Are you rocking or polluting the intertubes?

Who’s polluting the intertubes?

Here, the often interesting Frank Rich succumbs to microanalyzing a brief and meaningless exchange between Hillary and Obama. Hillary praised Obama, Obama was condescending, Hillary semi-cried. Rich mocks the “incessant video replays of Mr. Obama’s condescension” while joining the echo chamber. Focusing on politics over substance gets the audience to focus on politics over substance and further encourages the candidates to do the same. When the next exchange between the two is equally meaningless, perhaps Rich will acknowledge that he’s been part of the problem, but he’s more likely to mock the banality of others’ media coverage. If Rich were ever to accidentally read my work, I hope he’d do me the favor of calling me on the same thing.

Who’s rocking the intertubes?

Media Matters’ Jamison Foser provides a great example of the approach favored by propagantidote (whoops, did I just refer to myself in the third person?) when he breaks down Chris Matthews’ irrational Hillary-phobia. When someone’s talking crazy, instead of taking their arguments seriously, it’s preferable to try to figure out their motivations. Responding to Matthews with, “Oh, I don’t think Hillary’s a witch, she’s done lots of good things like, for example…” treats his absurd claim as an argument. And, you end up defending Hillary, which is what he wants. I contend that his claim doesn’t deserve such respect. By using Matthews’ own words against him, Foser demonstrates a fairly obvious pattern — Matthews has some serious fear-of-being-controlled-by-women issues. You don’t even have to get into any difficult and debatable psychological questions. Did he have a bad experience with a nun? Maybe, but you don’t have to prove it.

I’m not interested here in moralizing. Is Matthews is a bad person for this? Maybe, but that’s not the issue. Everyone’s irrational. But if you bring that irrationality in the political ring, it’s fair game because you’re hurting the rest of us. Kudos, Mr. Foser.

Naomi Klein squared off with Alan Greenspan in a Democracy Now debate. I don’t consider Greenspan to be rationally disinclined. Elitism, after all, makes sense for the wealthy and powerful. They run into problems when they try to argue that it’s good for the rest of us. As for this debate, Greenspan had no idea what he was getting himself into. Klein, who had already picked his book apart and had it sitting on the table in front of her, destroyed him with old-fashioned logic and evidence, quoting him frequently and holding him to his past statements and actions. Greenspan made two mistakes: he wasn’t prepared and he listened to the rationality of her arguments. A good elitist doesn’t actually listen. Bill O’Reilly, with half Greenspan’s intellect, would have stood a better chance with his sheer dickheadedness. Keep rockin’, Ms. Klein.