by Eyck Freymann
This is just fascinating to me. Fox, after being tough on Obama throughout the election season, is now unconditionally defending him. Maybe this is because they've found someone easier to hate: Nader. In this respect, Fox and I have something in common.
CONTINUED: Click "Read More"
I respect Ralph Nader. He has done so much for this country, from improving worker standards to protecting consumers to labeling food products to securing seat belts in cars. Up until 2000 he was an American hero. Then things started getting worse; after promising to not challenge Gore in key states, Nader reversed his word and put his name on the Florida ballot. Gore came three hundred votes short of the White House, and Nader's egomania robbed the Democrat of hundreds of times that amount.
This, perhaps, would have been forgiven if Nader had then, in shame, retreated from the public eye. But in 2004 he was back, this time with a new set of grievances against the establishment and a new psychological denial complex.
Eight years since grabbing the wheel and spinning America off course, Nader is once again lambasting President-elect Obama for "leaving out" millions of poor Americans. I don't think it is possible to be clearer: Obama will invest hundreds of billions in high-paying jobs in the renewable energy sector and will give tax cuts to the poor and finance them with tax hikes for the rich. Nader's denial is self-perpetuating: the more he loses the more the all-powerful "they" are stacking the deck against him.
That said, he does get treated as a punching bag. As me mentions late in the interview, TV stations that want to distract or psych out their interviews will put them in an adjacent room looking at a camera. They shine bright lights in their faces and provide no screen or frame of reference. Clearly, this is what they are doing with Nader, and this is unacceptable. Whenever networks do this (and Fox is by no means the only one guilty of doing so) the public should understand that this is a violation of the nonpartisan nature of journalism, that this treatment of disliked interviewees sullies the record of the network.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Nader on Fox
Labels: fox, Journalism, nader, Young Sentinel
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
It's not just about Nader—it's also about voting reform.
Also, the "Independent Party" does not exist. Where people come up with these things I do not know. He was running as an independent and was nominated in absentia by the Peace and Freedom Party, but there is no "Independent Party".
What do you mean by "voting reform"? More political parties? More openness towards independents?
I mean reform of our voting system, not our campaigning system. While I would like to see more political parties and more openness towards independents, the real problem is that our voting system does not allow for them. As long as two parties dominate the plurality voting system that we've got, it's going to be very difficult for an independent or third party to break into national politics, not least into the presidency.
There are numerous alternative methods that we could go for that would eliminate the possibility of the third-party "spoiler" by taking into account that those who vote for third parties might also be inclined to vote for one of the two major parties not as necessarily their first choice but as a better choice than the alternative.
Compare from Wiki: "To a much greater extent than many other electoral methods, plurality electoral systems encourage tactical voting techniques, like "compromising". Voters are pressured to vote for one of the two candidates they predict are most likely to win, even if their true preference is neither, because a vote for any other candidate will be likely to be wasted and have no impact on the final result. This is known as Duverger's Law."
Personally, I would prefer approval voting: "...FPTP would work better if electors could cast votes for as many candidates as they wish. This would allow voters to "vote against" a certain despised candidate if they choose, without being forced to guess who they should vote for to defeat that candidate, thus eliminating the need for tactical voting. Such a system would also serve to reduce the spoiler effect. This system is called approval voting."
Well, actually, I'd really like some kind of party list system, because they're cool (D'Hondt method FTW!), but in the meantime approval voting would be a very good fix for our current issues with third parties, IMHO.
Post a Comment