[lbo-talk] Re: we had opportunities...

[John Thornton]

At 06:57 PM 3/21/2004, you wrote:
>John Thornton wrote:
> >
> > [...WDK, you naughty, naughty fellow!]
>
>OK then, since you are so sensitive about my wording, I'll back off on the 
>NASCAR bit (dumb for me to say anyway as I'm a big car nut myself) and 
>I'll substitute "well-informed" for "intelligent," but I still stand by 
>"dumbass...who gets half his news from Rush Limbaugh and the other half 
>off Fox News."  If Rush and Fox are your sole sources for national and 
>international news and opinions, then I can not imagine how you could 
>possibly make sensible voting decisions.  Limbaugh and Murdoch are 
>consistently dishonest propagandists.  (And the sky is blue.)  Surely you 
>saw the recent public opinion survey which showed Fox viewers were quite a 
>lot more likely than non-Fox viewers to believe "false facts" such as that 
>the U.S. military actually found stocks of "WMDs" in Iraq after the 
>invasion, and that Saddam's government was responsible for nine-eleven.
>
>Meanwhile, you haven't at all addressed my main point, which is that 
>Saddam was not a "terrorist" in the sense that he ever sponsored terrorist 
>attacks against the U.S.A., yet there are a lot of seemingly very 
>intelligent and honest people who nevertheless persistently conflate 
>Saddam and Osama, and I still don't understand the motivation why or even 
>the mechanism how, knowing what they know, they can do that.
>
>Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net

I would hardly think that I'm being hypersensitive to the phrases you use. 
And my alleged sensitivities are in no way related to the validity of my 
response, namely that calling misinformed working class people "dumbass 
Nascar fans who watch Fox News" is the wrong approach to take. It is a very 
poor tactical choice to say the least. I have no idea how naughty you are 
and my response tells you nothing about how I may feel about that or that I 
even have an opinion of such. It was not a personal assault, it was a 
disagreement among reasonable people. At least I thought it was. The fact 
that Fox viewers are more frequently wrong in their assessments simply 
reinforces the point I made.
I occasionally point out some factual errors from Fox and other sources 
that are repeated by Mike (UPS driver) and we discuss them. I bought him a 
copy of the book "The Oh Really Factor" and gave it to him since he likes 
the show. He read it and came away very disappointed in Mr. O'Reilly. How 
far do you think our conversation would have gone if I referred to him as a 
dumbass Nascar fan? Do you think he would have read the book if he 
perceived the author had referred to him as a dumbass Nascar fan? If that 
was my opinion of him do you think he would be blind to the fact that I 
held him in such contempt?
There isn't a single reason some people tend to believe that Iraq is 
connected to 9/11 but I believe a major one is to avoid the cognitive 
dissonance that would be caused by trying to believe the US is a good 
country but ruthlessly attacks innocent people. Or that the Christian 
President of a good country would lie to the citizens of that country. 
Millions of people have no problem holding those ideas but millions do. 
Ridiculing them does nothing to further anyones understanding. Many people 
perceive the "left as being disconnected from peoples real lives and many 
leftists as arrogant know it alls. Phrases like that above reinforce that 
belief.
I wish I had an easy remedy for peoples misconceptions, my own included, 
but I don't. Name calling isn't it.

John Thornton