Is Dan Brown a "Liar?"
This post at the Da Vinci Hoax blog indicates that the London judge may think so.
This blog also has a courtwatcher "over there" with some insights and info losts by the MSM (Mainstream Media).
The blog is run by Sandra Miesel (bio) and Carl Olson (bio), co-authors of The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code (Ignatius Press, 2004) and is a companion site to their DaVinciHoax.com site, which contains numerous articles, interviews, and free downloads, as well as extended excerpts from The Da Vinci Hoax.
That last paragraph is brazenly plagiarized almost intact from their site.
Sandra and Carl have a point of view and have done an excellent job of defending a position that is consistent with contemporary Catholic teachings. While it is easy to find theological differences between them and me, I find far more grounds for agreement and recommend their work.
You do not have to agree with their religious viewpoints (nor mine either) to benefit from the work and analysis they have done.
This blog also has a courtwatcher "over there" with some insights and info losts by the MSM (Mainstream Media).
The blog is run by Sandra Miesel (bio) and Carl Olson (bio), co-authors of The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code (Ignatius Press, 2004) and is a companion site to their DaVinciHoax.com site, which contains numerous articles, interviews, and free downloads, as well as extended excerpts from The Da Vinci Hoax.
That last paragraph is brazenly plagiarized almost intact from their site.
Sandra and Carl have a point of view and have done an excellent job of defending a position that is consistent with contemporary Catholic teachings. While it is easy to find theological differences between them and me, I find far more grounds for agreement and recommend their work.
You do not have to agree with their religious viewpoints (nor mine either) to benefit from the work and analysis they have done.
posted by Lewis Perdue at 8:57 AM
7 Comments:
Thanks, Carl.
People who say they have NO bias are lying, either to themselves and/or to others.
What I object to are those in the so-called Mainstream Media (and humanist followers who hang onto the MSM's every word and attitude) who claim to be unbiased and yet demonize all those they disagree with.
Good facts and solid data are often trashed because they have judged the person and not the facts themselves.
This holds particularly true when the MSM are faced with religion, faith and belief. They ridicule people of faith as naive or self-deluded and automatically reject everything they say.
Society and discourse suffer badly from this, not to mention the spiritual well-being of everyone in the community.
I see all that as one of the profundly bad side-effects of the DVCode phenomenon.
I look forward to more of your work and Sandra's.
I shudder when I hear "MSM" due to the horrendous bias of those who cling to that term. Ususally it translates as a "liberal bias" postulate. I don't buy that. In fact, like most things American it runs toward money. Random House sure affirms that hypothesis.
I'm an agnostic, but religious memes are open to reinterpretaion as history in fiction, but not beyond that state. I know the FACT page well. I don't read as much into that claim as others do.
"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."
Robert M. Pirsig
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig
I think Brown's crime is a cut and paste job performed on HBHG and Lew's books. It still is new territry as far as themes and ideas.
Mark: I am a Christian who believes in evolution and the power of scientfic inquiry.
I watch MSNBC and Fox because I think they are both biased and hope that the truth can be found somewhere in between.
I believe that Democrats and Republicans are equally incompetent and have both betrayed us all.
I am a liberal who got his head beat in in the civil rights movement who believes that those who call themselves liberal and yet refuse to listen to the other side have also betrayed their cause.
I am conservative when I believe that people must be responsible for their own lives and that government should step in to protect those oppressed and prevented from doing this. Thus I believe that conservatives who intrude in personal freedoms have betrayed their cause.
I believe many things that defy a liberal or a conservative tag ... or an unorthodox versus heretic label.
As a journalist who has sent politicians to jail on the basis of my reporting, I believe that if you can't hang the bastards with multiple, corroborated facts then you should not try to do it with innuendo.
So I find the MSM guilty of being biased, lazy, beholden to special interests and in general incapable of serving the public interest in their constitutional role ... that goes for Fox and for CNN ... and the rest of them as well.
I find Nancy Pelosi the same personality as Tom Delay and wish they would both just get sucked into a black hole along with those who act and sound like them.
In short, I am a lot like the majority of Americans described in a wonderful book, Independent Nation.
Below is a review I did of that book which was published in Barron's, Sept. 6, 2004...
Book Review for Barron’s
Independent Nation: How the Vital Center Is Changing American Politics
By Lewis Perdue
Americans disheartened by the sludge-stained rhetoric of the 2004 presidential campaign can take heart that democracy has survived the same offal mess over and over for 228 years now and will likely prevail this year as well thanks to the pragmatic equilibrium of the electorate’s Centrist majority.
Independent Nation: How the Vital Center Is Changing American Politics (Hardcover, 400 pages, Harmony Books, Feb. 24, 2004, $24, ISBN:1-4000-5023-5) by John P. Avlon, clearly documents a Centrist and increasingly independent voting majority in America which is too liberal to be Republican and too conservative to be Democrats.
“[O]ver the past several decades, the Democratic and Republican parties have become increasingly identified with their most fundamental wings—the ‘religious right’ and the ‘lifestyle left’—a relatively small number of extreme partisans who view their opponents as enemies and seem obsessed with imposing their beliefs on the rest of the American people,” Avlon writes.
He uses polling data to show that the percentage of people describing themselves as independents has risen (at the expense of party affiliation) from 23 percent fifty years ago to 40 percent in 2000 and is even higher in Gen-X voters. At the same time, the percentage of Centrists who eschew the liberal or conservative labels rose from 36 percent in 1980 to 50 percent in 2000.
“Not coincidentally, as our professional politicians have become more partisan, Americans have reacted by voting in a new era of divided government…[in] pursuit of the implicit assurance that extremists in one party will not be able to hijack the national legislative agenda.”
In highly readable prose that is equal parts history, strategy and manifesto, Avlon, a former aide to Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Rudy Guiliani unites nearly two-dozen profiles of politicians – from Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to JFK, and Sen. Edward Brooke – into a rewarding read about a political trend the established parties have tried to ignore.
To the dismay – and often surprise—of both Democrats and Republicans, Avlon points out that Centrists will reject both parties and elect independent, out-of-bounds candidates when given a choice. Among the profiles in Independent Nation are three independent
governors – Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, Angus King of Maine and (of course) Minnesota’s Jesse Ventura.
Avlon uses these three to point out that today’s Independent candidate taps into a Centrist viewpoint rather than the extremist ideologies that fueled third parties in the past – Strom Thurmond and George Wallace on the Right, Henry Wallace and Ralph Nader on the left.
The rise of this increasing militant majority of Centrists should scare the pants and skirts off the self-appointed kingmakers at the RNC and DNC.
But Avlon points out that despite polling data showing substantial majority support for school choice vouchers, a woman’s right to choose, a balanced budget, campaign finance reform, tort reform and a host of other deeply held Centrist opinions that transcend party dogma, “Neither party entirely represents the interests of these voters because they are still influenced by the ideological relics of the Industrial Age.”
Avlon stresses that Centrists are far more interested in solving problems rather than endless ideological debate. Results count not rhetoric, but what the two parties dish out is “rule or ruin” – if you can’t rule the party, then ruin the opposition, even if it represents the best chance for electability.
“Liberals on the far left and conservatives on the far right each try to deny Centrist leaders legitimacy in office because their reforms represent a direct challenge to the special interests that make up the base of both parties,”
This makes the Centrist candidate’s path rough and rocky, something that John McCain learned all too painfully in 2000.
McCain, according to Avlon, infuriated the GOP establishment, “with his refusal to play ball with big business and the religious right while capturing the imagination of Independents and reform Democrats to such an extent that polls showed that he would have beaten Al Gore decisively, causing former Clinton pollster Dick Morris to imagine ‘that a President McCain, beholden to neither the union-dominated Democrats nor the Christian-Right Republicans could reshape American politics’.”
But neither party nor its vested special interests can afford a reshaping of American politics.
Thus it was no surprise that after McCain won the New Hampshire primary by nearly 20 points, was carpet-bombed by one of the most vicious negative campaigns in history. The Bush campaign “began blanketing the airwaves with ads attacking McCain, spending an estimated $50 million, with the understanding that if they did not win here [South Carolina], McCain would be unstoppable.”
The religious right stepped in with a sleazy campaign of anonymous phone calls alleging that McCain “had collaborated with the North Vietnamese, fathered illegitimate children, his wife was a drug addict.”
The incident illustrated how organized parties can use their enormous campaign slush funds, committed special interests, control of the primary process and gerrymandering to keep the Centrist majority of Americans from choosing the candidate they prefer.
While neither political party is willing or able to kick their addiction to special interests, they both know that they cannot win an election without Centrist voters, so they carefully shape a message to appear more Centrist than they really are.
But Avlon points out that politicians need to keep in mind that trouble will brew if there is not some element of “truth in advertising.”
If the elected official doesn’t deliver what is promised in the campaign, they are likely to find themselves out after one term, something Avlon explores in his analysis of, among other people, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton in his first term as Governor and at mid-term elections in 1994 and, he hints, George W. Bush who, he says, co-opted many of the Clinton-Gore Centrist positions then moved way to the right to reward the religious right for helping remove McCain from the competition.
In all, Independent Nation offers a host of lessons which, judging by this year’s campaign rhetoric, will be ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike.
# # #
Lewis Perdue is the author of 19 published books and has been a top aide to a Democratic governor and a Republican U.S. Senator.
That's a good review. I fall in the middle myself. Black/white is an either/or fallacy in my view. lately I've been attacked by far-left anti-war Al Jezeera types intent on blaming our meddling for all of the world's ills. I don't buy that. I was charged with racism over the Israel/Palestinian issue and so on. I am a big Clinton supporter because we agreed and he answered by implementing policies I support and hiring the folks I recommended. Centrists are demonized by the wingnuts on both ends of the spectrum. No question.
James Hansen of NASA who was stifled by the administration over his views on global warming was on 60 Minutes last night. His minder form NASA monitored him and Pelly from the corner. How Soviet is that? I'm the guy who told Hansen he had to fight back against that FOX nutball Steven Milloy. He took my advice, and truth marches on.
No Democrat would ever support such lies and stuff scientific information to spin their stories no matter how they fail in other areas. Acting out Bible prophecy on the world stage isn't my idea of sound judgment, no matter who does it or wants to. We're deep into mythos/logos fueding here with people who will believe anything. And it's about time some semblence of reason steps forward from somewhere. So I agree with you for the mostpart.
Yes ... and what I do not agree with you on, I respect you for because I know your opinion was arrived at in an honest personal effort.
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Thanks. I concur. It's very difficult to come up with something original as oppposed to just signing on. In many ways it's a pick and choose menu, and repeating what others have said can be quite a trap.
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