neocon's Journal: Open Question: Who's winning the culture wars?

Well, some amount of buzz has surrounded Brian Anderson's recent piece on South Park Republicans and the state of the culture wars in City Journal (also reprinted in the Wall Street Journal).

Anderson writes:

"The left's near monopoly over the institutions of opinion and information -- which long allowed liberal opinion makers to sweep aside ideas and beliefs they disagreed with, as if they were beneath argument -- is skidding to a startlingly swift halt. The transformation has gone far beyond the rise of conservative talk radio, which, ever since Rush Limbaugh's debut 15 years ago, has chipped away at the power of the New York Times, the networks and the rest of the elite media to set the terms of the nation's political and cultural debate. Almost overnight, three huge changes in communications have injected conservative ideas right into the heart of that debate. Though commentators have noted each of these changes separately, they haven't sufficiently grasped how, taken together, they add up to a revolution. No longer can the left keep conservative views out of the mainstream or dismiss them with bromide instead of argument. Everything has changed."

This is certainly true, as far as it goes. A lot of the energy and enthusiasm in our culture is indeed starting to lean in the right (and Right) direction these days. But Jonah Goldberg over at National Review warns against being too triumphalist, as these small steps in the right direction are still dwarfed by the old elite culture with it's ingrained biases (CBS News, the least well-off of the broadcast news outfits, still has more viewers than all of cable news put together, for example). He writes:

"Think about it: If we'd really won a culture war -- with all of the aggrandizement of territory implied by such a term -- wouldn't our troops be raising our flags in a few more enemy forts? Sure, we've mounted a few heads on a few pikes. But Phil Donahue did most of his damage 20 years ago. By the time he suited up for MSNBC, he was less a formidable culture warrior and more like one of those WWI veterans who sits outside the VFW talking about putting the kibosh on the Kaiser. And, sure, David Brooks now writes for the New York Times, and hooray for that. But he's still the "house goy" over there, ideologically speaking. Meanwhile, I don't see Harvard, Yale, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Hollywood, the Episcopal Church, or the Courts, getting demonstrably more conservative.

Which brings me back to Harrington's pie. If conservatives have such a lock on the culture these days, as Al Gore, Al Franken, and others keep insisting, why don't we just switch sides? The Left can have Fox News, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, the lavish offices of National Review and The Weekly Standard, as well as Sean Hannity's and Rush Limbaugh's airtime. The gangs at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation will clear out their desks, give John Podesta the code to the Xerox machine, and tell Eric Alterman where in the neighborhood to buy the best gyros.

In return, we'd like the keys to the executive bathrooms at ABC, CBS and NBC, please. We'd like the cast of Fox and Friends to take over The Today Show's studios ("and tell Couric to take her Cabbage Patch dolls with her!"). We want Ramesh Ponnuru as the editor of the New York Times and Rich Lowry can have his choice between Time and Newsweek. Matt Labash will get Esquire and let's set up Rick Brookhiser at Rolling Stone (that way they won't have to change their drug coverage). Andrew Sullivan can have The New York Times Magazine. Robert Bork will be the dean of the Yale Law School and the faculty of Hillsdale and Harvard will simply switch places. Cornell West will be airbrushed out of The Matrix and Harvey Mansfield will take his place (though convincing him say anything other than "you call that a haircut?" will be hard). NRO will get the bazillions of dollars spent by the editors of Salon and Slate, and those guys can start paying their authors with chickens and irregular tube socks made in Albania.

In other words, talk to me about how we've won the culture war when Dinesh D'Souza wins a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and Maya Angelou has to blog about it because no one at the New York Times will run her pieces.

I guess I fall somewhere in between. It's not time to declare victory -- a lot of progress would have to be made before the `culture' as laid out by media and other elites is anything but to the left of the mainstream here in America, but I'm happy with where the momentum is right now. What do y'all think?

(PS: I'm back. Or at least I intend to be, albeit perhaps with a slightly slower posting rate than in the past. So if you've seen me post recently, here's your confirmation, and if you haven't, well maybe you're finding out here.)

Are there only two sides?

[turg]

Conservatives see the media establishment as a left-leaning group, but the media establishment doesn't see itself that way. There is a movement of conservative talk radio and tv that seeks to present "our side" but the established media doesn't have an "our side" -- they are in the position they are in by default, not intention. Their arguments against the idea of "media bias" run along the lines of: "You've got to be kidding, we don't have time to organize a uniformly biased media, we're just trying to get

Re:Are there only two sides?

[neocon]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that there is an organized conspiracy of media bias. The truth is much less sinister, but much more pervasive: the media tends to hire `their type of people', and lives in a world (Manhattan, LA, and DC) where they are effectively isolated from the positions of the vast majority of Americans.

This results in such situations as Pauline Kael of the New Yorker remarking in surprise after Nixon beat McGovern ``I don't see how Nr. Nixon can have won. I don't know anyone w

Re:Are there only two sides?

[ces]

The funny thing is much of the so-called "progressive" left would claim much of the mainstream media like ABC, CBS, NBS, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, or even NPR, or The New Republic had a conservative bias, or at least a pro-establishment, pro-corprate, bias.

Basicly they see anyone to the right of them as being on the right. Much as many conservatives would consider anyone to the left of them as being on the left.

So no, of course the media does not consider

Re:Are there only two sides?

[ceejayoz]

Nor is this a vague `claim' of media bias. The effects of this bias are often directly and objectively quantifiable. Daniel Bradley and Jonathan Ma, for instance, did a recent study in which they cataloged every description of ten liberal and ten conservative Senators in six years of New York Times and Washington Post coverage.

Their findings? Conservative Senators were identified as such when quoted three times as often as liberals, who were often presented as `moderate' or `mainstream' in their views.

Li

Re:Are there only two sides?

[neocon]

Debunked? I don't think so -- the data Brady and Ma used is freely available, and can be easily reproduced by anyone with a Lexis/Nexis account. Several have already done so, and their work itself was a confirmation of earlier work by Bernard Goldberg and others.

So if by `debunked' you mean someone has shown flaws in their data or methods, well, sorry, no dice.

If, on the other hand, you mean that some people argue that the media's (here objectively demonstrated) tendency to label conservatives as s

Re:Are there only two sides?

[ceejayoz]

So if by `debunked' you mean someone has shown flaws in their data or methods, well, sorry, no dice.

The data is irrefutable. The methods aren't - e.g. you'll get different results depending on which senators you pick to analyze. There's also the chance that the most conservative Senators are simply more conservative than the most liberal are liberal. After all, the country does have a bit of a conservative slant - it's harder for a "hardcore" or "highly partisan" liberal to get elected than it is for a

Re:Are there only two sides?

[neocon]

The analysis of which Senators are more conservative or which are more liberal was left to a strict analysis of voting records performed by a non-partisan study. To suggest that liberals might be `less liberal' than conservatives are conservative is thus to entirely miss the point -- there is a spectrum here, and both ends of the spectrum were analyzed.

And you know what the analysis shows? It shows that the press are themselves much closer to one end of the spectrum than the other -- in other words th

Re:Are there only two sides?

[ceejayoz]

To suggest that liberals might be `less liberal' than conservatives are conservative is thus to entirely miss the point -- there is a spectrum here, and both ends of the spectrum were analyzed.

Ah, but if the ends of the spectrum aren't the same length from the center, such an analysis is useless.

but you can no longer argue that they aren't biased or that they don't hold such a position.

Certainly they're biased, but it's not necessarily a liberal bias. Perhaps they're moderate biased and the average l

Re:Are there only two sides?

[neocon]

Let's look at what you're saying here, because in this post in particular some of your more odd assumptions come to light:

Ah, but if the ends of the spectrum aren't the same length from the center, such an analysis is useless.

And pray tell, what would ``the center'' mean to you if not the midpoint between the ends of the spectrum? If you would define ``the center'' as some arbitrary point which you consider moderate, you're showing exactly the same sort of bias which Brady and Ma demonstrate that

My take

[Crazieeman]

Half asleep, bear with me :)

I still think we have a long ladder to climb regarding the culture wars in general. With marriage still being attacked and on the decline, increasing attacks on christianity which of course will become glaringly apparent as Christmas draws near, and the continual drumbeat of implementing "newspeak" (Political correctness), we are certainly not making any sort of drastic headway.

However, with the cancellation of several shows that have all been touted as entertaining, informa

Re:My take

[neocon]

That's pretty much my take as well -- we have a long way to go before we even reach parity, and there is a lot of cultural damage to recover from, but for the first time in a while, I'm pretty happy with where the momentum is. :-)