Just a note about something I enjoyed reading.
From Slate magazine
Just as you were slammed as a Japan-basher, you’ve been called a denialist (and worse) for your climate-change views. Do you think that stands as another example of how the media stifle debate?
The truth is, we live in an age of astonishing conformity. I grew up in the 1950s, supposedly the heyday of conformity, but there was much more freedom of opinion back then. And as a result, you knew that your neighbors might hold different views from you on politics or religion. Today, the notion that men of good will can disagree has disappeared. Can you imagine! Today, if I disagree with you, you conclude there is something wrong with me. This is a childish, parochial view. And of course stupefyingly intolerant. It’s truly anti-American. Much of it can be laid at the feet of the environmental movement, which has unfortunately frequently been led by ill-educated and intolerant spokespersons—often with no more than a high-school education, sometimes not even that. Or they are lawyers trained to win at any cost and to say anything about their opponents to win. But you find the same intolerant tone around considerations of defense, taxation, free markets, universal medical care, and so on. There’s plenty of zealotry to go around. And it’s hardly new in human history.
The media might stand as a corrective, cool and a bit detached, showing by example how to approach information and controversy. Instead, the media has clearly caught the fever of our intolerant times. Formerly, news people would never openly state their allegiance; young reporters understood it was poor form, and a senior person would carry the caution born of the experience that at least some of what one believes in the course of one’s life turns out to be wrong. But it’s a new era. Now, media reporters are proud to pound the table and declare their advocacy. Since so few of them have any training in science, they don’t really know what they are pounding about, when it comes to global warming. They couldn’t tell you even in general terms how the global mean temperature is calculated, for example. But it doesn’t matter anyway. They just want to declare they believe what “everyone” believes. Who values such a news source?
I want a news service that tells me what no one knows, but is true nonetheless. That’s what I would value.
Second, the media narrows the expression of viewpoints to an extraordinary degree. We’ve already discussed the small population of talking heads on cable shows. At the same time, the interest aroused by figures like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul occurred because, in my view, the American public had never heard people talk that way. Similarly, the Rev. Wright is espousing views that are hardly rare, but people react with shock and awe. People should take it as a sign that something is wrong—the media isn’t giving them the full story. By a long shot.
I always enjoy reading Michael Crichton when he talks about current events or culture. I find his novels latterly, to be ever more contrived in plot and character that they’re nearly unreadable.
I enjoyed immensely “The Andromeda Strain” and one he wrote under a pseudonym called “A Case of Need” (which is about abortion). “Jurassic Park” was also, incredibly, better than the film.
But latterly his thrillers seem much less interesting than his marginal notes or epilogues. I just wish he’d write or collect a book of his essays.
Bad Behavior has blocked 75 access attempts in the last 7 days.
