Bias and the Media.

Don't worry, we'll get to that in a second.

On Thursday I sat around a table with several men I met through my involvement with the climbing program at Cody. Granted, two of them I've known for much, much longer, but that's irrelevant. The troop's current scoutmaster, his good friend the rangemaster, Mike's dad, the rifle merit badge counsellor, and of course Mike, the lead instructor of the climbing program.

We were drinking beer and grilling kabobs and catching up when suddenly someone started talking about Ms. Palin, well, more that there was a picture circulating the internet of her at a pool party in a stars-and-stripes bikini sporting a rifle and posing for the camera. Charming, and quite a talking point for middle aged men, but it soon digressed into politics. Mike and I were the only ones under 50, and I was surprised to learn, the only ones who voted for Kerry in 2004. The three older men had all been republicans, that is till this election. 

All were fiscally conservative, one (a seasoned hunter) had let gun rights guide his politics, another had been raised on GOP doctrine and didn't think much of it before moving out to California. Some voted for McCain in 2000, the other reluctantly volunteered previous support for Bush. 

What astounded me was we were all on the same page for this election. Our discussions went round in circles but no debate popped up to spoil our dinner. There's something to be said for surrounding yourself with like minded people, it keeps you from having to think too much for yourself, no one had to defend what they said as we all agreed.

That's why I'm thankful for this Trevor kid. I have to think for myself and support any claims I make to him, as he takes everything that comes from my mouth as liberal drivel and inherently untrue. My goal is to convince him, if not of my views, that his particular mindset is poisonous and unhelpful. The only way to do this is that as long as he keeps rehashing his political talking points straight from Fox News, to keep thumping him until he learns to ask his own questions.

Now we've been going back and forth on the issue of experience in the 2008 election. His argument that he would take Palin over Obama, saying the senator's experience is much closer to Palin's than it is to McCain's. I refuted his arguments, and made my own; that this experience issue was created by Obama's opponents when they couldn't attack him by discussing the issues.

Besides playing along and recounting all of the candidates experience as elected officials, foreign policy experience and everything else, I opened up a new scope to the experience issue, drawing things back into focus between Obama and McCain. 

[He had called Obama's bid for the presidency "arrogant"] What may be arrogant (this is only my opinion) is that someone who was trained to fly a fighter jet and almost failed out of the naval academy (5th from the bottom of his class of 899) believes he is qualified for a position where he will be required to uphold and a defend the constitution. In fact he is arrogant enough to believe he is more qualified than a man who not only studied international politics, but wrote his senior thesis on disarming Russia's nuclear arsenal, earned a law degree from Harvard and is a professor of constitutional law. 

McCain takes a stance that paralell's Mr. Bush (suprise!) that education is not an important issue and that the most powerful man in the free world should not be as learned as possible. In fact, many conservative pundits throw Obama's education in his face calling him an elitist. Unfortunately leading a government is about creating and upholding laws, not flying planes, or rather, getting shot down.

In arguing against comparing Obama with Palin, I posted an article from the economist to back my claims, and called it "unbiased." This is after Trevor had complained that ABC and NBC were woefully biased in their coverage of the RNC. He then came back and stomped me saying that the newspaper had a clear bias, the article being the opinion of a single journalist and that it was an opinion piece.

What I meant by unbiased (and what I should have said) was that the piece was based on sound investigative journalism, without the same bias held in the American media. The bias I speak of is not clearly ideological, left or right leaning (unless we're talking about FOX news) but rather a bias towards controversy, sensationalism, and superficiality in their coverage. News in America is a form of entertainment and rarely seems to cover what is important, only what will captivate its audiences. That which starts out on television news programming as entertainment finds its way eventually into print media as "news."

What's funny is that recently, the republican party has condemned the behavior of the news media for sensationalizing the story of Sarah Palin, her kid, her kid's kid, her CHOICE to keep the child etc. What's worse is that true journalism is being admonished along with the superficial tactics of the American media. However, the Republicans can't have it both ways. Often (again, thanks to FOX) they reap the benefits of having the masses contented on the circuses they create, but now that the lions are coming after them, they scream foul play. 

I have to admit, it's fun to watch.

[Edit: I found the video that explains the propaganda campaign that's fed straight to FOX from the Bush administration]