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Heh, yeah, P&T's show is never about
being a balanced look at the issues. It's presenting their opinion (which,
usually, is a good opinion). However, the issues they take on are
generally conventional wisdom issues. Things that a significant portion of
the population believes. The show is about debunking those notions.
They're generally things about which a lot has already been published, so
there's little need to present the "other side." They usually are the
other side.
So, yeah, the show is totally biased, and I
think they're pretty up front about that. :-)
Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 12:08
PM
Subject: Re: [Eco] BS on the BS
On Jan 30, 2007, at 3:12 AM, Rick Castello wrote:
[John Cooper
wrote:]
BTW, Penn Jillette is also a research
fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think
tank which
publishes policy papers and press releases to
further their agenda.)
<snip>
While
I've heard the term conservative used as a dirty curse
word
before (and liberal!), I've never heard the word libertarian
used
with such distaste before!
These
were not meant as dirty curse words, I only repeated this phrase to point out
how P&T's sources are all from one corner of the issue. I would be just as
alarmed (and I hope I would have used similar wording, though it seems to have
backfired) if all their data came from left-wing policy institutes that exist
to further their own agenda. Sorry that I didn't make that clear.
I actually agree with many of the Cato Institute's policies. I wouldn't
be surprised if some people think of me as a social libertarian. I didn't mean
those phrases to look defamatory, just repetitive, to get my point across. I
was hoping for a few chuckles, really. Guess I failed in the message.
Perhaps my mistake while watching P&T's show was in assuming
that it included an attempt to gather data in an unbiased fashion. I realize
now that they are actually just, um, having fun entertaining people with their
show, and trying to spread their own gree-grees. At least they got me looking
closely at the arguments for and against recycling, and investigation is a
good thing.
If P&T had been more clear up front, and told their audience that
practically all their support for their argument against recycling were going
to come from political policy institutes, I would feel less swindled in the
end. The fact that I had to dig for their sources, and that they gathered
those sources from a small bandpass in the political spectrum indicates to me
that P&T knew what they doing, and didn't want the viewers to catch on
before they were sucked in to P&T's meme.
:-j
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