Andrew Sullivan calls it quits … for now

Longtime blogger Andrew Sullivan with The Dish, and previously with Time, The Atlantic and other publications, has decided to stop blogging for the immediate future after 15 years of commentary on the Interwebs. He did it with a heart-felt message to his readers, concluding:

I want to thank you, personally, for the honesty and wisdom of so many of your threads and conversations and intimacies, from late-term abortions and the cannabis closet to eggcorns and new poems, from the death of pets, and the meaning of bathroom walls to the views from your windows from all over the world. You became not just readers of the Dish, but active participants, writers, contributors. You trusted us with your own stories; you took no credit for them; and we slowly gathered and built a readership I wouldn’t trade for anyone’s.

You were there before I met my husband; you were there when I actually got married; and when I finally got my green card; and when Dusty – who still adorns the masthead – died. I can’t describe this relationship outside the rather crude term of “mass intimacy” but as I write this, believe me, my eyes are swimming with tears.

How do I say goodbye? How do I walk away from the best daily, hourly, readership a writer could ever have? It’s tough. In fact, it’s brutal. But I know you will understand. Because after all these years, I feel I have come to know you, even as you have come to see me, flaws and all. Some things are worth cherishing precisely because they are finite. Things cannot go on for ever. I learned this in my younger days: it isn’t how long you live that matters. What matters is what you do when you’re alive. And, man, is this place alive.

When I write again, it will be for you, I hope – just in a different form. I need to decompress and get healthy for a while; but I won’t disappear as a writer.

But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.

As a person who has read his blogging intermittently the last five or so years, I will say that Sullivan was his strongest when he was actually commenting on the news of the day, and his essays for The Atlantic and The Daily Beast were some of his finest work. At times, his blog, which often included up 20 or 30 or more posts in a single day, often seemed more like a news aggregate than a bona fide web log of thought and opinion, so I am happy to see him returning to the land of long-form writing, which I think was his best medium in the first place, and I’m eager to see what he can offer by way of a book down the road. For sure,whatever his method of choice away from the blog, I’ll be reading.

The ‘non-offending’ pedophiles

Andrew Sullivan from over at The Dish received an anonymous email from a self-proclaimed pedophile who said that while he has never acted on his attraction to children and is “committed to never doing so,” his sexual persuasion, like that of his “non-offending” pedophiles, is nonetheless innate.

Sullivan calls the following a “predicament” for these so-called Virtuous Pedophiles, which is a quote from the group’s website:

We do not choose to be attracted to children, and we cannot make that attraction go away. But we can resist the temptation to abuse children sexually, and many of us present no danger to children whatsoever. Yet we are despised for having a sexual attraction that we did not choose, cannot change, and successfully resist. This hatred has its consequences; many of us suffer from depression and sometimes even commit suicide. Paradoxically, the hatred actually increases the risk of child sexual abuse by making us afraid to admit our condition to others, thus discouraging us from seeking treatment. More of us could lead productive, happy, law-abiding lives if we could open up to people who would treat us not as monsters but as human beings with an unfortunate burden to bear.

Of course, we can all be glad that they don’t act on their attractions, but I see a couple things that are problematic.

First, we have fairly strong evidence to suggest that sexual orientation is genetic, and this makes sense since we see same-sex — well, sex — in other parts of the animal kingdom. Pedophilia, however, is classified as a psychosexual disorder that usually grows out of any number of types of abuse or neglect in a person’s past:

The underlying cause of pedophilia is unclear. Although biological abnormalities such as hormone imbalance may contribute to the disorder in some individuals, biological factors have not been proved as causes. In many cases pedophilic behaviour appears to be associated with sexual abuse or neglect experienced during childhood and with stunted emotional or psychological development. Research also has indicated that boys who were sexually abused are more likely to become pedophiles or sex offenders. − Encyclopaedia Britannica

Second, can a person really be described as “virtuous” for merely refusing to succumb to their desire to have sex with children? Modern humans are generally attracted to money, and from our youth we learn that if we have enough of it, we can buy things that can make us happy, even if its a shallow form of happiness. Do we call people who don’t rob banks or commit fraud virtuous? Every day, humans choose not to act on their desire to sleep with their friends’ wives. They have no control over who they are attracted to; yet would we call these people virtuous for not committing adultery when every fiber in their loins tells them otherwise? More than a few Catholic priests are apparently attracted to children. I realize some of them may have acted on it, but surely many closeted priestly pedophiles have successfully eschewed their longing for children. What about people who are into bestiality or forced sexual slavery? Are these folks just virtuous if they don’t act on their morally reprehensible inclinations?

I realize this group of pedophiles describes their plight as an “unfortunate burden to bear,” but people refuse to act on their desires every day for the betterment of society as a whole, and we don’t necessary applaud them for it or bestow them with anymore respect. It’s simply part of being a responsible adult. We all bear burdens.

It’s like the old schtick from Chris Rock about parenthood:

You know the worst thing about niggas? Niggas always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, “I take care of my kids.” You’re supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? “I ain’t never been to jail!” What do you want, a cookie?! You’re not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!

Sullivan: ‘The American President’

Really good piece from late last night — er, this morning — from Andrew Sullivan: The American President.

While I don’t agree with Sullivan on everything, I certainly appreciate his writing style and his ability to articulate a unique point of view:

The president’s oration (during his acceptance speech) was almost a summation of his core belief: that against the odds, human beings can actually better ourselves, morally, ethically, materially, and we can do so more powerfully together than alone, and that nowhere exemplifies that endeavor more than America. It was Lincolnian in its cadences, and in some ways, was the final, impassioned, heart-felt rebuke to all those, including his opponent, who tried to portray him as somehow un-American. How deeply that must have cut. How emphatically did he rebut the charge.

What he reminded me of was how deeply American he actually is – how this country’s experiment truly is in diversity as well as democracy. And his diversity is not some cringe-worthy 1990s variety. It is about being both white and black, both mid-Westernand Hawaiian, both proudly American and yet also attuned to the opinion of mankind.

As for the next four years, there is time enough for that. But I stand by these words. And one felt something tectonic shift tonight. America crossed the Rubicon of every citizen’s access to healthcare, and re-elected a black president in a truly tough economic climate. The shift toward gay equality is now irreversible. The end of prohibition of marijuana is in sight. Women, in particular, moved this nation forward – pragmatically, provisionally, sensibly. They did so alongside the young whose dedication to voting was actually greater this time than in 2008, the Latino voters who have made the current GOP irrelevant, and African-Americans, who turned up in vast numbers, as in 2008, to put a period at the end of an important sentence.

That sentence will never now be unwritten. By anyone.

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Sullivan’s ‘moral case’ for Obama

Andrew Sullivan wrote a blog post recently outlining what he feels is the “moral case” for Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney based on Obama’s stance on health care, and Romney’s apparent position on torture and what he may do (We don’t really know) regarding the potential for a nuclear Iran. Based on these issues, as well as the GOP‘s “institutional bigotry” toward the LGBT community, Sullivan, a well-known conservative on most issues, announced that he was withholding his support for Romney. Much of his argument in the post hinges around health care. He concludes:

On the universality of access to healthcare, on torture, and on pre-emptive war, my conscience therefore requires me to withhold support for the Republican candidate. I disagree with him on many prudential policy grounds – but none reach the level of moral seriousness of the above. Yes, a lot of this comes from my faith in the teachings of Jesus and the social teaching of the Catholic tradition in its primary concern for the poor and weak and the sick – rather than praising, as Romney and Ryan do, the superior morality of the prosperous and strong and healthy. But on all three topics, a purely secular argument also applies, simply based on the core dignity and equality of the human person, and the fragile advances we have made as a civilization against barbarism like torture.

That matters. It matters in a way that nothing else does.

I was particularly struck by the lines I have italicized above. First, the argument that Christianity is a religion for the “poor,” “weak” and “sick” is bullocks.  No one denies that the church, for all of the spiritual and physical harm it has caused humanity in 2,000 years, has contributed its fair share of charities and needy causes. But the central doctrine, that we have a loving father in heaven who will nonetheless exercise his absolute power and sit as a judge on the entire world does not exactly denote a meek and mild deity. Nor will this god exercise his absolute power to heal anyone’s sickness, hunger or poverty. The problem with the entire GOP program is that it assumes that people generally want to be and should be left to their own devices and that God and/or or the church or other nonprofit organizations will come along and meet the needs of local communities. Many churches do help, but they help in spite of their god’s utter silence and impotence: the god that wasn’t there and never will be.

In the above passage, Sullivan appeals to his church’s and his god’s apparently benevolent view of humanity to inform his political stance during this election. I don’t see it that way, but he nonetheless goes on to say that the same position could be held based on a “purely secular argument.” So, I must ask: if a person can arrive at the same conclusion, that the principles for which Obama stands are basically moral independent of religion, what’s stopping him from abandoning religion and embracing those principles, as he says, “based on the core dignity and equality of the human person?” Why drag dogma and doctrine into the equation when he admits that in theory, one could just as well arrive at the same conclusion without assuming at god at all? Sullivan is a sharp guy. I fail to understand how a person of his intelligence and insight finds the need (Perhaps it’s more like a desperate desire) to cling to religion like he does.

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Sullivan in denial on Christ

For on a time when a cardinall Bembus did move a question out of the Gospell, the Pope gave him a very contemptuous answer saying: All ages can testifie enough how profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie. — [[John Bale]], “The Pageant of the Popes,” 1574

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Christians arguing with other Christians about the “true” nature of Jesus and the church always makes for entertaining reading, but even more so when it comes from an openly gay Catholic whose own intellectualism should undercut his own faith in the first place.

In his new essay for Newsweek, “Christianity in Crisis,” Andrew Sullivan says that we should eschew the influence of politics and power that has crept into religion and get back to the “radical ideas” that spring from what Jesus did and said, including loving both our neighbors and enemies, turning the other cheek, giving away all material possessions and loving God the Father, whom Sullivan calls “the Being behind all things.” Presumably, this being is distinct from Jesus, yet Sullivan admits that he believes in the “divinity and resurrection” of Christ. That’s at least two gods in which Sullivan believes. We can imagine that there are three since most Catholics believe in the Hoy Spirit, which, when assembled, they call the Triune. Since the Holy Spirit is really just God the Father in spirit, I don’t really count that, so let’s just go with the two. So, Sullivan believes in two distinct beings, one that came to earth as a human but who was also divine and eventually was resurrected and another god who was behind everything that is. From any monotheistic viewpoint, this is troubling, but this is what every Jesus-as-divine believer must admit, that they believe in two distinct gods. Or not … depending on which verses one reads. Christians often support the Triune business by quoting the John 10:30 line that reads, “I and the Father are one.” Yet, the verse directly before it claims that, “My Father … is greater than all.”

But who knows. And that’s the point. Biblical scholars now have a clearer understanding of which parts of the gospels may be authentic, and in turn, which quotes attributed to Jesus he might have actually uttered (if he existed at all). One thing we do know: the gospels were written decades after the events took place, and there is not one contemporary source that attests to his existence. Further, the non-contemporary, extra-biblical texts that mention Jesus may point to a figure by that name roaming around the desert, but scant references to a Jesus by Josephus or some other early historian is a far cry from evidence that he was supernatural.

Sullivan knows this. He also knows that Jefferson, whom he rallies to the call in defense of Jesus’ simple truths, was not a Christian in any modern sense and rejected Christ as a divine being. On Jefferson, Sullivan declares of the Jeffersonian Bible:

And what he (Jefferson) grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus’ message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle.

While the latter is a clever sentence, Jefferson clearly saw no miracles and was only attempting to get after the rote details of Jesus’ life and the core precepts that he espoused. Jefferson said he was a “real Christian,” but only to the extent that he thought some of Jesus’ words were laudable, and that’s as far as Jefferson was willing to go.

Yet, despite what Sullivan describes as

a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory

he still seems to hold these works in high regard and for reasons that escape comprehension. If he readily admits that the gospels contain embellishments, how is he to trust the parts that he likes? How does he know that those parts — love they neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc. — authentically sprang from the mouth of Jesus and are not creations of equally fallible memories. How does he even know that those high precepts originated with Jesus, or the gospel writers, in the first place, or that most of the key episodes of the New Testament (virgin birth, ascension) were even New Testament constructs.

Indeed, many of the great ideas of Christ predate his uttering them. As for other elements that were likely copied from other religions, here’s a handy guide.

Sullivan conclusion doesn’t get any better. Earlier in his essay, he claims that

The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the  profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?

But the profoundest human questions are quests for knowledge independent of faith or religion. God, in short, is not the author of the questions or the answers. He’s a distraction from them since to assume a god in contemplating these questions makes the calculus even that more convoluted because we must then explain where God came from. The “thirst” that Sullivan no doubts feels in his soul can be rightly explained simply as a thirst for knowledge and truth, and while I have no doubt that Sullivan is a deep thinker, he seems to be also in deep denial. It is hard to tell whether this is out of fear of hellfire or merely out of devotion for the things of faith. If he already admits that the gospels are copies upon copies containing story “told by those with fallible memory” what is stopping him from throwing the whole thing out with the bath water?

Perhaps David Wimberly has it right. Here is part of his comment posted under the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s refutation of Sullivan’s article:

I stopped reading Sullivan some time ago as he continues to position himself as an intellectual but clearly cannot escape the fear from his catholic upbring. I have observed him to simply be a humanist in denial-as in someone guided by human morality-a morality built of our need to coexist.

His flat out refusal to overcome irrational fear of damnation and childish notions of fairy tales and to continually blame the contemporary church for crimes predicted by the reality of what his religion is make him sound more and more shrill in his attempts to square what he thinks is some higher intellect with the absurdity of his faith.

Breivik case: faith vs. political power

Andrew Sullivan, on his blog The Dish, ruminates about the distinction between Christianity and his self-coined word, “Christianism,” in order to defend Christianity from those who use faith for political purposes, as he claims about Anders Breivik:

The core message of  Christianism is, in stark contrast, the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others. And so the notion that Breivik is a “Christian fundamentalist” seems unfair to those genuine Christian fundamentalists who seek no power over others (except proselytizing), but merely seek to live their own lives in accord with a literal belief in the words of the Bible.

… Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon.

Of course, one can’t ignore the “real religious faith” of the 9/11 attackers, in that they believed they would be rewarded for their efforts in heaven (with a slew of virgins no less).

Continue reading

Re: The language of faith (Sullivan)

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan today asked what he considers some poignant questions for believers on the problem of finding ways to make the language of faith, particularly the Christian one, fresh for the modern mind.

As Sullivan, a believer, said:

I think of the term “incarnation” – a word that has come to seem like tired dogma. But what can it possibly mean that God became man? How is that different from God infusing all of us with love and hope and sometimes such overwhelming power that we lose all sense of ourselves? What made Jesus so different, so more remarkable than all the rest of us sons and daughters of God? To non-believers I know this must seem just insane; for those of us trying to get past the staleness of our faith, it’s a pressing challenge.

Sullivan also referenced this video, which the Rev. Paul Zahl of All Saints Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase, Md. spoke on that very topic. Both referenced this quote from Thornton Wilder:

The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem — new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.

So let me understand this correctly. The problem is not the message delivered but how the message is delivered? And who do we think could have possibly been responsible for these defaced and degraded words? Certainly not the unbelievers. It could have only been the people who use such words the most: righteousness, redemption, sin, sacrifice, incarnation, repentance, and the like. I’m not sure what words we could bring to bear to replace or improve on these tried and true truisms.

I don’t think Sullivan’s questions sound insane, and I have often thought about this topic, both as a believer and as a nonbeliever. I think the problem probably goes beyond rhetoric. (Or not, since those who will be taken to belief will believe so long as the language, whatever that may be, and the message inspires or compels them to do so.) For the rest of us, the issue goes beyond mere words because religion, whichever of the big three we choose, has not moved on in hundreds, or at least two cases, thousands of years. While science, astronomy, medicine, biology, physics and astrophysics offers us new wonders on a daily basis, and nature every second if we care to observe it, religion has just the one, for, as the Bible says, the message is the same yesterday, now and forever. I don’t think one has to be very imaginative to realize how that could, indeed, get quite worn out after these 2,000 years of preaching on it with no new information or revelation whatsoever, especially since the information that is allegedly divined appears cobbled together and contradictory by semi-literate folks milling around in the desert, not in China or other areas where people could read. And for those of us (I guess Sullivan isn’t in this category) who haven’t experienced God

infusing all of us with love and hope and sometimes such overwhelming power that we lose all sense of ourselves …

the crisis of faith isn’t just a rhetorical or semantical problem. It’s a real problem.

Oil slick and Obama’s level of fault, or not

Today, as BP engineers are apparently hoping for the best, but not expecting too much, in their numerous attempts to plug the massive oil leak that is daily imperiling our wildlife, salt water and god knows what else, some folks are blaming Obama for the seemingly languid response to the problem, even equating it with Bush’s woefully, and real, inept response to Katrina.

Credit: Getty Images

Peggy Noonan, in a recent Wall Street Journal column, has claimed that

I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill.

And she goes on to ask:

How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We’re plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?

Great questions. But it’s BP’s oil rig, not the government’s. If an Exxon station’s gas pump line, the one that goes to the car, bursts (I’ve been at a station where this has happened), the local Exxon station will come in and, I would hope, reimburse the customer for his troubles (gas-drenched clothes, the extra time and inconveniences, etc.). The local county government or the state will not helicopter in and handle a matter that is the responsibility of a private entity.

We have eight years proof that Bush, and probably Clinton before him, likely paid no attention whatsoever to regulations of oil rigs on the seas, and the current rig in question has been in operation at least since 2002.

Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan, with The Atlantic, recently opined on this topic. First quoting Noonan with:

The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration

And then the clear-eyed Sullivan’s reply:

Seriously? Her evidence for this? She claims the Democrats don’t love him. The latest poll of polls shows over 80 percent support. She claims that he is “weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support.” Really? With unemployment at near record highs after a deep recession, Obama’s approval ratings are stuck just below 50 percent – and have been remarkably stable for months. At this point in his presidency, Obama is about five points more popular than Reagan, who was poised to drop to 37 percent approval by January of 1983. Clinton was lower than Obama in June 1994. In today’s polarized climate and awful economy, Obama is remarkably resilient. He has a favorable rating over 52 percent, and his unfavorable rating is at a six month low of 39 percent. This is Obama’s political end?

The premise of Noonan’s moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand. And if such a technical issue is not resolved by government immediately, it reveals paralyzing presidential weakness and the failure of an entire branch of political philosophy. Again: seriously? It’s Obama‘s fault that under Bush and Cheney, government regulation of oil exploration was so poor and corrupt, corner cutting appears to have been routine? And this, Peggy, is what governments do, even when run by crazy-ass liberals. Governments do not dig for oil; they merely regulate those who dig for oil. That the government failed to do so under the previous administration does not seem to me to be proof that this administration has failed.

SOTU reax

CNN has created an interactive graphic allowing users to view any of 189,577 Twitter comments in response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union from Wednesday. The categories of commentators are “Support Obama,” “Oppose Obama,” “Mixed Reaction,” “Great Speech” and “Obama Too Liberal.”

Also, moveon.org held its first “real time dial test” of the speech, with about 10,000 moveon.org members participating. Understanding that this chart represents progressive reactions, here are those results:

Charting member reactions to SOTU speech

Also, here are some thoughts from The Atlantic’s James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan.

The New York Times chimed in today with its unsigned editorial, lauding Obama as a “gifted orator,” with the ability to “inspire with grand vision and the simple truth frankly spoken,” and here are a some more comments from various luminaries posted by the San Francisco Chronicle:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican
“Today’s announcement is fantastic news for job creation in California. … The Obama administration is strongly supporting California’s high-speed rail project, which is the largest public works project in the nation and will create jobs, save billions of pounds of greenhouse gases and be the first true high-speed rail system to break ground in the nation.”

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena

“As families across the country tighten their belt, we need to do some trimming of the fat in Washington, too. However, I’m going to watch very carefully to make sure that the president lives up to his promise to go through the budget line by line, rather than make across-the-board spending cuts that might do more harm than good to our local and national economies.”

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, Republican

“We want results, not rhetoric. We want cooperation, not partisanship. … All Americans agree we need a health care system that is affordable, accessible and high quality. But most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical care system in the world to the federal government.”

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara

“I commend President Obama for calling for the repeal of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. … We have been actively working on this issue in Congress and are more than ready to work with the president to ensure that this misguided policy is repealed as quickly as possible.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky

“I’m hopeful the administration’s new focus on the economy will lead it to say no to more spending and debt, more bailouts, and more government.”

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez

“(Obama) hit it out of the park. He made it very clear why we’re in this struggle to change the economy – and took the Congress, took the Senate especially, to the woodshed for not getting these things done.”

Boycotting FOX?

I was going to write about something else tonight, namely Andrew Sullivan’s piece on torture appearing in this month’s The Atlantic magazine. I previously read most of it on The Atlantic’s Web site, but I got the hard copy version recently and took the time to re-read it. But I will save that for the next post.

I wanted to address a column by Matthew Cooper on The Atlantic’s Web site (I found the column in the process of looking for the online version of Sullivan’s piece, consequently). Cooper basically makes the case that Obama is not following through with his commitment to reach out to his enemies by snubbing FOX News when he “made the rounds” one recent Sunday on a number of TV news outfits. Coopers says that he

wouldn’t argue that Fox is “fair and balanced.” It’s a conservative news outlet, and to argue that it’s not is ludicrous. That said, there’s obviously a spectrum of bias ranging from the straight-style reporting of a Major Garrett at the White House to the rantings of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, and some anchors are more Foxy than others. I like it when Media Matters for America calls Fox on its bias, although it’s a little bit like calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for being anti-Israeli. — theatlantic.com, Oct. 20, 2009

The spectrum of bias (or, more accurately, a bias inside a full-scale bias) to which Cooper refers is true enough. At once, viewers find the traditional “news anchor” pretending to be “fair and balanced,” while, the clues to the contrary are all around (Here, I reference the documentary “Outfoxed“). At the other end, we find Beck and the maniacal, fear-mongering, nonsensical crew. True also, mediamatters.org isn’t much better; it just exists on the other-other spectrum. Maybe that should read: the other hemisphere.

Cooper goes on to say that for the Obama administration to ignore FOX News “seems small minded.” He then claims many Democrats and independents watch FOX News. I’m not sure about this statement. If Democrats watch it, it’s to find fodder for their blogs or other political discourse; if independents watch it, it’s probably because they’re inwardly Republicans or Libertarians. Or, more simply, those folks watch it to get a laugh or for the sheer entertainment value.

Nonetheless, I disagree that Obama should give it the time of day, however big its audience, which is another of Cooper’s arguments: that FOX News would offer a grand stage for Obama to, perhaps, reach some people he wouldn’t be able to otherwise. He claimed the “Obama charm” would work at FOX and said the president was “better off” for appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” last year.

Cooper then comes to this question:

As for reporters, are we enabling a bad animal by appearing on Fox?

He apparently answers “No.” I answer, “Yes.” His response to the question:

I’d appear on Fox and have many times. I’d do it again. It’s a big audience, and while there’s a range of bias, so what?

So what?!? There’s not just a range of bias (a range within the full-scale bias, as I said before). The station makes a mockery of both words, “fair” and “balanced.” To boycott such a mockery to journalism would be an understandable thing and would, at least, slow the downward progression of the fine institution. The continued agreement of “real” journalists and leaders to appear on the network fuels its fire. If journalists, government officials and advertisers who disagreed with the blatantly weighted approach of FOX News made a concerted effort to refuse to support it, the network would surely feel the effects, in the quality of its on-air product and in its revenue.

To answers Cooper’s final question: the “slippery slope” of boycotting the channel ends with the channel itself. We have no need to boycott The Simpsons or the NFL. Does anyone really think Rupert Murdoch cares one wit about what FOX News or any of his other interests are doing? There’s no need to feel the same way about FOX the major network or FOX Sports or any of the others. For Murdoch, as long as they are making money, it’s all gravy. FOX News, consequently, found a niche in the far right-wing demographic, and its running with the shtick to the detriment of journalism. The other FOX networks aren’t involved in this derailment. I can’t speak for Murdoch’s newspaper interests because I haven’t read them at length.

Another point: the idea that the Obama administration would somehow make inroads with the FOX News viewership is silly. Cooper says:

Wouldn’t the White House be better off flooding Fox with its opinion rather than engaging in a fight with news outlet?

No. Obama isn’t going to gain anything by going into that crossfire. Folks don’t watch FOX News to have their cages rattled or their opinions questioned. They watch it to have their views validated. The typical FOX News viewer is an inert, immovable object politically, hanging on the edge of her recliner, clinging to Beck’s or O’Reilly’s every utterance. They question nothing and let others think for them.

Finally, Cooper states,

If the White House can reach out to the Iranians and North Koreans, for gosh sakes, they can talk to Shepard Smith.

No they can’t because Shepard Smith and the gang, in their FOX News cocoon are doing their best, sometimes without even knowing it, to destroy journalism, and we should not support or accept it.