Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« Video of Specter Gunship Apache Helicopter Taking Out Terrorists | Main | PETA's Solution To Mideast Violence? Shut Down Circuses »
January 04, 2006

Brilliant Rejoinder To The NYT @ NRO

Andrew McCarthy dismantles the Times' newest attempt to get the public fussed about the NSA intercept case.

Short version: He rides them harder than he rode Molly Ringwald at the end of the unrated director's cut of Pretty In Pink.

Longer version: They attempt to stir flagging public interest by revealing that the NSA has been harvesting all sorts of information without warrants... like what calls were placed, from what number, to what number, and for how long.

The trouble is: this information has never been constitutionally protected -- a 1979 decision held that a person could not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such information, and thus the Fouth Amendment, and its warrant provisions, simply don't apply. The content of a call is protected by the 4th A (usually), but not the simple fact that a call was made at all.

The Times never gets around to mentioning that.

Those who rely on the putative "Paper of Record" will not know that. That important fact -- dispositive upon the whole question of the data-harvesting's legality -- has been withheld from them entirely. And they won't ever hear of it, unless they read the alternative/conservative media.

Which most people simply do not.

We're living in two entirely different universes of information now. This partly explains David Letterman's cluelessness about Cindy Sheehan calling Iraqi terrorists -- the same men who killed her son -- "freedom fighters," and guessing that that was "crap." The MSM simply doesn't report such things-- if they mention them at all, they do so obliquely and vaguely, like conceding that Sheehan has "made controversial statements which have angered the right wing." (That's an invented quote, by the way, as an example of the sort of thing they write.) They don't often report precisely what she's said, so that the average news-consumer can decide for himself whether the statement in question is odious. More likely than not, he'll simply assume she expressed some mild criticism of Bush's Iraq policy which the "extreme right wing" has gotten itself in a lather over.

I find it more and more difficult to talk to my non-conservative friends about politics. Not because of anger -- we don't fight over such matters -- but simply because I find myself telling them facts that they've never read before, never seen on Brian Williams before, and simply do not believe to be true. The assumption is that they are simply made up out of whole cloth by disreputable right-wing fabulist propagandists spreading complete fictions to the gullible right wingers.

Any intelligent discussion must at some point move beyond the facts. The facts must be more or less conceded by both parties so that the more interesting part of the discussion -- what those facts may mean, what relevance and disposition to attach to any fact, what values are in play and how each should be weighed -- may procede.

For years the MSM provided a common universe of facts for the country to discuss and debate. True, those facts were highly selective and often strongly biased towards the liberal side of the debate, but most people accepted them as the nucleus of any political discussion.

That's changed. With a proliferating alternative media and a MSM becoming more desperate and dishonest in presenting its one side of the issue, we now are separated not merely by beliefs, assumptions, values, and priorities, but by a very wide gulf over what the factual matrix of the political universe even looks like at all.

This is not helping debate, but simply making it more contentious, as the words "liar" ("I don't believe you") or "idiot" ("How could you not know that?") are tossed out with greater frequency, and people retreat more and more into the particular fact-universe they're more comfortable in, rarely sampling what other less-reported facts might be out there to consider.

It's worse on the liberal side. Conservative news-junkies have to know the basics of the MSM fact-pattern, because we spend all of our time critiquing it, contextualizing it, and sometimes disproving it entirely. We're not as up on some stuff as early as we should be (for example, I'm still catching up on this whole Abramoff business; I have little doubt a liberal news-junkie could school me in it at this point), but by the time issues become ripe, we have a good working knowlege of both the "official" MSM-championed line and the unofficial, Shadow Media critique of that line. Liberals -- actually, all non-conservatives who rely almost exclusively on the MSM for what news they get -- know only the former.

Going back to the old way of doing business -- with the MSM simply selecting which facts are to be known, and which are to be kept secret, for fear of "confusing" the masses -- is intolerable, and will not happen in any event. But we find ourselves now more separated than ever, like Britain and America, two countries divided by a common language.

I guess the only resolution to this problem is for the MSM to begin -- finally! -- doing its actual job and reporting all relevant facts, no matter which way they might cut, in a neutral and dispassionate manner.

Which is to say: there's no near-term resolution at all.

And, as I always suspected, it's largely Andrew McCarthy's fault.


digg this
posted by Ace at 12:22 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere [/i] [/b]: "Morning, insomaniacals! I actually slept about en ..."

Braenyard: "Stefanie Lambert, an election integrity attorney w ..."

Epobirs: "The offending file(s) will usually make itself obv ..."

Epobirs: "Max Gail (Wojo) is apparently still around. He has ..."

Braenyard: "I don't mind renaming a file but going through 50 ..."

Epobirs: "New Tricks was more a more conventional police pro ..."

Epobirs: "I've usually gotten around the problem by copying ..."

Jim[/i][/b][/s][/u]: "New Tricks was the Brit version of Barney Miller, ..."

irongrampa: "Sitting here listening to music, mostly oldies tha ..."

publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb): ">> says you have 3 files with names too long for ..."

Epobirs: "New Tricks was on a lot longer than that. 2003-201 ..."

Braenyard: "Those 4bbl Holley's are light on the gas if you're ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64