This article first appeared in the Algemeiner on April 23, 2013. You can read the follow up there now: “A Campaign of Willful Blindness on Terrorism.” The Boston Marathon bombing provoked enactment of what has emerged, since 9/11, as a ritual of political theater refined even beyond its long history of performance. Even while law […]
The MSNBC Bent vs the FOX News Bias
. You hear it a lot. MSNBC is the liberal Fox News. No. It’s not. This is just one more variation of false equivalency, the inability to make acute judgments amid the buffeting winds of so many competing claims, the warp of reason by the gravitational pull of all those massive subjectivities. MSNBC has a bent. […]
Mainstreaming Bias
Among the most common complaints of those at the political edges – those on left or right who perceive themselves not to hold the reigns of institutional power – is that the mainstream media, along with other power centers, shapes our perceptions. It shapes and distorts our perception of reality in varied ways, including selection […]
Circumcision Cuts Both Ways (Ay, there’s the rub)
Circumcision has been in the news lately. (What makes it “news.”) More precisely, it is anti-circumcision sentiment that has been in the news. The issue is going to be on the ballot in San Francisco in November and was due to be considered in Santa Monica, California until the measure was withdrawn due to controversy. […]
The Prejudice against Bias
The other day ShrinkWrapped mused a bit about the nature and effect of our human biases in the political sphere, and offered, among other thoughts, that his desire to check them in himself is a reason that he engages with me in our Open Mind series. He also thinks that the challenges of strong argument […]