[sterlingice]

I don't think there is any way you can do more than a surface deep comparison of the three networks and come up with the same brush strokes. It is intellectually dishonest at best and more likely deliberately misleading. They all have their failings but they are different failings. So, get your insults straight.

Speaking of intellectually lazy, not everything is binary in politics despite what we've really tried to paint the last decade. I don't just mean that some people think one side is better while others think the other is better and that everything the other side does is wrong. I mean in the sense that just because something has some similar circumstances doesn't mean the action/event/idea as a whole can have the same criticisms leveled on it.

This goes back to the charge earlier in the thread of the war protests and how these are "just like" these protests. Huh? You want to compare them to the protests after Gore lost the election in 2000- that's probably a bit more accurate. A losing side who had kindof lost their way just protesting that their guy lost. How are war protests anything like this except that they have the word "protest" in it?

This is the same for the news networks argument that I made above. Just because all networks have their failings doesn't mean they have the same failings. Just because Democrat and Republican senators have problems doesn't mean they are the same problems. Identify the problems and attack the problems. If there are similarities to be had, go after those. One could say something like "well, the GOP-led Congress ran up big deficits, too" when comparing the current and former Congress. But this binary line of reasoning is the equivalent of "the GOP-led Congress ran up big deficits so gays in the military, here we come" or "the last time our deficits were heading this direction, the Patriot Act was passed so get ready for Patriot Act III!" They're complete non-sequitors.

Leveling the criticism: "Bush crushed rights and civil liberties with the Patriot Act and torture so he's a fascist" and then hearing "Obama is taxing us to pay for social services, so he's a... FASCIST" just is ignorant. You want to call him socialist- great. That's an accurate hyperbolic (if accurate and hyperbolic can be used together- but you know what I mean) statement. If you really want to go all out, call him a Communist. But where's the fascism? Hell, the best course of action for the economy would be nationalizing the banks and exerting huge government control over them but he's been extremely reticent to do that- hardly sounds like the actions of a fascist. Throwing bad money at free market companies rather than tanking them? Again, sounds a lot like socialism not fascism.

So quit being so damn intellectually lazy and participating in this third grader "I know you are but what am I" ignorance fest. Get your criticisms straight, if you're going to insult someone. Because at this point, these things just sound like they're coming from Pee Wee Herman.

SI