"24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey." Liberals express "more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets" in the survey. "NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals. "
They do not claim that liberals are philosophers but the evidence shows that there's far more political insularity around conservatism than the typical liberal.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/