Flippin’ the Word

The media’s acting all meta, agog at new research showing that there is a news bias - a conservative bias.

A study by the The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University found that “the big three” - ABC, NBC, and CBS - exhibited more negative opinions of Barack Obama than John McCain. Since the general election campaign began June 8, (the day after Hillary Clinton conceded the primary) the networks expressed negativity about Obama in 72% of their opinioned coverage. Comparitively, network opinions about McCain were negative 57% of the time.

The media - which, make no mistake, are center-left - are breathlessly pointing to these numbers in an effort to excuse their blatant preoccupation with The Anointed One. Since the beginning of the general election campaign, the networks have devoted 166 minutes of airtime to Obama - more than twice as much as the 67 minutes of coverage McCain received.

So, opportunists that they are, the media are using the results from the George Mason study to explain away the charges of liberal bias - specifically, Obama bias. To that end, they are citing the study as evidence that not only are they not Obamamaniacs, they’re actually disproportionally harsh to the Democratic candidate. 

And in doing so, they’re inadvertently showing their hand.

The study’s import has been bloated, magnified by a media guilty of a bias and in search of a rationalization. The thing is, accusations of a liberal bias were never based on the qualitiative merits of news coverage. The liberal bias “myth” was born of what the media presents, not necessarily how it’s presented. Because the subject of coverage is key - not the angle from which that subject is shown. Such is the basis for the PR adage, “any press is good press.”

In this way, the media can’t expect to exonerate themselves merely by showing that - despite their excessive coverage - they’re sometimes critical of Obama.

And what did the researches consider to be negative, anyway? Apparently, they defined “negative coverage” pretty liberally…so to speak.

For example, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was considered to have negatively portrayed Obama when she said that he “has problems” with suburban women and white men. Facts are facts - even negative ones - and the media’s declaration of them cannot legitimately be viewed as negative coverage. In fact, though I haven’t seen that particular segment, there’s probably a better-than-even chance that Mitchell was actually making some bigger, positive point about Obama…arguing, perhaps, that Obama leads in polls, in spite of the fact that he “has problems” with certain key demographics.

See how suavely I turned Mitchell’s statement around? Well played, right? Well, that’s exactly what the media is doing with the George Mason research: Overstating its implications, understating its curious methodology, and molding it to suit their particular purpose.

Well played, indeed.

I’ve been writing a series about how bad the economy ain’t, and apparently somebody’s listening. First my theory was co-opted by the McCain camp, and now it’s being echoed by Ben Stein. Behold:

“People think times are really, really bad, but it is an amazing thing if you are out there among them: the hotels are full, the airlines are full, the high-end shops are full, the Wal-Mart is really, really, really full, the highways are full, the trains are full.”

 Amen and Hallelujah.

There’s a hum on the blogs, growing steadily into a buzz, about how a gallon of gas costs more than a gallon of milk.

Apparently I am to understand that gas costing more than milk is some incredible inequity. Ever the contrarian, I have to wonder: In what divined scripture can I find the guarantee that Americans shall not pay more for their gas than for their milk?

For one, I’m flummoxed as to why milk and gas are even being compared. Sure, they’re both available by the gallon, but outside of the metrics they’re just not comparable. That’s like complaining that a pound of gold costs more than a pound of silver: Of course it does!

When asked why gas should cost less than milk, people generally respond that we use more gas than milk so therefore it should cost less. That may sound like deductive reasoning, but it’s actually devoid of even a scintilla of logic. Since when is quantity of use an absolute determinate of price? The truth is that gas is more expensive than milk because it is simply more valuable than milk - which is why people pay for it, even as its price rises. It’s just that valuable.

Now that I’ve set out the above logic for those intent on comparing gas to milk, I’ll now state the fact that gas doesn’t actually cost more than milk. At least that’s what USDA says in their most recent consumer price index, plus I got milk while filling up today and I paid $4.39 for the milk and $3.98 for the gas.

Apples ‘n oranges, people. Apples ‘n oranges.

For politicos as for pop stars, “the N-word” is the stuff of dreams, the gravity of which they mold out of our collective yearning to be offended together with our related collective need to be politically correct.

In a discussion stemming from Jesse Jackson’s comments about Barack Obama’s “nuts,” The View hosts - led by the rabid race-baiter Whoopi Goldberg - ganged up on Elizabeth Hasselbeck over their disagreement about the use of “the N-word.”

You probably think you know where I’m going with this: Given Hasselbeck’s conservative views, you’re likely assuming that she defended the use of the word, or that she, being all beige like she is, made racially insensitive statements.

Wrong.

What provoked Whoop’s ire is that Hasselbeck deigned to suggest that nobody should use the word, undoubtedly referring to black hipsters who think they’re all avant-garde for peppering their songs, their movies, their dialogue with that word. That same word, mind you, which, when uttered by the melanin-impaired among us, supposedly celebrates the white patriarchy.

Whoopi, along with fellow black co-host Sherri Shepherd, got positively head-bobbing when Hasselbeck declared that even blacks shouldn’t use “the N-word.” Whoop’s argument is - get this! - that blacks can use it because “we took out it out of the hands of the people who were using it and put it into our hands…”

Ok, so whites used the word to denigrate blacks, then blacks, empowered by the civil rights movement, claimed it as their very own so that they could…denigrate themselves?

Since there’s pretty much nowhere to go from there, I’ll just let you chew on that for a bit.

All I know is that it must be nice to be play the linguistic referee to a language which you can hardly speak.

With all the mumbo-jumbo about the economy and the market and the bottom line, something’s been niggling at me - something which, now that I’ve put my finger on it, encapsulates and delineates and sums up our problem. People - media people, expert people, people people - inexplicably speak about impending financial doom in terms of “rising monthly expenses.” Monthly expenses. How microcosmic.

To think of economic security in terms of this month’s or that month’s limits is to - and I’ve always avidly avoided this phrase - miss the forest for the trees. Financial security - or insecurity - is not a matter of month-to-month evaluations. Rather, financial security - or, again, insecurity - revolves around longevity, cultivated by - but never culminating in - daily and weekly and monthly and yearly outcomes.

A monthly assessment of one’s finances is but a blip on the money radar, mattering much less than the months that preceded it and those that will follow. That Americans conceptualize finances in terms of tiny and arbitrary increments ironically highlights the now!now!now! mentality that causes them to fear the end of the month.

Apparently meriting front page attention, anecdotal evidence has revealed that construction worker catcalls have decreased. While my inner attention whore is lamenting this news, I’m more interested in a heretofore unexplored dimension of this topic - one which brings together two of the left’s most ardent issues in a liberal crash-and-burn bonanza not seen since Elian Gonzalez confused and divided progressives.

I just love it when a pair of liberal causes - in this case, feminism and tolerance - collide to reveal the blaring inconsistencies within the liberal paradigm. What’s clear from the anecdotes is that it is Hispanic construction workers who are the catcalling perpetrators. From the article:

“Hispanic workers, who have a tradition of making unsolicited “piropos” in praise of passing women, generally fear for their jobs if they try it in the U.S.”

Now, one would expect that feminists - ever the voice for the disenfranchised - would be tolerant of all Hispanic tradition, including those which prompt catcalls. But no, it appears that feminist tolerance does not extend to flirty construction workers. In fact, it’s the hard-core feminists who complain the loudest about catcalls.

About the worst thing a catcaller could do is seek the attention of Mai Shiozaki, press secretary for the National Organization for Women. “I’ve filed five complaints in the last two years,” she said. “As a feminist, I don’t sit back. After I complain, I usually call the site manager to see if they took any action.”

In other words, even the most fervent pity-partyers have their limits, a fact which may come handy the next time leftists start vomiting their “tolerance” drivel. Come on, if the feminists have found a behavior with which they cannot sympathize, that’s got to guarantee the rest of us some slack.

Newsweek recently ran a feature in which it pondered the connection between fashion trends and the nation’s fluctuating finances. Apparently, an examination of our clothes is the most accurate gauge of the heft of America’s wallet.
 
It seems that women turn toward the traditional during hard times, trading polished pinstripes for pretty dresses.
 
“…the dress has remained an almost primal marker of female identity in the postmodern world. Its multiple variations…accommodate many different identities while simultaneously bringing to mind more traditional times, when America was still sitting securely on top of the world. The contemporary woman seems to be reacting to modernity by returning to simplicity and femininity, as opposed to the in-your-face working woman in a power suit.”
 
This buttoning-down of America signifies more than just economic hardship; it indicates that American women, despite their brash feminist militancy, miss the past - at least insofar as those mighty and fulfilling careers have lost their luster, sparking nostalgia for the simple life of yesteryear.
 
The working woman pretends to love it that she’s overworked and overextended. She wears her stress like a badge of honor, fake-complaining about her mile long to-do lists and her total lack of time. It’s an entirely gratuitous gripe, though, because she also coos breathlessly about her career and how it fulfills her and gives her purpose and allows her to feel independent. 
But underneath the surface, this woman - most women - feel cheated. Women miss being women; they traded femininity for feminism, thinking the nouns were interchangeable and realizing too late that they sacrificed a feeling for a cause.
 
Their despair resides in the shadows during economic success. But when a downturn occurs, as it has now, it leaps to the foreground, prompting women to rethink their choices - and most of all to reconsider the feminist paradox created by the “choice to choose.”
 
It happens to be that fashion provides the most salient indication of this dissatisfaction. As for me, I’ll keep rockin’ my skirts and dresses, too proud of my femininity to be a feminist.