TheHeretic
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Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Aswad
quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
"Liberal," in his context, bears little relationship to the political divide as it exists in the US today.
Actually, the point is that several right wingers have accused the media outside Fox of carrying a distinctive liberal bias, and that this has been demonstrated not to be the case. What Chomsky points out is often a mix of what he's getting at and a criticism of the politicalization (that can't be the right word?) of language. It is common to coopt terms in a manner that will impart a connotation that allows the debate to be shifted away from the issues, and for facts to be buried. There's often a segment or two about this side of things in his presentations, but he usually covers the actual allegations as well, and I would say the "common" allegation of liberal bias in the media- as the allegation is meant by those making it- has been quite thoroughly debunked.
It would be a lot easier if the right wingers would simply say "we're the far right, and we're happy about that" instead of needing to recenter the spectrum on themselves, with the attendant relabelling of the center as 'far left'. Where I live, it's normative to be slightly left of center, and most of the parties (but not all, mind you) range from slightly left of center to far left. They still don't recenter their world on the left and then go relabelling the center as 'far right'. Not only is it quite inaccurate, but it is also somewhat dangerous in making the nuances less visible in the area between the 'far whatever' and the fringe or extremist elements, both on one's own side and the opposite side. That makes it harder to prevent the truly radical elements that represent only a tiny handful of the population from becoming a factor in politics that not even most of the people on their own side of the center would approve of.
The optimist in me would like to think that anyone is capable of seeing the dangers of creating, supporting a worldview that is polarized in a binary fashion and then shifting the dividing line progressively further toward one side. The whole 'us' vs 'them' thing can get really ugly that way, and a lot of people can get swept up in something nasty that we haven't seen in the west for some 60-70 years now. It's not how I would like to spend the next few decades.
Of course, to an intellectual, the inaccuracy itself is sufficient reason to oppose this semantic shift in the discourse.
Health,
al-Aswad.
Thanks, Aswad (and to Ron as well, for keeping the thread awake while Christmas, and a bit of after Christmas chaos, ran their course).
I make no claims to being an intellectual, but I'll agree wholeheartedly that someone with a further left leaning view could easily see something Orwellian in calling the US Democrat party "liberal." By local standards though, it is.
No matter how far to the extreme edges the thought might drift, the dividing line is right where it should be. There are those whose default solution to any problem is more government involvement, and those, such as myself, who believe that government is both the only way to get some things done, and at the same time, the least efficient way to do anything. More, or less? Conservative, or liberal?
We have a two-party system. I think it sucks, and that we would be better served with a proportional representation system in Congress, but it is what it is. We have a media that leans distinctly towards one side, and that gets labeled accordingly.
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If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.
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RE: The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model... - 
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