Busting Out the Heidegger

What to make of the many news stories of the week – the resignation of ...

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What to make of the many news stories of the week – the resignation of James Bennet at The New York Times, the establishment of an autarkic city-state in Seattle, and more? On the Ruminant, Jonah sees some connecting threads between them all, such as the shrinking of large, trustworthy media institutions.


Show Notes:

–This Friday’s G-File

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  1. Patrick Ortiz

    After listening to this I stopped what I was doing and read “The Hop Bird”; it was a really wonderful piece. No matter how many times I hear stories from your dad they put a smile on my face, and they are some of the best parts of your writing. Thank you for sharing a bit about his life with us.

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    Anne W (Raw5254)

    I wish my dad could have heard this. He was always upset with Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the Democratic Convention in Chicago. My dad witnessed some of the rioting, having had a bird’s eye view from his downtown office window. As Cronkite kept talking about the police going after people in the crowd, he conveniently left out the fact that many of them were throwing feces and paper bags filled with vomit at the police. I don’t think we ever watched Cronkite again.

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  3. PM

    Oh and lest I forget...the last thing I would want to have happen to me is for Heidegger to chest burst out of me (Alien).

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    Gideon

    Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Sayre's law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law#:~:text=Sayre's%20law%20states%2C%20in%20a,(1905%E2%80%931972)%2C%20U.S.

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    Kevin Johnson

    Jonah, another home run. The variety of your content is exceptional. From a focused China-centric “seminar” , to the philosophical and historic wandering, to the humorous comments on the latest craziness, I love to read and listen. You are convincing about how the dilution of media power makes NYT, and other, outrages less important. However, there are two reasons why the long-term leftist culture war, including nyt and academic and entertainment players may be more important than you let on here:

    — lies or distortions to promote the left’s “narrative” can be deadly. While we face a serious problem with stereotyping of black men and police misconduct, data show that there is NOT an epidemic of police killing black men. Video and the internet may make it seem that there is one, but unless someone is hiding the bodies, we know there isn’t. Media and academy and entertainment lies (or ignorance) about this inflames justified rage at stereotyping to accusations that the police are gunning for blacks across the country. This leads to more killing, both in riots, and when police pull back. “Hands up don’t shoot” was a lie about Michael Brown, but the NYT and others continue to imply he was executed. I suspect millions of Americans believe the Michale Brown lie and think Chris Rock was telling truth, rather than comedy, when he joked “you’d think the cops would kill a white guy once in a while just to mix it up.” Data show many whites are killed by police, some in circumstances almost as awful as poor George Floyd. No news or videos of these. So black Americans, seeing racial stereotyping victimizing their community, are ALSO made to believe (Falsely) they are being killed at huge and increasing numbers by police. What could go wrong?

    — cultural and academic institutions are pushing a radical re-imagining of U.S. history which promotes more rage and division. Not just the ideological bad history of the 1619 project, but a vast array of leftist propaganda masquerading as “social justice” is seeking to indoctrinate the young and punish dissenters. The Smithsonian’s “how to talk about race” tutorial claims that early American society “created race to justify capitalism.” This is not just an op- Ed or the multiplying firing of those expressing “wrong speak.” This cultural revolution will not go smoothly and I hope we can all speak out to stop it.

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  6. Jordan Henderson

    In Belgium in WW I, the Allies and Central Powers fought over a "ridge" that was barely noticeable in a very flat country. They were still highly strategic. It may be true that the NYT has very little power compared to what they once did, but in the flat media environment, one where a lot of the media takes their cues from the NYT, who has anywhere near as much power?

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  7. MARK S ZOBEL

    Loved this episode. Thank you! Completely agree that the news delivery environment has become more fragmented, rendering even major players less influential. However, when you pull back and look at the entire culture including Hollywood, the music industry, academia, and now sports, the one-sided shift and cumulative messaging is more pervasive than the halcyon age of newspapers and network TV. As Andrew Sullivan warned, inculcating a couple generations of students in an environment where Zinn and Marx are celebrated is now spilling out of the campus. We have seen the future and it is CHAZ.

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      BMTD

      Currently in university studying philosophy as one of my majors (apparently, the major with the highest proportion of people identifying as socialist according to surveys) and the only time a discussion about Marx/Marxism occurred was as a brief overview in a graduate-level political philosophy course centered around property rights, natural resources, and conceptions of moral rights. Even going back to my high school education, the only time an educator mentioned Marx was within an economics course, and it was solely to disparage centrally-planned economies as compared to market economies. My (analytical) philosophy department only offers *one* course covering marxism and marxist thought, and it's basically just a survey course of Marx's early to middle writings, alongside the writings Lenin, Lukac, and others.

      I think older individuals and/or those who didn't/don't attend university have a misconception about the ideological tilt at universities. There's no denying that there's a liberal tilt. But it's precisely that: *liberal*. Not marxist. I'd hesitate to even call most college-aged self-described socialists actually leftist, instead of just being social democrats.

      The largest programs at my university are: business, journalism, engineering, and health professions/sciences. From what I know of the curriculum in all of these, the closest thing to leftism any student has to be exposed to is *maybe* a single "diversity" course (which, often times, is just a more general anthropology, religious studies, etc. course) that everyone blows off if they're not interested.

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      1. MARK S ZOBEL

        I have the privilege of paying for a current college student attending a highly regarded private school in the Southeast who working on a liberal arts double major. While the student body is pretty politically diverse, the faculty is not. Prior to attending college, both of my kids attended public school in a district consistently ranked in the top 1% of the country, and neither of them had to take a civics class until they were high school juniors. My point about culture is akin to David Foster Wallace's fish parable "There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

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        1. PM

          Well you could have sent them to Liberty University.

          If children in general as they "grow up" "rebel" against their parents then it doesn't matter where you send them. They're going to "rebel" regardless.

          I guess I'm more concerned about adults as I see them arming themselves for what I consider to be delusional justifications.

          I was talking with someone over the weekend who was concerned about his business having been closed. He actually believed that there were those who wanted to shut down all the businesses just to put them out of business. And of course the whole COVID-19 thing is a hoax.

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      2. PM

        Take a look at your English curriculum. While I don't know specifically about your university, I have taken a curious look at a few others. The bugbears are there.

        I read a bit of Marx in a political science philosophy course many years ago. You're more likely to encounter Marx directly over there or in a History course.

        But yes your point is well made. And of course it depends on where you are.

        Analytic (American/British) philosophy is very much opposed to contemporary European -- the deconstructionists for example.

        And of course it depends on where you are as some philosophy departments are going to be more sympathetic/specialize in contemporary European philosophy.

        I don't know about the journalism curriculum but journalists take English classes. So you'll get it there.

        And I recall taking a Greek course many years ago where the prof was constantly apologizing for the Greek viewpoint.

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  8. PM

    One has a sense that Bennet had it coming...that even if there hadn't been a Cotton OpEd (which I didn't cotton too) it was a matter of time.

    It was encouraging that there were two columns printed excoriating the decision.

    There's going to be the question of what is and what isn't permissible. For example, advertisers didn't bolt and protesters didn't rally at the door for Bennet.

    This isn't new in the sense that we've seen this for years now where person x says or does y and then loses their job over it.

    Or in the case of Dan Rather and CBS News, well it took a while.

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    Michael Garrett

    Happy Fathers' Day to those who celebrate.

    And if having one child isn't enough to disabuse you of the blank slate hypothesis, wait until you have a second! I have a friend who has five children, and he is now very sanguine about it all. To quote him, "Same ingredients. Very similar environments. Five very different people."

    Oh, and Ed Koch was defeated when he ran for reelection to a fourth term. His third he won easily.

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    Mkapnick

    Loved the part when you were talking about Tom Cotton's op-ed and told us we could get more into that if we liked.....of course even with the technology of Star Trek, we could not beam ourselves into your basement to answer you because that would require us to also travel back in time and then beam ourselves into your basement.....wait I stand corrected. The Enterprise did accomplish time travel to save the whales....so yeah...we would need "beaming technology' and a starship to fling around the sun at warp speed to go back in time in order to answer your question.

    Best intro into an underwear ad ever.....when I became a pundit 20 years ago, I never imagined it would lead me to talking about underwear into a microphone in my basement.....Jonah you forgot to mention "and getting paid for it!"....ha.....another interesting Ruminant....Thank you and have a nice weekend.

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