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[sebastian_dangerfield]

this is so fucking tired.

It is. The argument this is false equivalence is such bullshit the only response to it is an eye roll.

Fox lies. They just outright lie, and when caught, they don't correct.

This is unlike MSNBC or WaPo how exactly? I know, it's terrible taboo to cite Taibbi or Greenwald (because they can't be refuted on their claims of sleazy bias in the media, so instead, people on your side of the argument pivot to accusing them of cashing in by demonizing the media... which is of course a naked non-response/deflection to the accusation of bias). Taibbi has assiduously cataloged the mechanism by which the right and the left pump bullshit to audiences.

It's simple:

1. Report w/o fact-checking;
2. When it appears to have been untrue, don't issue a noticeable retraction... instead, bury it on page 7, or if it's online, simply edit the prior piece after the fact;
3. When flagged for a non-retraction on TV, bury the lede -- state it within a larger statement in which you nevertheless accuse the victim of the falsehood of something nefarious.

Set aside the "poor us, no body listens to poor conservatives like us who only spent a few hundred billion, maybe a trillion or two, dollars controlling most of the media viewed by old men and people who live in rural areas so we can whine about how the real slavery is masking..." Set aside that whiny crap that is 95% of what the right says these days.

Agreed. Fuck Fox. And fuck almost every outlet that hyped Russiagate for four years, and is still foisting that bullshit. Fuck every outlet that is still focusing on Trump (even as his polling among the GOP is sinking). Fuck everyone on the left who used endless attacks on him as a cash cow (which played right into his game). And really, really, fuck the people at MSNBC who admit privately that they sell succor to suckers.

So yeah -- fuck all those people.

They lie. About vaccines. They lie about race. They lie about immigrants. They lie about just about anything under the sun, and they double down when they are caught.

Yup. And their counterparts on the other side half-retract, half-apologize, and keep pumping out the same bullshit, week after week.

You can see it going on with the January 6 thing. CNN and MSNBC cover it endlessly, and hype it constantly. They desperately want this story to become the next Watergate. But guess what? No one really cares. It only gets traction among a small audience of news nuts. Society has moved on from Trump. The GOP is moving on from Trump. Who isn't? Well, CNN isn't. And for good reason. Their ratings are down monstrously since he left office.

When MSNBC says something that gets called based on facts, they run a correction. They regularly apologize. They fix it like a rational reality based news source would. Sure, MSNBC has biases, no surprise there. But they still deliver reality based news. (Realize, you could read their news on twitter in 5 minutes instead of watching it cycle through for four hours at night on four different shows all repeating the same thing - it's not really deep news, but its news).

There's a great movie out there called OutFoxed. It explains how, when Fox was still somewhat sane, many years ago - before it lost all semblance of integrity - it used sly, nearly imperceptible devices, to propagandize for its right wing views. MSNBC is nearly identical to that Fox of old. And the Fox of today? You're right. It's just full on Pravda. Fantasy. 24/7 bullshit.

But Fox is obviously bullshit. You can't even watch it. MSNBC still looks like a news organization. But it's not. It's serving up opinion cleverly stuffed into news. I'd say it's much more effective manipulation than Fox's obvious bullshitting of today.

CNN, they just throw any old cock in the ring and watch them fight, that's just news as sports. That's why they've hired some of the sleaziest folks on the right. Sure, someone like Erin Burnett behaves like an actual journalist much of the time, but that's a small portion of their overall programming.

I still watch CNN, however, because it's so bad at slanting (people like Stelter), one can easily separate the news from the spin. I also like Zakaria.

Your false equivalence is just more bullshit. Rogan got $100million for a heavily produced podcast with a big staff that spreads lies, he's as much an institution as any other media outlet. Do you really swallow that "poor Joey R" bs? Really? You'll swallow anything, won't you?

I'm not defending Rogan or saying he is not an institution. He is. I think his putting on loony guests is problematic. But I also think he has the right to do whatever the fuck he likes. Like Fox, MSNBC, etc.

We don't need consensus. We need people who base views on reality to laugh at and dismiss the snake oil salesmen. As adults, our goal should not be to gain consensus with the toddlers, because they're just going to insist that we agree with them that nap time is bad.

Where does this stop? I've elitist tendencies. I say godawful things about Joe Sixpack, and I've done it a lot here.

And I agree with you that an anti-vaxxer is a toddler. They drive me nuts. But you do realize that what you just said here is something dangerous. It's three simple words: "I know best."

On vaccines, you do. I do. All of us who got vaccinated do.

But, respectfully, I don't think I'd want you running policy of any kind. And I don't think you'd want me doing it. If people want to make bad decisions, they've a right to do so. If they want to believe bullshit, they've a right to do so. I don't object to nudging them in the right direction. But from where I am sitting, having viewed the decisions of people like us - the managerial professional classes - We Are Huge Fuck-Ups. The knuckledraggers may kill themselves and some of us with terrible decision making. But we make the really, really fucking awful decisions. 2008? Us. Iraq? Us. Wealth inequality? Us. Trump? A reaction to Us. We think we know everything, and repeatedly tinker with things, and then -- "Oh shit! The law of Unintended Consequences!" Our Brahmin of the moment are the dangerous fools of the next decade (Greenspan, Robert McNamara, Cheney, Most of Wall Street).

We can't lead without some consensus. And consensus is not people like Us telling others what to think or do, and trying to silence views we don't like or are bullshit. We can only give people good information. If they choose to reject it, that's on them. And if their foolishness harms us, well, that's the price one pays to live in a free society.