My Wednesday column and a reversal on the Alex Jones CNN appearance:
There's a cost-benefit conundrum when it comes to showcasing right-wing yayhoos and fakers in the broader news media: do we help to debunk their extremist views and therefore undermine their popularity, or do we give them more attention and therefore fuel and augment their popularity?
Usually, I err on the side of exposing them, but yesterday I posted the video of Piers Morgan interviewing conspiracy theorist and paleoconservative weeble Alex Jones, and I criticized Morgan for elevating Jones' apoplectic Cuckoo's Nest pro-gun kneejerkery to a worldwide audience. My thought at the time was that out of the entire menu of conservative entertainment talkers, Jones is the one who's probably the biggest performance artist of them all, and, as such, he's not a serious participant in the discourse. He's a side-show freak and contributes nothing of substance, I thought, and therefore should've been ignored.
In hindsight, I was wrong and here's why. [continue reading]