April 1, 2010

Jon Stewart interview

Check it. He interviewed some redhead host from the Fox business channel. I loved how she described how Glass-Steagal ended. If you listen to her, it just "happened." It just "fell away." It wasn't the conscious choice of Republicans like Phil Gramm.

One good example of the media sucking.

4 comments:

P M Prescott said...

They only know how to spin it one way.

LB said...

I didn't see the interview, but to be fair the end of Glass-Steagal was not exclusively the result of the Republicans. It passed with 38 Democrats in the Senate supporting it and 155 Democrats in the House. Then it was signed into law by bill Clinton. Regardless of how good or bad the repeal of G-S was/is, it happened in a very bipartisan way.

Streak said...

Certainly fair to say that this was not exclusively the work of Republicans, but it certainly was pushed heavily by Phil Gramm and other republicans. Yes, Clinton signed it into law (though the original bill passed closer to party line votes in the Senate--I think your numbers are the reconciled vote after meeting with the House). And it is absolutely fair that people like Lawrence Summers supported this repeal.

What is not true is that it "just happened," or "just went away" as this idiot woman framed it. For my students, this is an example of passive voice where the actors in the story simply disappear.

Streak said...

And by the way, LB, I think your point is certainly very valid that many Democrats supported this bill. My issues are not really (on this particular issue) aimed at a party as much as at the very conservative assumptions that decide that deregulation is better than regulation, and lower taxes are always better than higher ones. Those conservative assumptions have been adopted by far too many (imo) Democrats as well, though I would dare say have become as rigidly Republican as any other possible assumption.