Speaking of conspiracies, it’s awfully hard not to see this and this about the Democrats’ “Gitmo problem” (from Halperin and Ambinder) and not think something is afoot. Whether that something is a conspiracy, collective insanity, or just a couple of hacks going to the right-wing fear well one too many times, that I can’t say.
Seriously, though, what the hell kind of media do we have when so much time is spent on the “optics” of a policy and so little on its actual impact? We shouldn’t be surprised that much of the last ten years has been one giant Clear Skies/Healthy Forests initiative.
Davis X. Machina
Xenophanes the pre-Socratic said that if cattle and horses had hands, and could make sculptures, their sculptures of their gods would have horns and hooves.
The electronic media especially are in the optics business — so it’s the optics business they see everywhere.
sgwhiteinfla
They are both Republicans who think the specter of Democrats being tarred with torture will halt any talk of investigations. Its called projection, because thats exactly how THEY would handle it as Republicans if the situations were reversed. I have no personal attachment to Nancy Pelosi, and while so far the media charges against her amount to nothing more than lies and smears, if she was a part of this I would want her ass investigated just as vigorously as Dick Cheney should be. Thats one reason that Republicans are going to have a very hard time coming back to national prominence. They have little to no ability to accurately predict how the left responds to any given crisis. Most of that is because after years of claiming “The left believes X” type smears they have started to believe their own rhetoric. Halperin and Ambinder are just another two right wing hacks who are blinded by their own delusions about what the left really stands for.
Dennis-SGMM
Just substitute the word “superficialities” for “optics” and the behavior of the media is explained. Nothing new here.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Interesting discussion on Pakistan and India on Fareed Zakaria on CNN, going on right now.
Woody
The Dims ARE implicated, through and through, in everything the Busheviks did…
Why do you suppose there’s been so much hand-wringing among the Dim leadership, and so little enthusiasm for pursuing the criminals?
Joel
Ambinder went from a decent/interesting read during election season to just another hack in a span of just a few months. The guy is getting lazier by the second.
Dennis-SGMM
@sgwhiteinfla:
They aren’t alone:
Woody
Are you still moderating my comments?
Mike G
as well as members of Congress who were briefed on interrogation methods.
An interesting value system — “I told you maybe some sketchy details and maybe some lies about the bad stuff I was doing, so the bad stuff is all your fault.”
what the hell kind of media do we have when so much time is spent on the “optics” of a policy and so little on its actual impact?
We have a shallow, PR-driven media, so naturally their mindset is on the shallow PR aspect of government policies.
InflatableCommenter
That’s the first line of the first comment to your second link, as posted on May 8.
I don’t think we can summarize this “issue” any better than that.
Monty
Whenever one deals with the cesspool that is our national media, Glenn Greenwald has probably already had something worthwhile to say on the issue.
Case in point, regarding Halperin – one of the most insidious, know-nothing blowhards of the pundit class – and Ambinder, Greenwald once commented on the unfortunate perpetuation of Halperin’s deranged idea of what journalism is supposed to be by simply quoting Ambinder as follows:
It does indeed.
You know, I used to loke Ambinder, and he still does good work quite often, but this general attitude of his has already become evident too many times.
He is already tainted, driven by the desire to be one of the next great court stenographers…
dbrown
How in the fucking hell does someone in congress being told that harsh interrogation which includes (in the bushwhack/ass-wipe cheney world call non-torture) water treatment or boarding does this make them criminally responsible? Also, since we the public heard rumors long ago are we too responsible because we didn’t rise up in mass civil disobedience? Wait, this means that these bloodthirsty pigs are innocent because they told some people who had no direct power to stop them and hence, somehow in magic land blame is then transferred?
Yes, the people who heard of these techniques (and how much detail?) are morally bankrupt if they had remained silent (but then, in the cheney shit eating world, if they did talk of it then they would then be branded traders) and need to be taken to task but that is not and never has been criminal nor a war crime unlike the people who ordered it! This is beyond stupid and pointless. It also proves how much of the media is looking for any excuse to avoid allowing a US President and president of vice of both being true war criminals but hey, that can’t be true because all of us heard about the torture and didn’t stop it so by collective guilt these monsters are innocent?
Also, please add Clinton because if he did render US citizans, that is a crime (but a captured terroist can be returned to his country of orgin. If it was a third country then yes, that may be a war crime or at least a crime and more power to them to investigate that too.)
DougJ
I agree.
Beauzeaux
We have exactly the kind of news media that the Republicans worked so hard for so many years to attain, one that is in many regards dysfunctional, and preposterous, and practically begs to be ignored.
John H. Farr
Wrong question! What the hell kind of PERSON is each one of us that we have co-created this state of affairs?
Andrew
As someone who works with optics, I fucking hate the stupid, ungrammatical, and incorrect use of the word optics by political types.
Yo, commentators, the optics of the situation is the light from the environment hitting your retinas and then disappearing into the black hole of your brains. I’m looking at you, Marc Ambinder.
DougJ
How did we all co-create it? There are plenty of people here who opposed the war strongly when it looked for all the world like good politics, bad policy (I wish I could say I was one of them). And that’s just one example.
I don’t buy what you’re saying one bit. I don’t claim to be perfect, but I do judge policy decisions on the basis of whether or not I think they’ll work.
asiangrrlMN
Wow. Ambinder’s piece is mindless crap. I won’t read Halperin as I care too much about my brain cells to submit them to him.
Unfortunately, politics is much about the spin. Who can spin the story better. In this, the Republicans have the definite edge (though they are in serious danger of becoming the boy who cried wolf).
The Prez has to keep hammering home the point that we already have terrorists kept imprisoned on American soil. We have the Unabomber and several serial killers in maximum lockup.
And, if we find that there is no evidence against some of the detainees? Then we let them go. Why? Because that’s the way our laws work.
Lyle4
About Dems being briefed on what was done, aren’t they beholden to some sort of secrecy laws when it comes to classified information? Just wondering.
Indylib
Completely OT, but with all the Star Trek chatter, here’s an interesting take on how torture is handled in the new movie and in an episode of Next Generation from Slate
Splitting Image
I’m pretty sure that they are using “optics” to refer to the breaking up of the white light of truth into an array of pretty, distracting colours.
JK
Mark Halperin and Marc Ambinder are the Tweedle Dumb Ass and the Tweedle Bigger Dumb Ass of the alleged centrist, neutral, non-partisan faction within the punditocracy.
It’s a goddamn shame that these two breathtaking ignoramuses have attained Mt Everest like levels of respectability within the community of journalists.
BC
I still don’t understand why anyone would think that Pelosi being informed of torture would mean she was equally responsible – she had no power to change it, even after Congress changed hands in 2006. The only way to change it would have been to impeach Bush and Cheney, and there’s no way in hell they could have been convicted in the Senate – it was 51-49, remember, and you need 67 to convict. Republicans are just hoping that we will see the Democrats as being culpable – even if they weren’t the prime movers. Throwing sand in our faces because they can’t bring themselves to look bravely at their own acts. They aren’t very good at facing what they have done to this country in the past 8 years at all, but we can’t let them get away with pushing culpability for these problems onto everyone else.
Dennis-SGMM
@John H. Farr:
I still feel guilty about telling the NYT to sit on the warrantless wiretapping story until after the 2004 election.
AhabTRuler
@Dennis-SGMM: Yeah, well I am still upset that I hired Judith Miller.
asiangrrlMN
@Lyle4: Yes. They are not allowed to talk about whatever they are briefed on except to those with clearance. They can bring their concerns to the president….yeah, how would that have worked out?
JK
@asiangrrlMN:
Here’s a fun exercise for you when you have some free time. Try to find anything written by Marc Ambinder that is not mindless crap. Mindless crap is Ambinder’s middle name.
asiangrrlMN
@JK: True. Which may be why I don’t read him, either. In fact, Coates is the only one I read at the Atlantic.
bago
We’ve been living in terrorism 90210 for the better part of a decade. Remember when letting terrorists know that we waterboarded was a state secret? It led to the racial profiling of all people with gills that went through the TSA. Poor mister Phelps. He was reduced to opposite-dating Miss California.
Dennis-SGMM
@AhabTRuler:
And that was after I told you that she was a sloppy fuck.
Ash
.
CT
Simply put, only a few people can speak knowledgeably about policy, but any dumbass can have an opinion about politics-witness Obama’s 2,000 self-appointed campaign managers on Kos this past fall. And since there is apparently no way one can be fired as a pundit, no matter what the track record of being laughably wrong is, the choice is A) study issues in depth, so that you can offer a carefully drawn description of the pros and cons of different policy choices, recognizing that complex issues don’t have bumper sticker solutions or B) sit on your ass all day, but be willing to go on national TV at a moment’s notice to blather about “who won the week” and get invited to the cool parties.
Anne Laurie
Behavioral scientists phrase it: Reward the behavior you want. Halperin & Ambinder have been (are being) generously and publicly rewarded for spouting garbage in support of the Cheneyverse (fReichtard/Talibangelical/Robber Baron) agenda. Their continued success not only encourages the Low Information Voter to believe a long list of lies and fantasy, it encourages the somewhat better-informed future “journalists”, “pundits”, and “opinion-makers” to disregard reality in favor of whichever lies are being rewarded by this year’s Powers-That-Be. I’m beginning to think that’s the real purpose of tv’s Sunday Morning Gasbag block — not to “inform” (corrupt) the general public, but to keep aspiring Media Village Idiots up to date on the latest we-make-our-own-reality fashions.