Graham Wright:I watched the first 20 minutes when you posted it, but Sean Penn's droning voice made me switch off. I'll try again with it though as you are so positive about it.
Yeah I know...It's like I was saying at the link, I thought the film was going to be complete crap the minute I heard his nasally drone, but it's an important film that needs to be shared. It still kind of ticks me off that he's the narrator because it will turn a lot of people off that he's associated with it...let alone that you have to listen to his annoying voice.
...perhaps someone could create a new voice track?!
Graham Wright:Ron Paul is great obviously, but I can't imagine Milton ever acting the way Ron did on that Morton Downey show from 1988.
Well, you gotta realize Milton Friedman was well into his 60s by the time he started getting on camera. Ron Paul was only 53 the year he ran on the Libertarian ticket. I think age has a lot to do with it. Not to mention, the atmosphere of the show certainly didn't help.
For anyone interested, you can view the full episode here, although that one is literally a video of a tv screen (the audio makes it annoyingly obvious.) So you might start with this vhs rip and then go back to the other one for the rest.
That's NOT how you get people to think about what you're saying.
Yeah I'm not so sure that was the goal. I'm not so sure you go on The Morton Downey Jr. Show to convince anyone of anything. Either they had no idea what they were getting into, or it was just a springboard for publicity. I lean toward the latter.
I know. I live in one of those countries. To me "TV license" means a license to receive TV transmissions. That's what confused me. I guess to Milton and you "TV license" means a license to broadcast TV transmissions.
Yeah I wasn't aware of that usage till I came across that wikipedia page. Sorry about that.
Obviously, in the U.S. that's actually one restriction we don't have, believe it or not. So the terms get used interchangeably.
When you buy a TV from a retailer, I believe they legally have to take your name and address and report it to the TV licensing people, so that they can send someone round to your house if you are unlicensed to try catch you red-handed in the despicable act of watching live TV without State permission.
That is insane. If someone just told me out of the blue that that was how it worked, in a modern country like the UK, I wouldn't believe it. Utter madness.
But alas the BBC is much cherished in this country, and most people happily pay the license fee, saying it's worth it to not have adverts on the BBC. Among British institutions, it's up there with the NHS (socialized medicine) in terms of how much people love it.
Oh I don't doubt it. As long as something is around long enough to become ingrained in the culture, people come to not only accept it but actually love it, if for no other reason than it's simply familiar. People love tradition. Even if it sucks.
Ron Paul is great obviously,
Obviously? Good thing you made it clear.
Gero:Each newspaper (The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc.) and each news channels (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) has regular fluctuations in viewership, so that one is a news leader one month, but not another. I don’t have the viewer statistics long them,
Well you might want to get them, because you're way off. The numbers are pretty predictable. Fox News regularly dominates. Year-to-date, Fox News has averaged more than twice the total viewers of CNN and MSNBC and HLN for the full day. (As in, more than all three, combined). In primetime, same story...but by 3 times the margin. I'm not sure any of those networks has beaten Fox News consistantly since the latter network started.
These organizations are not constantly trading places at the top. Not by a longshot. As a matter of fact, In January, Fox News celebrated 10 years on top of the cable news viewership rankings. I have no idea where you're getting this. It's as if you just assumed that's the way it would work so you claim that's the reality.
And newspapers are essentially a similar story. They're virtually all in decline, but they rely on subscription-based services for the vast majority of their viewership. There's virtually nothing easier to predict, and it's even easier to track.
John James:Well, you gotta realize Milton Friedman was well into his 60s by the time he started getting on camera. Ron Paul was only 53 the year he ran on the Libertarian ticket. I think age has a lot to do with it. Not to mention, the atmosphere of the show certainly didn't help.
I don't think age has that much to do with it (and that's not a big difference anyway).
The atmosphere between the two shows was obviously completely different. The host was a major reason for that, but I think Paul's answers contributed to the hostile atmosphere to some extent. Think of that clip of Friedman talking to "young Michael Moore". That crowd could have turned on Friedman the way Downey's did on Paul, but Friedman controlled the discussion much better, using those qualities of his I mentioned earlier. A neutral would identify that Friedman won the argument against "Moore", but I'm not sure a neutral would identify Paul as the winner of the argument on the Downey show, because it was just a shouting match at times.
Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper
Law without Government
Graham Wright:I don't think age has that much to do with it (and that's not a big difference anyway).
I'd say 15-17 years is quite a difference. I realized the way I worded it makes it look like not much of a difference when you see the numbers on the page, but that's a pretty decent gap. The better part of two decades.
Even after middle age people continue to mature, and generally tend to be more selective about their battles and what they get worked up about (largely because they just don't have the energy). But I think it's pretty obvious Paul refined his conduct more and more over time. I'm not denying that Friedman is a better communicator. Like I said, I've never seen anyone better. (Tom Woods might match him, albeit with a quite different style). But tell me when was the last time you saw Paul act anything like he did in his more outbursty moments on that Downey show.
Think of the amount of crap he's had to put up with for three decades in the viper's den...and you show me a clip of him ever even coming close to that Downey show.
First of all, there was only one "show". The "young michael moore" clip was from a q&a session of a lecture Friedman gave at Cornell University (part of a series which you can view here, actually.) So the atmosphere and crowd was quite different.
Second, you make it sound like Paul's conduct "lost" him the support of the crowd. They were never on his side. They were Downey fans who got tickets to go to a taping of the Downey Show. Paul was brought on the show (along with that "lifestyle libertarian" and the old white guy) as a piñata. It was obvious from the start Downey didn't like him and wasn't there to give him a fair shake. Hell I'd never even heard of the show before and could tell the whole premise is to basically have a Jerry Springer spectacle. The only difference is, on Downey's show the audience gets involved, and it's a verbal fight instead of a physical one.
Third, as I said, I'm not so sure Paul's purpose on that show was to win any minds. And even if it was, can you really blame him for losing cool and focus? Again that's the whole point of the show. That's what it was formatted for.
You make it sound like the two situations are even comparable, and that the crowd on Downey's show was ever respectible in the first place.
In Friedman's case, he was a Nobel Laureate (pushing 70 years old) giving a lecture at an Ivy League university, and was the whole reason for the event. (As in, it was all about him.) The people came to see him, the event was organized for him, the cameras were there for his program...this was a Friedman event, and these were mostly university students.
In Paul's case he was a spry statesman barely into his 50s (with the physicality of someone probably at least 10-15 years younger), one of three guests brought out as piñatas on a Jerry Springer-type show in which the audience filled with Joe Sixpack morons are allowed (and encouraged, with the facilitation of microphones) to stand up and verbally attack the guests, while the host of the show eggs the whole thing on and gets his own licks in whenvever he feels like it, up to and including literally getting inches from the guest's face as he screams straw men at him.
And you're using the behavior of the two men in these two completely different settings and different times of their life to compare their overall personal conduct.
I think "unfair comparison" is an understatement.
You know, while I admit that modern variations on the 2 Minutes Hate like Limbaugh/the anger-management headcases on party line Republican talk radio and especially Bill O'Reilly have developed a more sophisticated form of sophistry, logic torturing and sheer arrogance, in comparison that Morton Downey Show seemed much more bluntly barbaric and warlike than anything I've seen on FOX news today.
It makes me wonder why the O'Reilly factor never developed and refined this Two Minute's Hate style to newer heights of Orwellian madness. Can you imagine the bloodbath of Billo leading on his pre-picked audience hordes with glee to shout down the guest scapegoat of the day? Holy shit...
But I understand why: because FOX has run on the whole 'fair and balanced' shtick in such a fashion to deftly play with the illusion of legitimacy,in such a way that succeeds in luring the morbid curiosity of liberal viewers (who still very much are in love with their own bullshit pretentious myth of 'objective media') and adding to the titanic viewership and ratings numbers. Not to mention they're smart enough at tempering the stupid with more nuance such as Koppel and formerly Napolitano to draw skeptical conservatives and libertarians.
Whilst the GOP are the "stupid party", FOX are "the evil geniuses" of the media.
“I have no idea where you're getting this. It's as if you just assumed that's the way it would work so you claim that's the reality.”
John James, you’re probably right. I should have said, ‘so that one CAN be news leader one month, but not another.’ I used the definitive ‘is’ when I should have used the conditional ‘can’.
John James, you are right. Although in my defense I wasn't comparing Friedman and Paul on "overall personal conduct". I explained exactly why I thought Friedman was great in that Donohue clip, and is generally an excellent communicator, and I wanted something to contrast it to. The example of Paul on Downey came to mind, because ever since I first saw that, I've considered it an example of how NOT to communicate libertarian ideas effectively. I used to behave a bit like Paul on Downey in my own conversations, out of frustration mostly, and it's now something I've learned never to do, because it doesn't do any good. I now try to be like Paul of today, or Friedman, or Kokesh, or that guy who spoke at the Occupy protests (can't find the link... I expect you know the one I mean).
That Downey show stands out for me precisely because Paul is usually not like that at all. Of course the host, the audience and the format of the show were stacked against him, and no I don't "blame" him for losing his cool, but he DID lose his cool, and he was dismissive, insulting, rude, raised his voice, got flustered, etc. Far less than everyone else in that studio, granted, but the art of communicating ideas requires staying cool no matter what the situation, if you can. Stay above it, if you can.
You say that Paul didn't go on the Downey show to win minds, but isn't that always what Paul is trying to do, one way or another? When you say it was just "a springboard for publicity" are you basing that on the "any publicity is good publicity" principle? Do you think his going on the show was a net-benefit or a net-loss in terms of the overall goal of winning minds?
A personal anecdote. About six months ago I was having lunch with about a dozen colleagues of mine and, as often happens, I got into a political discussion with one of them (John), who I regularly debate with. We were going at it for at least half an hour. I can't remember what we were talking about. Those around us were zoned out of our conversation, not interested, as per usual. But anyway, when we were walking back to work, one of them said to John and me "I take it Graham won that debate...?". John asked him why. He said something to the effect of: "Because you were raising your voice and getting frustrated, while Graham was calm the whole time".
That comment has stuck with me, because I think it's very common for people who don't have a strong opinion themselves (and don't consider themselves educated enough to argue or even have an opinion) to make up their mind based not on the arguments presented, but on the conduct of the person presenting them.
Graham Wright:that guy who spoke at the Occupy protests (can't find the link... I expect you know the one I mean).
This one?
Another good one is this one. You obviously don't see him speak, but as I say in the post, his method is excellent.
When you say it was just "a springboard for publicity" are you basing that on the "any publicity is good publicity" principle?
Partly.
Do you think his going on the show was a net-benefit or a net-loss in terms of the overall goal of winning minds?
Honestly I don't know. He did tie for second-highest vote percentage in the history of the Libertarian Party, if that counts for anything. Again, I'm not so sure the goal here was winning minds, so much as getting publicity...so even if the former is the "overall" goal, it's very difficult to gauge just how effective an indirect move like putting the Libertarian Party on the lips of more people is.
Again, this was 1988...there was no YouTube. People barely had VCRs. It's not like very many were going to catch this program in the first place, and it's pretty much guaranteed virtually no one outside of the live broadcast viewers ever saw any of it (at least not until decades later, like we're watching now.) And it's not like the media was beating down his door for interviews. I really doubt anyone saw this thing on primetime TV (as great as it is...thank awesomeness for youtube, eh?).
But as for Downey, again, either Paul didn't know what he was getting into, or he figured simply having the appearance on his resume would be useful. It would give reporters something to talk about, without anyone ever really seeing what went down. The worst you might get is a few seconds on an evening news report...but I can pretty much guarantee that didn't happen. Again, did you ever see any Jerry Springer clips make the evening news?
More than likely what happened was people simply talked about it.
"Did you see the Morton Downey Show yesterday? They had these 'libertarians' on. It got pretty heated."
"What's a 'libertarian'?"
"I think it's some political party or something"
"hmmm...."
And then maybe a TV interview:
"We are now speaking with the Libertarian Party candidate for President, Congressman Ron Paul. So, Congressman Paul, you were on the Morton Downey Show, where things got pretty heated. Tell us about that"
It's news. It's something somewhat interesting to talk about. It gets him aire time. Aire time is important.
Yes, that's a powerful lesson. It's a large part of the point behind the phrase: "Those on the Left want their opponents to shut up. The opponents want the Left to keep talking." You're right in that if you can manage to stay calm and collected you are at an extreme advantage, if for no other reason than the Leftist is almost guaranteed to get emotional and lose his cool (as, the majority of their belief system is rooted in emotion...how they feel about things. It's one of the only ways a person can hold conflicting beliefs simultaneously.)
They have a few nice moments regarding argumentation in the film Thank You For Smoking...