Mickey Kaus explains why he's afraid of debating Ezra Klein. I also earn Kaus' praise, which probably won't endear me to my netroots fan base. To regain anti-Kaus street cred, let me note that he reads a New York Times story that he thinks is unduly favorable to John McCain calls it liberal bias. There's no doubt that the press has, for years, suffered from a pro-McCain bias. It may even have been somewhat plausible in 2000 to chalk the McCain love up to liberalism (but then how to explain the press' hatred for Al Gore) but as time goes by don't you eventually need to just recognize that reporters like John McCain?
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The Fear
24 Mar 2007 09:31 pm
Comments (46)
You know, when someone concludes that the media is liberally biased because it covers John McCain favorably, it is fair to conclude that that someone is to McCain's right. Which, given Kaus's anti-union and pro-surge views, doesn't seem too far off. Can he stop claiming to be a neoliberal and just own up to his conservatism.
Yeppers. But after 7 years of this, isn't it time for editors to grasp this obvious truth, and to demand that their reporters correct for it, rather than simply drool all over McCain?
After all, if reporters are really a bunch of liberals who've managed to overcorrect for their sympathies in their reporting, there's no reason why they can't be a bunch of McCain groupies who manage to overcorrect for their sympathies in their reporting.
There are a lot of problems here. First, the "liking vs disliking" bias is far more insidious than any ideological bias. Ideological bias can be detected, discussed, and corrected in the wider public dialogue. But it's far more difficult to detect the bias of media "likability" in reporting on candidates. George Bush "charmed the pants off" the media in 2000 which discouraged reporting about his hyper-aggressiveness, rigidity, and ethic of ignorance. In the same way, the media was unduly pessimistic about Al Gore because they deemed him unlikable. I think this is one of the reasons why Hillary Clinton gets so little good press and so much negative press. Reporters find her unlikable but are never called on to explain why and consequently leave no opening for a counter-argument.
McCain is like an English Bulldog— so ugly, he's kind of cute. Then he bites you, unhinges his jaw and starts foaming rabidly, and you realize he's just fucking ugly— and possibly deadly.
not exactly relevant but mccain looks like death warmed over these days. i wish the same could be said for his reputation among the poodles in the press corpse.
They all loved him because of his Straight Talk Express filled with booze and snacks. And he entertained them. They all acted like kids a few weeks ago thinking they'd get to have another great adventure with Sen. McCain. 7 years and a soul sold later and it just isn't as fun. Why? You cannot repeat the same experience twice. People change and the world has changed.
I don't blame them. I hear it's a bitch to do primary coverage and any relief from the boredom, ect is well received.
Don't think there will be so much love this time.
Wow, on webcam Kaus is even more of an idiotic dick than he is in print.
Bonus: if I got it right, he indicated that Ezra Klein is less open-minded than Ann Coulter.
Wow
It goes without saying that I've given boys a lot more man than Kaus a size eleven crap hole just for giving me the dirty looks, but that Mickey is a real straight shooter.
My name is John fucking McCain and I want to be your goddamn president.
It looked like Robert Klein's uglier brother Hesh shooting the shit with Anderson Cooper's dweebier brother Linus.. And, from what I can tell- Hesh may even be right about his cousin Ezra. The blog does read like a bunch of dull liberal/progressive talking points.
Kaus does admit to being a "self hating" liberal, although Occam's Razor and his big smug ego would suggest he's a self loving conservative.
In recent years we have seen the press fall in love with; Bush, McCain, Rudy.
They have also shown open hostility towards; Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Hillary.
Do you see a pattern here?
Putting up a link to bloggingheads.tv without briefly summarizing the contents is kind of lame. That site is a technical nightmare.
BTW, why does Matthew Yglesias link to Kaus? I stopped reading Kaus years ago and just don't understand why anybody would be interested in his views. If I want wingnut views I go straight to Newsmax.
To be fair to Kaus (I know, I know), he's claiming the Times is biased because of what they're saying about immigration, not because they're sucking up to McCain. I wouldn't say Kaus is to McCain's right on just about anything else, but he is on immigration - hell, he's to Bush's right on immigration. Matt's conclusion about the press just liking McCain is right, but it doesn't really have anything to do with why Kaus is going after them.
Mickey is pointing out that the NYT covering McCain (Ted Kennedy's partner on immigration) is just Tweedledum covering Tweedledee. C'mon, Matt, you know that the American elite -- McCain, Bush, Kennedy, Rove, Hillary, the NYT, the WSJ, practically everybody -- is far away from the American public on immigration policy. And you know that most media coverage of the immigration issue is sentimental tripe with very little logical or factual rigor. Look how little energy you've devoted to the issue -- you know that if you tried to uphold the Establishment line on immigration, you'd be overcome with nausea and self-loathing at the cognitive contortions you'd have to force upon yourself.
Who would you rather have as a neighbor- Mickey Kaus or a hard-working, humble Peruvian motel maid?
I don't think elite opinion on immigration is all that far from the public's anymore, though it used to be. Polling the issue is dicey as slight variation in how questions are phrased can lead to very different results, but I've been very surprised to see how relatively pro-immigrant/immigration the country has become.
The problem, Atrios, is that the subject isn't "immigration", it's illegal immigration. The public simultaneously holds positive views of legal immigrants, and very negative views of illegal ones. Polls which deliberately blur the distinction can produce results all over the map, but the polls that are careful to make the difference clear have shown a large and remarkably stable opposition to illegal immigration for decades.
It's not hard to get to Bush's right on the subject, three quarters of the population are there. It's a remarkable failure of representative democracy that most of the political class are to Bush's "left" on it.
Personally, I attribute that to the fact that the political elite ARE an elite. Unskilled, illiterate workers are no threat to their standard of living, they may even improve it. But the sort of highly educated, literate people who immigrate legally represent direct competition to the elite. The situation is exactly the reverse for the bulk of the population.
And democracy tends to fail on subjects where the interests of the political elite systematically differ from that of the population at large.
Once again, by emphasizing the crucial "illegal" immigration distinction, Bellmore implies that if the United States legalized all immigration from Mexico, he wouldn't have any problem with Mexican immigrants, nor would the American masses with which he so closely identifies.
Hey, off topic excet related to Slate magazine, but did everyone see that Jonah Goldberg may have had a
um, I guess I am bad at html, and/or it doesn't work here. A sprezzatura issue. That's what Jonah may have had. There's an article about it at Slate. Here's the link, I think.
http://www.slate.com/id/2162099
Barbar, that would elevate our immigration policy from remarkably stupid, to merely "stupid". It would be an improvement of sorts if we didn't have a policy which prefered people willing to break our laws. But not much if they still didn't speak our language, or bring much in the way of skills.
There are millions of people world-wide, college educated, highly skilled, successful, and law abiding, who'd love to move here. We turn them away, in order to make room for the elite's nannies and gardeners. That is in the interests of the elite. It's not in the nation's interest.
There are millions of people world-wide, college educated, highly skilled, successful, and law abiding, who'd love to move here. We turn them away, in order to make room for the elite's nannies and gardeners. That is in the interests of the elite. It's not in the nation's interest.
So then the issue isn't illegal immigration at all. It's unskilled vs. skilled immigration.
i want to thank John for getting to the point with bellmore (and i'll also note, in passing, that bellmore and sailer appear to be somewhat confused as to what problems immigration policy can and cannot solve), but the real reason i'm posting is to note to matthew that if he wants to regain street cred, he must simply stop treating kaus as someone to be taken seriously to any degree. the man has become a sad joke.
Check out Wright's face when Kaus starts talking about how open-minded Ann Coulter is.
So then the issue isn't illegal immigration at all. It's unskilled vs. skilled immigration.
I think the problem is controlled vs. uncontrolled immigration. We can argue the merits of having more vs. less unskilled immigrants, skilled immigrants, medium skilled immigrants, etc., but we none of us (including the government) can do a darn thing to advance any type of sensible policy if we can't actually control who comes and who doesn't. I'm very sympathetic to so-called unskilled immigrants who come here and work their asses off at jobs that many Americans disdain. I'm also sympathetic to the argument that the high volume of such immigrants may impose a downward pressure on wages that is not in the interest of low income workers across the board. It's an interesting problem of individual vs. collective equity. But I don't see how anyone can think a policy of non-enforcement makes any sense whatsoever. Now once you grant that a prerequisite of an effective immigration policy is practical ability to control immigration, you have to consider the effects of a particular policy choice has on that ability. Kaus's argument is that, by granting periodic amnesty to illegal immigrants, the government increases the incentives for people to immigrate illegally and tends to undermine the practical control of the gov over the flow of immigrants and is harmful to low income workers. I think this is a non-ridiculous argument that deserves to be addressed on its merits. It's seems to me to be a claim that can be evaluated objectively by analyzing data, no?
Just because many pro-enforcement partisans are jingoistic, racist yahoos doesn't mean the only reasons to favor enforcement are jingoism and racism any more than the existence of legitimately anti-American radicals (and actual communists) opposing the war means that anyone who is against the war hates America. I'm not sure what is the best immigration policy, but I wish there was more reasoned analysis in the mainstream media on which to make a judgment.
Mickey Kaus believes negative stories about Democrats shows that the media has a liberal bias. I wish I was making that up.
The problem, Atrios, is that the subject isn't "immigration", it's illegal immigration.
That's disingenuous: the Dobbsian Know-Nothing posture repeatedly blurs the line between legal and illegal immigration, especially when the immigrants are brown and speak Spanish. See for instance the attempts of GOP representatives with anti-immigrant records, such as Steve King of Iowa, to introduce voter ID rules on the basis of a non-existent threat from immigrants (legal and illegal) voting. The objection to bilingual ballots and agitation for English as an official language is part of that posture.
The Dobbsian agenda shows neither an understanding of the immigration system as it stands, nor any desire to address its problems beyond building fences and moats filled with piranhas. Until the Dobbsites shake off that monomania, there's no reason to think that they're all about hatin' on the Mexicans.
Ugh: "no reason to think they're not all about hatin' on the Mexicans."
And I'll bet money that neither Kaus nor Dobbs have set foot inside a INS/USCIS office.
Kaus is one of those used up baby boomers who still want to think that they are "hip" and "groovy" for "the kids, man" when they fail to realize they were never hip and now constitute the main stream of "the man" demographic. Now he is just Abe Simpson shouting at the wind about "those #$%^ kids on the lawn!"
Kaus said,
When I see Matthew Yglesias' byline, I say, "This is an interesting guy. Who knows what he's going to say? He might question liberal orthdoxy. He might question 'progressive' orthodoxy, as he does in the current American Prospect." It's a byline that says, "I want to read this." When I see Ezra Klein's byline, I think, "This is going to be sort of rote talking points for the 'progressive' movement, and it's just not going to be that interesting. I'm sorry, that's just my reaction."
That's hilarious, coming from a guy who hasn't written an unpredictable post since 2001. What a total hypocrite.
He may be a hypocrite but he nails Klein, who's insufferably smug and predictable. Yglesias may be a windbag, but he's smart enough to get away with pontificating on stuff he has no clue about. Klein needs to spend a few years as a reporter.
It is bad enough to read (very occasionally, I assure you) Mickey being inane of some topic where his bias (of some kind, usually, anti-progressive) speaks louder than his logic, facts, or balance.
Watching him as he speaks and reacts is truly beyond the pale. You just want to hate him, period. He makes me feel dirty and unprincipled just by partaking his bobs and weaves.
"This is going to be sort of rote talking points for the 'progressive' movement, and it's just not going to be that interesting."
Funny, this is similar to how I react when I see a link to Mickey Kaus. Right away I think "this is going to be a sort of rote talking points for the GOP and it's just not going to be that interesting", so I don't bother reading him.
Kaus thinks of himself as a hip counterintuitive pundit. He doesn't seem to have any self awareness. He is just another GOP hack, no different than John Fund or Jonah Goldberg.
I only wish that was "wind" in Matthew's "bag," but let me assure you it is all succulent, rippling flesh...
If you watch Ezra debating Byron York, you get the distinct impression that he doesn't get the better of the argument with Byron (about secret ballots in union elections) Klein is reputed to have a 'razor sharp mind'. It isn't much in evidence when he's on Blogginheads.tv. That's not to say he's wrong about unions; he just doesn't make a really strong case for whatever he believes.
Well, everyone is belittling Ezra, but I enjoy his site quite a lot, specifically for the medical posts and inequality posts. He's got numbers and stuff like that. It seems to me that sometimes people confuse numbers and analysis for "talking points". Unfortunately talking points often use fake numbers, but using numbers doesn't mean you're hitting talking points.
Ezra is just what Bob Somerby says we need more of, and I agree with him - liberal pundits who can argue and who don't gratutitiously concede points because they think it will in gratiate them to their conservative hosts and editors.
More Ezra, less Colmes.
i hadn't expected this thread to turn to what kaus actually said about ezra, but since it did, allow me to join with chuck: ezra is an excellent young commenter who is well-informed and unafraid.
i could care less about blogginheads.tv, so i haven't watched him, but i wouldn't be surprised if a more experienced veteran like byron york could out-debate him; as matthew noted the other day, he eventually realized that there's no way that he (matthew) could out-debate hugh hewitt. these guys have been practicing little debate tricks for years back whlie ezra and matthew were still studying for their bar mitzvahs.
that kaus considers ann coulter an example of someone open-minded who might challenge orthodoxies just demonstrates what a nitwit he is, but we already knew that....
If you compare the guy to Colmes, sure, he's fine. Really, though, he's a particularly slick example of what we need less of: Glib talking-points pundits who have picked up an audience before they've figured out how the world works or what they want to say about it. Comparing him to Kaus and finding Kaus wanting is absurd.
guy, i'm fascinated beyond description: could you please enlighten us as to what kaus knows about how the world works? one longs to know.
(sure, we know what kaus wants to say about the world: damn doctrinnaire liberals messing everything up. exactly what's less glib about that than about being a liberal?)
It's not really some huge compliment to say someone's more worldly-wise or provocative than Klein.
guy, i get it: you don't like young ezra. fine, de gustibus and all.
but while one hates to be obtuse, i'm still waiting to find out what exactly it is about kaus that you think is either worldy wise or provocative....
I don't find him to be either. I do find him to be more so than Klein.
If you want a primer on how to kick Hugh Hewitt's ass in a debate- just read the transcript of his interview with General Odom. Just the right mix of disarming comments, restrained contempt, and timely ad hominem jabs to keep him off-balance and then an uppercut KO at the end. The key to making effective political points is not all that different than War: You must be more ruthless, cynical, and ingenious than your enemy.
Good point about studying General Odom's technique, although it helps to be a former head of NSA, and a real intellectual warrior. I once watched Odom and Mrs. Thatcher go jaw to jaw six inches from each other's face over German reunification for 15 minutes. That's a higher league than than Hugh Hewitt!
Comments closed April 07, 2007.
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