Tuesday, June 19, 2012
From a thread at crooked timber on Chris Hayes "Twilight of the Elites:"
Greg 06.18.12 at 7:19 pm
On the failure of institutions…
I remember a few years back, in the good old Bush II era when progressives were progressives, it all clicked when I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal following the death of David Halberstam. James Bowman, the author was, and he agued that investigative, “truth-seeking” journalism is a bad thing, because there is no truth, and it is therefore the job of the journalist to stop fussing about with accuracy and fact-checking, and instead to pick a side and help that side win.
Bear in mind this is a journalist writing about journalism in the Wall Street Journal.
That’s when it clicked that the US had – at the time – an administration that didn’t believe in government, a judicial branch that didn’t believe in the rule of law, a legeslative branch that didn’t believe in legislation and a press corps that didn’t believe in journalism.
Since then we’ve run into risk managers who don’t believe in risk, bank regulators who don’t believe in regulation, central bankers who don’t believe in central banks…
I’ll be very happy to read Hayes to get a view on meritocracy’s role in all of this.
Greg 06.18.12 at 7:19 pm
On the failure of institutions…
I remember a few years back, in the good old Bush II era when progressives were progressives, it all clicked when I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal following the death of David Halberstam. James Bowman, the author was, and he agued that investigative, “truth-seeking” journalism is a bad thing, because there is no truth, and it is therefore the job of the journalist to stop fussing about with accuracy and fact-checking, and instead to pick a side and help that side win.
Bear in mind this is a journalist writing about journalism in the Wall Street Journal.
That’s when it clicked that the US had – at the time – an administration that didn’t believe in government, a judicial branch that didn’t believe in the rule of law, a legeslative branch that didn’t believe in legislation and a press corps that didn’t believe in journalism.
Since then we’ve run into risk managers who don’t believe in risk, bank regulators who don’t believe in regulation, central bankers who don’t believe in central banks…
I’ll be very happy to read Hayes to get a view on meritocracy’s role in all of this.
# posted by Frank @ 2:35 AM 
