Losing K-Lo

When you've even lost K-Lo with your hackery, you're, well, a gigantic hack.

The right's hack propagandists bear an enormous amount of the blame for the sorry situation the country finds itself in. People often wonder to me what the deal is with the tens of millions of remaining Bush loyalists -- are they just morons, or what? But they're not morons. They're ordinary people and like ordinary people they have a lot of demands on their time and, consequently, don't make an intensive study of all the leading issues of the day. And, naturally, they do a lot of deferring to the expressed views of people they trust. Not being liberals, "people they trust" doesn't mean liberal pundits -- it means conservative ones. Millions of people out there are counting on conservative television and radio personalities to let them know if something goes dramatically wrong with the governance of the country. Instead, for years you saw what amounted to overwhelming lockstep support. It's worth keeping in mind that whatever you may think of the NRO gang, they're about three hundred times as intellectually honest as the average conservative broadcast media outlet.

Comments

I'm not sure that you can properly label someone intellectually dishonest if he actually believes what he's saying.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 4, 2006 11:01 AM

"They're ordinary people and like ordinary people they have a lot of demands on their time and, consequently, don't make an intensive study of all the leading issues of the day."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yeah, these are the same people that can't exercise, can't find the time to shop for healthy food, haven't read a book in ages, for three months running now can't get that goddamn broken lawnmower off the front yard and haven't attended a single parent-teacher conference in the entire history of all three of their kid's educations. Color me unpersuaded. You find the time or make the time to investigate subjects that are important or interest you. If your nation conducting genocide in your name isn't important or doesn't interest you you're lazy and apathetic. America is like the punk in the crosswalk with an I-Pod screaming in his ears. He's so wrapped up in his entertainment he doesn't even realize he's stepped into the street on a green light and there's a garbage truck a few seconds away from making him one with the pavement.

Posted by steve duncan | October 4, 2006 11:04 AM

Absolutely you can. Someone who doesn't believe what he's saying is just plain dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty includes not looking for evidence that doesn't support your views (at least, when it's your job to do so), not presenting mitigating factors or appropriate context, leaving misleading impressions, and bamboozling yourself when you damn well know better.

(If you saw that Scarborough/Stossel/Waldmann exchange, the right-wing honesty think 'intellectual honesty' means attacking your own side occasionally. But that's because they're hacks.)

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 4, 2006 11:08 AM

Weiner:

I'm honestly curious about this, and want the benefit of your training: if someone looks at well-established facts (say, about evolution) and submits them to his best intellectual efforts, and yet comes away with something like ID, is he being intellectually dishonest? That is, does "intellectually dishonest" mean anything other than intellectual bad faith? I can't see how that can be true.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 4, 2006 11:20 AM

Intellectual dishonesty includes not looking for evidence that doesn't support your views (at least, when it's your job to do so), not presenting mitigating factors or appropriate context, leaving misleading impressions, and bamboozling yourself when you damn well know better.

Such as what Matthew did in this post?

Posted by Al | October 4, 2006 11:25 AM

Just read any Rehnquist opinion if you don't know the meaning of the term. Then check the dissent for a handy list of all the inconvenient facts and arguments he simply ignored.

Posted by Steve | October 4, 2006 11:30 AM

More like 3 times than 300 times.

Posted by Katherine | October 4, 2006 11:36 AM

Al, after clicking through to the Hugh Hewitt ("Gerry Studds!") I realized I had forgotten "constantly bringing up irrelevant stuff to distract from a point they're losing," or what David Velleman calls "whataboutery."

SCMT, no, ID doesn't necessarily make you intellectually dishonest; but if you're believing ID because you really want to, and applying much higher standards to arguments for evolution than you would to anything else, then that can get to the territory of intellectual dishonesty, even if you sincerely believe the conclusion. (I make no claims to professional expertise here.) Self-deception can be a form of intellectual dishonesty.

I also think perfect intellectual honesty is damned hard to attain; there are results showing that presented with evidence that speaks to both sides of an issue, people will feel more confident of their initial view no matter what it was. I feel fairly complacent that I'm better off than K-Lo and Hewitt in this respect, though. Also, I think Yggi is right about the responsibility of the right-wing hacks.

Posted by Matt Weiner | October 4, 2006 11:41 AM

Oh, fuck off Al.

As for Hewitt, he's such an awful arse-licker that bidets are now modelled on his face.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 4, 2006 11:41 AM

No picture of K-Lo?

Posted by otto | October 4, 2006 11:46 AM

300 x 0 = 0 = 3 x 0.

But I think Matt makes an important point that doesn't get emphasized much in the blogosphere. There are thousands of truthinesses hanging out there that may get demolished by Media Matters or Digby, or whoever, but they never get corrected or challenged in the media that a large swath of voters get their news and views from. And it's not just the right - plenty of unplugged Democrats think Friedman is A-OK because his silly predictions never get challenged much in the so-called MSM (and he's in the Times and thus "fit to print".)

Posted by John I | October 4, 2006 11:47 AM

Moral and intellectual dishonesty in action: Sometimes nothing tells a story as well as a single, powerful photograph. I don't know why the national media didn't pick this up, but they should have. In case you missed it:

BW photograph of a truly shameless moment. There's a deep sadness here -- layers upon layers upon layers of meaning in this iconic Buffalo News photo that perfectly sums up and symbolizes the whole damn Foleygate scandal, which has rapidly moved beyond the "merely" sleazy, salacious and corrupt. Now it's an utterly surreal, blame-shifting mass abdication of all personal responsibility.

Take another look at the children. Then look at the man (Rep. Reynolds) at the microphone. See the face of a party leadership that uses children to score "family values" points but doesn't give a damn. At all.

Posted by Madison Guy | October 4, 2006 11:48 AM

Self-deception can be a form of intellectual dishonesty.

Boy, that seems like too much freight for a word like "dishonest" to bear. I would think that, except in rare cases, "dishonest" would refer only to conscious action.

I make no claims to professional expertise here.

Isn't this sort of your wheelhouse? Or are you saying that professional expertise implies a much greater familiarity with the sub-field than you have?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 4, 2006 11:51 AM

"not looking for evidence that doesn't...etc"

Degrees. Hey, everybody is peer-reviewed. How you write or speak I suspect is determined by your intended or perceived audience. Hugh is giving his audience what they want; K-Lo knows Ramesh and MY read her.

3 pieces of evidence and 2 arguments and a cite equals truth? I have never been impressed by claims to intellectual honesty. We do the best we can; or we do what we can get away with. A dissertation or academic journnal article simply faces a mean crowd.

Posted by bob mcmanus | October 4, 2006 11:52 AM

"intensive study"? it takes "intensive study" to figure out what a disaster has been going on for the last 5+ years? really? not to go through a laundry list, but how much study does it take to figure out that bush declared victory in iraq 5/1/03, yet we are still there and americans are still dying?

it seems to me instead that there is a fair segment of the population that is just impervious to facts, and not just people who get all their news from talk radio. do you really think 35% or more of adults in this country (the number who still approve of bush) listen to the echo chamber and believe what it says? maybe I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt the echo chamber has that big an audience. a pew poll in 2004 found about 17% of adults listen to talk radio, and of that 45% are self-described as conservatives, so call it 8%, a long ways from 35%, and that assumes all of them believe what they hear.

I remember back in the 70's how I knew nixon was dead: my grandmother finally realized he was a crook. this was a huge change in her worldview, which venerated the office of the president and was blind to the man. my guess is their are still a lot of people like my grandmother, basically decent people who just don't see the elephant in the room.

Posted by supersaurus | October 4, 2006 11:57 AM

"You find the time or make the time to investigate subjects that are important or interest you. "

It may come as a shock to you, but about half of the people of our country are of below average intelligence. While unfortunate, it is not a moral failing on their part. While access to information has ballooned recently, with 24 hour cable news and the internet, the effort, money and technology of disinformation has expanded even more. People tend to seek out the "news" that makes them comfortable. I would blame them, but there is a huge industry of highly paid specialists whose only job is to provide "news" that makes people comfortable with useful delusions. Many people are simply outgunned. Only when things become so egregious that the "news" hustlers lose their capacity to deceive does the ordinary person have a chance. Thankfully (or regretably), it seems like things are becoming that egregious now.

Posted by Njorl | October 4, 2006 12:10 PM

NRO is 300 times more intellectually honest then O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Malkin, Ingrahmn and Hannity? That really doesn't say much about NRO.

Posted by Paul Pidgeon | October 4, 2006 12:18 PM

Such as what Matthew did in this post?

Al's middle name is tu quoque.

Posted by cleek | October 4, 2006 12:18 PM

People often wonder to me what the deal is with the tens of millions of remaining Bush loyalists -- are they just morons, or what? But they're not morons.

It is true that they're not all morons. But a healthy percentage of them are. And that proportion rises with the loudest ones.

Posted by JJF | October 4, 2006 1:01 PM

Such as what Matthew did in this post?

Seeing as how he did nothing of the sort, no.

I would tell you to stop lying, but that would be like telling you to stop breathing. It's in your nature.

Posted by JP | October 4, 2006 1:05 PM

Did they (the repugs) really lose K-Lo? Sorry, not enough evidence as that fact, and as far as looking for facts rather then fiction, NRO is just as bad as Fox News. Slanted as the name implies, there is no objectivity at NRO and there never was nor never will be.

It like the old "support the troops" slogan but tell me how did Halliburton really support the troops more then the company actually screwed over the US taxpayers as well as military members? Unbid contracts must only be something that Repubicans theorize that there isn't anything wrong with it. How does torturing prisoners with a different set of laws that should change from the one that Timothy McVeigh was judge and then summarily executed with, evidence rather the question evidence obtained via torture. A lack of evidence causes Republicans nothing but fear so they just make it up as they go along.

Republicans did not lose K-Lo any more they have lost Murdock.

Republicans don't believe in the UN, global warming, diplomacy, the rule of law, the Geneva Conventions, and goverment oversight, NOPE, they ONLY believe that Bush is King, and questioning King Bush and the situation of the war Iraq is treason. If Bush says things are getting better, well then the king has spoken, enough said, and you bet that K-Lo, just like Glen Reynolds, doesn't want their illusions being mucked-up with the truth in Iraq, and truth of anything else either.

Posted by Cheryl | October 4, 2006 1:18 PM

"they're not morons .... [they] are counting on conservative television and radio personalities to let them know if something goes dramatically wrong with the governance of the country."

That sounds pretty moronic to me.

Posted by Jason | October 4, 2006 1:22 PM

A particular type of intellectual dishonesty I used to suffer from was believing that the people on my side of the spectrum, be they pundits or politicians, were any better than the guys on the other side. There's evidence of that in the comments here. Bush is dangerous, and the pundits that support him are no better, but don't let that push you into the welcoming arms of some crackpot from moveon.org lest we want to swing the pendulum the other way.

Posted by Mike | October 4, 2006 1:46 PM

"Bush is dangerous, and the pundits that support him are no better, but don't let that push you into the welcoming arms of some crackpot from moveon.org lest we want to swing the pendulum the other way"

I was not aware that anyone at moveon.org supported going to war based on lies, torturing prisoners, abolition of habeus corpus, destruction of social security, or enabling child molestors. Nevertheless, you seem to think that moveon.org is the equivalent of Bush and his suporters--why?

Posted by rea | October 4, 2006 1:58 PM

Lee Harvey (Hugh) Hewitt rants about the so-called MSM constantly.

We need to define the consortium of conservative media that Hewitt, Limbaugh, FOX News, NRO, Instapundit, et al. represent.

How about the Crackpot Coalition (CPC)?

The so-called MSM, for all its faults, still tries to present balanced views and uses fact checkers to validate stories.

The CPC, bereft of journalists, correspondents, and fact checkers, merely presents (bad) op-ed from completely insane (or totally disingenuous) commentators and writers.

It would be funny except for the fact so many Americans rely on the CPC to get their information.

Posted by mat_scheck | October 4, 2006 4:14 PM

it's hard to believe any intelligent person can actually believe that those who disagree with them on political issues must be ignorant, willfully blind, idiots, or all three. policy decisions are tough, because you never get to run the counterfactual (what actually happens if we don't invade iraq), so you can't ever prove anything. there are quite literally millions of people with equivalent educations, equivalent intelligence, equivalent experiences, who nonetheless draw different conclusions than matt and the commenters here. it's ridiculous to assume that there's not one -- let alone millions -- of bush supporters who have thought things through, paid attention, done their homework, but still think his proposed course is better than any alternative on the table. it's also tremendously unproductive (though i understand histrionics can be fun). unless you can understand those with whom you disagree, you've never going to make any headway with them through civil political discourse (though there's always brute force, revolution, etc.). put another way, you can simply assume something near half of the population is irrational, but that's rarely going to be a safe assumption. enjoy life in the echochamber.

Posted by dj superflat | October 4, 2006 4:55 PM

rea - not sure where you got the idea that I was calling moveon.org supporters of Bush's policies. What I was saying was that Hewitt misrepresented the facts. He left some out, he added other irrelevant points, and the stuff he did present, he twisted and framed so it would appear to support his position. That is wrong. Regardless of the political affiliation of the person involved. And people of all political affiliations do it.

For example, it would be wrong to say that Bush supports destroying social security. Certainly you can disagree with his plan, but a reasonable person could easily conclude that social security will destroy itself if we do nothing. Similarly, Bush, for all his faults, has absolutely no relevance to the Foley scandal, yet you tag him as "enabling child molesters." To dj superflat's point, we'll never engage in a meaningful conversation on the issues when people like you and Hewitt are representing your places on the spectrum with hyperbole and mis-truths.

Posted by mike | October 4, 2006 5:50 PM

They may not be morons, but they are ignorant. Before the last election 70+ percent of likely Bush voters thought WMD had been found in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein bore direct responsibility for 9/11. The ignorant are really the core constituency for this administration, and it does everything it can to preserve and extend that ignorance.

Posted by peterg | October 4, 2006 6:49 PM

Re: Slanted as the name implies, there is no objectivity at NRO and there never was nor never will be.

But unlike Fox News, NRO (and its parent magazine) have never pretended to be objective. They are an explicitly conservative, GOP-slanted venture and they advertise that fact proudly and, well, honestly. However much I disagree with their positions I don't have a problem with them in the realm of honesty any more than I do The Nation and its explicit leftwing slant since they admit it up front.

Posted by JonF | October 4, 2006 7:53 PM

I suppose the average person believes he is powerless to effect political change. Why would one then expect them to put in a lot of time studying information that is useless to make decisions that they believe have some effect on their lives?

And mike doesn't read rea to say what I think rea says.

Posted by Robert | October 4, 2006 8:47 PM

"In fact, they are not that dumb, although it doesn’t mean they are smart (who among us is?). But think of it this way: an awful lot of that 37 percent are people who are fighting just to get by. They’ve got crap jobs that don’t pay very well. They’re juggling creepy bosses, crabby spouses, dodgy day care. From the time the alarm goes off in the morning, they are in a rush: pop tarts and coffee, into the van, off to school, on to the job (still there?) back from the job, back from school, soccer practice, in and out at the fast food, bed time, and do it all over again.

"They’re stressed out. They aren’t really at risk of a terrorist attack (in truth, it’s about the last thing they need to worry about). But they are insecure: the job may vanish in a heartbeat, heaven knows what the kids are up to, what’s that lump in the belly, can’t even guess what kind of problem will come up next.

"In a world like this, they’re desperate for some security somewhere. The last thing they want to think is that their President might be a doofus. They do not like to be told that he’s got his shoelaces tied together, and that he really thinks torture is kinda cool. In truth, they kinda know: they haven’t seen body bags on TV, but they see more and more prosthetics in the mall. They kinda know the ranch is a pig farm, but precisely because they do know and do not want to know—precisely for this reason, when someone tells them he is a doofus, they get really shrill."

See:

http://underbelly-buce.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-can-they-be-so-stupid.html

Posted by Buce | October 5, 2006 12:34 AM

mike, you're right: you plainly have insight into my place on the spectrum that i strangely lack. it's obvious that the side you oppose is all wrong on everything, and your side's on the side of angels, etc. i'm glad we've finally reached a point where we have one political party that's beyond criticism because of its perfection, and another that's so incompetent/evil that it's plainly wrong on everything, making all of its supporters evil, dupes, or both. and i applaud placing party loyalty above reason -- it worked out so well for the far left in the 20th century (at least for the millions who weren't slaughtered by those so certain of the rightness of their cause, the evil of nonbelievers), so no reason to think it won't work out great in this one. don't stop believing (WWJD).

Posted by dj superflat | October 5, 2006 2:02 PM

Can just point out, a wee bit late, that as much as I would like to welcome the argument that there are "just as many" intelligent, educated people in the opposing camp, the fact is that Bush won heavily in districts where the average education level was a high school degree OR LOWER and lost overwhelmingly in those districts where the average education level attained was post high-school.

Posted by Daphne | February 20, 2007 4:51 AM