Sunday, September 10, 2006

Reader mailbag - "But Lieberman IS 'moderate!' the Media says so!"


This is representative of the feedback to today's cartoon about Joe Lieberman and the mainstream media:

By candor do you mean your opinion?---no humor?

Most people do not want a time table to pull out of Iraq.The people who are against privitization of SS don't have an alternative solution.Most people don't want to raise taxes to supprt universal health care.I'm sure the people you surround yourself with don't think Lieberman is a moderate,but most Americans do,based on facts,not the"mass media".--Is your comic ever humorous?--it so one sided.

-Steve N.

...And my response...

1. As recently as last month, 57 percent of Americans supported a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
-source

2. The people who are against privatization of Social Security DO have an alternative solution: it's called Social Security. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. A plurality of the country believed in 2005 that the system wasn't broken, and modest changes to the system, along the lines of the changes made in the '80s, would keep it solvent for generations.
-source

3. Most people do want universal health care, even if it meant raising taxes.
-source

In short, you're wrong on every count -- which leads me to believe that your assessment of the humor in Candorville is probably equally faulty. Thanks for taking the time to write!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent. And just where does this maroon think "most Americans" are getting their "facts," if not from the "mass media?"

Anonymous said...

The Media's so full of it. I can't even watch CNN anymore. Whatever happened to people like Bernard Shaw, who had integrity and intelligence? Now we're left with inarticulate simpletons like Wolf Blitzer, and even more inarticulate pretty faces like Anderson Cooper. They toss around labels like "moderate" and "radical" even when they don't apply to what they're talking about. They don't analyze anything anymore, and when they do you can't trust them, because it's coming from people like Bill O'Reilly instead of people like David Brinkley. I'd rather see Pat Buchanan have his own show on Fox than Bill O'Reilly, because even when I disagree with Buchanan, I never feel like he's lying to me.

The news has gone WAY downhill.

Anonymous said...

Paul, those medical care numbers, are those fees paid by consumers to HMO's? If so, the price tag wouldn't be anywhere near that. The price tag would be the same as it is for Medicare. Remember, we'd be removing the middle man (a middle-man that has to make a profit and therefore jacks up its fees).

As for Social Security, I don't think Greenspan has much credibility. His policies contributed to two unsustainable bubbles (dotcom and housing), and he's got some peculiar ideas about the role of a Fed chairman (preventing "wage inflation" is a highly questionable strategy).

"At least Bush proposed something" doesn't wash in my book, not when the proposal is worse than the "problem." Modest changes would fix the system for another generation at least, which is a reasonable goal. But you won't get that when Congress is run by the party that's been trying since the 1930s to abolish Social Security.

Anonymous said...

But he lies constantly. Yeah, he backs up his statements, but he does so by quoting sources like the "Paris Business Review" which doesn't even exist. When he happens to quote sources that do exist, more often than not, when I watch and manage to find the time to check what he says, I can't find any evidence that he quoted them correctly.

I think O'Reilly relies on us lazy Americans not checking his facts. Same problem I have with Hannity, and on the left with Michael Moore.

Anonymous said...

Perfect response (to that lame letter) Darrin!

Truth can afford to be simple.

It's the lies that "supporters" feel the need to pump up with useless jibberish.

-ZW