Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers.
That's essentially what Facebook is doing out in the open.
If somebody like Rush Limbaugh had a nationwide radio show where day by day he created content based on RNC talking points.
Or a network like Fox or MSNBC went all in on party loyalty and based all their content on party talking points.
Or a media conglomerate like Sinclair or Clear Channel pushed out political messaging to their affiliates in small markets that had to be aired during prime viewership.
The goal in for-profit communication is always going to be the same: getting return visits. The best way to do that is to tell people what they want to hear. This is why Rush and Fox and MSNBC and Breitbart have the content they have.
This is also what Facebook is doing. However, since they have the advantage of being able to complete personalize your feed to give you what you want, they can provide 100% coverage across all demographics.
> "places where there’s no social push to behave in a certain way."
This social push is a function of a community. If you happen to not feel any pressure to behave a certain way, you're very likely already behaving in line with the norms of the community you're in.
>I tracked the original studies and discovered that literally every statistics said by feminists, namely Hillary Clinton and Obama, is false.
Nope.
Whenever someone tries to imply that the "enemy" is perfectly evil or malicious, as you are attempting to do here, you can be certain that someone is trying to propagandize you. I'm going to be charitable per HN guidelines and assume you're not commenting in bad faith, but just in case you are, my advice would be to dial back the hyperbole just a wee bit if you want to accomplish anything more than incel virtue-singaling.
I don't know about "every", but I know Obama(and probably Clinton) pushed the 77% wage gap statistic. Just googling "campus rape clinton" brings me to Clinton's website which proudly displays the "one in five is sexually assaulted" story. You can tell how illusory that statistic is because the site gets the narrative wrong - it says 1/5 report sexual assault, but you can count those reports and disprove it. The narrative that goes along with that "statistic" is that 1/5 get sexually assaulted and 90%+ don't report it.
(I don't think these "lies" really make Obama or Clinton stand out from the rest of the political flock, for what it's worth, I'm a fan of Obama).
Not to mention that someone who has studied this alleged phenomenon as much as the commenter claims would be less reluctant to post evidence in support of the allegation.
There are Republicans with shows on MSBBC. Nicolle Wallace has an hour each afternoon – she was Bush's comms director & and worked for McCain's presidential campaign. Joe Scarborough was a Republican member of congress, and he gets 3 hours of MSNBC air per day.
But Fox News literally coordinates with the Trump team and he lavishes them personally with praise via Twitter almost every week. It's far more akin to campaign outreach rather than independent news. This never happened with Obama or the DNC.
MSNBC also does have independent journalists e.g. Chuck Todd and right-wing commentators e.g. Hugh Hewitt, Joe Scarborough etc. So it's not entirely liberal.
CNN has bias that fluctuates wildly toward the perceived flavor of the week; it operates for maximum sensationalism. It basically invented the 24-hour news cycle and hasn’t altered its formula for decades.
CNBC is business news; did you mean MSNBC?
MSNBC has the least viewership of the three and I would not consider it particularly influential. It is biased towards a minority ultra-Democrat position, hence its relatively lower viewership due to its fringe editorial content.
CNN's bias is firmly anti-Trump and it doesn't fluctuates in any way, shape or form. You can go to their home page and at any point, there will be some anti-Trump headlines.
To be fair to Fox News I don't recall anyone in the RNC resigning because they gave candidates debate questions they were privy to as corespondents. (Donna Brazile)
Misconduct occurs in all organizations; while pointing fingers I could make the claim that the Fox News organization is pro-sexual harassment because of two high officials’ actions (Ailes and O’Rielly). Yet this would be unfair and false.
Lest ye be Roy Moore’d (or Anthony Weinered), it is a mistake to take a bad actor and extrapolate isolated statements or conduct to the greater organization without evidence of a trend.
However, CNN is the topic. Don’t think for a minute if Trump or another Republican achieves greater than 50% popularity, CNN won’t swing that way. Negative coverage of Trump was en vogue before CNN started doing it, not the other way around.
I think people have trouble distinguishing the personalities from the editorial direction.
If MSNBC wasn’t close to Obama, it’s certainly in alignment with many progressive thought leader types. Fox and MSNBC are similar animals, it’s just that the Republican platform is simpler and smaller than the “big tent” Democratic platform.
But their owners and managers who actually tell them what to do and have all of the power over the networks are nearly all Republicans (or right-wing democrats). They don't do it for free, they do it out of self-interest.
For example, Sinclair broadcast group that owns a huge amount of local broadcasting in every media market in the US. Their national corporate governance literally requires all subsidiaries run blatant pro-Trump hyper conservative propaganda pieces.
I've read the "journalists lean left, owners lean right" mantra many, many of times over the last 10 years on various boards, yet the overwhelming majority of network news and shows, cable news and entertainment shows dump on Republicans/Conservatism and fawn over Democrats/Liberalism. IMO, it's a very misleading idea meant to deceive people into thinking their sources of news or entertainment are somehow more honest than they actually are.
The error is in thinking Hillary is majorly opposed to the Republican agenda. A lot of Bernie supporters switched camps to Trump, as insane as that may sound. The rich would continue to accumulate more money either way, more war in the Middle East, etc. I viewed Trump as kind of a last ditch hail Mary, which seems to have been a bad guess in retrospect.
This kind of information-free comment is just trolling. You've been breaking the guidelines a lot, so we have to ask that you please go read them and stop.
As a european it's always funny hearing some americans call Bernie an extremist.
Here he's just an average left-leaning politician, we elect plenty of people like him all the time. US politics are so absurdly shifted right it's mind blowing.
Edit: Does anyone here actually disagree with this or am I just being downvoted because people are upset this is the case?
No, actually, in this case the wording applies. It's one of the only countries in the world with such conservative stances on health care, guns, drugs and religion and really the only country with the aggregate of it all.
Comparatively, Europe is shifted left for sure, but you can't start doing something differently and then claim others are the ones doing it differently.
You're mistaking "Republicans are right now a steaming heap of awful" with "News and shows are left-leaning".
I'm a huge fan of having a principled, Conservative, political group. They are there to help provide measured, sane, grounding and represent the status-quo in opposition to those who would change it.
That's actually a good thing for Progressives - it helps test the ideas, to forge them into concrete and reliable policy, as well as get rid of ideas that aren't fully formed or have terrible knock-on effects.
I'd love a Conservative group like that. But the Republicans are not it. Some channels are more left-leaning that others but - speaking as someone left wing - only barely.
It's like the show Newsroom - the lead character in that espoused traditional Republican ideals. He was very much a 60s-70s Republican. Yet he was often criticized for being "too liberal". Things that got Regan elected, but not proposed by Democrats, are "too liberal".
News will have bias, obviously. There is no such thing as news without bias, ever. However to someone from originally outside the US the US media is at best centrist. At worst it's absolutely maddeningly right-wing.
As far as I can understand, this is the wrong way to think about conservatism in the United States. Conservatives are not 'just interested in preserving the status quo'. They are interested in conserving liberty. This is because the nature of liberty is to yield, every time a law is passed it is a limitation on liberty. This is why Reagan said 'libertarianism is at the heart of conservatism' [1]
If conservatives can notice that the government has made massive incursions into liberty they have to challenge the status quo and try and roll back some of these restrictions
The “conservatives” are the main ones eroding that liberty.
Trumps Administration right now, obviously, but the PATRIOT Act, the NSA wiretap program, the entire Regan administration... etc.
So yet, it IS the right way to think about conservatives in the US because that is what they do.
I submit that what you are talking about has zero to do with conservative vs progressive and a lot to do with authoritarianism. Unfortunately the worst offenders for that are US “conservatives” (but not the only offenders).
Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on.
More so than the media leaning "left", I think they lean populist. Human interest stories, people falling on hard luck, natural disasters, terrorism. Some of these things 'feel' left-leaning, some 'feel' right-leaning.
>Quite honestly, in the past 10 or so years, the Republican party has made itself extremely easy to dump on.
Quite the opposite actually. As the contemporary left has taken over mainstream culture and turned into the de facto "establishment" that it originally railed against, it's grown intellectually soft and dishonest.
Both sides play to populist emotional appeals and sentiments, but the left-wing outrage industry and identity politics has left them intellectually vulnerable.
I mean, if you want a case study on this vulnerability just head on over to the major liberal think-piece sites and read some of the essays (Salon, Slate, The Atlantic).
Last night I read a piece in The Atlantic that bemoaned the fact that some people expect their neighborhoods to be orderly and not riddled with crime, drugs, and gangs, arguing that these attitudes unfairly discriminated against minorities. This, from a "respectable" magazine!
The left has not taken over anything. We have lived in a very conservative, anti public services regime since the early 1980s. Rollbacks and defunding public schools, health and infrastructure has been on the basis that media has systematically attacked taxation and public spending as wasteful while military spending never seems to be targeted like other social programmes.
We have stop perpetuating this narrative that the media is in anyway 'left' leaning because it is not. When was the last time you read an opinion piece that called for the nationalisation of some private industry?
I specifically said that the dominant culture is left - and it most certainly is, not the economic order.
Virtually every major newspaper in every major city is left-leaning, almost every single cable news network, and all the major tech giants, who are a gateway to content, are undeniably liberal. And academia...well that goes without saying - half are card carrying communists, while the other half are in the ballpark.
In fact, it's heresy to even be conservative at most major tech companies.
Instead of being conservative or liberal why don't we just try being nice to people?
All these hot button issues that divide conservatives/liberals would evaporate if each side just tried, in each interaction to treat the other with dignity and according to their needs.
You know, the golden rule: Treat others like you would like to be treated? That's a good start, but we really need the platinum rule: to treat people how they would like to be treated.
Attempting to walk this path is a much harder task than relying on a dusty old book or on an enumeration of freedoms. It requires one to try to develop humility and wisdom.
I believe there are no moral absolutes, and that only by paying attention the entire situation in the moment can you tell what you should do.
When you adopt this point of view, you see that labels like liberal/conservative are just a set of received ideas that people use to avoid the difficult work described above.
They are just an interrelated set of heuristics allowing you to take shortcuts in our day to day interactions with others.
Then how do you explain the successive insanely excessive right wing governments in the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia over the last 30-40 years?
Have you even read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky?
What do you even mean by conservative? Liberal?
You do realise that liberal and liberalism means keeping the government out of people's lives. The USA is a liberal nation by definition, for example 'The separation of church and state' and your 'right to bare arms, in a well regulated malitia'
>Then how do you explain the successive insanely excessive right wing governments
I'm not familiar with Australian politics, but as for the others, what do you mean? We have had both liberal and conservative governments the last 30-40 years. This, again, has little to do with the mainstream culture, which was my original point.
As for explaining to you why neoliberalism has triumphed, well I recommend that you start here:
>Have you even read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky?
Yes, and it had quite an effect on me when I was in college, and utterly ignorant of history. A lot has changed now, and while much of the book is still good, Chomsky has lost his credibility as a cultural critic following the embarrassment of his analyses about a few corners of the world...:
I don't think you can really compare Australian Politics with US Politics the situation here is probably more similar to the UK than the US. Our parlimentry system is influenced by the UK 'Westminster system' we do not have a directly elected head of state. If you want to be technical the Govenor General appointed by the Queen is our Head of state. Sitting Prime ministers can be replaced by another member of their own party has happened several times in last 10 years.
To put my biases up front I am a left leaning voter who dislikes both major parties - voted for Greens most recently. Anyway here is my attempt to summarize it:
Our two major parties are the Labor party and the Liberal party.
"Liberal" in Australia has a different meaning to how the word is used in US. Calling someone a liberal or accusing them of holding liberal views has a very different meaning then in US. Here it refers to ecconomic Liberalism (support for private ownership and free trade). The Liberal party typically has a conservative stance on social issues.
Labor party has traditionally drawn it's support from Union movement it's policies mostly align with social democracy. In recent years labor has drifted more right-ward similar to Tony Blair led "New Labour" in UK. Labor party's stance on social issues has boggled my mind in recent years they tend to ping-pong all over the place. In general they take a more populist approach rather than standing on principles (i.e Kevin Rudd walking away from climate change action after declaring it the moral challenge of a generation during his election campaign) which in my opinion plays a big roll in growth of Greens (winning seats in state/federal parliament etc) as the 'inner city left' has somewhat abandoned Labor.
To call either party "insanely excessive" is inaccurate and I say that as someone who disagrees with both parties.
> insanely excessive right wing governments in Canada
Calling anyone who disagrees with your political philosophy "insane" is....I don't even know what word to use.
EDIT: Perhaps instead of a downvote, you could give a few examples of the insanely excessive things right wing governments in Canada have done recently (extraordinary claims and all that....).
The biggest thing that comes to mind (as a non-Canadian) was the Harper government banning scientists from making public statements. It's as if they knew all evidence contradicted the policy they were trying to enact, so rather than enact better policy they just decided to silence anyone who could provide evidence of their malfeasance.
No disagreement from me that that policy was absolutely shameful. But it falls a ways short of "successive insanely excessive right wing governments", at least for me.
The media is biased towards the left because they chose to promote the neoliberal who said she'd back a $12.50 minimum wage versus the one who said starve.
In no way, shape or form does that "bemoan" efforts to fight _serious_ crime in changing neighborhoods. It DOES take into account the impact of gentrification on the less affluent residents. Is actually discussing that impact considered "liberal"?
If you want to criticize liberalism honestly, then you probably shouldn't grossly mischaracterize your evidence.
This is a tangent about that article, as I hadn't read it before, but I live in that part of Brooklyn, have for a few years.
Last year on J'ouvert, 2 people were shot about two and a half blocks from my apartment building. This happened every J'ouvert until this most recent one. I'm fine with the extra police presence for that one. When I moved in, there were drug dealers on every corner, including mine. Going to work, I had to go past their pitbulls in the morning or walk in the street as they all crowded the sidewalk. That ended a few months ago.
I've seen more police, and more police called for things like a drunk beating up and robbing another drunk where that used to just be let go - it's not all minor crimes, it's an attitude change as people move in that don't expect to have dangerous people and violence around them. Sure, they shouldn't necessarily call the cops on the guy barbecuing in the street at midnight, but honestly? I don't think it's a really bad thing.
* uppity liberals and fringe left-wing protestors
* "the rest of us"
Interesting. Lots of people on both sides of the aisle admit that there are uppity conservatives and fringe right-wing protestors, but you neglected to mention them.
Do you feel that you're "in the middle" and not a conservative?
I was painting broadly the social demographic of the people that push this sort of nonsense - it usually is uppity liberals and fringe radicals.
People who actually care about their neighborhoods call the police when there are homicides, drug dealing, and violence occurring.
> there are uppity conservatives and fringe right-wing protestors
Yes, and I'm one of those uppity conservatives. I hold the fringe right-wing guys in contempt, but I don't see the relevance? If you want me to rail on them, I will gladly.
>Do you feel that you're "in the middle" and not a conservative?
Libertarian I guess? Grew up in a poor neighborhood much like the one described in the article, so I feel quite strongly about this sort of stuff. A larger police presence would have been a gift from God.
Yes, that one. I stand by my criticism, and I accuse you of the very thing that you are accusing me of. If you want me to go in depth, I will. If anything, I restrained myself in addressing that asinine article.
It opens with:
>"But having been marred by gang violence in recent years, this J’ouvert was markedly different, as The New York Times described. The event, which derives its name from a Creole term for “daybreak,” was heavily staffed by the New York City Police Department.....an overwhelming show of force in response to a comparatively small number of bad actors."
The author conveniently omitted the specifics of that "gang violance" - an aide to Gov. Cuomo was murdered at the event a couple years ago, there have been multiple stabbings, there have been homicides the past two years, and just few days before the festival this year, multiple people were shot and killed:
I can go on if you want, but I don't see the point. The article is an absurd framing of the situation, and completely omits the perspective of all the minorities who APPRECIATE the police presence, and who work with the police on a day-to-day basis, serving in community watch groups, and coordinating with and calling the police whenever they see problems. But no, that doesn't fit the narrative, so it's not in there.
So your first complaint is that the phrase "having been marred by gang violence in recent years" doesn't fully express that the violence included "multiple stabbings" and "homicides." Uh, that's what gang violence usually entails: stabbings, shootings, and murder.
You chalk that up to the writer intentionally ("conveniently") omitting that. Then you cite the NY Post, widely acknowledged as a sensational tabloid, presumably as an example of the coverage you prefer?
Then, you take fault with the author expressing their opinion that the festival had "an overwhelming show of force."
Is that all the author complained about in this respect? They didn't say "damn fascists!" or anything else? They didn't attach any value judgment -- YOU did. The author just pointed out that it was an "overwhelming show of force" which you admit did make the event safer.
If this is the awful, biased "liberal" media you're worried about, you should probably stick to the Post. That way all of your existing biases can be reinforced.
A few things - the citation is quite irrelevant when the information is true, so it's not a point worth raising. In a way - and if the Post is the only place that reported on this, then your adding credence to my argument that the media is biased. Thanks.
>Then, you take fault with the author expressing their opinion that the festival had "an overwhelming show of force.
No, I take issue with the authors insinuation that it wasn't warranted, hence:
"overwhelming show of force in response to a comparatively small number of bad actors."
>Is that all the author complained about in this respect?
Have you actually read the article? It's probably one silliest pieces of journalism I've ever read. Just read something of quotes:
>“The gentrifiers are not wanting to share—they’re wanting to take over.” One of the tools they can use to take over public spaces, he argues, is law enforcement.
Yes, law enforcement is a tool of the "gentrifiers" to move poor people out. This is ridiculous.
It's not the crimes that are the problem (homicides, assaults, drug dealing, public intoxication), but rather the "criminalization" of the criminals.
I guess the solution is just stop calling the cops?
>If this is the awful, biased "liberal" media you're worried about, you should probably stick to the Post. That way all of your existing biases can be reinforced.
It seems like a simplistic explanation, but I wonder if some people simply forget or overlook how multidimensional and complicated life is when discussing such matters. It is extremely common when reading political discussions, even among intelligent people, to see opinions with absolute certainty on matters they know very little about. It's easy for "smart" people to see this in (let's be honest) dumb people, but very few can see it in themselves, or others sharing their political stripes.
EDIT: Wow, I didn't even criticize one side or the other, but simply pointed out a fact of human nature, and here we go with the downvotes as usual. Another excellent illustration of the "either you're with us or against us" philosophy. At least people can agree with ole George on one thing.
Disagree. The extent to which "the left" is the establishment in the media today, was also true 10 and 20 years ago. Again, the appeals to populism, human interest stories, and so on, have been staples of popular media for ages.
The attitudes you speak of in some opinion pieces may be laughable in some ways but thought-provoking in others. Is it not true that some crime-fighting techniques disproportionately affect minority communities? Eg, not in proportion to the rate at which those communities commit crimes? You can't tell me that considering these factors is without merit, even if you disagree wholeheartedly with the conclusions.
It's difficult to honestly compare a perhaps laughable premise or conclusion from one end of the political spectrum, with outright disregard for basic facts, truths, and reason-based discourse on the other. I will not participate in calling these things equivalent, however many points it may score with folks who are too afraid to offend. (We won't go into the irony of the great offense felt by folks who are hostile to truth itself, who expect their hurt feelings to entitle them to being treated as if their (lack of) ideas have merit).
If you want a case study of how the Republican party has sunk to extreme dunk-on-ability, read the Twitter feeds of David Frum, Bill Kristol, and Rick Wilson: three stalwart Republicans.
Curious about the reasons for downvotes. In case I wasn't clear, those three are very critical of the current Republican party, especially the current administration
I disagree. I think the "natural" state of things is definitely more conservative, and it's reflected in people's attitudes, traditions, and behaviors as they age, and their general resistance to change.
Progressivism works as a sort of pushing against the order of things, for better or worse. Its development being the result of our ability to manipulate and change our environment to an extraordinary degree, much more so than any other animal.
Maybe that's human nature, but I wouldn't call that reality. Humans have to adapt or progress to survive. I think OP here was referring to things like global warming, it's a reality, but many (most?) conservatives in the United States believe it isn't happening. Another example is creationism. 60% of Republicans believe we were created by God 10,000 years ago, and evolution played no role. Yet, we know this isn't true, it's not reality.
I would consider myself centrist (which is conservative by Silicon Valley standards). Personally, I believe global warming to be real, but I find the alarmism to be an exercise in popular histrionics.
I remember being a kid in 1992 and being told that by this point in my life I would have to wear a special suit because the hole in the ozone layer would get so bad the suns rays would start frying us. The same is happening today. People are crying wolf about everything to the point where it's become impossible to take the alarmism seriously anymore.
Ivar Giaever and Freemason Dyson have done a great job illustrating the problems with the current dialogue around climate change.
There was a global effort to eliminate causes of ozone layer depletion. It took a significant amount of political will and resources to ensure that we'd get to the point we are at today[1].
The people crying wolf back then prevented us from depleting the ozone layer.
We addressed the ozone depletion problem by banning CFCs. It didn't magically go away. The issue of global warming has yet to be addressed.
You probably recall being told about endangered species when you were a kid too. The fact that they still exist does not indicate that you experienced alarmism but that people actively protected those species.
Interesting. Ok, maybe liberal is young peoples' philosophy, conservative is old peoples'. As reflected in the many sayings about how you should be the former before 30 or 40, the latter afterwards. It's not more natural to be young or old - both are natural. From Robert Louis Stevenson:
"...the opinions of old men about life have been accepted as final. All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age. It is held to be a good taunt, and somehow or other to clinch the question logically, when an old gentleman waggles his head and says: “Ah, so I thought when I was your age.” It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: “My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours.”
Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed of having passed through Newhaven and Dieppe. They were very good places to pass through, and I am none the less at my destination. All my old opinions were only stages on the way to the one I now hold, as itself is only a stage on the way to something else. I am no more abashed at having been a red-hot Socialist with a panacea of my own than at having been a sucking infant. Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact. And in the meanwhile you must do something, be something, believe something. It is not possible to keep the mind in a state of accurate balance and blank; and even if you could do so, instead of coming ultimately to the right conclusion, you would be very apt to remain in a state of balance and blank to perpetuity. Even in quite intermediate stages, a dash of enthusiasm is not a thing to be ashamed of in the retrospect: if St. Paul had not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a colder Christian. For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men. I seem to see that my own scheme would not answer; and all the other schemes I ever heard propounded would depress some elements of goodness just as much as they encouraged others. Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men’s opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better — I daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay. ...
When the old man waggles his head and says, “Ah, so I thought when I was your age,” he has proved the youth’s case. Doubtless, whether from growth of experience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer; but he thought so while he was young; and all men have thought so while they were young, since there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in May; and here is another young man adding his vote to those of previous generations and rivetting another link to the chain of testimony. It is as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn gray, or mothers to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier than their lives."
It is unfortunate that a request for a citation is downvoted but not responded to. Not only is the claim that every comedy writer is conservative not supported, it's not even true.
Now, I don't subscribe to conservative politics myself. But it is simply a moral wrong to assume an entire profession is united in political views. Nor is it a good thing to invoke such identity politics. Let's move forward and focus on the real issues at hand.
That seems unlikely, especially under union rules. Do you have any evidence to support your claim? Edit: Downvotes in the absence of that evidence makes me concerned.
Parks and Rec ran for seven seasons, and its protagonist was a fictionalized Hillary Clinton. The West Wing ran for seven seasons and explicitly featured a Democratic Presidential administration.
That's... quite a leap. You could easily argue Robin Wright plays a fictionalized Hillary Clinton on "House of Cards."
Personally, I think that the free market that the conservatives love to salivate about is making this happen. It cracks me up to imagine Hollywood producers saying "Well, I COULD make more money by making a super-conservative show but I just NEED to get my liberal views out there in the American brain!" Nope. They know that conservatives are going to stroke it to Duck Dynasty and that's about it.
Leslie Knope is a blond, Midwest-born woman who believes strongly in using government to improve people’s lives. Despite being stopped short from achieving her goals time and time again, she never loses her optimism or her determination. She prepares long, in-depth policy briefings that no one ever reads, comes under attack from ignorant yokels, and even makes understandable, innocent mistakes that get blown out of proportion into major scandals. That is exactly how Hillary Clinton’s supporters see her.
The show also started around the same time as her incredibly popular tenure as Secretary of State.
You just described about half of the female civil servants that I've met in the Midwest.
Wow, blond AND from the Midwest? A dedicated and caring public servant? Shit, I guess NBC is lucky that Hillary didn't sue them for such a blatant rip-off.
Oh wait, one is a real person who served as Senator and Secretary of State and the other is a fictional bureaucrat who served 3 months on her small city's council and loves waffles.
You've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not what this site is for, and as the guidelines point out, we ban accounts that do this irrespective of which politics they're battling for or against. I've banned this one.
If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
> Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers.
That wouldn't happen, because on the one hand no amount of money from the Republicans would persuade ABC/CBS/NBC to support them, and on the other hand they're quite glad to provide free support to the Democrats. The situation is reverse with Fox 'News,' of course.
This isn't for any nefarious reason: it's just that pretty much everyone associated with mass media believes that the Republicans are evil and the Democrats are good. There's no amount of money which could persuade me to claim that all murder should be legal; likewise, there's no need to pay me to say that murder should be illegal. The situation is the same for the vast majority of showrunners & news anchors: they really are doing what they believe is right.
Private web services are fundamentally different from the FCC regulated limited band of the RF broadcast spectrum. This was a major point of contention in the Net Neutrality debate, but it certainly has no application to Facebook.
For 30 Rock and Parks and Rec, weren't those appearances after the people were already prominent and/or in office?
The 30 Rock/Al Gore example in particular happened years after he was done running for public office.
And even Parks and Rec wasn't so much advocating for Joe Biden/Michelle Obama as having a left leaning, political character be excited about the opportunity to meet them. I can also remember John McCain appearing on Parks and Rec.
On that note, recall that NBC's SNL had Donald Trump HOST the show in late 2015, during the campaign. How nuts does that seem now, given how much the writers hate him?
I think the fall from grace narrative arc was very entertaining. Most political candidates get to do hits on Late Night shows in a relaxed atmosphere whenever they want. I think it's a great part about America.
30 Rock also pushed Obama a bit if I recall correctly and before the election - but they also cracked a joke about how Tina Fey's character would tell everyone she was voting for Obama but then secretly vote Republican.
A writer pushing their political agenda is one thing and something you can't quantify. Is there a department at ABC whose sole job is getting politicians to pay for guest appearances?
This is key. It's one thing to have creative staff that lean left, it's another for the injection of political propaganda to be the product itself. In that case, there's incentive for ever increasing amounts of propaganda (until it becomes so omnipresent that there's no marginal benefit to the buyer to having more of it, which would be pretty dystopian).
I wasn't quite aware of this myself until a few years ago. Now I see it in almost every crime/spy/military-related show or movie. I've stopped watching several shows because of it and never started watching others.
Most of these conditions look to be along the lines of, "if you're going to use military property or equipment to film your movie, you don't get to turn around and disparage the military", which has done nothing to stem the tide of Hollywood films explicitly designed to disparage the military.
Can you please give me a list of recent -- or ANY -- Hollywood films that are explicitly designed to disparage the military? That is a BOLD claim and I'd love to learn more.
So the main point of Avatar in your opinion -- the reason it was explicitly made -- is that the military sucks? Not colonization or overcoming physical adversity or even just a fun sci-fi romp? It was just $100 million of "lol the army sucks?"
And you realize that a movie about the horrors of the Vietnam War isn't necessarily anti-military, right? America lost tens of thousands of young men and hundreds of thousands more were injured -- the country was torn about the war, with people literally dying in protests. It was a BIG DEAL. Which is why tons of movies and tv shows have dealt with those issues in the ensuing 50 years.
If your movie says "the Vietnam War sucked" or even "Lots of American soldiers came back from Vietnam with incredibly severe mental and physical problems" -- that's not anti-military. That's the truth.
If you want rah-rah, "go Army!" then there are plenty of archived Army recruitment and propaganda films from the 40s, 50s, and 60s on YouTube.
That's essentially what Facebook is doing out in the open.