Zakaria is often accused of coddling the left? Do you agree?

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Forums > All Posts > Zakaria is often accused of coddling the left? Do you agree?

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08-18-2011, 12:38 AM

Zach F
Denton, TX
Posts: 942

Dismissing what the extreme right has been saying, which includes some very ugly Islamic slurs, many right wing media outlets have accused Zakaria of being extreme leftist. I disagree but I was curious what everyone else here thought.

08-18-2011, 06:47 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

Well I'm a big fan of Fareed Zakaria so I'm probably not one to provide an unbiased opinion. I see Zakaria as a liberal pragmatist, much like Obama...but this comes across as centrist. Pragmatism requires one to be centrist in compromising. Otherwise nothing gets done.

He is highly intellectual and global in his various perspectives. Born in Mubai India of Muslim parents, he is a US citizen educated at a Catholic school in Mubai and later Yale and Harvard in the USA. He has a PhD in political science from Harvard in 1993.

I appreciate that he can carry an intelligent conversation with many foreign dignataries asking in-depth questions that the far right could never begin to comprehend.

From Wikipedia: "Zakaria has stated that he tries not to be devoted to any type of ideology, saying "I feel that's part of my job... which is not to pick sides but to explain what I think is happening on the ground. I can't say, 'This is my team and I'm going to root for them no matter what they do.'"

"George Stephanopoulos said of him in 2003, "He’s so well versed in politics, and he can’t be pigeonholed. I can’t be sure whenever I turn to him where he’s going to be coming from or what he’s going to say."" I agree with Stephanopoulos.

In his latest article in Time magazine, August 12, 2001, The Pragmatist President, he presents the pragmatist view of Barack Obama. It is well articulated by someone that shares his own pragmatist views. Zakaria closes that article with a quote from the late Bart Giamatti, a former president of Yale and former baseball commissioner:

“My middle view is the view of the centrist,” he said, before quoting law professor Alexander Bickel, “who would ... fix ‘our eyes on that middle distance, where values are provisionally held, are tested, and evolve within the legal order derived ... from the morality of consent.’ To set one’s course by such a centrist view is to leave oneself open to the charges, hurled by the completely faithful of some extreme, of being relativistic, opportunistically flexible, secular, passive, passionless ... Be of good cheer ... To act according to an open and principled pragmatism, to believe in the power of process, is in fact to work for the good.”

Zakaria used that quote to define Obama, but I think it also defines Fareed Zakaria. Many on the extremes, especially the far right, will not agree.

09-05-2011, 12:39 PM

aparametric
Not Selected
Posts: 1

It is difficult to criticize Zakaria in the context of contemporary television, as he is one of, if not the most well-spoken, intelligent, and rational commentators today. On Sunday, Sept. 4th, he opened, talking about the number of vacation days on average which American workers have available, compared to those in other advanced democracies. He concluded by urging Americans to take more vacation time. Unfortunately, his studied avoidance of politics presented a contrast which was utterly misrepresented. Europeans have more vacation time because vacation is a matter of public policy, and the rights of working people in this regard are determined by law - by democratic process, that is. Were legislation to be seriously suggested in Congress - or in State capitols - providing anything approaching the number of days available by law for the humblest European worker, outraged Republicans would argue that such a law "takes property away from businesses unconstitutionally."
And American workers simply do not have the choice - or the political power - to take more vacation time than they have. For most Americans happily being hired entails accepting wholesale the conditions of an employment agreement which they cannot change - and which typically defines them as "at will" employees who can be terminated for any, or for no reason, at any time by the employer - including active nonacceptance of the most miserly vacation provisions anywhere in the developed world.
Dr. Zakaria did not attempt to explain that the difference is a political one, and one which corresponds to the existence of labor parties elsewhere than the United States, to the higher rates of voting among working class citizens, higher rates of union membership, and an entirely different view, even on the part of businesspeople, of the responsibility of government to its citizens and of the desirability or undesirabilty of immense differentials in income, wealth, and economic class - which exist in the US far beyond modern European societies.

09-07-2011, 12:02 AM

Abraham Foxx
Gilbert, AZ
Posts: 2

I look forward to GPS every Sunday and find Fareed to be very unbiased on most topics. Occasionally, I can see him slip a little to the left, but he is after all entitled to his position. I would not by any stretch of the imagination classify him as extreme in anything. Of course, the Far Right streches the imagination quite a bit these days.

Fareed generally finds a way to ask the tough questions without making the interviews uncomfortable. He is very articulate and intellectual . . . in short, all the attributes that the Far Right despise. I am a moderate Republican and I like him.

02-06-2012, 09:35 AM

buckfly83
Not Selected
Posts: 1

Fareed is a strong proponent of all members of the US democratic party. He promotes the democratic party, and tries to intellectualize their failings by pasting blame on the republicans, capitalists, or others that are not aligned with them. He potshots republicans at every turn. I question how CNN which promotes itself as a news channel would allow Fareed the Democrat's answer to Bill O'Riley to have blow time. Fareed is not a news reporter or journalist. He is a democratic socialist that wants Americans to think its ok to be second best, 3rd best or top 10. He is a bacteria with a mission to rot the soul of America. CNN needs to wake up or maybe they know exactly what they are doing.

02-06-2012, 10:35 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

buckfly,

I couldn't disagree with you more. Republicans have lost touch with reality, and Zakaria exposes that new dogmatic line of thinking in his June 16, 2011 Time Magazine article, How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality:

"Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U.S."

Zakaria goes on to describe how "conservatives used to be the ones with heads firmly based in reality...with powerful reforms addressing the market, streamlined government and empowered individuals whose "effects were large-scale and important."

Today's brand of conservative reform, according to Zakaria, is to "just cut and starve government — a strategy that pays little attention to history or best practices from around the world and is based instead on a theory"...describing such proponents as "woolly-headed professors."

The true intellectual conservatives of the past like William Buckley and Edmund Burke have little voice in the current political atmosphere where daily dosages of anger, fear, hate and anti-intellectualism are promoted by the new conservative "populist" media types like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.

03-18-2012, 06:43 PM

joe48c
Not Selected
Posts: 2

Zakaria is the the most intellectual of the pundits on Sunday A.M. TV. My wife and I love to watch, because he does not echo what the networks have said all week. He always approaches subjects from an independent moderate viewpoint. He always looks at the big picture not just this week's headlines and biases.
The reporters from other networks sound like they have been all at the same cocktail parties listening to the same ideas. Fareed does his research and takes a unique, well informed stance on all subjects.
The reason I am writing today is , He is the first reporter to put Grover Norquist on the defensive." Meet the Press etc." have always softballed questions to him. Mr. Zakaria went right after him and asked him for specifics. He couldn't answer and knew it.
This guy runs the Republicans. He wrote a paper on the subject of taking over a government,based on Stalin,as a graduate student. I remind you, he was a graduate not an undergrad. He is scary. No one has elected him,but he is the most powerful individual in our government next to the President.

03-18-2012, 06:46 PM

joe48c
Not Selected
Posts: 2

Sorry. The subject of the last paragraph was Mr. Norquist.

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