Posted by Famous Amos! on September 20, 2009 at 23:11:57:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: NIce Job Jay Diamond posted by Jay Diamond on September 17, 2009 at 19:39:11:
Jay, I say again at the risk of seeming like an incurable Jay Diamond sycophant, you absolutely RULE!
Now... here is my take (for which you all have been waiting, with bait on your breath, I am so sure :-) on who's right and who's wrong:
When a person expresses a strong point of view, based on their accumulation of facts and digestion of same; followed by deductive reasoning processes and their personal interpretation of this data... that is "OPINION".
This opinion can turn out to be as wrong-headed as it gets. But it's valid. It's "OPINION".
CONVERSELY:
When a highly-paid pundit is given a task to sway the crowd in a certain direction by a political or industry "think tank"; and together with professional marketing people, formulates a pitch based on deliberately-distorted facts ("lies") and buzz phrases that have been proven in focus groups to confuse and obfsucate the issue... that's "PROPAGANDA". It is NOT valid.
The litmus test of any "strong argument", as to whether it is valid "opinion" or invalid "propaganda" (and remember! Both conclusions can be exactly the same!), is whether or not it can be supported indisputably by FACTS. "Facts" are statements that cannot in any way be proven to be false (no Colbertian "truthiness" here; you are not permitted just to "FEEL" they are true!).
What Jay is telling you from firsthand experience, is that the right-wing bomb-throwing he cites is, 9 times out of 10, based upon pseudo-"facts" ("lies"), which could easily be disproven if the target audience of this propaganda were ever to dig one inch deeper into the issues than they normally do.
However, you can take it to the bank that the Karl Roves and the Frank Luntzes of this country are fully aware that the "low information voter" is about as likely to go through that highly-taxing procedure [g], as they are to start a local branch of the Communist Party. Their propensity toward getting the hots over bumper sticker slogans and their voluntary ignorance heavily benefits that political party which is not too ethical to disseminate "propaganda".
And I'm afraid the dread Librul Democrats are just not that... er "talented". Or they, too, might have a larger collection of Persons Using Radio, ya never know.
We need to be able to discern the difference between a bona fide, human "opinion" and a job the pundits were sent to perform on you for money.