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Maddow is one of the few TV hosts that will outright say that she's a raging liberal.
I am glad she is honest, but does it really contribute constructively to the discussion? If you already know where she stands, why watch the show? Also, just because she is honest about her slant, does it not still make her slanted? Does she portray herself as a "journalist"?
Usually it's fairly easy to tell if someone is coming at a discussion from a particular political perspective. It's better if they just level with the audience. Maddow has said that she has liberal points of view and isn't trying to hide that fact. If you don't like that, don't watch.The distinction between a show like hers and someone like Beck's is that most of her commentary is well-researched and backed up. You may not agree with her targets or what she chooses to focus on, but at least you can count on her being somewhat reasonable. Does she use hyperbole? Sure. Does she take cheap shots? Yes. However, at the end of the day you're not like to watch her show and claim that she isn't informed and doesn't at least try to work within the confines of a fact-based argument.
If you're watching any of these political commentary shows in the hopes of finding objective points of view, I would question why you're watching. That's not what they do or what they claim to do. I think many of them do consider themselves to be journalists, but it's clearly colored by their own personal perspective and slants.
What I think viewers should be asking is whether they are at least coming at the topic reasonably and making salient points. I would say Maddow, though liberal, does that orders of magnitude more than Beck.
I guess I am missing the point of the point of watching the show. Is this for the uninformed to get their talking points? Is it for the somewhat informed to cheer their side and sharpen their talking points?
What do they claim to do? Even though she is informed and attempting to work in within the confines of a fact-based argument, but she doesn't subject consenting and dissenting viewpoints with equal rigor, isn't this just well-polished propaganda as opposed to unpolished propaganda? It is easy to cite only your facts while allowing those to agree with you to slide with their missteps and attacking those with whom you disagree for their missteps. It makes your argument look superior when in fact may not be...no matter how you attempt to frame the tactics.
I will take her piece on ACORN as an example. It was
loosely fact-based. Yes, ACORN does register people to vote. Check...that is accurate(for the moment, we will leave out the charges of voter registration fraud). They also did provide some services to the community. Check.
However, to completely dismiss the legitimate charges of outrageous behavior by their employees in multiple offices all across the country is more than disingenuous. To then attack people who legitimately expose these egregious acts by posting a strawman crosses the line of credibility.
Like the example I stated before(not in this thread), it is accurate to say that Al Capone provided soup kitchens during the depression. This is accurate. But how it is in the remote realm of fairness to cite these acts only when presented with the fact that Al Capone was a mob leader? How does it contribute to the discussion?
I understand your criticism. The ACORN thing has been a tricky issue to wade through. Clearly they have employees who aren't doing their job. Lots of places have that. There is also corruption and other issues that have come up. No question.I think the problem here is complicated with ACORN. Maddow's take I think is this:
- ACORN does far more good than bad
- ACORN has received an disproportional amount of scrutiny due to the '08 election, some warranted, most not
- most of the driving force behind the ACORN scrutiny has been by conservatives with agendas to discredit their practices in voter registration
- many of the cases of impropriety in the voter registration cases were self-reported by ACORN and dealt with internally
- ACORN is a very large organization that probably has a similar incidence of corruption than any other organization does
- ACORN is getting a bad rap overall because of the loud opposition from people pushing an agenda (in part to discredit Obama)
- though not a political organization, ACORN registers more lower income people to vote which helps Democrats disproportionately, thus the predictable opposition
One interesting counter argument about this ACORN stuff is to highlight the level of corruption in other groups, companies, non-profits that receive government funding. The logic goes as follows: if these other groups demonstrate incidents on par or worse than those of ACORN, where is the consistent outrage? Also, this seems like a fairly thinly-veiled attack on a group that ends up serving Democratic party interests more than Republican ones. If this was reversed, you wouldn't hear a peep from conservative critics.
Are there legitimate gripes about ACORN? Yes. In fact, ACORN itself has admitted as much. The trouble is the most vocal opposition to ACORN has focused on some narrow incidents and taken that to imply that the entirety of the organization is the most corrupt thing we've ever seen. That's taking it too far.
I do think that Maddow's reporting of ACORN hasn't been as balanced as it should be. She should at least admit that many of the claims are legitimate gripes. The problem with her doing that, I think from her perspective, is that it somehow allows people raising hell to score some points. She'd rather sweep these under the rug and make the consistency argument and say that most of what's being said is completely overblown (which I think is true).
In politics it's more about appearances than facts in some cases. I think this explains why Congress voted nearly unanimously to defund ACORN without taking much of a look into the frequency and pervasiveness of the incidents. If they did the same with other funded groups, they'd likely find similar or much worse cases. Maddow pointed out a number of these (mostly government contractors) on her show and questioned the seriousness of the ACORN attacks. I think she's right to do that (it's fact-based), but it does ignore legitimate gripes about ACORN.
I don't disagree with the vast majority of what you said.But the special comment tonight was not good in my opinion. I thought it was self serving and just par for the Olbermann course. I Keithworld everything is about him. I feel for him about his dad being sick but weaving a story about Pops Olbermann and healthcare reform was just silly to me. If you want to spell out why you support reform and make your agrument, I'm cool with that. If you want to rationally dismantle the arguments of those opposed to reform or the public option, again, I'm cool with that too.But that isnt what Olby does.On, Maddow. I think she's respectable. She has the educational chops and you can tell she does her homework even though she does on occasion take people out of context. She tries to play it straight. although I see her pound the righties alot more than the lefties.
