Borrowing a line from Atrios, I have six or seven forwarded emails alleging that the Washington Post editorial staff skull fucked a kitten. Front page material!
Reader Interactions
30Comments
Comments are closed.
by Tim F| 30 Comments
This post is in: Media, General Stupidity
Borrowing a line from Atrios, I have six or seven forwarded emails alleging that the Washington Post editorial staff skull fucked a kitten. Front page material!
Comments are closed.
STEVEinSC
Well, did they?
brendancalling
the NY TImes has no mention either. at least not online…
4tehlulz
Your use of the term “skull-fucked” shows that you are not serious, unlike the the professional journalists that “follow a set of standards, a code of ethics.”
Punchy
Uh…..what??
Hey, not everyone can link to DK. Work filters, natch. Anyone wanna give us poor saps the 10 sec skinny?
Gracias.
jake
Heh. To judge by the comments section for that story, the readers are not amused.
Dulcie
Punchy – Obama has Muslim ties because some guy is S.C. is “suspicious” that Obama’s dad instructed him in the ways of Islam.
Our MSM in action.
yet another jeff
That’s impossible, I tested this in a sandbox with a Hello Kitty doll and this is a lie. Hello Kitty dolls don’t even have bones or mouths! This proves that in no way could the Washington Post editorial staff have had intercourse with any orifice or socket of a kitten’s head.
Dulcie
Remind me again why anyone takes the WaPo seriously?
yet another jeff
Because they…well…NYT…er…Judy Miller…um.
*sigh*
Because they’re…
Crap, I got nothing.
4tehlulz
Fixed.
KCinDC
OT: Time for another resveratrol post, Tim?
demimondian
Why? Because however out of touch they may be with the country at large, the NYT and the WaPo shape opinions inside the bubble of “serious people”. They serve as useful sites for the “serious people” to get information which disconfirms the kinds of stuff the cranks on the fringes say.
“Oh, noez!”, you say, “That evil press corp is suppressing the voice of teh peepulz!”
Well, yes and no. It does help to have a dispassionate, unbiased voice evaluating the tin-foil hat crowd. There’s a reason for a Grey Lady to hold the kooks in check. We want a disinterested press, and, yes, we want people to pay attention to is, as well as to us.
Right now, though, we have an uninterested press, we have an uninterested press. Currently, the WaPo and the NYT are willing to be spun by both sides, rather than being aggressive about resisting them. They publish crude hit pieces created and disseminated by partisan operatives as if they were original reporting — without doing truth checking. When they are lied to, they protect their sources, preferring continued access to fair reporting.
That’s where the news press is falling down, not in its core mission.
dan
What will be hilarious is when the “Democrats claim Obama is not a Muslim, Republicans disagree” stories get written. I can’t wait.
4tehlulz
They’ve already been written. The editors are just saving them for if/when Obama gets the nomination.
Jen
I think there’s some good stuff to be found in the WaPo, I like Gene Weingarten (his chats are better than his columns) and I like Froomkin. Okay, I’m out of things to like about it. I still read it online tho. Lately I’ve been getting annoyed about their random and stupid hyperlinking. As in, Sean Taylor’s grieving relatives showed up in a Mercedes-Benz, and the Mercedes part is hyperlinked.
Billy K
WaPo still hasn’t denied this story. I can only assume it’s true.
4tehlulz
If you have an ad-blocker, enter “http://*.intellitxt.com/*” (without quotes, but with the asterisks) as a site to block. That should take care of those (and the popups that go with them).
Jen
But why do they do the over-the-top hyperlinking in the first place? It’s tasteless and idiotic to link to Mercedes in a story about Sean Taylor.
cleek
it’s probably automatic. and Mercedes probably paid to get their name added to the list of things that generate those popups.
The Other Steve
Harry Smith and Jeff Greenfield were talking about it this morning on the CBS Early Show.
The Other Steve
There is money to be made!
Jen
But it doesn’t link to the Mercedes website. It links to other articles with Mercedes in them, such as (this is No. 1 in international news right now): Gas tank in car explodes at petrol station
How much could Mercedes be paying for that kind of publicity?
Punchy
And here I thought his black-ness would be the target. Painting him as a Muzzy just cuz his name’s Obama? What’s the Washington Post….third grade or something?
cleek
It links to other articles with Mercedes in them,
ah. i assumed it was like other sites i’d seen. my bad
Jen
Cleek, that’s because no normal human would ever click on such moronic links!
Jake
You won’t see that in the Washington Post and I doubt any paper with a circulation of more than 100 will come out and say “OMG, A black guy wants to be prezident, hide the wimminfolk!eleventy1” but it is a handy way of pointing out that Obama is *Ahem* “Different.”
Actually, we have a large Muslim population in these parts and the WaPo ran the story anyway. So who knows what the hell those shmucks will do next.
D-Chance.
Wow. A Washington publication being criticized, and they aren’t even Moonies. Go figure… ;)
Tim F.
You’re either new around here, or have the reading comp of a chipped NPR gift mug.
jcricket
Just yesterday I read (maybe it was here) that even after people read the denials of some smear/slur, their opinion of the person’s “character” doesn’t change.
Basically, they hear Obama’s a shady muslim lying his way to get to the top. Then they hear a full-frontal denial. So they end up no longer believing Obama’s a muslim, but still believing he’s shady and a liar.
The GOP plays this game, unfortunately, brilliantly. And the Democrats suck at it. We’re not even really good at the denial/counter-attack part (which might help at least a little).
But regardless, I hope this shows Hillary-haters that there is no level to which the GOP won’t stoop to stop the next president from being a Dem. There is no candidate the Democrats can nominate that won’t get attacked in a way that make the lying swift-boat douchenozzles seem like Mother Teresa.
While it’s beyond hope that Democrats ever really get on-board with full-frontal attack politics, I really have two hopes: One, better counter-attacks; Two, no retreat (i.e. no caring/responding to what GOP/concern trolls say about anything). The latter, especially, could go a long way to defusing the whole press corps nonsense spouted by Joe Klein and David Broder.
demimondian
Yes, and I’m glad we are — it’s a nasty, slimy game.
We need to counter attack when reporters spread lies, or, more importantly, when they refuse to acknowledge it. That’s just like primarying a bad Dem — it’s how you keep the pressure on. But full-frontal attack politics is un-American, and we should not join in.
I want no part of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.