...Snapshot of the Culture Wars
Edward B. Driscoll, Jr. - published 4/15/05
http://www.techcentralstation.com/041505D.htmlThose right-of-center college students, for the most part, aren't Alex P. Keaton-clones, decked out in Ralph Lauren double-breasted navy blue blazers. They're more likely to look like every other college kid: jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts advertising their favorite rock groups. (On the other hand, as Anderson notes in his book, campus South Park conservatives usually smell better than their bathing-optional counterparts on the left).
But there's one thing that South Park campus conservatives abhor: "Political correctness drives them nuts"*, Anderson says. "In interviewing students, for instance, it was clear how much the PC conformities of the campus Left turned them off."
The Media: Leftwing Overreach, Rightwing Pioneering
The "over PC-ing" of the media brings up a key aspect of today's culture wars. "One key reason the Right is, if not winning", Anderson says, "at least no longer losing the culture wars isn't the new media; it's the intellectual exhaustion of the Left, something that has become especially apparent in a post-9/11 era".*
… Ten years ago, 60 percent of adult Americans regularly tuned in to one of the network newscasts. Now it's only about one in three. And people have lost trust in the mainstream outlets*."
As proof, he cites a Pew Research poll last year, which found "that just 21 percent of its respondents viewed the New York Times as a trustworthy news source -- a figure below that of Fox News*, it's worth noting,"
…Fox arrived as a major professional news organization with the capacity to define the news as something other than what the elite consensus says it is…
he's trying to ensure that academia "isn't a machine for left-wing political advocacy".
The whole article makes for a good read. The website is listed. You might not find it on a major outlet or in the New Jerk Times.
Kermit
* Emphasis added by Kermit
