NPR Check are really heading out to the liberal fringes!
In one of their latest posts, they comment on a commentary from NPR Weekend Edition essayist Diane Roberts. I have issues to take up with her too! But first, to NPR Check.
They end their commentary by saying...
"...Really the offense of calling the Scots election Floridaesque is that it belittles the accomplishment of the Bushists in Florida. Scotland was a bungle, a snafu - Florida was a democracide."
What happened in Scotland was not a mere bungle or snafu. I was blogging this live at the time, the posts are still here for anyone to read. AT THE TIME, I dreaded to think that we were going to have an electoral incident like the Florida "hanging chads" debacle, but as the night and day wore on, it became clear to me that this was the British equivalent of "hanging chads".
However much extreme liberals like to say that the election was stolen from Al Gore, what happend back then, CANNOT be changed now. It is history, consign it to there!
And in terms of the size of the bungle, the hanging chads debacle only affected one state in an election that was run nationwide. However much you tabloidize it, it did not affect the 49 other states, because it did not HAPPEN in those states. The Scottish Spoilt Ballots debacle affected the WHOLE Scottish Parliamentary Election! We will have no idea how those 142,000 spolit ballots would have affected the election had they not been spoilt. And perhaps, it's better for our collective sanity, that we don't.
Now, for Diane Roberts!
I understand she is in the UK for the summer, and I understand that she is a Florida native. She felt offence that the Scottish debacle should even be compared to the Flordia one. As she herself described it on her commentary, "...it has become a byword for Electile Dysfunction!", primarily by the 24/7/365 media that we have in this world today. Diane, wake up and smell it! She tried to turn it against us by saying "...we faced our voting demons, we got help!".
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK THEY'RE DOING NOW???
The real offence you should be feeling, is that something as bad as the hanging chads debacle even HAPPENED in the first place. By taking out your anger on the comparisons, you are doing nothing more than defending the debacle! Hey, it might have been a debacle, but it was our debacle and don't you ever compare your piddling little incident which will only affect 6 million people to something which affected the entire world! is the attitude I got from the commentary.
Diane, if BBC analysts were comparing it to Florida's hnaging chads, then there IS a comparison to be made. LIVE WITH IT!
Now, back to NPR Check...
If you find her commentaries out of place, why don't you have a go at the commentaries and shows of rabid conservatives, such as Rush "Limburger" Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. THESE are the people you really need to be commenting on, rather than a public service like NPR.
But as usual, it's one rule for the public broadcasters and no rules for the commercial ones. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. IF you are going to hold public broadcasters like NPR, CBC and the BBC to one high standard, then you MUST hold the commercial broadcasters to the SAME high standard. Otherwise, don't bother.
I thought I'd comment out of courtesy. I'm not an extreme liberal, I'm not a "liberal" a all--I am a leftist, progressive, secular humanist.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me that you don't rebut any of the facts that I have presented (again and again in my past posts) of the intentionally stolen Florida 2000 election (with most of the cited research being done by Greg Palast and Harvard Civil Rights Project).
I'll stand corrected on minimizing the Scots elections (fiasco and debacle would have been correct) but it bears no comparison to the intentionally criminal enterprise of the 2000 elections in the US.
You can be forgiven for not understanding our bizarre election system--but it was the national election that was stolen, not just the state of Florida.
I find it sad that you have such little value for historical truth and memory and think people should just get over it...yes, we've been getting over it alright - eight years of criminal goverment featuring war, kidnappings, torture, stripping of civil liberties...etc...God knows what they'll come up with for '08.
Cheers!
To answer your points in reverse order...
ReplyDeleteI write for other websites, other than just my blog. At one of those websites, Transdiffusion, historical accuracy is a must. For me, it's a must as well. As far as memory goes, I followed that election in 2000, just as I have followed every US presidential election since 1984, and I remember the entire debacle, but my strong impression at the time, and it is still mine now, is that no matter who won, the political forces at work were so polarized and opposed, whoever won, the opponent was going to claim foul play. Similar in many ways to the way elections have been fought in Africa and Latin America. And if you seriously think the 2000 election was stolen, then quite honestly, you overlook the smash and grab raid that the Republicans pulled off in 2004. That truly was a stolen election.
As I said earlier, I have been following US presidential elections since 1984, when Ronald Reagan successfully got his second term in office. I do understand the system, but what I don't understand is why the election is not just a simple highest number of votes wins, with votes cast on paper ballots and the voter puts an X next to the candidate. One of the adages I live by is the old KISS adage. The simpler it is, the better.
As far as not rebutting your points, I have not seen the research you cite, so from a proffesional standpoint, I have no opinion on it. My opinions come from my own memory of the story that I followed back in 2000 and 2001. If I felt like it,I could easily find the news stories that are stored on the CNN and BBC news sites.
Finally, with regards to political standpoints, you say you're not liberal, but you are on the political left. I call a spade a spade, and I do it from my own perculiar 'viewpoint', hence the name of the blog. Politically and spiritually, I am centred. I have opinions that stretch across the political sprectrum, but ultimately I am an animal of the political centre, which in the US, seems to be a pretty empty highway.