Not sure how many of you caught Chuck Grassley being “interviewed” by John Roberts this morning, but it was yet another journalistic failure:
ROBERTS: Senator, of course, the president has got this speech to a joint session of Congress tomorrow evening. He kind of laid down the groundwork for that, yesterday’s speech to the AFL-CIO in which he took on people like yourself who have been critical of his plans for health care, saying what have you done lately? Let’s listen to what the president said.
GRASSLEY: Yes.
(begin video)
OBAMA: What are you going to do? What’s your answer? What’s your solution? And you know what? They don’t have one. (link to video)
(end video)
ROBERTS: Senator, the president charges, you don’t have a solution. So let me ask you now, what is your solution to health care reform? What’s your plan?
GRASSLEY: Well, don’t forget, I’ve been working the last three or four months with Senator Baucus one-on-one and then later with a group of six to come up with a bipartisan plan. And it seems to me that the bipartisan approach is the best. And if you look at the president during his campaign, he wanted to be post partisan, and it seems to me like those statements yesterday were very partisan, contrary to what he promised in the last campaign.
But I would be working towards a bipartisan effort. And if we don’t get a bipartisan effort, then, of course, there are so many things in what I’ve been working towards that could easily go into my plan or a Republican plan and then don’t forget that there’s already four Republican plans out there introduced by other members of our caucus. But because we’re the minority party, you at CNN and other places haven’t given our plans much publicity because I suppose we’re in the minority and you want to help the president so much so that I hope that if we – if we don’t have a bipartisan plan, that you’ll start giving some attention to the Republican plans that are out there.
ROBERTS: Right. Well, I can assure you, Senator Grassley, it’s not our intention to help any politician, president, you, anyone else. We’re just merely telling people what is out there and we will redouble our efforts to illuminate Republican plans.
Now I am just a lowly blogger, and not a highly trained and well paid journalist, but my gut instinct after Grassley whined for two minutes there about bipartisanship and media bias would have been to ask: “That’s great. But what exactly is your plan?” I, however, am not John Roberts, who felt the need to apologize. That must be a new interviewing technique they are teaching the professionals these days.
At any rate, I guess we did learn one thing, and in a roundabout way, Chuck Grassley did tell us the truth while whining to Roberts. The truth is, they don’t have a plan. At all.
SenyorDave
First. Normally I don’t like posters who do the “First” thing, but I feel it is more substantive than anything Grassley has to say about HCR (or anything else other than ethanol subsidies)
arguingwithsignposts
Only slightly off-topic, politico’s Washington social gossip site.
BC
Exactly – Roberts could have followed up several ways:
1. Mention that Grassley has been bragging to his homefolks that he is only in negotiations to keep any bill from passing out of Senate Finance Committee
2. Ask him for the outlines of the Republican plan
But instead he apologizes because CNN has not publicized (“illuminate”?) the Republican plan.
JK
Grassley was also on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning from 8:30 – 9:00 lying thru his teeth.
OT
C-SPAN is now showing George H.W. Bush speaking to school students in 1991.
Ambergris
If this kind of media sheepishness prevails, the attacking team will always win.
JK
John Roberts is just a hairdo with a tv show.
SpotWeld
Said the guy being interviewed on CNN?!
PeakVT
Grassley’s plan is to sprinkle every American with bipartisan pixie dust.
Keith
CNN would give more time to the plan itself if Grassley would talk about said plan rather than spend his minutes complaining (yet again) about how the MSM doesn’t talk about what he wants them to talk about.
JK
@Ambergris:
Calling John Roberts’ interview an example of media sheepishness is an insult to sheep. Sheep are more agressive than that. I’d say John Roberts was more like a potted plant.
Leelee for Obama
I find it remarkable that King defends the media, instead of saying-Senator, if you folks have a plan, what is it? I read Sully’s article last night, and there are some things that bear looking at. But, you don’t hear them talking about anything but what they don’t want. The Party of No #?????, needs a really big table.
El Cid
I’m askeert. Neal Booooortz just told me in clean, over-enunciated consonants that every day Obama represents a deeper and graver threat to this nation, and a closer step to the destruction of our economic liberties. I must go pee.
General Winfield Stuck
Shorter Grassely– We won’t kill grandma, what more plan you need/wingnut
Leelee for Obama
@Leelee for Obama: Sorry, John Roberts, not King. Interchangeable, though.
DanF
Roberts should go back to doing Heavy Metal music television. What a fool.
GReynoldsCT00
“But because we’re the minority party, you at CNN and other places haven’t given our plans much publicity because I suppose we’re in the minority and you want to help the president so much so that I hope that if we – if we don’t have a bipartisan plan, that you’ll start giving some attention to the Republican plans that are out there.”
Jesus what a word salad of avoidance of actually even having a shred of plan beyond obstruction, hell he put the salad in teh blender. The MSM is useless.
JK
@Leelee for Obama:
They’re all interchangeable and all equally failures as journalists.
cleek
This just in: local man learns nothing from television segment!
JK
C-SPAN is right now re-airing its half hour segment with Grassley on healthcare reform.
John Cole
Self-congratulation warning:
I’m proud of the title of this post.
Brachiator
I miss Ted Koppel.
“With all due respect, Senator, you didn’t answer my question. Exactly what is the Republican plan for healthcare reform?”
El Cid
@John Cole: “For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favor of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading..” Pliny the Elder. Or Michelle Bachmann. One of the two.
Senator Grassley
My plan is the bipartisanship thing, but if at least 80 U.S. Senators won’t vote for it then it won’t work and shouldn’t pass. Also, even if Baucus and the president accept my ideas, I still won’t vote for the thing if my very bipartisan Republican colleagues won’t vote for it.
MP
No wine references, please…it’s a painful reminder I’m on a low carb diet that does *not* include alcohol. It’s been doubly tough over the last week with all the wingnut stupidity about Obama’s speech to kids in school.
Glidwrith
Having caught an op-ed from the San Diego Union Tribune a few weeks ago, their so-called plans involved recycling McCain’s $5000 per family plan while taxing health benefits, deregulating insurance companies across state lines and the author actually saying that the “monopolies” of Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare really need to be opened up to the insurance companies to bring down costs. Of course, the Rethugs don’t want to talk about their plans…..
Leelee for Obama
I meant to mention I like the title, but I got side-tracked by something.
Their orders at restaurants always seem to start with “I want some whiiinnnee!”
TR
That was a classic Republican move. The media pushes back a little, and they parry with a cry of “liberal bias!” and shut the conversation down.
Bulworth
@JK:
Yeah, but it’s all about the subtext. Or something.
JK
@Brachiator:
YES, I miss Ted Koppel as well. He’s a 1,000 times better than the 3 stooges combined who now co-anchor Nightline.
I don’t remember the actual wording Koppel used because it’s been a few years, but he once devoted a Nightline broadcast to Dick Cheney during which he subtly criticized Tim Russert for his softball interview with Darth Vader.
Demo Woman
My rep Tom Price has a plan. Allow competition across state lines and 800 billion in tax cuts. Blue Cross will be happy since they won’t have to have so many regional companies.
As far as the 800 billion in tax cuts, Price said it’s paid for.
Josh Marshall has a great article about the opinion piece in the WSJ about lowering health care costs.
JK
@Bulworth:
Michelle Malkin can take that subtext and shove it. In a sane society, Malkin would be waiting tables or cleaning out wastebaskets. The fact that this malignant media carcinogen is a wingnut superstar shows just how depraved our society has become.
de stijl
Grassley (and the Republicans) do have a plan:
Step1
– Say “No! Hell, no!” to anything resembling health care reform
– Pray that unemployment remains high and the economy doesn’t rebound too strongly
– Engage in ludicrous monkeyshines like claiming that speech encouraging students to remain in school and study hard is socialistic indoctrination, etc.
– Politely look the other way when their rabid base screams “Commie!” and “Fascist!” otherwise engages in so not-too-subtle race-baiting
Step 2
– ?
Step 3
– Republican electoral resurgence in 2010 mid-terms!
Now the party in opposition party always tries to denigrate the party in power and to stymie their political plans and to limit their legislative gains.
They should.
It’s necessary and healthy to a great degree.
But the Republicans are very close to letting the crazy wingnut fringe of their party run the asylum. Between the Death Panels and the Birthers and the Tenthers, and the Tea Partiers showing up at townhalls with weapons to demonstrate their opposition to all things Obama and anything Democratic while not very ironically wearing the same t-shirt that Timothy McVeigh was wearing when he was captured….
I’m not a “natural” Democrat by any means – socially libertarian mixed with a fiscally responsible bent along with an aversion to war where at all possible. I have a great respect for Republicans of the Rockefeller mold. I used to go out of my way to try to balance my ballot across the parties by voting for a token handful of not-insane Republicans when I was younger, but it got to be harder and harder to pull the lever for any Team Red candidate.
The natural outcome of the Nixonian Southern Strategy is killing the sane part of the Republican party.
For a brief window in the beginning of year I actually thought to myself, “Hey, maybe to some small degree we are becoming a post-racial society.” I was a naive fool.
I may not happily vote for every Democratic candidate, but I will not vote for another Republican the rest of my days.
Emma
When I was in the UK last I watched one reporter in the BBC morning news interview aome government boffin or another. And at one point, the guy said something and the reporter came back with: “But that’s not quite true, now, isn’t it?” and followed up with data. I sat there with tears of joy on my face.
Rick Taylor
Seems to me journalists could learn a lot by studying Katie Couric’s interview of Sarah Palin. What she did ought to have been completely unexceptional; she asked follow up questions when Palin didn’t answer. What books exactly have you read? How exactly does living in Alaska give you foreign policy experience? On the one hand, it hardly seems like it deserves a remark, but most journalists don’t seem to do that.
El Cid
@Emma: I listen to the BBC World Service, particularly the twice daily (2 editions) of NewsHour, and they don’t take any crap from any government or corporate spokesperson.
It’s always, “Now, Mr. X, you’ve just said that Y’s official position is Z. However, 5 different reports available from the UN, etc., etc., directly contradict your claims. Surely people will weigh these independent sources more heavily. How do you respond?”
Zifnab
@Rick Taylor:
That bitch. She was totally out to get poor Sarah. And no one even watched the interview. The only reason Sarah Palin looked bad was because the evil communists at SNL made fun of her.
Rick Taylor
“Well, senator, I’m sorry we in the media haven’t done a better job publicizing the Republican plan. But I’m going to make up for it right here right now; you have the floor. What is your plan?”
General Winfield Stuck
@JK:
I will steal this.
kay
This is a debate between conservative Democrats, Democrats, and liberal Democrats.
Conservative Democrats are filling in for Republicans, who abandoned the whole field, to chase imaginary threats like school speeches and death panels.
There’s enough play just among Democrats to make this “bi-partisan”, ideologically. Conservative Democrats filled the void left by moderate Republicans. It was bound to happen. The Blue Dogs are ambitious, and there was this huge, gaping hole that was just begging for GOP-lite filler.
Media are completely baffled by this turn of events, but that’s what happened. It may take media several months to figure it out, but by then we’ll have a health care bill, and they can try to figure out what happened, and what’s in the bill.
Comrade Mary
J.D. Roberts and his hair (and Jeanne Bekker of Fashion TV) being pwned by The Clash on The New Music in 1979.
He peaked here.
SiubhanDuinne
@John Cole 11:02 am
In vhino veritas.
Splitting Image
On behalf of Canadians in general and Torontonians in particular, I’d like to apologize for inflicting John Roberts on you all.
The sad thing is that he was a better journalist back in the CityTV days. Back then he would challenge his interviewees.
ironranger
Roberts totally rolled over. An apology for asking what the R plan is! Incredible. Now that’s some awesome journalism, no doubt highly motivated by a big, fat paycheck to be a worm.
Svensker
The Republicans do so have a plan. It is to do nothing. They implemented that plan during the Bush years.
Comrade Dread
And it wouldn’t be that hard to throw out some ideas from the simple to the absurd. Off the top of my head…
1. Grants, tax breaks, scholarships to encourage more students to enter medical school
2. Direct subsidies to create a network of free clinics in poorer areas to treat the uninsured and immigrant population. Provide some tax breaks to companies that start their own clinics to do the same.
3. Enact proposed medicare reforms to save some money.
4. Create (or expand) government regulatory agencies to oversee insurance companies and prevent cancellation of policies in good standing due to illness.
There. No direct public option.
r€nato
This is an area where the insurance companies have somewhat of a point, or at least a built-in incentive to dump ill people. Very healthy young people generally don’t get health insurance if they don’t have to. Yet it’s the premiums for healthy people which help pay for bills of sick people.
Too many people filing claims + not enough healthy people paying premiums = losses
So if we want to keep the current system but eliminate rescission (or at least greatly reduce it), it seems to me that we have to require everyone to have health insurance.
Of course, the best way to do this is to just put everyone in a single risk pool, that is, COVER ALL AMERICANS WITH UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.
In one swell foop, you eliminate the need for rescission as well as the profit motive which incents health insurance carriers to dump people who need costly treatment.
This, of course, provides effective health care but does nothing to enrich congressmen nor health insurance CEOs. Therefore it is a non-starter. God Bless America.
BombIranForChrist
So, Roberts is worthless, but I will say this …
If you are whining, you are losing. Grassley does not come off very well in this. If a big part of winning the health care battle is winning independents, Grassley is losing. He sounds like a schmuck.
Leelee for Obama
@de stijl: To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Thus, conscience doth make Democrats of us all.” I’ve written about this before, but I don’t understand how anyone who cares a whit about their fellow citizens, or, really, themselves, can vote Republican since Teddy Roosevelt, or Ike.
Leelee for Obama
@BombIranForChrist: What do you mean, sounds like, Keemo Sabe?
Rpm
Wow, Grassley had a prime opportunity to subvert the liberal media and get out all the wonderful republican ideas….just slip’em right in there ….and he didn’t. Dumb or no plan, either way not much of a leader. Not much of a leader applies to far to many of ours lately.
ericblair
@de stijl: Now the party in opposition party always tries to denigrate the party in power and to stymie their political plans and to limit their legislative gains.
They should.
It’s necessary and healthy to a great degree.
See, that’s the thing. You can have an opposition party that does this, or you can have bipartisanship. Not both. Trying to have both means the minority party runs the show, which means that elections have no meaning.
In parliamentary systems that I’m familiar with, sure, opposition parties oppose. But nobody has to try to get them on board to pass bills; in fact, if the majority loses a vote on most legislation it’s considered a vote of non-confidence and the government may be dissolved to call new elections. As a minority, you’re expected to bitch, but you are definitely out of power until the next election.
Mike in NC
According to the wingnuts, that was “gotcha” journalism. Imagine the impertinence to ask a politician what they read! No, only polite stenography is acceptable to our corporate media hacks.
Cruel Jest
Meanwhile, deep in the labyrinth, a wingnut writes, “Grassley just schooled! that libtard Roberts on the Republican Plan. How that moron Obama can say we have no plan is just like the Holocaust.”
I’m thinking about super-gluing my palm to my face. Just to save time.
nepat
The problem with our television “journalists” is not that they’re biased; it’s that they’re ignorant. They just don’t do any preparations (hair and make-up don’t count). This is why they are continuously and without interruption rolled by Republicans. They don’t have any information to fall back on. Consequently they can be knocked over with a feather. Or a talking point. This is also why God invented the remote control.
Elie
Y’all have to consider that part of what the MSM achieves is
#1 – they know we will propagate the highlights of whatever is said — particularly the idiotic stuff. WE in effect, help spread the bull
and # 2
Our outrage helps increase the buzz around what many times would be a boring show for many of these second tier types like Roberts.
So just know, our outrage, as evidenced in this string of comments, says to them that they are doing everything just about right. They also know # 3 — that we will correct any mistakes in information, sparing them the effort…
Am I cynical?
Yes, I am.
Question is: How do we change this equation and put them back into responsible journalism versus playing the sensationalism?
I don’t know.
serge
“In whino veritas, eh, Brute?” Grassley has come to epitomize the very definition of ‘right-wing tool.’
If you spun him around, a la pinata time, he’d have no idea what planet he was on. He’s a joke, a great only-in-America joke. He pretends to be a decent, honorable person and the good people of Iowa buy it.
Look, I’ve got DeMint and Graham. The former is a mean, spiteful son of a godforsaken bitch, and we know this. We hate him for it, of course, but we’re under no delusions concerning his character. Graham’s a closeted gay man who one can see doing something decent politically if he would just come out and tell the truth. He won’t, so fuck him. We know enough from the past to despise him anyway.
Grassley and Baucus are those under-the-radar freaks that need to be called out for what they truly are. Republican freaks.
gex
Isn’t this proof enough that Grassley has no plan? His main complaint, when asked, was that the media was not highlighting Republican health care reform plans. Well, dumbass, you were just asked about your plan on air by the media. Why not use that time to talk about your plan instead of complaining that your plan doesn’t get talked about?
I wish Roberts would have said something like, “Respectfully, Senator Grassely, I just asked you if you have a plan and gave you an opening to discuss it. Instead of talking about your plan, you attacked the media for not covering your plan, meanwhile an opportunity to talk about your plan goes unheeded. It’s almost as though you don’t even want to talk about your plan. I’ve just asked you about it, you wish it would get media coverage, so now’s the time to talk about it. What is it?”
jl
Roberts is the dull-witted ex VJ who reads Human Events, and told Cheney he wants to get Obama’s evil plans to degrade the nation ‘out there’ Am I right?
And he is an immigrant from the communist state of Canada. Tell Dobbs, see if he will start a campaign to send this pollution to our purity of essence back where he belongs to the Canadian menace to our north.
Why is this gooftard still allowed on the air as a journalist? Oh, right, because our corporate media is complete incompetent and corrupt.
Luthe
[quote]Very healthy young people generally don’t get health insurance if they don’t have to.[/quote]
Very healthy young people generally don’t get health insurance because they can’t get jobs with benefits these days. The only reason I have insurance right now is because I work a union job that gives you insurance after a year. Otherwise, I would be continuing my two-plus year streak of not having coverage at all and paying $180 a month for my anti-depressants.
It’s not that we don’t want it. It’s that all the old folks with tanking 401ks won’t retire and let everyone else move up in the world.
J
Emma 33, El Cid 35.
The great master of this was (may still be) John Humphrys. It was bliss to hear him on radio 4, which I could receive in Germany during what is always called in Britain the ‘run-up’ to the Gulf war.
The abject boot licking sycophancy which is the norm in our press culture serves us very poorly.
Chad N Freude
@John Cole:
I think you didn’t read Grassley’s statement carefully enough.
I mean, how much more specific can you get?
The problem with the newsers on TV (and largely in print, too) is that they don’t think about an issue as more than a competition between the parties, and they don’t pay enough attention to blather when they hear it. So how can they possibly persist in asking for substance when they don’t even see that it’s not there?
Chad N Freude
I see that similar points have been made upthread. Apologies for being a late-comer and serial repeater.
Chad N Freude
@Cruel Jest: C’mon. Really?
licensed to kill time
Anybody see this today?
This from Ezra Klein:
Next line of attack – from the Great Minds.
Chad N Freude
@licensed to kill time: This is a positive suggestion with respect to The Common Good and saving lives, but many people are very sensitive about the integrity (can’t think of a better term) of their physical bodies and would view harvesting organs by default as an invasion of their personhood (even after death), a desecration of their bodies.
Merely speculating about a maybe alternate-universe concept is grounds for hysterical right-wing ranting, and I think it was not a good idea to toss this into the current political mix.
licensed to kill time
@Chad N Freude:
I get your point, and it’s a valid one. If they could get death panels from end of life counseling, I guess this is kind of tossing out red meat. (Argh, bad imagery there…)
Wile E. Quixote
@JK
Remember, if America had the kind of immigration laws that Michelle Malkin wants she’d be working as a bar girl in Manila saying “Me so horny G.I. Me love you long time. Three hole, ten dolla!”
JK
@Wile E. Quixote:
LOL, we have a winner.
What movie was that from Full Metal Jacket or Good Morning Vietnam?
henqiguai
@JK (#68):
Yes, [email protected] it ! Late again !
According to the Navy guys I used to work with, it was from anyone’s experience of even a single overnight layover at Subic Bay, before we shuttered all our facilities over there…