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A Lying Liberal Professor Has Actually Been
CAUGHT!
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20021028-78905499.htm
Michael Bellesiles, the history
professor
who wrote that firearms were rare in early
America,
has resigned from Atlanta's Emory University after
an investigation found he "willingly
misrepresented
the evidence" in his award-winning book.
Robert A. Paul, interim dean of
Emory
College, announced that Mr. Bellesiles would
resign
effective Dec. 31 after 14 years at Emory, and
said
the university considers "authoritative" an
investigative
committee's report about charges of research
misconduct
against Mr. Bellesiles.
This is certainly not the first time
a professor has openly lied to support a leftist
cause, but I believe it is the first time in
history
that a professor has actually been PUNISHED for
lying to support a leftist cause.
Professor Bellesiles will have no
difficulty getting new job, of course. Can you
imagine
any professor ever getting another job if he had
lied AGAINST liberals and been caught at it?
Bellesiles had gotten awards and
grants
for his new book after making up his facts to back
the left on gun control. He was trying to counter
research like that of Professor John Lott, who has
shown repeatedly that where the people have the
right to carry weapons the crime rate goes down.
Once again, like all liberal
policies,
gun control just does not WORK.
Now wait for respectable
conservatives
to chorus in about how this is very unusual, and
how most liberal professors are honorable and
almost
never distort the truth.
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The Practically Perfect Press
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The other day I was astonished when a scandal at
the Associated Press was actually reported on a
TV talk show. It turns out that one reporter had
been handing in false news from made-up sources
for three years and finally got caught doing it.
Some seventy of these stories had gone out on the
AP wire service and were reported as authentic
news
from coast to coast on every medium.
False news did not surprise me. What astonished
me in this case was that someone in the media
actually
MENTIONED it! And the reporter was FIRED!
Think about it. You have recently heard about
scandals
in Congress, scandals in business, scandals in the
military, even scandals in the clergy, but you
NEVER
hear about scandals in the media.
About twenty years ago, a black reporter for the
Washington Post was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for
a story she had made up completely. She left the
Post but she had no difficulty finding employment.
Everybody agreed that except for this little slip
she was generally a fine reporter.
No one questioned that all her other stories were
completely true and unbiased. Leading the pack in
saying how wonderful she was were the respectable
conservatives like James Jackson Kilpatrick.
Everybody, especially respectable conservatives,
agreed that such a made-up story never happened
in the press except for that one "slip."
Every human institution where money and power is
on the line has a lot of scandals.
Except one.
The press is a multibillion-dollar industry with
enormous power. But everybody in the press agrees
that the press is practically perfect. All the
newsmen
are honest, hard-working, truthful and unbiased.
I thought I would bring that up, since nobody
else
will.
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Reporters
and Actors Are Overwhelmingly Liberal
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Everybody thinks his biases are really just objective
truth. I have heard reporters say that they are liberals
because they see oppression and real life so much. It
is hard to imagine a more superficial comment.
We all think we have a special handle on real life, but
only a really naïve person can BELIEVE that. This is not
exactly a new idea. Socrates talked about how all men
perceive reality the way a blind man perceives an
elephant.
One blind man feels a trunk, another thinks an elephant
is all huge legs, and so forth.
But reporters regularly tell each other, in public,
that
they have the only realistic view of life.
And nobody laughs.
I very much doubt this was a new idea when Socrates
talked
about it. You really have to be naïve to think you have
a special handle on reality.
When I was in college, it was an accepted rule that all
freshmen are socialists, but most grow out of it. Like
most such comments, it as an overstatement of a general
truth.
Most freshmen of average intelligence have left home
for the first time, and when their professors tell them
that professors should rule the world they believe it.
I never took the idea seriously that if government owned
the whole economy and bureaucrats ran every aspect of
production and distribution, it would lead to fairness
and efficiency.
Socialism is silly. But professors naturally say that
"intellectuals" like themselves should plan and dictate
who makes what and who gets what. Only the mind of a
not-too-bright
freshman, new to the academic world, could take that
seriously.
Reporters and actors are mostly people who remain
not-too-bright
freshmen. A reporter, after all, is someone who devotes
his life to getting an item five minutes before the rest
of the world gets it. If the item is a scandal in
Hollywood,
he is gossip columnist. If the news item is a
congressional
scandal, the reporter who gets it first is a
professional
journalist.
It is not surprising that a lot of superficial people
would make the pursuit of hot items a life's work.
So when a group of "journalists" get together and one
says they have a special handle on life and that is the
reason they have their political views, nobody laughs.
A bunch of none-too-intelligent freshmen would sit
around
and tell each other how deep and unique their or their
professor's insight is. So would an actor.
But everybody else would laugh at such naiveté, all the
way back to Socrates.
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Of
Course Respectable Conservatives Aren't
Bright
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Reporters tend to be liberal because they are still
college
freshmen who never grew out of it.
These overage freshmen are the ones who choose which
conservatives will be "respectable."
The commentators and anchor men you see on television
were reporters first. They decided to devote their lives
to finding out five minutes earlier what everybody will
know in half an hour.
When Rush Limbaugh was on one network talk show, the
press raised hell because he was not "a professional
journalist."
The public wanted to hear him, but he did not have the
homogeneous worldview a reporter gets. So much for
diversity.
So these overage freshmen have a monopoly on media
commentary.
But the media had to let in some non-liberal
commentators
into the media over the years. They fought it for thirty
years, but they had to make concessions, especially
after
Reagan was elected and most reporters didn't know a
single
Washington conservative.
It is these overage liberal freshmen who had to choose
which conservatives are allowed in any interview or talk
show. Not surprisingly, the conservatives they select
have very little insight or intelligence.
The people liberals who control the media choose to
label
"respectable" conservatives are the ones who make
liberals
feel comfortable. Conservative spokesmen tend to be
morons,
not because of a conspiracy, but as a result of a
natural
process of selection.
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A
Very Southern Aversion?
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Because the liberals and respectable conservatives who
do interviews are neither bright nor perceptive, they
let the people they interview get away with the most
superficial
evasions.
So when a politician is asked a question he often
starts
talking to himself. Someone asks him about a proposal
he supports, and he begins the kind of dialogue with
himself
that one normally only hears from people who are
seriously
senile.
"Is it perfect?" The politician asks out loud. "No,
it's
not a perfect policy," he answers himself. With the
interviewer
sitting there silent he goes on, "Will it do what needs
to be done? Yes." And then he proceeds to make a little
speech in answer to his own softball questions.
Politicians have begun to have these dialogues with
themselves
in the middle of speeches. To me it is a bit shocking.
I think it is shocking to me because it strikes me as
so rude.
There is nothing more rude than the nitwit who starts
asking himself questions when talking to someone else:
"Is it perfect?," he asks himself. "No, it's not
perfect," he answers himself. That person is treating
his audience or his interviewer as if they did not
exist,
and treating others as if they aren't there is the
height
of bad manners.
I have not yet seen a Southern politician do that,
though
I have not seen all the examples. I hope this habit of
talking to himself in the middle of an interview or a
speech is the kind of thing only a New Englander would
find acceptable.
Nobody should put up with it.
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