In fact, I'm so bored that I can barely rouse myself enough myself to comment on the ridiculously small blogospheric mote that is the Coulter Leg Bias flap (see, oh, here, and here, and maybe here, and, what the hell, here too.)
And I should probably just ignore it, like I ignored the Pope. However, I think I feel a good half - dozen neurons firing, so off I go.
Judging by various comments to various posts which may or may not have been linked to a few short lines ago, some folks actually seem to believe that there is some sort of real problem, here... something that must be corrected, in some way. In fact, there's a whole slew of people from all sections of the happy funtime political rainbow who are just downright indignant about Media Bias in general, if not Ms. Coulter's freakish legs in particular.
So. Here goes.
ONLY PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY STUPID WILL BE SWAYED SUCH THINGS.
If that's not clear enough, allow me to obfuscate. (On second thought, you allow nothing here; this is my circle of HTML hell, and you do not rule. So, I shall obfuscate. And you'll like it.)
Often, people of any political hue who bemoan "media bias," or "corporate media," or "liberal media" as a phenomenon they find ideologically distasteful or morally wrong are actually saying one or more of the following three things:
1. I fear that Americans are, by and large, stupid, especially those who don't think like me.2. "The Media" has a responsibility to be objective so that my positions - - which are of course correct in fact and in intent - - will be properly presented, and thus reveal their self - evident superiority to even the thick - witted who dwell among us.
3. The individuals who comprise "The Media" are, by and large, capable of such objectivity.
These three conveniently numbered and indented items comprise what is essentially the Bi - Partisan Media Affirmative Action Plan: the information deluge is too complex for people, so we must maintain a pious information priesthood to correctly distribute it so that those of lesser faculties will not be unduly moved by the other side's propaganda.
Bull dung, I say! Great, heaping, flyblown piles of it.
One of the key components of a classical education in 5th - century Athens was rhetoric. The study of the verbal bow, the accompanying shield and quiver of arrows, and the techniques of their proper use allowed an educated person to spot the aforementioned bovine fecal matter when it issued forth from the mouth of a politician, an orator, a philosopher, or the local loudmouth at the baths. Such study served as a defense against infection by bad ideas and allowed for escape from poorly - constructed logical traps. In short, it equipped the student with much of the intellectual arsenal that he required to think for himself.
Those who argue today for a reduction or elimination of media bias, to be somehow carried out by the media itself so as to maintain its illusory independence, are the equivalent of a 5th - century Athenian arguing that anyone who made a speech had a duty to present only the undisguised truth and make no attempt to sway his audience with any rhetorical tricks.
I've written before about Plato's depiction of Socrates' mistrust of the written word. Part of this mistrust, I believe, stems from his belief that the written word deprived the reader of the use of a very powerful arrow in the rhetorical quiver: dialogue. Interlocution was a vital part of Plato's entire philosophical process and, thus, absolutely vital for the pursuit and discernment of truth.
He lived in an age when the almost all libraries were small collections of manuscripts privately held by wealthy patricians. The single public library at Alexandria held 750,000 scrolls at its height, a significant portion of which must have been duplicates because there weren't that many written works in the known world. The primary mode of information exchange - - and thus, the primary method of intellectual influence - - was verbal.
But Plato didn't Google. He couldn't imagine that I, a person of no great means, would have access to a tool that could put the contents of several million Alexandrian libraries on my desk. He couldn't conceive of an informational landscape where ideas can sprout, blossom, and wither in a matter of days after discussion and debate by millions of people scattered across the entire globe.
Plato's Republic was famously hostile to poets and artists because the former produce only images, "phantoms" which they are unable to tell are "three removes from reality," [599a], and the latter produce only "phantasms" that are "far removed from the truth." [598b] Imagine his horror at a world where moving images are intended to influence the political process, entire arguments are expressed through the use of still photography, and the primary mode of rational discussion is the written word.
Plato's hypersonic grave - spinning aside, his basic premise still stands: it is the responsibility of the listener to determine the truth of a proposition, not the speaker. It is Socrates who must insist on dialogue; it is Socrates who must define the rules of dialectic; it is Socrates who, in the end, always admits that ultimate truth may be approached but never reached.
Similarly, today's media consumer is responsible for his own intellectual development and the fine - tuning of his own discernment. If someone is foolish enough to be affected by Time magazine's photographic choices, it does not then become that magazine's duty to change its ways in order to better accomodate the readily confused. Neither is it Dan Rather's duty to perfectly muffle his own ideological predilections so that the viewing public can trust him and the all - seeing eye logo. It is, instead, the viewing individual's duty to keep himself informed enough to be aware of the debunking of a particular media fraud, or, failing that, to educate himself in general using information beyond that provided by The Media.
Hidden within any harangue against the biased media is the implication that people are too dumb to figure it out, and, worse yet, that "figuring it out" is simply too much to expect from them.
This may be true of some Americans, but I don't think that it's productive to operate from the assumption that it's true of all or even a simple majority of us. It lowers the bar of public debate and treats The Media as the powerful master of the semiotic process while condemning the people as passive intellectual victims of that process.
Thus, as I write this, I am assuming three things:
1. Americans are, by and large, not stupid.2. "The Media" is not the sole distribution channel for information, has no responsibility to be perfectly objective, and is to be regarded with the same skepticism as any other rhetorical source.
3. The individuals who comprise "The Media" are not, by and large, Socratic philosophers.
This is not to say that mostly non - partisan fact - checkers such as the now - defunct Spinsanity or FactCheck don't provide a valuable service; they do. However, in the end they are just another informational source, and their authority counts for nothing when compared against an individual's working familiarity with the rules of good argument and keeping a loose grasp on what he is "certain" is the truth.
It seems to me that agitating for the elimination of Media Bias is a fool's game. Why not agitate for improved educational standards in the areas of critical thinking, logic, and rhetoric instead? That would go a lot farther towards blunting the Media's influence, as well as mitigating a host of other problems.
We should never cede responsibility for the discernment of truth to anything that can be spoken of as a collective... be it The Media, The Government, The Party, or The Church.
That is a task for the mind of the individual, and can never be the end - product of an organization.
