Another lesson in how the right wing media functions.It's one thing to see such tribbing on the editorial page.
It's another to see it in the paper's news section.
This is what I missed yesterday. It's a piece by Jeremy Boren and Jason Cato and it's about poverty in America. In positing an opposing point of view, Boren and Cato wrote:
As the figures grow, the face of poverty is changing to include more suburbanites and young, able-bodied people such as Jones who want to work but are having trouble finding jobs as unemployment hovers nationally at 9.1 percent.I am sure you know where this is going.
Views of poverty also are being challenged.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, riled poverty advocates with a July report from researcher Robert Rector that said most poor people are not huddling in shacks or waiting in soup kitchen lines.
Instead, Rector wrote, 80 percent of poor people have air conditioning; 92 percent have a microwave; almost 66 percent have satellite TV; nearly 75 percent have a car; and more than half have Xbox or PlayStation game consoles in their homes.
The report said 96 percent of poor parents said their children did not go hungry in 2009 despite the recession.
"It's meant to remind people how really well-off the people in the bottom quintile are," said Edwin Feulner, president of the foundation.
Do I need to remind Messers Boren and Cato that their boss, Richard Mellon Scaife is the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Heritage Foundation? The same boss that's given millions to the Heritage Foundation?
Do I need to remind Messers Boren and Cato that Ed Feulner, defender of the above mentioned Rector Report has a weekly column at the very same newspaper they write for?
Or that Mr Rector wrote a column on this subject in their very newspaper only a few months ago?
Surely I do not need to remind either of them of their paper's owner's financial connections to the sources they cite, do I? Perhaps I do. Perhaps they, in fact, didn't know any of this all too easily found information. Perhaps, had their audience known of those connections it would, again perhaps, undermine the credibility of their piece.
Why else wouldn't they mention them?
And THAT, my friends, is how the right wing noise machine works.
