Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Another Side of Martin Bashir

Update (November, 2013): Martin Bashir has more commitment to vile language and bashing than truth telling. His judgement is worse than poor.  It's execrable and filled with personal hate.
On Friday’s show, Bashir responded to comments Palin made linking America’s debt to slavery, calling her a “dunce” and suggesting Palin might be a prime candidate for the same treatment slaves received from a plantation owner named Thomas Thistewood: being urinated and defecated on.
It took Bashir three days to apologize--or be forced to apologize. One wonders what punishment he would dish out to the Apostle Paul, not to mention Jesus, for their analogies to slavery.



Here's an interview with Martin Bashir in which he explains this interview and his commitment to truth telling (see bottom of post for audio links to interview).

UPDATE: Ten Mile Island comments that Bashir often has troubles of his own in getting source data right. This is underlined by Bashir's inability to correctly read Sarah Palin's latest facebook posting. Instead of linking "Sugar Daddy" to the American taxpayer, which Palin does, Bashir misrepresents her position as one of calling Barack Obama a "Sugar Daddy". And in the latest dust up, without even verifying source data, Bashir pooh-poohs the very possibility that Barack Obama could have walked out of the debt talks. Poor Martin Bashir seems to many more low points in truth telling to every high point.

H/T Ken Shepherd

2 comments:

Ten Mile Island said...

Good stuff. I'm going to spend more time with Bashir. I had always discounted Bashir due to his association with MSNBC. And a quick search leads me to this:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbcs-martin-bashir-falsely-accuses-sarah-palin-of-calling-president-obama-a-sugar-daddy/

How true is the representation of Palin as an effect of Bashir's piece? I think it fails on several levels. I remember using "sugar daddy" myself when I was a kid. Mebbe it's a regional thing. Obviously, as a kid, my ability to understand some hidden, sexual meaning in sugar daddy was both limited and normal.

But to what extent does Bashir help us understand the usage, and the meaning of Palin's words?

Disturbing paradox.
.

T. D. said...

Point well taken. I posted this as "another side" of Bashir because I've taken him to task for his own misapplication (misuse?) of sources.

http://terrancethisisstupidstuff.blogspot.com/2011/06/reasontv-nails-martin-bashir.html

Apparently regarding non-political questions, he does think about truthfully presenting sources and asking key questions about assumptions being made.

I was especially impressed that he probed at two key philosophical failings in Bell's thinking. I say "failings" because Bell didn't answer the questions. Rob Bell begged off on the first by saying it was a paradox (how a caring and all powerful God would allow immense suffering in the recent tsunami disaster in Japan; I *assume* Bell uses this same argument as to why God wouldn't send anyone to Hell) and never answered the second (why believing in Christ in this life is important if everyone will end up following Him anyway in the life to come).

It was "another side" to a reporter I have not thought highly of.

Thanks for taking the time to comment and pointing out Bashir's own paradoxical position that seems to pop up too often especially as regards Sarah Palin.