alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

May 28, 2007

Big Fat Hippie Watch

by AltHippo @ 6:00 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

About a year ago I was at a screening of “Why We Fight,” a political documentary looking at that impulse that makes us want to blow the crap out of other countries. In back of me was Joe Klein, yes that Joe Klein, who kept muttering “He’s just saying the same thing over and over again.” In some ways this says something about Klein, who may not have a taste for political documentaries outside of the variety that you’d see on the History channel.

It’s also may say something about the journo-pundit class here in DC. They seem to have reached a consensus about a vast segment of such films: that they’re lefty agitprop. In particular, Michael Moore’s films are egregiously fat and badly dressed agitprop.

So, it didn’t surprise me when I saw Klein write this: (emphasis mine)

The New York Times does some actual reporting on the health care system in Cuba. This doesn’t mean that the current U.S. system is at all tolerable. We need a universal system, and now. (Regular Swampland readers know that I favor the individual mandate, community rated system that Senator Ron Wyden has proposed.) But the Times does expose Michael Moore’s stunt for what it was: propaganda.

Moore has a tendency to push people’s buttons. But his movies tend to be factual. So, if you believe that the facts themselves have a liberal bias, then Moore’s work is propaganda.

But, here, Klein goes beyond saying that he thinks Moore is a propagandist. He’s saying that through “actual reporting” the NYT demonstrates that he’s a propagandist. The article, however, never uses that term, nor demonstrates anything beyond the notion that people in Cuba have the same life expectancy as those of us in the US. And, doesn’t have the horror stories that you hear about here when people can’t afford health care and die as a result.

The point here is not to beat up on Klein. He’s representative of a type that you find around here. I’m suggesting that the bias isn’t personal, it’s institutional.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
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