Bipolar Press
Here’s Josh Marshall on the state of Republican debate on rescue/stimulus legislation:
The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It’s true that macro-economics doesn’t make controlled experiments possible. And economists can’t speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living.
Obviously, the problem Josh is getting to is that the corporate press, from the NY Times and Washington Post to Chris Matthews and Brian Williams, treats both Democratic rationality and Republican insanity with exactly equal credulity (actually, one could make the case that they give greater credulity to the insanity by volume). The (possibly intended) upshot is that the ignorant public doesn’t know whom or, therefore, what they should believe.
Clearly, the press has to cover the two political parties we have, rather than the ones we might want. But it’s their job to report both the truth and the lies, the pragmatism and the insanity, that each of them convey. The current bi-polar disease is killing us.
