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Facebook Founder Presents Vision For The New Republic, Many Resign In Protest
SkiTee94 writes: Chris Hughes, one of the original founders of Facebook, is in damage control mode to save his recently acquired, century-old publication The New Republic. In response to Hughes' vision to turn the highly respected, and most would say old school, publication into a "digital media company," about a dozen senior editors and writers simply quit (out of a 54-person staff). One of the editors who quit said, "The narrative that they are putting out there is that it is the 21st century and we have to innovate and adapt. ... We don’t know what their vision is. It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything." Is Hughes a visionary cleaning out dead wood or a clueless tech star leaving destruction in his wake?
"....It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything."
That made my day!
I've heard Hughes speak. He enjoys pushing new things simply because they're new, not because they'll actually improve the product.
Sad to see this happen to TNR.
Hughes is both a visionary cleaning out dead wood and a clueless tech star, the latter because he bought TNR in the first place.
Same thing is happening to ACN in The Newsroom (HBO) right now.
Some Tech Billionaire screwing up the righteous journalism methodology of the network's senior management.
Interesting!
Without knowing what he means by "digital media company" and what changes exactly were taking place it's impossible to know.
Maybe the staff overreacted to some BS corporate email?
Maybe the publication was being turned into something with typical clickbait articles, because it makes more profits?
Heh, only someone whose politics is on the extreme right would consider TNR a "far left wing liberal rag".
I'd say that Hughes didn't do a damn thing.
You had a bunch of journalists who didn't identify with the pablum the new owner was puking. So, to send a CLEAR message, they quit.
An unusually direct show of integrity in today's era of spineless, jellyfish-like hack wannabes.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
People in this country just want to read and hear views that reinforce their World view.
As a result, people are uninformed, lack understanding of the issues and get suckered by propaganda.
As an experiment, watch the news about the protests happening around the country. Some networks just report and show the very few instances of violence, while another network focuses on the violence because their viewers' World view is that black people are violent subhumans - and they want to make them angry enough to keep tuning in.
No magazine that is a century old should be called new, unless it's readership is mostly vampires.
From about 1975 forward TNR was in the vanguard of "neoliberalism", which basically amounts to packaging hard right Republican ideas + hippie punching and selling in to "moderate" Democratic politicians and DC insiders who think they need to "move right" to get re-elected. Classifying TNR (cf Andrew Sullivan) as a 'liberal rag' is a bit, oh, silly.
sPh
Which admittedly is darkly amusing as from 1980 forward TNR - under multiple editors - was as engaged as any neoliberal [*] entity in destroying economic security for the majority of US citizens. Now they get re-engineering/outsourced/disrupted and it is a tragedy.
Also, the failure of any of these people to resign during TNR's era of deep racism under Peretz/Sullivan should disqualify them from uttering even a peep.
sPh
[*] neoliberal = hard right Republican with a prettier face
You don't have a single left wing outlet in the US. Even the most left leaning is way into the political right everywhere else on the planet. You've got so used to extreme right as central, you cannot see you're a fascist state.
For the past 40 years TNR has apparently been owned by a incredibly bigoted person who used the liberal credibility of the magazine to push his white supremacists ideas. Certainly these ideals are accepted in some circles, but not the target audience of the TNR. As a new generation who was not raised on overt bigotry came into being, a generation that pretty uniformly saw the assassination of MLK through history books, not newscasts, and were not raised on magazine subscriptions, the new century saw the circulation of the new republic cut in half. The white supremacy could no longer be covered with the inertia of the respect of the magazine.
In this way we see the problems of TNR firmly rooted in old ideas and the destruction of the brand by the previous owner. If the brand is to be rehabilitated it is going to require the jettison of the previous ideas that are not consistent with far left ideology, and those who think that white supremacy is consistent with anything real in the US were free to leave with the editors.
TNR is only going to be saved by re branding as an online source of liberal news and analysis. While the editors did not promote any kind of white supremacy, they were complicit in the past, and that may have been a problem in the present.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You are absolutely correct. We need real right-wing media not lapdogs of FedGov like Fox News.
No, this magazine actually is a public trust. It has never turned a profit in 100 years. But it has provided a forum for some of the best writers we've ever had. I hate to break it to you: lots of terrific art, theater, music , literature, science , sport, journalism , and for that matter, personal relationships, are not for-profit activities. And now this FB dweeb has decided to fire the Editor without telling him, kill the print edition, and become another HuffPo or Daily Mirror Online or TMZ or ... any number of other shallow "digital media" your generation is saturated with. It is just part of the general demise of good writing and the rise of "info porn" that the Internet has brought us -- along w Instant Billionaires like Bezo and Hughes and Zuckerberg.
You mean people with proper language skills and know how to write. This outlet will become nothing more than clickbait shite once it becomes digital.
Thats just severe crazy pretending to be right wing.
I prefer to think that they have researched the market and are offering a product that is desired by a large segment of the population. And that their commentary is very well crafted in order to increase the moral outrage in their audience and hence increase ratings.
Whether or not they are "pretending" is only something that is known to them.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It can be both a 'Trust' and a business. The two are not incompatible.
For a decent magazine to survive in the modern media environment. It has to make a choice:
1 Regurgitate the cheapest possible copy and content you can scrape up from the cheapest possible source to get your advertising costs as low as possible so you can undercut the price of any other magazine. Race to the bottom.
2 Be a distinct and unique voice that attracts readers for your unique writing and insight.
Guess which one the editors want and which one the new owner wants? Given that there are more crappy magazines out there already than anyone can read, which one do you think is likely to attract quality employees?
Magazine market is racing to the bottom almost across the board. This new owner sounds like he is dying to join the race.
The problem with this purchase, and the NYT pay-to-read-editorial thing a few years ago, is that there's too much free propaganda on the web. Any business model that relies on getting people to pay for propaganda from any perspective is doomed.
No, you have to reverse that... Those people are paid to act crazy. And for that kind of money, I would put on the red nose too... It would be crazy not to.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Funny, just a few days ago I watched the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty..
It's newer than the original.
The open letter from the long-time editors who quit says:
> It is a sad irony that at this perilous moment, with a reactionary variant of conservatism in the ascendancy, liberalismâ(TM)s central journal should be scuttled with flagrant and frivolous abandon.
The very people who make the magazine are very clear that their intention has been that it is "liberalism's central journal". Elsewhere you'll see they honestly and clearly state their intention to promote left-wing liberalism. They aren't pretending to be objective, balanced, or factual.
Is this where this season's Newsroom plot came from? I assumed they were just trotting out an old trope, not mirroring current events...
...very senior...
That's the key... Better to get out while the offer is on the table...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The liberal TNR has been packaging "hard right Republican ideas + hippie punching"? And "Classifying TNR (cf Andrew Sullivan) as a 'liberal rag' is a bit, oh, silly"? That's just nuts. TNR is Liberal. You're heading deep into the fringe left if you want to claim they're "right wing" in some fashion.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I doubt they have forgotten it, in fact it probably puts them in a good position for feeling out if someone is actually saying something.
Hughes was involved in online organizing for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign on My.BarackObama.com, the campaign's online social networking website.[7]
Look how that turned out.
He is also an invitee of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference at the Suvretta House in St. Moritz, Switzerland.[12]
Laugh
In March 2012, he purchased a majority stake in The New Republic Magazine. He is now the publisher and editor-in-chief of the magazine.[13]
Money makes you an expert in everything.
Under Hughes, the magazine has become less focused on "The Beltway," with more cultural coverage and attention to visuals. It also stopped running an editorial in every issue. There has also been attention to what media observers have described as a less uniformly pro-Israel tone in its coverage (which was a hallmark of Marty Peretz's ownership).[24]
On December 4, 2014, it was announced that Gabriel Snyder, previously of Bloomberg, would replace Franklin Foer as editor, and that the print edition of TNR would be reduced to ten issues a year. At the same time, a letter of resignation was signed by ten contributing editors, Paul Berman, Jonathan Chait, William Deresiewicz, Ruth Franklin, Anthony Grafton, Enrique Krauze, Ryan Lizza, Sacha Z. Scoblic, Helen Vendler, Sean Wilentz, and sent to Chris Hughes. Longtime contributor and the current literary editor of TNR, Leon Wieseltier, also resigned in protest to the changes being made at the magazine by Hughes and CEO Guy Vidra.[25]
My personal opinion is anyone involved in growing Facebook is scum, the antithesis of what the World needs.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Pretty much all of them. There is such a fear of being seen as "leftist" that over the years media companies have leaded further and further right. FOX and AM radio are extreme cases, but even places like NYT is pretty right leaning.
Unless you've got a Sugar Daddy shoveling money into the organization, you absolutely must make money to pay your bills and feed your staff.
To know the future, you just read the past. One of the strengths of those that consider themselves Digital Citizen is the lack of consideration for resource burning beyond the daily 8:00am status meeting. Graffiti scribbled on the carcases of dead trees is going the way of Cuneiform. People still read Cuneiform, but can one read yesterdays daily 8:00am status meeting; 10,000 years from now? The writers of Cuneiform already know.
Nothing to do with totalitarianism. Outside of a few social issues, the U.S. has almost no liberal politicians, and the U.S. also has essentially no fiscally conservative politicians. Instead, both parties are fiscally liberal, with the Republicans being the most fiscally liberal (spend money and don't worry about raising taxes to pay for it). Both parties are socially fairly conservative, with very few progressives or socialists even on the Democrat side of the aisle. The only real differences between the two parties are that:
In short, the differences are mostly a lot of empty rhetoric, full of sound and fury....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Indeed, both the Supreme Court and President Obama have recently supported the fact that the Second Amendment applies to individual citizens.
As for Fox News being "fascist" LOL, Marine LePen is right-wing, Brit Hume is not. True mild rightists like LePen do not even get on TV, print, or radio in the US.
Fleecing conservatives of their money is in fact a market. Those guys will open up their wallets if you say all the right sweet things. Even better they'll go around repeating it. There is an entire eco-system in right wing political systems doing this. Since a lot of these people trend to being older, they are both susceptible to fear and they have money. The young, can also be susceptible, but they don't have money so there is no market.
They need to create an index for conservatives.
I don't listen to NPR for the political commentary. Mostly stuff like Car Talk, and some of the insightful pieces for instance on Katrina or things that national media have stopped focusing on.
Again, conservatives are loud and they have money.
Elsewhere, for which you don't have a quote handy.
Until Hughes bought it, for the previous few decades it had been controlled by Marty Peretz, and was to some extent reflective of his views, which are an odd idiosyncratic mix of left-wing and right-wing ideas. He's socially liberal but a defense hawk, among other positions. Which explains why TNR was liberal on things like gay marriage, but neoconservative on things like the Iraq War.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Supporting Excellent Iraq War II, pumping the _Bell Curve_, publishing the racist fantasies of Stephen Glass, joining the anti-public education movement, and also publishing the "No Exit" hatchet job on Bill Clinton's health care reform proposal isn't in any way shape or form liberal. And that's not even taking into account Martin Perez' racism and ethnic hatred which is of a variety that is a bit harder to criticize in US society but which most liberals reject.
Representative quote from Andrew Sullivan: "The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column." [note that he later altered that essay as published on his blog to make it less self-damning; this is the original wording]. Yes, he's gay. No, he's not liberal.
sPh
Right, Left -- actual life is more complicated than that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Is there a difference?
Learn to love Alaska
One big problem with focusing solely on skill is that there will always be someone younger, who has more energy. The older you get, the more crucial job security and stability become. So policies that don't take into account seniority tend to attract that younger crowd. Unfortunately, young people are fickle. When you're in your early twenties, most folks are willing to drop a job and pick up a new one like it's a hat. It is difficult to maintain a consistent voice and a consistent style when the people keep changing, and worse, lots of institutional knowledge simply disappears when that happens.
The only way to be successful in the long term is to keep a decent percentage of your senior people around. If you don't do this, your organization is screwed. Unfortunately, the self destruction usually doesn't happen immediately; it is a slow rot that progressively degrades the quality of the final product, resulting in a gradual decline of sales. As a result, the people who promote such shortsighted thinking rarely get the blame that they deserve.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Performance pay--- how do you measure performance? It is NOT a simple problem and no matter what you come up with humans are naturally talented at adaptation, they will survive and many will thrive by gaming your system. Seniority is the least hackable metric of all and so simple everybody knows it's inherent flaws - but EVERY metric is going to be flawed.
Online performance is largely measured by CLICKS. The result is the trashy click bait we have today. An earth shattering investigative report which might take a year of a senior journalist's time (a REAL journalist) puts them at the bottom of the scale while some twit pushing rumors/gossip who can't spell has tons of clicked of trash gets to the top (and has the nerve to call what they do journalism.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Belo Corp was national and very conservative, until they were acquired. I have no idea what the result of that acquisition had on their leanings.
There are a lot of the smaller ones that are very conservative.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm sorry, but the only difference between a liberal and a totalitarian is that the liberal says, "You are free to do whatever you want, as long as what you want is what I think you should want."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"The Democrats tend to create social programs, then forget to check up on them to see if they're actually working as intended, and just assume that they are. The Republicans also tend to not check up on them, but complain that they're not working as intended, even if they are."
I don't mind social programs. But they need to be checked. There are a lot of unintended consequences that happen with them and they can both be abused or micromanaged. I tend to prefer giving money to people who know how to do it correctly and from a local perspective. I would totally gut the welfare state and start over.. although not now, too many crazy conservatives around. It's important that we have a very large middle class while making sure people don't slip into poverty. If we want to have healthy small businesses or even be able to create small businesses that is where it needs to be. We need to de-emphasize large corporations.
Promise me you don't take a look at Europe. You'd probably go blind and deaf with all those deep red socialist news networks littering the airwaves with their leftist propaganda.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They consider "liberal" to be "left". It really boggles the mind.
I'd really love to see where they'd put the average European center-left party.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
LOL
Hows Obama's position on those H1-B visas treating you and just how much income have you lost.
Or how's that UVA rape thing going for you ? Fake but Accurate again ?
come 2016 let me know how you feel Hillary is working out for you.
What you mean is that conservatives are Right.
I think you're making an unintuitive leaps of logic. Your mistake is that you're still defining political buckets for those who are exploiting them. There is no political bucket, it's just business. The conservative demographic is much more likely to open their wallets than liberals because liberals tend to be younger and have less money.
as in Right wing? or something else?
It's far more than a dozen that simply packed up and left and there's also a whole slew of contributors, columnists, and other's associated with the publication that have quit and/or asked for their names to come off the masthead. Essentially anyone that was anyone has declared they want nothing to do with the publication anymore. Literally overnight a century old establishment is gone and not because it failed but because all the key people associated with it walked out the door. Even if you don't agree with everything said in the publication, it's a very sad day. Those that left are preemptively saying that nobody was against advancing a digital strategy and pushing more content online, but what they are against is largely the incompetence of the new owner and the fact that Hughes seems clueless in understanding what about the publication allowed it to exist for a hundred years when others failed left and right. It's like someone bought the Royal Shakespeare Company and said "Shakespeare is so old and stale, I think we should like make action movies or something..." Only time will tell, but Right now Hughes comes across looking like someone who stumbled into a lot of money by simply being at the right place at the right time with the right people--not because he's actually a skilled businessman. With The New Republic it's as if he thought "oooh, buying publications seems like a popular thing for rich guys to do... yeah let's do that and then do some cool Silicon Valley stuff with it... like I think I know something about that!" His husband's political campaign in New York this fall was equally a disaster. Voters saw through the fluff and saw someone saying "hey my husband has a lot of money and can pay for me to run for office... vote for me, it would be awesome!" Not surprisingly the voters weren't impressed.
Could you give me the address for this Ms. U.S. person whose beliefs you are presenting to us? I'd like to get in touch with her and learn more about her ideology. I find it interesting.
What? Who in the US favors totalitarianism? Do you??
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Your center detector needs re-calibration (travel anywhere in the world outside the US)
Yes, the US, once the last, best hope for freedom and liberty, is moving further to the left where all the countries that have already lost are now positioned. Central Banks (rah rah), central control (yippee ECB), and soul-crushing austerity rules while the ECB spends 1.6 Billion Euros (that's Billion with a "B") on its luxurious building, built for kings. Of course, they are the new kings and priests all rolled into one, while the obedient zombies of Europe cheer on their own enslavement.
That's great - let's bring it to the US. It's working very well. The only thing stopping Agenda 21 from wresting control of all property from the US citizens and handing it to the elitists are those that know enough history to recognize the New World Order being promoted by HW Bush and Obama is no different from the serfdom and slavery of the old world that founding of the US tried to avoid in the New World. Old habits die hard, though, and the descendents of the old dictators want their Divine Right of Kings back, but with a new name now because they have created new gods to replace the old, and those gods demand sacrifice from the people. And glory for the New Priests.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You cannot add figures up like that in radio statistics; if 5-million people listened to ten shows a week each, the "cumulative total" would be 50 million per week, etc.
> See also #3.
Sorry, you wanted the numbers rendered on your ordered list? Wrong site.
Yeah, I can't imagine why they did that, either.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Right, Left -- actual life is more complicated than that.
It only seems complicated because both sides use the same tactics: Each has a group of followers that are convinced the [left / right] is the only ideas that help the common people, and they use those followers to promote ideas that end up, once implemented to always be bad for the common people and provide more power and money to the elites in control. It's all a game to them, and they each have one color of pawns or another.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yeah,it's also that thing we listen to while we're at work so we can pay taxes to keep no good lazy liberals up!!
You seem to be making a number of mistakes, including thinking that people serving a market don't have convictions, and that liberals are necessarily young or don't have money. Do you think David Korn's only interest is the check he picks up for writing? Keith Oberman pursued his political mania until it ruined him. Slashdot is often innudated by howls about whatever "outrage" the Koch brothers are claimed to have engaged in while practically nobody acknowledges their spending is dwarfed by that of rich liberals and progressives. Being liberal is a state of mind, not an indicator of either wealth or age.
I'm not sure you've addressed anything I'm even talking about. We're like talking about two completely different things. I made the point that conservatives are a market and that businesses like to cater to them because they are generally older and have money. (they also have more free time) All of those are quite intuitively true. I never talked about spending by liberals or koch brothers or whatever. So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. They may all be true. I'm just telling you what makes Fox and others successful in a media market.
The older you get, the more crucial job security and stability become.
Uh, what? When I was young, I either had to have a job, or move back in with my parents, because I had no savings. Now I could quit on a whim, knowing I can live for ten years before I have to work again.
Or did you mean 'when you've blown your next ten years income on a $1,000,000 house that should cost $200,000 in a sane world, and a Porsche you bought on credit, job security and stability is crucial'?
uh.... so the Washington Post doesn't count then (moderate left)? How about the Detroit Free Press (hard left)? What about the New York Times or MSNBC? And stop pulling your information (and quoting verbatim!) from Yahoo Answers.
By the way, Barack Obama is hard left which is why the American media fucking love him.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
What is going on here with the lists? Who at Slashdot thought that non-list lists made any kind of sense? How do Slashcode devs not understand the effects of list-style-type: none;? Why does this persist?
Perhaps more salient, why are we, as ostensible tech geeks, not raising more of a fuss about a site that many think represents computer geek-ness, and yet that cannot implement sane (and relatively simple) CSS?
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Other than FOX on TV, which national media outlets are there that aren't left wing liberal biased? In Canada all of our media was left biased and so a new newspaper had to be created to give balance for the other 50% who aren't lefties. We now have The National Post. Conservatives also now have The SUN and Sun News Network TV channel.
It's ironic that if news networks simply reported the news instead of editorializing it, they wouldn't be liberal or conservative, they would just be news.
not to worry, you've still got TTAP and the PTA to deal with. Except, you don't, as it's all done behind closed doors, to Chatham House Rules under the guise of State dinners and defence deals. You ain't getting the detail until the ink's dry.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
in Old York you used to be able to shoot a Scot found within the city wall on a Sunday before church.
(way back when Englishmen had backbones and used their own femoral arteries to string their bows)
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
So say the crazies on the far right.
Learn to love Alaska
Fox News is conservative, of course. The Fox News Radio tagline is something like "the latest news and conservative perspectives". Similarly, New Republic calls itself a liberal journal. To pretend that either is objective would be silly.
Fox used to have one good show, Hannity and Coomes, co-anchored by a liberal and a conservative who would both acknowledge when the other made a good point.
Is Hughes a visionary cleaning out dead wood or a clueless tech star leaving destruction in his wake?
Why on earth would you think those are mutually exclusive?
"Your center detector needs re-calibration (travel anywhere in the world outside the US). All media in the US is right to far-right."
Your rest-of-the-world detector also needs some recalibration: that's old school. The rest of the world is getting significantly more right-wing at the moment, while pubilications such as Slate thrive in the US.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Is Hughes a visionary cleaning out dead wood or a clueless tech star leaving destruction in his wake?
Both. He's clueless because he doesn't understand who buys the New Republic. He's a visionary because NP does have a lot of dead wood. The truest example of who Hughes is: On Season 3 episode 4 of the Newsroom Lucas Pruit buys ACN after it is spun off from its parent company Atlantic Media in an effort to save Atlantic Media from greedy asshole cousins who were given shares in their uncle's will that would allow them to take over the company to...sell it to someone who only wants its IP assets. Hughes is Lucas Pruitt who announces his vision of bring ACN into the 21st century by intoducting crowdsourcing media, instagram and twitter links etc. Everything that Charlie Skinner hates.
A liberal editor COULD try to keep his personal beliefs out of it, so the publication doesn't espouse one position or the other. They could, but New Republic has explicitly chosen to avoid objectivity, they TELL US that the magazine is used to advocate certain positions. Consider what their owner and editor-in-chief says the magazine stands for:
"The New Republic is very much against the Bush tax programs, against Bush Social Security 'reform,' against cutting the inheritance tax, for radical health care changes, passionate about Gore-type environmentalism, for a woman's entitlement to an abortion, for gay marriage, for an increase in the minimum wage, for pursuing aggressively alternatives to our present reliance on oil and our present tax preferences for gas-guzzling automobiles. We were against the confirmation of Justice Alito."
â"Martin Peretz, owner and editor-in-chief, The New Republic
Franklin Foer, New Republic editor:
the magazine âoeinvented the modern usage of the term liberal, and itâ(TM)s one of our historical legacies and obligations to be involved"
They've also had editors who worked two jobs, working for TNR while also working for the KGB. You don't get much more leftist than having the KGB editing the magazine.
That's true, but that's a special case of the more general:
The only difference between almost any person involved in governing and a totalitarian is that the former says, "You are free to do whatever you want, as long as what you want is what I think you should want."
Despite the lofty goals claimed by almost any person of any party, whether running for office or just voting, the main reason that people get involved in government is to assert control over others. There are positive and negative outcomes of their actions, but every single one of these people think that things would be better if only they were king. The only tool that government has is coercion; political differences come down to how that tool is to be applied.
Most of the rest of those who actually want to reduce the power of government either still want the government involved where "what I think you should want" is concerned, or have other non-governmental means to effect coercion.
If you see any political party in the US as not fitting into that statement, it's just because "what [you] think [they] should want" and "what [they] think you should want" are aligned. Your liberal adversaries see themselves as just as rational and correct as you see yourself.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Mostly right on, but the rich are largely Democrat voters and Democrat policies highly favor them. That's why 90% of the "recovery" over the last 6 years went to the top 10%. You read that correctly. Upper middle class tend to be Republican, and Democrat policies hurt them. When Democrats tax "the rich" Warren Buffett doesn't feel it but the upper middle class does.
Do you have ESP?
I've read the comments and even, blasphemously, the article, and I still have no clear idea what's going on here.
Leftists quit because the publication was going right wing?
Talented editors quit because whatever (gawker?) wanted to turn into clickbait?
Nobody seems to talk about what actually happened here.
Back in the 1980s it occupied a more unique space, offering what seemed to be much more of true centrist position, equally critical of the left and the right. At some point it seemed to slide from that position into a more left wing position and losing the intelligence that the center gave it.
But it's not alone, the National Review has crapped out, too, becoming the print edition of Fox News with a little sophomore-level pseudo intellectualisn sprinkled on top after the death of Buckley.
Uh, the point was not whether anyone in the US favors totalitarianism or not. The point was that the original poster made it rather clear that they felt perfectly comfortable speaking as if they were the direct representative of the entire US. Making them an arrogant prick. Not everyone in the US views those espousing Totalitarianism as out of the mainstream. The original claim.
There are those who view the Republican party as espousing Totalitarianism. They are pretty mainstream. Fox news views Obama as advocating Totalitarianism. He and they are both considered mainstream.
The major news outlets spend a lot time discussing these issues. So not simply ignored as the original poster claimed.
There are groups within the US espousing totalitarianism. Just as there are in Europe.
There are groups that do not as well. Both in the US and Europe. The second group outnumbers the first by a large margin in both places.
To pretend that the US holds some sort of special relationship in rejecting Totalitarianism over Europe is xenophobic stereotyping.
'Totalitarianism' is just being used as a trigger word to end actual discussion.
I don't mean to undermine your arguments, but what in God's name or otherwise are you talking about? It's like everything you said had this demeanor of factuality when none of it is true. Very Colbert of you. Not sure whether to applaud an epic troll or kick myself for responding at all.
So, the issue actually is totalitarianism. Do you think many people in America favor totalitarianism? Because I'm going to speak for America and say, no, there aren't many.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I love the irony.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I seem to recall that leftist countries go to war. That may not be a reliable indicator of idelogical alignment.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Correct, right about nothing.
That some of the adaptations were things like rewarding skill not seniority.
And you're going to do that how, exactly? Skill is not as easy to measure as your average MMORPG makes you believe. And almost every way to take a measurement can be gamed. Skill is also a very vague word. Skill in what, exactly, just for starters.
There's a lot that goes into making a successful magazine, and the recipe is so unknown that the best publishing houses have come up with in the past 50 years is to simply do field-tests - start the magazine and after some months decide whether to continue or pull the plug.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It isn't the racist party it used to be and now the Republicans get blamed for being racist. Now all the "ex"-KKK Democrats are dead or dying off they can pretend all that never happened.
Your center detector needs re-calibration (travel anywhere in the world outside the US)
Yes, the US, once the last, best hope for freedom and liberty, is moving further to the left ...
I can stop reading right there.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
By the way, Barack Obama is hard left which is why the American media fucking love him.
The US doesn't have a meaningful left anymore and Obama is to the right of Richard fucking Nixon (ended the draft, signed the EPA and Title IX into law, desegregation, and a proponent of the 26th amendment). All the real political fighting is over wedge issues where I happen to side with what Obama says (but doesn't necessarily do): Gay rights, access to birth control, etc... As far as actual economics go, Obama is firmly entrenched with the large financial institutions. As is the actual Republican party (the part of the party that wields any power).
The whole left-right political spectrum in the US is absolute bullshit. In general boiling down all complex issues down to a single dimension is completely meaningless. But if Obama was on the left, he would have tried for a single-payer healthcare system.
The economy is way better than when GW Bush left office, yet everyone blames Obama for the economy. Of course it's a systemic issue, not really much under the control of any President, but the spin sure is interesting. You'd think a media that "fucking loves" Obama would make a bigger deal out of his accomplishments. One last thing, the effective tax rate for the rich is at a near historic low while it's simultaneously at near historic highs for the poor. Obama has tried to rectify that, but the right seems only interested in tax cuts for the rich. Maybe Obama would be a "leftest" if he could be, but the current political reality is so skewed that his record is far right of center. (I'm referring to the center of the possible political spectrum, not the center of the paucity of choices we have.)
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
TNR has been a wretched hive of pro-government propaganda since its inception. If it goes belly-up, then good riddance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What you mean is that conservatives are Right.
Cute word play, but the current batch of conservatives are reactionary. They want to wind back the clock and go back to "the good old days." The problem is, there were no "good old days." It's all a fiction, most of human history has really sucked for the majority of humans. That's why their were socialist movements. I'm not saying socialism is the answer, but neither is everyone fending for themselves. But it does work well for the oligarchs. At least in the short term.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Correct enough to win the congress this year presidency in 2016.
BTW how did that democrat controlled government work out by you ? See your dreams realized ?
...
You don't have a single right wing outlet in Europe. Even the most right leaning is way into the political left in the US. You've got so used to extreme left as central, you cannot see you're living in a fascist state.
If you think Europe is facist, you don't know what the word means. And as I've pointed out elsewhere, Obama is to the right of Nixon. The GP is correct, there is no significant "left" in the US. The Republicans and Democrats have everyone fighting over wedge issues and the oligarchs are laughing all the way to the bank.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
If that sounds too insane for you, type "third position" into wikipedia. Oh my oh my.
As far as "far left" goes, I would also like to hear your definition of "far left".
Supporting Excellent Iraq War II, pumping the _Bell Curve_, publishing the racist fantasies of Stephen Glass, joining the anti-public education movement, and also publishing the "No Exit" hatchet job on Bill Clinton's health care reform proposal isn't in any way shape or form liberal. And that's not even taking into account Martin Perez' racism and ethnic hatred which is of a variety that is a bit harder to criticize in US society but which most liberals reject.
Representative quote from Andrew Sullivan: "The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column." [note that he later altered that essay as published on his blog to make it less self-damning; this is the original wording]. Yes, he's gay. No, he's not liberal.
sPh
Sullivan (a Brit) self-identifies as a conservative, which he translates into Democrat in the US.
And he's long admitted his support for the Iraq war was a mistake, I'm curious about your accusation that he altered the essay, he's generally very forthright about when he's wrong and if there's a discrepancy between the TNR article and what he reposted I suspect it's not for the reason you suggest.
Either way, if you ignore the partisanship I don't think supporting the Iraq war was necessarily a conservative or liberal position. If one succeeded in deposing Iraq and replacing him with a relatively healthy democracy with minimal casualties you can make a pretty strong argument for the war from either end of the spectrum. Hitchens identified as a Marxist and I don't believe he ever repented of his support (other than the fact Bush was too incompetent to pull it off).
I stole this Sig
Actually in my local area the best two news outlets are online only with actual investigative journalism. The printed papers are in a race to the bottom just printing press releases, news wire, and pushing the same agendas that they won't drop. None of the printed outlets for instance will say anything bad about real-estate or car sales. Their "How to buy a car" articles are written by car salesmen. Their "How to buy a house" articles are written by real-estate people. And their business articles are written by a guy who has vested interests in the companies he writes about (promotes). Then these same outlets try to blame the internet for their downfall. But the online journalists are not only going out an investigating interesting things with articles that aren't op-ed at best but actually reaching over and picking apart the existing print outlets' articles for their terrible journalism. For instance they had a blow by blow article the other day after a puff piece was printed about this start up where they tore the article (and the company) to bits. The company is falling flat on its face with government money the only thing propping it up while the print article made all kinds of claims about their successes (all of which are old and turned to failures long ago).
So I don't know what you call it when a physical paper is basically all click-bait but online is where things are happing in my area.
Also the online newspapers are nearly 100% subscription. They typically only have one or two free articles with all the rest paid. And they are booming.
That's centre left, certainly not far left.
Far left is ending personal property etc. There arenewspapers in Europe with that viewpoint.
In between, firmly left publications like http://socialistworker.co.uk/
In nearly every company that I consulted for if the pay was job based then the young person turnover was very low. If the pay was seniority based then the young person turnover was very high. Basically those people who felt shafted by the company were as loyal as the company deserved them to be. But in no case did I see them leave lightly. It was either one of two situations: Should I leave for another $10,000? Or should I bother even asking these geriatrics to match my $50,000 larger offer? But in either case equal pay would have kept them.
But the best that I ever saw was a company where they lost a pile of junior engineers who started their own company when one particularly charismatic engineer asked over and over to go on a course that would give him a fairly critical new skill. The course was fairly cheap with the main cost his being away for a week as it was just a bit too far for him to drive every night. They said no no no. But then a contract was coming up where one of the engineers would need that course to qualify for bidding (as the young engineer predicted one would) so an old engineer with a few months until retirement was paid to go to a warm and sunny location and take the course with his wife. This way the company could claim they had an engineer who was qualified when they won the contract even though the guy would be gone. The young engineer then took sick leave got the course himself. Came back to find that the older engineer had managed to have a heart attack and didn't do the course. So the young engineer started his own company with 3 of the other young engineers and were the only ones in town with that particular qualification giving them a huge edge in the bidding. They bid low and won. The other company basically lost their shit and tried to scuttle the contract, tried suing, and even went to the engineers society and filed a complaint. That was 10 years ago and I would guess that there are maybe 25 people working their and not a single one over 40. One thing they do that freaks out the other engineering companies is that they pay their co-op students very very well and let them do actual work. Thus they are the number 1 local choice for students.
I think we need to stop using terms like "left" and "right", because they are utterly confusing on what they mean. Baiscly three big forces exist Socialists(we the people) classical liberal/capitalist(business owners) Third position(proggresivies and fascists, self-appointed experts that know how to live your life better than you)
The fact is that you were more mobile when you were young. You could take a job a hundred miles away, and move to the job. If things didn't work out, you had your parents, and you could move back in with them. It might not have been an option that you'd have wanted to use, but was an option.
When you're older, at some point your parents won't be around anymore. And when you have kids of your own, you become more tied down, because you don't want to keep moving your kids around from place to place and disrupting their development. This means if you lose your job, your choices are more limited geographically. Additionally, there are fewer jobs for senior people, and getting them is harder. As a result, the older you get, the longer you tend to stay unemployed when you lose your job.
And although it is true that if you're earning excess income, you can and should save that money to provide yourself with a safety margin, not everybody earns a six-figure salary; most people are not in a position where blowing their income on an overpriced house or a Porsche is even possible. For the other 99% of workers, job security and stability are crucial.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Funny, they show up fine on my screen. Then again, I browse using a custom stylesheet that overrides that particular bit of Slashdot brain damage. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Every news outlet has programming for conservative viewers. They are the primary demographic. Fox was just the first to figure it out and take advantage of it. I don't know if 50% of the population is left and right. We're left and right depending on what the situation is. We are the sum of our experiences...
No, this magazine actually is a public trust. It has never turned a profit in 100 years. But it has provided a forum for some of the best writers we've ever had.
That sounds awesome and all, but what you're describing is not a business, it's a charity. If they want to convert themselves to a 501(c)3 and take donations like NPR does (which serves a similar niche), then I think that's awesome. But it's not a business, it's a particular type of ego-driven charity bankrolled by the super-wealthy who are happy to lose money being associated with something that gets them invited to smart cocktail parties instead of losing money on something that does things like cure malaria or provide clean drinking water. (See also: "owning professional sports teams.")
I say this as a former professional journalist myself: if your publication is losing money, never get too comfortable and keep your LinkedIn up to date. Because your self-indulgent ownership today may change to an actual business person owner tomorrow, and if they ever do, shit is going to turn 180 degrees immediately in every way you care about. And don't be surprised or upset when it does.
"95% of all Slashdot
Or young people concerned about their future.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You don't seem to have a good source for what contemporary American conservativsm is concerned with. Try these instead:
Weekly Standard
National Review
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Pretty much. America was the last bastion of freedom and liberty in the world. It was a slow erosion long before I was born, and 911 patriot act was the final nail in the coffin that made it official.
I've tried to play all the hypothetical scenarios through my head regarding who would be president and at what time. It didn't make a difference. As I've gotten older I've became more cynical to the truth. Simply put, man is destined to ruin and greatness time after time; it's cyclical. For the next 10,000+ years (assuming the human race still exists as we know it), it will be same shit different day. War, conquest, power: it's what defines being human.
Shorter: America is in the decline. Get used to it cupcake!
Life is not for the lazy.
dgatwood's observations on US political tendencies starts off well, but I think goes off the rails at the bullet points.
Abstracted: “There’s not a dime’s difference between the Democrats and Republicans.” (coined by George Wallace; reused by Ralph Nader)
It's this sort of thinking that led a significant number of useful idiots to play at left-wing politics by voting Nader in 2000. I think the differences in outcomes between what we'd have likely seen from a Gore Administration and what we actually got from GWB are self-evident. It was certainly obvious to voters between '00 and '04, when Nader's national total dropped from 2.8 million to
Underestimating what brownish people are capable of, wasting hundreds of thousands of lives, pissing away trillions in treasure, and scamming via a mirror image of LBJ's guns and butter budget with a Republican guns and diamonds if that's a dime, my da kine is a redwood.
Luke, help me take this mask off
So the Libertarian version of liberal then.
It seems no one on the thread's mentioned how TNR was setup in the World War I era to propagandize Americans into interventionism, because they were too "isolationist" and not enough support existed for empire building. They went on to promote other wars and forms of supremacy. Most recently promoting the war in Iraq. There were a sprinkling of interesting pieces here and there but it was mostly the Robert Kagan style liberal neocon guide to Empire for fanciful 21st century Lawrence of Arabia wannabees. Good riddance and I hope it somehow turns into a radically anticolonialist clickbait site.
--hongpong.com
That's silly. Progressives and classical liberals nearly don't exist as a political force and socialists only exist in name only, but they mostly just hand out bread and circuses.
What, that a crazy in the middle thinks both sides are crazy? Where's the irony in that?
Learn to love Alaska
In Gitmo?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Every news outlet has programming for conservative viewers.
I'm a conservative. What MSNBC show should I be watching.
Sullivan (a Brit) self-identifies as a conservative, which he translates into Democrat in the US.
Wasn't always so. Sullivan used to self-identify as a Republican. Self-identifying as a Democrat today, when that party is moderate Conservative, while the Republicans have abandoned Conservatism for a race to the fringes of radical right-wing wing-nuttery is absolutely what any honest thinking Conservative would do.
It is significant, I think, that the last public turn that honest thinking Conservative William F. Buckley took before his death was to reflect with satisfaction on his role in running the radical right-wing wing-nuttery of the John Birch Society out of Republican politics. He lived to see the reincarnations of the John Birch Society take over the Republican Party in the early 1960s.
Needless to say, the implicit rebuke went unnoticed on the right.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I was under the impression this was a joke post about Zuckerberg proposing to create a grand clone army..
Mostly right on, but the rich are largely Democrat voters and Democrat policies highly favor them...
If only that were a fact, rather than that staple of the right, a lie made up on the spot. In fact the available evidence shows that not is the truly rich heavily Republican, that they even more heavily favor Republican economic and policy prescriptions than party ID would indicate.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Obviously, you've never read The New Republic.
Here, here!
For nearly 40 years I have read TNR off and on, trying to divine why it was regarded as a thought leader among Liberal/Left/Progressives. All I could conjecture was that is was a combination of their culture writing, and left-over reputation from an earlier era before I was old enough to read it, which it was gliding on. It's articles about economics, and social and foreign policy were fairly consistently disturbing and decidedly right-wing.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
...
You don't have a single right wing outlet in Europe. Even the most right leaning is way into the political left in the US. You've got so used to extreme left as central, you cannot see you're living in a fascist state.
If you think Europe is facist, you don't know what the word means. And as I've pointed out elsewhere, Obama is to the right of Nixon. The GP is correct, there is no significant "left" in the US. The Republicans and Democrats have everyone fighting over wedge issues and the oligarchs are laughing all the way to the bank.
Of course Europe is fascist, and the US is moving in that direction very quickly. Fascism is simply a method of implementing totalitarianism - one that involves partnerships between government and big business. When the banks decide how governments will spend their money, and governments decide how and what companies produce, that's fascism, and Europe is steeped in it.
Of course extreme right and extreme left (as described in most outlets these days) are both paths to totalitarianism. Europe has simply chosen the far-left form of totalitarianism. There are very few places in the world moving away from totalitarianism these days - and none are in Europe or North America.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
1990s of course.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
with the classic and pulp science fiction eras.
Because when they are, they realize that all bad things come from placing tech above people.
A guy who uses the word "narrative" has no business complaining that someone else is using "mumbo jumbo buzzwords".
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
If the person running the company (that is actually running it day to day) can't look out at their minions and know who delivers the goods and who doesn't then that person sucks. I certainly have seen many companies where a few blowhards have the ear of the boss but those companies often suck as well. But those few highly profitable highly productive companies that I have visited over the years ran a tight ship. I can certainly tell you that if someone walked into the bosses office and said, "I have 20 years here and deserve a bigger bonus than that new guy who ran profit circles around me." that there would be laughter. But in those sclerotic companies that are in death's waiting room (Sears like companies) seniority is everything. Where I would see seniority as a bonus is that a company should show some loyalty to those who have shown loyalty to it. So if a guy with 20 years royally screws up for the first time then he should be given another chance before some guy with two weeks in. But their pay should be the same if their performance is the same.
Fleecing conservatives of their money is in fact a market. Those guys will open up their wallets if you say all the right sweet things. Even better they'll go around repeating it. There is an entire eco-system in right wing political systems doing this. Since a lot of these people trend to being older, they are both susceptible to fear and they have money. The young, can also be susceptible, but they don't have money so there is no market.
They need to create an index for conservatives.
Fleecing liberals and progressives of their money is in fact a market. Those guys will open up their wallets if you say all the right sweet or scary things. Even better, they'll go around repeating and reposting it. There is an entire eco-system in left wing political systems doing this. Since of a lot of these people tend to be older, they are both susceptible to fear and they have money. Some will even direct corporate donations to help the cause. The young can also be susceptible, but the poor results of their own policies has left many of them without jobs and dependent on the government and their parents. They believe the cure for bad outcomes form government programs is even more government programs. The noose grows ever tighter.
They need to create an index for progressives and liberals.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I can only imagine how right wing it must be, and therefore find it hysterically funny that it is going to be ruined by a clueless webrepreneur who probably self identifies as libertarian and innovative.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Not all work is in tech start ups .
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What FB should have is an "I sympathize" button.
None at FB, but some as Obamas 2008 social media manager. This abrupt change of company direction probably could have happened better.
I heard a talk from the Washington Post managing editor at Denver University last month. Like the New Republic, Bezos is pushing hard for an "all media" platform. But the WP workers sounded happier, probably becuase Jeff is also pouring money into it and hiring instead of firing.
Bad news: "the rich" includes more than the top 1%. Nice try, though.
Do you have ESP?
I only read it occasionally, but it was good, and has been for a long tim.
I think the editors and staff and contributors should get together, scrape up some money (hell, I'd buy a subscription), and start a new magazine. Perhaps it could be called "The Old Republic", given our new oligarchic collective mind Emperors....
mark "A more wretched hive of scum and villany (and I don't just mean Facebook)"
My dreams were trashed by Bush Jr, so I had no expectations. Also, are you a prophet? I was completely unaware that the Repubs already won the 2016 election! Sounds to me that you Hoping for Some Change. Where have I heard that before....
Engineering? I did a bit of work with a different engineering company that has recently screwed up a local mega project. The average age of an engineer there was around 55 and I could tell the under 40 engineers were just pencil sharpeners. Not a single one of the senior engineers could use any cad software. But the best part was that I got to see a drama played out from both sides. They were hired by someone I know to construct an atrium like building. So just as the aluminium frames were being craned into position a friend of the customer said, "those are aluminium, right? Those bolts in the cement are steel, right? Aluminum and steel are on opposite ends of the galvanic scale, right?" So the engineering company had to eat the cost of the entire building contract as not only were the aluminium frames not accepted but since their incompetence was underlined the whole contract was lost (Concrete frames were used in the end). But when all was said and done all the blame was put on the client. These bozos had all the experience in the world and are doing 100's of millions in local government contracts. Yet there are hundreds of under 30 engineers who would make none of the mistakes they are making.
So the only industries where experience helps much are those where people aren't actively learning as a matter of course or are learning the wrong things.
I program computers and about the only talent that I have developed is the ability to identify bullshit solutions and to learn a new programming language quickly. But anyone who is 25 can easily keep up with me. And my talent to learn new languages is actually rare among people going into their 50s and non existent in software people in their 60s.
Sorry my candidates don't shoot roses from their loins like yours do.
If I get a level of reasonably competent government with a level of theft less than the democrats I will be very pleasantly surprised.
No.
Buzzwords were invented by admen to sell products by abusing language to add empty syllables and obfuscate the true worth(lessness) of a product. The words were as empty of meaning as the products were of worth.
A successful editor is a wordsmith, using words to craft deeper meaning filled with subtlety and nuance.
There is nothing more offensive to a master craftsman than the flagrant abuse of his tools.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
I didn't say that Obama or Hillary wasn't in the pocket of business - though he's less so than mainstream Republicans (let alone the far right wing) are.
And, if by 'that UVA rape thing', you mean political correctness run amok, that's dumb, but it's not crazy. Making policy based on a literal belief in Noah's arc is crazy. Believing that 90+ percent of scientists are perpetrating a hoax on climate change is crazy. And, by the way, some more mainstream beliefs - like that lowering taxes always raises revenue, or that cutting corporate taxes will produce a lot of new jobs - are pretty crazy too. Evidence matters - or at least it should...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...