Why is this not a bigger story:
Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that …17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.
But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP’s alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.
The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It’s already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It’s already made its compromises with reality. It’s already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.
I seriously do not get this country. The subservience to the Republicans by the media at least made sense when they were in the majority and held the Presidency in 2001. But this is 2009, the Republicans have been routed electorally for the past few years, everything the Republican party believed in failed miserably the last eight years and they have been exposed as total frauds, they released a budget with no numbers on April Fools day, they have been whipping up teabaggers and gun nuts into a froth for months and screaming about death panels because they have no ideas or solutions, and when they finally do release their health care “plan,” it totally and completely sucks. It is nothing but fail, fail, fail, from the GOP, they just lost two more seats in the house, they are going through a horrible (yet delicious) civil war, yet according to the media, everything is bad news for Democrats.
You know what is bad news for Republicans? They used to be able to get elected and be incapable of governing, and as the House elections on Tuesday and the CBO score today show, now they are incapable of getting elected and governing.
And yet somewhere, Chuck Todd or one of the other Beltway drooling class is typing up their next thought piece explaining how all of this is bad news for Democrats, and David Gregory’s staff is probably getting touch with McCain and Boehner’s Chiefs of staff to see if they are available for Meet the Press on Sunday.
I can’t tell what is a bigger joke- the Republicans, or our failed media experiment. Three decades of screaming liberal media bias is about the only smart long-term thing republicans have done in my lifetime.
Davis X. Machina
That’s the story and they’re sticking to it. The facts will just have to take their chances.
On the tombstone of the Republic will be the epitaph “Killed By A Story Arc”.
MBSS
but it looked like such a big stack of papers there on the table next to boehner.
you mean it doesn’t cover anyone or save money?
General Winfield Stuck
I sure won’t defend our media but the problem runs deeper than them. It is actually a large number of citizens that continue to support wingnuts no matter fucking what. It is ideological hatred that trumps any common sense for the good of the country and their own self interest. I suspect some of it is regional and race and religion, but it is, in the end quite inexplicable to me.
The media fears their numbers on the bottom line derived from readership. There are other factors for sure in why the media keeps wanking for wingnuts, but at the end of the day, it is because there are just so damn many idiots living in this country who seem to get their jollies, in part, from seeing their fellow citizens suffer.
Svensker
You sound bitter. Have some more soup.
Mark S.
It’s the most brilliant thing they’ve ever done. Not only do they have most of the media bending over backwards to them, they’ve convinced about 30% of the country that the only news source they can trust is Fox.
Leelee for Obama
This was the first thing I read today, and then I shut out the world for quite a while. Then, Michele Bachman and the Dachau bullshitters at the Capitol. Then, Ft. Hood. So maybe that’s what happened to this story. Maybe someone could do some analysis-Keith made an effort tonight-but I bet no one else did.
Leelee for Obama
Right action, wrong direction.
freelancer
Cole, that’s some of the best nutshelling you’ve done in a long time. Whereas the financial situation made me want to beat the shit out of my printer, this makes me want to pull an Erickson and mail baby drool bibs to all the hosts of Sunday Morning Talking Head Shows.
Who’s with me?!
(crickets)
MK
I want to see Betsy McCaughey carrying the Republican bill around to interviews and point to certain passages that prove people will live longer under it. “See? This language encourages doctors to prescribe treatments to elder folks that will likely extend their life. It’s right here!”
The other thing I’d like to point out is that Republicans still have a certain skill with euphemisms with regards to naming their bills. So they’re not completely inept.
“Patriot Act” and “Protect America Act” are ones that immediately come to mind. And now we have…”H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act”.
Right.
Leelee for Obama
@freelancer: How about boxes of baby oatmeal-that’s pablum, ain’t it? I’d go for that!
Calouste
@MK:
We also have the Internet Freedom Act that gives the control over the net to the ISPs.
MK
@General Winfield Stuck:
Ya know, I agree. People love to bash on Fox News (and they’re not exactly on my top ten list of favorite things ever) but the truth is, they’re offering content that their customers want.
For all the bashing on the media, the point is that ultimately, it says more about the people than it does the media. That is, people much rather listen to and pay for news that constantly reinforces their worldview, not inform or challenge it.
And, IMHO, that is ultimately a far sadder truth than the ineptness of the media.
Jager
Just once, I’d like to hear one of the “crack” journalists that pollute our media confront some asshole like Mitch McConnell with facts and figures on what private health insurance would cost an old buck like him. And then ask him if he’d give up his government plan and switch over to a private, eat up your paycheck insurance plan with all the bells and whistles like; pre-existing conditions, recission, high co-pays, life time limits, etc, etc, etc. One can only dream!
kommrade reproductive vigor
Must defend The Narrative.
Must worship The Narrative.
Must spread The Narrative.
General Winfield Stuck
If someone has already mentioned this, then sorry/
Creepy story about creepy Michelle Bachmann calling on tea baggers to bring the show to the halls of the Capital bldg.
To “Scare Them”
Sean
Perhaps a sports analogy would help: The media pundits have chosen their team and their sticking with it, just like any loyal fan.
There is a neurobiology to it. Experiments with Functional MRI scanners suggest that partisanship short-circuits rational thought. Once you’ve chosen a side, you stop reasoning and start rationalizing.
In Chuck Todd’s case, however, it think the issue is that he’s a douche-bag.
-S
Chuck Butcher
I’ve been a lefty for as long as I can remember which resulted in me settling for the Democrats at 18. I will admit a partisan outlook but I seem to lack the tribal impulse and there is a lot of that in what is being asked. Why would anyone stay with it?
If you start looking at history you find that tribalism has kept ideologies alive long after their time had passed. The Whigs didn’t die overnight anymore than any other Party did. Keep in mind that the Republicans started out as the progressive/radical Party and with institutionalism became what it is early in the 20th Century. The fierceness of opposition is not new and has not reached historical levels, many of us just lived through a lull in that and seem to think that was the ordinary.
Ask John Cole how long he held onto his tribe beyond what he would now call reasonable evidence to leave. It is not just the province of the weak of mind or stupid.
dmsilev
It’s so sad what happened to Chuck Todd. Back in the days of yore (about a year, year and a half ago), he could actually give some intelligent insights into his area of specialty, crunching electoral numbers.
Then he got promoted.
His current suckiness has actually retroactively ruined his previous reasonableness.
-dms
El Cid
It’s almost like the Establishmentarian system is deeply set up to hate liberals and liberalism, particularly with regard to economics, the core functions of government, and foreign policy.
Or, at least, that’s what I would say if I were a crazy conspiracy theorist dirty fucking hippie liberal, but I’d never say that given that news corporations are working hard to find the best people to put in these tough positions where the principles of journalism guide their everyday work.
Leelee for Obama
@dmsilev: Advancing to the rear-a sad legacy.
ZIRGAR
This is what I tweeted to Boehner this morning when he tweeted about how awesome the GOP healthcare bill is:
@johnboehner CBO says GOP health care ‘alternative’ leaves 52 million uninsured by ’19. Good job, Boehner. Cut costs by not covering anyone.
Boehner is a disgrace, but not more of one that this horrible bill he’s touting. Shameful.
CJ
Didn’t Rick Perlstein nail it in Nixonland? After being the wonderful gatekeepers of news for ever and ever, the “liberal bias” claims shocked them to the core. How could we, the super awesome media, be biased?
So to “fix” that, they just started falling over themselves to cover conservative issues.
cleek
the media is the bigger joke.
the GOP gets the joke, and is happy to play along.
A Hidell
The screaming about media bias was always just FUD. There is a real reason why the media consistently put their thumb on the right side of the scale, and nothing I’ve heard to date really answers why.
Sure, it’s not hard to read the tea leaves and know who can be attacked and who is off limits. It’s also easy to see that advocating (with the proper level of code-wording) for right wing positions is an easy path up the corporate ladder.
And demographics (short-term) favor conservatives in the media. The high-MSM consumption demographics skew old and conservative.
And conservative framing is the cheapest and easiest to produce. Blame, half-truths, and an obsessive fixation with symbolism over fact is a product the MSM is good at delivering. Media is first and foremost a product, and one effect of continuing corporate consolidation is that everything that corporation produces starts to look similar. Simply put, the product that major corporations like Viacom or Newscorp, or Time Warner ends up being a conservative leaning product because conservative leaning product has the best profit margins.
But none of those explains enough. As one example among many, the media is more consistently slanted against health care reform than what I’ve expressed would produce. I wish I understood this more.
Morbo
Check out von’s take on this at OW. High contrarianism at its worst.
El Cid
It’s not media “bias”. It’s media corporations doing exactly what their owners and funders (advertisers) would lend them to do.
What? Are we supposed to be like infantile extraterrestrials who believe that because news production companies tell us their role is to uphold basic principles of journalism that therefore this is their function? And that continual ‘failures’ in favor of whatever right wing economic fetish and hawkish fantasy is some sort of aberration?
We’ve had roughly a century of seeing how the advertiser funded bosses’ media would work compared to the earlier age of popular labor, ethnic, and socia_list papers and publications in addition to the bosses’ press.
It’s not working too well for us ordinary jackasses. It works pretty well for the owners and the upper classes who dominate the governing agenda.
There’s no conspiracy theory here — just the absence of naivety theory.
Bud
Last night I had an argument with my GOP brother (he is hanging on by his fingernails at this point) and when he claimed I was always as partisan as any of today’s teabaggers, I ripped into him without mercy.
I listed off all the GOPers I used to admire and respect for their foreign policy chops – names like James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, George Schultz, RIchard Lugar, Jean Kirkpatrick etc. I never would have voted for any of them, and I frequently disagreed with them, but they were always worth listening to and reading.
I asked him who besides John McCain (who is cut from the same cloth, but I still didn’t vote for him) has any influence over the direction of the GOP these days. I asked him to provide a single name of any rational foreign policy analyst with important sway over the party these days, and told him about the time I happened upon Fox News and saw a panel discussion about Iraq that featured that major Iraqi expert Ann Coulter.
He was silent. Thinking. They are losing my brother.
The GOP is toast.
Mark S.
This is the part that kills me. My cat could come up with a plan that would cover more than 3 million people over a decade.
Sly
Numbers are boring and hard.
I don’t mean to get all academic elitist and whatnot, but we are largely talking about journalism majors.
A Hidell
@El Cid: I’ll take that as explanation enough. History rides to the rescue again!
schrodinger's cat
OT
BTW has any one spotted the great white one lately? His fans miss him.
-Tunch fan
jcricket
The working the refs strategy is nothing short of brilliant. Think about it: Republicans have everything against them – facts, demographics, their own actions. And yet 30% of people will vote Republican no matter what, and another 20-30% can be convinced Republicans offer useful solutions, will do what they say, that Democrats are full of crap, etc.
The only thing Democrats can take solace in is that being entirely wrong eventually catches up with you (see bubble, housing; crash, dot-com) – sadly the damage has long been done by then.
ds
The Republican plan “works” by making sure insurance companies can drop anyone who is actually sick and refuse to pay for expensive treatments.
But most people will have shiny insurance cards in their wallets, and it’ll be cheaper! Yay!
Every time I explain to this fact to a Republican when they decry the supposedly burdensome regulation of insurance companies and how it increases the price of insurance, I get the same basic response:
“Well, I’m perfectly healthy, so I don’t need any of that stuff. Why should I have to pay for it?”
They seriously do not comprehend the idea that anyone can develop a serious medical condition that will require expensive treatment. They think that if you pray to Jesus he’ll keep you healthy, and anyone who needs expensive health care is either being punished by God for having an unhealthy lifestyle.
Yutsano
@Morbo: Amazing. He says he’s not ready to punt, then calmly proceeds to do so. Are there parts of this plan that are good? Sure. Could they be incorporated? No doubt. Will this win any GOP support for the other side? My 20 year old mare will pop out twin unicorns before that happens.
arguingwithsignposts
I somehow think this is all good news for President John McCain.
The Dangerman
I don’t understand why it took so long for the Republicans to produce their plan; how long does it take to right down tax cuts (especially capital gains tax cuts) and the removal of any regulation that would prevent a company from fucking their customers? There, I typed it in 30 seconds, tops.
Brian J
I posted a link earlier today from The Times’ Prescriptions blog where the reporter said that the Republicans admitted their plan wasn’t designed to increase coverage. It’s nice they finally admitted it.
I’ve said for some time now that it’s pretty much impossible for the Republicans to come up with a decent plan. I have no idea if their “plan” really would do anything significant to contain costs, but even if it does, that’s only part of the problem. A big part, to be sure, but we’re still talking about having millions of people without coverage. Unless costs come down so dramatically that everyone but only the most destitute among us can afford it, that’s a simple fact. And unfortunately, nobody seems to be predicting that will happen. So in order to give such people a chance to have coverage, you will need to subsidize it in some way. This requires revenue…funded through taxes! I’d be very happy to be wrong about this, but I’m not expecting the party of death panels and “No, folks, we really do have the best health care system in the world!” to come around on tax increases to help people get coverage. In fact, I’d say it’s more likely that I’m going to burst into flames.
I can’t think of a single health care reform idea that increases coverage without additional revenue. (This could come from cutting other spending, too, but the Republicans have proven to be equally useless on that front.) Can you? The next time someone talks about the Republicans in this area, ask them that question. But don’t expect to get an answer.
El Cid
Yeah, but you’re not including PowerPoint. That takes months.
Brian J
@Morbo:
I don’t read that site as often as, say, this one, so maybe there’s something obvious I’m missing, but he often seems like the guy who has an objection of some type to what the Democrats are doing and has some suggestion for some alleged improvement on their overall goal. Perhaps it’s not fair for me to say this, but what the hell? The impression that I’m getting is that he’s full of it.
Brian J
@ZIRGAR:
Boehner doesn’t strike me as the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, to say the least.
ds
For all their massive faults, the Dems are making a good faith attempt to deal with some of the country’s biggest problems. Problems which these media institutions are fully willing to admit exist. BUT THEY’RE DIRTY HIPPIES.
Republican governance involves:
a) denouncing gays, minorities, immigrants, single mothers, people who live on coasts (often after from returning from meth-infused gay Republican orgies)
b) shoveling money into their contributors’ pockets
And the media treats them as very serious grown-ups who are the thin blue line between Western civilization and some hippie commune involving forced gay marriage and wearing sweaters inside that Nancy Pelosi is trying to impose on us.
They could propose a health care bill that consisted of nuking San Francisco, and the media would treat it as a very serious policy proposal, praise the Republicans for bipartisanship, and demand that Democrats drop what they’re doing and adopt it.
Ash
Speaking of the failed media experiment, I’m gonna fucking break something the next time a talking head (I’m looking at you Anderson Cooper) mentions that the psycho shooter guy was Muslim. Maybe that had something to do with it, BUT NO ONE KNOWS. SO STOP FREAKING MENTIONING IT LIKE IT MEANS ANYTHING. He’s not an “American born Muslim.” He’s a freaking American who went berserk.
[/rant]
Neutron Flux
Well, there you go.
This is our world, and now you are living in it.
Deal with it, or not.
Sly
@The Dangerman:
The GOP didn’t have since January of this year. They had since January of 1995 until January of 2007 to draft, mark up, submit, amend, vote on, and pass a health care reform package. Twelve years they dithered, because improving peoples’ lives is not part of the Republican agenda. It cannot be said more succinctly than that.
It’s a circumstantial sign of divine justice that they are rightfully locked out of the process now.
ds
Speaking of the failed media experiment, I’m gonna fucking break something the next time a talking head (I’m looking at you Anderson Cooper) mentions that the psycho shooter guy was Muslim. Maybe that had something to do with it, BUT NO ONE KNOWS. SO STOP FREAKING MENTIONING IT LIKE IT MEANS ANYTHING. He’s not an “American born Muslim.” He’s a freaking American who went berserk.
Dear fucking God. PLEASE bring on our Chinese overlords! The state propaganda stations will have 10 times as much integrity as these jokers on the teevee.
Do these people even know this guy is Muslim? Just because you have an Arabic name doesn’t make you Muslim, and coming from a Muslim family doesn’t necessarily make you Muslim.
And it has no fucking relation to the crime.
El Cid
@Sly: What is this period you speak of? Everyone knows that Democrats have controlled the Congress since time immemorial; and they have had the Presidency since Bill Clinton, except for those few months when we all called in that George W. Bush guy as our Keep Us Safe temporary leader when Bill Clinton let all those Iraqis attack us and then again when he had to invent THE SURGE to make Iraq perfect and whole again.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Chuck Todd validates the Peter Principle.
Great rant John, absolutely on target.
Another note about our lame media; Rachel Maddow is going to be on Press The Meat this weekend. Seems she raised their ratings through the roof with her first appearance and Stretch wants more of that creamy smooth good ratings stuff to roll around in.
If Rachel plays this right she can really have some fun with it.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
It’s that dull orange color he radiates. He is better used as a Halloween decoration, maybe a pumpkin.
I am not suggesting that anyone carve him up though. Just saying…
El Cid
@ds: Want to have your head boil over?
How much you want to bet that right wing radio will establish it as a mythology that the ‘librul medja’ refused to mention that this guy was Muslim because of Nancy Pelosi garble flarp Barney Frank xlobble Obama Kenyan.
Brian J
@ds:
Ugh, this needs to be the last response I write so I can get some work done. But you bastards keep making good points.
Yes, that’s absolutely right. The Democrats may have a ton of problems, but the Republicans are useless as a party. Individuals in that party may be okay, but the party as a whole can’t die soon enough. I can’t think of a single reason why, even if I agree with them on some things, in theory at least, I’d vote for them. For all their faults, the Democrats aren’t provincial, addled, hateful assholes. The Republicans, for the most part, are just that.
MBSS
i don’t think any of you would be able to mess with boehner. he’s the largest and strongest oompa loompa.
williamc
hmmm, is anyone else feeling that the crazy cart is about to jump the track and dump its crap all over the rest of us?
what happens if these loons win?
I don’t want to entertain the notion, but really, imagine a year from now, the DOW is going up up up, and health care reform passes, but its toothless because of liberman and the blue dogs, cap n trade stalls out in the Senate, education reform falls apart in the Senate, and unemployment is up near 15%? All of those things are possible, and heck, they even all seem like they may happen.
what if these loons win in 2010? I don’t think they’ll take the Senate, there aren’t enough seats that could change hands there, but they could take the House (really, 60+ of the D seats there were R seats 4 years ago). nothing would get done in government because the loons would start ACORN investigations and rev back up the UnAmerican Activities Committee and pick the White House apart bit by bit with phony allegations cooked up in Glenn Beck’s feverdreams.
are average everyday Americans smart enough to not fall for the teabaggery?
El Cid
Florida’s Senator Jim DeMint is meddling in U.S. foreign policy to Honduras again, doing what he can to possibly blow up the formation of a government of national unity by mischaracterizing the position of the U.S. government with regard to the restoration of the Constitutional government because, you know, why the fuck not, saying that Hillary Clinton and Thomas Shannon have personally guaranteed him, Jim Fucking Nobody DeMint that the U.S. will of course recognize the upcoming elections no matter who the fuck yahoo the Honduran coup regime sticks into office for temporary Preznit, though the U.S. has made no such comment publicly nor would it. Asshole.
Chuck Butcher
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Maybe somebody will be stupid enough to try to bully her again… (I have a tag on my blog – terminal stupidity)
Sasha
Wow. Are you sure you voted for W. twice? You sound like a fire-breathing lifetime liberal to me.
El Cid
Ooops! Sorry, I meant Honorary Florida Senator, but actually SC.
The Dangerman
@Sly:
Well, that’s not entirely true; they are surely trying to help the very wealthy, although you could argue that the very wealthy don’t qualify as people and I wouldn’t argue vociferously. I’m tired of the “Let them eat cake” mentality from that group. I’ve said before, I’ll say it again; string up only one person guilty of insider trading from a light standard and Wall Street will clean up it’s act in milliseconds.
So, what IS the Republican Agenda? Other than starting wars in the Middle East?
bago
@Brian J: Maybe not, but he’s definately the orangest bulb on the christmas tree.
Beauzeaux
Do we understand now why Republicans fought tooth and nail for decades to eliminate restrictions on media ownership?
General Winfield Stuck
@El Cid:
Somebody needs to throw a net over that sumbitch.
El Cid
@Beauzeaux: Yes. The tiny proportion of truthfulness and occasional non-right-wingism that had popped up in the national media in the late 1960s and early 1970s had proven shockingly offensive to them — PBS even one time aired a TV show suggesting that the Vietnam war was something other than awesome!!! — and they would not permit such uppitiness to get out of hand.
bago
Ah, crap. Beaten by the orange boehner jokes multiple times.
El Cid
@General Winfield Stuck: He’s directly fucking meddling in the formation of a national unity government perched very, very delicately atop a military coup. He’s telling the leaders of a foreign government that the U.S. really doesn’t care about the restitution of a leader that the U.S. has publicly insisted has been its position for months now.
If this were a Democrat they’d already be advocating hanging him for treason or at least dressing up in colonial garb and screaming LOGAN ACT like they did when NANCY PELOSI WENT TO SYRIA!!!
Chuck Butcher
I’m sure there are archives somewhere that show the mid 60s as a bit more accurate than 1979, but I’m older than John
Bubblegum Tate
The worst part is that no matter which of the above is a bigger joke, the joke, ultimately, is on the rest of us.
This fuckin’ country….
Cat Lady
The Assholes tag is missing on this post.
The press is a shameful failure. I for one will welcome our insect overlords/
parksideq
The sad thing is, even as the public at large are FINALLY wising up to the puppetry that passes for Republican ideals, I fear that we’re going to end up trying to steer the ship away from the iceberg a day late and a dollar short (excuse the mixed metaphors).
Exhibit A: Harry Reid thinks HCR won’t pass before 2010.
A bill that enjoys broad support from Americans, the AARP, the AMA, unions, and anyone with half a brain (at this point, anyone with less is either still with the GOP or Joe Lieberman), yet he’s not sure if he can fucking. pass. it. now.
If Congress drops this ball, it’ll feel more like an anvil on a pinky toe when it hits the ground.
soonergrunt
FWIW, here’s my comment in the Afghanistan thread.
jcricket
@williamc:
Great Depression 2.0, combined with infrastructure failures all over the place, followed by massive borrowing and spending (or third-worldization of America, esp. the red states).
Basically GW Bush all over again, without the booms (housing and dot-com) and on-top of our existing deficits.
The Great Depression became truly great when FDR listened to the deficit hawks after the initial success of his stimulus-type programs. That’s what caused the “double-dip” when recovery was just getting started.
DonkeyKong
Answer to John Coles rhetorical question on the Washington media: Self loathing is a hell of a drug!
kwAwk
@ brianj
Isn’t that was analysis is? Looking at what is happening and saying I agree with this part, but not with this part? I think this could be done better and I think was done well?
Who wants to read a blog where everybody agrees about everything? I mean, I agree with 85% of what Cole says but does anybody really want to read 30 posts a week of me saying: I agree entirely with John.
Not to mention, when you’re the main blogger anywhere you’re trying to post stuff that makes people think and develop an intellectual identity for yourself. Are people really going to tune in to read: I just love everything Nancy Pelosi does, and boy does she look radiant in that red dress.
slag
Seriously, if you haven’t been watching The Daily Show this week, do it. Tuesday’s episode just thoroughly destroyed our entire pundit class. It was exceptional, even by Daily Show standards.
parksideq
Sorta OT, but has anyone seen HuffPo’s front page lately? It’s a giant header/photo regarding Ft. Hood, but it’s got these weird “Breaking” globes that are spinning akin to Drudge’s sirens.
Seriously, HuffPo is becoming part of the problem. And a parody of itself.
Chuck Butcher
In the history of the press, the idea of journalism we’re discussing as an ideal is relatively modern and of short historical duration. The press through most of our history would only qualify as check-out tabloids or pamphlets today and facts were generally victim to partisanship. Duels were fought over things that appeared in the press and generally, politeness would describe the exceptions.
Stop and think that Hearst almost single handedly took the US into the Spanish-American War, “Remember the Maine” was based on nothing in fact.
williamc
@jcricket
yes friend, you and I know that to be true, because that’s what we’ve learned all these years…but remember, the wingnuts don’t believe that, they think that FDR extended the Great Depression(!) remember?
kwAwk
Chuck – Good point. And on top of that during most of the history of what we consider to be the glory days of journalism happened during the period from 1932-1994 in which there was a single party that dominated the political landscape.
The conservatives look at that same time period and see just the opposite. A period where they were denied a voice.
Not saying that what they say is true, but only that it is sometimes a matter of perceptions.
General Winfield Stuck
@El Cid:
I was going to mention The Logan Act but see you did already.
Hypocrisy is a defining feature of the American Wingnut.
Davis X. Machina
@ morbo
It’s not so much contrarianism as team spirit: von draws his curves before he plots his data.
Redshift
@The Dangerman:
Lessee…
1. Gutting regulation because the market will automatically produce everything good (and not just whatever makes the most money) if enough regulation is removed, no matter how overwhelming the evidence to the contrary.
2. Unapologetically using the powers of government to reward their contributors and undermine the Democrats’ contributors, no matter how much harm it does the country.
…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Morbo: I like this quote in the comments:
SFAW
What’s interesting is that this scenario mirrors the conditions in Rand’s US before John Galt and his uebermenschen save Teh World. Yet another case of Rethug projection: they’re the Looters, but they keep screaming that the DFHs are the ones bringing down the country. That’s why, if any of those imbeciles really did Go Glatt!, they wouldn’t have a fucking clue as to what to do next.
[Oh, wait, I forgot: Tigerhork worked 237 hours last week, thereby confirming that he is Teh Most Productive American Evah! So I’m obviously wrong about all that.]
Yeah, I know it’s OT. It’s just that jcricket’s comment induced an epiphany, and I knew that you were all waiting for my next pearl etc. So sue me.
Mike in NC
I caught something on the tube about them having Hayley Fucking Barbour,
governoroverseer of the plantation of Mississippi, on MTP on Sunday.gnomedad
@Ash:
Can we start referring to wingers as “American-born Christians”?
bago
Fun summation of the Pain Book Tour, stolen from instaputz:
williamc
@ Mike in NC
I like that…overseer of the plantation of Mississippi…as a native Georgian, that has always been how I’ve thought of Mississippi, just never put into words before…
bravo!
Gawd, wouldn’t a new Great Depression suck?!? All of the food banks/shelters are either closed or overfilled already, and there’d be no WPA, CCC, or NRA because Bayh, Nelson, Lieberman, and Landrieu would fight spending money having unemployed people make stuff like roads and parks and art because THAT’S COMMUN!SM/SOC!AL!SM!
nepat
This post is, well, the best damned thing I’ve read all day. Now I’ll sleep soundly. Thanks, John!
SFAW
From Matthew 7:3-4
“And why beholdest thou the bias that is in thy lib brother’s eye, but considerest not that thy head is so far up thy wingnut ass that thou canst see thy eyeteeth?”
That Jesus guy, what a DFH. If he’s comes back anytime soon, I’ll sic la migra on him.
Nutella
@gnomedad:
Yes. And Timothy McVeigh was an American-born Christian, too.
SFAW
You seem to be laboring under a misconception that they’re Christian. Real Christ-ians don’t hate on their brother the way these schmucks do.
They’re Dominionists (maybe), and that ain’t real Christianity.
dmsilev
Wow. Jon Stewart just dismantled Glenn Beck, burned him down to the ground, sowed the ground with salt, and then dusted the area with radioactive dust.
Good times.
-dms
El Cid
God. Damn. What Jon Stewart just did on the Daily Show to Glenn Beck… It was a fucking thing of beauty. Just… just… a fucking thing of beauty.
El Cid
@Mike in NC: ‘We’re gonna rebuild his house. Gonna have a coupla cool drinks on his new front porch.’
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher: Not to under-emphasize Hearst’s role, but there was a long-standing goal of the young U.S. to steal Cuba from the Spanish, and the Cuban rebellion nearly fought the Spanish off and the U.S. had the opportunity to intervene just at the point at which the Cubans had nearly gained their freedom from Spain and took it. It wasn’t just Hearst. It was an entire political and foreign policy class.
El Cid
@dmsilev: No fuckin’ shit. This was a god-damned Master Class in dismantling right wing fuckwits who think they’re geniuses.
Brian J
I don’t know if anybody has linked to it yet, but here’s an interesting discussion with one of the people who designed Taiwan’s health care system. He’s actually a professor at Harvard, so he’s fairly in tune with the political difficulties in this country of reform.
Redshift
@El Cid:
Yeah, I’d put it on a level with “Stop hurting America.” Just brilliant.
Cat Lady
@El Cid:
The fate of the Republic may rest in Jon Stewart’s hands.
dmsilev
@El Cid: Yup.
For those who missed it, (a) it’ll be up on Comedy Central’s web site soon so go see it and (b) basically Jon Stewart took all of Beck’s bizarre mannerisms and obsessions and turned them up to 11.
-dms
El Cid
@Cat Lady: One of the proudest moments of our Republic — and I’m being serious here — is when one of our comedians finally called out the Naked Emperor to his face, aka, Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. (With all fair praise to when Al Franken shredded the Newtie Congress at the same event.)
El Cid
Hulu hosts whole episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert, and they’re usually up by the next morning sometime.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
Absolute evisceration. Wow.
Redshift
And as another illustration of how the media are wired for Republicans, we had Richard “the Pinhead” Wolffe on Countdown pointing out that there’s an “ideological purity” push on the Democratic side, too (because there must always be an equivalence, no matter how false it is.) Never mind that DFH’s in general were never pushing a line that it’s better to lose seats than elect “impure” Democrats, not to mention that once they started listening to us a bit more they started winning.
Sigh.
Chuck Butcher
@El Cid:
Oh it was scarcely all his doing, but he sure marketed the hell out of it.
I don’t like what has happened to journalism and there sure are enough causes for it, beyond just the Confederate Party of Republicanism’s liebrul media drum beat.
Colbert just used Nov 5 to call the teabaggery bunch – Guy Fawkers, as in Bachman’s Guy Fawkery of Heath Reform, next up Guy Fawking gay marriage. Punnery run rumpant
El Cid
@Redshift: Remember, to the Establishmentarian punditocracy, pushing for better policies over shittier policies or accurate analyses and reporting over shittier and inaccurate analyses and reporting is some weird leftist hardline purity fetish by weirdo ultra-libs who just can’t let it go.
MNPundit
Well at least you eventually saw it right Cole? You could be screaming “librul bias!!!” yourself these days.
Cat Lady
@El Cid:
and the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer throwdown. Its all up to the Jesters to point out who the fucking jokers are.
slag
@El Cid: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the only reasons to watch television anymore. When the shows came on iTunes, I subscribed for a while but couldn’t keep up with the episodes well enough to justify the expense. Love that they’re now on Hulu for free!
El Cid
@Cat Lady: Almost forgot the Jim Cramer episodes.
Mike in NC
Let’s just skip another stinkin’ Emmy and give Jon Stewart the Mark Twain Award at the Kennedy Center, like NOW!
Cat Lady
Remember that all the young’uns get their news from Stewart and not Beck. The teabagger/rightards are dinosaurs, and so are the pundits. Stewart and Colbert are the meteor strike – those two are that good. Franken, also too.
williamc
wow, is Beck really like Jon was making him out to be? I’ve never seen any of Beck’s show (except Stewart & Colbert making fun of him, wingnuts on tv make me ornery enough to break stuff, never fail), but he can’t really be all jittery and nonsensical like that can he?
Redshift
@El Cid:
Yeah. Sigh.
slag
@Cat Lady: This whole week has been The Daily Show on steroids. Going after every insipid aspect of our culture with a machete. It’s been beautiful to watch.
BethanyAnne
O.M.G. The Daily Show tonight. O.M.G. This is amazing. Jon Stewart has switched gears on Glenn Beck. just…wow
BethanyAnne
And now I scroll up to see others have caught it. {grin} I’m just open-jawed here. Damn, I may need a cigarette, and I don’t smoke.
Pangloss
The only thing that could be more predictable about the Republican “plan” is if they nominated an Arabian Show Horse Judge or Harriet Miers to be in charge of it.
Redshift
@williamc:
Heh. Oh, yes he can be! Go check out some clips on Media Matters, if you think you can take a small dose.
Pangloss
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Conservatism can never fail– it can only be failed by disloyal practicioners.
Dr. Morpheus
Neither Comedy Central’s website nor Hulu have tonight’s episode up yet.
And I’m jonesing pretty bad for some Stewart right now.
slag
@Dr. Morpheus: Go for some reruns. You won’t regret it.
BethanyAnne
@Dr. Morpheus: Like someone said upthread, watch the one from Tuesday. Pretty awesome.
BethanyAnne
Or the recent Colbert with Andrew Sullivan. That was the best Colbert I’ve seen in a while.
But tonight’s Daily Show. Damn, maybe the best they’ve ever done. I think what I liked so much was the “voice”. One of the things that they do best is illustrate the insane by playing insane. Like John Oliver shouting for “Free Market Death Panels”. This had that “swimming in the crazy to make you see the water” feel to it.
trollhattan
Channeling my inner Blazing Saddles: holy sheepshit!
Had to dial up BJ comments to see if anyone else was watching Jon Stewart, uh, “doing” Glenn Beck better than Glenn Beck can…umm…do himself(?!?). Not disappointed.
Had he any capacity for self-reflection he’d watch it and take a twelve-month sabbatical, but like McMegan and Dubya, it’s best to limit self-examination to something one does in front of a Macy’s mirror.
I feel really good after watching that. JS must have been working on it for months.
williamc
The best thing about Colbert and Stewart is they really do shoot straight down the middle and call them as they see them (the Repubs really are insane, just watch this video clip of them being crazy! the Dems really are pussies, watch Harry Reid waffle and wimpout in this video!). And its great how the view from way up NYC way from the writers room of the main news source for the under-40 age group calls out the media on just how terrible they all really are at their jobs.
The episode of TDS from earlier this week with the night-before-election-night election night analysis pretty much laid bare every trope of modern television punditry. A person would have to be totally shameless to see Oliver, Mandvi, and Bee break down exactly how pundits “form their analysis” and still go to work the next night and do it exactly as foretold the night before on the Daily Show.
Shameless Wankers…
trollhattan
p.s. Compare and contrast: Susan Rice and moustache guy. Discuss.
trollhattan
p.p.s. Heh indoozle. Colbert: switching from teabagging to guyfawking.
Yutsano
BTW we needz late night open thread plz kthxbai!
mantis
I am an 11/3 patriot.
danimal
John, this post is a thing of beauty.
I try to think of rational reasons for the bizarre media behavior of favoring right-wing viewpoints and voices. While the corporatist angle makes some sense (big corporations looking to maximize profits by brainwashing the masses), that is a little too conspiratorial to me. The only rational reason that really makes sense to me is a marketing angle: the median news consumer is well to the right of the median American voter (or the median American). One problem, this doesn’t explain why no one really fills the niche market on the left (at least until MSNBC, barely).
Or maybe they’re just wimps afraid of the noise machine.
I’m off to hunt today’s Daily Show now.
Chris Dowd
“Liberal Media bias” once had a core kernal of truth to it. In fact- my initial attraction to conservatism of the “National Review” variety was because of a distinct bias in the major media of the 80’s and early 90’s of a leftish or “liberal” variety especially on social issues and a sort of petty haughty disdain for the values and sensibilities of “regular Americans”.
However- what was once a legitimate gripe on some issues was hijacked by very cynical people for their own ends and it has now become a total joke- in which anything that doesn’t jibe with a very narrow reich wing agenda being labeled “liberal”.
Indeed- the term “liberal” itself has lost all meaning and is applied to basically anything that upsets reich wingers.
When it comes to military matters – reich wingers will denounce as “liberal” even the most rote basic reporting on Iraq or Afghanistan that mentions civilian casualties or anything even slightly negative about the war effort in those areas- even simple “process stories” about how decisions are made.
All one has to be to be labeled a “liberal” by reich wingers is dissent from the GOP/DC agenda even when that agenda involves more spending- or things directly at odds with geniune conservative principles.
You think cutting back on inmate meals to two a day instead of three is petty and mean and counter producive and basically uncivilized? Well then- that makes you a “liberal”.
You dare to actually to take into account the perspective of an Iraqi or Afghanis and what they might think about US interests in their regions? That makes you a “liberal”. Indeed- empathy of any sort is “liberal”.
You think maybe the US imprisons to many people and maybe we should look at that? Yep- you are a “liberal”.
Basically- being “conservative” has been re-defined so that you have to be a total douchebag- the sort of person who supports torture and an executive branch with unchecked power (at least when run by a GOPER)- the sort of person who thinks Sherifs that go out of their way to serve rotten baloney to misdemeanor inmates at county jails is good policy.
Chuck Butcher
@Chris Dowd:
Ummm, yeah sure. Sounds like a POV on your part rather than something empirical.
There is a tone and content to your comments that, well, not to be ungracious, is a bit b/w and jaundiced. I’m scarcely a Pollyanna, but things are not completely in the shitter either.
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
Thanks for a very interesting read — I’d like to talk more about this tomorrow, when more readers are around & alert.
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: Perhaps a front page posting? His post is very well articulated and gives a rather unique perspective that I think needs to be shared.
r€nato
@ds:
I still haven’t gotten over watching that smarmy POS Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) on Real Time with Bill Maher claiming that healthy young 25 year olds should be free not to buy health insurance.
There are just so many things obviously wrong with that kind of glibertarian bullshit, and nobody called him on it.
r€nato
@Ash:
they sure as fuck didn’t constantly refer to Tim McVeigh as a Christian, now did they?
r€nato
@ds: actually, I heard he had been reprimanded for proselytizing others to join his Muslim faith. So he likely was a Muslim… but the talking heads insinuating that his religious belief was the cause for the rampage is bullshit.
Chris Dowd
@Chuck Butcher:
Well- yeah- it was my POV. I was also an early listener to Rush Limbaugh back in the early 90’s. He made some cogent and entertaining points back in those days- at least to my perspective at that time- especially about the so called “liberal” bias of the media.
But somewhere along the line and I am not sure exactly when- “liberal media bias” became a term applied to virtually any reporting that doesn’t originate from a reich wing propaganda organ.
What we have seen with the rise of Fox News in the mid 90’s is a right wing that simply and literally rejects all media as being “liberal” that isn’t explicitly defined as right wing.
And we saw the result of this decade long forced isolation during the last election when GOPER activists emerged from their media echo chambers and exposed themselves on the national scene as monkey doll waving imbeciles obsessed with birth certificates. We saw the results of this when their own candidate had to defend Obama’s basic decency as a person at one of his own campaign rallies.
What we have seen is right wing America separate themselves from reality itself over the last decade. We are seeing the steady kook-i-fi-cation of the GOP- and it is self inflicted.
Gian
the quote from some long gone french guy fits
the revolution devours it’s children.
the GOP likes of Bush the elder still knew that media spin BS was media spin BS and that they still had to govern like the fate of major cities was important. as time passed the GOP grew a new generation of leadership – the “we make reality” crowd, and most of them realized they were selling magic beans.
then the folks who believe in magic beans gave bush the younger a second term (with the help of voter fraud in a real way) and started electing other people like Bachman who also believe in those magic beans.
as for them with the media? they have by brow beating the media over the last 40 years – and more so more recently by way of the internet convinced the corps who control media content that the magic bean believers need respect
Dr. Morpheus
Thanks slag and BethanyAnne, I already watched the earlier episodes from this week and they were indeed great.
Need as much comedy as possible. This hasn’t exactly been a banner week for me as it looks like my girlfriend is dumping me.
Hell, it hasn’t been a banner year, laid off in January, Mom dies in February, dog dies in front of my eyes in June and now this.
Yeah, comedy and wine is all I got right now.
Chris Dowd
For an example of how completely out of whack the term “liberal media bias” has become- I’ll point to an exchange I had with another poster on Boston.com a couple weeks ago. We were discussing torture or as this poster was calling it “torture”.
At one point during the exchange I posted a link to a New York Times story that pointed out how the Bush administration copied- almost to the letter- all of the “Interrogation techniques” used by Stalin’s NKVD during the Great Terror of the 1930’s- from sleep deprivation- to face slapping- to stress positions- to loud noise- to keeping prisoners in extremes of temperatures and so on and so on . . .
This poster with whom I was “debating” refused to read the linked article on the grounds that it was in the New York Times and thus it was a bunch of “liberal” and “leftist” lies.
This was an article detailing the facts of Stalin’s torture regime and how the US government copied those tactics but this poster simply refused to read it and dismissed it- laughably – as being “leftist”.
That is what the right means by “liberal bias”. If it doesn’t come from a self identified and bona fide “Right wing” media outfit- then “conservatives” do not accept it as a legitimate source.
That is what makes them so scary and dangerous.
Janet Strange
@Chris Dowd:
It’s very cult-like. Isn’t this the first thing cult leaders do? Convince their followers that only the leader is to be listened to, knows the realtruth, that everyone else is lying? That they should put their hands over their ears and go la-la-la if anyone else tries to talk to them for fear that their minds will be contaminated with heresy?
Janet Strange
@Janet Strange: Italics closing tag fail. Sorry.
Chris Dowd
@Janet Strange:
I think anyone who adheres to any sort of “ism” at all has preferences as toward whom they place more or less trust in. That’s only natural.
But when you take it to the degree that the modern American right wing has now- and simply close your eyes to all media but your own- not only close your eyes too- but believe to be evil- then you have crossed the line into the realm of hard authoritarianism if not totalitarianism.
LoveMonkey
Yes, they have the media, and they also have a solidly Democratic government. The GOP is shrinking and becoming marginalized.
What’s the lesson? The lesson is that the media doesn’t influence voters much. The media follows ratings and churn the way a dog sniffs out a ham sandwich. It doesn’t persuade. It can only follow an audience, and its audience is not the majority of voters. Its audience is a minority of voters, and the blogonavelgazingsphere.
We can ignore this simple and obvious lesson, or just go on groaning the same tired groans every damned day.
Jeff Berardi
@Janet Strange:
“The oldest trick in the book” is a commonly used expression, but what you’re describing may in fact be literally be the oldest trick in the book. Political leaders, religious leaders and other various snake-oil salesmen have been pulling it basically forever. Fairly simple thing; happens to work.
Zuzu's Petals
Looks like the NY Times has noticed the obvious too:
Sly
It doesn’t. Something that people who claim to be politically astute (a designation that is only given out by non-influential media) always think that editorial pages and cable news are the most trusted sources of analysis.
The NYT has a circulation of a little less that one million. LA Times and WaPo has even less. Even the “everyman” USA Today is only around two million. Fewer than five million people tune in to Cable News throughout the course of the day. About ten million watch the Sunday Morning Bobbleheads every week. All this in a voting population, as of this time last year, of ~130 million people. Plus or minus the fifty million ACORN spoofs (guffaw).
The problem is that these forms of media drive the Beltway discourse. Voters don’t watch, or read, much of that crap. But people who are running things do, and thats the scary part.
Xenos
I was fairly late to figuring out how corrupted the political media had become. What tipped me off was when Ann Coulter produced a book were 90% of the footnotes were either misattributed or dishonestly used to support her points. She then proceeded to be on every TV, interview with major magazines, and become generally ubiquitous. She should have been shamed and cast out, but rather somehow was turned into a celebrity.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but that did not happen by accident.
Soon after that I discovered mediawhoresonline, and the scales fell from my eyes. “Fascist propaganda? You are soaking in it!”
Comrade javafascist
Go through Jake Tapper’s tweets yesterday to see how bad the media is. He posted one tweet about how few people would be covered, another about the savings. Then after about 30 minutes pointed out that he posted two tweets, one good one bad about the bill and people only rewteeted the one that agreed with their ideology. He was shocked that nobody retweeted both!
Um Jake? The “good” point you posted is still a bad when compared to the Dem bill. Balance fail. I pointed this out to him (and also that his expectations of others retweeting habits was itself a bias.) Since I’m not a villager and I don’t drive a cab, he must not have valued my opinion because he never responded. (And no, I never expected him to. I’m sure he gets replies all the time from us nutty internet dwellers.)
kay
@Comrade javafascist:
The worst part is they never got around to explaining the reforms.
They failed the big test, which isn’t pushing a narrative or photographing teabaggers, but laying out information. We know who supports and opposes the bill. I could list the players. What we don’t know is how it might operate. I was looking at the various mandate mechanisms, and trying to get a feel for how those might work, and how many people they might impact, and it’s really really difficult to glean from the text of the proposals.
I had another relatively (I thought) simple question, if (and how) the proposals change or alter S-CHIP. I haven’t been able to find out. There’s so much political NOISE I can’t find sift through and find basic information.
I have to wonder if anyone knew what the hell Medicare was all about when it was enacted. That might be a good point of comparison, to measure how poorly media performed.
Yellow Journalism
Far from the supposed “Liberal Bias” that is nothing but a conservative fairy tale – the MSM reflects a corporate bias that permeates it due to the ownership of said media. Decisions are made with an eye to the bottom line. The good of “We the People” takes a back seat to the good of the shareholders. Fair and Balanced my a$$!
El Cid
People don’t have to “trust” or “believe” what is printed in the news pages or the editorial pages or their broadcast equivalents in order to be affected by what’s there and what’s not there.
You don’t have to be believed or trusted in order to influence what people believe and discuss.
It’s pretty damned influential when people think that there is a “debate” over a certain issue or set of issues, when what’s being “debated” doesn’t cover half of what’s really at stake.
You could have been as cynical as hell about all the news producers in the leadup to the war in Iraq, but unless you were already tuned into the alternate sources, where would you have gotten basic facts, such as there was no possible threat from Iraq attempting to get yellowcake uranium from Niger (never mind the simple hack forgery job) and it was one of the most absurd and ridiculous scenarios ever, ever spun, not the least of which because Iraq already had had thousands and thousands of tons of yellowcake uranium for decades and didn’t have the technology or technique to do much with it, and getting 500 tons out of a French-guarded and owned facility in the middle of the god-damned Niger desert, trucked across Africa and into Iraq because of the no-fly zones was on its face a pure joke?
It’s also pretty damned influential when huge, major facts and analyses are simply omitted, invisible, occasionally referenced in the 3rd to last paragraph or by one guy who’s on at 3 minutes before the show ends.
soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie:
Look forward to it. I’m taking today off because I have a two and half day drill starting tonight.
fiona
The Repubs are the media, they own it, thats why they can say what they like, lies an’ all, the trick is switching them of, as long as people tune into them, they will keep broadcasting.
Find a news outlet that you think is fair, and stick to it, ignore the rest.
As for the Repubs health plan, it was probably written on the back of a napkin while they were eating lunch one day, I honestly think, they thought they did not have to produce one, because they thought, they would be able to derail the Dems plan long before this, thats why its no good, no thought whatsoever was put into it, they may as well just have written “the status quo will do us thanks”.
Sly
@El Cid
I always found Jay Rosen’s application of the model developed by Daniel Hallin, to explain how the press (or certain aspects of it) controls the public discourse, to be quite useful in understanding how the modern media machine operates. To wit:
Sly
Feh. Above link goes to a comment by Hallin himself to Rosen’s initial article. Just scroll up, in case you don’t remember the piece. It made all the rounds on the lefty blogs back in January.
Svensker
@Dr. Morpheus:
Sorry to hear about that, Doc.
Sasha
RE: TDS 11/5
I especially appreciated “Purity of Essence” scrawled on the blackboard.
Liz
I nicked this and re-posted elsewhere with source. Thanks John. Somehow you often say exactly what I’m thinking.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“A person would have to be totally shameless to see Oliver, Mandvi, and Bee break down exactly how pundits “form their analysis” and still go to work the next night and do it exactly as foretold the night before on the Daily Show.”
I think the reason The Daily Show kicks the ass of the commentariat is that they’re so much frickin’ smarter than the cable show talking heads: Oliver is a Cambridge graduate, Stewart went to William and Mary, Bee went to McGill.
By contrast, Glenn Beck didn’t attend college at first, and then took one divinity class at Yale and then dropped out. Larry King never went to college.
No wonder they run rings round them.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
When the whole fucking thing comes crashing down and you find yourself living “Escape From New York” no matter where you are, don’t waste your time rounding up the politicians; they’ve only been doing what politicians do. Get the journalists. The pathetic excuses they give to the Judge Dredd panels should be especially amusing.
SFAW
Liberal elitist swine! Report to Roger Ailes immediately for re-education. (No, I don’t mean R.A. the blogger.)
SFAW
Well, as Edna Mode would say “And yet, here we are”.
“Solidly Democratic” only in terms of labels – the Rethugs are still controlling the agenda in a way disproportionate to their actual numbers. Part of that is due to the media’s daily reaffirmation of the right-wing messages (in no small part because they’re afraid of being labeled liberal/commie/elitist/what-have-you); part of it is due to far-too-many of the Dems being spineless (thanks Harry!); and part of it is due to the ignorance of much of the electorate. (Well, not sure if it’s ignorance or stupidity. There’s certainly an extremely large portion of stupid out there, and the Rethugs do their best to keep it that way, because it helps them stay in power. I’m just not sure how much of the apparent-stupid is just ignorance.)
The media don’t need to influence voters much for there to be a majorly negative effect. All the media needs to do is let the lies go unchallenged, or not provide the truth/reality, and their work as pawns – witting or unwitting – of the Rethugs will be done. By allowing the false/dishonest shrieks of the wingnuts to go unchallenged, they are helping the Rethugs turn this place into Gilead.
Think I’m wrong? Fine. Keep telling yourself that evahthing’s gonna be alright; I’m sure the Rethugs will continue to go quietly into that good night, and in a few years: Unicorns for everyone!.
Or maybe not.
k_michael
John, why are you surprised that the “main stream media” are still so deferential to the Far Right (which the GOP officially embraced yesterday and adopted as its platform)?
The fact is that media outlets are almost all owned by a tiny number of huge, and typically multinational, corporations. Those people who wish to work in media-related fields therefore have their employment (and the conditions thereof) controlled by those big corporations.
This is why we will not see “main-stream media” discussion of the fact that “capitalism” is a broad descriptor which can be applied equally well to both economic liberalism
(a.k.a. the Free Market; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism for a good well-referenced summary) and corporatism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism ). As a ersult, we also will not see any discussion of the fact that the Republicans are using Capitalism as a direct and exact synonym for “liberty”, when what they are actually militating for is corporatism.
The often-regurgitated claims regarding the “the liberal media” are, it seems to me, most-often based upon the fact that the corporate-owned media allow a few non-corporatist reporters and editors to remain part fo the staff, so as to give the appearance of being “fair and balanced”.
So, John, not only should you be not at all surprised when the “main-stream media”, including CNN and similar cable stations, give more air-time to far-right-wing and purely-corporatist spokespersons than they give to those holding moderate or liberal viewpoints; far from being surprising, this is something that should be expected.
HTH…
RememberNovember
Stewart/Colbert are our Murrow and Cronkite. We need to encourage them to keep speaking truthiness to the insanity.
LABiker
Along these same lines, did anybody hear the Mara Liasson piece (o’ crap) on NPR this morning? Of course it included a sound bite from a Republican who said that the voters are going to turn away from Democrats in 2010 because of the president’s low approval numbers. Yet another right wing lie that went unchallenged by the media gate keepers… I hope listeners are responding to this garbage the same way I do, but I wonder.
SFAW
If only it were true. Murrow, at least. Cronkite was a good man, but Murrow was, at times, on a completely different plane.
Well, it’s not as if Liasson were another Maddow. I mean, she does work for Fox, too, doesn’t she?
Wile E. Quixote
@LABiker
NPR is as corporate as they come. I resolved last year to never again donate to NPR or any NPR station listening to Juan Williams do his professional negro schtick one too many times during the election last year. And it’s the whole system that’s rotten, a few weeks ago I was listening to my local NPR affiliate, KUOW, and Ross Reynolds, who is as completely fucking useless as anyone who works for Fox news, was interviewing congressman Dave Reichert about the health care bill. Reichert spewed the usual bullshit and talking points and was never challenged, not even once, by Reynolds, who is just another useless local NPR ass-kisser hoping that he can become a more highly paid, but equally useless, national NPR ass-kisser.
Dr. Morpheus
Thanks Svensker, I appreciate it.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Dr. Morpheus: So sorry to hear this. Yeah, comedy helps, especially the dark, snarky gallows humor kind. Know that we’re rooting for you.
Aunt Moe
Anyone know how many pages the damn bill is? There’s your headline you media darlings, you.
jason
“orange boehner”, sounds like a drink.
evil is evil
I never cease to find that otherwise intelligent people can be as ignorant as a hammer.
“Liberal media” is an oxymoron. No “news” organizations are free from the control of the rich and powerful. They are all strictly propaganda.
Want to call me a liar? Check out the “news” and see how much has been written or published or shown on TV or talked about on the radio about single payer.
Next thing I know some jackass is going to start citing “military intelligence” about something.
Some people even believe that there is a purpose for the CI lying A. Hey, people, I die away laughing every time I see Fidel Castro in the “news.” Been in power for over 50 years, less than 90 miles from american soil and the CI lying A has never found him.
FranklyKathy
This may be old, but I found it interesting:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-liberalmedia.htm
Similar to what k_michael says above, the media is owned by just a few corporations — and they want you to hear what they want you to hear.