Krugman makes his case by describing examples of Republican presidential hopefuls who have been condemning the simultaneous expansion of the government workforce and the reduction of the number of private sector jobs. Krugman cites stats that prove those claims incorrect. Likewise there are claims of an explosion of federal regulators. Krugman points out that almost all of the increase is in the Department of Homeland Security whose job it is to protect us against terrorists, hardly something that right-wing politicians should be complaining about.
Of course that is but one example of a tsunami of misinformation that makes it very hard for the voter to differentiate between truth and spin. As Krugman puts it, ""there's a well-developed right-wing media infrastructure in place to rapidly disseminate bogus analysis to a wide audience where it becomes part of what "everyone knows'."
Yesterday, December 27, I received an email from left-wing blogger and TV talk show host Thom Hartmann. In it he describes a Pew Research Center Survey that studied media coverage during the recent midterm elections. The study showed that the 3 politicians who received the most coverage were all Republican. It also showed that Sarah Palin, who was not even a candidate, received three times more air time than the Vice President. Conservative commentators, like Glenn Beck, also received more media converge than their liberal counterparts.
This is not a recent trend. MediaMatters came to similar conclusions back in 2006. Yet it seems to be the conventional wisdom that the mainstream media has a liberal bias. Could it be that a media that is actually dominated by conservatives might have a vested interest in spreading such misinformation? You betcha! It's time to say Bah, Humbug! to biased media.
In the Glenn Beck biography, "Common Nonsense, the Triumph of Ignorance", Alexander Zaitchik reveals that as a youth Beck idolized the renowned circus entrepreneur, P.T. Barnum, who famously said "There's a sucker born every minute" describing his philosophy that there's no such thing as bad publicity and the more outrageous your claims the more people that will notice you and buy a ticket to your show.
Now in his middle-aged renaissance from just another disc jockey to one of the most watched and listened to pundits in American media it is clear that Beck not only adheres to the Barnum philosophy but has made a science of it.
While I believe that Beck is in this just for the money and has no interest in power, many of his peers in leadership roles in the Republican Party are in it for both money and power. Like Beck many of them seem to adhere to that old Barnum philosophy.
So, like it or not, the circus is in town and it's here to stay. But, buyer beware, their claims are not substantiated and in many cases they are outright lies.
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