Packchem91 said:
caryking said:
Civilized said:
caryking said:
Civilized said:
TheStorm said:
Packchem91 said:
TheStorm said:
hokiewolf said:
TheStorm said:
#1 it's spelled "Reagan"...
Hokie, how old were you when Reagan was in office since you're such an expert on him? I've seen you post previously about having school age kids in other threads, and so yeah, it's a valid question.
(Watch him turn out to be older than me)
early 40s. I was a kid when he was President but I've read four books on him.
So essentially, you were an infant when he was first elected... and then maybe 4 or 5 when he was re-elected...
LOL, so can we never discuss Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, King, etc anymore, since we weren't of age when they were doing their things?
Do you think I would know more about those guys than someone who was there with them at the time?
Depends on how that aware that someone was and where they were getting their news from, no different than now.
I imagine there were significant swaths of society without the means, interest, education, or freedom to consume much factual news about their political leaders.
There's also the issue of news of the present day being politicized vs. rearward-looking historical assessments being more sober and clear-eyed since they're removed from the emotion of the moment and they've got the benefit of hindsight.
Last paragraph is good. I've looked at newspaper, from the 1700's and the use of satire was extremely prevalent then. So, while not living then, we could draw a conclusion that politics were rough, back then; however, the instantaneous access was not…
100%.
Politics was a messy game from the jump and the mainstream media was never some unbiased beacon of objectivity that people make the historical standard out to be. Papers in the 1800's were trying to drive sales just like today.
Hell when you go back and read snippets of those old papers I'd say journalistic standards are noticeably higher today, as crazy as that sounds given we all know how liberal j-schools and the preponderance of news sources trend. Papers back then read way more like tabloids than factual news sources.
no argument from me...
That said, perhaps people accept news more (in general) literally than they use too...
I'd argue people have become accustomed to team-based news. We trust the news from our preferred sources, and think the other side is lying.
This is true too.
The frustrating thing is that it's possible to acknowledge bias without necessarily considering the information factually incorrect and disregarding it outright.
I'm aware that Fox leans right, especially with their talking head opinion shows. That said I don't consider Fox *News* to be nearly as far right as their editorial shows. The same is true of all networks. Don Lemon is not reporting the news. Tucker Carlson is not reporting the news.
Take January 6. The sitting president lied about winning what he described as a "stolen" election, said he and his supporters should never concede the election, and encouraged thousands of people to march on the Capital with the intent of undermining Congress' election certification. That's factual. Debating the "why" and what happened after is more understandable but the who/what/when/where isn't in question.
Problem is that so many get sucked into the "why" and "whataboutisms" of Tucker/Cuomo/Lemon that the who/what/when/where gets called into question by association and stymies actual productive, critical discourse. (To cowboy's point)
You can say this about any president or event but it becomes especially pronounced for presidential politics. Biden is no different. His mental acuity, age, inflationary effects of the third round of stimulus, broadening of government size and reach, attempts to simultaneously appeal to the activist wing of the Democratic party and also moderates, etc. are all fair game.
We' be soooo much better off if we could agree on the 80% that's fairly dry and just debate the 20% but social media and talking heads run completely counter to that type of discourse. When you see the proportion of news production and consumption that's just opinion vs. actual news reporting, it's easy to see why we are where we are.