Centerfield

I agree that he's a pushover. But I wonder whether or not the show would in fact be better (or more fair) if he were replaced by a more zealous reflexively defensive liberal.

I'd like to see a show where there were 3 thinkers, a moderate and 2 partisans. The moderate would be able to "side' with one or the other to force the addressing of valid points.

But then, I can't really watch these shows anyway. When they all start yelling, I bail.

That's a brilliant idea!

What if there were three sides?

Some shows have a moderator who is in theory a neutral party, but they generally ask questions of the two sides rather than put forth their own, balanced position.

Some shows have 5 guests with various positions.

CSPAN has an call-in line for Independents, but they can be all over the map.

I can't think of any which offer left, right, and centrist as 3 options.

Is there any venue where we could push for this?

As bk noted, when the talking heads start shouting, I'm outa there. IMHO, the worst thing to happen to "commentary and analysis" shows during the '90's was the split-screen talking heads, and the failure of the host to use microphone cutouts. When they all start to talk over each other, there's no longer any point in listening.

Alan Colmes has always been about Alan Colmes. I remember his radio show from over a decade ago, when he was unabashedly and unreservedly rabid Leftist. Whenever someone disagreed with him, especially when they had the truth on their side, Colmes didn't bother to argue substance but always went direct to ad-hominem, insulting the caller.

I am so turned off by knee-jerks, period. I don't care which "side" they're on.

Does it really matter to you what either of these guys says? If they'd "balance" someone who is generally to the right with someone who is generally to the left of issues, but actually get people who listened and evaluated what the other side was saying rather than screaming at them, it might actually have some value.

What is this bit about everybody shouting at the same time, anyway? When did that become good television? Is having two or four people all shouting at the same time entertaining? Sheesh - I used to live next to people like that and I moved away as quickly as I could. I sure wouldn't watch that sort of bs out of choice.

The only analyst I look forward to hearing speak is David Gergen. I often don't agree with him, but then sometimes do. But I respect that he is actually using his mind, not a set of talking points delivered by the popes of an ideology.

Rick, you're out of touch if you think that Fox is the hard-right. IMO what this reveals is that you haven't understood your own position well enough to place yourself accurately on the continuum from hard-left to hard-right. You're far enough left to not be able to see the hard right over the horizon.

It often seems that this is a problem for the left, something analogous to the age of discovery when maps failed for lack of information and simply gave up at the edges; beyong this point there be dragons... or demons. The reverse is true for those far enough right to not be able to see the far left.

To see the whole continuum requires distance, detachment, a useful place to visit but no place to stay.

back40

I didn't say that FOX was hard-right, but that Hannity is. To be more specific, I wouldn't call Hannity far right or ultra-right but he is a solidy partisan of the conservative POV, while Colmes seems to be of the soft left.

I'm surprised at what Tully has to say about Colmes being on the hard-left in the past, but people change over time, possibly influenced by seven figure contracts.

Rick, I suspect Colmes was picked for that show back in '90 to be as blatantly far left as he could be, as his show was stacked up right after Limbaugh all across the country and through the same syndicate. Which makes me wonder if he's EVER been really sincere about being hard-leftist, as compared to just Colmist...

I won't throw rocks at anyone for matching their politics to their paycheck. If I did, I'd have to start with a goodly chunk of Congres, both sides of the aisle.

You said "The right-shift on FOX is such that center-left is the balancer for hard-right." This is false. The hard-right is considerably further right than Fox. This is important to understand. It is important to realize that American political debate takes place in a fairly narrow slice of the center of the spectrum and that there is a vast distance to either end of the spectrum from that center slice.

Distorting the nature of the debate with accusations of extremism serves us poorly. The views of the main contenders are very close but the passion of their disputes is high, as if they are desperate to differentiate themselves. It seems odd but is boringly common that as the stakes of contests diminish the violence of dispute increases. Theater substitutes for substance.

If you are merely a politician or entertainer then by all means continue the shrill distortion, but if you aspire to do useful analysis and earn respect more measured statements are required.

Back40,

Your rhetoric is nice, but I think you're way off. But tell us more. If Fox is not pretty far to the right, why don't you tell us who is and what those hard right positions look like that fox pundits like Hannity don't support. That would be far more intellectually honest than accusing Rick of "shrill distortion." That's the phraseology of a "politician or entertainer" too, and pretty far from the "measured statements" you seem to be promoting in the very same sentence in which you fail to use them yourself.

I don't think the popular debate occurs in a "narrow slice" in the center of the spectrum. I sense the guys on Fox, and liberal firebrands like Al Franken, are worlds apart and basically consider the positions on the other side to be laughable.

Listen to Rush Limbaugh ... and then watch an episode of Bill Moyers' program on PBS. These are vastly different worldviews, and both have mass audiences. Or take a look at the books on the bestseller list right now.

Your confusion William is a symptom of a provincial perspective. Limbaugh and Moyers are entertainers who profit from the illusion of passion while expressing views that are nearly identical when considered from the perspective of world debate.

To be an effective centrist requires understanding the narrow spread of American opinion. Commonality of basic views assures the possibility of forming policies that are acceptable for the vast majority of Americans. When the focus is development of useful policies rather than the pursuit of power and personal advantage small differences, however passionately proclaimed, can be accommodated by policies that advance core concerns.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this notion that Limbaugh and Moyers are nearly identical politically.

They do both roughly support the capitalist system, though Moyers has more than a bit of socialist in him, I suspect. However, in all the world, there's no real alternative to the capitalist system any more. Even China is essentially moving in a capitalist direction, and the anti-globalizers seem to be just critics rather than proponents of an alternative model. Even Osama bin Ladin, for all his crimes, is not anti-capitalist.

So I do think that Moyers and Limbaugh do represent different poles even in the world debate. Limbaugh et al stand for essentiall laissez faire, while Moyers et al are for a mixed economy with heavy government regulation. Yes, there are Birchers far to the right of Limbaugh, and there are indymedia types to the left of Moyers, but they are not serious players politically.

Yeah, back40, come up with the goods. Since you've twice asserted that the poles we see are actually narrow slices from the center of a MUCH wider spectrum, how about giving us 2 or 3 examples that illuminate this alleged much wider spectrum.

And I'm expecting that these examples are going to be ideas/political views that are espoused by more than 10 guys in a basement or the population of one island in the stream, or whatever.

"Limbaugh et al stand for essentiall laissez faire, while Moyers et al are for a mixed economy with heavy government regulation."

No, they all want regulations, they just have different views about the specifics. They differ about the level of regulation, each wanting strong regulation on some things and light regulation on others, and they disagree about which is which.

Entertainers like those mentioned profit from exaggerating differences to appeal to their audiences, but policy makers can recognize their essential similarity and seek relatively harmless solutions, ones which give each side more of what they want but don't harm their opponents greatly. Policies that cause more pain to one side than benefit to the other are avoided. This may rob the opponents of the pleasure of seeing their enemies suffer, but it makes real progress on truly useful issues.

I think this may be a wasted argument.

Yeah, if you want to continue as far left as you can, you can always come up with some isolated throwback who still sleeps with Mao's Little Red Book and believes that the need for government will "wither away" when the utopia of the Marxist Revolution is finally achieved.

In a country of almost 300 million people, surely there's a thousand or so of those out there still....

And, of course, the whole problem with "achieving the Revolution" was that it required control of everything in the process to that unachievable end.

And if you want to continue as far right as you can, well... here is where it splinters for me. Is ultra-right the Nazis? Well, that's about control... Or the folks who want to turn the US into a religious state? That's about control, too. Or the militia groups? Their groups are all about control...

In fact, extreme left or extreme right, it all seems to be about control, with the disagreements just being over the stated purpose and who is in charge of it....

Or are you talking about anarchists? If you want to take libertarianism to its extreme, that's what you have, I guess. Pure capitalism, no regulation, and no laws or courts too, I guess. Some sleazy company dumping pollution in your back yard? So what do you do -- pick up your assault rifle and teach them a lesson? What are you do when some folks get together to exercise their freedom of speech and make the free decision that, if you're going to drive on the streets of their neighborhood, you'll stay below 35 miles per hour?

There are reasons that those extremes don't show up as commentators..... instead of the conflict that builds ratings, we'd all just have mass agreement that they are lunatics completely ungrounded in any semblence of reality.

Lumbaugh and Moyers are only in the "center" of the bell curve when you count that center as about 90% of the American voters. Of course, you can find people further left or right of them, but they're too far out to be able to attract an audience.

Although Michael Moore and Anne Coulter flirt with it....

Poor Alan.

I agree, he does need to employ some invective. How about a new name for the Dittoheads and Hannittyites: CRYbabies. The CRY is an acronym for Christian-Right Yahoos. CRYbabies.