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November 09, 2004
Election Result Explanation
I found Pixy Misa's explanation much more convincing than mine. He succinctly explains the role of the media:
Now, the flip side to this in recent years has been the actions of the mainstream media. For some reason - I have no idea why this is so, because I can see no benefit in it for them - they have decided to throw in their lot on the side of the liberal/left. Entirely, to the point of utterly destroying their own credibility, which is their stock in trade.
What they have been trying to do, and they have been willing to not just misreport and distort the news but to fabricate and flat-out lie to do it, is to shift puplic opinion to the left. That would mean that either the right-of-centre party would have to shift to the left (pragmatism) or stay where they are and lose power (ideology).
The problem with this plan is that the mainstream media do not have a monopoly on the distribution of information. We can thank Rush Limbaugh and other talk-radio hosts, Rupert Murdoch, small-town newspapers, and the internet for acting as a spoiler. Because what happened instead was that the opinion of roughly half the public shifted to the left.
Then he moves on to why the race was just so dirty:
Which, I think, is why both races were so acrimonious. If you can't bridge the gap, if you can't count on picking up some of the moderates on the other side, all you can hope for is to energise your own side. And if you're not a remarkable man, a gifted orator (and let's face it, none of the candidates in these two elections were that), then the best way to do that is to demonise your opponent - widening the gap still further. There's always some of that in any such contest, but this time it was the primary tool of the left because they simply didn't have much else to use.
Then the unmistakable conclusion:
And so, what we have is this: Michael Moore won the election. As did Dan Rather, and Martin Sheen, and Philip Adams, and Maureen Dowd, and Margo Kingston, and the editors of The Guardian, and a host of other lefty celebrities and intellectuals. Of course, they won the elections for John Howard and George Bush, which is hardly what they intended.
Go over and read the whole article with an open mind. Not only does it explain the whys and wherefores but it also explains what needs to be done to fix the problem.
Posted by Ozguru at November 9, 2004 07:49 AM
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