What caused the meltdown of the banking system? Was it Texas-Hold'em Poker? According to those new puritans at New York magazine it was--gasp!--television! Worse, horror-of-horrors, it was cable television, and they want this sort of smut and financial pornography banished from the airways:
The real villains here, the truly bad seeds at the heart of this crisis, have gone unpunished thus far and are still in operation. They are Jeff Lewis and Ryan Brown of Bravo's Flipping Out, Armando and Veronica Montelongo of TLC's Flip This House, Kristen Kemp of TLC's The Property Ladder, Kendra Todd of HGTV's My House Is Worth WHAT?, and the TLC, Bravo, HGTV, and Fine Living networks in general. All of them encouraged people to take out massive loans in order to buy and renovate homes and sell them at a profit when, really, most people have terrible taste, and furthermore, are bad at laying tile. These shows are still on! WHY?But then, there are all sorts of reasons for those on the left to avoid examining some of these root causes:
Back in late December, we noted that the Connecticut Post refused to print emails from readers if they delved too heavily into a particular hometown topic:
"All letters are welcome. But there are code words hidden in some that are signals to stop paying close attention -- "Chris Dodd" and "Barney Frank."All of which points to a word that the New York Times simply can't bring itself to speak, Ed Morrissey writes:
The Times wants to sell Dodd as a victim of the "moneyed Washington subculture where powerful incumbents are invited to get something wholesale," but that's poppycock. The man who accepts a bribe is no more of a victim than the man who offers it. It takes both to create corruption, and it's hard to find a more bald example of it than this. Dodd oversaw Countrywide as part of his committee chairmanship and understood that when he accepted the two loans for below-market rates and no-points acceptance. Countrywide later went belly-up, costing the nation billions of dollars for its easy-terms lending practices, and Dodd has been among the voices blaming the collapse of the lending markets on poor oversight. Well, he ought to know that firsthand, oughtn't he?Exactly. As G.K. Chesterton noted a century ago, "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem"--or where it began.There's more at stake in this refusal to acknowledge corruption, and we have seen it in Barack Obama's Cabinet appointments. He and Congress have excused wrongdoing for Tim Geithner that would likely have resulted in criminal prosecution for others because Geithner supposedly belongs to a rarified elite group of technocrats that the nation can't do without. That stands the rule of law on its head, and put Geithner, Dodd, and others like them beyond the same responsibilities as the rest of us plebes. Dodd, Geithner, and other DC insiders now get a pass from responsibility for their actions simply because of who they know.
Taking sweetheart deals from the industry Dodd oversaw is corruption, regardless of the circumstances. Refusing to pay taxes even after getting reimbursements from one's employer is tax evasion. When we start making up new names for old crimes based on the relative power of the person who committed them, we have ended the rule of law and created an aristocracy.
Candidate Jimmy Carter said yes on the campaign trail, but history remembers his actual presidential administration with much more of a gimlet eye. And President Obama is having more than a few Carteresque moments of his own.
Found via Steve Green's weekly roundup of Blogs at PJTV.com, Barbara Curtis writes:
On Tuesday, as press secretary Gibbs fielded questions from the press regarding Daschle's dropping out as HHS secretary, Obama and Michelle "escaped" to read a book to second graders at a DC public school:"Who is this guy? Where is the Barack Obama who charmed the country and challenged it to greatness?" is New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin's cri de coeur.There's certainly the irony that his own girls are going to the most elite school in DC while the Obamas grandstand among the common kids in a public school.
But ponder the significance of a man who spent only several months in the Senate and then campaigned for almost two years to get to the White House, who now spends two weeks flubbing administratively while entertaining lavishly, then together with his wife acts like it's such a terrible burden they have to "cut loose" and "break out."
And just imagine if Bush had done something similarly shallow in the midst of constantly crying "Crisis!" to the citizens of this country.
Over at his American Spectator blog, Robert Stacy McCain responds:
Campaigning is tough, but governing is infinitely harder. Remember when first Hillary Clinton, and then Republicans, tried to point out that Obama had no executive experience, had never really shown leadership in his legislative jobs, et cetera? Now his deficiencies are hurting him every day. The White House has many advantages, but it's not a very good place to hide.Orrin Judd looks into distance and observes: "Somewhere, a killer rabbit licks its chops."
As an adjunct to Kathy Shaidle's recent Examiner piece titled, "The Vietnam War: everything you know is wrong", Indy Jane and The People's Cube graphically illustrate what the New York Times would have looked liked in 1943 if it was Pinch Sulzberger running the show in 1943, and not his grandfather.
(And for some thoughts on how legacy mass journalism's collective tone changed dramatically during the course of Vietnam, ultimately becoming bifurcated from a wide swatch of its readers and country, follow the links here.)
Robert Stacy McCain and Donald Douglas weigh in on Judith Warner's New York Times-approved Freudian fantasies of a shack-up with Barack, or as Douglas calls it, the "Sexual Subtext in Obamessianism."
Update: The Skepticrats are appropriately skeptical about those seeking a Last Tango In Washington, and note that "It's worth checking out Gawker's post about this just for the illustration they use", which brings new meaning to the phrase "Unicorn Rider."
We'd get at least another four years of Clint Eastwood-inspired tough guy comparisons--and they were right!
If you enjoyed the recent "Picture Kill" edition of our Silicon Graffiti videoblog, which looked at a series of deliberately botched or manipulated stories by the MSM designed to drive a particular agenda or worldview, don't miss Kathy Shaidle's latest piece in the Examiner. Kathy sets the Wayback Machine and the B.S. detector (also known as the A.P. detector) to 1968 for part one of her series debunking the MSM myths of the Only War In History for the boomer era and their journalists.
"Did Saddam Hussein Bug Dan Rather Before the Iraq War?"
Join host Steve Green of VodkaPundit.com and myself for a troika of interviews with best-selling authors:
- Roger L. Simon, the CEO of Pajamas Media.com and PJTV.com, on his new book, which looks at forty years inside Hollywood, Blacklisting Myself.
- Bernard Goldberg, formerly of CBS, now with HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, and a frequent commentator on Fox News, for his look at A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.
- And veteran talk radio host Hugh Hewitt provides a sneak preview of GOP 5.0.
Judith Warner, the author of a book titled Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety begins her op-ed in the New York Times, still, despite its anemic stock price, one of the most influential spokes in the legacy media, thusly:
The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president's health or jealous because of the cigarette.Who dreams of having the President of the United States in their shower while their spouse is yelling at him for smoking? Worse, who admits to this in public? Warner herself provides a clue, here:
"This is the first president I've known who looks, talks and acts like a peer," is how one Washington man explained it to me. "Notwithstanding his somewhat exotic life story, I feel like I understand what he's like and where he's coming from. And despite his incredible achievements, he still seems like a lot of people I know. If you stopped the clock in 2004, in fact, or maybe a couple of years earlier, he'd feel roughly like a peer in terms of accomplishments, too.Which means that if he had an (R) after his name instead of a (D) that Washington man would be calling him grossly unqualified for the White House, instead of admiring his rapid rise to power and vapid, chameleonic style.
More from the "Washington man" Warner quotes:
"Of course I know nobody with his political gifts, speaking skills and confidence, and he's also a gifted writer and thinker. But I feel like one or two different turns for Obama or me and he could have been someone my friends and I wouldn't think it extraordinary to have in our circle."Included in that category are people whose shame is so diminished, they begin op-eds in a newspaper read by millions with embarrassingly mawkish dreams of showering with the President of the United States while simultaneously reaming him out for having a Marlboro 100 in the house.Sometimes this sense of close identification turns a bit dark. There's a subcategory of people who feel that they really should have true intimacy with the Obamas.
Update: "Mind-sexing Obama??? File under Things I Could Happily Lived The Rest of My Life Without Thinking About."
That reporters would be threatened, and even physically roughed up on occasion--if not by the president himself, then by members of his cabinet--and they were right!
Amy Ridenour provides a case study of how the legacy media covers global warming:
When University of Washington Professor Eric Steig announced in a news conference and paper published in the January 22 edition of the journal Nature that he and several colleagues had removed one of many thorns in the sides of climate alarmists -- in this case, evidence that Antarctica is cooling -- he received extensive worldwide attention in the mainstream press.Of course, such biased "reporting" followed by much less visible retractions isn't just limited to global warming, but many other pet causes of the left--such as this media meme, to reference but one.But when a noteworthy error was found in Stieg's research less than two weeks after it's publication, of the mainstream press, only an opinion column in the London Telegraph and a blog associated with the Australian Herald Sun carried the news.
The Stieg paper's release was covered by 27 newspapers, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, by CNN, by the Associated Press, by NPR and quite a few others (see reviews of the coverage at the end of this post).
After independent analyst Steve McIntyre discovered a noteworthy error in the data, and released his results on his influential blog Climate Audit beginning on February 1, based on a Nexis search I conducted February 6, none of these outlets chose to inform their readers.
Hey, somebody should do a video about this topic!
Peter Robinson writes, "Every so often a president finds himself standing completely exposed--naked, so to speak--before the political class." Reasonable people (if such a group can be found to debate President Bush's record) can disagree, but Robinson believes that President Bush was first caught with brass exposed in October 2005, when he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court:
As she began making courtesy calls on members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, word began leaking from the offices of astonished senators that her purchase on even the most basic constitutional case law proved tenuous.In contrast, Robinson believes that President Obama's fallibility is being exposed much sooner in his administration's tenure:
Permit House Democrats to draft his stimulus legislation? What could Obama have been thinking? Only one answer fits: Obama wasn't thinking.In 2007 and 2008, Obama was given virtually no vetting by a media deep in the midst of a "slobbering love affair," to borrow from the title of Bernard Goldberg's latest book. (Incidentally, Bernie will be a guest on this week's PJM Political show tomorrow on Sirius-XM satellite radio.) He (Obama, not Goldberg) encouraged voters to view him a cipher that they could project onto any and all hopes they wanted. He frequently engaged in messianic rhetoric while campaigning, and seemed to encourage similar responses from his more rabid fans--certainly, he did nothing to tamp down such responses.After the Harriet Miers debacle, Bush quickly recovered the support of Washington Republicans. He nominated Samuel Alito in Miers' place and then returned to his other duties as chief executive. That was that. Nobody ever had Bush figured for a brilliant mind anyway.
In recovering from the stimulus debacle, Obama is unlikely to prove quite so lucky. A brilliant mind is exactly what Obama's supporters in Washington thought he had. Brilliance defined Obama. Brilliance is what Obama was all about. Now we know that he has already made some dumb mistakes.
The glee among Republicans right now is only to be expected. The long faces among Obama's startled supporters in Washington are a lot more telling.
Even when he won the election, and the media's comparisons to Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and other presidents venerated over decades or more of history continued, Obama consciously played into them, jetting back to Chicago and taking the train, a la Lincoln, to his inauguration.
What could go wrong once it became time for the least experienced executive in the nation's history to actually govern?
Samizdata.net notes:
In a recent New York Times column, Paul Krugman wrote about what he called the bad faith of the opponents of President Obama's economic stimulus plan. Krugman is apparently labouring under the view that his side has a monopoly of virtue in the current debate and that the Obama plan can not possibly be attacked on the merits.Apparently?
(HT: I/P)
"How do you turn a hearwarming tale into just another excuse to call conservatives heartless, mean ol' hatemongers? Just ask Jessica Heslam from the Boston Herald who, right in the first sentence of her story, decided it would be fun to take a slap shot at a conservative that helped save a woman's life, this week."
"NBC's Ann Curry Gushes: 'Who Are We Going to Be' Because of Obamas?"
CBS's Katie Couric scolds the New York Post for running, as she sees it and decrees it, "an unfair picture" on their cover of President Obama.
"If [ABC thinks] they are bleeding audience numbers now, what do they suppose will be their audience's reaction when it is established that their chief Washington correspondent continues to be a key strategist for the Democratic Party?"
"Reporter Escorted From White House After Seeking Obama Autograph."
President Obama: "I think it's fair to say that I don't always get my most favorable coverage on Fox, but I think that's part of how democracy is supposed to work. You know, we're not supposed to all be in lock step here..."
What is it with the New York Times' ads lately? Last month, Galley Slaves linked to their incredibly lame Bobos In Paradise On Park Ave. themed Web video ads, noted (accurately, I think) "Whatever was spent on this 'Conversations' project might as well have been flushed down a drain. Just ridiculous", and asked, "Do Newspapers Deserve to Die?"
Today, Steve Green looks at the Times' latest online ad featuring a glowing photo of The One Who Pinch Has Been Waiting For and asks:
Is it just me, or has the NYT ad department just given the President a ringing endorsement? It's one thing when the editorial page makes an endorsement, but a banner ad? Really?My favorite is the recent theme featuring the headline, "Subscribe To History," which has a remarkably ironic unintended subtext.
Liberal blogger describe liberal legacy media as racist--for asking the president a question when he visited the White House press room. ("You can't ask questions in here! This is the press room!" Ann Althouse quipped with Strangelovian satire immediately after the incident.)
Such blue-on-blue reactionary thinking was merely a matter of when, as it's far from the first time that left has formed its own circular firing squad on the issue of race.
Speaking of boomer-era flashbacks, Glenn Reynolds dubs this "Chris Dodd's Modified Limited Hangout"; Mark Tapscott writes that "There are two kinds of journalists in the world":
those who have been been given the idiot's treatment by public officials on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for public documents, and those who will be.How will Beltway journalists respond? Tapscott predicts that they'll happily play along:Believe me, I know because I didn't get inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame for nothing (no, really, I am not making that up. Go here if you think only liberals get such honors.).
Now Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen, Chris Dodd, D-CN, has pulled what has to be an all-time classic evasion stunt against journalists covering Congress and the economic crisis concerning his promise six months ago to make public all of the documents about his sweetheart loan deal with Countrywide Mortgage.
Dodd invited a select few Connecticut reporters to his office in Hartford Monday and gave them a few minutes to view - but not copy - a small selection of documents that he claims proves he did nothing wrong in accepting special treatment from Countrywide that saved him a reported $75,000 in refinancing a couple of loans worth a total of $800,000. The Wall Street Journal called it Dodd's "Peek-A-Boo Disclosure."
My guess is that they will do nothing because Dodd is a Democrat and he will be protected just as they have protected House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Clinton administration officials like former OMB Director Franklin Raines, and the many Democrat donors and operators like Mozilo who made millions through their associations with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They forced lenders to lend billions to unqualified buyers, shielded the process from public exposure and accountability and then cried "Wall Street greed" when their Ponzi scheme exploded and the economy tanked.In other words...
"Vietnam analogies can be tiresome", Evan Thomas writes, before attempting to yoke Newsweek's Man In The White House with the hoariest of all Vietnam cliches (hint, the first letter begins with "Q") that the New York Times is simultaneously attempting to apply as well.
And additionally, as Orrin Judd writes, if you're a liberal Beltway journalist, you don't let the fact that it's a rather sloppy history of the endgame in Vietnam in the first place stop you from using it in the first place.
Besides, Vietnam and Watergate are the two ends of the boomer axis upon which the legacy media rotates, as James Taranto wrote in 2005, in the midst of Newsweek's Koran-in-the-can debacle:
The obsession with Vietnam and Watergate is central to the alienation between the press and the people. After all, these were triumphs for the crusading press but tragedies for America. And the press's quest for more such triumphs--futile, so far, after more than 30 years--is what is behind the scandals at both Newsweek and CBS.Curious though, that such high boomer-era cliches linger on nearly 40 years after their initial debut, even when there's a president that the legacy media doesn't immediately wish to destroy.It's also behind the Valerie Plame kerfuffle, which hasn't been properly recognized as a journalistic scandal. The mainstream media accepted uncritically a Democratic partisan's unfounded allegations of criminal conduct within the Bush administration, suddenly discovering that there was no crime only when the ensuing special prosecutor investigation threatened to put two reporters behind bars. (See our February account of the New York Times' evolution on the subject.)
In response to the Koran-flushing debacle, Newsweek has acknowledged only technical problems with its reporting. This follows the pattern of CBS, which commissioned an "independent" report that allowed the network to claim it was free of political bias. In the Plame case, we don't know of any journalistic outfit that's admitted an error; the Times, for instance, still insists baselessly that Plame's "outing" was "an abuse of power."
The problem in all three cases is that news organizations were so zealous in their pursuit of the next quagmire or scandal that they forgot their first obligation, which is to tell the truth. Until those in the mainstream media are willing to acknowledge that it is this crusading impulse that has led them astray, we are unlikely to see the end of such journalistic scandals.
And who better to tell than Allahpundit (trackbacks be upon him) himself, linking to an NPR(!) Webpage: "Shhh: Al Qaeda leadership decimated, complete defeat foreseeable."
Matthew J. Darnell, who edits the "Shutdown Corner" football on Yahoo.com notes that "Matt Millen's NBC commentary comes with a warning label." He links to a Detroit Free-Press article that explains how local TV provided a little extra expository information about the former Detroit Lion during the Super Bowl pregame show:
Every time a certain familiar face showed up on camera Sunday during NBC's Super Bowl pregame show, Channel 4 ran a scroll at the bottom of the screen:You can see video of the label in the YouTube clip above. Of course, it's too bad the networks don't inform their viewers with similar warning labels applied to those working outside their sports divisions..."Matt Millen was president of the Lions for the worst eight-year run in the history of the NFL. Knowing his history with the team, is there a credibility issue as he now serves as an analyst for NBC Sports?..."Hilarious. But good for Channel 4, not toeing the company line as it sought online comments from viewers on Millen's gig. Or maybe it was just trying to distance itself from NBC's brilliant move.
During the Super Bowl, when Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald made a key play, NBC's cameras caught his father in the press booth, working the game for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. Papa Fitzgerald acted remarkably stoically to his son's on-the-field wizardry and Al Michaels quipped, (and I'm paraphrasing), "No cheering from the pressbox--that's the sign of a true journalist."
I don't know if anybody else interpreted it the same way, but to me, that was was a short sharp rebuke to just about everybody in NBC's news department in 2008.
But when old media wasn't overtly cheering, they kept rockin' in 2008, as one of Glenn Reynolds' readers notes:
What Katrina taught the media was that they could hurt Bush by lying. What 2008 taught them was that they could help Obama by not reporting at all. What will 2009 teach them? I shudder to think.Me too.
John Hinderaker adds:
A basic reality of our time is that our mass media are monolithic, and what they choose to report (or not report) depends on what fits the narrative they are pushing on the public. If our reporters and editors wanted to portray Obama as clueless and out of touch with ordinary Americans, he has given them ample opportunity to do so. But because they are Democrats and he is a Democrat, they have no desire to tell that story. So "let them eat steak" is not a theme you'll be seeing on the evening news.Lovers rarely kiss (up) and tell.
Update: "Sometimes the mask slips." And, as happens very occasionally, more than one mask slips.
"Once in a while there is a short piece spewed forth by some Old Media outlet or another that is so perfect as a primer of left-wing bias 101 that I just have to share it."
The L.A. Times is shedding jobs; it will soon have 300 fewer people employed not to publish the news.
Meanwhile, CNN isn't afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve, and its biases on its chest, though sadly, it doesn't appear that a "Wright-Free Zone" T-shirt is yet for sale.
Headline via the The Sundries Shack, which asks, "Has anyone seen FEMA lately?"
It seems we have people dying by the dozens in the midwest, where they've been freezing to death for a few days. Local officials are calling out the Federal government for its notable lack of response.But Bill Quick (found via Instapundit) believes that "'Where's FEMA?' is not the appropriate question":
The appropriate question is, "Where is the mainstream media, screaming in one united voice, that the absence of FEMA demonstrates the utter fecklessness and failure of the current President and all his policies?"This might be a good time for those who have pledged "to be a servant to my president" to head out there, rather than bitching about the contractors working next door. On the plus side though, to the best of my knowledge, no one on the left has actually been rooting for the snow and ice, unlike previous meteorological disasters:Plus his barely concealed racism, of course.
Well that's one way to stimulate the economy: sell lots and lots of Israeli and U.S. flags to the Middle East, where they'll have a remarkably short operational lifespan before replacements are needed.
In his review of Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man for the Claremont Institute, Jonah Goldberg summarized the New Dealers' attempt to deploy military methods and central planning to nationalize America's economy thusly:
When liberals speak of unity and hope, what they really mean is success. The 1930s and 1960s, unlike the '20s and '50s, were decades when liberals, broadly speaking, were "winning." When you hear liberals bemoaning divisiveness and insisting that we must "get beyond" "labels" and "ideological" differences, what they are really saying is that their opponents should shut up and get with the program. The New Deal's appeal lies in the fact that it was the first time when progressive social engineers had real power without the galvanizing dynamic of a war. The Brains Trusters had spent much of the 1920s complaining "we planned in war," i.e., during World War I; they insisted that they should be allowed to plan in peace as well. The Depression gave them their shot. And that in a nutshell is why supposedly empirically minded and "reality-based" liberals still genuflect to the myth of the New Deal. It is the ne plus ultra of liberal power. Defending the New Deal is the first requirement of liberal power-worship.Rusty Weiss spots a newspaper cartoonist so close and yet so far from this point, as he equates the passing of the so-called stimulus bill with the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima:
In one of the more insulting comparisons seen in recent memory, Albany Times Union editorial cartoonist John de Rosier does a major disservice to the honorable men who served during the Battle of Iwo Jima, by depicting recent efforts of Democrats to pass a non-stimulating 'economic stimulus plan' as equally heroic.Meanwhile, in a brief item on Jonah's own Liberal Fascism book, Frank Wilson, the book editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes:The cartoon shows Democrats in the role of the Marines featured in the Iwo Jima Memorial, a sculpture based on the famous photo by Joe Rosenthal entitled Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. The exception to this replication lies in the flag being raised - the Dem's are trying to hoist a 'bailout flag' as opposed to a flag of the United States.
If that weren't insulting enough, the cartoon also shows the Republican Party mascot, the elephant, trying desperately to pull the flag down.
In short, the Democrats are trying to save our nation by heroically raising up the Obama bailout flag, while the villainous Republicans are trying to destroy our nation by stopping their efforts.
I downloaded Goldberg's book on my Kindle because I was curious about a book that had made it on to the NYT best-seller list without ever being reviewing in the Times or most other papers and because I didn't want to pay the full price for what I suspected might be a screed. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a well-written historical survey of a set of ideas and how they grew. I was also surprised by what I learned about Mussolini.As I wrote in my own review of Jonah's book:
Mussolini similarly invented the word "totalitarianism" as a way to describe a cradle-to-grave socialism that would bind all aspects of his nation together. "Mussolini meant it to be appealing to people," Goldberg said. "It was a sales pitch for his kind of government. He meant it as we would use words like 'holistic' today, as sort of covering every aspect of life; everyone's going to be included, everyone's going to be part of the community. No child is going to be left behind. That was the meaning of totalitarianism in its original conception."Concurrently, the Philadelphia Inquirer seeks to get itself even deeper into bed with government, requesting a bailout from the state's Democratic governor. Needless to say, Il Duce would approve.
Related: The Illustrated Stimulus.
(Meanwhile, Greg Pollowitz explains how PETA played NBC.)
Steve Green writes, "They Don't Like Profits Anyway":
Via Melissa Clouthier comes this tasty little item from Gawker:Even as yet another east coast paper begs for a federal bailout, there's hope yet for another legacy media: "Snuggie Sales Prove TV isn't Dead"!...today the NYT runs an op-ed from Yale's hallowed money manager David Swensen, in which he recommends that newspapers turn themselves into non-profits with endowments (we agree, philosophically at least). "As long as newspapers remain for-profit enterprises, they will find no refuge from their financial problems." He's talking to you, NYT!The NYT is already headed towards zero profits for as far as the eye can see -- so why not make it official?
Well, that's a relief.
As we noted in February of 2003, during the Pleistocene era of our humble corner of cyberspace, CNN dusted off the Q-word three weeks before the liberation of Iraq began. This week, the New York Times similarly is "Fearing Another Quagmire in Afghanistan" a week after President Obama is in office.
As Jules Crittenden notes:
The real question raised by this article is why a major American newspaper ... currently bogged down in a considerable quagmire of its own ... would want to jump into the quagmire of quagmirism again. But it looks like we may be witnessing a fascinating evolution in which Obama, having adopted a number of key Bush war policies and practices, will be subjected to the same shoddy reporting practices.Fortunately, the Times has a legendary Pulitzer-winning journalist to airdrop into that far-off land.
(Incidentally, I wonder if the Age of Obama has caused the Times' publisher to revise this sage moment of '60s-minted Radical Chic philosophizing?)
Infidels Are Cool has the video of CNBC calling Rush to harangue him over his Wall Street Journal op-ed. It's been a while since I've watched the ostensibly business-oriented CNBC; when did their hosts start sounding like they're auditioning for the even further leftwing MSNBC?
Related: Roger Kimball suggests that maybe President Smoot "should listen to Rush Limbaugh after all."
Set the Wayback Machine for 1981, fire up your TRS-80 and experience the magical new world of...online news!
Much more retro-futurism here.
The New York Times: for show trials before they were for them. Maureen Dowd writes:
It's psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.Just as long as we start with the management who plowed this firm's stock price into the ground over the last five years.Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.'s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.
Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O'Neal?
"Well -- his office was very different -- than -- the -- the general decor of -- Merrill's offices," Thain replied. "It really would have been -- very difficult -- for -- me to use it in the form that it was in."
Did it have a desk and a phone?
How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) -- and not as perps?
Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.
Recently, Charles Johnson and his readers debated if CNN ran faked footage of an attempted resuscitation of a wounded young boy in a Gaza hospital, in a video supplied by a Palestinian stringer. CNN initially pulled their video, and a day later reinserted it into their lineup, claiming:
Responding to accusations that the resuscitation efforts of Mashharawi's brother appeared inauthentic, Martin said that, based on his years of reporting from Gaza, doctors often go through such efforts even with little hope that a patient can be saved.Charles Johnson responded:
If they really had "little hope" the patient could be saved, they'd be going all out with CPR, which means very vigorous chest compression (it's not unusual to break ribs if it's done right), and ventilation to oxygenate the blood--not delicately touching the boy's abdomen with the tips of their fingers as we see in the video clips.But if the jury is still out on that clip, let's take a video look at news from this decade that we know conclusively was botched, including:
- The New Republic's Danger Man, Scott Thomas Beauchamp.
- Reuters' Picture Kill fiasco.
- Former CNN chief Eason Jordan claimed US (and Israeli) troops targeted journalists For assassination--but was surprisingly cool about working with Saddam Hussein.
- Hurricane Katrina and the "Echo Chamber in the Superdome."
- Document Dan Rather.
- Jayson Blair.
- And the grandfather of 'em all: Walter "Boom Boom" Duranty.
Keep rockin'--and watch for cameos by Larry Kudlow, Hugh Hewitt, and John Hinderaker!
(If you missed any of the previous editions of Silicon Graffiti, click here and just keep scrolling.)
Update: Welcome readers (viewers?) from Little Green Footballs, VodkaPundit, the Brothers Judd and Danny Glover!
More: Welcome also readers from Pundits Insta and Gateway--and from Dr. Melissa Clouthier.
Gay Patriot writes, "Joy Behar Says Obama Too Perfect for Mockery":
On Sunday night, while doing my cardio, I caught what appeared to be rebroadcast of an episode of Larry King LIve. King asked The View's Joy Behar why comedians didn't make fun of the new president. The comedienne replied that this prez was just too perfect.*As a former employee of ABC said in 2007 on Joy's show:Can you imagine how the media would react if a conservative had chastised a comedian for making fun of former President George W. Bush because he was "too perfect"? A few google searches yielded no mainstream criticism of Miss Behar's panegyric to the president (not even on the right-maybe that's because no one else was watching?)
It is truly frightening that a comedian in a free society would think her president too perfect for mockery.
I'm saying that in America we are fed propaganda and if you want to know what's happening in the world go outside of the U.S. media because it's owned by four corporations one of them is this one. And you know what, go outside of the country to find out what's going on in our country because it's frightening. It's frightening.Come back Rosie--all is forgiven!
(H/T: IP)
James Taranto writes that already, the Obama administration has brought hope!--and change!--to one American institution: the press:
More than 144 hours into Barack Obama's presidency, the economy is still in recession, the country is still at war, and in many parts of the country it's still cold outside. Citizens are growing impatient: Wasn't President Obama supposed to bring change?Of course it was done quietly--the new White House can't figure out how to send email. (And while I'm enormously sympathetic to technology snafus, imagine how that story would be reported in the world ofYet one institution has changed dramatically, and in a very short time: the press. After spending the Bush years as a voice of opposition, American journalists have by and large turned on a dime and become cheerleaders for the man in power.
A case in point is the Associated Press, perhaps the nation's premier "straight news" outfit. During the Bush years, the AP introduced a new reportorial idiom called "accountability journalism," whose goal is "to report whether government officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the promises they make." Turns out they weren't.
But the AP's new idiom, which we hereby name "pliability journalism," aims to show that everything is completely different from the bad old days of a week ago and before. A Saturday dispatch by Liz Sidoti, titled "Obama Breaks From Bush, Avoids Divisive Stands," shows how it works:
Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.A central feature of pliability journalism is the bending of contrary facts to fit the narrative of change, hope and unity. Here's how Sidoti reshapes one such fact:So far, Obama's only real brush with issues that stoke partisan passions came when he revoked a ban on federal funding for international groups that provide or promote abortions. He did that quietly by issuing a memorandum late Friday afternoon. The move was expected; the issue has vacillated between Republican and Democratic presidents.So three days after taking office, Obama executed a 180-degree policy turn on the nation's most emotionally charged subject. That would seem to be the epitome of divisiveness. But no. It (1) has been "Obama's only real brush with issues that stoke partisan passions," (2) was "expected" and (3) was done "quietly."
Update: From the visual arts department of the pliability media, political cartoonists suddenly get cold feet at the prospect of satirizing the man who promised to raise the ocean levels and heal the entire planet.
When I was young and naive, I'd have guessed that the media didn't yet have the particulars of this story but were working hard to bring them out. Now I just assume that they know everything already but that the bombshell won't burst until the day after the midterms.And even then, it will time to play "Name That Party" if the politician in question has a D between his name and his home state's initials.
Keep rockin', MSM!
An ABC morning show host in 2007: American morale is at an all time low because 9/11 couldn't have happened without massive government help.
An ABC morning show host in 2009: "Consumer confidence has to rebound, which won't happen without massive government help."
Then: "Dissent is Patriotic."
Now: "Arguably treasonous."
Or as James Lileks wrote on election night:
I'm off to the Mall to sell razor blades so people can scrape off their "Question Authority" bumper stickers. Just remember: Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Except now it will be practiced by the lowest form of people.Including those who buy airtime by the gallon.
As Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters writes, Howard Kurtz, the legacy media's legacy media critic has a blinding flash of the obvious and renames MSNBC "The Obama Network":
In the '90s, many conservatives referred to CNN as "The Clinton News Network" due to its obvious biases towards the 42nd president.At one point on his Reliable Sources segment on CNN, Kurtz said, "Okay, well then I just want to be clear about it, because MSNBC denies that it has moved to the left, and I think the evidence is pretty strong."Years later, just days after the inauguration of the 44th president, one of that network's on-air hosts officially labeled MSNBC "The Obama Network."
You gotta love it.
They don't always deny it--it just depends on who's doing the asking.
(And it goes without saying that Kurtz's employers are both in the tank themselves.)
Sherman Frederick, the publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal writes, "As our president said, it is time to grow up":
There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.He's absolutely right, but he lost me with that last sentence. Nip it in the bud? This isn't exactly a new development: Garofalo's shtick dates back to 2003. The origins of the black liberation theology that fuels Obama's former spiritual advisor date back to the 1960s, not coincidentally, the terrorist heyday of Bill Ayers and other paramilitary Obama supporters. Radical payback for opposing views isn't exactly new, either.Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be "jailed." Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church's way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression.
There is also an ugly racial component to it. We first saw it with Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said, among other things, that white America had deliberately inflicted black Africa with AIDS.
When the Rev. Wright first hit the national stage, we hardly knew what to make of his irrational and separatist statements. Consequently, we pretty much ignored the substance of Wright's racially divisive rhetoric and focused on it as a day-to-day political story. It made us more comfortable, I think.
But in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate -- no matter the color of the person who makes them -- and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.
Back in mid-2004 with an election year in full swing, Charles Krauthammer coined "the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release":
The loathing goes far beyond the politicians. Liberals as a body have gone quite around the twist. I count one all-star rock tour, three movies, four current theatrical productions and five best sellers (a full one-third of the New York Times list) variously devoted to ridiculing, denigrating, attacking and devaluing this president, this presidency and all who might, God knows why, support it.The media's pressure cooker would pop yet again the following year: as Mickey Kaus wrote at the time, Katrina allowed them to go nuclear on Bush without sounding unpatriotic, unlike their GWOT and Iraq-bashing coverage.How to explain? With apologies to Dr. Freud, I propose the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release.
The hostility, resentment, envy and disdain, all superheated in Florida, were not permitted their natural discharge. Came 9/11 and a lid was forced down. How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander in chief? With Bush riding high in the polls, with flags flying from pickup trucks (many of the flags, according to Howard Dean, Confederate), the president was untouchable.
The Democrats fell unnaturally silent. For two long, agonizing years, they had to stifle and suppress. It was the most serious case of repression since Freud's Anna O. went limp. The forced deference nearly killed them. And then, providentially, they were saved. The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq.
Stripped of his halo, the president's ratings went down. The spell was broken. He was finally once again human and vulnerable. With immense relief, the critics let loose.
The result has been volcanic. The subject of one prominent new novel is whether George W. Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is re-elected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They'll need therapy.
So this isn't exactly a new development in politics--this is merely SOP for the American left.
Back in July you'll recall that John McCain's campaign ran a YouTube video that dubbed Barack Obama "the biggest celebrity in the world" and compared the candidate (still in the middle of his first term in the Senate) to Paris Hilton.
You know you're over the target when you start receiving Good Morning America, and they and the rest of the enraptured legacy media were collectively infuriated by this ad:
Co-host Diane Sawyer hyperbolically derided the spot as a "political nuclear attack" and asserted that the campaign is taking "a strange new turn."And for a time it was. In mid-September, when McCain was still leading in some polls, Rich Lowry wrote:GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo seemed equally flummoxed. He opened the show by asserting, "Some odd campaign news today. There's a round of new campaign commercials that really have us scratching our heads here." A bewildered Sawyer agreed: "What sort of committee meeting do you have where you say, 'Let's use Britney!' 'Let's use Paris!' Yes, that'll be a blow!"
The enduring scandal of the McCain campaign is that it wants to win. The press had hoped for a harmless, nostalgic loser like Bob Dole in 1996. In a column excoriating Republicans for historically launching successful attacks against Democratic presidential candidates in August, Time columnist Joe Klein excepted Bob Dole -- not mentioning that Dole had been eviscerated by Clinton negative ads before August ever arrived.One of the reasons why the "Celebrity" ad so angered the MSM was that it spoke to the heart of Obama's appeal--it's not ideas and policy oriented, it's "largely aesthetic and personality-based", as Peter Wehner writes in an excellent article at Commentary. Read the whole thing, but the main thesis is here:The press turned on McCain with a vengeance as soon as he mocked Barack Obama as a celebrity. Its mood grew still more foul when the McCain campaign took offense at Obama's "lipstick on a pig" jab. "The media are getting mad," according to Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz. "Stop the madness," urged Time's Mark Halperin, exhorting his fellow journalists to fight back against the McCain campaign's manufactured outrage.
Obama's appeal, while widespread, is largely aesthetic and personality-based. This explains why a somewhat unsettling cult of personality has arisen around Obama. His appeal is not rooted in ideas or political philosophy or governing achievements; indeed, it is not grounded in any acts of governance. Yet some people already speak of him as a Lincolnian and Messiah-like figure.Which is my Michael Novak is speculating on "The Coming Fall"--when it will occur, and what might cause it.But precisely because this appeal is largely aesthetic rather than substantive, because it is not grounded in things deep or permanent, its durability is limited. Reality will intrude. A million watt smile, fashionable sunglasses, and a nice jump shot are fine - I wish I possessed each of them - but one can confidently assume that Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Hassan Nasrallah, and Hugo Chavez are immune to their charms. Inflation, deflation, and unemployment will not be determined by the eloquence of Obama's rhetoric, the dinners he attends, or the columnists and reporters he seduces.
My point is really a rather simple one: Obama will be judged by the outcome of events. The other things are fine -- but in the end, they are far less important, and in some cases they are evanescent. People magazine and the Style section of the Washington Post are fun, but they are not serious.
Right now Barack Obama, having been President for all of three days, appears to be sitting on top of the world. He is a bright, talented, and able man. But the world is an untidy and unpredictable place. Pakistan may convulse. Iran may well go nuclear on Obama's watch; if so, Saudi Arabia and Egypt might soon follow, and the most unstable region in the world would be home to several nuclear powers.
Hard decisions need to be made, often based on incomplete information and rapidly changing events. Inter-agency clashes will occur. People and agencies thought to be competent will prove to be unreliable. Intelligence agencies will not be able to tell the President all that he wishes. A massive federal bureaucracy, an emboldened Congress, and other nations will begin to assert themselves. The law of economics will not be suspended. Entitlement programs remain unreformed and therefore unsustainable. Wasteful programs will refuse to die. The deficit is exploding. People's expectations are soaring, and soon enough they will insist on results.
Barack Obama may or may not succeed as president; but whether he does or not, the things people are taken up with now will not be determinative. And if things get worse rather than better, if Obama appears overmatched by events, then what are viewed as strengths now will be seen as weaknesses later. The day's vanity will become the night's remorse.
Barack Obama is President of the United States, not a crown prince on a white horse. Fairy tales are fine; but fairy tales are childish things.
Or, great moments in live TV!
Scroll to about 1:55 into this clip (at least while it's still online) to hear a local television sex doctor completely stick her fist in her mouth, as Gawker.com writes:
Dr. Terri Orbuch, the "Love Doctor" on a Detroit news station was talking about how lovey-dovey they are and then completely stuck her fist in her mouth. She was trying to reference last June's infamous terrorist fist jab moment, shared between the then-candidate and his wife when he won the Democratic nomination.Unfortunately, thanks to the potent mixture of live TV and flop sweat, Orbuch blurted out this:
We also need to be affectionate, and you can see that with Barack and Michelle as well. They do a lot of a lot of touching, kissing, even fisting with one and other.As Gawker concludes:
See, if we weren't talking quite so much about how awesome it is that they like to touch and kiss each other, we would never have had the Presidential Fisting image seared into our brains. Thanks, Detroit!Heh.
As Glenn Reynolds wrote last week, "Remember, it's only McCarthyism if you disagree with the politics."
Mrs. George Stephanopoulos on the reaction of herself and her husband to Obama's inauguration.
As its former Ombudsman Daniel Okrent wrote in 2004, "Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?"
Related: Has Caroline Kennedy gotten Pinch-ed? Don Surber thinks so!
(H/T: Radio Pundit.)
Not quite the same as the Chewbacca Defense, but worth reading nonetheless, as Robert Stacy McCain lists the sordid details of, as he calls him, "Mayor NAMBLA"--whose party affiliation dare not speak its name in the MSM.
in his last week in power, in order to ensure that the nation's capital actually survive the transition process, President Bush had declared DC a disaster area. Between the inclement weather, the lack of indoor plumbing, the minimum of functional outdoor plumbing, and hundreds of thousands of pop music-loving anti-war protesters, last Thursday, I wrote that the inauguration sounded like "a repeat of Woodstock, except with Geritol the drug of choice instead of LSD, and many fewer cool bands."
CNN's John Roberts, the architect of CNN's infamous "Wright-Free Zone" last year, agrees. As Newsbusters puts it, "CNN's John Roberts Dubs Inaugural Crowds 'Barack-stock'":
CNN's CAROL COSTELLO: You know, usually, you have a little bit of a problem getting people to agree to be on television, but not yesterday. People were begging to be on TV. They wanted their thoughts recorded. They were very much aware that history was being made, and they wanted to be a part of it in whatever way they could.Well far out, man! The lead act was pretty amazing, but did you catch Country Joe Biden And The Sea Kittens? Crosby, Stills And Rahm? Clinton Clearwater Revival? And how 'bout that oldies act, Thomas Jefferson Airplane!JOHN ROBERTS: It really was 'Barack-stock' -- peace, love, and history.
COSTELLO: It really was.
Seriously though, it did seem like there was plenty of featherweight pop culture and more than a few bad trips yesterday as well. Hopefully the administration will recover from their dalliance with nostalgie de la boue and actually govern like grownups. The legacy media's long strange acid trip of the last election cycle may have been too much for them to overcome, though.
Update: While CNN's Roberts declared yesterday to be "peace, love, and history", Michael Medved notes that "President Obama explicitly and forcefully distanced himself from the far-left 'peace activists' who provided his drive for the presidency with much of its initial energy and urgency."
When I read that the crowd today booed President Bush -- and then saw a video of it -- I thought of a quip my friend Eddie made, not long ago: "When the Left asks for a classless society, now I know what they mean."Meanwhile, Tom Brokaw has a classless moral inversion of his own, looking at the president who liberated Iraq from a would-be Stalin and quipping that his successor's inauguration "reminds me of the Velvet Revolution," which toppled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
Just when you thought that media out of Gaza wasn't surreal enough, comes this moment, courtesy of Charles Johnson, who writes:
Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.(Turn on closed captions for English subtitles.)
This clip casts a whole new light on the numerous American media scandals of the past decade. For example, give CBS credit--as bad as RatherGate was, they've never launched missiles off the roof of Black Rock at their competitors!
The Media Research Center is your one stop shop for Obama worshiping media clips. Savor the bias!
(No really--I'm just thrilled that even more legacy journalists are on the record regarding where they stand.)
Update: "Are They Writing for Tiger Beat or the New York Times?" Who can tell the two apart these days?
This doesn't happen often, so it's worth highlighting: Howard Kurtz, a good media critic except for his frequent see-no-liberals style, actually uses the L-word; this time in reference to weeklies such as Time and Newsweek, whose publication rate is rendered glacial by the speed of the Web.
(Incidentally, Kurtz has ties to both magazines' owners: Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post Company, which also publishes Kurtz) and Time is published by Time Warner Inc., which owns CNN, the network which airs Kurtz's weekly Reliable Sources segment.)
As Kurtz notes, in order to survive, the rival editors at both of these once prominent weeklies have been forced to turn out magazines "that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal":
When Rick Stengel joined Time in 1981, every story in progress filled a thick binder -- the reporter's version, the editor's rewritten version, the top editors' version, the fact-checked version -- that would be unimaginable in today's cut-to-the-bone corporate culture.And Kurtz lays out the survival plan later in the piece:Many of the recently laid-off staffers, Stengel says, "were people whose jobs really didn't exist any more."
When Jon Meacham joined Newsweek in 1995, "there was a phrase in the culture -- 'We need to get something in on X' -- that we never use anymore," he says. The days of a "newsmagazine of record," Meacham says, are long gone.
The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal. They are pursuing a more elite audience, in print and on the Web, abandoning the old Henry Luce notion of catering to the masses. It is nothing less than a survival strategy.
One answer is to jettison the old straddle-the-center formula in which the newsweeklies spoke with an institutional voice rather than publish bylines. Each magazine's lead columnist -- Time's Joe Klein, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter -- is liberal. Newsweek has been running columns by Jacob Weisberg, the liberal editor of Slate, another Post Co. property. Newsweek also ran a controversial cover last month headlined "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage" -- "one of the last great civil rights issues," Meacham says. And its top writers appear regularly on liberal talk shows on MSNBC, with which it has a news partnership.Too bad you're not conscious that you've just triangulated your publication as establishment liberal."I'm not going to be silly about it," Meacham says. "A lot of people think we're left of center. I think it depends on the week and the issue. . . . I'm not ideologically driven by any means." He notes that Barack Obama's campaign limited cooperation with the magazine when Newsweek ran a cover photo of arugula last spring to symbolize his elitist image. Meacham himself wrote a post-election cover piece on why America is still a center-right nation.
Time ran a column last week by liberal academic Jeffrey Sachs titled "The Case for Bigger Government." This week's issue features Obama, Time's Person of the Year, yet again, and the cover headline "Great Expectations," plus a piece on his wife as "America's Next Top Model."
Stengel, who worked for Bill Bradley's Democratic presidential campaign, says he has tried conservative columnists -- including Bill Kristol, who left -- but has not come up with a star. "I get as many complaints from readers that we're too left as complaints that we're too right," he says. "I'm really conscious of trying to be fair and balanced."
Since the early days of this blog, I've been writing about an increasing number of legacy journalists willing to go on their record about their own, and their employers' biases. The sheer number who came out for Obama this year renders the idea of an "objective" media DOA, as many, such as Michael Malone and Victor Davis Hanson noted at the conclusion of the 2008 election. As does advertising such as this. (I can't wait to hear the response when the next GOP president asks CBS to reciprocate with his slogan on inauguration day.)
In 2006, Time magazine couldn't pick a Man of the Year, so they gave to me...and you...and everyone!
This year, virtually the entire legacy media was in the tank for President Elect Obama. And for the most part, they weren't afraid to let you know it, either explicitly as in the examples in the video and text in the second half of this post, or implicitly, by executing acrobatic stunts such as this.
Which is why the many readers of Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs blog gave the negative equivalent of Time magazine's Man of the Year Award--the Fiskie Award, named after the Walter Duranty of the 21st century--to the entire Mainstream Media.
Say, I wonder whom they'll nominate to collect their award?
Update: Gateway Pundit notes, "CNN Wants Obama's Inaugural Speech Carved in Marble... Even Before It's Delivered."
Mark Steyn writes, "The world is flattened":
After Thomas Friedman correlates (on the back of a napkin) freedom and the price of oil, Mr Taibbi correlates, rather more plausibly, happiness and the size of Valerie Bertinelli's ass (with accompanying graph).Valerie used to take life "One Day At A Time"; based on this headline at Power Line, I'd say Talibbi may have taken one life at the Times!
I've met Neo-Neocon in person a few times. Everyone knows she blogs anonymously (and man, is it hard talking to someone at a cocktail party when she holds an apple in front of her face the whole time), but who knew just how secret the life she was leading really was?
For you see, Neo-Neocon is also, simultaneously, Meryl Yourish at the same time. With the Bush administration concluding this week, this could be the final closely held American secret blown wide-open for the next four to eight years by the intrepid New York Times--not to mention its layers and layers of ace fact checkers and editors.
(H/T: Glenn Reynolds, who is also both Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Corbett. And maybe John Glenn, too. Who can say?)
Some thoughts on "the primal tribal imperative that underlies the relentless scapegoating of our 43rd president by his political adversaries" from Sisu Willis.
Related: On the other hand, "Welcome back from the Wilderness of Despair and Oppression, kids."
Selwyn Duke looks at the state of manufactured consent at the dawn of the Obama administration:
A common defense of error today is to say, with due indignation, "I have a right to my opinion!" Legally this is true, given that our First Amendment is extant. But as G.K. Chesterton once said, "Having the right to do something is not at all the same as being right in doing it." There is no moral right to an immoral opinion -- nor to one bred of emotionalism unconstrained by reason -- nor to a deceitful one.Read the whole thing.More than ever, Americans are realizing that this isn't a sentiment to which the mainstream media subscribes. In fact, with how it shamelessly carried water for Barack Obama during the election, 2008 has been dubbed "the year journalism died" (Sean Hannity is fond of this label). Yet, while such pronouncements make for compelling commentary, nothing could be further from the truth.
The reality is that journalism is alive and well -- outside the mainstream media. As for the latter's journalism, by the third millennium it was not only dead, not only laid to rest, but fossilized and buried under the stratum containing the hula hoop and pet rock. And it would take a Jurassic Park-like effort to reconstitute its DNA and resurrect the ancient beast. Thus, a more accurate statement about 2008 is: It was the year that many more illusions about the validity of mainstream journalism died. Let us now take a look at a media that has made malpractice an art.
"Leading climate expert Jim Hansen" (no relation, as far as we can tell, to a deceased but global warmingly remembered Muppet expert) believes "Barack Obama has only four years to save the world."
Of course he does. But we give Mr. Hanson bonus points for eschewing the leisurely and far overdone bourgeois pace of the ten year countdown--four isn't a number that's picked all that often from the proverbial hat for a doomsday countdown. But in any case, file this one way for election time in 2012 if--and we think the odds are somewhat reasonable here--Mr. Hanson is wrong.
In any case, no final countdown is complete without...
Some thoughts from, and about, Camile Paglia at Five Feet of Fury.
Jonah Goldberg spots Bill Moyers channeling Jimmy the Greek.
Jonah writes, "It's long past time they put Moyers out to pasture." Of course, if his statement goes down the memory hole, it wouldn't be the first time an unsavory element of Moyers is excused by the liberal establishment.
Maureen Dowd visits a Florida spa; unintentional hilarity ensues.
ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson is not happy that his audience, like Spinal Tap's, is becoming more selective:
ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson says his network needs to continue taking programming risks despite the economic downturn and plans a robust development slate for the fall.The article is titled, "McPherson Plans Robust Fall, Criticizes Nielsen." I swear at first glance, I read it as "McPherson Plans Robust Fail."McPherson told critics at the winter press tour that he plans to shoot 10 comedy and drama pilots for next season.
"We have to take swings at the plate, and we still have to be bold," he says, noting the shows that have worked best for the network such as "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" creatively broke new ground. "We want to grow our brand and built off the success we have. ... I don't want to do a total departure and do CBS-like shows."
The entertainment president also criticized Nielsen, saying the ratings measurement company contracted by networks doesn't take into account enough forms of audience viewing.
"We're talking about a different world now," says McPherson, whose network, like most broadcasters this season, has lost viewers.
Elsewhere in old media, "Scribes Guild Mourns Death of Elegant Calligraphy."
Update: Epic fail, new media style: "Hulu CEO: 'We screwed up royally.'"
Currently up on the Drudge Report is the headline, "BANK OWNED BY AMERICA; FEDS BECOME LARGEST SHAREHOLDER."
Talk about burying the lede--Drudge's headline is real story of this article from the New York Times' spinoff the International Herald Tribune. Which is why, naturally, it's buried five paragraphs in.
But as Frank Martin wrote last month:
This is how it ends. As of right now, the Senate IS the banking system. You just try prying the banking system from the hands of the Senate now. You want a loan? Sure, lets just check your voting record, lets see what kind of car you want to buy, oh darn its not a certified government "greenmobile", well sorry Mr. Consumer, we cant give you a loan for that new Toyota Dual Axle truck for your ranch, but how about a new Chevy Cobalt Hybrid? Sure thing. Sign right here Mr. Consumer.Or as I asked last month:SNAP! That's just how easy it is for you to find that you no longer have any economic choices. No banks - then no bank loans. No bank loans - then no economy. In point of fact, your entire economy is now run by just 100 people. 100 people that if most of us were in an elevator and any one of them got on, we would then get off and walk up the rest of the building rather than risk our well being by exposed to their close proximity.
And for some other video looks on how we got here, click here and here.
Update: Am I blue? You'll be, too:
Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital Blog mentions a new buzz word in energy policy discussions--blue jobs--jobs associated with oil and natural gas industries. The industry is pushing to keep the oil and natural gas energy relevant in America's discussion of energy policy to force policy makers to keep them in mind in the formulating of new policies and programs. The gas lobby wants to keep "blue jobs" in demand, jobs that total 5.8 million nationwide--in both direct and (sometimes very) indirect jobs that the gas lobby says are dependent on natural-gas related activities.In today's "POR economy" (centrally planned to perfection and/or perdition by the bluest of the Blue Staters, Pelosi, Obama, and Reid) aren't all jobs blue jobs?
"'Sometimes, Brian, I think we live in a parallel universe, where the media see the world one way when it's a Democrat in power and another way when a Republican is in power,' NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade."
Much more here.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier takes the pulse of the MSM, with some assistance from Charlie Martin of Pajamas Media's "Edgelings" tech blog, and a little video help from your humble narrator himself.
And speaking of a troubled MSM, Newsbusters reports that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has declared Chapter 11. Its best-known journalist in the new world of the Blogosphere and Satellite Radio directs us to this piece in the Minnesota Post for some additional details of the Strib's bankruptcy and what may be to come. (But not before including a sublime screen capture from A Night To Remember, taken at the apex between iceberg and eternity.)
Related: "Your MSM Moment of Zen."
Michael Calderone writes that there was cheering in Washington Post building at the president elect's arrival today--but heaven forfend, there's no reason to believe that any reporters cheered:
Obama arrived at the Washington Post headquarters today, as covered in priceless pool report by the New York Times Helene Cooper.Excuse me, there's no reason to think there were any reporters cheering? No, of course, not. None at all.After three and a half hours at his transition office, PEOTUS obama took another 6 minute ride through washington, arriving at 157 pm at the nondescript soviet-style building at 15th and L street that houses the washington post.Is Cooper bitter about the Times still not getting an interview?Around 100 people--Post reporters perhaps?--awaited PEOTUS's arrival, cheering and bobbing their coffee cups.
Pool is holding in a van outside, while Mr obama does his washington post interview, and will exercise enormous restraint by ending report before saying what really thinks about this turn of events.UPDATE: "There's no reason to think there were any reporters cheering," said a Washington Post spokesperson, adding that there are "a lot of people who work in the Post building who don't work in the Post newsroom."
Update: More from Allahpundit, who unearths a remarkably prescient quote from 2005:
"Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions," an editor working for the Washington Post's Sunday "Book World" section charged in a contribution to a daily internal critique of the newspaper quoted by Howard Kurtz on Monday. Marie Arana disclosed that "if you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats."I doubt anybody's very flabbergasted these days. The one benefit of the media wearing their hearts on their sleeves for Obama is that readers now know where their journalists stand, and can choose their publications accordingly.
Update: Mission Accomplished! "Exurban League has obtained an exclusive photo of the Washington Post preparing for Obama's arrival..."
More: "I hear Barack is a good name."
The mere existence of this headline--"CBS says ratings success proves network TV viable"--is proof that the clock is ticking on the model, at least in its current form. Imagine such a headline running 10, 20, 40 or 50 years ago.
Meanwhile, Galley Slaves notes that the clock may be ticking slightly faster for one of CBS' competitors.
Of course, the viable lifespan of the original big three is likely to exceed a far older component of the legacy media.
Blogospheric train wreck finally, properly labeled by his employer.
Gee, that only took four years.
Bill Whittle writes:
[Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber] stated that he did not think reporters should be allowed on the front lines to cover conflicts. This generated a lot of heat: some from the left, whose elitist disdain for Joe was best captured by John Stewart, sneering at him for his lapses in professionalism as he reminded all of us that a career being the primary news source for an entire generation of voters cannot be entrusted to a rank amateur like some common plumber, but must instead be vouchsafed to a person with a far nobler and serious and weighty background ... a career in stand-up comedy, say.Meanwhile, Camille Paglia unloads on an infinitely bigger media figure.
Update: Related thoughts from Outside The Wire's J.D. Johannes.
Orrin Judd spots one pundit making essentially the same "American power is on the wane" argument today that he made twenty years ago.
James Pethokoukis notes that "Big Media Distorts Bush Economic Record."
It's a mixed-bag of course--just not the one being peddled on the 6:30 Evening News.
Pethokoukis writes:
The past four months have been terrible. You had the money-sucking leviathan that is the poorly implemented Paulson Plan -- and Bush's failure to push better alternatives. You had the Detroit bailout. You had a failure to vigorously defend the free-market approach that, when implemented 25 year ago, saved the imploding economies of the West and helped win the Cold War. We really needed the Explainer-in-Chief to bring his A-game. Didn't happen.He had an A-game as a speaker? Of President Bush's attributes as a leader (the best of which I'll cheerfully acknowledge), explaining anything was not his strong suit.
Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg writes that his successor "is interested in any idea, as long as its peddler starts from the same 'non-ideological' assumption that government experts know best":
The current climate reminds former Freddie Mac economist Arnold Kling of the battle of the Somme in World War I (a war everyone knew would be over in six months). "Having experienced nothing but failure using offensive tactics up to that point, the Allies decided that what they needed to try was ... a really big offensive," Kling writes. "My guess is that in 1916, anyone who doubted his own ability to direct an enormous offensive involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers would never have made it to general. Similarly, today, anyone who doubts the ability of a handful of technocrats to sensibly allocate $800 billion would never make it into government or the mainstream media."Read the rest.
"A source of mine called to say that Obama's reached out to some newspaper publishers about giving papers a tax break in the stimulus package."
Man, from P.J. O'Rourke's fingers to the Connecticut papers' mouths, to Obama's ears. If this story actually is true, it's yet another example of reality invariably trumping fiction.
Ten years ago, the late Paul Weyrich wrote:
I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.In his latest column, Jay Nordlinger looks at the state of the overculture and similarly concludes, "It seems to me that the Left has won: utterly and decisively":
What I mean is, the Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher mentality has prevailed. They decide what a person's image is, and those images stick. They are the ones who say that Cheney's a monster, W.'s stupid, and Palin's a bimbo. And the country, apparently, follows.Donkey?I have a friend who teaches at a prominent university, and she says that, when Palin's name is mentioned, the people laugh. In the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, an extraordinarily accomplished woman -- more accomplished than most of the rest of us will ever be -- was turned into a laughingstock.
What are the shaping institutions of American life? The news media. Entertainment television. The movies. Popular music. The schools, K through grad school. In whose hands are those institutions? In what areas do conservatives predominate? Country music, NASCAR, some churches? (Talk radio too, I suppose -- no wonder so many on the left want to shut it down.)
I will be talking more about this in the coming weeks, months, and possibly years. Sidney Blumenthal once wrote a book called "The Rise of the Counter-Establishment" (meaning conservative associations and institutions). The counter-establishment needs to be tended, and beefed up.
A country that believes that Cheney's a monster, W.'s stupid, and Palin's a bimbo is a country with its head up its . . .
For a longform video look at the above topic, tune into John Ziegler (he of the upcoming How Obama Got Elected documentary) talking with the hosts of Breitbart.TV's B-Cast program yesterday. (Which concluded with my recent look at our incoming gaffe-o-matic president and vice president, after a brief mime-is-money silent interlude from the hosts and their failed soundboard.)
Jennifer Rubin posits that "the president-elect may end up pleasing conservatives more than McCain would have". I think the jury's still very much out on that, but Obama's already starting to alienate the nuttier fringes of the far left--scroll down to the bottom of Zombietime's coverage of the recent Gaza War Protest in San Francisco for plenty of anti-Obama vitriol.
Last year, most PUMAs angry at Obama for derailing Hillary Clinton's election bid eventually got back in line, if not in love with The One, the bloom has come off of at least one media romance rather quickly.
"In the course of cheerleading anchoring the MSNBC coverage of Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing today, Matthews suggested that the media shouldn't cover the Republican National Committee's criticism of Clinton."
Of course--because the role of the postmodern news media is to keep things out of the news, not let them in. I wonder if the Matthews of the 1990s would recognize his 2009 counterpart.
Forbes posits that "The Most Intense Period Of The Recession Is Behind Us"--hope they're right and the worst is over.
Though that won't stop incoming President Obama, his pliant new Congress, and the Jeff Gannon-ish legacy media for calling for ever-higher taxes and tossing around trillion dollar (wait--two trillion dollars!) spending packages.
Investors' Business Daily believes "We may have witnessed in the last eight the Anti-Watergate":
Richard Milhous Nixon never forgot a slight, used federal law enforcement powers against his political enemies and infuriated the Republican Party's conservative base with policies ranging from wage and price controls to detente with communists to Supreme Court appointments.Which is at once both the most vicious parting shot and the most charitable statement the president could have said to, and about, the braying legacy media at the conclusion of his watch.Soon-to-be-ex-President Bush, on the other hand, has taken at least as much personal abuse, yet his graciousness seldom fails. While the 37th president acidly told the press, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore," the 43rd told the reporters at his final presidential press conference Monday that they were "just people trying to do the best they possibly can."
At Pajamas HQ, Steve Green profiles the man whom the American Thinker once dubbed "the new Mary Mapes"--Time magazine's Tim McGirk. Steve writes:
McGirk was the "journalist" who "broke" the "story" of the "massacre" by U.S. Marines at Haditha, Iraq. In fact, he fought with his editors to get the word "massacre" in the lede of the story, calling it "a battle I lost." A good thing, too, because the story of the Haditha Massacre has been proven to be a fake.And these days, he's shilling for Hamas--read the whole thing.But, as Clarice Feldman noted in an American Thinker article asking if McGirk was "the new Mary Mapes," McGirk is no stranger to the moral equivalence game. Reporting from a Taliban hideout weeks after the 9/11 attacks, McGirk wrote that he left, "thinking that maybe this evening wasn't very different from the original Thanksgiving: people from two warring cultures sharing a meal together and realizing, briefly, that we're not so different after all." Surely, McGirk's access to the Taliban is no mystery.
Guy Benson looks at Obama's tightly-controlled press coverage so far:
As I watched President Bush's final tango with reporters this morning, I was reminded of how Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin described President-elect Obama's press conferences thus far:I give 'em four years, myself. Eight years tops."As ferociously as we march like villagers with torches against Blagojevich, we have been, in the true spirit of the Bizarro universe, the polar opposite with the president-elect. Deferential, eager to please, prepared to keep a careful distance.The Obama news conferences tell that story, making one yearn for the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken the slumbering press to the notion that decorum isn't all it's cracked up to be.
The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day."
How long will the Obama-friendly press corps, no matter how "deferential" and "eager to please," tolerate such tight management?
I don't think the nascent host of the six decade old Meet The Press gets a passing grade from Ann Althouse.
Jazz Shaw has an epiphany: "Joe Wurzelbacher Is Not Edward R. Murrow":
During a recent interview, Joe informed us that he felt his safety would be well augmented as a good Christian, since he expected to enjoy "the protection of God." Our parting question should be: Who will protect the Israelis and the global news audience from Joe?Israel has survived CNN, Reuters, the AP and AFP. I think they can handle Joe The Plumber.
With the news of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer spotting icebergs off the port bow, this edition of Breitbart.tv's B-Cast from last month on the topic of the rocky future of newspapers in general is well worth your time:
As is our recent video on the topic if you've missed it:
That's the subject of a recent op-ed by Terence Jeffrey--at least on the field. (Today's politicians--even Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd--have little on Jerry Jones' mid-1990s Cowboys for sheer off-field debauchery.)
And of course, journalists could learn a thing or two from their sports department as well, a topic I discussed a few years ago. Though anti-Americanism may be somewhat less in vogue in journalism for the next four to eight years as they go to work for The One.
For the past few years, I've seen a number of blogs, and particularly Ace of Spades refer to the legacy media as "The Deciders." I didn't realize its origin was this quote from David McCumber, managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
"I understand that people have a hard time with the concept that we get to decide what is news and what isn't, and what is fair and what isn't."Robert places that quote into sharp context--and reminds the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who the real deciders are: consumers, i.e., the readers--or the lack thereof.
Summon the meteors--because, "Sometimes, the future shows up way sooner than anyone expected."
When I flew out to New Jersey for Christmas, I greatly enjoyed reading John Derbyshire's piece on H. L. Mencken in the December 29th issue of National Review on the long flight. So I finally picked up a copy of Terry Teachout's 2002 Mencken biography, The Skeptic at the enormous Barnes & Noble in the Citibank building on 54th and 3rd in Manhattan--and read it on the flight back. It's tremendously enjoyable on one level, though the deep cynicism and Nietzsche-inspired nihilism of Teachout's subject does start to wear after a while.
But history has been remarkably kind to Mencken in one sense. Upon Hunter S. Thompson's suicide a few years ago, James Lileks wrote:
He can say what he wants. Drink what he wants. Drive where he wants. Do what he wants. He's done okay in America. And he hates this country. Hates it. This appeals to high school kids and collegiate-aged students getting that first hot eye-crossing hit from the Screw Dad pipe, but it's rather pathetic in aged moneyed authors. And it would be irrelevant if this same spirit didn't infect on whom Hunter S. had an immense influence. He's the guy who made nihilism hip. He's the guy who taught a generation that the only thing you should believe is this: don't trust anyone who believes anything. He's the patron saint of journalism, whether journalists know it or not.If Thompson made nihilism hip in the 1970s by combining a loathing of his country and the bulk of its inhabitants with gallons of Chivas and a Rexall's drugstore worth of pharmaceuticals, Mencken put it on the map in America in the first half of the 20th century--literally so in one sense, by penning one of the first biographies of Nietzsche in the English language.
And certainly Mencken's tone, if not his actually stance, was the model for newspapermen since. And really is his tone that mattered, because they didn't pay much attention to his content, aside from his writings on the Scopes trial. Unlike vast majority of journalists in Old Media, the only big government that Mencken admired was the Kaiser's; he had little use for Wilson's restrictions in WWI, and he really hated FDR and the New Deal.
In the 1920s Mencken wrote:
It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.Which is certainly a respectable position, though half the time it involves contrarianism for its own sake. And at one point, journalists drunk deep from that well--or at least claimed they did, which is why that ridiculous "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable" cliche keeps popping up, even in the 21st century. But these days?
I think they realize that America wants to see results, and they don't want gridlock. So I think this is an extraordinary moment. I guess my passion is for something to happen to fix these problems, and for dialing down of all of the sharp criticism that we have on cable talk, on talk radio, from, you know, the -Tavis Smiley:ROSE: From left to right.
MITCHELL: - the blogosphere. I just wish that we could find something in the center that would be bipartisan and would be productive and constructive.
Harry Reid, put down the crack pipe. You don't work for Barack Obama? We're all working for Barack Obama.And that's just from the past couple of days; this McCain video from the summer featured clips of numerous earlier examples from 2008:
* * * I believe that he can be a great president. But only if we help make him a great president. It is not left to his own devices, it's not going to happen. We have to help make him a great president.
As one of the my favorite recent quotes (from Umberto Eco) goes:
G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.H. L. Mencken may have been a rare skeptic in a nation where religion flourished, but these days, journalists have a new savior to worship. And something tells me that Mencken would be loving every minute of it.
Update: The writings of Mencken's mid-century successor also seem remarkably prescient these days.
John Hinderaker writes, "The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that Governor Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris' to the Senate does not require the Secretary of State's signature to be valid":
he unanimous ruling came as no surprise, but it stripped Senate Democrats of their principal excuse for barring Burris from taking the seat to which he has been appointed. It now appears that Mr. Burris will soon be Senator Burris after all.Meanwhile, "Dems Melt in the Heat of Burris Fiasco", Jonah Goldberg observes:
Now, I certainly understand why Reid & Co. caved. For starters, Reid's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box.Finally, in the face of impeachment, Gov. Blagojevich stands tall: "A Blagojevich spokesman said the governor will not resign."But why all the fuss in the first place? Isn't this how it always works? The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, an impressive African-American writer, is amazed that "Reid has been outmaneuvered by the sort of overt, hamfisted identity politics deployed in the '70s."
The '70s? So this sort of thing stopped more than three decades ago? I had no idea. What planet do my newscasts come from?
I thought this was simply what liberals and Democrats do. When Newt Gingrich introduced the Contract with America, black Democrats denounced it as racist. Charlie Rangel proclaimed, "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things." When impeachment threatened Bill Clinton, he draped himself in black ministers and staffers. The NAACP ran an ad narrated by the daughter of James Byrd, a black man brutally murdered in a hate crime, insinuating that then-presidential candidate George W. Bush's refusal to support hate-crime legislation in Texas was like murdering her father again. In the recent campaign, nearly the entire liberal punditocracy insisted that opposition to Barack Obama could only be explained by racism, a story line egged on by Obama himself when convenient.
And don't tell me Blago's corruption changes the equation. Has anyone read about the baleful history of minority set-aside programs in cities like Chicago? Cronies and grifters are routinely given sweetheart contracts under the guise of fighting discrimination when in reality it's all a riot of kickbacks, "pay-to-play" and cronyism. People don't call Jesse Jackson a shakedown artist for nothing.
There are two reasons why this spectacle shocks some liberals. The first is that Blago, Burris, and Rush used this tactic on fellow Democrats. And since Democrats can't be motivated by racism, any ploy like this must be cynical. When the same gambit is used on Republicans, it's called "speaking truth to power." Second, some honestly believed that Obama represented a real change of the racial landscape. So far, alas, these folks just look naive.
Allahpundit asks, why would he?
He just got done rolling Harry Reid, and Fitzgerald's indictment is still months away. I'm not even sure what the charges against him in the impeachment trial will be at this point. Supposedly he can no longer perform the duties of governor effectively. Really? He was effective enough to make the entire U.S. Senate choke on the Burris appointment.And if all this sounds surreal so far, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Update: "Following a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court, Jesse White, the Illinois secretary of state, has certified Roland Burris' appointment to the Senate, removing a major roadblock blocking Burris' ascension to the body." Does this make the headline above official? It seems likely that Harry Reid's not going to offer very much additional pushback. But hey, between DC and Illinois, anything's possible.
The TV channel with one finger poised on the delete key suddenly has an epiphany, Steve Green writes:
Via Charlie Martin on Twitter comes this admission from CNN's Campbell Brown (video at link): "Obama's lofty ideas lack specifics."CNN declared itself and their candidate an idea-free zone during the election; why start now?Dude, hope and change. How much more specific does the President-elect need to get? I mean, those were good enough for CNN during the campaign.
Meanwhile, CNN is trashing the newest citizen journalist heading towards Israel. As a viewer, frankly, I'm not at all sure what Joe the Plumber can tell me about the Middle East. But I do know that hasn't lied to me yet about the Middle East, and that already puts him ahead of at least one TV network.
Yesterday, we mentioned "Pallywood", the perpetual Palestinian propaganda machine. In the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg recently explored "The World's Pornographic Interest in Jewish Moral Failure", which included this excerpt:
Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble -- and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I've seen in my life. And it's typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they'd learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.One of Charles Johnsons' readers believes he's spotted yet another Palestinian snuff film.
Hollywood is an multi-million dollar industry known throughout the world in creating remarkably realistic but totally imaginary worlds--and so is "Pallywood", the Palestinian propaganda factory that has manufactured plenty of consent, particularly from Big Media. Both imaginary worlds come together in this post in the news section of the Internet Movie Database, which often goes off the rails when it's not reporting on box office takes, awards shows, and other news that's directly related to Tinseltown:
The trade publication Editor & Publisher has editorially chastised the U.S. news media for providing "largely one-sided coverage" of the conflict in Gaza and "little editorializing or commentary." Only CNN and MSNBC, the editorial said, had "provided some helpful balance" in their coverage, but the broadcast news networks' Sunday morning programs, it observed, featured Democratic leaders who "said little, or nothing, critical of Israel." Such imbalanced coverage, E&P said, comes in the face of condemnation of the "disproportionate" Israeli attacks by Amnesty International and equally strong editorial criticism in the Israeli daily Haaretz and outrage by its columnists.Meanwhile, if you're finding the dinosaur media's "largely one-sided coverage" as tilting in a different direction than the picture painted by their house organ (which knows a thing or two about media manipulation themselves), Roger L. Simon writes:
If your only information about the current Middle East crisis came from CNN, you'd think it boiled down to a bunch of high-tech Israeli bullies running around Gaza torturing Palestinian women and children, while tossing smart bombs on hospitals and blowing up UN schools with Merkava tanks. Almost no context is given. That Israel had done virtually nothing for the three years since voluntarily withdrawing from Gaza but grin and bare it, as missiles after missile, many courtesy of Iran, flew willy-nilly into the Southern part of their country - a fusillade no nation on Earth, civilized or uncivilized, would begin to tolerate - is barely mentioned or mumbled into a half-audible mike while the video plays bloodied Palestinian infants screaming for mama.Tune in here.The New York Times may be worse. Bending over backwards in a morass of cultural relativist obfuscation, the paper seems to have imbued moral equivalence with a religious fervor usually found at Lourdes.
Of course, the Israelis have the media ticked off. Remembering well the media's role in the second Lebanon War when some, notably AP and Reuters, went so far as to try to palm off Photoshopped Hezbollah pictures as authentic photos from the front when the forgeries were so obvious bloggers caught them in minutes, this time the IDF has the media cordoned off miles from the action. This time they don't have the chance to lens endless photos of the same "green man" popping up at one scene of "Israeli brutality" after the other. Who could blame the Israel government for having had enough of the propaganda wiles of the MSM? I had to laugh when I heard CNN's Ben Wedeman complaining last night that the network had to rely on their Palestinian stringers inside Gaza, but assuring us they were excellent and reliable. We're supposed to take that seriously from the network whose former executive director finally admitted after several years that they had covered up (effectively lied about) Saddam's atrocities in order to get access inside Iraq? Have these people no shame? Well, I guess not.
So that brings us to Pajamas TV. We have decided to help right this imbalance in our small way by emphasizing coverage from Israel as long as this crisis is going on. We have a live camera in Jerusalem and we are going to feature the following talent there, among others: Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post, our own Middle East Editor Allison Kaplan Sommer (a Tel Aviv resident), Richard Landes of Boston University and a part-time Jerusalem resident and Nitsana Leitner of the Israeli Law Center. We admit we are biased in favor of Israel, in favor of the side we view as the good guys in a moral struggle. So bear that in mind when you tune in, but tune in every day for our Gaza Update.
Related: The reasoning seems smart merely on the surface, but Mike McNally delves further into "Why Israel is Smart Keeping the Media Out of Gaza". And on the flipside, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard "intriguingly leaves open the possibility that Hamas is operating with a different form of rationality."
Blair's Law (named after the Bard Down Under, of course) refers to "the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force."
See also this: "CBS Buys First Front-Page Ad On New York Times":
An advertisement for CBS has become the first display ad ever to appear on the front page of the New York Times. In its own article about the appearance of the ad, the newspaper called it the "latest concession to the worst revenue slide since the Depression." It conceded that the move is "regarded by traditionalists as a commercial incursion into the most important news space in the paper." Oddly the newspaper indicated that it could not learn how much CBS had paid for the ad.Presumably it was more than this earlier sweetheart deal demonstrating yet another example of Blair's Law in action. But yes, it's amazing how quickly aphasia affects the media when reporting on itself.
Having blogged quite a bit--in both print and video form--on the media's "Red Queen's Race" to bottom, it's only fair that I link to Michael Hirschorn's piece on the final lap of the race: "End Times":
Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print--the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. . . . But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business--like, this May?But as Steven Den Beste notes:
Michael Hirschorn writes (regarding the impending demise of the NYT):Fortunately, the media's estate planning at least was remarkably prescient: their newly built mausoleum awaits them.If you're hearing few howls and seeing little rending of garments over the impending death of institutional, high-quality journalism, it's because the public at large has been trained to undervalue journalists and journalism.Ah, several things spring to mind in response to this. "Undervalue"? A thing is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and if "the public at large" considers journalism to be worth very little, then pretty much by definition they're right, because they're the ones doing the paying. The problem here is not that the public is undervaluing journalism, but that journalists have gotten into the habit of thinking that their work is worth more than it really is.Which brings up the other point: "high-quality journalism"? It's been a hell of a long time since any of that has appeared in the NYT. And that's another reason why the NYT (and the Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times, etc.) are losing circulation and money: they abandoned any pretense to "high-quality journalism" years ago, and the public increasingly won't pay for what they're offering instead. (That being "agenda journalism" aka "propaganda".)
The big reason you aren't seeing the public shedding many tears over the demise of the NYT is that we all know that they've dug their own grave. The impending demise of the NYT isn't tragedy, it's justice.
(H/T: IP)
As Charles Johnson writes, linking to this essay by Steve Emerson on the Gray Lady's love of all things radical chic:
It's bizarre and disgusting to see much of America's media making excuses for a bloodthirsty, openly genocidal death cult. Something is deeply wrong with journalism in this country.Meanwhile, Bob Owens explores the ongoing love affair between Reuters and Hamas, with an assist from out epic "Picture Kill: How We Got Here" post from 2006 on the media culture that allowed Adnan Hajj and other fauxtographers to flourish.
Don Surber proffers a modest cost-cutting proposal to the Gray Lady.
(The only downside: It would wreak havoc with the denouement of the EPIC 2014 forecast.)
Max Boot on the New York Times' Bob Herbert and quagmire punditry.
Pretty safe bet there, James! But they'll be "Dull Scandals" according to NBC--"Say farewell to hilarious sex hijinks and hello to corruption and related bummers."
So without the sex angle, which used to be a personal matter in the mid-to-late-1990s--wonder what changed in 2006?--institutional corruption on the left is a mere "bummer", and thus NBC and the rest of the dinosaur media has given themselves plenty of cover as to why they needn't bother focusing on them.
Besides, relegating the scandal to page 15-D near the supermarket coupons cuts down on having to not name the party involved.
(Via Margret's agrarian-oriented real estate.)
Related: Jennifer Rubin: "So Glad It's a New Political Era."
Just as Virginia Postrel spotted several journalists hot for "Depression Porn", Ezra Levant reminds us that it's "Not quite the 1930s":
So we're in for another Great Depression, are we? Don't believe it.Read the whole thing--as the aforementioned Postrel puts it, along with a link to historic annual unemployment rates, "Oh My God, It's 1993 Again!":Now that the epic U. S. presidential race is over, a caffeinated press corps is in withdrawal, so hyperventilating about a new Depression is their new fix. Just to pick one newspaper at random, Toronto's Globe and Mail used the phrase "Great Depression" over 300 times in December alone -- or about a dozen times each edition. And that's restrained compared to U. S. cable news shows.
The recession is bad and probably will get worse, but historical context doesn't scream Great Depression. Journalists, who are like steelworkers in the 1980s, can be forgiven for thinking the economy is collapsing--we're all afraid of losing our jobs--but the rest of you should know better.Finally, some thoughts on the media and the economy from the Blogfather, including a quote from one blogger who writes, "Compare the last 6 years (or so) of unremitting (and largely unwarranted- until recently) doom-and-gloom economic coverage, against the press' bend-over-backward efforts to avoid riling the American public after 9/11."
Glenn adds that journalists "know how to be exquisitely sensitive, when they're protecting something they care about", but it's a remarkably situational sensitivity.
Update: Why are journalists so hot for Depression Porn (and consequently led the cheers for Hoover '08)? Because of charts like this.
North Carolina's News & Observer observes that Mike Easley, the state's outgoing governor "said newspapers should be nice to him":
In an interview with the Greensboro News & Record, Easley complained about how newspapers, particularly The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, have treated him. Both papers are owned by Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy Co.And the News & Observer is happy to oblige in one sense: there's no mention of Easley's party in the above linked article."My job is to be nice to other people, and their job is to be nice to me. Just because they're not doing theirs doesn't mean I shouldn't do mine," Easley said in audio of the interview posted on The News & Record's Web site on Christmas Day.
It's the pact that President Elect Obama and the legacy media have--why shouldn't other Democratic politicians request the same agreement, particularly since their relationship with their media mouthpieces is likely to become even cozier in the coming months and years.
(H/T: Betsy Newmark)
As I wrote in February 2006, describing our remarkably genteel legacy media:
To easily see the Victorian Gentlemanly style in action, pick up a copy of a paper like the San Francisco Chronicle. (Or scroll through their Website of course, but it's even more obvious "on dead tree".) Read their coverage, of say, the protests outside the gates of San Quentin during Tookie Williams' execution. Then peruse the photos of the same event at Zombietime.You can observe that same whitewashing style at work today, by comparing the Fort Laurderdale Sun-Sentinel's dishwater dull article on local pro-Hamas protesters, versus the viscerally intense video of the same event shot on a camcorder, edited and uploaded to YouTube.
In Reason magazine, Veronique de Rugy notes that--as usual--conventional leftwing wisdom regarding President Bush is wrong:
When Barack Obama was running for president, he made no secret about his plan to "restore common-sense regulation"--read: increase regulation--by closing the regulatory loopholes he thought the Republicans had opened. Deregulation, he argued repeatedly, is the source of evil. Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, Obama offered a sweeping, ambitious agenda: new financial regulations, new labor regulations, new energy regulations, and more.Meanwhile, a push for deregulation comes from a surprising source--Brian Lowry of the ancient show-biz bible, Variety magazine, who writes in an essay titled, "Reevaluating media regulations" that "Tough times may call for lax restrictions":Today Obama is the president-elect of the United States. With Democratic majorities in Congress, he will have tremendous power to push his "reforms." And unlike FDR before him, President Obama won't have to create a regulatory system from scratch in order to increase government control of people's lives. His groundwork was laid by George W. Bush.
Some people still seem to think Republicans take a hands-off approach to regulation, probably because the party is always quick to criticize the burdens regulations place on businesses. But Republican rhetoric doesn't always match Republican policy. In 2007, according to Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, roughly 50 regulatory agencies issued 3,595 final rules, ranging from boosting fuel economy standards for light trucks to continuing a ban on bringing torch lighters into airplane cabins. Five departments (Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency) accounted for 45 percent of the new regulations.
Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations' cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are "economically significant," meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That's a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.
Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.
If it takes a big man to admit he was wrong, said man needn't be quite so magnanimous to concede that changing circumstances have altered his outlook.Jules Crittenden and Robert Stacy McCain spot one key way that regulations have significantly harmed multiple legacy media; the latter writes:The perils of media consolidation have been a longstanding concern. Even during a stint working for Tribune Co. as they futilely attempted to squeeze synergies out of TV-print combinations, I banged the drum against allowing TV, radio stations and newspapers coagulate in too few hands, fearing ethical abuses or the nagging appearance of them, as well as the loss of independent voices to watchdog government and the media itself.
Today, though, amid daily waves of depressing economic news, conflicted voices sound preferable to neutered or, worse, deceased ones.
It's not a given that further relaxing restrictions on media consolidation would significantly benefit ailing broadcasters and newspapers at this late stage. Economies of scale certainly haven't kept Time Warner from shedding staff at its magazines or Tribune out of bankruptcy.
Even so, the incoming Obama administration faces difficult choices involving big media nearly as nettlesome, in their own way, as the mess it's grappling with regarding the Big Three automakers.
The absurd idea that a Connecticut newspaper might get a government bailout prompts Jules Crittenden to one of the few useful suggestions for saving print journalism:As the Red Queen's Race accelerates its velocity, newspapers lost $64 billion in share value in 2008. Which helps to explain why, as this poll notes, "Seventy-seven percent of Americans believe that the U.S. media is making the economic situation worse by projecting fear into people's minds."Throwing out the FCC's cross-ownership ban once and for all might also help.The FCC's obsolete prohibition on newspaper publishers owning broadcast franchises in the same markets has been bent, over the years, for a few politically-connected conglomerates -- for instance, Cox owns both the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB TV/radio in Atlanta.
There was a time when, if the ban had been repealed, newspapers would have purchased broadcasting outlets. If the ban were lifted now, the buyout pattern would be the other way around. But too little attention has been paid to how the FCC, by preventing consolidation between print and broadcast media, undermined the economic viability of print journalism.
The rise of cable television in the 1980s changed the game. Cable is not "broadcast" and thus is exempt from FCC regulation, and anyone who was paying attention should have realized how the growth of this new technology invalidated the FCC's original rationale in banning cross-ownership. Newspapers could have benefitted by sharing editorial staff between print and broadcast, and using the broadcast outlet to promote the print product. But the entrenched New Deal-era mentality among regulators stifled such insights, and so the absurd wall between broadcast and print remained -- with strategic exceptions, of course, for the big conglomorates that could curry favor in Washington.
The idea of newspapers being bailed out began as a post-election joke by P.J. O'Rourke, but since satire can never compete with reality for pure absurdity, it's rapidly gaining steam in the real world, thanks to an insane request by some Connecticut newspapers to a would-be government benefactor:
Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.Ed Morrissey responds:Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.
That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. "The media is a vitally important part of America," he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.
The only reason -- the only reason -- that news media is vital to a democracy is its independence from government. Think about this. Is The National Enquirer vital to democracy? [Actually, increasingly so--Ed] Will the Republic fall if Entertainment Weekly suddenly closed its doors? Not at all, not even if the entire paparazzi industry suddenly collapsed.We already know of one Connecticut newspaper that's announced publicly that it's in the tank to its region's politicians, and in the new spirit of old media -- "Comforting the Comfortable" -- it appears it will soon be joined by others.The need for a truly independent media is to make sure that the citizenry is fully informed of government activity and policy, and not just relying on the self-serving communications from elected officials. Without independence, newspapers and other media have as much value as press releases from Congressional offices.
Now, what happens when government suddenly takes a stake in newspapers and other media? Can they remain independent -- or will they cater themselves to those politicians who support those subsidies and target politicians who don't? In fact, the very act of asking for those bailouts has destroyed their independence and credibility on political matters, the very core of what makes a free media necessary for a democracy.
At this point, the best possible outcome would be to let the newspapers crash and burn. They're worthless now as an independent voice in Connecticut. If the market demand remains for print-and-deliver newspapers, then we will see private capital form to meet the demand. If not, then all the taxpayer subsidies in the world would not have saved them anyway.
Related thoughts from Roger Kimball, here.
"For at least ten seconds there, it appeared Margaret Warner thought PBS stood for the Palestinian Broadcast Service."
Fortunately, there are new media alternatives available, as "Israel Shakes Up the Information War."
Tim Graham of Newsbusters looks at the letter that was missing from most media reports of political scandal.
Perhaps the legacy media simply didn't want to risk hurting their chance to be collectivized into a sort of uber-PBS network.
Meanwhile, Tom Blumer explores the other story which quietly dropped off the legacy media's vacuum tube radar: "A Toast to Old Media's--and Old Medea's--Defeat in Iraq."
Related: "Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's 'Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians' for 2008"
That's the headline of this new post by Allison Kaplan Sommer; think of it as more news that CNN keeps to itself...
(H/T: IP)
"Congrats. The New Republic finally smoked out a hoax! Too bad they can't apply the same standards of veracity and accountability to their own writers when the fit hits the shan."
Mickey Kaus writes, "Enjoy your daily print newspaper. It's later than you think", as the "Web Blows By Papers as News Source."
So with the Red Queen's Race marching on, will the New York Times have the money to pay off--or at least settle--on this lawsuit?
Update: Roger L. Simon: "Vicki Iseman vs. the NYT could spell Big Trouble for the Grey Lady."
...That David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy wore his baseball cap with the brim facing backwards:
Who would have thought that twenty years after I, as a teenager, thought it looked cool to put my baseball cap on backwards (was it a Beastie Boys thing? Who remembers...), that youths, and even some adults (saw a guy in his 30s yesterday), would still be doing it (though there seemed to be a break for a time in the late '80s and mid '90s). Folks, the bill is on the front for reason, to shade your face from the sun. And it's soooo unclassy. Can you imagine Cary Grant wearing a backwards baseball cap? Please ladies, boycott the gents who wear the cap backwards, or at least tell them how silly it looks, and end this travesty for good. Perhaps a simple, "you know, David Bernstein had that look twenty years ago," will do.Too bad this unwitting celebrity fashion victim and his army of media handlers such as this Reuters journalist never got the memo:
The president-elect, looking uber-cool with his White Sox baseball cap on backwards, flipped the shaka to a crowd of about 30 people as he left a gym on a Marine Corps base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he is vacationing.As Jonah Goldberg noted last week, American society--let alone the rest of the world--is far too balkanized for such a blanket statement. And in such a diverse environment, news agencies such as Reuters need to mindful of such a wide range of readers. In other words, we all know that one man's uber-cool fashion plate is another man's uber-dork. To be frank, it adds little to the national dialogue to call the attack on the basketball courts by the president elect an uber-cool aesthetic experience.
Old media leaves Iraq as they found it--happily ignoring the big stories that don't fit their template. Until 2003, this meant spinning cheerfully for Saddam Hussein--and in at least one network's case complicit in covering up his crimes. Today, this means ignoring the progress occurring as Iraq makes continued strides towards becoming, as Mark Steyn recently put it, "the least-worst state in that part of the world."
That's going to increasingly leave the coverage of that fragile young democracy to new media professionals such as J.D. Johannes, whose name and coverage of Iraq was last seen being tossed into the memory hole by old media journalist Paul Mulshine in the Wall Street Journal.
Update: Related thoughts from Andrew Breitbart and John Nolte, here.
Michelle Malkin has a "Tale of two presidential workout fanatics"; meanwhile, Ed Morrissey has a tale of two politically-connected religious leaders. In both cases, one story has been met by praise (home run!) the other with derision. What ties these pairs of stories together? "Liberal double standards: It's just how they roll", Michelle writes.
Several of the recent posts here have focused on the surprisingly brief life and quiet death of objectivity in the legacy mass media. Or as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in the last days of the 2008 presidential election, "Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place."
The replacement is a curiously schizophrenic beast; blending punditry and journalism; turning every newspaper into the Washington Times without the conservative op-eds, every network news department into Fox News without the pro-American populism. Regarding the latter trend, last month Robert Stacy McCain wrote:
The rise of Fox News as the No. 1 cable news outlet has resulted in ideological counterprograming. [emphasis in original--Ed] The success of a conservative news network has had an effect that might be best understood by reference to Newton's third law of motion. At first, there was the "equal effect" -- chastened by Fox's success, most networks sought to rein in their traditional liberal bias. But then, after the 2004 election, the "opposite effect" kicked in. Network executives figured, "Hey, Fox already has a monopoly on conservative viewers. Let's let our freak flags fly and give liberals what they really want." I really noticed this phenomenon during the 2006 campaign, when the media (a) pretended that the contributions Jack Abramoff's clients made to Democrats were meaningless, and (b) presented Mark Foley as the GOP poster boy. The existence of Fox News provides a ready-made excuse for liberals in the media to think of their bias as "balancing" Fox.But half of the time those on the inside either don't know what's changed, or if they do, won't admit it publicly. (Occasionally a voice in these institutions will come clean and then a successor will forget the earlier admission--or more painfully, his own.)
All of which helps to set the stage for this post by Glenn Reynolds: "Paul Mulshine Blows It."
Update: Don't miss the extended comment by Jay Rosen regarding Mulshine's column, on Fausta Wertz's blog. Jay writes (amongst other things):
We are quite well informed about why the newspaper business is collapsing. The immediate cause: readers are moving to the Net but for various reasons the advertising isn't. Newspapers are stuck with huge capital structures they cannot easily jettison and revenues are falling. No one who writes seriously about new media and citizen journalism is unaware of this. No one in new media, citizen journalism or regular journalism knows what to do about it.That's not the only reason, though it's a big one; it's an extremely safe assumption that revenues bottoming out are what's driving some of the other reasons old media's hit an iceberg (see above, and Michael Malone's great election-end column at Pajamas HQ), and is a subject we explored in video form earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Jules Crittenden also spots the extreme blurring of the lines between punditry and reporting in old media.
The Telegraph of England has an article titled, "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved." (Hey does that mean that the earlier 1970s-version of eco-paranoia, man-made global cooling is now back in style?) If so, one reason why is that the Internet makes it possible to go back in time and compare the predictions of the past with the current reality.
It also allows us to find earlier stories where scientists and journalists suggested that their peers in each profession ditch objectivity and play on the understandable fears of laymen. Flopping Aces has a long blog post written by Dr. Tim Ball, former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg highlighting one example of the latter technique from 1989. This is merely an excerpt:
E. R. Beadle said, "Half the work done in the world is to make things appear what they are not." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does this with purpose and great effect. They built the difference between appearance and reality into their process. Unlike procedure used elsewhere, they produce and release a summary report independently and before the actual technical report is completed. This way the summary gets maximum media attention and becomes the public understanding of what the scientists said. Climate science is made to appear what it is not. Indeed, it is not even what is in their Scientific Report.And that trend very much continues nearly twenty years later--legacy media trade publication Editor & Publisher actually ran an article last year titled, "Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity, Newspapers." My post about it from August of 2007 is found here; for non-subscribers of E&P, the text of the actual article can be read here.The pattern of falsifying appearances began early. Although he works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Stephen Schneider was heavily employed in the work of the IPCC as this biography notes.
Much of Schneider's time is taken up by what he calls his "pro bono day job" for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II of the IPCC from 1997 to 2001 and a lead author in Working Group I from 1994 to 1996. Currently, he is a Coordinating Lead Author for the controversial chapter on "Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risks from Climate Change," in short, defining "dangerous" climate change." - Pubmedcentral.nih.gov
He continued this work by helping prepare the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released in April 2007.
Schneider, among others, created the appearance that the Summary was representative of the Science Report. However, he provides an early insight into the thinking when speaking about global warming to Discovery magazine (October 1989) he said scientists need, "to get some broader based support, to capture the public's imagination...that, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have...each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest." The last sentence is deeply disturbing-there is no decision required.
But then, newspapers have gotten over objectivity on virtually all stories, not just climate change--with disastrous consequences.
(Via Maggie's Farm.)
When I created my recent Silicon Graffiti video on the various and sundry financial meltdowns of the past few months, I titled it "In Dodd We Trust?" It was too good a pun not to use, even though it really wasn't about the Democratic senator from Connecticut per se, but Congressional meddling in economic matters in general.
But get a load of this recent story from Dodd's hometown house organ: as one of Ace of Spades' guest bloggers writes, "Connecticut Post: we're not interested in readers bitching about Chris Dodd or Barney Frank." The paper, evidently being buried with letters from readers regarding their hometown Friend of Angelo and his race-baiting friend from Boston, actually wrote:
...All letters are welcome. But there are code words hidden in some that are signals to stop paying close attention -- "Chris Dodd" and "Barney Frank." ...On the other hand, it's nice of the paper to let us know who they're running interference for, and dropping the increasingly outdated 20th century perception of "objectivity."
(Via Gateway Pundit.)
Jonah Goldberg writes:
Steve Clemons' proposed solution to the Caroline problem is to have Obama send her to London as the Ambassador to the Court of St. James. That'd be fine with me, I guess. Though I don't think it's as exciting an idea as he does. I do think it's odd though that Clemons spends so much of his post rehearsing the usual anti-Bush throat clearing while completely ignoring a point that's actually relevant: The media would be obliged to revisit her grandfather's stint in the same job. And that might be embarrassing to the Kennedy clan.Nonsense--all things embarrassing to clan Kennedy are conveniently airbrushed from history.
Joel Stein in the L.A. Times, January 24th, 2006:
I don't support our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car.Joel Stein in the L.A. Times, December 26, 2008:
I don't love America. That's what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there's no winning.Back in July, when he proffered advice to fellow liberals afraid to satirize then-candidate Obama (as his deifying leftwing adulation was at its zenith), Stein wrote, "We are the immature jerks we have been waiting for."But I've come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn't love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I'm more in "like" with my country.
Who am I to argue?
(Via Cassy Fiano.)
This just in: "Americans prefer news from Web to newspapers: survey."
The enormous readership of Matt Drudge (where I found the link) proved that to be the case a decade ago, which is why he was so initially despised by those he made obsolete.
CNN's John Roberts can be witnessed between 6:50 and 7:30 point in this edition of Silicon Graffiti doing an amazing aerial 180 worthy of both Tony Hawk and Joseph Stalin--and here with the very definition of a Freudian slip. And yet, he seems surprisingly incredulous when one of October's chief hit and run victims of the drive-by media mocks his objectivity.
Update: Kathy Shaidle observes a revolving door revolving at the White House, as the upcoming Obama administration continues to take shape.
More: "That's a great thing about E. J. -- you don't have to read his columns anymore. You just know he's supporting Obama."
Glenn Reynolds links to James Surowiecki in the New Yorker, who asks, "Are Newspapers Doomed?"
"There's no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up. In the third quarter alone, it dropped eighteen per cent, or almost two billion dollars, from last year."Another reason why is that errors such as this are becoming increasingly easier for readers to spot.He also suggests something that I've noted in the past -- we may have been getting more news than we (that is, the market) actually wanted (that is, was willing to pay for) due to cross-subsidies from things like classified advertising. With those gone, we may wind up with less news. I hope not, but it's a plausible scenario.
To invert The Who, the Gray Lady will get fooled again, as Roger L. Simon writes:
No doubt most of you remember the Jayson Blair affair at the New York Times, when the paper jettisoned the reporter for publishing several plagiarized and, at least partially, fabricated stories on its front page. The ensuing brouhaha caused an editorial shake-up at the onetime "newspaper of record."The tipoff that it's a phony should be obvious, Allahpundit adds:Well, what's the old saying about the "second time as farce"? [I think it's from Marx.-ed. So it is.] This time the paper has outdone itself by publishing a putative letter from the mayor of Paris, attacking the potential elevation of Caroline Kennedy to the US Senate:
In the Times's defense, the letter does have a decidedly Frenchy tone ("Can we speak of American decline?"), but I ask you: Would the mayor of Paris, of all people, be likely to object to a big break for Jackie Kennedy's daughter?Heh, indeed.™
Couldn't the Times have run the email past the ghost of Walter Duranty? That man knows a thing or two about phonying up foreign stories--and he's even got a blog, to boot. (Although, to be fair, it's about as quiet at the moment as the real Duranty is.)
Finally, Dan Riehl spots a giant iceberg looming off the port bow of the S.S. Sulzberger:
If so, that will be one helluva an exit lap for this ever-accelerating race to the bottom:From 24/7 Wall St - based upon background and financials, ten major companies predicted to go away in 2009. Number 6 on the list? The New York Times. h/t An email from Pundita.
24/7 Wall St. looked at some of the largest and most well-known companies, reviewed their SEC filings if they are public, analyst reports, and media observations about their businesses and picked ten that probably won't be around at the end of next year.6) The New York Times (NYT) has to repay $400 million in debt in the first half of 2009. It does not have the money. It plans to mortgage its headquarters, but it is uncertain what that will bring in an uncertain real estate market. The firm's Boston Globe and regional newspaper operations lose money, so they will be hard to sell. NYT is controlled by the Sulzberger family which has super-majority voting shares. That won't matter much when the company runs out of money. Another big media operation, perhaps News Corp (NWS) which owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, will come in and auction off what it can and keep the flagship New York Times newspaper and NYTimes.com website.
In his profile of Paul Weyrich for the DC Examiner, Lee Edwards writes:
He was born on October 7, 1942, in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of working-class German Catholics. His father tended the boilers of St. Mary's Catholic Hospital for 50 years. He was politically active from an early age: at 19, he and his friends took over the Racine Republican party.The manufactured dissent that Weyrich describes witnessing in the early '70s and emulating during its second half reminds of something Tom Wolfe told an interviewer about his New York Herald-Tribune salad days:He worked for a local daily newspaper and then as a radio-television journalist before coming to Washington in 1967 as press secretary to Senator Gordon Allott (R-CO).
He learned how to organize from the liberal opposition. During President Nixon's first term, he attended a meeting of key liberals planning the enactment of an open housing bill. Present were a White House official, a Washington newspaper columnist, an analyst from the Brookings Institution, representatives from several black lobbying groups, and aides to a dozen senators.
Weyrich noted that everyone took an assignment. The Senate aides promised that their bosses would make supporting statements and contact other senators. The White House official said he would keep everyone informed of the administration's strategy.
The newspaper columnist promised to write a favorable article about the legislation. The Brookings analyst promised to publish a timely study that would impact the debate. The black lobbyists agreed to produce public demonstrations at the right time.
"I saw how easily it could be done with planning and determination," Weyrich later recalled, "and decided to try it myself." With funding from conservative businessmen like Joseph Coors and direct mail assistance from fundraiser Richard Viguerie, he helped start major conservative institutions such as Heritage, the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (later the Free Congress Foundation), the Senate Steering Committee, the Republican Study Committee, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Liberals as well as conservatives acknowledged his essential role. In January 1981, the AFL-CIO described the New Right and specifically the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress as smart, effective and responsible for "a whole passel of persons sitting in the U.S. House and Senate."
Well, one of the things is what I would call "media ricochet", which is the way real life and life as portrayed by television, by journalists like myself and others, begin ricocheting off of one another. That's why to me, in Bonfire of the Vanities, it was so important to show exactly how this occurs when television and newspaper coverage become a factor in something like racial politics. And a good bit of the book has to do with this curious phenomenon of how demonstrations, which are a great part of racial and ethnic politics, exist only for the media. In the last days when I was working on The New York Herald-Tribune, I'll never forget the number of demonstrations I went to and announced that to all the people with the placards, "I'm from The New York Herald-Tribune," and the attitude was really a yawn, and then, "Get lost". They were waiting for Channel 2 and Channel 4 and Channel 5, and suddenly the truck would appear and these people would become galvanized. On one occasion I even saw a group of demonstrators down in Union Square, marching across the Square, and Channel 2 arrived, a couple of vans, and the head of the demonstration walked up to what looked like the head man of the TV crew and said, "What do you want us to do?" He says, "Golly, I don't know. What were you going to do?" He says, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You tell us."As Edwards wrote, Weyrich simply took the methods of the left and moved them starboard. Something that Mary Katharine Ham notes that Rick Warren is doing in his recent interviews with the legacy media.
James Taranto corrects a moment in the election timeline:
Remember Barack Obama's big race speech back in March, the one that invited comparisons to Lincoln? Neither does anyone else, but it seemed like a big deal at the time. On March 18 The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder did a short item called "Speechwriter of One" (quoting verbatim):(H/T: FTPS)This wasn't a speech by committee... Obama wrote the speech himself, working on it for two days and nights.... and showed it to only a few of his top advisers.This now appears to have been puffery, at least if the Washington Post has the story right:One Saturday night in March, Obama called [Jon] Favreau and said he wanted to immediately deliver a speech about race. He dictated his unscripted thoughts to Favreau over the phone for 30 minutes--"It would have been a great speech right then," Favreau said--and then asked him to clean it up and write a draft. Favreau put it together, and Obama spent two nights retooling before delivering the address in Philadelphia the following Tuesday.Favreau is the 27-year-old Obama speechwriter best known for a party photo in which he pretends to grope the right breast of a life-size cardboard cutout depicting New York's junior senator. Harmless frat-boy antics, to be sure, but it does make all the solemn praise Obama got for that race speech all the more hilarious."So," Obama told Favreau afterward. "I think that worked."
Time magazine's "Person of the Year 2008" cover story, dated December 17th: President Elect Obama's "arrival on the scene feels like a step into the next century -- his genome is global, his mind is innovative, his world is networked, and his spirit is democratic."
Time magazine, December 18th: "Obama has proven himself repeatedly to be a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot."
"For people who think there's no cultural divide in this country, consider the treatment of two women much in the news in 2008."
Found via Mark Hemingway, the New York Times notes that W. Mark Felt, the FBI agent who was revealed in 2005 to be Woodward and Bernstein's "Deep Throat" and played by Hal Holbrook in the film version of All The President's Men is dead at age 95.
Back in 2005 with a movie then in theaters about a powerful Machiavellian ruler corrupted by power that featured performances even more wooden than Robert Redford in mind, Mark Steyn wrote "Revenge of the Felt":
''Revenge of the Sith'' is a marvel of motivational integrity compared to ''Revenge of the Felt,'' the concluding chapter in that other '70s saga, Watergate. Before the final denouement last week, there were a gazillion guesses at the identity of ''Deep Throat,'' but all subscribed to the basic contours of the Woodward and Bernstein myth: that he was someone deep in the bowels of the administration who could no longer in good conscience stand by as a corrupt president did deep damage to the nation. So Darth Throat, a fully paid-up Dark Lord of the Milhous, saved the Republic from the imperial paranoia of Chancellor Nixotine by transforming himself into Anakin Slytalker and telling what he knew to the Bradli knights of the Washington Post.During that same period, Jay Rosen wrote of "Deep Throat, J-School and Newsroom Religion":Now we learn that Deep Throat was not, in fact, Alexander Haig, David Gergen, Pat Buchanan or Len Garment, but a disaffected sidekick of J. Edgar Hoover, an old-school G-man embittered at being passed over for the director's job when the big guy keeled over after half-a-century in harness.
Hmm. Like the ''Star Wars'' wrap-up, ''How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat'' feels small and mean after three decades of the awesome dramatic burden placed upon it. The nobility of the Watergate myth -- in which media boomers and generations of journalism school ethics bores have sunk so much -- seems cheapened and tarnished by this last plot twist.
The best thing I read on the subject in the last few days was a 1992 piece by James Mann from the Atlantic Monthly. He doesn't identify Deep Throat, though he mentions Mark Felt in an important context. But get a load of this remarkably shrewd paragraph from 13 years ago:
''By coincidence, the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17, less than seven weeks after Hoover's death and [FBI outsider] Gray's appointment [as acting director]. The FBI took charge of the federal investigation at the same time that the administration was trying to limit its scope.
''Therein lies the origin of Deep Throat.''
Bingo! Mann also adds: ''Rarely is it asked whether White House aides like Haig, Ziegler, and Garment were the sort of people willing to hold 2 a.m. meetings in a parking garage, or whether they were able to arrange the circling of the page number 20 of Bob Woodward's copy of the New York Times, which was delivered to his apartment by 7 a.m. -- the signal that Deep Throat wanted a meeting.''
With the benefit of hindsight, Mann's observation seems obvious. That's what the spy novelists call ''tradecraft.'' It's the sort of thing spooks and feds do, not White House aides. Why then was it not so obvious for the last three decades?
The answer is that, thanks to All The President's Men, the media took it for granted they were America's plucky heroic crusaders, and there's no point being plucky heroic crusaders unless you've got the dark sinister forces of an all-powerful government to pluckily crusade against. Think how many conspiracy movies there've been where White House aides are the sort of chaps who think nothing of meeting you at 2 a.m. in parking garages, usually as a prelude to having you whacked. In films like Clint Eastwood's ''Absolute Power'' or Kevin Costner's ''No Way Out,'' political appointees carry on like that routinely. That image of government derives principally from the Nixon era.
Watergate is the great redemptive story believers learn to tell about the press and what it can do for the American people. Whether the story can continue to claim enough believers--and connect the humble to the heroic in journalism--is a big question. Whether it should is another question.Felt and many of the other supporting players of Watergate are slowly heading towards the exits. And with the lights about to go out on the legacy media, journalists finally have found a new religion to rally around--but will it be powerful enough to save the old order?
Update: Welcome readers of The Hill's Blog Briefing Room.
Elsewhere on the Web, Ed Morrissey's thoughts on Mark Felt are also worth reading.
Michael Graham has "The Shoe 'Nuff Truth":
Now that you've heard the Partisan Press cackle and misreport the Shoe-Flingin' Iraqi "Journalist" story for 48 hours (did the press tell you, for example, he worked at a Pro-SADDAM newspaper in Egypt?), get the Natural Truth from military analyst and historian Ralph Peters:Glenn Reynolds places the attack into context with another event that occurred near the start of President Bush's administration.If an Arab journalist had thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein or one of his guests, the tosser would've been beaten, then tortured, then killed. Today's Iraqi government is considering whether the man should be charged under the state's democratically validated Constitution.Charles Krauthammer made a similar point on Fox News yesterday, noting that while the Arab and American media are gleefully reporting this one man's actions as reflective of Iraq, the elected Iraqi parliament--which has to go home and answer to citizens--overwhelmingly passed the Bush-backed security plan that the president went to Iraq to sign.Bush won. Even if shoe-thrower Muntadar al-Zaidi (who works for an Egypt-based media outfit) walks out in his stocking feet and becomes a hero to dead-enders, he unwittingly showed what a great thing has been accomplished in Iraq.
Let the bad guys throw shoes, and let the US military win wars and help create democracies. I'll take that deal any day.
(Via Kathy Shaidle, exploring the Zapruder film and going back and to the left wingtip.)
Times Watch has the Gray Lady's worst quotes of note for 2008--but there's still time for more!
We mentioned AP's "Byline Strike" on Tuesday, but Dan Riehl does a great job of reading between the bylines:
The real kicker is that while the journalists are busy writing about the collapse of the Global economy, or the newspaper industry looking like it's going away, all in times so bad we need a new, New Deal - they went to the table asking for a 10% raise.As Dan writes, it's obvious that even AP doesn't believe the endlessly catastrophic news they've been reading via AP.
Well, can't fault them there.
Even as newspapers are shedding staff and hemorrhaging money, Roger L. Simon spots "The Great Byline Strike Of '08" amongst journalists at the Associated Press:
I read with amusement that reporters and photographers for the Associated Press are staging (via the Newspaper Guild) a 'byline strike.' Say what? To stage a such a strike people have to have heard of you, but practically no one is more anonymous than a writer for a news service. It almost comes with the job description. You are the "Associated Press," not yourself. The AP is not exactly where you find the next Norman Mailer. News service reporters are not even as well known as bloggers. I mean whose names are more famous to the general public at his point -- Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin and (yikes) Markos Moulitsas or [insert any Associated Press writer here]?As that sage philosopher of Springfield, H. J. Simpson once told his daughter, "Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day, and do it really half-assed. That's the American way."Not that I don't have some sympathy for my AP colleagues. These are trying times for all in the media. But they made a choice by joining a news service and that choice was for a form of literary facelessness. Also, they opted for a form of homogenization, since the AP and other news services are by mission supposed to be uniform in style and content.
And therein lies the rub. Of recent years the uniformity of the Associated Press in publishing a kind of bland, accepted liberalism of the most uninspired (and sometimes distorted) sort may be the root of their business woes - not the presence (or not) of bylines or even the current economic situation, although the latter certainly plays a part. I would suggest to the writers and owners of the AP that they consider opening up their company to people of different biases and opinions. They are supposed to be a news service, after all, not a ideological distribution center. People on the more extreme right love to compare them to Tass. That's not fair. The AP is nowhere near as bad as that. But they are pretty bad. And they are failing economically. And when you're failing economically, you're supposed to do something. [Maybe they're waiting for a TARP bailout.--ed. I'd rather drive a Buick.]
And from that perspective, the staff at AP have been doing an exceptional job of alerting readers of poor working conditions there for years.
Found via Newsbusters, this Chicago Sun-Times article begins thusly:
Bye bye, black Senate seat! The political blackbirds are singing a swan song for the hopes of keeping a U.S. Senate seat in African-American hands. The Rod Blagojevich implosion may have dealt that cause a fatal blow.So much for post-racial America.Last week's stunning pay-to-play charges led to calls around the nation for a special election to choose President-elect Barack Obama's successor.
That possibility has provoked outrage among black community leaders and politicians. Not so fast, they are saying.
Ed Morrissey posts an amusing clip of Joe Scarborough riffing on the instinctive legacy media.
FrontPage Magazine quotes the speech that Bernard Goldberg (the author of the groundbreaking books on media bias, the first titled, logically enough, Bias and its sequel, Arrogance, gave during David Horowitz's latest Restoration Weekend on November 14th. It was followed by a Q&A, where this excerpt was taken:
Bernie Goldberg: I have long argued, and I continue to argue, despite what some of my conservative friends think, there is no conspiracy. Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, and in my day, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw never came in the morning, went into a room, summoned their top lieutenants, pulled the shades, dimmed the lights, gave the secret handshake and the secret salute, and said, "How are we going to screw those conservatives today?" It never, ever happened that way. And you know what? I wish it did because that is so outrageous. That is so unacceptable that nobody would tolerate it for two seconds.He's right--McCain did much damage to his own campaign through its infighting and lacking of planning and coordination, and his ham-handed "suspending his campaign" stunt in late September without really knowing what he'd do once he got to Washington to deal with that month's bailout sealed his fate.What happens in reality is worse. What happens is there are so many likeminded people in the newsroom, they not only think alike; it becomes a group-think kind of thing so that they see conservative views as being to the right of center, which they are, and they see liberal views as middle of the road. They don't even know what liberal views are because of this bubble that they live in.
What made it different this time - despite the fact that they wanted Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale to win, it wasn't the same thing as this year because Walter Mondale was just another white guy and so was Michael Dukakis. This was different. They were on a mission. This was very important. Their cause, as I say, was noble, and they were going to do whatever they had to do to make this happen. And unlike in past years where they all denied their bias, you're right. The questioner was right. They acknowledge it. And you know why they acknowledge it in the end? Because they don't give a damn what any of you think. That's why.
Unidentified Audience Participant: What I would like to know is there's such a contradiction here in the fact that the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times are almost spinning out of existence. Why is it that they had such a powerful effect on the election?
Bernie Goldberg: I don't know that they do have a powerful effect on - I don't think the media defeated John McCain. I think the media was as corrupt as the day is long, but I don't think they defeated John McCain.
One of my friends in the room suggested maybe two or three points, but it wasn't enough to throw the election. I think people listen to this stuff.
A poll came out. It was a reputable poll. I think it was by Pew, the Pew Research Center, that said 90 percent of Republicans - the question was simply this - "Who do you think most reporters want to win the election?" and 90 percent of Republicans said they want Obama to win. But this is a statistic that should send chills running up the spine of any journalist with half a brain; 62 percent of Democrats and independents said the same thing. Now, if they don't have Republicans - we've already decided we don't trust them, but if 62 percent of Democrats don't trust them, that's a real problem because all they have, at least in theory, is their credibility. So I think they didn't put a thumb on the scale, but they put their big fat asses on the scale this time, and they wanted him to win, and they made no bones about it. But they didn't beat John McCain.
And McCain seems thrilled to be able to hang out with David Letterman and count the media as his friends again. The pressure of actually having to lead is off.
Now go over and read Goldberg's actual speech.
And for my two-part interview with Goldberg in 2004 in Tech Central Station, click here and here.)
(H/T: CG)
I originally produced the above clip, "Mugging For The Camera," back in early April as part of my Silicon Graffiti series of videoblogs, and uploaded it first to my primary video server, where I posted it here and it got a fair chunk of traffic in the Blogosphere. I then uploaded it to YouTube for hosting on my page there.
Last year, one of the subjects of the video, television reporter Rebecca Aguilar, then with Dallas-based KDFW, received a firestorm of attention (here's our post, which links to others) for her badgering tone when attempting to interview an elderly Army vet whose business was robbed on multiple occasions, and fought back. (She was eventually let go by the station.)
In late March, when a TV station in northern California reported in a rather upbeat manner about the bravery of another elderly vet who fought back rather than be mugged, it seemed to be quite a contrast to the report that aired in Dallas.
As part of my Silicon Graffiti video series, I wanted to place those two video clips side by side, as well as include comments made by other journalists and bloggers, such as the proprietors of Breitbart.TV (who are local television vets themselves), and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com, all of which was clearly within the context of fair use.
On November 18, the page containing the above video was the subject of a DMCA take-down notice sent to YouTube by KDFW. YouTube, quite appropriately, took down the video and sent me a copy of the notice. My wife and attorney sent a counter notice, and after waiting the appropriate time, YouTube restored the content earlier this evening with a note that my account would not be penalized, which means that this won't count against me on YouTube's "repeat offender" list.
As others have noted, YouTube is quick to pull videos whenever there's a whiff of controversy or a dispute regarding them. But I'm glad to see this video back up--to the best of my knowledge, it's the only record available on YouTube at the moment of newscaster Rebecca Aguilar's original report, the others having been removed due to KDFW's objections. (See here, here and here.) But it's also a reminder not to rely on the site as your primary or, especially, your only video host.
At NewsBusters Kyle Drennen spots CBS with their shoe in their mouth:
According to CBS correspondent Richard Roth, in a report on Monday's CBS Early about an Iraqi journalist throwing a shoe at President Bush during a Baghdad press conference, the incident was reminiscent of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein five years earlier: "Mr. Bush's message of progress was eclipsed in Baghdad by a sign of his unpopularity...The symbolism wouldn't have been lost on Iraqis, for whom shoes can be used to show extreme contempt, as with the footwear beaten against the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled by Marines five years ago."Of course, in 2002, when Saddam held his last "election", CBS hilariously reported:
(CBS) Iraq declared Saddam Hussein the winner Wednesday - by an 11 million-to-0 margin - in a war-shadowed referendum on his two-decade military rule, sending celebratory gunfire crackling from the streets and rooftops of Baghdad.Of course. More explorations of the Memory Hole, here.The 100 percent turnout, 100 percent 'yes' vote shows all Iraqis are poised to defend Saddam against American forces, the country's No. 2 man said.
"If they come, we will fight them in every village, and every house," said Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, announcing results on what Iraq billed as a people's referendum on keeping Saddam in power another seven years.
"Every home will be a front, and every farmer, every shepherd, every Iraqi, will play his role," Ibrahim said. "All Iraqis are armed now, and by God's will we will triumph."
* * * CBS News Correspondent Tom Fenton, reports voters going to the polls in Baghdad faced a simple choice - to vote "yes" or "no" - and everyone seemed to be voting "yes."
Whether that's because they love their leader - as many people said they did - or for other reasons, was hard to tell.
A United Nations human rights report says 500 people were jailed in the last referendum after they voted "no."
Some voters went to extremes to make it clear where they stood.
"I love Saddam more than myself," one man told CBS News, as he wrote "yes" on his ballot in blood - his own blood.
Ibrahim, announcing the vote, said all 11,445,638 eligible voters had cast ballots, and all for Saddam.
"Someone who does not know the Iraqi people will not believe this percentage, but it is real," Ibrahim said. "Whether it looks that way to someone or not. We don't have opposition in Iraq."
Iraqi officials said popular outrage at the U.S. threats to Saddam's regime made the turnout and percentage even higher than in 1995, when Saddam received a 99.96 percent 'yes' vote.
Iraqi media compared it to Bush's 2000 election victory, eked out in the Electoral College despite losing to Al Gore in the popular vote.
"The truth of the matter is that he (Bush) won by a fraction of the votes, and this fraction was engineered by sly lawyers' games," said the state-run Iraqi Daily. "Maybe this is one of the main reasons for his hysterical threats on the Iraqi choice!"
Meanwhile, Power Line reviews HBO's whitewashed miniseries about Saddam and finds more than a little equivocation:
There is much more that could be said. But let us sum up: HBO and the BBC want us to see Saddam as a family man, a tyrant at home, a dictator at work, who became this way because his stepfather beat him. He was, in this version, an ordinary kind of dictator and this was an ordinary kind of Middle Eastern authoritarian regime run as a family business. The trouble is it was not. Saddam was uniquely brutal in his rise through the Ba'athist Party. His regime sought to eliminate entire groups from the nation. He launched two aggressive wars against neighbouring states. This was not a normal authoritarian regime, nor even a bad one. Saddam was a genocidal dictator who terrorized his own people. This attempt to normalize him is a disgrace.Saddam became a dictator "because his stepfather beat him"? Moviemakers seem remarkably generous when it comes to forgiving a tyrant's excesses when they can blame them all on a dysfunctional childhood.
More Hollywood forgiveness offered here.
The Business & Media Institute rounds them up; a Tech Central Station column by Arnold Kling from 2006 explains their origins.
In a related vein, Ronnie Schreiber explores "Myths of Organized Labor", memes which also derive from a similar ancestry.
If you enjoyed my Red Queen's Race video last week, Jon Stewart (found via Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds) has a fun clip summing up the newspapers' endgame in about two minutes:
Meanwhile, Investor's Business Daily notes that "Some journalists out there seem to be actually rooting for a new economic depression--the very thing that will hurt them more than it will hurt many others":
The blogosphere has a name for this syndrome: "depression lust." Virginia Postrel, an Atlantic Monthly columnist who invented the phrase, contributed to a Boston Globe story published in November that collected ideas from various people to (allegedly) give readers some insight into what a 2009 depression would look like.And of course, with the economy slowing, the AP feverishly wishes that Obama will bring it to a stop with tons of business-choking global warming regulations.The conditions "sounded pretty damned good to some people," Postrel writes on her Dynamist blog, "a sure sign of an affluent society, or at least affluent commentators," who, we should add, appear to be operating under the illusion that things would still be rosy for them in a depression because they always have been.
Journalists "seem positively giddy with anticipation at the prospect of a return to '30s-style hardship -- without, of course, the real hardship of the 1930s," Postrel blogs.
Jim Miller, who writes a political blog, has made a similar observation. "I can't count the number of times I read hopeful pieces in the New York Times saying that a recession might be coming soon, so now that one is actually here those people have to be pleased."
Did any of those New York Times stories come from David Carr, whose "Stoking Fear Everywhere You Look" appeared Monday?
"Every modern recession includes a media seance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be," noted Carr, who did a bit of his own communicating with the dead spirits of the Great Depression.
As Postrel notes, journalists, whose industry is teetering and "who are already the equivalent of 1980s steelworkers," should be among the most fearful of a depression.
But they can't help themselves. Their contempt for the capitalism and free markets that have made so many of them comfortable is strong enough to make them wish for economic conditions not in their best interests -- and it comes through loud and clear almost every time they report.
As one of Tim Blair's readers quipped on Friday:
Obama has besmirched the "Office of the President Elect" more than anyone in American history.In mid-November, When Obama's transition team fired up Photoshop, printed out their mock "Office of the President-Elect" signs and pasted them to Obama's lectern, the media, weary of covering the real president during the final two months of his administration (except when the Florsheims fly, of course) ate it up. Itchy with anticipation over the transition and already used to giving their candidate maximum media exposure (and plenty of cover), they were thrilled to report on his press conferences as if he already was the president--why bother with the stuffy formality of transferring power in January?
And then we all learned how to pronounce the word "Blagojevich."
With a little bit of political jujitsu in mind, this weekend, the RNC responded with this ad:
Hot Air's Allahpundit asks, "Should the RNC have waited on this? No benefit of the doubt during the interregnum, at least?"
In 2000, there was plenty of doubt, and very little of it beneficial, thrown by the out party at their successors during the transition period.
Having established the precedent, why would they think the urge to attack during what was once a calm and orderly transition would cease?
As Christian Toto writes, while Roger Ebert has always been a man of the left, his BDS seems to be getting the better of him these days. In his otherwise appropriately middling review of the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, Ebert opines:
The message of the 2008 version is that we should have voted for Al Gore. This didn't require Klaatu and Gort. That's what I'm here for.To which Christian replies:
Really? I thought you were here to help the public decide the best way to spend their hard-earned money at their local theater. Maybe that whole "thumb" thing was just a distraction.Exactly. But Ebert really lets his 1960s-minted BDS flag fly in his review of Frost/Nixon:
Strange, how a man once so reviled has gained stature in the memory. How we cheered when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency! How dramatic it was when David Frost cornered him on TV and presided over the humiliating confession that he had stonewalled for three years. And yet how much more intelligent, thoughtful and, well, presidential, he now seems, compared to the occupant of the office from 2001 to 2009.That's not strange, that's what the media does to every Republican president when he leaves office when comparing him to a successor from his same party. Why should Nixon be the exception?
More Ebert:
Nixon was thought to have been destroyed by Watergate and interred by the Frost interviews. But wouldn't you trade him in a second for Bush?Nahh, I'm not a wage and price controls kind of guy. But that's the great irony of Nixon's presidency, as Tom Wicker of the New York Times wrote in his 1991 biography of Nixon. If the left could have gotten past their hatred of the man, they would found, particularly in his statist warmed over Great Society domestic policies, he really was one of them, to paraphrase Wicker's title--or at least he certainly governed like it.
While Ebert naturally gives the movie four stars, John Nolte provides a bit of much-needed perspective:
Frost/Nixon is a full on respectable, accomplished and intelligent retelling of the now famous series of interviews English television personality David Frost conducted with disgraced former President Nixon in 1977, just a few years after Nixon's resignation. No one can argue a successful stageplay hasn't been transformed into a beautifully shot narrative with two memorable performances by Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost. The film holds your attention and reeks of competence from beginning to end.Even Ebert circuitously admits that the film is a show about a show about nothing:All that's missing is a point.
* * * Frost/Nixon rates as an impressive television movie, but as a feature it lacks a point, any kind of real intellectual curiosity, and, most of all, an ambition to do more than win awards. There's a great Nixon film to be made about this corrupt but fascinating man, but a couple of terrific lead performances won't help anyone remember this one for very long.
[Nixon] admitted what everyone already knew, and that freed him to get on with things, to end his limbo in San Clemente, Calif., to give other interviews, to write books, to be consulted as an elder statesman. Indeed, to show his face in public.Wait--didn't you start your article by saying that Nixon was "interred by the Frost interviews"? So the interview that interred Nixon freed him to get on with things?
In actuality, the interview was hardly the heavyweight slugfest the movie and its hagiographic critics make it out to be. At National Review, Fred Schwarz goes back to the newspaper reviews of Frosts' interviews with Nixon to see how they played at the time with a media still giddy over their recent victory:
To someone who was around back then, the idea of making a major motion picture about such a notorious fizzle seems bizarre; you might as well write an opera about "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault." Is this just a case of memory being deceptive? Were the interviews really a landmark of a milestone of a watershed, as the publicists assert? To test this, I looked back at the reception they got in the media of the time.As Orrin Judd concludes in his review of Wicker's biography:The show's producers secured lavish advance coverage by giving virtually everyone with a press card some sort of "leak": transcripts, unedited video, production notes, briefing materials, correspondence. The week of the broadcast, Nixon was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek, in that long-vanished era when those publications were considered influential. In the days leading up to the broadcast, the Washington Post ran several solid pages of Watergate transcripts and analysis, flashing back to the glory days of 1973.
After the airing of the first interview -- the only one anybody cared about, since it contained all the Watergate material -- there was far less hoopla. The Post's Bob Woodward, Nixon's erstwhile tormentor, called it "a much-touted television interview which shed little new light on the scandal."
Elsewhere in the Post, Haynes Johnson's analysis dripped with disappointment: "[The former president] proceeded, for the next 90 minutes, to give us all the familiar Nixon responses we have all seen for more than a generation. Those advance reports about Nixon being broken -- or shattered -- or even shaken by the withering interrogation of David Frost are in error. Nixon is in control throughout. He offers little that is new, and less that is of substance." Johnson continued: "Last night's program was billed as a dramatic and historic encounter between Nixon and his opponent, the relentless David Frost. It was nothing of the sort. . . . By the very end of the program, Frost looks as though he's swept up by the Nixon responses. . . . The tables have been turned. Frost had met his match."
The New York Times, in a brief, unsigned "Week in Review" item a few days later, echoed the been-there, done-that theme: "The spectacle was a familiar one . . . he portrayed himself, in typically Nixonian terms and gestures, as a victim of circumstance whose errors sprang from good intentions. . . . No important factual information about Watergate emerged from the interview."
* * * How did this one-day story suddenly become the most important event since the Civil War? Well, if there's anything the media loves more than overhyping an anti-Republican story, it's overhyping its own importance, so when they have a chance to do both at once, it's no surprise that they get a little too excited.
As I wrote here last year, Frost/Nixon is an attempt to use history, assisted by plenty of dramatic license, to retrospectively turn a loss into a win. By all accounts, Frost/Nixon does a fine job of dramatizing the negotiations and preparation that led up to the interviews. And it's hard to imagine Frank Langella, who plays a Brezhnev-looking Nixon, giving a bad performance. Still, the movie's fundamental premise is just plain wrong.
The trailer says: "In 1974 President Nixon resigned to hide the truth. But one man had a few questions." In fact, Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment; "the truth" was contained in congressional transcripts, court papers, and Oval Office tapes, and the great bulk of it came out before Frost and Nixon sat down for their "historic" clash. Some questions did remain unanswered: Why would anyone bug the DNC? Why didn't Nixon burn the tapes? Where did the 18-1/2 minute gap come from? But Frost never brought these up.
All that his much-vaunted interviews "revealed" was the unsurprising truth that, even in retirement, Richard Nixon was the same Tricky Dick he had always been.
It is perhaps the perfect punishment that Nixon has no one left to defend him now except for the same liberals who were his lifelong enemies. One imagines Richard Nixon spinning in his grave at the very thought of a NY Times columnist penning a 700 page apologia for his life and works, and one smiles.And as John Nolte writes:
Since 1976's All The President's Men Nixon's become a genre all his own. Take a look.My personal favorite is Robert Altman's Secret Honor, starring Philip Baker Hall and a half gallon bottle of Chivas Regal, and its Blagojevichian conclusion. (Language warning, but the video clip's here.)
Nixon was still very much alive when the 1984 film was made; while I don't know his response, I'd like think that deep down inside, he very much enjoyed, even a decade after he left office, still being able to cause that embittered a reaction amongst the left.
(And as for Nixon's interviewer? Much like Dan Rather's banishment to the cable purgatory of HD-Net, Frost has also been exiled to his own video Siberia.)
The traditional conventional wisdom (and by "traditional conventional wisdom", I mean about as far back as 2002), Bloggers are one-man bands, guys in their pajamas (to coin a phrase) producing material without the traditional infrastructure and interpersonal cooperation found in mass media.
The new conventional wisdom from mass media? Where do we sign up:
Under a new agreement reached this week with its labor unions, WUSA, Channel 9, will become the first station in Washington to replace its crews with one-person "multimedia journalists" who will shoot and edit news stories single-handedly.Gosh--there's a shocking new development.The change will blur the distinctions between the station's reporters and its camera and production people. Reporters will soon be shooting and editing their own stories, and camera people will be doing the work of reporters, occasionally appearing on the air or on in video clips on Channel 9's Web site.
For decades, TV journalists have worked in teams, with the lines of responsibility regulated by union rules or simple tradition. Stories were covered by a crew consisting of a camera operator and a correspondent (and further back, by a sound or lighting technician); their work was overseen by a producer and their footage assembled into a finished story by an editor.
But technology -- handheld or tripod-mounted cameras, laptop editing programs and the Internet -- have made it possible for one person to handle all those assignments, station managers say.
Welcome to the 21st century, guys--we'll be glad to show you around.
An editor at the The Hill claims that "death threats" are keeping Rahm Emanuel from attending press conferences to discuss the Blagojevich meltdown. As Mark Finkelstein writes:
Which would be the safer place to be for a political figure who's received death threats?:Presumably "The Office of the President Elect" has amongst it perks a phalanx of Secret Service agents at every press conference, in addition to dozens of journalists eager to take a bullet for either man.a. A school concert in a public venue.
b. A press conference in the company of the President-elect of the United States of America.If you answered 'b,' you're thinking like me and presumably most people. If you answered 'a,' you're A.B. Stoddard. The associate editor of "The Hill" offered up the strange excuse that death threats are preventing Rahm Emanuel from attending press conferences in the course of an MSNBC appearance this afternoon during which she also claimed that "President-elect Obama is taking steps to be as forthcoming and as open and as transparent as he promised he would be."
Meanwhile, a possible reason (or maybe not) why Rahm's been remiss.
Having aided in his defeat for the White House, the media are now allowing John McCain to safely inherit the role of inoffensive elder GOP statesman-as-lovable-loser role last worn comfortably in the late 1990s by Bob Dole.
Meanwhile even with McCain's campaign concluded, the incompetence wears on.
In contrast, "The Other McCain" offers a roadmap for GOP recovery, here.
Or, "Journalism--The Unknown Ideal", to paraphrase a lesser known, but equally appropriate title.
The media are fixating on Rod Blagojevich's helmet hair as a sign that he's "nuts", as Vanity Fair dubbed the Illinois Democrat. It allows for plenty of cheap jokes--and we're as guilty of that as anybody. But as P.J. Gladnick writes, it also allows journalists to ignore the bigger question they'd much rather avoid:
Will other media outlets also promote the idea of Blagovich as insane due to perfectly groomed hair? Hmm... John Edwards also had an obsession over his hair so there just might be something to it. Of course, insanity as evidenced by great hair is a much more palatable excuse for Democrats and their media allies than the fact that Blagojevich was a typical member of the corrupt Chicago political machine.And for background on that machine, Reason.TV looks at "Crook County":
The Wall Street Journal notes, "In Chicago, Political Celebration Gives Way to Political Shame:"
The pride that's been surging through this city since Barack Obama's presidential victory last month is showing signs of deflating now that political corruption has returned to center stage in Illinois.Gosh, there's a shocker. Meanwhile, despite being a target-rich environment there's "Not Much Humor in the Blagosphere", according to Yeah Right:To many residents, the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich for, among other things, allegedly trying to sell the president-elect's vacated senate seat marked an end to the political glow the city has been basking in.
"It was as if Chicago politics had turned a corner and this was a new day," said Sean Kennedy, former president of a student Democrat organization at Loyola University here. "All of a sudden, we get pulled back into reality, and realize nothing in Chicago has changed that much."
I haven't done an exhaustive search, but I'm pretty disappointed in the lack of funny material online on the Rod Blagojevich scandal. I mean, brazen corruption + lotsa obscenity + awesome name. In my book, that ought to = comedy gold. Perhaps its just that the reality is funny enough that it is stunting the creativity of our nation's funnymen who seem to be struggling IMHO.One of their links goes to Blagojevich's Gary Hart moment from earlier this week:
Finally, though reasonable people may disagree, looking at Blagojevich's freeze-dried hair, I'd say now we know who Christopher Reeve donated his toupees to.
Just to follow up on our link earlier today to Virginia Postrel's post on "Depression Porn", Culture11 explores "Recession Chic" in the fashion magazine industry--"Who knew an economic collapse could be so fabulous?"
Meanwhile over at Ace of Spades, "U.S. Economy In Recession; Women, Minorities, and [B.S.] Artists Hardest Hit."
Back in early 2005, Howard Fineman of Newsweek wrote:
A political party is dying before our eyes -- and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.Looks like Howard's employer didn't take his advice:
Facing increased costs of postage and maintaining its circulation, Newsweek has been quietly considering a drop its circulation guarantee by a million copies or more, FOLIO: has learned.In addition to Fineman's warning from 2005, these recent moments will stand as key mile markers on Newsweek's decent into Thought Leaderdom.Executives at Newsweek began discussing a rate base rollback as early as this summer, according to a pair of sources familiar with these discussions.
Both sources say that the magazine is considering slashing up to 1.6 million copies from Newsweek's current rate base of 2.6 million, which would put the magazine's rate base at 1 million.
Newsweek declined to comment.
"A million [rate base] was the extreme," said the source. But, as the year wore on, and the economic crisis worsened, "[they] didn't see a recovery."
'Thought Leader'
Aside from the cost of maintaining such a high circulation, Newsweek would like to transition from newsmagazine to "thought leader," something more akin to the Economist. "[Editor Jon] Meacham and [Time editorial director Richard] Stengel are both infatuated with the Economist," the source said. "To get that 'thought leader' position, a million is the sweet spot." The Economist's rate base in North America is 714,000.
Update: More news of fresh disaster: "Hit by Recession, NPR to Lay Off Seven Percent of Staff."
Jonathan Last notes that the Gray Lady isn't exactly helping herself win converts with its latest ad campaign. And in news regarding another medium, AP spots "broadcasters having bad year":
Broadcast TV's fall season is going so poorly that four out of five returning programs have a smaller audience than they had in 2007.Say, this trend deserves a name, don't you think?
Related: I can certainly sympathize with the image Photoshopped by Doug Ross that accompanies this post: "Newspaper CEOs rearrange deck chairs in closed-door 'Crisis Summit." This chart helps to explain that image.
(Found via Free Canuckistan.)
How much are the media in the tank for Obama? Enough so that they'll happily toss inconvenient articles down the memory hole for him.
This morning, Ann Althouse wrote:
Why am I getting the feeling that the mainstream media will do what it can to obliterate the connection between Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama?It's more than a feeling, to quote those sage philosophers from Boston.
Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey spots plenty of airbrushing at Obama's Change.gov site.
Warner Todd Huston compares and contrasts 2008 and 2001:
Jonathan Alter was an early accuser of new President George W. Bush when he and VP Cheney began to try to warn the country that an economic downturn was well underway as he was taking office. As Bush tried to warn the nation, the media jumped all over him for "talking down the economy." Yet, as we watch the reporting of Obama's current down talking of the economy, the media has said nothing similar to the condemnation reigned upon Bush.Why would the media complain about Obama, when they're doing a remarkable job of talking down the economy themselves, as Virginia Postrel notes:The myth that people like Alter was pushing in 2001 was that Clinton bequeathed a good economy to Bush, but the reality was that the spiral had already begun to fall into negative territory months before Bush took office. Despite that obvious downturn, the media formed a chorus of attacking Bush for being too negative in the face of the American people. On March 26, Alter unleashed his Newsweek piece headlined "Thanks Ever So Much, President Poor-Mouth." Alter called Bush's warnings "risky and unusual," and made the pronouncement that Bush was wrong to do so. "Even if Bush turns out to be right in his predictions of gloom," Alter wrote, "that doesn't mean he was right to make them."
On CNN, Lou Waters needled Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer on January 12, 2001 about the "politicalization " of the economy. "President Clinton, sort of, answered that as well today. He's talking up the economy. There are economists who say you guys are talking down the economy. What's happening here in this transition period, the whole, sort of, politicalization [of the economy]...," Waters said.
On March 19, The New York Times scolded Bush that presidents were supposed to be "cheerleaders for the nation's economy."
Yet, has anyone seen any similar scolding of the new "cheerleader" in chief, Obama? Has anyone seen an Alter sternly scolding Obama for "poor-mouthing" the economy? Has there been any hectoring from CNN over Obama's grave warnings? Where is The New York Times beating up that downcast Obama?
If anyone should fear a Depression, it should be journalists, who are already the equivalent of 1980s steelworkers. But instead, they seem positively giddy with anticipation at the prospect of a return to '30s-style hardship--without, of course, the real hardship of the 1930s. (We're all yuppies now.)Read the whole thing.
Reuters: "Obama Seen Untouched by Illinois Governor Charges."
Meanwhile, as Mary Katharine Ham notes, "No need to wait for Obama to frame the issue when the Associated Press knows his favorite words already. They are great students of his oratory, after all." AP rather subjectively reports (emphasis MKH):
Though Barack Obama isn't accused of anything, the charges against his home-state governor - concerning Obama's own Senate seat no less--are an unwelcome distraction. And the ultimate fallout is unclear.Ham writes that there's another "distraction" added by AP "just a few paragraphs later, after a vigorous defense of Obama and a rigorous downplaying of his connections to Blago":As Obama works to set up his new administration and deal with a national economic crisis, suddenly he also is spending time and attention trying to distance himself from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and charges that the governor was trying to sell the now-vacant Senate post.
Still, at the very least, the episode amounts to a distraction for Obama at an inopportune time just six weeks before he's sworn into office. It also raises the specter of notorious Chicago politics, an image Obama has tried to distance himself from during his career.As MKH adds, "The story goes on to castigate mean Republicans who just won't let the issue drop, already. Again, the AP should just drop the grown-up words and write with emoticons. The picture associated with the story even features Obama wearing a frowny face. The pathos!"
We should be sympathetic though. After all, it's not easy for a legacy media at the tail end of the Red Queen's Race, when their favorite hologram needs a little help.
As that hoary old newspaper cliche goes, the goal of journalism is "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable", a statement that makes a hash of any mid-20th century claims to "objectivity." But in the past, most journalists, print or video, paid lip service to the idea of being a champion of the little guy, the working man, Joe Six Pack, or whatever that particular week's fabulously outdated and only mildly paternalistic reference to Middle America was.
But that was a long time ago. On Sunday, Tom Brokaw suggested that President Elect Obama tank the economy even more, by sticking it to commuters' wallets:
Let's talk for a moment about consumer responsibility when it comes to the auto industries. As soon as gas prices dropped, consumers moved back to the larger cars once again. The SUVs are the big gas consumers. Why not take this opportunity to put a tax on gasoline, bump it back up to $4 a gallon where people were prepared to pay for that, and use that revenue for alternative energy and as a signal to the consumers: "Those days are gone. We're not going to have gasoline that you could just fill up your tank for 20 bucks anymore."And of course, the Washington Post is also pretty cool with that idea.
Meanwhile, rather than letting the marketplace decide who sells books and who doesn't, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan doesn't want anyone infringing on his turf:
The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet?Gosh, there's a shocker; Tim Blair makes quick work of Egan's arrogance--but it's merely the latest reminder that newspapers in general really don't want any competition for their territory.I didn't think so. And I don't want you writing books.
Of course, they're not alone in that department.
Update: Not surprisingly, Iowahawk has a few japes at Egan's expense: "Silly Plumber, Lit Is For Crits!"
Wow, I really wish I had seen this 2007 clip from McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, before I shot my "Red Queen's Race" video over the weekend.
As P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters notes, Pruitt does a terrific Baghdad Bob impersonation--but only before invoking his heartfelt commitment to "philosophers and rock 'n' roll songs. Sometimes it's one and the same as with Lenny Kravitz's song from a few years ago, 'Dig In.'"