Archive for September 22nd, 2004

Can an Anchorman Just Plain Lie?

Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 09/22/2004

When I was coming up there were scandals in every business and every part of political life.

With one exception: the press.

When I pointed this out, people would laugh and say, “Of course not! The press won’t report on itself.”

But they never THOUGHT about that.

Press scandals like the New York Times and its fake article writer and CBS and Dan Rather with his fake memo did not just begin recently. People inside the New York Times said they had been warning about those fake stories for months before the scandal broke, BUT ONLY INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Now every conservative commentator is assuring us that both CBS and the New York Times “made a mistake,” but they are as pure as the driven snow. Every conservative commentator says CBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post — the latter had a reporter make up a fake story that won a Pulitzer Prize that had to be given back — have never, never, never done this kind of thing before.

These are Major News Organizations, and Major News Organizations don’t lie like the rest of humanity does.

It’s sickening to watch the conservatives grovel to gain brownie points with the liberal media.

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The Basics Don’t Change

Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 09/22/2004

An old professor friend of mine was very enthusiastic about “Why Johnny Can’y Think: America’s Professor-Priesthood.” He was also amazed about how consistent my ideas have been since we met forty years ago.

With due apologies I pointed out to him that his ideas about arithmetic were also consistent. Since I met him he got his PhD and had a long academic career, but he still repeats “2+2=4” today exactly the same way he did when he was eight years old.

I am still looking at the most basic facts of politics and economics. They are exactly like 2+2=4. They don’t change.

Rememer that there was a whole theory and university science of medicine before they accepted the existence of bacteria. There was a whole university study of economics, called political economy, long before anybody ever heard of supply and demand. Before they heard of bacteria or supply and demand, both medicine and economics were destructive.

I am still trying to introduce the idea of wordism and the professional biases of social scientists into the field of social science. Until that is done, they are still exactly where medicine was when doctors regularly bled people to death and economics was when it pushed the old Mercantile System. They are stupid and they are wrong.

I have spent a frustrating lifetime trying to talk real social science to the social science professors who sell bleeding and Mercantilism in the social sciences today. I will keep doing it.

I will also keep saying 2+2=4.

I am indeed very consistent.

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