Investor’s Business Daily and the Fear of Being Social

Twice today I started to read articles on the Investor Business Daily web site, only to find myself frustrated that there was no way to reply to the editorial content. Whenever I come across web content that doesn’t allow feedback, I immediately distrust the author. This is only magnified when the author is also nameless. In the case of The Investor Business Daily, both cases are true.

Skew the Facts. Distort the Truth.

For example, take this headline, “Barack Obama, Doubting Thomas”. This seedme mildly interesting, so as a RSS feed sucker, I bit.

The article starts out:

Sen. Obama joins the high-tech lynch mob that still thinks Clarence Thomas is unfit for the Supreme Court. The ex-state legislator with no accomplishments to his name dares to question Thomas’ experience.

Now in two sentences the anonymous author manages to inject race and discounts any of Obama’s experience…in just two sentences. That’s pretty effective writing, which is why I’ve subscribed to their RSS feed. It’s good to keep abreast of the crackpots ink. But suddenly I’m faced with a desire to write back. I want to point out the obvious error of their rhetoric. And of course I can’t. And so I respond here.

The Injection of Race

First, to equate Obama’s comment, that he didn’t think Thomas should have been on the Supreme Court is the same as being part of a lynch mob…come on. This only works when your a lazy writer looking to stir up images of blacks hanging blacks and therefore mitigating any real horror on the part of whites hanging blacks. Would the same language have been used if Hillary Clinton had mentioned Clarence Thomas? Likely not.

Next President Not Qualified to Question the Supreme Court?

Second point comes to the experience factor. Notice how the author says, ex-state legislator, without mentioning that Obama became an ex-state legislature by becoming a United States Senator. But that’s not necessarily the funny part. Then he adds, “dares to question Thomas’ experience.” (Note: Thomas only had one year experience as a justice before getting on the Supreme Court…that’s questionable experience).

Here’s a man who has a 50/50 chance of becoming the next president. Obama will likely be nominating justices to the bench, and yet he doesn’t have the credentials to “dare” question a sitting justice when asked a hypothetical question? Never mind that he was a constitutional law professor, teaching alongside Scalia. Oh, and this is the same Obama who was the ex-President of the Harvard Law Review and likely could’ve followed a path to the Supreme Court if a democrat was elected in the year he turned 50.

I’m amazed by the intellectual dishonesty. In fact, I’m the first to admit I’m not a high-road freak like Obama. I’ll throw dirt. And maybe a few people will read it and listen. And maybe they’ll throw dirt back. I enjoy the debate, but I’ll never shut off feedback because I deal with too much spam or I hate moderating. In today’s social media environment, that’s just a sign of fear…fear that you’ll be exposed as a fraud.