This tells you everything you need to do know about our elite media. From MSNBC’s First Read (via Politico):
Honest question: Is there a point when the president knows too much about an issue?
That’s what it’s come to: we’d be better off with a president who knew less about the issues.
And this from the same people who were saying “Ho, snap!” and high-fiving every time John McCain shouted “bear DNA!” at a confused American public.
Sometimes I think we are really fucked.
MikeJ
fixx0red
ruemara
Sometimes I think we are really fucked.
My first clue was being born and looking around. What was your first clue?
DougJ
ur link iz b0rked.
Thanks. I fixed it.
lotus
Headline could use a verb.
TenguPhule
Just think?
slippytoad
When I was in college English class, 20 years ago, we English majors used to giggle behind our hands at the dumb-as-rocks Journalism majors who drifted, airheaded, through our classrooms. We knew they didn’t belong because even the simplest conversations about literature, grammar, or anything else were completely out of their league and they outed themselves almost instantly by asking the most boneheaded questions or making the most mumblefucked statements you could imagine. And they didn’t have the presence of mind to even realize how stumblefucked stupid they looked.
I thought maybe just the Journalism program had particularly low standards of entrance, but now that I’ve watched what professional journalists do for a living I’ve decided that they are just too fucking STUPID as a rule to be trusted with anything of importance. I wouldn’t hire one of these gimbal-headed chowderbrains to operate a paper clip.
Jesus.
MikeJ
Barack Obama has an answer to Harry Reid, speaking today from Ohio. “I want it done by the fall.
Video at GOS:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/23/756920/-Obama-in-Ohio,-the-Fierce-Urgency-of-Now
JenJen
You know, I’ve been trying to keep my head up all day, what with all the discouraging news, especially that of that fucker Harry Reid’s apparent surrender.
But I’d have to say your quote there did me in, Doug. Just when I start thinking, “OK, maybe we’re not totally fucked” I end up reading something like that. :-(
DougJ
Headline could use a verb.
Thanks. I fixed it.
Sarcastro
…noting the President’s use of the word “incentivize” multiple times during the exchange with reporters.
Imagine my surprise to learn that the word “incentive” and the suffix “-ize” are completely fucking foreign to native god damned English speakers!
Yea, all us rubes know how to do is simply verb a noun.
“He incentived it real good didn’t he? Guh-huck guh-huck!”
Bush really did speak their language.
Martin
This is great news for Sarah Palin!
PeakVT
Sometimes I think we are really fucked.
Odds are pretty good that we are.
But you have to keep trying, because… just because.
MikeJ
Incentivize as a word bothers me far less than a word we often heard, but rarely saw in action, in the dot com days: monetize.
JGabriel
To be fair, it depends on the issue.
Health care? No.
Porn? Maybe.
.
Comrade Jake
Piles of stupid. Honestly, it’s so dumb it hurts.
jenniebee
Honest question: can a President know too much about the policy he’s proposing?
Honest question: can a CEO know too much about his company?
Honest question: can an aerospace engineer know too much about physics?
Honest question: can a surgeon know too much about anatomy?
Honest question: can a lawyer know too much about applicable case law?
Honest question: can an architect know too much about load-bearing structures?
…
…
…
Honest question: can an electrician know too much about electricity?
Honest question: can a foundation repairman know too much about carbon fiber stucco lathe? (now barge the lathe!)
Nope, not working for me so far…
Robertdsc-iphone
Depressing.
JGabriel
slippytoad:
You’re talking about people who majored in journalism because they wanted to read the news or sports on their local TV station – like Sarah Palin!
There are others, in the minority granted (about 1 in 6 I’d guess, or maybe 1 in 10), who really do care about journalism and writing, though, and aren’t complete airheads.
.
Joshua Norton
Humph! The usual cast of talking heads are not “reporters”. Ironically, the “reporters” have become nothing more than talking heads themselves.
MHorton
Honest question: Is there a point when the president knows too much about an issue?
We are that much closer to electing President Comacho.
John Hamilton Farr
And then what?
El Cid
Maybe we should see what it’s like to have a President who’s not too bright and who thinks with his gut and who could do symbolic things like wear a cool flightsuit to make journalists swoon and help land a jet on a specially positioned aircraft carrier and who could give everybody nicknames and make jokes about a blind guy wearing glasses…
jwb
Listen, the mediaheads just don’t like having a President who is clearly smarter than they are. They’ve also been taught that they have to tell a story so that a sixth grader can understand it. Is it any surprise that a President who treats his audience as adults has trouble with that crowd?
gypsy howell
Honest Answer: No, dumbass.
Honest Question: Is there anyone too stupid or craven to be a journalist?
ronin122
Why not just let Murdoch and Fox own all the media now? I can barely tell the difference at this point.
randiego
I think we’re so fucked, even on my best days I don’t see how reasoned policy ever gets done in this country.
JGabriel
gypsy howell:
I heard there was someone, once, who failed at it and became governor of Alaska instead.
.
jibeaux
Unless the “issue” is, say, episodes of Charlie’s Angels or Gilligan’s Island, I’m going to go with “No, dumbass.”
gypsy howell
@JGabriel:
:-D. And then she almost became Vice President!
flounder
Is it too late to get my ‘Country First’ tire gauge?
norbizness
I would have paid good money ($3.50) to see a 90-minute press conference devoted to the pressing issue of hot bottled water delivered to dehydrated infants.
Seebach
Sometimes I think we are really fucked.
We are fucked. I’m 26 and I honestly don’t expect to live to see 40. You get used it.
CapMidnight
What doesn’t the President know?
And when didn’t he know it?
Comrade Jake
BTW, check out Drudge. The Gates thing is blowing up like fireworks. So fucking predictable.
whatsleft
If he would just stop using all those Harvard-y big words, then I wouldn’t have to even pretend to “analyze” and could go back to being a stenographer – but who can transcribe so many words? waaaaaaah!
The Grand Panjandrum
Honest question: Can the press report too much on itself?
handy
Maybe? At best, maybe! Like only if we were talking goat porn or something, though.
Derelict
So sad that the press is bored out of its mind by actual policy. But I guess when your own level of understanding of the world hovers somewhere around 5th grade, it’s really difficult and frightening to have to think of things in terms other than black and white.
Davis X. Machina
‘In a democracy, each man iz as good as another, and often a good deal better’, is how Mr. Dooley used to put it.
gnomedad
Honest answer: sure, if his role is as a sock puppet for someone in an undisclosed location.
GambitRF
@Comrade Jake:
It’s been right at the top of Google News and CNN.com all day as well. Apparently the rest of the news conference concerning the massive health-care reform bill is completely insignificant compared to the black guy who’s President having an opinion on the story involving that other black guy.
Davis X. Machina
Hey, when I passed papers on my house, Carbon, Fiber, Stucco and Lathe handled the legal work. Good firm.
It’s self-loathing. I have HS students who ask me — no brag, just fact — “If you’re so good, why don’t you teach college?” (I will spare the
dick-credential-waving. My answer “So you don’t think you deserve anybody good?”ironranger
@JGabriel:
Heh, excellent point.
Any ‘journalist’ even asking if the president can know too much about an issue is embarrassingly revealing about that journalist. When pundits say that something is too complicated or detailed for americans to grasp or get interested in, I always laugh. What an pathetic excuse for lousy reporting. Speak for yourselves, you egotistical over paid idiots. Maybe if the Obama spoke very, very s-l-o-w-l-y……
Cat
If your goal is some progressive super society where nobody wants for food or shelter, Only dies when their body or science can no longer repair them (if they even have to die!), and gets to be happy, Then, yeah, we are never getting there.
If your goal is human beings, whatever shape or form, survive until the earth is a barren wasteland and can’t support life, we are on track for that. People just disagree on when the end is.
jibeaux
@handy:
I don’t see what Mickey Kaus has to do with any of this…
ironranger
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Ha, ha, choke. I’m sure there were will be a very serious news segment on just that question with a panel of very serious tv faces any time now.
Zandar
“Things were much better when we had Dubya around. He was cool. We were doing journalism on cool fun things like war. Health care is boring.”
Joshua Norton
One night the local news talking head came on at 10:30 with the lead-in stories of the night: “Al Gore’s utility bill” and “Pickup lines that work”. News at 11.
I’ve been switching between reruns of “Two and a Half Men” and “Chelsea Lately” at 11 pm since then.
MikeJ
If it were true that something was too complicated for the common man, wouldn’t it be that much more important for our leaders to understand it?
RedKitten
It’s not so much that they’re bored by actual policy, they’re just absurdly ignorant of it. These are people who look for simplistic, bumper-sticker-worthy sound bites that they can put in, and who sit on their arses and wait for various PR flacks to tell them what to write. Now, they’re being expected to actually do a bit of real work, and it’s pissing them off royally, so they’re taking it out on the guy who’s making them work: Obama.
slag
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If pundits are going to insist on divining what “real Americans” think after every speech, they need to bring back the snap opinion polls. This exact problem occurred during the campaign, and those snap polls saved my sanity and kept BS memes like this one from flourishing. It’s bad enough that all these people do anymore is theatre criticism, but it’s even worse that they have the means of getting actual data for the purpose and they don’t even use it.
linda
you think we’re really fucked?
honey, we are truly fucked.
this country’s ‘leaders’ no longer believe in the rule of law; equality of justice; opportunity for its citizens; honesty, morality, ethics. it’s the complete power grab by the moneyed interests and they’ve utterly succeeded.
harry reid’s gutless capitulation was the final nail.
it’s bad enough that there will be no accountability for the torture and the looting of the treasury; the least that the citizens of this country could have hoped for was a fucking social policy that addressed their grave concerns. but those motherfuckers in congress can’t be bothered.
and now i’m watching tweety devote his program to gatesgate; he’s got lynn sweet on and just covered the police presser live. now he’s replaying obama’s comments; tweety’s jacked — this is his type of issue that he loves to propel.
jl
Is the NBC crew mentioned in that piece saying that the ‘average American’ does not know what ‘incentive’ or ‘incentivize’ mean, or that they do not know?
Anyway, Honest Answer: that is one goofball question.
Was ‘misunderestimate’ Washington jargon, or difficult to understand?
What should a normal person do (whether it be a garbageman or president of the US) when confronted with these nincompoops from the press? Put on a tutu and get ready to do dog and pony tricks?
Benji Amarillo
A real citizen of this country with a long form birf certificate and everything wouldn’t know this much.
jl
@linda: I guess we need a new acronym now: WATF.
Goes well with WTF.
J. Michael Neal
The journalism majors I knew here at Minnesota (I know of two exceptions that went elsewhere) *all* entered the program because there was no math requirement.
Nethead Jay
This talking point is straight out of the modern Reich-Wing playbook. As I recall it was used against Carter and both Bill and Hillary Clinton. It’s part and parcel of a strain of anti-intellectualism that infects large parts of the wingnut/GOP base and the mass media establishment. I find it saddening and more than a little bit scary.
flounder
@Joshua Norton
Ha ha.
A few weeks ago, the Phoenix newscast my wife subjects me to ran a story on Wed. about how terrible business was for the local hotels and they advertised how you could get fancy 4 star rooms for 100 bucks a night, and went on to talk about how these hotels were begging for convention business and for people to take “staycations”.
Thurs. night they ran a story about how the Social Security Dept. was going to waste a whole bunch of money by having some meeting at one of the local Hotels that had been mentioned the night before. The talking head went on to proclaim that this really sucked because it was “nearly impossible” to get Social Security. I looked at my wife and said that for something that is impossible to get, there are sure a lot of old people collecting Social Security.
Tom65
Behold Palin’s tweets and remove any doubt.
ironranger
@MikeJ:
That would be too logical & reasonable.
KG
wow. i mean, seriously: wow.
i normally love the commenters here. this is probably the only blog where i regularly read the comments. but today, y’all have just lost your damn minds. none of this is the end of the world. it’s simply stupid people saying and doing stupid shit. it’s not going to destroy the world. it’s not like we’ve got barbarians at the gates, we live in a relatively civilized society and we’re arguing over who has to pay for people to go to the doctor. it’s not like we’re making choices about who gets food, water, and electricity today.
jibeaux
@flounder:
It’s hard to get social security disability, but not of course social security retirement. This is possibly what he meant.
I’m not sure what the reform should be, but possibly some different presumptions. I remember my grandfather was rejected after he had a stroke. He was an accountant. He couldn’t remember what year it was from five minutes to the next. The question of his disability really shouldn’t have required a full evidentiary hearing, legal representation, and the better part of two years, IMO.
Seebach
it’s not like we’re making choices about who gets food, water, and electricity today.
Not today, no. But we’re not going to be doing anything about global warming, either, and you were a naive fool if you ever thought we were.
linda
@MikeJ:
lynn sweet was just bitching that most of the responses she got from the public about her question were pissed off that she took him off message about healthcare! she just couldn’t understand what they were so angry about.
they are completely isolated and ignorant of what issues are important to the american people. that they have no sense of urgency whatsoever about this healthcare battle is enraging. watching kelly odonnell/tweety yammer following last nite’s presser and they kept talking about how rationing would have to be imposed with any public policy — clearly they’ve never had any claim denied (esp tweety with his malaria health issues) which is astonishing. and what do you want to bet that the on-air g.e. people have a very sweet healthcare policy vs what the rest of the staff gets.
Brachiator
@RedKitten:
This reminds me of an episode of the ABC Sunday pundit show. Paul Krugman made a point about the Depression and the current economic mess. George Stephanopoulus challenged Krugman with a stupid question and was quickly dismissed. George Will made some fatuous remark about history, and Cokie Roberts practically threw up her hands and flatly declared that the Congress doesn’t care about the details of economic policy anyway.
This was the last time I watched the program.
I’m sure that as soon as the media wear themselves out with stories about how Obama is a Stealth Black Panther conspiring with Gates to off the pigs, they will return to their regular program, whining about how Obama is being too professorial and lecturing to the American people instead of simply reassuring them that everything will be better tomorrow. At exactly 2:15 pm. Also, too.
Colette
@slippytoad:
Almost entirely OT, but I think Mumblefuck and Stumblefuck will be my new pet names for Cheney and Dubya.
Calouste
@J. Michael Neal:
That explains a whole fucking lot about journalists.
Da Bomb
What kind of dumbass criticism is that?
The President knows to much about an issue?! WAH!
Crackheads run amok!
gnomedad
@Seebach:
Jeez, kids. Read Nixonland and tell me again how we won’t survive this. True, we may not. But there are always surprises, good and bad.
thomas
[email protected] 37
only if it’s that really funky goat porn, not like the good stuff you and I have on our PC’s
Seebach
Jeez, kids. Read Nixonland and tell me again how we won’t survive this.
I have read Nixonland. Good book. But it didn’t involve coastal flooding, running out of oil, and massive drought in farming regions around the world.
linda
oh man, tweety devoting another segment to the birthers — this time with g. gordon liddy — who really appears quite feeble. and he’s getting his ass kicked by tweets! liddy really believes obama’s an illegal alien. and liddy’s proof is an affidavit by the step-grandmother who claimed to be present when barack hussein obama was born in kenya. lol.
demkat620
Why is G. Gordon Liddy on my tv?
His mother is an american. He’s an american.
There you go folks. The birther movement. It’s the new Vince Foster murder.
ironranger
Gordon Liddy is on Hardball talking about the birth certificate. When did Liddy become a feeble, quavery voiced old terrorist or is he faking it?
Brachiator
@KG:
The problem is that the stupid people saying stupid shit are the people whose job it is to be at list somewhat intelligent, curious and engaged.
Instead we have newspapers and magazines going under, and the few which remain eagerly transforming themselves into ideological rags or glossy infotainment ragazines with lots of pretty pictures and meaningless graphics. And the audience for this are boneheads who will get nervous and start to cry if they have to read or even listen to a sentence that is too long or have words that they don’t understand.
And waiting in the wings is Sarah Palin, who absolutely promises you that you don’t have to know a damn thing to be a happy, fulfilled “real” American.
No, not exactly the end of the world, but you gotta wonder how effective a democracy can be when its press and segments of its citizenry are battling to see who can be more stoopid.
demkat620
How come no other president had to go through this?
I will never as long as I live vote for another republican. I don’t care if the democrat is a fucking throat warbler mangrove.
Fuck the GOP.
Liddy makes no sense. The American government of Hawa’ii is lying but some crazy woman in Kenya is telling the truth.
linda
@demkat620:
yeah, cause it’s not like some elderly woman stuck in some remote kenyan village wouldn’t inflate her association with the most powerful man on the planet…and i’d love to see what the exchange was like between her and liddy’s interviewers. lol
good god, liddy has turned into a drooling old biddy. how hilarious to see such an asshole in such an embarrassing public performance.
bvac
Did we ever find out if that was a criminal issue or a paternity issue?
KG
@75: there have always been stupid, lazy people. Our democratic system will survive, just as it always has. I think the overattention to politics results in a lot of us missing the forest for the trees. Trust me, when normal people (ie not us who follow every development, hour by hour) start paying attention again, they will see Sarah Palin as the vapid fool that she is. She will not win the GOP nomination, she will not be anywhere near the halls of power ever again.
The ship will right itself, just have a bit of patience.
I’ll also add this: what troubles me so much today is that so many of you have bought – hook, line, and sinker – into the conservative blowhard (ie Limbaugh) line that this means Obama and the Dems are finished. It’s been 7 months. Obama has another 41 in his first term. The Dems have another 17 before the mid term elections (and let’s be realistic, the GOP isn’t gaining seats). This whole thing is a long way from over. This is not Waterloo because this is not a war. It’s crafting domestic policies involving a very large segment of the economy that, while everyone agrees it’s broken, no one really knows how to fix.
Sly
Maybe he can fix the dust storms and all this starvin’ bullshit.
freelancer
“I got a solution. You’re a dick! South Carolina, wat up?!”
Tax Analyst
Seebach says:
“Sometimes I think we are really fucked.
We are fucked. I’m 26 and I honestly don’t expect to live to see 40. You get used it.”
Oh no, you’ll likely make 40 unless you off yourself or get run over by that truck coming up behind you now. You just won’t enjoy any of it.
As my late mother used to say, “Cheer up, things could be worse.”, So I cheered up, and sure enough – things got worse.
Origuy
@linda: More likely an elderly non-English speaking woman would confuse a question about Barack Obama II with one about his father, Barack Obama I. Or that the translator would, or the guy doing the interview.
Tax Analyst
Seriously though, I agree with the posters who are lamenting all the “Doom & Gloom” in today’s comments. Look, Bush & Cheney no longer have the keys to the family car. Yes, it is true they ran over an awful lot of people while they did and when they brought it was all bashed in on every side, had no gasoline in it and all the tires, including the spare were flat. It’s going to be difficult to make it work right again. But it can be done. Now if McCain and Scarlett O’Palin had won the election I might be considerably more pessimistic, but they didn’t. Yes, I’m frustrated over a lot of things I had hoped would have been taken care of by now, but realistically I think a lot of us got carried away. I revelled in the Democratic Party Senate majority without too much worry about the effects of Blue Dogism on passing anything too useful, and I should have, but really didn’t expect the full measure of Republican obstinancy that we have been subjected to. I don’t know why, but I thought there might be SOME general issues that they would try to be cooperative on, but it quite clear by now that their sole agenda is to try and make Obama, and by extension, the country, fail.
KKE
@Seebach: When I was 26 I didn’t think I would live to be 60 either. Clinton was pres and Kosovo happened, Rwanda happened and “DNA sample” became a euphemism for sperm. I am now 42. Survived Clinton and Bush. We are not fucked. We are Americans and we will survive even out mistakes.
Rainboskies
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_L6pDyjqqsvY/SmIq2shE3lI/AAAAAAAAc3w/aGOLekLALQg/s1600-h/obama+deficit.jpg
Need I say more? President Diaster and the Democratic Congress(majority since 2007) have got us here. Woooo, Sarah Palin sucks!!
Sam Simple
“You’re all Joe the Plumber!”
–John McCain, 2008
Et Tu Brutus?
Only sometimes? Optimist !
Bender
I hope the media realizes that might be the Most Hypothetical Question Ever.
Somehow, I don’t think the leg-tinglers do.
jcricket
Brawndo, it’s what the health care system needs.
That movie grows on me over time. I saw it on TV one night and it was pretty lame, but the vignettes have a odd resonance if considered on their own (e.g. getting a degree at Costco, Brawndo, the whole bit about educated people waiting to have even one kid v. dumbasses with 30 kids). That Mike Judge, he’s smarter than he looks.
steve s
“This was the last time I watched the program.”
Yup. And I used to watch This Week every week. But after things like George Stephanopoulis’s lapel pin nonsense and George Will’s repeated lies about global warming, I gave up.
Surly Duff
@ jennibee
Honest question: can a CEO know too much about his company? It is better to know as little as possible what is going on with your company, drive it into the ground or bankruptcy, and yet still receive large sums of money. For example, see Nardelli & Home Depot/Chrysler.
Honest question: can a surgeon know too much about anatomy? Better to know a little in order to make a diagnosis from videotape. See Bill Frist & Terry Schiavo
Honest question: can a lawyer know too much about applicable case law? Yes, but isn’t it better to have a legal mind that is incapable of understanding even basic legal principles? See Thomas, Clarence.
I can keep going if necessary.
gonzone
Yup, the Villagers media circle hate politicians who are smarter than them.
And that is indeed a very low bar to set.
And somehow the GOP manages to find suitable clowns.
Bender
Was I supposed to be impressed by “red pill, blue pill?” Did “Your neighbor’s car costs less!” display any great knowledge of how to stop government-run health care from breaking the bank? Ummmm, no. It was all vague, rudimentary, goals-not-means stuff. But the polls say that the public’s not buying it anymore, so the media must come up with an explanation as to why.
Hmmmm…it must be…that Obama…is too smart for everyone else! Or at least smarter than J-school grads…which I totally believe. (What about Joe Biden — is he too smart for anybody?)
I realize that when it comes to Obama, leftists and the media (BIRM) are easily impressed… but the dude is reading Cat in the Hat up there — after already having admitted failure on the stimulus and failure on the bailouts and failure on the economy in general — and their legs are tingling. I think this says way more about them than about him.
Paul Weimer
Because its got Electrolytes!
I long ago read the SF story Idiocracy is based on (“The Marching Morons”, C.L. Kornbluth.) I was surprised to find the movie as merciless as that story was.
(e.g. to fool customers, car speedometers in the story register wildly inflated speeds so that the drivers think they are driving exceptionally fast).