Paul Krugman gets right to the heart of it, though his question was the milder one about CNBC's "decision to drop even the pretense of journalistic objectivity and throw its weight behind the deficit scolds."
No, this is what the audience wants. And it’s what they want even though the Austerian stuff the network peddles has been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong ... It is, I believe, a tribal identity thing; the consumers of business news want to see themselves as part of the economic elite, although they mostly aren’t. And Chris Mooney wins again: we’re talking about personality types who aren’t responsive to evidence. Indeed, the more often you show them that their hard-money, anti-spending prejudices have been proved wrong, the more deeply those prejudices become entrenched. ...Paul Krugman, Economics and Politics
Exactly. That's why it's so pointless for all of us over here in the world -- where thinking and individuality are a part of life -- to try to escort righties to reality. They don't want to leave their tribe. They're afraid to leave their tribe.
We need to watch out for that in ourselves.
CNBC: The Wall Street Network
Posted by: Joecollege | November 24, 2012 at 06:21 AM