Friday, July 29, 2011
Centrist fantasies
And the harm they do our country are the subject of Dr. Krugman's column today. He expands his blog post on the subject to provide more detail on the harm that the media's false equivalency does to the politics and governance of this country of ours.
Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?Krugman goes on to call a spade a shovel because he does not note that Fux Nooz and and their stable of talking heads are paid to generate just that sort of confusion in the public. Still he is making a point that is starting to break into the consciousness of many as the current congressional fap fest continues.
The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.
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