You have to see this ridiculous snippet from Tim Graham at the National Review's blog. It speaks volumes, and loudly:
On the occasion of the final episode of NBC's Will & Grace, Katie Couric insisted, "on a serious note," that it's one of her daughter's favorite shows, and it's so important to teach tolerance of "people who are different" at a "very early age." Anyone who expected a fair and balanced anchorwoman at CBS on the hot-button social issues, shred your illusions now.
Apparently, if you think tolerance is important, you can't be "fair and balanced". And the alternative is...what? That if someone thinks it's important to teach people to be intolerant at an early age, that person would be "fair and balanced"? Does one have to be in favor of treating gays badly in order to be "fair and balanced"? I think it's fair to say that anyone who would take such an idiotic position is unbalanced.
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For everyone, "fair and balanced" means "only moderately differing from my views" and/or "having no views at all". How can you expect ANYONE to admit he considers HIS OWN views to be not "fair and balanced"?
Roman wrote:
For everyone? Not for me. I would not consider a news program that only presented my views to be fair and balanced (not that it's likely to happen in this universe anyway). I don't think everyone is that intellectually dishonest, just most people. And it's certainly fair to condemn those who are.
It's my understanding that Ms. Couric will be reading from the teleprompter. Like all news readers - eh - anchors. Network news, thankfully, is still only 1/2 hour and unlike Faux News & CNN doesn't get constantly interject their agenda and spin it at fair & balanced news.
Ms Couric has been getting slammed for that comment by a lot of folks. It would be terribly funny if it wasn't so sad. Especialy since I consider "tolerance" to be ridiculous. Acceptance is a much better way to go.
On the note of "fair and balanced" news. I just want the news without anyones bloody opinion. When I want opinion I listen to talk radio or watch talk tee vee. News should just, bloody well, be news.
I believe the fair and balanced position would be to have no opinion at all. You don't have to be either in favor of tolerance or in favor of intolerance. You can also have no opinion, which is what you usually want out of a news reporter. Not in this case though. I want a bias in favor of tolerance, of course.
Ed:
sorry, I understood the phrase wrong. I thought "fair and balanced" meant "not extreme, not mad, not irrational". Of course, you're right.
I seems that "fair and balanced" now means "extreme right-wing biased". I've had step-in-laws tell me that tolerance is the cause of our societal ills (the gay marriage fight, War on Christmas, etc), and that god-fearing-christians are being denied their rights (to opress everyone else?). They further claimed that intolerance is not the opposite of tolerance, I think because they want to avoid being labeled intolerant. I'm not certain, but I think this very thinking is espoused by Focus on the Family.
Rod just nailed it on the head. "Fair and balanced" is merely Double-Speak for all things right-wing.
Does anyone recall a song from "South Pacific"?
---- "You've got to be carefully taught" ----
The great thing about this is how low the bar is set in the first place. "Tolerance" is passive--as Treban notes, "acceptance" is the real deal. So if passive tolerance--an attitude that allows you to say "eh" when you find out someone's gay--is not "fair and balanced," then the real "fair and balanced" reaction to someone being gay is intolerance. OMG LOOK AT THE HOMO, from the mouths of babes!
I don't know that I agree with the downgrading of tolerance as somehow fake or unimportant. When it comes to my gay friends, I certainly would prefer acceptance to tolerance. I would love to live in a world where the fact that someone is gay garners a reaction akin to finding out that they don't like sushi - an indifferent shrug because it simply doesn't matter. But in a world where humans invent disagreements and chop ourselves up into groups on the flimsiest of pretenses, I don't really think that's likely. Homophobia will never be eliminated entirely, and it's too much to ask that everyone jettison their moral views and find homosexuality acceptable. For those people, I will happily settle for tolerance - you don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, and you don't have to endorse it, just don't use the power of the state to coerce or punish.
There are lots and lots of human behaviors that I don't accept, but happily tolerate. I think men who go to prostitutes are pathetic losers, for example, but I'll defend their right to do so and push for the legalization of the exchange. I don't have to accept it, but I do have to tolerate it because my principles demand it. Tolerance isn't a bad thing, and it's not just something we have to settle for.
Ed, I'm not dismissing tolerance--"you don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, and you don't have to endorse it, just don't use the power of the state to coerce or punish" is an attitude we need more of in American society. All I'm saying is that it's a remarkably passive stance to be against, as Tim Graham's remarks are. Tolerance is not fake or unimportant--but it's a passive stance, saying "you do what you want and I won't interfere." Graham's take on "fair and balanced" means that (by his view) he should interfere, Katie Couric should interfere, and the rest of us should interfere too. Intolerance is an active stance (as you say, it amounts to "treating gays badly"), and demanding it of our news anchors under the name of "fair and balanced" is ridiculous.
This ommits completely the problem of women selling their bodies.
Roman wrote:
I don't see that as any more of a problem than anyone else selling their body, and it's done in a thousand different ways. A professional football player sells his body and so does a ditch digger and a construction worker. The prostitute owns her body and can choose to sell it if she wants to. Now, I certainly wish that no woman ever made that choice, and if there were fewer pathetic losers in the world there wouldn't be a market for it. But from a legal standpoint, there isn't any real distinction between someone selling their body for sex and selling it for labor. As long as it involves consenting adults, the law should have little to say about it. Again, this is an example of the difference between tolerance and acceptance. I don't like prostitution. I wish no one chose to go to prostitutes and I wish no one chose to be one. But I have no legitimate authority to do anything about it and they each have a right to engage in it, so I must, and should, tolerate it.
What about immigrant women prostituting because of poverty, or being forced to do so by thugs? This is a significant problem in Europe.
Roman wrote:
On the former, I don't think the "immigrant women" has anything to do with it, but people have to do things to escape poverty all the time. A coal miner gives up his body to avoid poverty, as do factory workers and laborers of all types. We all work to avoid poverty and some people work at jobs they hate for that reason. As for the latter, if anyone is forced to do anything by someone else, that is both wrong and illegal, and should be.