Obliviously Ironic Quote of the Day

Regarding FoxNews' large number of viewers:

They’re giving their ideological audience what that ideological audience wants. They bought into a belief system that can’t be challenged by any evidence to the contrary. -- Bill Moyers

From the adulatory interview everyone's linking.

He does say something I think most of us would agree with:

But there’s no institution more immune to criticism than the media.

But of course by that he means that the New York Times has just been too gosh-darn easy on the Bush Administration.

He also veers off into Michael Moore territory:

There are always a lot of people who prefer the comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. In this case, a majority of voters knew exactly what you’re saying, yet voted for him none the less. They did so for one of two reasons. First, Bush had America scared to death. And fear was the dominant issue in that campaign, not moral values. Second, many of Bush’s supporters buy into the belief system that he and his allies have propounded. And in that belief system — which is supported by Fox News and talk radio — no evidence to the contrary can be permitted.

Ideologues embrace a worldview that cannot be changed because they admit no evidence to the contrary. The Washington Post had a story about a study recently about how even if what people first hear turns out to be wrong, they still tend to believe it’s true. That’s because, if it fits their value system, they don’t change it after they learn it’s not true. It’s a weird phenomenon. I’d also say conservatives have never been more politically dominant and more intellectually and morally bankrupt. Because of that they can keep their troops believing the Big Lie. The Big Lie is that the threat of Al Qaeda is greater to us than the threat of low wages, environmental pollution, the growing inequality in America, or the terrible failure of the Bush policies on schools. People just didn’t want the uncomfortable truth to disturb the comfortable lie.

Hey, nitwit, let me explain something to you. Low wages, etc., have been problems in this country since its founding, and furthermore, we have been addressing these problems (to the extent they are problems, rather than bugaboos imagined by leftists like you) by incrementalist reforms.

On the other hand, the threat of suddenly being killed by terrorists is a rather new phenomenon, and does not readily admit to an incrementalist approach.

Does this simpering red-diaper baby really imagine that he is non-ideological? If Bill Moyers isn't an ideologue on the left, who the hell would be?

You can read the rest of it, but it's more of the same.

posted by Ace at 11:23 PM

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