Marcy Wheeler destroys Marc Ambinder for saying that he was right to be wrong about the Bush politicization of terror alert. Here’s Ambinder (he later added a weasely addendum):
Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists’ conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence. But journalists should have been even more skeptical about the administration’s pronouncements. And yet — we, too, weren’t privy to the intelligence. Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt. We can see, now, how pre-war intelligence was manipulated, how the entire Washington establishment (including Congressional Democrats(, including the media, was manipulated by a valid fear of the unknown — but a fear we now know was consciously, deliberately, inculcated.
Here’s Wheeler:
God forbid a journalist use simple empiricism–retrospectively matching terror alerts with reports on which they were based–to assess the terror alerts. God forbid a journalist learn that we went to Code Orange because someone claimed terrorists were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch, and from that learn to be skeptical of terror alerts going forwards. It’s not as if, after all, the election eve alert was a one-off, the only alert in which the hype was later shown to be over-hype. There was a pattern. And normal human beings equipped with the gift of empiricism that apparently gets weeded out at journalism school tend to look at patterns and conclude that if a relationship consistently has happened in the past, then it probably will exist in the future.
But no!! Journalists can’t do what normal human beings do all the time, and make certain conclusions by watching patterns develop.
One obvious take away here is that hippies are wrong even when they’re right. Another is that Marc Ambinder is an asshole.
But for me, the most important take away, is that we live in a world where journalists get ahead more by clinging to the right-center conventional wisdom than by actually finding out the truth. It’s quite literally better, careerwise, to be wrong all the time. This is why I think our society may be irredeemably fucked.
Augustine
just to get all empirical-contrarian on a friday, what would make anyone think these people’s jobs are anything other than to put something down in a “journal…”
to “report” back on something
to “commentate (sic)”
…so as to sell as many copies/views/CPMs as possible
the naive trust that what we read in black/white is anything other than somebody else’s biased screed is based on a anomaly which occurred in the latter half of the 20th century (and not much at that either)
MaximusNYC
Our skepticism about the activists’ conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush
A finer summation of the Dirty F***ing Hippie Principle has never been written.
Ambinder is indeed a tool if he can write these words without any apology or self-consciousness in 2009.
bellatrys
My fury with this sort of thing is that every single rich person, and most every middle-class person, has gotten that way by exploiting people like me who do the work for them at below living wages, with no health ins or junk ins., and getting discarded like trash the minute the economy goes south so that they can keep on with their house payments and Aruba vacations and private schools for their kids and new SUVs and Harleys and so on.
Doesn’t matter if they’re conservatives or liberals or libertarians, all small business owners I have ever worked for have been exploitative predators calling themselves “self-made” when it’s come from gouging those of us who cannot get out from under. (Same experience of everyone I know, too.) Ditto the doctors and architects and so forth who don’t ever think how their profits stay so high based on cheap labour – which has to stay cheap *somehow*! I’m not even going into the ones who have argued to my face that women deserve to be paid less for the same work, ’cause that’s what Jesus would do. (Srsly.)
Yeah, I came to understand why the bourgeoisie goes up against the wall with the aristos (and the clergy!) after working customer service for just a couple years… the boss may charge $60 an hour for my work but I only see < 10 of it AND I have to eat shit with a smile, too. But that’s capitalism for you, as well as Feudalism. Aux barricades, citoyennes!
smiley
To quote a recent episode of Burn Notice, “Once you see a pattern you can’t unsee it.” (or words to that effect) Marcy is right, of course. The world of political journalism is so rigidly structured that most political reporters just can’t believe politicians would lie to or otherwise deceive them.
Mumphrey
Well, I for one am glad he the press never poked around into what the Bush administration was doing with terror alerts. I, mean, hey, I thought it was all politicized crap, but, then, I hated Bush right from the get-go, and if the press had listened to people like me, then where would we be as a country? Listening to sane people is no way to sell newspapers or run a country.
MattF
It’s amazing, really. Ambinder’s basic accusation is that the DFHs were politicizing the War on Terror… And he’s right that it’s a grave accusation. But, but, but,… (splutter)
Ed Drone
I recall someone’s cartoon during this period that allocated the color-coded alert levels to Bush’s approval ratings. I don’t recall whose cartoon that was, or where it could be found on the internet, but it was so obvious that I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand how a logical conclusion other than, “THE BASTARDS ARE CHEATING!” could be maintained.
To have it all thrashed out now, and have some still insist, “No one could have imagined that
someone would fly an airplane into a buildingthe Bush madministration would ever run an election on fear alone” is preposterous.To hell with them all, and the sooner the quicker!
Ed
Macswain
I think this says more about how delusional Ambinder is in thinking that people on the left only “react” to issues out of a blind hatred for the right and cannot have possible used logic, reason and empiricism.
It also speaks to his arrogance in that he attributes these qualities to himself … even when wrong. How can we have any intellectually honest discourse with such a person?
Zifnab
Sure we were selling out to the GOP for journalistic access and the Limbaugh demographic and out of general laziness at the time, but – in retrospect – I think we can all agree that while our motivations were rooted in some of the most unethical and selfish desires, our actions can be rationalized as entirely justifiable given a set of assumptions that no journalist would ever have made under, say, a Clinton or a Carter or an Obama.
So, you see, combining ridiculous double standards with bullshit hindsight hand waving, we can all safely conclude that shit’s just hunky dory and please don’t stop buying our dead tree fish wrappers or they’ll take away our health insurance.
mp1900
Someone a few years ago told me she wanted the news to be “balanced.” (She’s a self-described ‘moderate.’) I told her I just wanted it to be factual and accurate. If it is, and your side still looks bad, don’t blame the news: Change sides.
donovong
“This is why I think our society may be irredeemably fucked.”
Me and you both, my friend.
Dreggas
Ambinder is such a douche-nozzle.
I would point out one thing i found amusing. This am, the local fox station was reporting on what Ridge said and one of the hosts said matter of factly that Keith Olberman got it right the first time. Of course this is the L.A. fox station and it’s hard to not have liberals on the news casts and morning shows as staff but there was some joy to be taken in watching someone on a murdoch station saying Keith got it right.
vacuumslayer
OK, conservatards like to say we had a “gut hatred” of Bush. What they never say is that we had good reason to.
LiberalTarian
“… better to be wrong all the time.” I am sure Dan Rather would agree–after all, he was correct about AWOL GW, and it cost him his career.
vacuumslayer
BTW, as far as I’m concerned, Ridge’s revelations make the results of the 2004 election null and void. ‘Course, can’t do a goddamn thing about it now…
beltane
I think you’re right about our society being irredeemably fucked. The smartest, most thoughtful, and most moral among us are silenced or ridiculed while those who play dumb in exchange for cash and status are praised for their wisdom. Instead of a cost-effective health care plan that covers everyone, we will have a grossly inefficient plan that leaves almost no one fully covered.
We have reached the point where the parasite has destroyed the host. We are merely witnesses to the decomposition of the carcass.
Zifnab
I heard it was because of all the flag burning and pornography and gay marriage and rap music.
Nicole
“…most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt.”
And that’s the problem right there. When is that ever a good idea?
Macswain
It appears now that he has posted up a half-apology for his elitist generalization of those on the left. He still says many of us are still shitheads but not all.
I don’t know which of us can accept the apology since you can’t tell who is on the shithed or not-so-shithead list.
demkat620
Shorter Marc Ambinder:
Always give republicans the benefit of the doubt but those dirty fucking hippies are always liars.
BerkeleyMom
This is actually something most of us learn as children. It’s a story called “The little boy who cried wolf” for pete’s sake. If a 5 year old can grasp the concept what does that say for Ambinder?
demkat620
Oooo is it me or does the font look different?
Stooleo
So now after being punk’d for umpteenth thousandth time Ambinder finally gets it. Wow, just wow. I sure with this new wisdom he will be scrutinizing every little thing out of the Obama administration. This wisdom will again conveniently lost just in time for the next republican administration.
vacuumslayer
@beltane: The teadeathbirthers have shocked me to my very core. The fact that people have questions or concerns regarding a health care bill wouldn’t have made blink. People have a right to ask questions (about cost, etc.). But the truly mindless ranting…the talk of Nazism, Stalinism…by people who have no clue what either label means…and the fact that these fucktards are actually mucking up the debate and simply the message of “NO!” seems to resonating with large swaths of the uninterested masses is incredibly depressing to me.
After the election of 2004, I was pretty convinced that I lived in a nation of morons and that there wasn’t much hope for this country. But that changed in 2008. I don’t know. Maybe I was too quick to be hopeful. I think the moron hillbillies are still winning.
bellatrys
In short, capitalism depends on there being a permanent, and large, underclass kept in near-poverty as well as a group in dire poverty pour encourages les autres to keep our heads down and not demand any more, and this is not a bug but a feature, the system is not broke this *is* the system, and this is not wild conspiracy but what I long ago to my shock heard respected economists admitting on NPR Marketplace when they explained why *low* unemployment was “bad for the economy”…
It’s a mug’s game, and the handful of little turtles held up to us as proof that it’s possible to succeed if you just work hard (TM) American Dream Land of Opportunity blah blah blah don’t prove a thing except that someone wins the lottery, sure…
Working for Republicans started to turn me into a flaming liberal, and working for a liberaltarian media outlet whose owner laughed at me and those like me before our faces for being “really f~cking poor” completed the job.
John PM
@vacuumslayer:
“conservatards like to say we had a “gut hatred” of Bush”
Isn’t that how we are supposed to think, though, with our guts, and not our brains. Or at the very least, can’t we look into another person’s soul, as Bush did with Putin, to determine whether a person is trustworthy. Perhaps we should say that there was no “gut hatred” of Bush but that we looked into his soul and found one was missing?
malraux
@vacuumslayer: Yeah, my hatred of bush was based on incompetence in office, political manipulation of terrorist threats, lies to get us into a war, etc. There’s a big difference of that and the town hall anger.
General Winfield Stuck
This is the thing with people like Ambinder and his ilk. They never ask themselves why Bush had a 90 percent approval until he decided to invade a country on a whim and lies. A country that had not attacked.
If he did ask himself this, it would have been obvious that most dems approved of Bush when he seemed sane and competent. It wasn’t until he went pure blood lusting neocon crusader that dems became Bush haters.
Wherein Greater Wingnuttia was all in against Obama from day numero uno. They are intellectually dishonest by nature, and more importantly intellectually lazy. They get their thoughts from the Mighty Wurlitzer and that’s the gospel. And when events conspire to bring the truth, they blame the hippies for being hippies and making them get shit wrong.
This is the loyal opposition party and our press carry their buckets they think are full of cash and stardom. And may well be.
And btw Dougj, you have made me a believer on Chuck Todds MO for moving toward the Fox moneytree. HIs taking the word “choice” out on the NBC poll asking if Americans supported was an act of Fox wannebe douchbagism.
bellatrys
bah, wrong thread, sorry. Too many tabs open.
El Cid
A century ago, people understood clearly that the bosses’ newspapers would favor the bosses. But this was back when subscriptions and purchases paid for the news, not advertisers. So the best-selling papers were the labor, socialist, and ethnic papers.
Now, we mainly keep our heads up our asses and keep wondering plaintively why the bosses’ newspapers and networks favor the interests of their owners and advertisers over us in the vast majority, and we’re shocked, shocked each time that this is re-revealed.
Pangloss
See: Kristol, William.
vacuumslayer
@malraux: Of course!
vacuumslayer
@John PM: I’m afraid to look deep into Putin’s eyes. He’s so dreamy, I might give him a big, tonguey kiss.
Leelee for Obama
@vacuumslayer: Nor do they admit that they had, and have, a gut hatred for any Democrat who wins the WH. While I never, ever, once trusted that smug little prick,I really didn’t start hating Bush until July 2003. Once the truth about WMD and Rumsfeld’s statement the “we won’t allow the Iraqis to have an Islamic Republic” came out, I was done with the “benefit of the doubt” shit, and the “we’re a country at war” shit and the “honor the office” shit. I see a pattern here. Guess I was done with a lot of shit.
I had learned to dislike, or gut hate, several Presidents before, but I always gave them a chance to prove me right in my vote, or wrong about them. If I liked them enough to vote for them, I kept liking them-though I would get pissed at some things. If I didn’t like them enough to vote for them, not one of ’em ever proved me wrong. Full Disclosure-first President I really hated was LBJ, over Vietnam. He got some forgiveness for Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Medicare/Medicaid, but I had too many friends and friends of friends in that mess to forgive him for that. My first vote was Nixon/McGovern. Still loved my bumper sticker 30 years later.
Martin
<a href=http://www.newsless.org/2009/08/the-3-key-parts-of-news-stories-you-usually-dont-get/Reposted for discussion:
Hunter Gathers
Our political press if proof that this country leads the entire universe in Upward Failure.
Martin
Preview FAIL!
Link: http://www.newsless.org/2009/08/the-3-key-parts-of-news-stories-you-usually-dont-get/
Summary in various states of blockquoting above.
Discuss.
ChrisB
@Nicole: Amen. Think how many real journalists would be rolling over in their graves if Ambinder was worth paying attention to.
The Grand Panjandrum
Marcy’s takedown is pretty good. Glenzilla’s is a masterpiece.
Read the entire piece. It’s classic Glenzilla.
@bellatrys: You seem to be quite confident that your lack of achievement is to be directly blamed on others. Why is that?
vacuumslayer
@Leelee for Obama: Well, of course. I only started hating Bush when I finally woke up to the fact that he lied us into the war with Iraq. I’m ashamed to say I once supported the war. The fact that millions were duped into supporting it and that millions of Iraqis and thousands of Americans died for a lie still leaves me breathless. Do I hate Bush? Goddamn right I do. And for good reason.
shelley matheis
Ah, when you’re feeling down, Asmussen’s cartoon, ‘Bad Reporter’ never fails to buck you up.
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/asmussen/
bellatrys
@vacuumslayer:
Vacuumslayer, if it’s any consolation, we were around in the 1970s, too (I was raised a crazy theocon, liberals were gonna put Christians in gay-commie-athiest-pagan concentration camps, yanno?) and if we’d had a communications infrastructure back then we’d have been pulling the same stunts then, too.
…yeah, I know it’s not much consolation in the short term to find out that it’s always been this way, but in the long haul it does.
freelancer
@DougJ:
Yeah there have been quite a few people looking at journalism as a whole, the state of our discourse, and just doing Big Think about where we are and where we’re going. The “we’re fucked” meme has some legs.
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/olympia-snowe-admits-public-option-not
Healthcare reform is toothless, the bailouts weren’t chained to any meaningful change in regulation. The investor class of this country is devouring the seed corn.
I wouldn’t dwell on it too hard, the malaise will kill you.
I suggest more wine-blogging.
shelley matheis
jenniebee
It wasn’t a “gut hatred.” Guts were (and are) what the conservative hoi polloi makes their decisions based on. Ours was a rational disdain for Bush based on his know-nothingism, his constant, unabashed and easily observable lying, his disregard for civil rights, and his whole administration’s quoted & published opinion that war was both a preferable method of conducting foreign policy and political gold. We didn’t just hate him for no reason and therefore characterize his intellect as unexceptional, his canards as intentional lies and his appetite for carnage as warmongering, it was the other way round. There’s a difference.
kay
What was the point of the color alert system anyway?
I understand hurricane, tornado and earthquake public service warnings, but what were we supposed to do when terror went to orange? Tape the windows? Don’t take an airplane? I know it wasn’t “stop shopping”.
Swine flu warnings? You’re supposed to look for symptoms, so I understood that.
The terror warnings were scaring people, and then giving them nothing constructive or practical to do with that fear.
Could journalists have asked that? Could they have asked the First Best Question? : “Why?”
I wondered why we were doing this, and no journalist even asked.
Seitz
Umm, Marc should have been skeptical when the goddamn “terror alert” system was invented. There are alert levels that make sense, like for fire danger for example. When the fire danger is high, don’t start campfires in the forest. There’s a threat, and there’s something you can do in response to the threat.
There was NEVER anything that normal citizens could reasonably do in response to raising the terror alert level. What were we supposed to do, not fly? Not take public transportation? Look really closely at any brown people in our vicinity? The government certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone to really do anything other than “be alert”. That right there, a stimulus with no reasonably considered response, should have tipped Ambinder off that the whole thing was crap from the get go.
kay
@Seitz:
Exactly, and you said it better than I did.
Seitz
Or what Kay said.
shelley matheis
Mister Papercut
If recognizing the “Saddam wouldn’t let the weapons inspectors in” rationale as a lie (and, more distressingly, seeing it go completely unchallenged every fucking time the Chimposter trotted it out) and therefore being skeptical of every single claim that followed from that mis-administration makes me a DFH, then a DFH it is. I will wear the title with pride.
Leelee for Obama
@vacuumslayer: This is it exactly. So many dead, maimed, damaged. All for lies and money and revenge. It does leave you breathless, and kind of sick.
By itself, it would be enough to leave him no legacy but dust. Add in the economy, the health care crisis, Katrina, BlackWater, torture, lord knows what else.
They should all be in The Hague.
vacuumslayer
@Seitz: Yup.
Susanb2012
Not only did this information exist…Keith Olberman did many segments on the odd “coincidence” of heightened terror alerts or phony terrorist attack plans and political events, complete with dates. There is no excuse for ANY media in this… lazy, gullible and unfortunately for us, exhibiting little curiousity for the truth. As usual.
jacy
Having spent a lot of time around journalists — god, that was all I dated in college back when I was young and stupid — I thought that journalists were supposed to NEVER believe the government, unless whatever crap the government spewed could be backed up by, you know, SOME FUCKING RESEARCH INTO THE FACTS.
I wish someone would point to the exact moment it became common knowledge that anything a liberal said was A) over-reaction, B) treasonous, C) based only on their hatred of the other party. Because in looking at the way it stands, it seems to me that A, B, and C are perfect descriptors of anything the insane Republican right says.
Damn, it’s such a shame that facts have a liberal bias. Ultimately that’s what’ll destroy the country, reasonable people clinging to their useless facts and their insistence on telling the truth.
And Mark Ambinder is a mealy-mouthed jerk-off. Also.
JGabriel
DougJ:
In a just world:
Marcy Wheeler would have a goddamn Pulitzer for her work chronicling the the Plame cover-up, the Libby Trial, and/or the torture memos, especially for being the one to break the story that we waterboarded KSM 183 time. If any journalist deserves a six figure salary, it’s Wheeler.
And Mark Ambinder would be a commenter at Free Republic. With all the salary that pays.
.
jonas
@vacuumslayer: Precisely. Note to Ambinder: the reason so many DFH’s hated Bush is because he was pulling shit like this on a daily basis for eight friggin’ years.
jenniebee
@Leelee for Obama:
I still love one of the 1968 Nixon campaign’s button slogans: They Can’t Lick Our Dick. They were like the original teabaggers.
JHF
Yup.
harlana pepper
@vacuumslayer: I’m curious about your name. Have you ever, out of pure frustration, taken a hammer to your vacuum cleaner, like yours truly?
jrg
There’s just no winning with you people, is there? One minute it’s “We cannot allow journalists to trust the motivations of political leaders like the Bush admin”, the next minute, it’s “There are no death panels in the bill because Obama says so.”
If you people can’t decide, how is the Washington press corps supposed to? They are not mind readers, you know.
harlana pepper
Hey, man, if somebody like my dad (a retired, former working-class schlub, who never went to college) could figure out those terror alerts were bogus, these late pseudo-apologist media elites gots no leg to stand on.
eyepaddle
From the comments to Ambinder:
“Ulysses (not yet home) August 21, 2009 9:39 AM
To: Bob Cohn, Ed. Atlantic.Com
cc: James Bennett, Ed; Scott Stossel, Deputy Ed.; et al:
Sirs: Are you in fact reading this persons work? If so, WTF?”
I am surprised by my brning hatred for Ambinder–not because I didn’t think he wasn’t a tool, I just didn’t know it could still feel this fresh after all this time.
The comments to his post are EXCORIATING him though; if he is reading them it has to sting, just a little bit.
EdTheRed
+1 to DougJ for the Clash reference on Joe Strummer’s b-day.
REN
I disliked him before 2000 because environmental issues have always been important to me, and his reputation as “the toxic Texan” was well deserved. I knew exactly what would happen to the EPA under his administration. All the neo-cons that he had surrounded himself and his campaign with, and their statements about how daddy Bush hadn’t finished the job in Iraq, foretold of the trouble to come. Even with all that, I was surprised by the depth of their dishonesty, and the fact that they were allowed to get away with it. The MSM in this country has failed Democracy.
Sloth
…yeah, I know it’s not much consolation in the short term to find out that it’s always been this way, but in the long haul it does.
I too lean on that, probably more than I should. But things really do seem to continually, slowly-but-steadily, get worse.
burnspbesq
I have to say that Glency Wheelwald won this pie-fight, and it wasn’t close. If there were a mercy rule in journamalism, this would have been over after five innings.
P.S. Why is my identifying information not persistent after the upgrade? Having to re-enter my name and email every time is almost as annoying as having to read Church Lady every day.
ellaesther
As a member (former? I’m not really sure these days! Ah, the lot of a freelancer. But I digress!) of the media, I would suggest that it is less a clinging to “the right-center conventional wisdom” than it is an unfortunate combination of laziness and a need to constantly produce copy of some sort.
It is simply easier to do “he said, she said” reporting than it is to do “he said, but he’s demonstrably wrong because…” reporting, especially if you’re laboring under tremendous pressure to Produce — either as part of a 24 hour news channel, or as a member of a desperately understaffed newsroom, all of whom being watched for what amount to billable hours (if it doesn’t lead directly to copy, it’s bad).
For the most part, staring into the middle distance in order to gather your thoughts, or hitting the pavement in pursuit of 25 leads, only one of which will lead to what you need but man it’s a doozy! are no longer considered reasonable journalistic behaviors. This is not true for everyone, everywhere, I hasten to add, but it is true often enough that when you add to it what I believe to be the built-in human tendency toward laziness, you wind with a whole lot of “he said, she said,” and very, very little else.
And it pisses me the hell off.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Shorter Marc Ambinder:
Dammit, I only do this stuff because I have to and it’s MY JOB – somebody has to keep YOU PEOPLE from breaking into the Versailles Palace, spilling BBQ sauce on the furniture, getting your greasy fingerprints all over everything. Do you think the Hall of Mirrors cleans itself? Do you? Do you know how hard I work *every day* to keep this place clean and sparkling for the King?
[stomps off to go get his wig re-powdered]
Shorter me: Time for Mr. Head to say hello to Mr. Pike.
Shygetz
No, it’s “There are no death panels in the bill because the bill says so.” Empiricism is really a very simple idea.
JGabriel
jrg:
One gets the information that there are no death panels in the bill, not from trusting Obama but, from reading the bill.
Jackass.
.
vacuumslayer
@harlana pepper: No! But I have destroyed (mostly by picking up copious amounts of pet hair) so many over the years (along with various other household appliances) that hubby gave me that nickname. I’ve been using it online for years now. :D
shelley matheis
Leelee for Obama
@jrg: There are no death panels because there are no death panels. In the immortal words of the teabaggers “Read the bill.” Having Medicare pay for a voluntary conversation with your physician about what you’d like to happen at the end of your life is not an invitation for anyone to tell you it’s time to die and decrease the surplus population. It’s a mercy, because the Doctors are always busy telling 84 yo that they have patients who are 94 yo and they’re fine. (True story) They get paid for their time and they spend as little with you as possible. and they seem to bill by the nanosecond.
I must say though, that if the Health Care Reform doesn’t go thru in some meaningful way, I’m going to ask for a death panel to put me out of my misery. I’m so done!
vacuumslayer
@Sloth: Yeesh. That’s not what I need to read. I’m gonna go bang my head against the wall now.
gypsy howell
I suspected it was all lies from the beginning (and I had good reaosn too, besides my “gut” — I lived thorugh the Vietnam war and richard Nixon, so I KNEW our government was quite capable of lying to us.)
But two things assured me that it wasn’t just gut instinct. First was the unraveling of the Jessica Lynch story – remember the Army girl whose rescue was faked for TV? That was the big one for me — the Aha moment when I knew it was all lies, lies, lies , every single fucking bit of it lies.
Then there was Joe Wilson’s op-ed in the NYT.
From there on in, I never doubted for a moment that every single tiny utterance by the Bush administration and their cronies was a pack of filthy lies.
Lies, lies, lies, lies, and more lies.
Once the veil is ripped away, the lying is unbelievably obvious, And it’s maddening to see everyone around you fall for it, over and over and over.
Marc Ambinder: peddler and enabler of lies, lies, lies, and more lies.
Roger Moore
@jrg:
No. There are no death panels in the bill because anyone with the time and patience can read the bills in question and see that there are no death panels in them. That’s called “research”, and it’s what reporters are supposed to do for a living. Repeating whatever somebody else tells you without bothering to fact check is called “stenography”, and it’s what too many tools in the news business do instead of their fucking jobs.
ellaesther
@harlana pepper: I know you weren’t talking to me, but man, am I jealous that you did that and I still haven’t.
I’m going to drag the vaccum over here and tilt the screen down so that it can read your comment — that oughta put the fear of God in the damn thing!
SGEW
Yeah, yesterday marked the day I would stop trying to defend Marc “But I’m Trying To Be Moderate!” Ambinder.
His half assed mea culpa didn’t really help, either.
gratefulcub
Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt.
But, only in matters of war and terror. If government officials try to reform healthcare, a healthy distrust of government is not only accepted, but expected.
gypsy howell
@ellaesther:
Sorry. I don’t buy it. The default position was to take the Bush administration at their word for everything. It could just as easily, and with much more evidence to support it, been “They’re lying.”
JGabriel
@burnspbesq:
Mine persists just fine. Maybe your browser discarded the Balloon Juice cookie while it was down, and BJ isn’t generating new cookies — or is generating cookies but with short timeouts — after the WordPress re-install.
.
burnspbesq
@bellatrys:
Please. Everybody in services wholesales their time to someone who sells it at retail. Doesn’t matter what segment, doesn’t matter how senior you are or how good you are.
If you want to retail your time, start your own business. And stop whining.
shelley matheis
JGabriel said it better than me
Bob In Pacifica
What happened to the font?
Meanwhile, all societies are fucked. My town cryer example. The town cryer didn’t wander through the streets shouting that the king or the city fathers were fucking the people over. Not for very long anyway.
The purpose of the media is to lie to people. Sometimes there’s someone or some media that speaks the truth, but eventually the voice of the people gets locked out. Hey, there used to be labor pages in newspapers. They went away but there’s still a business section.
gratefulcub
I am not aware of all the internet traditions.
Can someone tell me what a DFH is?
Leelee for Obama
@gratefulcub: Dirty Fuckin Hippie!
gypsy howell
Dirty Fucking Hippy.
In other words, someone who has been right about every single thing for the last 40 years, but is dismissed because .. because Michael Moore is fat and shut up that’s why.
gypsy howell
or, the way Leelee spelled it.
jrg
gratefulcub
@jrg
Dude, no need for * here.
~DFH (I just learnt that)
Xenos
I was working at a government office in Boston in the spring of 2003. Every time the alert went to ORANGE, which must have been several times in those few months. It was a tremendous pain in the rear end, because every time you needed to go into the office there was a search, if you traveled anywhere there were extra police, and so on. Even if you went to a bank, to a big law firm, business HQ, accounting firm… the same thing. Tons of security.
Most Americans probably did not notice a big difference. But for those of use in the periphery of political, financial, commercial power – the message was clear. We are at war. And you are not trusted. You are being watched. For your own good, of course.
I supported the war in Iraq, to my shame. I would like to claim that being manipulated through the press and the TV and the hysterical security alerts made me submit to the authority of big brother, but that would not be entirely fair. In restrospect, though, the hysteria and the feeling that we were already at war contributed to my tolerance of a real war breaking out. At a basic level I was really tired of the tension, and wanted to get it over with, already. I suspect that the educated and well connected professional classes were very much targeted by the White House propaganda to the effect that the people who should have been most suspicious and vocal about the war were effectively silenced.
gratefulcub
@jrg
But seriously, journalists should be able to realize that no one is offering up death panels, because since said journalist is still alive, he hasn’t become too stupid to breathe.
gnomedad
@vacuumslayer:
I kinda assumed you were a evil physicist determined to bring about the end of the universe by initiating the decay of the false vacuum.
Sloth
Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt.
Um, hey, Ambinder. Newsflash: you make your fucking living from information asymmetry. It is your job to find it, expose it, and level it out. That, in a nutshell, is what journalists do.
Or should do.
And, manifestly, don’t.
gnomedad
@Xenos:
Thank you. Very useful perspective.
kay
I think the press just really liked President Bush, in the same way they like McCain, in a way that we on the outside just don’t understand because we’re not a part of their work environment.
They treated President Bush as a known storyline, and one they were familiar with.
Unless they’re talking with Obama about his family, or talking about his family (“family man”) they treat him as if he’s slightly exotic, and a little dangerous.
They don’t seem biased towards the right to me, they seemed biased towards the conventional, so in that sense “conservative”.
They don’t like new stories, or people they can’t slot into categories. “Rebel Texan son of Olde Family” “maverick war hero with a heart of gold” “black person who is family man”.
vacuumslayer
@gnomedad: I’m stealing that explanation. :D
kay
They did it again and again with President Bush. Fit the man to the story they had decided on.
It was painfully obvious to anyone watching with any degree of remove that Bush was completely and inherently political, and that’s always been assumed, with other politicians who reach the Presidency. Obama is referred to as a “politician” and Bill Clinton certainly was.
It made sense with Bush, too. He’s a third generation politician. He hired Karl Rove, and relied on Rove.
But that isn’t what the press had settled on. They settled on “straight shooter outsider” and just stuck to that, despite everything that was right there staring at them.
harlana pepper
@vacuumslayer: lol, I have that problem (cat hair) also!
General Winfield Stuck
Jon Voight is becoming a full frontal screaming nutter. It’s no wonder Anjelina won’t have anything to do with him.
Remind me to boycott his movies.
scav
@gnomedad: I’d come up with something similar only it involved the slaying of the vacuum that exists between some peoples’ ears. On the principle of Nature Abhors etc. Sounded like a good hobby, albeit one that could eat up a hell of a lot of time.
David
Remember when all-of-the-sudden-one-day you couldn’t take more than three ounces of any liquid onto a plane and travelers were delayed and it was all over the news? Instant chaos and fear — was that really the best way that new rule could have been introduced?
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
“It seems to me….” that the President is inciting a civil war.
Myyy goodness. Can it get crazier?
scav
@kay: In a thread devoted to reasoning based on empirical evidence?
Yes.
FormerSwingVoter
@jrg:
I’ll try explaining this very, very slowly. Try to follow along.
You see, there is something called “objective reality”. It is the concept that if you can observe something to be true, then it is true/. Things that are observed to not be true are false.
Now, a lot of times people have these things in their heads called “thoughts”. These may or may not be true. People can “verify” these thoughts by seeking out “information”.
If someone has the thought that “paper is cheese”, this is not somehow equally valid as saying “cheese is cheese”. You can verify this by eating a piece of paper, and eating a piece of cheese, and determining if the experiences are similar. Then, using this “information” you can verify whether the thought is true or not.
So, if you want to determine if Bush was manipulating the terror alerts for political gain, you can look at the stated reasons that were given for raising them, and decide if those are plausible. Likewise, you can determine if the health bill has death panels in it by reading it.
If there are two opposing views, they are not automatically equally valid. If one of those views has huge mountains of evidence in its favor and the other has literally none, then they are definitively not equally valid.
InflatableCommenter
Well, that’s just baloney, Doug. Journalists don’t run anything.
The idea that democracy rests on these little houses of cards that people in the media and blogosphere prop up is just nonsense.
Democracy rests first on the ability of most of the people to be able to vote, and create action on, their own true interests. Self government rests on this idea. On the day that people figure out that they don’t need conventional “journalism” in order to know, and then act on, their true interests, the problem goes away.
Again I say for the ten trillionth time, information is like food. It does no good to sit around and bitch about how McDonalds is making people fat. People can choose what, and when, to eat, just as they can choose what, and how, to get and process information. Once they learn to take responsbility for that, and stop blaming someone or something else for the problems associated with it, they are free to govern themselves in an effective manner.
At this point, your whining about this just becomes part of the problem and not part of the solution. But as they say in my line of work, if you can’t be a part of the solution, you can at least take comfort in knowing that there is good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
gypsy howell
@David:
As someone who flies a lot, and has before and after 9/11, the whole Terra!Terra!Terra! schtick got pretty old pretty fast.
Has the terror alert, even to this day, EVER gone below Orange — or, as I like to refer to it, “Ernie”, on the Sesame Street Scale? No?
Complete and utter and total bullshit.
But at least we seem to be past the days when the airports were filled with bomb-sniffing dogs and military swat teams. Those were fun times.
Leelee for Obama
{{But as they say in my line of work, if you can’t be a part of the solution, you can at least take comfort in knowing that there is good money to be made in prolonging the problem.}}
I am mystified and would love to know what line of work your are in.
kay
@scav:
The press, to me, are at their absolute worst when they think they’re in something “historic”. All reason goes out the window. They feel like they’re writing for the ages.
I think it’s pretty damn simple, actually.
They liked Bush, he fit the “leader” storyline they invented after September 11th, and they were all terrified of being “on the wrong side of history” by questioning his judgment.
On anything. For years.
We all suffered for that, they haven’t learned anything from being so completely and thoroughly duped, end of story.
They have to stop making their jobs about THEM.
John PM
@General Winfield Stuck:
“Remind me to boycott his [Jon Voight’s] movies.”
Hell, I have been doing that since at least “Anaconda.” I mean, seriously, what quality movies has he done since “Midnight Cowboy”? I liked both of the “National Treasure” movies, but he really wasn’t acting.
JGabriel
@kay:
It’s interesting how a poor kid from Arkansas or Hawaii are consummate ‘politicians’, but a third generation politician is an ‘outsider’.
Kind of like how a decorated war hero is a ‘wimp’, but a guy who goes AWOL from domestic service is ‘tough’.
One might almost think there was some sort of partisan bias. Or one might think of Orwell.
.
Eric U.
he has it exactly backwards. The republics do everything to piss off Dems. Dems are relatively tolerant. Even after the election theft, I was willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. He immediately blew it with the entire country, his ratings were falling fast. His administration was run as if they didn’t need any approval from anyone other than the religious fundies and the rich. It was a total scorched earth campaign from the beginning. And can you imagine Obama taking a month off in his first year? If it weren’t for 9/11, he would have had 20% favorable ratings at the end of his first term. And that’s even with the Sgt. Shultz attitude he got from the press from the very beginning. Despite first appearances, Americans aren’t stupid.
The administration of the first president I voted for, Carter, was an eye opener for me. He was screwed badly by the press. I’m not sure about how previous Dem presidents had been treated by the press, there is some evidence they got the same screw job as Carter. Bush/Reagan got kid gloves, Clinton got the screw job. Bush the lesser got active propaganda and stories that were inconvenient for the administration were glossed over by the press. They certainly would never notice that the terror alerts were politically motivated, even though any moron could tell they were.
Obama has gotten a little more even-handed approach, although the sharp knives are out.
vacuumslayer
Hey, in the press’ defense, Chimpy did look mighty swell in that jaunty flight suit.
gypsy howell
@John PM:
Whoda thought he’d turn out to be one of the wackos, huh? I mean Dennis Miller, I can understand. That guy ALWAYS annoyed me.
General Winfield Stuck
@John PM:
This is true as a leading or substantial supporting roles. But he shows up in a number of decent flicks as a less than significant character actor. I have been treating that as not enough for boycott. But may reconsider.
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
Really? Because what I said applies to about three fourths of modern white collar occupations as near as I can tell. Especially if one is a consultant or contractor.
diggerd
What journalist can’t put A+B+C=D together?
A) Treasury secretary Paul O’Neil’s comment very early on: “Everything the Bush White House does is political.”
B) The classic line from the Downing Street Memo: “Fixing the facts around the policy.”
C) The obvious pattern of manipulation the terror alerts in concert with Bush’s poll numbers.
D) Carl Rove’s political office would do EVERYTHING in its power to FIX the facts or MANIPULATE the system to empower the Bush presidency.
Ambinder should seriously consider going into PR.
Mark S.
OT, but I can’t believe some liberals are arguing that Betsy McCaughey handled Stewart last night:
Huh? I thought she looked utterly ridiculous. And I really don’t think Stewart’s technique is to bully his guests, at least in the manner O’Reilly bullies his guests.
JGabriel
@John PM:
I guess now we know why Jon Voight and Helen Mirren were divorced.
.
kay
@JGabriel:
I took particular offense to the treatment of Clinton (whose general centrist ideology I wasn’t crazy about) because I identify with his “type” and to me, it’s so completely American.
I know a lot of (lesser) Bill Clintons, and I always, always like them. That “whip-smart, wildly ambitious, but dragging yourself up from trashy” thing is just part of our culture, and it’s a part I like, actually. I love those people.
Every time some sneering press person or think-tank conservative started in on the “bubba” theme I went right back into Clinton’s corner. They drove me into Bill Clinton’s arms :)
It was about CLASS, I knew it, plenty of other people I know knew it, and it went right to gut-level with me. I hated them for it.
Redshirt
I was so confident Bush was going to launch his war in Iraq come hell or high water that I set up a betting pool in December of 2002 to pick the date of the invasion. I got ten people in the pool, and the person who won was within a week of the actual invasion – pretty impressive, I thought.
How did we have such foresight? It must have been our DFH guts stuffed with prophetic arugula and djion wheat germ.
drillfork
The sad part is for all the time (rightly) given to skewering establishment-sucking losers like Ambinder, actual journalism still exists, thanks to Wheeler, Glenzilla, Taibbi and many others.
And the discussion of the laughably bogus Terrorist Color Code got me thinking of this from back in the day:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-july-8-2002/domestic-security
“According to the Benjamin Moore racial profiling color wheel, any person darker than butterscotch is probably a terrorist.”
Still, awesome…
Leelee for Obama
@InflatableCommenter: Well, that just ruined my year! I guess being stuck in the house with Mom had really sheltered me from things. I never worked anywhere that thrived on a lack of problem solving. In the restaurant biz, the owners tend to be useless but the help better solve problems fast, or the tip jar, she doth not overflow. It’s all about context, I guess.
EdTheRed
@Mark S.: Yeah, Stewart was so out of his league with McCaughey that she just resigned from the board of Cantel Medical Corp. this afternoon. Like Aretha said, who’s pwnin’ who?
Leelee for Obama
@gypsy howell: IIRC, Miller got a royal case of the yips after 911. Before that, he made me laugh, on occasion. Once he said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I thought that worth remembering.
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
Read “The Learning Organization” by Peter Senge.
InflatableCommenter
Sorry, was multitasking and got the title wrong. “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge is the origin of the Learning Organization concept.
Comrade Darkness
@bellatrys: Capitalism actually does better with an educated, well-paid consumer class. See Scandinavia’s rise from poverty after wwii for a nice demonstration of that.
Banana Republics where the rich can bask in the rights they purchase through bribes requires the masses to be poor and uneducated. Why republicans and neocon thinktanks want so hard for the u.s. to be a banana republic is the question we really need to be asking.
Leelee for Obama
@InflatableCommenter: Obee Kaybee. Will I be depressed, or simply enlightened?
kay
@JGabriel:
And they do the same thing with Obama. They are going to shoe-horn Obama into their story, if they have to lie like hell to do it.
That’s how I saw Gates. Whatever Obama says, whatever Obama does, will not matter, because they have settled on what Obama IS, and that is, they are sorry to say, a liberal black person. Sorry! No use trying to escape! We know what you are.
Bill Clinton? Trailer trash who made good, and eventually, he slipped and showed it, right?
They were waiting around for the actions to fit the narrative. Bush’s actions never actually fit the “strong leader” narrative, so eventually they had to just give up, and start reporting what happened.
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
Dunno, I myself was inspired when I read it 18 years ago.
It’s a very readable and enjoyable book if you like organization and process stuff, which I really love.
Senge is brilliant.
Patrick
This is why I think our society may be irredeemably fucked.
Dude, we rocketed past ‘may be’ a while back.
Joey Maloney a/k/a The Bard Of Balloon Juice
OK, I’m skipping over 100 messages to post this so someone else probably has by now – but I remember perfectly well when some DFH pajama-clad blogger actually did chart terror alerts against Bunnypants’ polling numbers. It got a fair amount of attention at the time amongst us sufferers of BDS.
Ah, here it is… http://img70.imageshack.us/i/aproval_vs_alert_chart_NEW.gif/
Too bad we let our gut-hatred blind us to the way reality completely supported our suspicions.
InflatableCommenter
Full disclosure, I am also inspired by Laurel and Hardy, and Bob and Ray, so you have to put things in perspective.
InflatableCommenter
@Patrick:
Yeah, “we’re fucked” is the leftist version of “Where’s the birth certificate?”
Intellectually, actually, the latter has more substance.
Laura Clawson
I was right on time. Not that long ago I said to myself “Marc Ambinder’s tweets do nothing but irritate the crap out of you. Why do you follow him?” And I unfollowed him.
Some might say it’s good to know what the respectable Village consensus is and that he’s as good a source as any. They’re not wrong, but I think I get enough of that crap just by osmosis.
Leelee for Obama
@InflatableCommenter: I have to say those are both righteously inspirational. Bob and Ray were Icons in my house, and Laurel & Hardy still crack me up. I’ll get the book-I read “who moved my cheese?” years ago, maybe it’s time for a new business book.
Cain
@REN: I disliked him before 2000 because environmental issues have always been important to me, and his reputation as “the toxic Texan” was well deserved. I knew exactly what would happen to the EPA under his administration. All the
I disliked him almost immediately. He was pretty fake. His debates sucked. His plans for the country sucked. His background with all these companies he ran into the ground should have been your first warning. I mean come on… what has he done that was so competent? My BS meter went up when I heard about his “compassionate conservativism”. What the fuck does that mean anyways? People were eating that shit up.
Ambers can go fuck himself, he’s a clueless twit who deserves to be dick slapped by two donkeys.
cain
Wordpress
I hunger!
InflatableCommenter
@WordPress:
Best laugh of my day so far. Well done.
HyperIon
@beltane: I liked your comment. If the blockquote buttons were available, I’d use them to give context. But I’m lazy and so will stick with “Good comment.”
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
I am pretty sure that Jerry Stiller is the funniest human being that ever lived. Those old Stiller and Meara sets were to die for.
And do you remember Nichols and May? Mike Nichols, now the famous director, was part of a comedy act with Elaine May that made me laugh so hard I nearly needed diaphragm surgery.
Irony Abounds
Pardon me if this have already mentioned above, but this is illustrative of the only way Republicans and conservatives know how to fight something: by grotesque fear tactics. Whether it is the war on terror, Gitmo, the war in Iraq, dealing with Iran and North Korea, healthcare, illegal immigrants, you name it. All they do is constantly play the fear card, recklessly and relentlessly, without qualms or attention to facts. Obama has screwed up the health insurance reform case by the manner he has presented things, and by leaving it in the hands of Congress. Nonetheless, even though I have my doubts about the bills pending before Congress, given that all the Repubs offer is fear and more fear, just the same old tired and disgusting playbook, I know 99.9% of the “problems” they allege will occur are just flat out lies. F them, in a hard and painful way.
scav
With some of this press and the public issue, we’ve wandered into the chicken and the egg problem. Apparently reality and thinking don’t have much of a market anymore. Should have seen this coming when I was standing in front of that blackboard in front of entirely too many undergraduates.
I think WordPress is now auditioning to be the new monster under my bed.
JGabriel
Cain:
“Dick slapped”? Do we really need Jeff Goldstein / Protein Wisdom impersonations?
.
Wordpress
@InflatableCommenter: You ever see the outtake reel from Seinfeld? There’s a set of clips where Julia Louis-Dreyfus keeps going to pieces when Jerry Stiller is reading his lines. It is absolutely hilarious.
vacuumslayer
@InflatableCommenter: Actually, no. The former is yet to be determined. The latter was proven to be complete bullshit about a billion times.
Brick Oven Bill
The next National Treasure movie should definitely be to look for Obama’s Birth Certificate. John Voight should partner with Andrew Breitbart or Mel Gibson on this movie. There could be investigative scenes in Hawaii, in Chicago, and perhaps an action chase scene in Wyoming.
In this action chase scene, I can picture David Axlerod running through the Wyoming underbrush with what he thinks is the real fake certificate, to protect it from the prying eyes of independent analysts.
But Axlerod will actually be running through the Wyoming underbrush with the fake fake certificate, and John Voight will be smiling as he possesses the real fake certificate, the parallel is of course the Declaration of Independence in the first National Treasure movie.
The final scene will probably be a courtroom. Or perhaps a Kenyan airport arrival terminal. Copyright 2009.
InflatableCommenter
@vacuumslayer:
Yeah, no. The American Experiment has proven wildly successful by any set of standards. That is, standards that include wide latitude for hideous problems and collossal fuckups, which are the trademark characteristics of human activity.
The idea that some how it has failed or will fail based on the evidence so far is just really absurd bullshit, and I have no patience for it whatever.
In the blog world, this kind of crap is the coin of the realm the same way that “war on terror” was the coin of the righty realm a few years ago.
vacuumslayer
@InflatableCommenter: I can’t imagine why you–for even one second–would think I would care you will or will not have patience for.
That being said, my point stands: the birth certificate nonsense has been put to rest by everyone but insane and mentally-challenged people, and unless you can see into the future you, kiddo, have no idea whether we’re fucked or not.
Mike G
Shorter Assbinder:
Bush would never lie to me, he was wonderful. So anyone who disliked him must have been emotionally deranged, unlike the fine rational folks who hate Obama for being a Kenyan-born Marxist terrorist pushing Nazi forced-euthanasia.
Besdies, I don’t worry my pretty little head about intelligence matters, it’s all so *complicated* so I just trust the big boys in DC (giggle).
kay
@scav:
You have to give credit where credit is due, and make some distinctions. I am actually curious about the various health care proposals. I have actually learned about them from reading the NYTimes the last few weeks.
That paper also unequivocally called the death panels bullshit “bullshit” (in so many words), from day one, so props to them.
InflatableCommenter
@Brick Oven Bill:
Yeah, no, Bill. Your pseudoracist fake spoofapalooza birther routine has run its course. There is no movie there. Unless you envision one in which your toothless hillbilly forebears are yucking it up about the state of the moonshine business.
Leelee for Obama
@InflatableCommenter: Look up the youtube of them do the bereaved nephew and the funeral director. It’s black comedy gold!
InflatableCommenter
@vacuumslayer:
Oh wow, you are one of those people. You don’t care what I think? Well, that hurts me deeply. I have an idea? Why don’t you go fuck yourself and the smug and ignorant horse you rode in on, you smart alecky piece of shit?
Brick Oven Bill
National Treasure III: The Birth Certificate could be further improved by an investigative scene in Kenya. There are plenty of opportunities to introduce more action and chases in this Kenyan scene. Think King Kong.
Copyright 2009.
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
Yes, that is probably my favorite comedy piece of all time. Maybe the funniest punch line I have ever heard. I am honored to run into somebody who knows about it.
Nutella
Ambinder, like most of the press, was once again proved to be completely wrong and very, very stupid. He will be rewarded for that.
Leelee for Obama
@InflatableCommenter: by the time they got to “and do God knows what with him”, I was almost in a coma!
Joel
@InflatableCommenter: “We’re fucked” is a common view shared by everyone, depending on the issue. I wouldn’t call it leftist anything.
InflatableCommenter
@Brick Oven Bill:
Oh yeah, Bill. “Investigative scenes in Kenya” are box office gold.
General Winfield Stuck
@Joel:
Some might even call it a light hearted figure of speech.
Kyle
“This is why I think our society may be irredeemably fucked.”
Because ‘War’ and ‘Stupid’ sells biggest. And what sells is all that counts.
Leelee for Obama
@Leelee for Obama: I am also partial to Larry Miller’s stages of drinking, and his age progression riff. The grandmother with the green bananas nearly did me in.
scav
wheee. Some people still acknowledge the existence of gravity, doesn’t mean that a solid majority won’t be willing to point to the bible as proof they can fly over the evidence of the bruised and swollen buttocks.
There’s the trend and there are the individual datapoints. I’m still betting on empirical evidence that yes, things can get crazier. There seems to be a hell of a half-life on the crazy.
JGabriel
@InflatableCommenter:
To the extent that the US has survived for 220 years, won WWII, used Breton Woods afterwards to make the dollar the de facto international monetary standard, and has the highest per capita income (though that is somewhat mooted by its ridiculous top-heavy distribution), yes, it’s been wildly successful.
But that does not mean we have never been fucked, are not fucked, and will not be fucked in the future.
Periods in which we have been fucked include The Civil War and The Great Depression. The current Great Recession, as it seems it will be called, is likely another one of those periods, though one hopes it will not be.
.
steve s
Right, because people were so much more rational back…um…uh…
InflatableCommenter
@Joel:
Really? Shared by everyone?
Wow, you have elevated convicing argument to new heights there, compadre.
If the American Experiment is truly doomed, then what are you doing here yukking it up? Shouldn’t you be out there planning for the End Time with the Rapturists?
We’re Doomed is just another version of scarem manipulation crap that has no value at all. The thing about America is that is presents each tableaux with an opportunity for self government. That opportunity is alive and well, despite the crapmongers’ cries to the contrary.
scav
@steve s: They’ve always been with us, they seem to be gaining. I don’t think this lot would have achieved space flight.
shelley matheis
InflatableCommenter
@JGabriel:
Blah blah blah. Your argument is that since we can’t prove the future, then any nonsense about the future is worthy.
Got it.
{ rolls eyes }
JGabriel
@InflatableCommenter:
Whoa, someone on Balloon Juice was a smart aleck?
On the internet?
Jesus Fuck, what is this world coming to?
.
scav
And there was a time when people didn’t insist they have their preconceptions re-enforced in schools and complain to the profs when it didn’t happen and, moreover, didn’t faint when store clerks didn’t greet them with the holiday greeting of their preference.
Joel
@InflatableCommenter: Are you sure you have the right guy?
Because, I’ve heard “we’re fucked” used in some form or another in reference to:
The economy
Abortion
Hip hop music
Steroids in baseball
etc..
Or as pointed out earlier:
It’s meaningless. I don’t think anyone who expresses that opinion is offering in-depth commentary on the “American Experiment”, beyond “I don’t like this situation as it stands”. It seems you agree. What are words, plus or minus Five Dollars?
Seebach
Jon Stewart got Betsy McCaughey to resign. Neat trick
General Winfield Stuck
I just work here, for less than that.
Patrick
@InflatableCommenter
Yeah, no. The American Experiment has proven wildly successful by any set of standards. That is, standards that include wide latitude for hideous problems and collossal fuckups, which are the trademark characteristics of human activity.
It has been successful. There’s no guarantee that it’s going to continue to be successful. I happen to believe that it is a testament to the system that we’ve made it this far, but it’s not as if the system over time nor the challenges to it over time are static. The threats to the system today are different and greater than they were in 1909.
I believe that the best case scenario long-term is Idiocracy. The worst case scenario is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I’d love to be wrong but when listen to what’s being said, look at the world around me and read what’s being written these days, it all seems like we’re just running out the clock while trying to convince ourselves that we are still playing to win.
I hope you end up being right and I hope I end up being wrong.
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter:
No, my argument was that we’ve been fucked in the past, that this may be another one of those times, and that, since history repeats itself, we will be fucked again.
Granted, it’s not the most original argument, but it is certainly more realistic than the Panglossian assumption that, since the US is wildly successful, it has never been fucked and never will be fucked.
I mean, there’s such a thing as taking optimism too far. Did “they will greet us as liberators” teach you nothing?
.
General Winfield Stuck
@JGabriel:
Number one question from Monks to be.
smiley
It’s very interesting to me that comment threads like this one become back-and-forths among a relatively small group of commenters. I engage in it too, btw. Reminds me of usenet.
I don’t tweet or participate in any other social networking group-related activities but I can only imagine that it’s even more common at those sites. Seems to me that the evidence from the blogosphere is that mass group think is one of its consequences (just check Memeorandom). I’m not going to speculate one way or the other but this could be either good or (in the case of group think) very bad for the political discourse. As a friend of mine once said in graduate school, someone should do a study.
InflatableCommenter
@Joel:
Ah, another convicer. If we have heard it, it must be worthy.
I am learning new things today.
Where does all this stupid come from?
Hey, I heard that the earth is 6000 years old. A majority of Americans seem to think that evolution is bunk.
Time for me to do a Reverse John Cole and become a Republican, I guess. I can’t go against solid arguments like these.
Brick Oven Bill
This is coming together nicely. In National Treasure III: The Birth Certificate, Gary Sinise will be a Freemason who is sent by John Voight to George Hussein Onyango Obama’s hut and introduces him to the craft. George Hussein Onyango Obama will then expand his hut and convert it to a Lodge of Freemasons which will grow and attract the leadership of the hospital system to its membership.
This will begin the unraveling of the secrets of the dusty hospital records, and the ultimate discovery of the real birth records by Gary Sinise.
In the final scene George Hussein Onyango Obama will face his half brother and state that:
‘Hey bro, I’ve been living in a hut. You are the President trying to convince people that you care about them AND I’M STILL LIVING IN A FRICKIN’ HUT! Brother’s keeper my ass. These brothers are my true keepers.’
Close with America the Beautiful.
Copyright 2009
General Winfield Stuck
@Brick Oven Bill:
I swear BoB, you git crazier by the day.
InflatableCommenter
@Patrick:
“It has been successful. There’s no guarantee that it’s going to continue to be successful.”
That is so obvious that it hurts to even read it.
So, how does that translate into “we’re fucked?”
Really, draw out the argument for me. I am all ears, I look like Ross Perot at this point.
Joel
@InflatableCommenter: What are you even arguing against? Follow the thread here.
Seebach
I’m guessing InflatableCommenter believes it’s not too late to do anything about global warming. Cute. I also guess America was designed to stand up to global catastrophe and unprecendented energy shortfalls.
InflatableCommenter
“I mean, there’s such a thing as taking optimism too far.”
Yeah, no. No disrespect, but I think I can decide for myself how far is too far for my optimism.
But I appreciate your concern. No, really.
BC
The verbal pretzels that the journalists and the Republicans use to avoid simply saying, “We were wrong and the DFHs were right. We will now go look at how we were so taken in by the bamboozlement, mend our ways, and show you that we have learned our lesson and can be trusted.” That acknowledgment would go a long way to helping them regain their reputations – but, no, they have to go whole hog and admit they MAY have misread Bush, but they did so for good and cogent reasons that any fair-minded person would agree were good and cogent reasons (the journalists) or double down on the stupidity and craziness and not admit that ANYTHING was their fault (the Republicans).
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter:
Yes, solid arguments like those from Brick Oven Bill are much more convincing.
.
InflatableCommenter
“I’m guessing InflatableCommenter believes it’s not too late to do anything about global warming. Cute. ”
Guessing? Why you guess about something regarding which I have not uttered a word?
If you want to know what I think about something, why not just ask me? If you don’t want to know, why are you talking about it?
John S.
He’s probably whacking off furiously while he comes up with these demented fairy tales…
JGabriel
@InflatableCommenter:
Aw, shucks, it’s nothing. It’s just that we care so much about you, Bro.
.
InflatableCommenter
@Joel:
Jesus, you are really bad at this.
InflatableCommenter
@JGabriel:
Yeah, that’s as funny as it is sincere, asshole.
You guys are all gathering around to defend the well-concieved “we’re fucked” view of the world?
This is too fucking funny, really.
Let me put it this way. You may be fucked. I, on the other hand, am not.
Sorry.
Seebach
If you want to know what I think about something, why not just ask me?
Okay, Pangloss. How does the next 50 years go down? Please include many references to the Infinite Wisdom of Our Godlike Founding Fathers and how America Alone will avoid all trouble due to God’s Providence.
Unnecessarily Sarcastic Commenter
Well, now I just don’t know what to think about the future state of our nation.
Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
InflatableCommenter
@Seebach:
My hunch would be that it will go down a lot like the last fifty. In zigs and zags, with good times and bad, and with America being in a predominant small group of nations that are shaping the world.
You?
steve s
Are you referring to the times when schools required kids to pray to jesus, didn’t allow the coloreds in, and arrested a guy for teaching evolution? Those times?
Yeah, things were so rational, back in the day.
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter:
A virgin, eh? I never would have guessed.
.
Joel
@InflatableCommenter: You’re right. When I stated that “we’re fucked” is a meaningless throwaway line, I probably should have thrown in some Capitalized Meaningless Bullshit to enforce my point. My fault. I’ll do better in the future.
Seebach
My hunch would be that it will go down a lot like the last fifty. In zigs and zags, with good times and bad, and with America being in a predominant small group of nations that are shaping the world.
Oh, wow. Nevermind. I thought you were serious. If you’re just a joke, then you’re not even worth engaging.
General Winfield Stuck
Your commentary is valued Vaccumslayer, at least by me.:)
InflatableCommenter
@Seebach:
Oh, and if you are going to reach for a reference you need to better than Pangloss. Saying that “we’re fucked” is a stupid statement for the very reasons that we don’t know that, nor do we have any direct evidence in our history to support it, is not “Pangloss,” or even close to it. I’ve been posting here for five years, there is nothing in my posting history to suggest a Panglossian view, whatever.
InflatableCommenter
@Seebach:
Really? Then you must have a really terrific answer to your own asinine question. What is it? What does your crystal ball see in the next fifty years?
Enlighten us. Unless your intent was to make this all about me, which appears to be the case.
Parole Officer Burke
What the hell is wrong with you people?
JGabriel
@InflatableCommenter:
Why, I’m sure it was no less sincere than your own comment, InflatableCommenter.
I’m dismayed that you would think otherwise.
.
InflatableCommenter
@Joel:
If it is a meaningless throwaway line, then why does DougJ use it eight times a week, mainly to take roll here and get all the hyenas to come out and bark it with him?
Do youi prefer that this place just be a wall of throwawy graffitti?
Okay, whatever.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m late to the party here, but I must say that not all journalists are incapable of drawing from point a to point b. And to tar the entire profession with the brush of the Villagers is a little bit much. I should note that there are apparently plenty of doctors, ceo’s and other assorted loons who can’t make those connections either.
InflatableCommenter
@JGabriel:
I’m sure you know that that means. Maybe someday you tell others.
asiangrrlMN
Meh. I never liked or trusted W. I didn’t buy his lies for one second. I was against the invasion before it ever happened. During his tenure, I hated that man because of the destruction he had brought to this country. It had nothing to do with my gut. Now, I have no feelings for him other than I would really like to see him in prison oranges (Cheney more so).
As for Ambinder, I have a little bit of advice for you. You fucked up. Admit it with no add-ons. Like this: “I bought every single goddamn lie W. and his posse fed me, and I fucked up.”
That’s it. That’s all. End of story. The fact that you continue to put the onus on DFH only adds insult to injury. I hate non-apology apologies.
asiangrrlMN
@smiley: Once that happens, I try to walk away because there is no point after that.
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter (responding to Seebach): :
Hey! That attack should have been directed at me!
Oh, sure, Seebach also called you ‘Pangloss’, but I called you ‘Panglossian’, first.
I feel wounded and forgotten, like a motherless child.
.
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
I don’t think I ever heard anything funnier.
Didn’t Elaine May die recently?
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
You know, this is what it all boils down to. I’d have a lot more respect for any high-dollar journalist who would just admit once in a while that they got duped. Judith Miller, Ambinder, whoever. Just say, “You know what, I was punked, and I should have done better, but it happened. I promise I’ll do better in the future and you can keep me to that.”
I think that’s one of the biggest credibility issues these days. Nobody in journalism says they screwed up unless it’s something relatively minor like screwing up the facts in an obituary (and yes, I know that’s pretty big, but in the scheme of buying Bush’s bullshit, it’s pretty small potatoes).
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter:
Are you really that dumb?
Ooo-kay, let’s spell it out for you then. It means: you can dish it out, but you can’t take it, asshole.
.
InflatableCommenter
@JGabriel:
Really. Well, that truly convinces me that you are not full of shit.
“We’re not fucked” is Panglossian. Amazing. Seriously.
Anything short of snary doomalicious horsemanure, which passes for the standard DougJ punchline now — Doug’s “Oh Wilbur” line — is Panglossian.
Got it. Really, I am learning so much that my head is melting.
Joel
@InflatableCommenter:
DougJ basically cited Marcy Wheeler calling Ambinder out for being an irresponsible asshole. Wheeler is right, and DougJ was right to highlight her. For the record, Ambinder apologized in full on his blog today.
Then he said, “we’re fucked”. I frankly don’t give a shit. You’re making a straw man argument.
InflatableCommenter
@JGabriel:
Really. Well, at this point you are at the “your mother wears combat boots” stage of your dissertation. I have no idea what you are talking about.
I can dish it out, and I can take it a lot longer and better than you can, and if you want to prove it out one way or the other, then let’s go. Im rested up from a long vacation from this dungheap and ready to rock and roll, my worthy competitor. With my large power drill I shall open your head and drain out your gangrenous cranial contents.
InflatableCommenter
@Joel:
How much does Doug pay you to be his lawyer?
Can I get in on that?
InflatableCommenter
“I frankly don’t give a shit.”
Careful, the walls have ears here.
Leelee for Obama
@InflatableCommenter: Not according to Wiki.
InflatableCommenter
“Are you really that dumb?”
If I am, how would I know?
bellatrys
@Comrade Darkness:
Why republicans and neocon thinktanks want so hard for the u.s. to be a banana republic is the question we really need to be asking.
Well, I personally think it’s partly due to a romanticized view of TEH PASST in which it was not a matter of constant peasant revolts and parasitic aristos alternating between clueless and terrorized the way it is in Froissart etc but rather the happy servile serfs and their benevolent Lords & Ladies Bountiful all living in a pastoral idyll; but then you have to ask, *why* that particular romanticized view? why the choice to ignore *real* history in favor of it? which just pushes the question back a little farther.
But I honestly don’t think there’s a mental *capacity* to imagine what it would be like to live in a Brazil-type environment 24/7, especially for those not rich enough to have their own gated castles and helicopter pads, based on listening to my still-wingnut kinfolk and recalling what it was like to be in the Movement. That’s for the rank-and-file, as well as the upper crusts, who have admitted that any pretense of it being to promote the general welfare was just that, that “compassionate conservativism” was just to fool the more tender-hearted of their rubes…
They *say* a “rising tide lifts all boats” but they don’t actually *want* that, given their opposition to anything that would raise anyone else’s boats.
InflatableCommenter
@Leelee for Obama:
Huh, for some reason I had it in my head that she died. Im glad to see that I must have been wrong.
bellatrys
Also, Scandinavia is not exactly the best example of a pure Capitalist Paradise, from what I hear from Scandinavian bloggers…
burnspbesq
@InflatableCommenter:
But … but … what about “Thank You Mask Man?”
tc125231
Ambinder IS a sloppy, self-serving asshole. This conclusion can be reached empirically.
One can’t quote Kurt Vonnegut too often about such people:
“”It’s still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own.”
“Sure—provided somebody tells him when he’s young enough that there is a Money River, that there’s nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. ‘Go where the rich and powerful are,’ I’d tell him, ‘and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You’ll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.’ “
Ash Can
@Leelee for Obama: He didn’t even come up with that himself. I was seeing that saying on buttons and t-shirts in the local DFH bookstore a long time before there was a Dennis Miller on the national scene.
InflatableCommenter
@burnspbesq:
That’s a line I have to say to my boss about once a day.
Hey, gotta go. My stents are acting up. Some people here are going to feel bad when they realize that they caused a heart patient to have an ischemic attack, which the best of all possible coronary events under the circumstances. Heh.
handy
@arguingwithsignposts:
These people have no interest in contrition because they were the ones partially responsible for putting W in the WH to begin with. My brother-in-law is still convinced to this day that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet.
And we can thank our high minded friends like Ambinder, Fred Hiatt, Maureen Dowd and other reliably “liberal” members of our serious press corps for this and other assorted nonsense.
Dear God I’m sounding like Bob Somerby. Lord have mercy.
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter:
Sigh.
It’s always about size, or power, or drilling, for some people.
Will no one think of energy efficiency or foreplay?
.
Scott
You know, this is what it all boils down to. I’d have a lot more respect for any high-dollar journalist who would just admit once in a while that they got duped. Judith Miller, Ambinder, whoever. Just say, “You know what, I was punked, and I should have done better, but it happened. I promise I’ll do better in the future and you can keep me to that.”
I don’t know — a lot of people who weren’t Elite Journalists Who Know More Than The Peons Do were able to see through the Bush/Cheney bullshit, presented copious evidence, argued their cases convincingly… and the Elite Journalists Who Know More Than The Peons Do generally responded with “Who cares about you? You’re a Dirty Fucking Hippie, and Dick Cheney calls me by my first name.”
They didn’t just believe the lies — they were actively promoting lies that they almost certainly knew were untrue. The proper response would be for the newspapers and news channels to apologize to their viewers and readers, detail how their reporters and pundits worked to dishonestly mislead the nation, and to then fire all of the Elite Journalists Who Know More Than The Peons Do.
arguingwithsignposts
@Scott:
Elite Journalists Who Know More Than The Peons Do. = EJWKMTPD? :)
InflatableCommenter
@JGabriel:
It’s all about the NiMH batteries, know what I mean?
Leelee for Obama
@Ash Can: Then he was an asshole before I knew he was an asshole. Thanks, Ash, I hate giving someone credit they don’t deserve.
Leelee for Obama
@Scott: I don’t believe anything till I see on McClatchy. Those guys got it right, when everybody else was tongue-bathing those bastards.
Scott
@arguingwithsignposts: Aww, we have so many acronyms to remember already. It’s hard enough to remember DFH and IOKIYAR and LOL.
Maybe something shorter? Like Future Junk-Punched Douche-Bozos?
John PM
I feel compelled to respond to BOB since I mentioned the National Treasure movies. Some advise:
1. Putting copyright at the bottom of your synopses does not provide you with federal copyright protection; you would need to register your screenplay in order to prevent others from stealing it.
2. Having said that, I do not think anyone will want to steal your idea; Republican movies tend to do poorly, e.g. An American Carol.
3. To really make the idea work, you need to have a scene where Nick Cage and his new love interest, Sarah Palin, save John Voight from one of Obama’s death panels. I mean, I can’t believe you forgot the love interest; typical Republican mistake.
Also, thank you to the person who mentioned BOB’s hillbilly relatives; I can’t believe I forgot that Jon Voight was in “Deliverance.”
katiemc
@Brick Oven Bill:
HAHAHA I for one think this is pretty darn funny BOB.
handy
Why do you hate freedom?
Makewi
I can’t help myself.
Oh please, in the highest grossing movie of all time Titanic, all the poor people are dead at the end of the movie.
arguingwithsignposts
@Scott:
Don’t forget IGMFU – My t-shirt is going to say: “John Galt says IGMFU!” I wonder if the wing-nuts will get that it’s a putdown?
Shygetz
Shorter Armbinder: “I didn’t know, therefore it was unknowable, ipso ergo facto sum no take-backs.”
It’s all about their ego. If Armbinder hasn’t figured it out, then anyone who did figure it out must have just lucked into the right conclusion.
Comrade Darkness
Ambinger HAD to hate on the early Bush haters. The early Bush haters knew the boy prez was an incompetent doofus and hated the damage they knew he was going to wrought. For Ambinger to recognize the incompetence behind the hate would have required self awareness.
cbear
@John PM: “I can’t believe I forgot that Jon Voight was in “Deliverance.”
Yeah. I watched the film again the other night and was startled to realize the “you shore do have a purty mouth/squeal like a pig” scenes, which were so shocking 30 years ago, are today just normal greeting behavior among Republicans like Voight.
bellatrys
This is the funniest bumper sticker I’ve seen around lately – the one a couple streets over with the Cal Tech Alumni plate that said “I Pay My Taxes To Avoid Going To Prison, Not To Pay For Your Big Ideas” was just sad by comparison.
(To fully get the hilarity of someone with that sticker in a parking lot in the Millyard in Manchester NH, you have to understand that a) although we have rather sucky public services and overall infrastructure maintenance due to the fact that we have way too many libertarians here going way back who don’t want to pay for anything even though they love to complain about how come shit’s broke all the time, *nevertheless* we have a pretty robust infrastructure in terms of highway maintenance especially in the winter down in this part of the state *and* this is the bump in the road that tripped up the Free State Projectionists, who moved up here from points west and south and discovered that as far as they’re concerned we have the full dress rehearsal for the Fimbul Winter for more than half the year, so they didn’t actually move up into the uninhabited northern part of the state and take over the vacant land because, well, there’s *reasons* it’s uninhabited up there having to do with snowfall, unmaintained roads (no towns, no govts, nobody plows!) and the lack of arable land only being a part of it.
Instead they stayed down in the thickly-settled part of the state and get together at restaurants (that are in the middle of towns with lights and streets and cops and all) regularly and don’t tip the waitresses and whine about how much it sucks living in civilization and how betrayed they feel by New Hampshirites not living up to our “live free or die” boast since we won’t plow their neighborhoods for nothing and won’t let them not feed the umpteen horses they dragged here from Colorado and leave them out in the snow – seriously, the Free Staters are the most thin-skinned, whiny-ass bunch of crybabies to ever infest the comments section of a local paper. It’s like they have no idea how to take what they dish out to us DFHs, almost!
And the Millyard is not only the past site of generations of labour organization and struggles in this city, it’s a present place of cubicle farms and office spaces and so forth, meaning that this guy has done about the farthest thing from “Going Galt” possible. It’s like someone claiming to have gone off exploring unknown bits of tropical rain forest as they put away their lawnmower – and not joking about it.)
Mike in NC
Rich Lowry and Bill Kristol will totally bankroll this movie as long as they cast Angelina Jolie — nutcase Jon Voight’s girl — in the roll of Sarah Palin.
bellatrys
@Shygetz:
Shorter Armbinder: “I didn’t know, therefore it was unknowable, ipso ergo facto sum no take-backs.”
ROFL! & yup (sigh…)
Veritas78
The Atlantic tried a weasly renewal thing with my credit card but it didn’t work, then they tried jacking up the rate in a series of guilt-laden postal pitches, but screw ’em. I enjoy throwing away their billings for issues I never ordered. With luck, they’ll pay Ambinder the same way I am now paying them. Let their new neo-con friends subsidize their drivel.
mapaghimagsik
How did it go from George Carlin?
“We’re all fucked. It helps to know”
Mikeg
Irredeemably Fucked could be a great band name.
Mike G
I’d have a lot more respect for any high-dollar journalist who would just admit once in a while that they got duped.
Climbing the slippery pole and maintaining power-position as a high-dollar Village journalist depends on upholding these conceits:
That they are knowledgeable experts on everything they write about; and
They are ‘important’ because they, among few others, have ‘access’ to DC politicians; and
There is something worthwhile and valuable in stenographing the pronouncements of politicians in media outlets.
Those not careerist and mercenary enough to eagerly perpetuate these fictional constructs never make it into the sainted circle to begin with.
Admitting that their politician sources lied their asses off and used them like cheap whores, and that they gullibly took the bait, undermines their sense of ‘importance’ in the Washington power structure, the value of their ‘access’ to liars and the worthiness of repeating their lies in the media, and their failure to detect and uncover the lies makes a mockery of their claims to expertise.
They would basically be admitting their and their media organ’s patent hollowness as a vessel of trusted information and authority in the show-and-tell jungle of Washington. Most likely they would be made a scapegoat by their organization and would probably be risking their career unless they made such admission as part of a corporate herd.
Most of these people, with the exception of a few rarely talented individuals, must be craven careerists and corporate politicians to get where they are, and admitting you were duped is an unacceptable show of weakness in a world where substantial failure is never to be admitted lest it puncture the conceit of organizational authority.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mike in NC:
Angelina used to wear a small vile of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood around her neck while they were married. How hot is that, and moderately scary/
Patrick
@InflatableCommenter @ 185:
Sorry to be such a late follow up, work called. Love these late Friday “gotta have it” times.
I think that we’ve made it this far because, while we’ve faced hard times and plenty of challenges before as a nation, we’re at a unique juncture right now in our history where we’re facing some incredibly challenging issues that require a cultural consensus to deal with successfully. At the same time, I’d argue that we are incapable of working up a national cultural consensus on anything more contentious than “kittens are cute” or “apple pie tastes good” due to two main factors: Finally having to pay the bill for 30-odd years of conservatives poisoning the public well against government and so much of our media devoted to the idea of balance instead of the idea of reporting.
Things like getting serious about fighting wars, dealing with the reality of climate change, changing the broken system of health care that we are muddling through right now and trying to figure out how to rebuild an economy that will not be driven by bubbles are the big ticket items that I see right now. All of these things require some degree of cultural consensus in order to change. I’d argue that cultural consensus on these issues would look something like “shit, we’ve hosed our military trying to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan at once and we’ve got to do something about it” or “wow, anthropomorphic climate change is going to seriously wreck this planet and we’ve got to act yesterday to change our ways”. There is no consensus on either of those issues, though. There’s no cultural consensus on any of these issues and without a cultural consensus, our political system cannot deal with these issues.
I simply don’t think we get by all of these challenges. I see it as a perfect storm of events that will most likely victimize our system of government because it is not equipped to handle so many things out of balance at one time.
Janet Strange
@Leelee for Obama: I was pretty sure that it was Florynce Kennedy who said it in the early ’70’s (I’m old enough to remember it), so I did some Googling . . . . It was from her book Abortion Rap pub. 1971. So now you can give proper credit next time it comes up.
Kennedy was awesome. Check out some of her other quotes.
LondonLee
Jon Voight was also in the ‘liberal’ Vietnam film ‘Coming Home’ with Jane Fonda. He won an Oscar for it. I guess his politics have changed since then.
Trivia: Voight’s brother is the legenday pop songwriter Chip Taylor who wrote ‘Wild Thing’ amongst many others.
Leelee for Obama
@Janet Strange: Thanks, Janet. Those are awesome quotes, and I’m glad I don’t have to defend that putz anymore. Now I can say he’s a plagiarist! WIN!
bago
BHAHAHAHA. Ambinder proves that he just doesn’t get it. He just copies and pastes a Sarah Palin facebook entry, calls it journalism, and moves on.
tripletee
@Makewi:
All right, I’ll admit it – this made me laugh.
tc125231
@Makewi: Actally funny. Good show.
HyperIon
@vacuumslayer: If I’m not mistaken, it’s ThymeZone (aka ppgAZ) you’re talking to. If so, remember *he* doesn’t give a shit about what *you* think either. ;+0
Mike P
Ambinder is getting blasted from everywhere right now. From his Twitter feed:
“Next, Atrios’s WOW. Then Frank Rich’s example of how I enabled torture. Then Olbermann’s WPITW. Then a Maddow report about my finances.”
Damn!
Steeplejack
@John PM:
At first I thought you said “since Anaconda,” and I was thinking, hmm, I do have a soft spot for his very small role as Ben Stiller’s father in Zoolander.
“Daddy, I’ve got the black lung!”
“You were down there one day! We’ve been down there 30 years!”
Something like that.
But you said “since Midnight Cowboy“!
Aw, c’mon, Voight has had a long, respectable career: i>Deliverance, Conrack, The Odessa File, Coming Home (he won an Oscar for that). That’s just off the top of my head. He has been on a shallow downward glide path for a while, but, hey, he’s 70 years old now–well into “Get off my lawn!” territory. Because movie stars tend to age better than real people, we sometimes forget they can get screwy as they age, just like real people.
. . . Just checked IMDB and saw that Voight was nominated for an Oscar as recently as 2002 (for Ali).
Don’t construe this as a defense of Voight’s descent into nuttery, but he’s a good actor.
P.S. Also liked his small role as the fixer in Heat (an all-around great movie).
bill
John always seems to refer to liberals as Hippies! I am not a hippie, I’m a Punk Rocker!
harlana pepper
@Steeplejack: Jon Voigt got his start playing a gay male prostitute on the big screen and now he is a spokesperson for the right. I would say “wow, how ironic!” right about here but, well, ah jeez. Anyway, I always liked him. Sorry to see he’s descended into howler territory.
Taylor
Bellatrys:
Best. New Hampshire. Quote. Ever.