Why Americans Hate the Media (1996) | Hacker News Reader

Why Americans Hate the Media (1996)

theatlantic.com

11 pointsbell-cot10 comments

There is a different reason also: https://freebeacon.com/media/yes-the-media-bury-the-race-of-...

I too had wanted to embrace the idea of a race-indifferent society. But given that our country actually had enough seething racism that people voted for a political agenda of severely harming themselves as long as "those people" would get hurt more, I'd say that the media's traditional policy of trying to mitigate those animalistic urges has now been vindicated as being quite noble.

Yeah I think I both overestimated how "stupid" the establishment was 10y+ ago and underestimated how many that are actually susceptible to tribal incitement.

Yep. I also attribute it to getting older and more conservative. (actually conservative, not this revanchist destructionism cloaking itself in the label "conservative").

It is an irritating realisation that the ones I though were naive, weren't, but I was for thinking they were naive.

Your usage of the word "naive" to describe how you thought of the establishment is weird to me. I was surely naive. And I still don't even really see that as a bad thing (is it not the job of youth to imagine a better world and push us forward?). But I saw the establishment as more suffocating, tired, preaching to the lowest common denominator, puppets of entrenched interests, etc.

> the media's traditional policy of trying to mitigate those animalistic urges

As the article shows, they only mitigate [1] them for whites, and encourage them among everyone else.

[1] What a nice word for deception!

> they only mitigate [1] them [animalistic urges] for whites

The article says they only do it for non-whites. By flipping the sense of only [hide descriptions] for non-whites into only [avoid animalistic urges] for whites, you're seemingly dragging in an assumption that every white just naturally harbors racism against other races - basically showing a hand of promoting racism.

And regardless of word choice - as I said given how many people were eager to see our country burn simply so "those people" would get hurt more, it's certainly looking like that "deception" was actually the lesser evil!

The crux of the issue is that while racism might be endemic, or even an unavoidable emergent effect (cf black cops policing black neighborhoods while living in white suburbs), we're able to have society of many people working together to achieve larger goals precisely because we aim to suppress the "natural" animalistic urges. For example, everyone poops as well. And yet we make it a point of keeping it to ourselves, often doing it alone in a different room. And if someone were to come out of the bathroom holding a giant log in their hands proclaiming "I make poop and I'm not ashamed of it!" while everyone else recoils in disgust, it's not because that person is being edgy or otherwise doing something novel or productive.

> The article says they only do it for non-whites.

I think you're misunderstanding it. Let me try to explain with an example. When the attacker is white and the victim is non-white, the headline reads: "White man kills minority!"

When the attacker is non-white and the victim is white: "Man commits killing"

> we aim to suppress the "natural" animalistic urges. For example, everyone poops as well. And yet we make it a point of keeping it to ourselves

It's fascinating how you simply continue on as if this point hadn't been debunked. Again, no, this suppression isn't aimed at "everyone" - it's aimed only at white people, as evidenced by the media downplaying when they are attacked by a member of an outgroup, but eagerly demonizing them when the attacker is white.

And it was effective - while you're spreading the falsehood that the result was some kind of multi-racial harmony, the reality is simply anti-white discrimination - despite having among the highest SAT scores, whites are the most under-represented group in the Ivy League: https://archive.org/details/ivy_league

The cherry on top is people like you telling them that opposing the politics that resulted in their becoming a minority and being driven out of the Ivies (while still getting blamed for taking up too many Ivy spots [1]!) is "voting against their self-interests"!

[1] In addition, 70 percent of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. [4] This is hardly surprising: historically, the alumni of selective American universities like Harvard have been disproportionately white. [5] Yet, this racial disparity reveals the discrimination underlying legacy admissions that preserves and perpetuates historical inequalities in higher education. - https://www.culawreview.org/journal/legacy-admissions-an-ins...

Maybe re-read the Atlantic article?

At least that article's subtitle, where it says "Perhaps the public has good reason to think that the media’s self-aggrandizement gets in the way of solving the country’s real problems."

A click-here-and-get-angry story, about the secrets the "other side's" media is keeping from you, sure sounds like it fits the rap sheet.

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