{"id":5153,"date":"2008-10-28T00:48:56","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T08:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5153"},"modified":"2008-10-28T00:48:56","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T08:08:44","slug":"no-thats-not-a-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5153","title":{"rendered":"No, that's not a response"},"content":{"rendered":"

EconomistMom<\/a>, who I’ve linked positively in the past, introduces a guest post:<\/p>\n

Here is a post by DirectorDad in response to a Dean Baker critique<\/a> of the movie \u201cI.O.U.S.A.\u201d that recently appeared on Huffington Post:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what follows isn’t<\/em> a response to Baker’s critique, which is lengthy and serious. Instead, DirectorDad (aka Patrick Creadon, the director and co-writer of “I.O.U.S.A.”) furiously attacks a strawman.<\/p>\n

After reading Dean Baker\u2019s critique of our documentary \u201cI.O.U.S.A.\u201d, I am left pondering one important question: How could Mr. Baker have possibly come to the conclusion that our film is \u201cone-sided\u201d? […]<\/p>\n

We were very fortunate to get the following people to participate: Warren Buffett and Peter G. Peterson are both interviewed in the film (a Democrat and a Republican, respectively), as are former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Paul O\u2019Neill (a Democrat and a Republican), the two heads of the Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and Ranking Member Judd Gregg (one from each party…) […] Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan (a Democrat and a Republican) […] praised by dozens of film critics for being balanced. The New York Times called our film \u201cresolutely non-partisan.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is just sad.<\/p>\n

Baker did indeed criticize the film for being “one-sided,” but — contrary to what Creadon seemingly believes — the only two sides in the world aren’t “Democrat” and “Republican.” It’s completely possible for an argument to be “one-sided” and nonetheless be supported by both Democrats and Republicans. For instance, if I had a forum on the Iraq War and my invited speakers were Joe Lieberman and John McCain, Creadon might criticize my forum for being “one-sided,” and it would be ludicrous to me to reply that I can’t be one-sided, because I had “one from each party.”<\/p>\n

The subject under discussion — how important is the budget deficit, and what should we do about it? — is important. Baker’s critique<\/a> of the film is substantive and lengthy, and people should read it. It’s a shame Creadon didn’t answer the critique in any serious fashion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EconomistMom, who I’ve linked positively in the past, introduces a guest post: Here is a post by DirectorDad in response to a Dean Baker critique of the movie \u201cI.O.U.S.A.\u201d that recently appeared on Huffington Post: But what follows isn’t a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}