Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
I never thought it would come to this. You are taking the word of some foreigner over our very own sebby?
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Let me pour some salt in this wound:
“Authorities” by their nature are untrustworthy. Sometimes they have an interest in denying truths, and sometimes they actually try to define truth as being whatever they say it is. “Elevating authoritative content” over independent or less well-known sources is an algorithmic take on the journalistic obsession with credentialing that has been slowly destroying our business for decades.
The WMD fiasco happened because journalists listened to people with military ranks and titles instead of demanding evidence and listening to their own instincts. The same thing happened with Russiagate, a story fueled by intelligence “experts” with grand titles who are now proven to have been wrong to a spectacular degree, if not actually criminally liable in pushing a fraud.
We’ve become incapable of talking calmly about possible solutions because we’ve lost the ability to decouple scientific or policy discussions, or simple issues of fact, from a political argument. Reporting on the Covid-19 crisis has become the latest in a line of moral manias with Donald Trump in the middle.
Instead of asking calmly if hydroxychloroquine works, or if the less restrictive Swedish crisis response has merit, or questioning why certain statistical assumptions about the seriousness of the crisis might have been off, we’re denouncing the questions themselves as infamous. Or we’re politicizing the framing of stories in a way that signals to readers what their take should be before they even digest the material. “Conservative Americans see coronavirus hope in Progressive Sweden,” reads a Politico headline, as if only conservatives should feel optimism in the possibility that a non-lockdown approach might have merit! Are we rooting for such an approach to not work?
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tempor...rus-censorship
I used to love Oliver. He had great timing. Then he became a preachy, self-important imp. Jon Stewart could pull off political bits because he was smart. Maher can pull it off because he is smart. Letterman could do it well. Kimmel succeeds at it. Oliver has become a dimwit who services an audience of middle minds. He and Seth Meyers are cruising on political points and tribal "atta boys" from people like Flower in place of actually funny bits. Unlettered views for unsophisticated thinkers.
It sucks, because I used to really enjoy Oliver. He went from biting and astute to earnest and irritating overnight.
But I guess that's how it works. One must "pick a side."
