Alex Jacobson 3.0

CNN is gaining against Fox News in the ratings. The question is why now? My theory is that CNN is more convenient to watch (default) and people care less about its ideological blinders when we are outside of election season. Note I don’t watch either network so it is also possible that CNN has simply improved and Fox degraded. But if so, why would that be?

A friend forwarded a link to this NYTimes article which claims the Marines are upset about implicitly the Bush administration denying them armor and needed manpower in Iraq. As a Vietnam War veteran, he was outraged at the Bush administration at this stuff. Subsequently I found this blog post which did the homework on the NYTimes article only to find that the real issue is interservice communication problems not civilian decision making.

I told him that this is a common pattern for the NYTimes. It selects and produces content in order to produce outrage at the political enemies of its readers. Clarifying details are often left absent. Recall that the first NYTimes coverage of the swift boats was an incredibly one-sided article about its funding rather than its claims. Recall the NYT coverage of the Al Qaqaa arms depot from just before the election that turned out to be entirely bogus.

The NYTimes provides value to its readers by making them believe they are reading all the news that is fit to print while actually providing all the news that fits their worldview.

If something in the the NYT is making you see red, don’t assume that your anger is actually justified. Its more likely just dramatic entertainment.

Free markets favor the religious because they can keep their flocks together and decide how they want to operate their societies with less imposition from the government. So the market is looking more secular than ever before. From Job Henke:

‘m simply not persuaded by the argument that there is a burgeoning “Theocracy” in the United States. You can tell the Social Conservatives are losing by the very battles they are fighting. Almost without exception, they are doing rear-guard duty. I mean, we’ve got partial nudity on prime-time television, and gay marriage on the radar.

That’s one hell of a long way from the 1940s-50s, where even married TV characters had separate beds, and the question was not whether homosexuals deserved marriage, but whether they deserved a lobotomy. We may feel strongly about arguments like the 10 Commandments statue, Intelligent Design in schools, and Janet Jackson’s nipple, but the fact that we’re arguing about these should indicate just how secular our government has become. 50 years ago, we were putting God into the Pledge of Allegiance, Intelligent Design would have been a big step forward for (creationism-dominated) science classes, and TV stations would have refused to show Janet Jackson from the forehead down.

Josh especially, read the whole thing.

From Michael Barone:

In the 2004 presidential exit poll, 74 percent of voters described themselves as churchgoers, 23 percent as said they were evangelical or born-again Protestants and 10 percent said they had no religion.

This is in line with longer trends. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark in “The Churching of America 1776-1990″ used careful quantitative analysis to show that in America’s free marketplace of ideas, the religions and sects that have grown are those that make serious demands on members. Those that accommodate to secular critics and make few demands decline in numbers. The Roman Catholic Church continues to grow in America; the Assemblies of God and the Mormon Church grow even faster. But mainline Protestant denominations, which spend much effort ordaining gay bishops or urging disinvestment in Israel, lose members
[...]
Who inherits the future? In free societies, each generation makes its own religious choices, but people tend to follow the faith of their parents. Secular Europe, with below-replacement birthrates among non-Muslims, could be headed for a Muslim future, as historian Niall Ferguson suggests.

In the United States, as pointed out by Phillip Longman in “The Empty Cradle” and Ben Wattenberg in “Fewer,” birth rates are above replacement level largely because of immigrants. But, as Longman notes, religious people have more children than seculars. Those who believe in “family values” are more likely to have families.

In other words, if your parents had fewer children, chances are you will too.