{"id":15845,"date":"2014-01-18T20:30:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-19T01:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=15845"},"modified":"2014-01-18T20:44:53","modified_gmt":"2014-01-19T01:44:53","slug":"ecuador-and-the-medias-selective-victim-memes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/01\/18\/ecuador-and-the-medias-selective-victim-memes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador and the Media\u2019s Selective \u201cVictim\u201d Memes"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Economic Perspectives<\/em> has the article Ecuador and the Media\u2019s Selective \u201cVictim\u201d Memes<\/strong><\/a> by William K. Black.<\/p>\n

The third media meme was that Correa is a terrible person and we should view the enormous support he has among the people of Ecuador as further evidence of how terrible he is.\u00a0 The smear article<\/a><\/strong> stated:\u00a0 \u201cCorrea\u2019s generous social welfare programs have won him 70 percent approval ratings among Ecuadoreans.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Romney made precisely the same charge.\u00a0 He claimed that 47% of Americans were indolent and supported Obama because he had bribed them with \u201cgenerous social welfare programs.\u201d\u00a0 To use Romney\u2019s exact words:<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]here are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that\u2019s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\nIn Plessy v Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which upheld racial segregation under the rationale of \u201cseparate but equal,\u201d the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana\u2019s law segregating rail cars against the claim that the law violated the equal protection clause. The two sentences from Justice Brown\u2019s opinion for the Court that have haunted Supreme Court Justices of conscience for over a century read:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff\u2019s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Richard Kluger quotes this passage from Plessy <\/em>in Simple Justice <\/em>(1976) and then comments:<\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the words ever written in assessment of the Plessy<\/em> opinion, none have been more withering than those \u2026 [of] Yale law professor Charles L. Black, Jr., who [said that in] \u2026 the two sentences\u2026 \u2018The curves of callousness and stupidity intersect at their respective maxima.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\nAssociated Press writer Gonzalo Solano crafted the sentence about the people of Ecuador in which the curves of callousness, stupidity, and dishonesty \u201cintersect at their respective maxima.\u201d He doubtless had an AP editor. Journalism students need to read truly terrible acts of \u201cjournalism\u201d that cause them to cringe and be determined to never \u201cpull a Solano.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course we know why the Republicans think the poor ought to be altruistic to the point of voting for politicians who harm them the most.\u00a0 How else would they get a vote from anyone who is poor?\u00a0 On the other hand, they see no need for\u00a0 wealthy people to vote for anything but their own self-interest.<\/p>\n

Now, why would I think poor people should vote for their own best interests and wealthy people might want to vote for social justice even if it seems to be against their own economic self-interest? The poor have little room in their standard of living to give up some of their self-interests to benefit the people who have much more than enough.\u00a0Now compare what room there is in a wealthy person’s budget to give up some of their self-interests to benefit people who really need it.<\/p>\n

It just seems so doubly mean for the wealthy to upset the balance to tilt it unfairly for their own benefit and take what rightfully ought to go to the non-wealthy.\u00a0This meanness seems to be in their policies before we even get to the point of discussing tilting the balance to actually favor the poor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Economic Perspectives has the article Ecuador and the Media\u2019s Selective \u201cVictim\u201d Memes by William K. Black. The third media meme was that Correa is a terrible person and we should view the enormous support he has among the people of Ecuador as further evidence of how terrible he is.\u00a0 The smear article stated:\u00a0 \u201cCorrea\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15845"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15851,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15845\/revisions\/15851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}