Battle of the Bilge

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Green Day, American Idiot

A Book Worth Reading

In researching the phenomena of political discourse and stretching of the truth, I came across a book released in June of 2009 that contains an amazingly insightful narrative about the current state of affairs. Written by Esquire magazine’s Charles P. Pierce, the short book lays out a history of ‘American Cranks’ and argues that what was once an intrinsically useful and very American concept of the ‘Crank’ has morphed into a dangerous global marketplace where ideas are accepted as truth due to their exposure to mass media.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free is equally harsh on the left and the right side of extremist commentary, although most cases brought up as examples can be thought of as right wing issues due to the nature of the mass media today. Pierce pieces together the story of the founding fathers and their intention to make America a land of free expression and thought, and argues that in our early years it was this welcoming of ‘out there’ ideas that helped us launch innovation in science, commerce and industry that vaulted us past other nations in the world. The problem with today’s media, in Pierce’s view, is that the ideas that the Cranks (a term used in a humorous and at times endearing manner) don’t have the societal checks and balances that were in place in a less instantaneous world. Ideas were vetted and argued on a small scale through various institutions and groups. The ones that were truly crazy did not gain significant traction while the ones that led to breakthroughs both technically and socially were then presented on a national stage.

Today we don’t have that community on a local scale and due to talk radio, cable news and the insufferable implications of instant communication via email, internet and especially social web platforms. A blog post and a group of followers can thrust any idea into the mainstream if there’s enough interest and it confirms peoples ways of thinking. Two excellent ideas are presented in the book. One of them is Pierce’s own and the other he sites from Andrew Cline of Washington University in St. Louis and both are excellent summaries of the problems with mass media.

The Three Great Premises

Pierce lays out the Three Great Premises that drive today’s political news stories (which he states observantly are more entertainment than actual news):

The First Premise – Any theory is valid if it moves units.
The Second Premise – Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough
The Third Premise – Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

There is so much truth to this theory that I’m inclined to doubt it just because of how fervently I believe it.

Andrew Cline’s Rules for Modern American Pundits

Cited in the book is another insightful theory that can be seen as a perfect description of today’s hyper partisanship. While it certainly does not describe all political pundits, it does help reinforce the idea of the entertainment centric version of most national level media figures. Cline’s rules are as follows:

1. Never be dull
2. Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity
3. The American public is stupid; treat them that way
4. Always ignore the facts and the public record when it is convenient to do so

As we celebrate more than a year of this blog, the daily lack of fact based media certainly seems to support this model. While I personally reject the notion that the American public is stupid with as much energy as I can muster, it is clear that some members of the media rely on this assumption.

Email Response

Not all email forwards or inquiries into Battle of the Bilge are presented here on the blog. A good deal of them don’t fit the model of military based interests, so I handle them on a case by case basis, providing answers and information back to MOAA members as best I can. This morning in response to a debunking that I did on a particularly inaccurate email forward regarding an immigrant in Florida supposedly with 8 kids and a $144,000 per year government subsidy, I received the following response (MOAA member’s name withheld):

Thanks for giving me the straight poop regarding the information forwarded to you by me. Too bad people who compose these messages cannot stick to the truth. There is enough truth available that can be communicated regarding the matter discussed in the message without spreading outright lies.

That is the best summary and statement about email forwards I’ve seen in a while, and could have been the forward to this book. It also supports my opposition to the idea that the American public is stupid. At least I know MOAA members aren’t…

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