Patterico's Pontifications

8/29/2005

Transcript of Tim Rutten’s Interview with Hugh Hewitt Is Up

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 6:50 am



A transcript of Tim Rutten’s interview with Hugh Hewitt is available here. I am hoping to hear the interview itself, since transcripts often contain some inaccuracies and don’t necessarily convey the flavor of particular exchanges. But there’s some interesting stuff there. If you want to understand how the people at the L.A. Times can be as blind to their own biases as they so obviously are, go read it.

P.S. One of my favorite parts of the interview: Rutten considers himself a “pretty conservative guy” because he goes to church, has remained married to the same woman his whole life, and takes care of kids. In the world of the L.A. Times, I guess that makes you pretty conservative.

P.P.S. Recall that Rutten is also the guy who once wrote, without a trace of irony, of the “mythology of liberal Hollywood.”

P.P.P.S. Another favorite part is the part where he bemoans the lowering of our public discourse:

And you notice, that’s the thing about our public discourse now? That whether it’s in the blogosphere, whether it’s on talk radio, whether it’s just two guys shouting or two people shouting at each other on TV, nobody’s every wrong anymore. They just…they’re liars.

Thank goodness Tim Rutten eschews such words when describing conservative bloggers — preferring instead the high-flown terms “[m]alice, mendacity, and misrepresentation.”

I’ll likely have more comments once I have heard the interview. Hopefully Hugh will run it during the 5:00 hour.

13 Responses to “Transcript of Tim Rutten’s Interview with Hugh Hewitt Is Up”

  1. Rutten talks of a temporary talk-radio cyclical dip, (ignoring the blogging explosion), and turns it into an ominous downward trend of conservative media. These people do the same thing with global warming; they use a temporary rise in a certain areas’ temperatures, (while ignoring areas where temperatures have fallen), and come up with catastrophic global consequences.

    bureaucrat (825e78)

  2. I left a long comment but I got an error message and I don’t see it so I think it got lost. I won’t retype it all so here is the truncated version.

    I liked where he said that being pro-life doesn’t mean you’re against Roe V. Wade.
    I’m not pro-life, but I’m pretty sure that it means you are against abortion, which Roe allowed to happen.

    I also like where he said that he was a pretty conservative guy and the LA Times journalists … seem sort of moderate, you know, middle of the road people to me. They’re sort of unrelentingly bourgeois.

    First, No.
    Second, perhaps to denizens of the LA Times newsroom and the upper east side of NYC, he’s “pretty conservative” and they’re “unrelentingly bourgeois” and “middle of the road”, but not to most of us.

    Veeshir (e06f00)

  3. HH: Well, see, that’s what the public doesn’t agree with. That’s why you’re stuck at 900,000 and falling like a rock, is because what you think is an irrelevance…

    TR: Did the public realize this after we were at a million two?

    The LAT was at 1.2M in 1990, fifteen years ago. No internet, Rush was a new phenomenon, no Foxnews. Rutten is not getting that people have more choices, and the LAT is no longer the only place to get information. They have always had a monopoly in print, but people seeking news no longer have to wait for news that is 36 hours stale.

    Rutten really is dreaming about increasing readership, and denying the tilt. All the horrible pictures printed of conservatives, horrible book reviews, 100% of columnists including the business and entertainment sections tilting left…

    HH was great at calling Rutten on his denial, and I loved it!

    LAT is dying, dying... (5b6eb8)

  4. It’s possible that liberals as a species have lost the ability to perceive how others see them, this is an illustrative example.

    bill (26027c)

  5. It’s as I said on this subject in an earlier post.
    Like so many others on the Left, Ruttan just can’t see what side of the aisle he is on. To him and his perception of his collegues at the LAT he is in the center.

    One of the other things that I picked up in the interview that I agree with (I can’t remember who said it) is that opinion writers no longer attempt to pursuade – they just rant at the other side. I see this every day on both sides. They seem to be “preaching to the choir” rather than attempting to convert or pursuade the opposition.

    rls (0516f0)

  6. On the one hand, I’m fascinated that Rutten seems to imply that liberals don’t go to church, don’t stay married to the same person for life, and don’t take care of children (since those alone imply “conservative,” their absence must imply non-conservative/liberal). So I guess there is simply no idealogical/political element in being conservative at all. It’s all simply a matter of personal lifestyle!

    But then what’s Rutten’s problem with conservatives, since they are people like him in the defining characteristics he has chosen, and their belief systems are irrelevant?

    And–those low-life “liberals,” evidently amoral libertines, all! I wonder how Kinsley, Brownstein, et al feel about Rutten’s implicit characterization.

    With such feats of logic and rational discourse the LA Times courts readers and builds its unassailable reputation as a centrist media outlet? Forget fact-checking and simple accuracy in reporting–someone send these jerks some dictionaries and books on elementary logic.

    Levans (e63dcc)

  7. Rutten is to the right in comparison to Moveon.org or Howard Dean or most of the hollywood “liberals”. The problem with Rutten’s perspective is that the “liberals” he is thinking of are actually way to the left of liberalism- very close to stalinists or socialists. To be to the right of a socialist or stalinist is not to be conservative, but liberal. Unfortunately there are very few liberals in L.A. but many socialists and stalinists and that is why Rutten feels he is not a “liberal”. Looney tune lefties have stolen the “liberal” label and therefore anyone not on the extreme left is considered “conservative” or “moderate”. It’s sort of the way National socialist party is described as right wing. How can a socialist party be right wing? well it depends on what you are comparing it to. Obviously the National socialist party was a left wing organization if we consider conservativism to be based on the philosophy that encourages limited government. And it is interesting that caring for childern, being married to one person for life and going to church is considered “conservative”. It leaves you with the idea that the “liberal” label has become tainted and so extreme and that many “liberals” no longer are willing to identified with that taint and extremism.

    john (fb05db)

  8. I listened to Hewitt today and he mentioned you on the air!!! Essentially, he said if the LA Times published more of your articles, he would read the paper. Keep up the good work.

    Lou Parise (9249df)

  9. Reading your blog it seems to me that the LA Times is to the left of the New York Times (That I cannot stomach since sodomy became the most important thing in the world) I thought there was very little left left to the left of the New York Times, but I seem to have been wrong.

    Raul Alessandri (0562b0)

  10. A bit OT, but I note that a recent LAT article on the “Mess in the Crawford Ditch” starts off by mentioning that “thousands” of protesters on both sides are gathered in Crawford. Then in a later paragraph, it mentions that on one side of the road (Cindy’s) “dozens” of protesters sing songs, etc. No mention of how many on the other side… hmmm, let’s see: if you subtract “dozens” from “thousands”, that still leaves “thousands”, doesn’t it?

    Keep burying the truth boys, and some day it will rise up from where you buried it and eat you alive!!

    Daver (abf261)

  11. I think to Rutten, “pro-life” means discomfort at partial birth abortion; no huge opposition to making it really illegal.

    Of course, having judges who won’t strike down such laws is prolly terrible …

    Before trying to change a mind, one must have some ideas of what “facts” could occur that would cause one to change their mind.

    Like, how many US soldiers would have to die in Iraq before it was a “mistake”? (For me, at least 10 000 — without chem, bio, or nukes used.) Or, for anti-war folk who nevertheless claim that they are glad Saddam was booted, how few US soldiers would have to die to say Bush did a good job? For me, less than 2500 and he gets an “A”; 5000 for “B”; 10000 “C”; more deaths, “D” or “F”.

    What does the body bag counting mean if there is no standard?

    Oh, forgot, Leftism means “no standards.”

    Tom Grey - Liberty Dad (b0fc63)

  12. […] Here’s the quintessential dog bites man story: Tim “I’m a Pretty Conservative Guy” Rutten libeled Michael Fumento, and the Dog Trainer refuses to run a retraction, or even Fumento’s letter. […]

    damnum absque injuria » (38c04c)

  13. Why is MICHAEL FUMENTO celebrating this man?!?!?

    See comments just below article:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2054390/posts

    Joel Schwartz (4e0c88)


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