I really can’t believe this shit from the president of CNN on the Lou Dobbs birther stuff:
“I understand that people with a partisan point of view from one extreme or anther might get annoyed that certain subjects are aired.”
[….]“I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs.”
What’s interesting is that Dobbs has crappy ratings too. I’m not a media conspiracy theorist, but CNN has now kept two hard-core wingers — Glenn Beck, who as at CNN for quite a while, and now Dobbs — despite poor ratings. At a certain point, that starts to look less like a legitimate business decision and more like…I’m not sure what.
Zifnab25
I’ll take wingnut welfare for $100 Alex.
E.D. Kain
I’ll just take Jon Stewart’s warning that the man smells funny. I mean, something smells awfully bad with this whole birther nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if the set at the Dobbs show was more malodorous than usual.
General Winfield Stuck
Their was a guy on Hardball a few minutes ago from the American Spectator who said something interesting about the birther stuff, (and I know, American Spectator, Oh noes!)
Anyways, he said it was a symptom of our political discourse that is increasingly becoming more about people trying to meet some personal psychological need. rather than an exchange of ideas. I think that is very true, from the left and right. But more from the currently insane right.
me
While Joe Klein, who works for the same company, takes a dump on Dobbs.
Mike G
At a certain point, that starts to look less like a legitimate business decision and more like…I’m not sure what.
Perhaps they command advertising dollars disproportionate to their ratings, from corporations seeking to subsidize right-wing propaganda on TV.
Or that there is pressure on the networks to air only ‘corporate-friendly’ viewpoints or lose advertising across their range of programming.
That’s the only explanation I can think of for the continued existence of rightard freak shows with tiny audiences, versus BSNBC shitcanning Phil Donahue (their highest-rated show at the time) a few years back.
joe from Lowell
Hold it, the paragraph right before that in the story you link to reads:
Klein sent a private memo to Dobbs staffers yesterday saying the birther story is “dead” and questioning its legitimacy, but Dobbs has continued to discuss it on the air, anyway. Klein said the memo wasn’t a sign of concern, however, calling that conclusion “overblown.”
From said memo, which is linked to in the story: “It seems this story is dead- because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”
This is what Klein is telling the people who actually work on the show. When Dobbs was off a couple days ago, his replacement debunked the story.
Klein is just making some conciliatory noises here. I don’t see the big deal. He’s killing the story.
DougJ
Klein is just making some conciliatory noises here. I don’t see the big deal. He’s killing the story.
I don’t see it that way, but I hope you’re right.
I guess it bothers me that (1) he claims the criticism of Dobbs is all partisan and (2) he uses the word “journalist” to describe Dobbs.
aarrgghh
i think the term you’re fishing for is “wingnut welfare”.
handy
So to call idiots who claim the President of the United States isn’t even a U.S. citizen on their B.S. is…an extreme partisan point of view?
So glad I don’t have cable anymore. Douchebag.
Hammy
They also had Daryn Kagan, Rush Limbaugh’s squeeze.
Kyle
people with a partisan point of view from one extreme or another
The two ‘extremes’ being ‘truth/reality/unassailable evidence’ on one side and ‘paranoid batshit-insane hatred’ on the other.
In true corporate media style, we must treat both sides equally and blandly conclude that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Fade to commercial.
demkat620
@DougJ: I don’t think he’s killing it at all either. I think he’s using it to get people to watch Lou Dobbs tell Jon Klein on air that CNN will never dictate what stories Lou Dobbs covers.
Ratings gold, beh-beh, cha-ching
salacious crumb
The mainstream media is convinced that Obama’s presidency is a fluke…they feel that this election of his was an instant feelings based reaction election caused by the misjudgements and misbehaviours of misguided but well meaning and the more “patriotic” Republicans.The righteous Republicans will eventually come back to power and usher in an era of peace and patriotism, when everything is black and white and where we the American people will be able to distinguish good from evil. So better not antagonize their lackeys. Another thing the MSM is convinced about is that the American people are inherently conservatives. So there is no reason for the MSM to censure blowhards like Dobbs and Beck because they are just expressing the feelings of the American people. They have calculated that the American public would rather have an idiotic racist blowhard bloviating about nonsense on TV as opposed to an intelligent liberal who questions the misdeeds of our Army and Airforce and our corporate benefactors.
Martin
I finally figured out what was bugging me so much about the birfer position – what they’re asking for makes no sense.
We’ve already established that the standard process here is to accuse, get a statement, show that it’s a lie, and then impeach. The birfers accused, Obama released his certificate, and which all of the birfers claim is a fake. The lie is already established (from how they present their point of view), so asking for a different version is pointless. Either it will back up the first one with no added assurance that it’s any less fake than they think the first one is, or it’ll contradict it which they already assume is true. What lawyer would, after finding falsified evidence go back to the party accused of falsifying it and ask for different evidence?
So, the only rational (yeah, I know) course of action here would be to impeach on the basis of the (presumed) fake certificate. That is, unless they really don’t believe that it’s a fake, but just want to keep the circus going (which of course is the goal). Since there are cosigners on bills to address this, why isn’t anyone asking them about impeachment proceedings which would be the more logical avenue?
r€nato
I am 100% certain that if Lou Dobbs started doing some hard-hitting stories about GE or Capital One or other major CNN advertisers, Klein would be telling Dobbs to never cover the story again.
They’ll never stop pandering to right-wing lunatics for ratings.
Silver Owl
Maybe CNN’s new company motto is crap standards.
JimPortlandOR
CNN, i hardly knew ya (before you become FNC-II).
Any society will have its psychotics (equal opportunity and all that), but where sane societies give them secure caregiving, the US just puts them on TeeVee News – with no ankle GPS units.
So, the inmates taking over the asylum was a prediction, not a joke.
Hammy
HuffPo says that Jon Klein is backtracking on his statement.
sparky
any controversy is good controversy. at least that’s the idea governing much of the drivel we see today, whether it be news, newspapers, talk radio, or here on the intarwebs. jabber has always been a staple of human nature and now that the people who run the news divisions have figured out that ginned up controversy will pull more eyeballs than anything else, why would we expect otherwise? fox is, and will remain, the model until someone dreams up a new model or their demo completely dies off and everyone notices. either way, i suggest not holding your breath. incidentally, i don’t understand the point of continuing to hope that somehow things will be different.
Elie
–Again, if they replace Dobbs they might actually have to find someone who can talk about real issues and content instead of inuendo and fear/hate mongering. They WANT no discussion of anything — just to derail competence and confidence in Obama and what he is trying to do
r€nato
It’s a replay of the 90’s (ginned-up faux scandals with a big assist from the ratings-hungry ‘liberal’ media), with a healthy dollop of racism, as Joe Klein so ably stated.
Why shouldn’t they try to run the same playbook? It worked pretty well for them, the last time around. Be grateful that the Dems hold Congress as well, or the GOP would be laying the groundwork for impeachment.
gbear
Oh, how about, lets just say that maybe CNN is handling this situation…stupidly.
handy
Dobbs:
At least G. Gordon Liddy was man enough to come out and call Obama an illegal alien. Dobbs can’t even do that.
Jon H
@Hammy: “They also had Daryn Kagan, Rush Limbaugh’s squeeze.”
That doesn’t necessarily indicate that she was originally a wingnut. Politics and dating are weird, especially when one party is loaded with money.
DougJ
@Hammy
They’re referring to the same interview I’m talking about here.
JK
I’m convinced that Lou Dobbs is pushing this birther nonsense because his ego is still bruised by the fact that Obama personally criticized him during the presidential campaign. I don’t recall the exact quote, but during a speech, Obama said that Lou Dobbs’ overheated rhetoric on illegal immigration was detrimental to having a sensible discussion on the subject.
Dobbs is quickly becoming as repulsive, obnoxious, and stupid as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly.
MacsenMifune
I read somewhere, not sure where, that the main reason they kept Beckers on even thought his rating were head towards McEnroe territory was that his radio show had high ratings and CNN was hoping those views would migrate over to the TV show. Which never happened, I liked to hear what the excuse is for keeping Dobby on the air, some Xenophobic John Candy look alike demographic they’re after? Look at Tucker Carlson, it took them years to except he’s a total load and finally push him out the door. If these jokers where sitcoms on network TV they would have been canceled along time ago.
Elie
— I would add this: I dont even think that this birfer and the other distraction about the Harvard professor is racial for the most part either. Its all in my opinion about providing emotional distraction from the issues and content of our important decisions.
To me it communicates their desperation and lack of real ideas or substantive alternatives to what is about to happen: We are going to have a major government success that is going to give millions of people health care that they never had before — after over 50 years of trying, its going to happen. This is mortifying not only to the Republicans, but to all those who want to undermine that government can effectively meet citizens’ needs AND rescue our economic bacon…
ellaesther
Well, it’s undeniable that these two men get CNN a lot of publicity. I can’t help but think that has something to do with it.
MacsenMifune
Yeah but does publicity equal ratings?
JK
Follow-up on my previous post #26
Here’s Obama attacking Lou Dobbs by name for his rhetoric on illegal immigration. I’m sure Dobbs is pushing the birther bullshit as payback for Obama saying the following about him:
At a fundraiser in Florida Thursday night, Barack Obama accused anti-immigrant crusaders Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh of “ginning things up” to such an extent that there was a rise in hate crimes against Hispanics last year.
“A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year,” Obama said. “If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.”
h/t Obama: Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs Responsible For Rise In Hate Crimes Against Hispanics http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/23/obama-rush-limbaugh-lou-d_n_103315.html
BOB in Exile
More like a patriotic act?
Tokyokie
Hammy
They also had Daryn Kagan, Rush Limbaugh’s squeeze.</i?
I don’t thnk squeeze as much as crush.
Comrade Jake
One of the best moments from election night was watching Dobbs talk to the CNN political team as the results came in. The dude could not, absolutely could not, contain his disappointment. It really was full of win.
WereBear
I see it as part of a larger goal, which is that TV genuinely wants a stupider audience.
It’s not just eyeballs, it’s gullible eyeballs. When you whirl reality around people’s heads until they get dizzy, they are probably more likely to believe that boner pills work, that all they have to do is take the magic formula and watch the pounds drop away, and they’ll get a great deal at XYZ dealership.
With more people preferring the Internet and less commercial loaded options like downloaded movies for their entertainment, what do you have left? They are chasing the numbnut audience, to a certain extent, because that’s what is self-selecting as television watchers these days.
Mike
My Email to CNN:
Hey Jonathan, either send Lou packing to Fox where he belongs, or give
Noam Chomsky a primetime show for “balance”.
Midnight Marauder
@joe from Lowell:
Klein is just making some conciliatory noises here. I don’t see the big deal. He’s killing the story.
There is a substantial difference in the rhetoric between Klein’s memo to Dobbs’ staff and what he’s telling Sargent in that interview. If the story is “dead” then why allow Dobbs to continue to discuss it? What’s the point of informing the staff that “anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef” if the president of the network feels that the story isn’t settled? But wait…
“I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs.”
That’s right, Mr. Klein. No “good journalist” would say that…unless the story being discussed was so DEMONSTRABLY FALSE that no new facts or pegs could be introduced to change that. I don’t see too many Flat Earth types appearing on CNN these days. In reality, the only new pegs that each day brings on this issue is another stunning example in the art of mind-blowing illogical bullshitting (table for 1, Mr. Beck…)
Klein said that Dobbs has repeatedly stated that he believes that Obama was born in Hawaii, and has simply been examining the “phenomenon that for some people this won’t go away.”
Gee, I wonder why the “phenomenon” (gag me) won’t go away, Mr. Klein? Every question that Dobbs has asked (“And all we need here is a doggone document, but for some reason the president doesn’t want to release that.”) has been answered in depth (Hawaii went paperless in 2001, thus all birth records dating back to 1908 are now electronic–And I’m not even a fancy big city journalist, Lou!) Maybe it’s because of the ridiculous doublespeak coming from you that sanctions such an “examination”:
“The story is dead guys. Everyone knows Obama is an American. It’s been proven more times than necessary. But…if you still want to spout off nonsensical ramblings that are so easily refuted that a fucking rocking chair could knock them down…well then, be my guest, Lou.”
If the story was dead, there wouldn’t be a need for him to say that what Dobbs does is “his editorial decision to make.”
You’re the president of the fucking network. Act like it.
tofubo
starts to look less like a legitimate business decision and more like…I’m not sure what.
i think the concept you are trying to come up with is bought-and-sold-motherfuckerism
Lee
I like it :)
gex
@Mike: OMG, could you imagine the reaction? Countering all the wingnut welfare cases and the pseudo-liberals (played by centrists or right-center folks) with an actual real deal liberal? The squealing would never end.
Calouste
I wonder what triggered Google to present us with Gingrich ads with this post: birther, CNN, Lou Dobbs or Glenn Beck.
Bob In Pacifica
I’ll take fascist propaganda machine for $200.
Scott
I think Dobbs may qualify as the most stubborn and egotistical pundit on TV. Why is he still on about the birthers? Because he got pushback about it. And if he backs down now, he’ll look weak, and how dare they speak against him anyway?
Every time Dobbs gets significant pushback about something he’s fucked up, he doubles down on it.
General Winfield Stuck
OT
Again informing Firefox users of a text formatting toolbar that will make your life easier and mine in reading blockquotes.
Anne Laurie
True, that. A small consolation, but heck, it’s summer and a Friday night.
beabea
Birther water-carrying by the daily newspaper in Louisiana’s capital city today.
I don’t now if Lou Dobbs has a lot of viewers here, since he’s on that liberal CNN. We watch us Fox News here in Baton Rouge, like the real Merkans do. But even if we don’t catch Lou’s show, we can count on our daily paper to validate the birther conspiracy:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/51535837.html
Oh yeah and we don’t need that gummint health care. But we will screech and holler when the Federal Medicaid funding formula says the 70% reimbursement we’re used to getting from the Feds, is going to be trimmed down.
Help me! The stoopid is so overwhelming today, I can’t take it anymore.
Tonal Crow
CNN? You mean the Conservative Nonsense Network?
Maude
@General Winfield Stuck:
Thanks, I just downloaded it.
Zifnab
@r€nato:
Ugh. Health Care, environment, the F-22, DADT, the hate crimes bill, it’d all be off the table so Republicans could screech about how we have to protect ourselves from flag burning and reverse-racists. What a nightmare that would be.
Maude
OT-
AP has headline that Gitmo detainees may be brought to US jails.
And why has Cheney been so quiet since the IG report?
Tonal Crow
@r€nato:
I bet some congressional GOPer proposes a bill of impeachment before the year is out, and, further, I give P=0.5 that it’s Bachmann.
b-psycho
@handy: That’s like the icing on the wingnut cake right there. Not just the idea that his birth certificate is fake & there’s been a grand conspiracy all this time to put a non-native in the White House, but insinuating that that means he’s an illegal immigrant — conveniently ignoring that he’s been married to a natural born citizen for 17 years.
Boy, do they know how to pile on or what?
Brick Oven Bill
You’d think, with all of this noise interrupting the political agenda, and giving rise per Janet to dangerous fringe groups, it would probably just be better to spend ten minutes and present the damn certificate to the Plaintiff’s attorneys.
Oh wait, never mind.
ItAintEazy
@Kyle:
For that to be true, they have to showcase the the viewpoints of the extreme clownshit-crazy left, and other than actual communists and troskyites, I can’t think of any group that would remotely come close to who they are inviting from the right. ZMag is looking more and more moderate every week.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Let’s see … first sentence is a fReichtard talking point.
Nah, must be a coincidence.
And if Dobbs is a journalist, I’m the Queen of England.
Brick Oven Bill
b-psycho makes a valid point. If the actual situation is as it appears to be, Barack could apply for Citizenship as Michelle’s spouse. He would also have two anchor babies in this case.
Anne Laurie
Pretty good for Joe Klein (although Somerby, bless his heart, is going to call him a Lordly Liberal). Whatever you think of JK’s commitment to truth and/or journalism, he’s got a pretty good track record for jumping in front of the Conventional Wisdom parade, doesn’t he?
Y’know, one ingredient in the toxic birfer stew that’s been overlooked (as far as I know) is the sexism behind the basic argument. Barack Obama’s father was black, and foreign. His mother was white, and born in the heart of Heartland America(tm). But in a Talibangelical-Godly society, where women are mere incubators, maternal lineage can’t confer legitimacy. Thus the obsession by the birfer rules-lawyers with bvllshit about whether Ann Dunham qualified as a natural born citizen under some twisted misreading of the rules. Sane people know that Dunham was born in America, that she never renounced her American citizenship, and therefore her offspring — no matter their paternity, no matter where they were born — are also American citizens. But having an American mother is just not good enough for the inchoate supporters of the Natural Aristocracy. There’s plenty of racism and even some ageism behind what passes the birfers for reasoning, but there wouldn’t be this obsession with BHO’s citizenship if his parents had been a white college boy from Kansas and a black woman from Kenya. Yes, they’d still be swearing eternal emnity against the “usurper”, but they wouldn’t be hung up on what they so deeply wish to be the “mystery” of his birth.
Zifnab
@Brick Oven Bill:
Fix’d.
Having trouble finding the Real Kenyan Birth Certificate, BoB? Here’s the link.
http://www.google.com/search?q=google&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
It’s power is great. Use it wisely.
Napoleon
@Anne Laurie:
Sexism has nothing to do with it. This country has a long history of the “one drop” rule. Any black blood and you are black. The perfect example it Thomas Jefferson’s wife and black “lover” (Sally Hemmings). They had the same white father, yet one of them had some black blood and was a slave, the other was not.
bago
@Brick Oven Bill: Or, possibly the plaintiff could use this thing called the internet, download a copy that was released years ago, and not waste people’s time with a frivolous lawsuit.
Midnight Marauder
@Brick Oven Bill:
Oh wait, never mind.
Hmm, looks like others beat me to the facts. So instead, I guess I’ll just have to settle for this:
The fuck. Shut it up.
Calouste
@Tonal Crow:
Presidenting While Black is an impeachable offense to people like Bachmann.
kth
Dobbs was pulling huge numbers during the immigration debate, just a couple of years ago. But it looks like he was a one-trick pony.
beabea
@General Winfield Stuck
Thanks from me too. My HTML skills are rudimentary to the point where it’s probably disrespectful of me to refer to them as “skills”.
Just making sure
it really worksI am using it correctly. Thanks again.JK
@Anne Laurie: Good points. Joe Klein’s comments are right on the money. Bob Somerby can go fuck himself. He’s an arrogant, obnoxious scumbag.
PK
Anne Laurie
You are right about the sexism part. It is really about almost every republican crazy fear, racism, sexism, loss of power, etc. The only thing that is missing is the gay angle. Somehow there needs to be a gay conspiracy in this whole birth certificate thing to make it perfect.
les
@Midnight Marauder:
Would that I could be so succinct.
Anne Laurie
No, sexism reinforces the racism. As per your example, Jefferson felt it was perfectly okay (laudable, even) to “purify” his wife’s half-sister’s progeny by generously donating his own certified sterling frogbelly-white genes, with or without her consent to the donation process. He also felt it was okay to treat his own children with Hemmings as livestock, to be trained, used, and sold the same way he treated his horses. But then, he also treated his legitimate daughters pretty badly, and — even by the not-exactly-PETA-quality standards of his peers — his four-legged livestock even worse. “Everybody” knew that Jefferson was screwing his wife’s personal slave (and those closest to him knew that his wife and her slave were half-sisters), but despite on-going media attacks by his political opponents, Tom’s “openly flaunting his dusky concubine” during his ambassadorship to France had exactly zero negative effect on his career, social or political.
Now try to imagine a scenario where Tom’s legitimate daughter chose a “very comely, almost white-looking” male slave, or even a free man of color, as a sexual partner. Yeah, exactly. As a member of the Natural Aristocracy, a prosperous white straight man, Jefferson got to choose which of his genetic offspring would grow up as members of his own “elite class”, and which would grow up as slaves. Such choices were not available to any women of his era, not even the relatively privileged women of Jefferson’s own caste. The modern Birfers are obsessed specifically with Barack Obama’s “foreignness”, as opposed to just his skin color, because they still believe that a mere woman cannot confer legitimacy (i.e., membership in the Natural Aristocracy of prosperous straight white men to whom the American presidency has “historically” been restricted).
JoeC
This has probably already been covered, but I think at some level it’s a business decision. When you’re a entertainment exec and you realize that the good old days of 3 networks and nothing else are never coming back, why not lock in your slice by pandering to the authoritarian minded, as small as it may be? At least then you don’t have grope around trying to figure out what’s “hot”. Works for Fox News.
Nemoudeis
… more like a … Mighty Wurlitzer, perhaps?
Heh. There was a time, back when I was posting on my own blog, when I would have hesitated before making an accusation like that, on the grounds of sounding too much like a sweaty, basement-dwelling paranoiac. Looking back on what I was writing back then, I can see that I clearly wasn’t mentioning nearly enough of what I was picking up on.
So Mighty Wurlitzer it is, then.
Numberwang
I think it’s not about the size of their ratings, but the attractiveness of the demographics of some of the audience people like Beck and Dobbs have. Sure, if you’re not on their bizarro planet, they sound insane, but you can get a tidy pile of money together without knowing much about current events, and when you tune into manipulative, angry demagogues like Beck or Dobbs, someone is at least giving you a cohesive picture of what’s going on, even if it’s wildly divergent from reality.
Uloborus
I do often wonder myself what Dobbs is doing on CNN. The network at least maintains a pretense of neutrality, and Dobbs ranks somewhere between your average anchor and commentator on FOX. His biases are really strong and, if he’s following the birther thing, quite irrational.
Someone speculated that CNN wants a dumber audience. I’m normally skeptical of such accusations, but it’s well established that networks have a strange hang-up about demographics. They’re very commonly obsessed with pursuing some ‘perfect’ demographic, rather than raw popularity or quality of content. They want just that audience that they think will make their advertizers sit up and beg. I’m not at all sure if Dobbs draws those people, but it’s not out of the bounds of possibility.
Another person speculated that Dobbs is just mad at Obama for making fun of him. I would actually absolutely believe this. The man’s ego is huge and fragile. I was dumbfounded to switch on the news one afternoon and be presented with Dobbs delivering a whiny rant about how Hillary had said the state department doesn’t think about him much. Then he spent the entire show interviewing people and trying to prove that he was important and Hillary really cares what he says.
Finally, there’s a lot of ‘this is racism’ speculation on the birther thing. Personally, I think it’s only peripherally racism. I mean, they’re racist, and the thing they’ve chosen to rant about certainly smacks of it. But it’s a detail. This is motivated by their refusal to accept that a democrat won the election, not a black man. They went just as ballistic about Clinton, maybe more. Many of the speculations were just as wild – like murder. The crazy factor is more publically prominent this time, but it’s the same phenomenon, and they have less to lose now. They have to placate their base, and we’ve discussed the state of their base at length.