CSotD: Hanlon vs. the Pissants
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The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. — Hanlon's Razor
Let's start with Darrin Bell's take on the response to the CBO Report, because it is less based on deliberate, conspiratorial GOP spin than on simple but purposeful misreading of the text.
That is, "purposeful" in that it's really hard to misunderstand what the report says, assuming you make some attempt to even find out what it says.
There were some other cartoons commenting on the mis-reading of the report:
(Clay Jones – and welcome back to cartooning!)
I prefer Bell's take because the false reporting began immediately, and, while the Republicans were gleeful over what they claim it said, there was not the usual gap between initial postings and later spin.
That is, you certainly can't blame Obama's enemies for helping accentuate the error-ridden reports, but I don't think you can blame them for the actual errors themselves.
Given all the anti-ACA people who, when it was up for debate, screamed "Read the law!" under the apparent impression that legislators regularly read the entire text of everything that comes to the floor rather than relying on their staff to analyze pending legislation, and further assuming, at least by implication, that their own legislators opposed it on the basis of having read the entire thing personally themselves, it's hard to give anybody a pass for not having read the far, far shorter CBO report.
And it's all but impossible to give reporters a pass for not hearing the director of the CBO when he stood in front of them and said, "I want to emphasize that that reduction doesn't mean that that many people precisely will choose to leave the labor force. We think that some people will chose to work fewer hours. Other people will choose to leave the labor force."
Between Bell's cartoon and Dan Kennedy's take-down on the media's counterfactual reporting, I've not nothing much to add to the analysis, except that I think this is one time when it's fair to say, "They are not deliberately lying. They honestly, truly, are this incredibly stupid and lazy."
That's not (entirely) a partisan statement. I have worked with partisans and I have worked with morons. Their ultimate impact may be much the same, but there are differences.
I thought I had mentioned this before, but I can't find it so perhaps I didn't: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a story on people who had been screwed by Obamacare in which, under analysis, it turned out that three of the four "victims" were (A) Tea Party opponents of the ACA and (B) less than honest about their situations.
The reporter later explained that she was a general assignment reporter with little knowledge of, let alone "expertise" in, health care issues and that she was told to find people who had been victimized by the new law and to file the report in less than 48 hours.
So, deliberate lie or simple incompetence?
The editor sent her out to fulfill his expectations of what the story would be. Now, certainly, at Fox, that would be a deliberate effort to skew coverage along partisan lines. (Watch the movie, read the book.)
There are, however, a raftload of editors who have neither the common sense nor the grasp of ethics to realize that you don't send reporters out to confirm, but to discover.
I've been sent out to confirm fads that weren't happening in our community, to confirm epidemics that didn't exist, to confirm the superiority of a gaming system that was, by all reports of area gamers, inferior to its competition. And I've been chewed out for failure to come up with "the facts."
I've also been interviewed by reporters who clearly were looking for quotes to insert into a story that was all but written in their minds before we ever spoke.
That's not conspiracy. It's incompetence. It's lack of ethics. It's idiocy.
It's Ted Baxter and it's Inspector Clouseau but it's not Auric Goldfinger.
Add that to under-populated newsrooms in which all reporters have to cover all topics and are not permitted to develop expertise on a particular beat, and you end up with incompetent news coverage.
I find that a lot more frightening than the "vast right-wing conspiracy" of which Hilary Clinton warned us in 1998, and which everyone laughed off.
It was, of course, true: Conservative plutocrats poured money into manufacturing Whitewater, which, when they finally stopped hurling accusations and explained what was happening, made reporters on the commercial development beat say, "What? That's how it works. That's how it always works. Where's the scandal?"
They may have been trees falling in a desert, but at least they were there. Today, all those knowledgeable veteran reporters have been paid to retire, not because "they knew too much" but because "they cost too much."
The result is a lack of institutional knowledge that reduces the competence of the organization and increases the likeliness of errors, and the likeliness that those errors will be repeated.
When I was in talk radio, there was a black-on-white banner in the studio with our logo and the slogan "The Voice of the Rockies." Someone had taken a piece of electrical tape and closed in that second "C" so that it read "The Voice of the Rookies."
If I believed the dishonest ACA reporting was proof of conspiracies, I'd also believe that prank was proof of the powers of prophecy.
But, however it came about, here we are. Our watchdogs are puppies and their trainers punish them when they disturb things by barking.
So the other night, I guess Bill Nye The Science Guy debated some Young Earth Creationist and I really don't know why. Whose minds did either of them expect to change?
The dogs bark. The caravan moves on.
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