Ghetto for the Intellectually Malnourished

Some of you may have encountered a number of blogspots purportedly dealing with BBC bias. Among them the unimaginatively titled 'biased-bbc.blogspot. Like many such right wing cells, it dramatizes itself as some noble minority fighting a left-liberal establishment.

Now, you might think a recent report on the subject of BBC bias would arouse its interest and engagment. Instead, we get the following post:

'BBC biased towards Israel, says a recent study by the Glasgow University Media Group. That's that then. We pack up shop.'

Despite the clumsy irony, this statement speaks volumes. Why would a blog that is genuinely concerned with bias 'pack up shop' in response to a report on BBC bias? Well, see, its not their particular brand of bias is it? More bizarrely, the sure implication is that if teh BBC was biased toward Israel, the blog would be perfectly happy.

Of course, they have no genuine interest in BBC bias. What they do have an interest in is promoting a very obvious right-wing agenda under the disingenuous guise of a concern for ‘objectivity’. Anything outside a pro-conservative/ pro-republican line is vilified as a pathological deviation. What is also striking is the seeming unfamiliarity of any of their writers with elementary logic or the basic tools of media analysis. The whole enterprise is without rigour, humour or self-insight. Fortunately, it is also entirely without efficacy

Pontifications

I was accused of 'pontificating' from my armchair (about Nicaragua) the other day, by one who had 'actually been there'. And so he had - armed only with the thin key of anecdotal detail he was determined to unlock the supra-empirical truth.

Anyway, i was reminded of Gustave Flaubert's 'Dictionary of Received Ideas'. One could add an entry:

'Armchairs. Pontificate from them. Or rather, accuse others of so doing.'

The Inexhaustible Wisdom of Marcel Proust.

On the subject of Received Opinion (see below), some of you might remember the cafe proprieter described in A la Recherche:


"He was in the habit of always comparing what he heard or read with an already familiar canon, and felt his admiration quicken if he could detect no difference.. If he did not find the terms that were familiar to him in the remarks of a customer or the columns of a newspaper he would pronounce the article boring or the speaker insincere."

Helpful

"It might be helpful to us to rid ourselves of the habit of hearing only what we already understand"

Received Opinion

What passes for thinking borrows its authority from the invisible network of 'recived opinion' that precedes and underwrites it. When, for example, one makes a statement about the 'fight against terrorism,' one presupposes and reposes upon that invisible network. Thus you claim authority for yourself by standing on the shoulders of 'what everyone knows'. And in so far as your authority is borrowed from that which you repose on (Opinion) you are its proxy. If however you say, like Chomsky, 'the USA must stop engaging in terrorism', you are brave enough not to rely on the invisible network of Opinion. Courageous because received opinion will of course vent its furies upon you. It is furious that 'what everybody knows' has been bypassed. Needless to say, the critique of this invisible network is the starting point of thought. Reading the mainstream newspapers is like encountering an organised campaign to prevent one reaching this starting point.