Debate channel with honesty (Iraq, interview, suspect, highway)
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Would you watch a cable channel (instead of Fox or MSNBC) that has a factual basis...No kidnapped pretty white women, no Al Sharpton whipping up race issues?
I would love if they offered a topic...say the Jena Six...and the best of each side addressed each issue to the intellectual end. No 6 split screens. No unmatched intellects. Just the best each side could offer. Facts. No hysteria.
A great way to show how fascinating and brilliant the left is would be to address the other point of view. They do not.
Bring on your BEST and debate a topic. Ed Schultz(sp?) ran away hard from a debate he instigated with Dennis Prager. Prager would STILL take him up on that.
Oh, and I'd love for the topic to be the evil neo-con right, too. I don't care what the topic is, I'm just sick of the hysteria and spin and would like a logical debate, where there may be some real influence on our country/voting/world view.
Perhaps if more people wrote in to the cable networks, and demanded more intelligent reporting, journalism, etc. and also wrote to advertisers, we'd see better programming.
But I suspect folks like fluff more than substance.
Personally, I'd like it if the news were less injected with opinion all the way around. Bias is natural, but I'd love to see objectivity become a goal again.
Funny... I was just thinking it would be fun to have a debate sub-forum in the Politics forum where two level-headed members could respectfully debate each other on issues.
Funny... I was just thinking it would be fun to have a debate sub-forum in the Politics forum where two level-headed members could respectfully debate each other on issues.
Funny... I was just thinking it would be fun to have a debate sub-forum in the Politics forum where two level-headed members could respectfully debate each other on issues.
Do you watch C-Span?
CSPAN is probably the best news and opinion location in all of television.
Although Frontline, McLaughlin Group, and Jim Lehrer are fairly even. Tim Russert is still pretty decent fella.
// You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How does it work?
The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.
"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.
So what should they be calling it?
It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same "it." There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.
So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.
It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country — the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.
//
Last edited by ParkTwain; 10-03-2007 at 01:21 PM..
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