My favorite topic for blogging — actually, my favorite topic of any kind — is all the dumb shit the media said about George W. Bush before Katrina. So I was pleased to find a link to this 2002 gem from Howard Fineman in Krugman’s post on the Obama presser:
George W. Bush likes big belt buckles: shiny silver ones. Back in Texas, he sported one from the Texas Rangers–not the baseball team he’d helped run, but the elite police of the Lone Star State. More recently, in a Vanity Fair cover portrait with his terror-fighting posse, there was Bush, suit coat open, showing off his newest silver buckle, one bearing the presidential seal.
[….]Bush II, whose early years were spent in Midland, Texas, at Sam Houston Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High, is wired differently. He likes to call people names. That’s practically the first thing you do: Call someone out. You name something for what it is: evil. His speech of last Sept. 20, contained the toughest talk imaginable–we would do nothing less than banish terrorism from the world–and the American people loved what they heard. They still do.
[…]Woofin’ is often the prelude to deal. There was never a deal to be cut with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. But, despite Powell’s call for a “regime change,” I can see the administration accepting the half-measure of renewed U.N. inspections in the meantime. That, at least, has been the pattern in Bush’s legislative dealings, both in Austin and in Washington.
[….]But there was something about Putin that Bush recognized from the school playgrounds of West Texas: a guy from a proud, gigantic and rather untamed country, a guy with a touch of swagger, a gift for blunt gamesmanship and a belief in the business of doing business. Putin has warned Bush against unilateral military action in Iraq, which owes Russia $10 billion. But that leaves Bush plenty of room to maneuver.
Bush is a cowboy because he went to junior high-school in West Texas. And he’d never do something as stupid as launching an unprovoked war without international support.
Tonight, Fineman accused Obama of playing “three card monte”.
What else is there to say?
Update. More Fineman on Obama, from March:
By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He’d have made a fine judge. But we don’t need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.
Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list. A genial, amenable guy, he likes to appeal to every constituency, or at least not write off any. A beau ideal of Harvard Law, he can’t wait to tackle extra-credit answers on the exam.
norbizness
I think complete sentences confuse and frighten Howard.
John Hamilton Farr
Well, I went to junior high school in West Texas, too: Lincoln & Jefferson Junior High Schools in Abilene. I don’t know that West Texans of the time (or now) were necessarily “proud,” more like insular and defensive, as I recall, ready to chase you out of town in hail of bullets and Bibles. Abilene was run by the Baptist and Church of Christ Taliban. Professionals had to wrap empty liquor bottles in paper bags so the garbage men wouldn’t tell on ’em and make ’em lose clients. No school dances because dancing was a sin, so help me. Magazines with alcoholic beverages on their covers got removed from the racks, beer commercials blacked out of national baseball game broadcasts on teevee.
I don’t know what any of that means, except maybe that it never was a “cool” or in any way magnificent place to live or be from, although rather singular in other ways, like the isolation and the dust storms. So Fineman can go suck on it.
DougJ
Well, I went to junior high school in West Texas, too: Lincoln & Jefferson Junior High Schools in Abilene.
I guess that makes you a cowboy too.
General Winfield Stuck
Howard’s getting senile or just has gotten himself swallowed whole by the Village beast. I will trust that the skinny black dude knows what he’s doing better than the Tweety’s and Fineman’s of the world. You Know, the Obama who got himself elected as the first negro president in a country that not long ago, in certain parts, would have had him sit at the back of the bus, or risk getting lynched.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
Abilene is not really west texas. If we were talking Odessa or Midland or maybe even San Angelo, perhaps we would be talking West Texas. Abilene is more like West Dallas…
ed
Don’t forget this gem, when Fineman compared Commander Bunnypants to Shane:
Awesomely covered here:
http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/04/wine-me-dine-me-howard-fine-me-i-did.html
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ:
Hey now, GWB was a cowboy, he just rode a silver spoon instead of a horsey.
cbear
Yeah, I went to elementary school in Texas also, also—and I knew a few kids like George W. Bush. They could usually be found down by the creek lighting their own farts on fire, shoving firecrackers up frog’s asses, and torturing neighborhood pets.
We used to beat the shit out of them.
I’m relatively sure that some of them went on to be serial killers. I know MonkeyBoy did.
And, No, I’m not joking or trying to be funny.
Keith G
Hey, give Howard a break. He probably lost his ass in the market last year and knows that Newsweek will not be breathing for long, so he has to make up silly shit up so he can be on TV and pay the bills. Saw him on Maddow yesterday. He spent 2 min saying nuttin that made sense.
Anne Laurie
Here in the Boston-metro-media-market, two of the three network late-night news stations led with the “OMG Obama talked about the Cambridge police/Skip Gates kerfuffle! ! !” (The third, which 10 years ago was the least stupid, had “exclusive video” of an elderly drunk driving through the front of a local convenience store.) Closest any of the three got to discussing the actual health care portion of the health-care press conference was local arsehole Jon Keller “judiciously” reviewing internet health-care ads, pro & con (he thinks the president “needs to make his case” because Some People Say “costs are an issue that worries them”. My takeaway? People (actual human voters, as opposed to the Some People who Say stuff to the MVIs) are not co-operating with the Media Village Idiots when it comes to complaining that President Obama hasn’t cured the entire health care crisis after a whole six months in office, so the MVI is going to stop talking to actual voters until we have learnt our lessons & return to parroting the preferred talking points.
Incidentally, the city of Cambridge — despite its “Peoples’ Republic” reputation — is a working-class city, where 85% of the voting population gets ignored / harangued by the Talented Tenth-Plus around Haaavahd Yaaahd. Twenty years ago, it was a mostly-white working-class city, and the gradual encroachment of Not Whites leads to the usual ongoing political warfare. The current mayor is a woman of color, but the city bureaucracy, especially the blue-collar police/fire/maintenance hoplites, not so much.
DougJ
“If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family.”
Just shoot me.
DougJ
Hey now, GWB was a cowboy, he just rode a silver spoon instead of a horsey.
He was born with a silver spoon in his nose.
Jean
Each of Fineman’s analogies sounds good, but individually and collectively nonsense. It’s a metaphorical story about Bush that is pure fantasy. A swaggering Texan Ranger with a big silver buckle and tough talk who’s afraid of horses. That must have made his “terror-fighting posse” nervous.
Comrade Kevin
I will take take a page from ol’ George and call him out: Dumbshit.
DougJ
Here in the Boston-metro-media-market, two of the three network late-night news stations led with the “OMG Obama talked about the Cambridge police/Skip Gates kerfuffle! ! !”
Only cos the Red Sox lost.
JMY
If the American public, after 2 years during the campaigns and in the last 3 months, don’t realize how serious an issue health care reform (whether the agree with it or not) is, then that is sad. It’s all we hear on the news, the blogs, radio, 24/7. The president has had town halls, had a prime time special, and now the press conference. Health care is the main thing that is being talked about, there is no way you can miss it. If people don’t realize that part of reforming health care involves personal responsibility, and not just regulating the health care industry, that is sad. We don’t take care of ourselves as a country. We know that insurance industry needs to change…we know these things. The president has mentioned this countless times. Why don’t the media understand that? Do they not listen
to what the man says? Are we so used to being talked to like idiots the past 8 years that when someone tries to talk to us like adults we get upset about it? I mean who worries about whether a press conference is exciting or boring?
mvr
This guy has a column!?!
Jason Bylinowski
Ah crap. I missed the drinkin’ festivities earlier.
And also missed the conference, as I was forced to work late on a little old lady’s computer, which, you guessed it, just like my dear Gov Sanford’s way of expression, is just a euphemism for the real work I do under cover of darkness.
On topic: Fineman. I can’t have an objective opinion about Fineman. I could if he would stick to print. But everytime I see his little precious self round-tablin’ on the teevee, I just automatically want to choke his smarmy ass. Sorry if that’s blunt, I’m quite sure I could stop myself in real life, though only just. He just reminds me of everything that has always been wrong with big media, that these national-level people, for all their posturing, are just in a different world than I am. Fineman doesn’t even bother to pretend, which I suppose I should admire in a cross-eyed sort of way. But I don’t.
Off topic: Any DFHs in the house tonight? Anybody ever try brewing tea out of Kratom ? I got some spare leaves from a friend of mine at “work” today, and I must say…..I’m all kinds of loopy right now. Yay for legal highs!
As you were.
ed
“If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family.”
Just shoot me.
The day that Howard “Bumface” Fineman compared George Bush, Jr. to Shane, whatever day that was…
WE WILL NEVER FORGET!!!!
Phoebe
Boring typo alert:
“And he’d never do something as launch an unprovoked war with international support.”
I think there might be a couple of words missing between “as” and “launch”. I would like to know what they are. Thank you.
freelancer
Fineman is “…such a dick”
I took some flack for this a couple weeks ago, but seriously,
How long before I’m completely sworn off of every member of Olbermann’s bullpen?
slag
Does anyone else miss the snap opinion polls we had during the campaign? I remember how useful those were in preventing McCain from “winning” every debate, and after hearing a smidge of cheap seat theatre criticism of Obama’s speech today, I was thinking how much I’d like to see what “real Americans” actually think in real time again. Instead of what “real Americans” think according to Top 2% America, that is. Is any media outlet doing snap polling anymore?
arguingwithsignposts
As someone who spent a year in the deep recesses of Canyon, Texas (where the sky is wiiiide) you folks can’t type West Texas without a thesaurus. Howard Fineman can kiss all our asses, because he doesn’t have a fuckin’ clue. the fact that he gets on NATIONAL television and pretends to do so is a SAD, SAD thing. he should be fired from his know-nothing job in his know-nothing city before he gets his ass hurt.
MBSS
isn’t fineman really just a cocktail party journalist?
DougJ
I think there might be a couple of words missing between “as” and “launch”. I would like to know what they are. Thank you.
I fixed it.
devopsych
I doubt Howie ever played the game. Dodge ball doesn’t count. Even if you didn’t cry much, Howie.
mcd410x
Sweet Cheezus, I’m glad you read/watch these assholes so I don’t have to.
Life is too short. Seriously, dude.
Comrade Kevin
Twitter Update from “Roland Hedley”:
hamletta
@DougJ: Ah, but does he have an outfit?
Mike G
“If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family.”
Can be used to induce vomiting. Consult your pharmacist.
It used to be you’d have to skim over to the (North) Korean Central News website to find such cringing sycophancy by a ‘journalist’ toward a national politican. What next Howie, a scintillating report on his visit to State Tractor Factory #5 where he exhorts the workers to toil selflessly for the glorious future of the Motherland?
Steeplejack
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine:
Amen. Abilene is right in the middle of the state! Odessa, Midland, San Angelo, yeah, that’s more “west Texas.”
This from someone who lived in Del fucking Rio for three years.
ed
Der Kruggmeister:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/professor-in-chief/#comment-203295
ronin122
@DougJ: I thought it was a silver spoon in his mouth and a rolled up dollar bill in his nose?
Linkmeister
@Comrade Kevin: Hey!
As subdued as our 50th anniversary celebration may be, we are nonetheless a state. We have a small number of indigenous Hawaiians who would like it to be otherwise, but that dream is destined to die unfulfilled.
Craig
All I know is that when I finally meet Bernard Goldberg I’m going to punch him in his fat, droopy face, and then I’m going to laugh, and then I’ll probably run away because I’m a pussy.
A Cat
@Comrade Kevin: I hope that is high satire…
Hah! It is! Doonesbury is still not funny though.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t. (per Ann Richards)
Anne Laurie
Opinions differ. Ever since Roland first appeared in the late 1970s (“Roland, your informant’s ‘giant marijuana plant’ is a lilac bush.”) I’ve thought there should be a Roland Headley Award presented annually to the most obtuse, self-promoting, conventional-wisdom-hugging Media Village Idiot. If only the top contenders weren’t likely to treat it as a prize to be fought for…
ed
there should be a Roland Headley Award presented annually to the most obtuse, self-promoting, conventional-wisdom-hugging Media Village Idiot. If only the top contenders weren’t likely to treat it as a prize to be fought for…
The Horse was pretty good for that. “Wanker of the Day” is decent too.
Napoleon
To bad each of the Villagers, not to mention voters, were not required to read this before the 2000 election. After reading it it was not impossible to understand how totally unsuited Bush was for the presidency.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2000/10/bush200010
Fineman is a f—-ing moron, but you all already knew that.
aimai
Anne Laurie,
I don’t know if even twenty years ago Cambridge was largely a working class white city. I was born here forty eight years ago–there was always a historically african american part of the city (right down the hill from our house). Twenty years ago prices had begun to rise so high that working class people who could afford to get out of the projects got up and out and bought houses elsewhere. Thats because new white upper class money started pouring in. Forty years ago there were lots of professors living inside the city limits in actual houses. By twenty years ago Harvard was scrambling to find some way to subsidize housing for their own professors to keep people willing to come here and teach. As I posted over at baloon juice one of the things that has happened is the middle class/managerial class in the city have been priced out so lots of the firemen and policemen moved out but experience themselves as exiles in their own city.
aimai
Nethead Jay
Hmm, seems like ol’ Howard is just another two-faced Villager. I only know him from Countdown and IMO he’s not too bad (though still the weakest) on there, guess he just knows not to spew such outright shit to Olbermann’s face.
I really hope someday the definitive takedown of the Media/Village behaviour during the Bush years gets written. And smashed into their faces.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
Oh, fuck’s sake. Today leads off with Barry’s presser. Guess which angle they led with…
Yes, Skip Gates.
A Mom Anon
CNN actually covered the teeny mix up where one reporter jumped in line before the other one. This is a fucking story? The reporter who asked about Prof Gates needs to be flogged. God Damn It, I KNEW that would de-rail the whole health care discussion. I’m so sick of these morons.
I never got to go to college,don’t have a degree in anything,and I bet I could do the job covering the White House just damned fine. I’d be an annoying pest,but people would learn something when I was finished.
WereBear
I have no objection to a real cowboy becoming President: someone with “horse sense,” who is internally strong minded, and is kind to wimmins and puppies.
But we didn’t get that. We so didn’t get that.
debit
@Napoleon: Even though reading it made me throw up in my mouth a little, thanks for the link.
El Cid
You people are a bunch of insensitive jerks.
Howard Fineman just does his job and accepts that all the conventional media wisdom will serve him well. So, he mindlessly repeats it all, even makes himself believe, and then, what, a few years later, and most people think Bush Jr. is something bad you stepped in?
How is that Howard Fineman’s fault? How was he to know that the inane and backwards shit which was made up to believe about the fucktard Bush Jr. and his insane VP Cheney would someday be venomously rejected by great majorities of the nation?
What? Is he supposed to be like, not only a media talking head and writer and whatnot, but also some sort of magic super-genius who like thinks things in his head and somehow magickistically ‘decides’ whether or not they make sense?
Pfffft.
Napoleon
@debit:
Debit, something occurred to me after I posted that link and was driving to work. Whereas Sonya S. is virtually a poster child for how affirmative action can help some truly worthy people have a chance to cultivate their real talent and ability, that story about Dubbya is the exact opposite and makes him a poster child for how the extreme wealth differential in this country and the difficulty in moving between economic groups, which is to an extent unknown in other industrial democracies, hoist upon this country a crass know nothing incompetent ruling class. If we had anything approaching a meritocracy in this country, heck even one like in Sweden or France, none of us ever would have heard of Dubbya.
Ash Can
Howard Fineman and his cohorts need to get it beaten into their thick heads that if they’re not able to keep up with Barack Obama intellectually, the fault’s not Obama’s.
El Cid
@Ash Can:
But it totally is Obama’s fault. People like Fineman and his peers weren’t hired to be all intellectual and shit. They were hired to do a fancy type of gossip. It’s NOT FAIR to now ask them to think and stuff after they’ve done been on the job all these many years without having to do it.
It’d be like asking a liberry to figure out how to list all its books on computers & stuff instead of just on the card catalog like God intended. It ain’t right.
gonzone
Who knew Andover Academy was in Texas.
All this time I thought it was in Massachusetts!
Imagine a Bush attending a public school.
Bob In Pacifica
I thought Bush the Cowboy rode Jeff Gannon. Or vice versa.
Jonny Scrum-half
The 2002 time frame was when I really started wondering what was going on in the country. I was still a Republican at the time — I hadn’t yet heard that I was a traitor for opposing the Iraq War — but I just didn’t understand the chorus of voices who were telling me what a great “leader” and how “authentic” GWB was.
Bertie Wooster
Jesus. . . “Shane”, “Texas Ranger of the World”. . .
All it takes is a president who speaks in complete sentences and has an interest in governance to turn Uriah Heep into Waldo Lydecker.
Shoot me.
Professor Fate
Thanks for the post – I had forgotten just how inspid and innae and outright stuipid press covearge of W was.
The one that sticks in my head was a glowing triubute to Bush in the NY Times week in review shortly after 9/11 – it featured a drawing of W in a pose taken from a famous picture of Winston Churchill down to the watch chain in the vest – The words have thankly faded from my memory but that drawing still burns. And despite Katrina, the economy, Iraq and other massive bungles, the fawing by sections of the press never stopped.
Ash Can
@El Cid: LOL! Perfect!
margarita
Isn’t Obama’s weakness that he’s trying to “call signals for a game plan” at the same time that he’s “checking off boxes on a long to-do list,” all while apparently working on his tax return and trying to “not write off” anyone? Obama’s living a mixed metaphor, and Howard Fineman’s the only one who can see the pitfalls in the soft underbelly of the emperor’s new duds.
Nick
Fineman’s greatest ever, 2002: Bush is “Our boyish knight, with his helmet of graying hair.”
slippytoad
It’s a wonder guys like Fineman can talk at all with all that gristle in his mouth.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
‘Tis understandable. Even at the time it was happening, the idea that “We are an empire now, we create our own reality” would translate into Maoism for Baptists (with NASCAR instead of tractors) was so preposterous as to be un-f*cking-believable. Even today I can’t shake off the feeling that it was some sort of nightmare that we’ve collectively woken up from rather than something which actually happened.
Molly
@Steeplejack: “Amen. Abilene is right in the middle of the state! Odessa, Midland, San Angelo, yeah, that’s more “west Texas.”
My husband is from Midland. Fineman has no idea what he’s talking about.
There is nothing “untamed” about Midland. It’s where oil execs live. Back in the oil boom days, Midland had more millionaires per capita than anywhere in the U.S. Midland is not a cowboy town. Bush played at being a cowboy, it’s the identity he chose. There’s lots of poseurs in Midland, wearing their belt buckles and driving their shiny new trucks. Yes, there are hard-working people in Midland. Bush was never one of them.
Odessa is where the roughnecks live. I guarantee Bush did not mix with them, ever. I guarantee the man has never worked on a rig in the middle of the desert, or been on an offshore drilling platform. If he’s worked a ranch, it’s a vanity project. Cutting mesquite is something he did for fun, not out of necessity. You cut back mesquite because it’s a danger to livestock on a working ranch, not because you think it makes you a man to “work the land.” Bush has never non-voluntarily been without AC, never had to live hand-to-mouth, never worked a day in his life except for work he CHOSE to do. He is no hero. He is an ignorant, spoiled rich boy.
God, I miss Molly Ivins in times like these.
Molly
@Molly:
And one more thing, while I’m on a role here…
Texas politics is about as ridiculous as it gets. We know when a moron is making his way through the national political ranks; we’ve already seen the stupidity locally. There’s a reason we called Bush “Shrub,” Rick Perry “Governor Goodhair Perry,” and Tom Delay “The Bug Man from Sugar Land.”
To paraphase Ms. Ivins, again, “The next time Texans stand up and say “For God’s sake, do not vote for that man,” listen to us.” The BS that Bush told about his record as governor, the crap he managed to sell this entire country, the lies he told…he conned his way into office on a false record, and no one called him on it.
/end rant. Texas produced Barbara Jordan, Sam Rayburn, Lloyd Benson, Ann Richards. Those people worked hard to become the politicians and human beings they were. THOSE are the people Fineman should admire as real Texans, not Shrub Bush.
cmohrnc
Where do I go to get one of these two or three million-dollar a year pundit jobs, where I get to spout off political/character analysis pulled out of my ass and get paid handsomely for what I now give away for free?
I sort of know the obvious answer: schmoozing, backscratching, and getting to know and impress those in control of media news outlets that I can, with seeming articulateness, write/say with decent composure stuff compatible with their world-view. The really hard and essential part is how to find and get inside the critical doors to get to schmooze, backscratch, and gain attention of the necessary gatekeepers in the first place. Which leads to the essential problem of why we have so many worthless, but well-paid pundits making a handsome living in the first place – it has enormously to do with the characteristics of the sorts of folks who decide who is invited into the critical doors of entry in the first place, as much as it is the pundits themselves who make it inside the doors of big media to spout their inane blather at us. When inane folks with bloated egoes are a disproportionate portion of the gatekeepers, it shouldn’t suprise us that the folks they choose to invite in to positions of punditry are also inane (but superficially articulate) folks with bloated egoes.
Sister Machine Gun of Mild Harmony
It is interesting just how much attention Fineman seems to have paid to Bush’s … uh… belt buckle. The article implies that Fineman really likes big .. uh … belt buckles and that he REALLY appreciated it when Bush posed in a way that showed off his .. belt buckle. I bet Fineman stared at it for a loong time.
Tyro
Bush is a cowboy because he went to junior high-school in West Texas.
I went to junior high school in northern New Jersey. That doesn’t make me a Tony Soprano-like mafioso. In fact, if I started talking like one, everyone would laugh at me for being a poseur.
Almost pathetic to see Fineman swallowing Bush’s crap whole. How could anyone not see Bush’s shtick and not laugh at him for it?