I check the blog aggregating site Memeorandum at least once a day, because it tells me at-a-glance what most people are blogging about. And as many have noticed, righties and lefties tend to comment on different stories.
Most of the time, the reason for this is obvious. “Our” side chases stories that make “them” look bad; “they” go after stories that make “us” look bad. The occasional “hooray for us” swarm is usually followed closely by a posse of “so what?” posts.
But what about this: Yesterday most of the Right Blogosphere reported frantically on the plane accident in Manhattan that killed a New York Yankees pitcher. Several righties “live blogged” what they saw on television. The Left mostly left it alone, except to comment on what the righties were up to.
I didn’t blog about it because I do political and social commentary here, and there was neither a political nor social angle to the accident. It was off topic, as far as I was concerned. I probably would have blogged about it had I been an eyewitness, but I wasn’t. I don’t know anything more than what was reported on television yesterday.
Tom Tomorrow snarked at the righties: “No one is going to get a blogging Pulitzer for being the fastest to post what they just saw and heard on the TV.” Allahpundit responded,
True, but no one’s going to win a blog Pulitzer anyway. And it does come in handy for the 90% of the readership that are at work and looking for information.
But why was this “information” so vital that people couldn’t wait to hear about until they got home? A political development likely to impact the elections or the government or otherwise have widespread consequences is one thing. But a small plane accident? I could sorta kinda see commenting on the accident before it was determined it was an accident and not terrorism, but a number of righties continued to treat it as a Big National Bleeping Deal story long after they knew it was an accident.
For that matter, I was surprised Chris Matthews spent the entire hour of the 5:00 Hardball on the plane accident. New York local news was all over it, which is understandable, as the accident was a big local story. And since a nationally known sports figure died, it was worth some time on national news. But an entire hour of Hardball? Of course, cable news is not exactly famous for perspective, given the absurd amount of attention given to John Karr a few weeks ago.
But it gets worse — apparently, for some reason, the accident was a global story. Tim Footman in the UK comments:
A small aircraft has crashed into a building in Manhattan. Obviously, we are gripped by the news: the attacks five years ago are still seared in our minds, and the memory is made more grim by the knowledge that the whole thing was a beginning, not an end. The outside chance that such an event might be repeated grabs the attention of media providers around the globe.
But soon, it becomes clear that, although the precise details are yet to emerge, it wasn’t a terrorist attack. There’s added flavour from the fact that one of the men on the aeroplane was a baseball player with the New York Yankees, but that’s as far as the story looks likely to run: a tragedy for the people directly involved and their friends and families; a shock for local residents. Please move along, there’s nothing to see here.
Except, apparently, there is. I quite understand why the initial reports flashed around the planet – no editor would want to miss the possibility of 9/11 redux. But when we realised that it was a false alarm, surely it became little more than a footnote.
Not according to the BBC website, which was still making it their lead story, hours after it became clear that Osama was nowhere in sight. Ditto the Daily Telegraph site. The Guardian, Times and Independent kept it as second or third lead. Further afield, the story led on the sites of Le Monde, La Repubblica, Süddeutsche-Zeitung, El PaÃs, the Times of India, Yomiuri Shimbun and many more.
Mr. Footman speculates that the story got international attention because it happened in New York.
It seems that we’ve exchanged the Little Englander insularity of the men in dicky-bows for a weird loss of perspective, in which the lives and deaths of Americans take precedence over all else. It’s a sort of vicarious insularity, something akin to the morbid fascination some people feel for the celebrities in Heat magazine, to the exclusion of news that may actually affect their own lives. Just as medieval scholars created maps that placed Jerusalem at the centre, the world’s media has made Manhattan the capital of the planet.
Maybe, but that doesn’t explain rightie bloggers, who tend to think of New York City as an alien corruption defacing the edge of the beloved Homeland. Maybe, deep down inside, they hope one plane crash in Manhattan is the beginning of a trend. Otherwise — WTF?
And then the Righties will post blogs about how the Lefties are posting blogs about the Righties making blogs about the aircraft crash in NYC, showing that they only care about butter.
How recursive will it get?
I CAN HARDLY WAIT!
Could it be that ‘righties’ are more likely than ‘lefties’ to be hardcore sports fans?
By the time I heard about it, it had already been ruled an accident. I was annoyed, but not too surprised, that it dominated cable news. I understand that star athletes are celebrities for some, though they aren’t for me.
Perhaps the most plausible explanation revolves around the whole Fear Issue. Even an event quickly determined to be an accident can still be quite usefully exploited and beaten to death by the usual culprits if for no other reason than to not so subtly remind everyone that it COULD have been an act of terror…while simultaneously being at least somewhat reassuring that it wasn’t. People can then be thankful and releived in general terms…but that always handy specter of fear still is as maintained as it is reflected by this tragic event.
Besides…in these days and times…it has, for many, become a virtually inbred/induced Pavlovian response to instantly think that most anything that crashes or blows up somewhere is surely the handiwork of The Bad Guys.
Here in Tampa, talk radio maximized the possible terrorist angle. One call-in listener suggested that we consider the possibility that the crash might be a terrorist probe to guage our lastest Homeland Security defenses…..Dood..get a drug!
Re: Spades R. Spades @ 10:13a
Exactly. In fact, just that element of FEAR was being retailed throughout the rightie’s realm — even going so far as to claim that the act was deliberate, a hideous choice to cause as much destruction as possible by a clearly deranged pilot, even if that pilot was a famous baseball player, and even if the evidence shows it was an accident. Doesn’t matter.
Because the issue is the FEAR that can be whipped up by incidents like this, fear of the deliberate actions of deranged people, in other words, anybody can be (and probably is) a terriss at heart and will use any opportunity available to kill you!!!
Media in general loves FEAR. Fear sells. Fear of spinach, vaccines, terriss, it all runs together in the media, because FEAR is such a winner in their minds.
And no matter what we say about it, most of us are vulnerable to the FEAR ploy.
Spades, I think you’re on to something.
Yeah, cnn, etc showing images all day sure seemed like catering to the fear factor to me.
Besides the above, baseball player stories are nearly as good as MWM (missing white women). Plus, it’s probably a relief for these people not to have to strain their (limited) imaginations coming up with some way to spin whatever into “good” news for the Right.
Yeah, even Wolf spent 2 hours on it, and Cafferty dredged deep to come up with apropos questions. Well, I caught up on some reading.
Addicted to fear? Adrenaline rushes? I read somewhere that adrenaline is designed for emergencies, after which the physical body must neutralize [by shaking, and other metabolic processes] whatever adrenaline still circulates, because adrenaline is toxic.
Watching the fear-mongerers…… I can believe that addiction to adrenaline rushes does lead to chronic toxicity….. especially poisoning healthy mental function.
I think the fear issue is a big part of it. That said, it was also a Big Story because the pilot was a pitcher for the New York Yankees (who were just eliminated from the playoffs). I don’t follow sports, but lots of other people do.
Hmm. The New York blogs and the baseball blogs were all over the story, understandably. I blogged about it because I’m a New Yorker and a Yankees fan, so it seemed relevant, plus I found out about it before a lot of other people I know did because a friend from out of town who couldn’t remember where my office was called to ask if I was okay before any of the facts were really known.
I haven’t looked much beyond local news sources, so I had no idea the righties went bonkers. That strikes me as odd; it was ruled an accident fairly early, plus righties mostly show animosity towards New York unless there’s something they can exploit… oh, wait. But I don’t really see the value in flogging the story. Are the righties trying to tell us now we should be afraid of small planes piloted by baseball players?
When I first heard about the accident and the news people were wondering if it was a terrorist attack, my first thought was how dumb are these people. When I heard it as a small, single engine plain, I blew it off and quit listening. I feel the government over-reacted in that they deployed fighters over several cities. Since I have heard comments on the news from several private pilots of small single engine planes complaining about restricted air space, saying that some of the areas verge on being rediculous, they are so large.