Media Showing Itself As Financial Catastrophe Denialists

Very good point from an Instapundit reader. After quoting a story about the Make Believe Media ready, willing, and eager to undertake its customary duty of talking up the pain of budget cuts while failing to note the just-as-real pain of inevitable fiscal disaster, ...

Reader Dave Gamble notes an inconsistency in terms of how the politico/media establishment deals with the budget crisis — certain to come — versus global warming — a possibility: “Somehow protecting future generations from possibly having to endure the hardship of an extra tenth of a degree over the next century is a high moral calling, while fighting against the certainty of mortgaging their financial future with trillions in government debt is the work of the devil. Odd."

Yes, it is odd -- the science is settled but it appears the unavoidable and simple arithmetic is infinitely mutable and open to question.

Why are those who claim that math has suddenly stopped functioning in 2010 not deemed to be "anti-math"? (Or just anti-science, as math is the handmaiden of the sciences.) Why are those who deny fiscal reality not termed Financial Catastrophe Denialists, on par with Holocaust Denialists?

I mean, unlike the Holocaust, math is real.

No but seriously, isn't it pretty obvious which defects of thinking the media is God-sworn to combat? I just watched a Sunday talk show in which the host -- David Gregory, I think -- would not stop asking Boehner to swear to a fact about which he knows nothing (Obama's citizenship). Even after Boehner said "I believe he's a citizen." That wasn't enough for Gregory; he demanded that Boehner swear to facts he knows nothing about.

Over at Hot Air, Stephanopolous similarly demanded that Bachmann swear that Obama is a Christian and a citizen.

One may feel that these subjects are beyond dispute and therefore it's fair game to ask public officials to deny or affirm them. But when did the media ever ask Democrats to explicitly deny Trutherism? Or to demand they stop calling Bush a war criminal, as he's, you know, provably not, the way they continue demanding that Republicans swear Bam-Bam is not a socialist (which is actually is)?

(By the way, Bill Maher, a lefty in good standing, just proclaimed Obama was lying about being a Christian, calling him a secularist and agnostic who just pretends to be a Christian for political reasons. I agree. But I'd be badgered about this by Stephanopolous, whereas Bill Maher would just be asked to list the ways in which Tea Partiers are Nazis.)

So here we have a genuine, provable calamity on the horizon (and by "horizon," I mean 3-5 years), and the media fails to take to task those who deny we have a serious problem, permitting them to speak in gibberish and evasions rather than commit to staving off financial Armageddon.

NBC has a Green Week. Think they'll start a Solvency Week? To similarly raise awareness?

Don't count on it. While the media is eager to expose what it believes is erroneous thinking that hurts the liberal cause, they have no desire at all to cure erroneous thinking that helps the liberal cause.

Even if it destroys the country. And not in goddamned 2115 but in 2015.

posted by Ace at 01:16 PM

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