Reply #96: I tend to agree with you

[zipplewrath]

Frum was sniffing around some good points, but the person making them was basically hypocritical for advocating them. He was part of "the problem" for much of his professional career. Ask him about Willey Horton and get back to us on "adult discussion".

That said, I thought Rachel was a bit back on her heals at first. To some extent she was in a tough position of not wanting to go off on a "guest", but also try to control the show a bit.

There has been a loss of "adult conversation" in our political discourse. It can be traced to many things, and one of them is the phenomenon of "entertainment news". Jon Stewart and SNL are fun, but they are not a replacement for more serious, thoughtful, and respectful discourse. Alternately, it was the media's attempt at "objectivity" which the right wing/conservatism used to their advantage to undermine intelligent discourse. Their attacks on education and reasoning (reality based thinking as a perjorative) was so outrageous that it was worthy of derision. But objective news shows tried to show deference, even to the absurd. In the name of objectivity, some highly accomplished academic would find themselves being placed on some equal footing with the political hack/surrogate of the day. This all came to a peak with the advent of Rush and Fox and all of the "opinion" shows which are nothing more than "propoganda" shows. But somehow the left is suppose to not participate in this area of public discourse.

Frum tried to do to Rachel what Stewart did to Tucker Carlson and company. The problem is, Stewart was in a position to make such a claim. He's a comedian saying "look, don't look to me as standard of discourse. I'm SUPPOSED to be funny and light weight. You're passing yourself off as serious discourse.". Frum on the other hand, was a guy that participated in the distruction of "adult political discourse" and is now somehow trying to climb on a high horse. And do it I might add with someone who could think her way around him on her worst day.