Obama Calls Today's Ubiquitous Gadgets and Information "a Distraction" 545
zaphod was one of several readers unhappy with the sentiment expressed in President Obama's graduation address to the students of Virginia's Hampton University, writing: "According to Obama, 'information becomes a distraction' when it comes to iPads, the Xbox, etc. (All items he admits not knowing how to use.) He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.' Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views."
CNET has a slightly different, less critical reaction, focusing on the differences among the actual devices named; they note that the Xbox is not an iPad.
Re:pot and kettles (Score:1, Informative)
Yep. [nytimes.com]
The transcript (Score:5, Informative)
is here [wtkr.com], and here is the paragraph that people are taking issue with:
What I find interesting is not the assertion about the devices, and information becoming entertainment — that's been true since at least the beginnings of edutainment and of news as entertainment almost twenty years ago. For me, the interesting part is the first sentence: "And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter." It seems to me that throughout history, the times when truth has been the major component of the information we are given have been few and far between. For example, the news media in the US, despite their pretensions to objectivity, haven't been particularly honest at any time in their history. Even in WWII, the war correspondents left out more than they said, and that was probably the height of objectivity in the news. Heck, the news media was in great part responsible for fomenting the Spanish-American War (google "yellow journalism"), reported the propaganda of Saddam Hussein as news in order to maintain access, and spent years trying to talk us into a recession (note the tone of economic reporting under Bush vs. that under Obama, and compare that to the actual statistics).
In other words, the real requirement we have is not to shut off the flows of information, or even to tilt at the windmill of trying to ensure that all the information we have access to is truthful, but to armor ourselves with scepticism, basic statistical knowledge, and deep historical knowledge so that we, individually, can sort out the truth from the lies, distortions and agenda-driven propaganda we are faced with.
Re:Transparency (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, this sarcasm makes sense because all of these actions could so easily be performed in no time at all. Point by point..
You do know that the prisoners from Gitmo have to GO somewhere, right? That takes time.
Once you've moved into a country and destroyed its infrastructure, you can't just pull out, leaving a few pamphlets and books on how to build a country from a pile of rubble.
Same goes for Afghanistan.
I don't think a President can veto a law that is already in power. Let me know if I'm wrong there.
Full employment? That was promised somewhere? More realistically, the job loss bleed has been slowed/stopped. See : http://tinyurl.com/yhb3dq2
The first step to reducing the deficit is keeping the tax base from burning to the ground. SHIT TAKES TIME.
Sure, partisan politics can end. Tell the repubs to STFU.
The lobbyist thing, I'll agree with. This has been a bad deal, but at least they're not in CHARGE of his admin, unlike Bush.
Have you not seen what they've been doing to clean up the oil spill? As far as capping the pipeline, there's a huge effort to take care of that. You're just being purposefully dense.
Re:NEWS: Obama makes a speech and people take a fe (Score:3, Informative)
Aren't they pretty much the same thing? Talk is cheap, and when you're smart sometimes it's hard to word things perfectly for the obsessive-compulsive crowd who doesn't understand your hand waving and generalizations.
Just like people take sound bytes of Obama and say "OMG HE'S A COMMUNIST!" this is no different. Unless policy changes arise from this, I don't really care. What he's saying is generally intelligent and has some merits, but nitpicking about specific points is just asinine. When he's making a graduation speech, he doesn't need to dot his I's and cross his T's just because some people can't look past the words and get to the sentiment.
And to the poster below who thinks I loved Bush: no. That's a false conjecture, though I gave him his benefits of the doubt as well. I voted for neither Bush nor Obama (yet).
Re:it wasn't a distraction last year (Score:2, Informative)
soon you'll hear "all those electronic devices aren't good for the environment"...
Sooner than you think.. They already took the lead out of our solder, the PCBs out of our oils.. Next they'll be telling us no more silicon.
Re:it wasn't a distraction last year (Score:3, Informative)
I believe your blame is misplaced. A white guy in his 40s was seen in leaving the area and changing shirts as he left. The FBI wanted to question him as a "person of interest". They had him on a security camera. He was one of the first people they looked at, but they dismissed him as a suspect very quickly.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126565648 [npr.org]
This was not some vast liberal conspiracy to make it look like a tea-party member did it. It was simply the 24-hour news media going crazy with a video that somehow went public.
Re:it wasn't a distraction last year (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color.
Yes, and no one has ever been stopped for Driving While Black either.
In short, I think the President should have that knee-jerking problem looked at by a doctor-- I hear he has a great health plan.
Yeah, because it's not like any of these conspiracy theories are being touted by "mainstream" Republicans:
(Former FEMA Director Michael Brown [thinkprogress.org], Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino [mediamatters.org], Rush Limbaugh [mediamatters.org] (now he said "environmental wackos)
Seriously. Why should anyone think of these people as legitimate? Furthermore, since these are leaders in party, why should the party be considered legitimate?
Re:it wasn't a distraction last year (Score:5, Informative)
It's only recently that we have opposing views in media that expose the bias.
Really? Most major cities in the U.S. (and elsewhere) have had competing newspapers for centuries [wikipedia.org], some of which tend to be associated with liberal biases, some with conservative, some with other views. About a century ago, huge syndicates started growing that created a system where many papers nationwide were owned by the same person or corporation. It's not surprising that such mass media markets all got similar news when they were owned by the same company. Smaller independent papers couldn't compete, so we lost the diversity of news sources somewhat in the early 1900s.
Nevertheless, most major cities maintained at least two newspapers that had contrasting political viewpoints.
Since we now have differing views on different channels, we can compare them and the bias becomes obvious.
I think what you're referring to is the Fairness Doctrine [wikipedia.org], large sections of which were repealed in the 1980s. This only applied to broadcast media, and it actually required opposing viewpoints to be considered on the same channel. Of course, one of the major impacts of this rule was that extremist views tended to be avoided in broadcast media, since it was too hard to be "fair" to all extremist positions. Repeal of some provisions of this resulted in a more fragmented broadcast media with more extreme positions.
Nevertheless, the point is that this only ever applied to broadcast media. You could always have alternative newspapers with different perspectives, for example, and these have always existed.
When all the media is saying the same thing, bias is harder to spot. It gets accepted as truth by default. [...] Getting the same story from different views is a good thing.
While I agree with the basic principle here (since I too like reading the same story from different views), the majority of people seem to gravitate toward news sources that agree with their own personal biases. So, rather than educating the public in terms of a reasoned debate (which is what the "Fairness Doctrine" was supposed to do), we have a system that allows people to get their news from sources that already agree with them. People end up reinforcing their own biases, and those biases can grow stronger and more extreme.
I'm not saying we should go back to the older system, but the current system doesn't completely solve the problem you bring up -- and arguably, it tends to make the news media more fragmented and more extremist, which obviously trickles down to listeners/viewers.
Re:it wasn't a distraction last year (Score:3, Informative)
the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color
The law also REQUIRES law enforcement to stop someone who is reasonably suspicious.
The law also allows third parties to sue law enforcement agencies if they DON'T stop people who are reasonably suspicious.
It's quite easy for a cop to stop someone based on racial profiling first and come up with an excuse about reasonable suspicion later if they have to.
While there IS a federal legal requirement for aliens to carry papers, there is NO requirement for citizens to carry papers, thankfully (so far, AZ law effectively excluded)
The law is fucked up
(CAPS are added to stay in keeping with parent's style)