Sep 02 2006
Liberal Media’s Condescending Views
The liberal media, like liberals in general, is so full of itself it is stunning that it comes from a segment of society that simply reports on the accomplishments and efforts of others. Reporters have the dubious distinction of watching others do something and then telling other people doing their thing what they tried to learn. Recently the media is not learning much of anything. The Peanut Gallery is more than a little nutty. Check out some of the introductory lines in this AP ‘9-11 article’ dripping with condescending images:
Five years. Is it enough time to begin moving on?
MoveOn? Is this pun intended or Freudian? Move on as in forget it all happened? Move on as in pretend the UK didn’t just stop the possibly loss of another 3000+ innocent people? Move on so we just let Madrid, Lodon, Bali, Bombay, Egypt and all the other mass murders just go without any justice? Or is it move onto a subject that is more positive to liberals and less so for conservatives? One gets the feeling the left is angrier and tired of being behind in the war on terror and has decided their only answer is to change the subject, pretend it doesn’t matter anymore.
A widow’s bed still feels empty, but she can balance the chequebook.
This is cold and codescending in so many ways it is stunning. The Widow’s bed is empty, but she still has money? Or is it she has now, finally, learned to stand on her own where before, in the binds of marriage, she was unable to handle the chequebook? Fear not poor widow, you lost your love but you have money. Wonder how that works for the children and parents of victims. No mention of poor widowers.
She can function without him. In some ways.
Is this sympathy or what? Of course a spouse can ‘function’ without the other spouse. But who wants to? Is it sufficient to ‘function’ or should we strive ‘to live’? And again, what is the message here? Those of you who lost loved ones, forget about them, you have come through this ordeal – move on?
At home, she balances the chequebook, changes the light bulbs, determines which night the trash goes out on the curb. But she remembers how Lou once took care of those things, how she relished being his protected princess in their 25 years of marriage.
This reporter is congratulating this woman for handling the simplest things. Why? She is amazed this woman knows what day the trash goes out? [Confession, I forget all the time, it has nothing to do with 9-11 or losing someone]. The article goes on to document multiple people’s lives and the imacts from that fateful day, but in a crude and awkward and immature way. There is this line:
Before Sept. 11, Crider was a buoyant bride-to-be, planning a wedding and a new life. After, she grew obsessed with news programs about the attacks, cried when baseball fans belted out “America the Beautiful”…
I still get a bit choked up when I hear that song. Especially this summer at swim meets where wonderous young voices would spontaneously come together and simply overwhelm us parents with a beautiful rendition. But the patriotism I feel at these moments cannot be from any personal loss on 9-11 because I did not lose anyone on 9-11. It comes from the connection I and many others discovered after 9-11. A connection to America and our fellow Americans. A connection the far left squirms over and which they call “jingoism” and “patriotism” and “flag waving” and “fascist”. The left was the first to pull away from the solidarity of 9-11 because their political greed was too much for them. The pullout startedin 2002 and rampaged through 2004. No one forgets Durbin’s cries of Nazism when he talked about Guantanomo Bay (which has NOTHING to do with the war in Iraq).
I am not sure what the AP and the reporter were trying to communicate here. But I know how it came across. When someone is amazed a woman can balance a ‘chequebook’ it is pretty clear they do not have a high opinion of them to start with. That simply shows an extremely low level of expectation.
Another example of the immaturity of liberalims is the photo that goes with this story. It seems to clearly be a message to Bush and all his supporters – ‘screw you’.
The liberal media simply can’t grasp the meaning of sacrifice and the idea of a cause larger than oneself. So here it trivializes one woman’s sacrifice, with the trite media template of “putting a human face” on her loss.
AJ, you have accurately caught the snobby media in another act of “dumbing its consumers down.”
I still think you should email some of these AP guys and invite them to the site for an interview/debate and let the audience decide how bad their biases are. (bad)
The democrats don’t care about the victims…any kind of victims. They worry about the murderers and thieves instead. They go on and on about the horrible life these people had.\, etc. etc. Very few people have had an easy life with no tragedy, hardship or pain. I am sorry that their life was so bad, but that doesn’t excuse their crimes. Witness the murderers on death row that the left clamored to save from capital punishment. Once they were dead, they were dead to these people. You never heard another word about them. The left can’t get their votes, or at least most of them. I’ve seen it time and time again the victims are dead and gone and they can’t be helped by the great benevolent democrat party.
Or as saner people see it as freeloading.
Very likely the majority of the victims of 9/11 were democrats since this was New York City, but that hasn’t stopped the democrats from writing them off. No votes, you see. I wonder how their families feel about this or if they even know about it.
An example of the cold callousness of these people I had a friend who lost her husband several years ago. Three months after his death, a liberal friend of hers told her she should get over his death and move on.
I for one can speak with some authority about the loss of a loved one, since I lost my wife just over a year ago.
It is hard to do, it’s not an easy row to hoe.
Marriages are never ended equal, one partner dies before the other and there is a loss to be born by the survivor.
I am on the short side of the statistic stick, since most wives survive their husbands.
I miss her as much as she would have missed me, this is the mark of a true and full relationship.
But I still celebrate the time we had together, as the best years of our life.
To do otherwise would be a rejection of the reality of the situation.
I was blessed for a time, and now I remember and enjoy that rememberance.
One man’s view, one man’s thoughts and presented with the hope that everyone has a much attachement and validity to their spouse as I did.
Well said, Merlin OS2. Worth frequent reflection.
At the same time, I think the point of the post is that the press was patronizing this victim while ignoring the evil that caused this personal loss. Islamo-fascism has caused thousands of such victims.
Macker
Thanks for the reply and your thoughts.
In my view , perhaps the word patronizing in you post could be exchanged with using. It had the tone of exploitation which is an option I never prefer.
It has as much appeal to me as the press sticking a camera into the face of a mother who just lost a child to a drive by shooting to get her reaction.
Suicide bombers always go for the soft targets, not a mindset that portrays those who believe they are on the right side of a situation.
I am still at a bit of a loss to explain how the world community as a whole can tolerate suicide bombers. As just a pure and simple reasonable humainity situation this should be rejected as an afront to human judgement. However we still report and document it like it is an acceptable condition.
We have NGO’s debating the premise of jailed prisioner treatment , but somehow silent of people killing innocent children , mothers and fathers who just happened to be in blast range.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that they believe that responsible adults will respond to critisism but totally lost causes are beyond repair and not worth commentary. A totally disjunctive view which shouts many words about their real worth on the world stage.
Merlin OS2,
Agree: Change “patronize” to “use.”
The hostage taking, suicide bombings, and using civilian populations as a shield are reported like the weather. The indifference to these repeated atrocities is surreal.
AJ, you don’t seem to get it. As long as we remember 9-11, as long as we remember why we are at war with terrorists, the left has nothing to offer us. They tell us that the reason they don’t want us wiretapping overseas calls is because some “American” might be on the other end. The tell us they are protecting our civil rights not to have the government spy on our private lives. It’s been five years since 9-11 and to the left, since we have not been attacked again, it is time to moveon. They tell us that it is not that the administration has been doing all it can to prevent another 9-11 but rather that the administration is wrong headed in thinking the terror threat to all of us is as great as the administration claims.
The left knows that the American people, when asked who protects them better, will not chose the left. So they must minimize the danger. That is the only way they can regain power. If 9-11 still matters, they will lose again.
What kind of people would want to gain power by making us forget 9-11? What kind of people would want to weaken, not strengthen our defenses? People who do not have our best interest at heart, but are so power hungry they will do anything to regain that power. By their mere actions we must awaken to the fact that they should never be allowed positions of power again.
Americans are war weary. All they read and see on the evening news is the bad (if it bleeds, it leads philosophy) and none of the good. The left knows Americans are impatient. They play on that impatience. But we will be hit again, sooner or later. The terrorists are not going to stop their plotting and planning just because we have become a nation of appeasers. It will only make the job of the terrorist easier. And when that happens, I hope that every American once again remembers 9-11, Madrid, Bali, and all the other attacks and says finally “Never Again”. That is when we will see no more of these condenscending articles and when Americans will finally wake up to who it was that protected them and who it was that allowed another terrorist attack to happen.
AJ —
I really find it amazing that anyone would get so exercised about this AP story. I find it hard to believe that AJ himself actually read it, and suspect that other readers/commenters did not either (which would not be terribly surprising, since no link was provided).
The talk of condescension and that the piece is emblematic of liberal bias is absolute rubbish. Some folks need to get a grip on their egos, ids, and etceteras; more than anything, the article appears to be a Rorsharch test, and it looks like not everyone is passing.
I read this condescending article by a professor who called people who support Bush the “benighted masses,” so I wrote a story that I illustrated with links to pictures and articles to show what I thought of him.
Here is the link.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2006/09/leupp-dupe.html
dgf
Actually sometimes we don’t even have to follow to read the stories that links are provided for.
It is a hallmark of adult thinking processes. If you have seen enough examples, you can eventually by inductive logic almost write the story yourself without having to deal with the actual prose.
When you have seen enough hatchet jobs, little is added to the reference base of your knowledge that the relevant quotes don’t suitably express.
My impression is some were commenting moreso on the generalities of this type of article rather than the specifics.
Take from it what you will, just offering a different view.