I just heard some former administration official (Bush era, I am assuming, since he wore a bow tie, and using the Tucker Carlson/George Will theorem, the surest sign that someone is both an asshole and about to start spewing bullshit, but who knows for sure) on CNN state that more stimulus money needs to be spent on road construction and infrastructure, because Rahm Emmanuel has spent the money on the Department of Education to achieve a political goal.
Anyone want to count the number of ways that statement is bullshit? We could start with the fact that Rahm Emmanuel had not one vote on the stimulus bill. We could also note that infrastructure spending was toned down by, guess who? We could also note that education spending on teachers is a good thing, because states not laying off teachers keeps people working. And on and on and on. Add your own.
The anchoress at CNN, of course, said nothing.
Another day with our failed media experiment.
General Winfield Stuck
The wankers rolodex goes around and comes around. You can set your watch by it.
Senyordave
I find that I no longer even consider stopping at any of the new channels when I’m flipping the remote. I skim Yahoo news, go to a couple of newpsper web states in the morning, and might watch a few minutes of one of the network news shows at night, but if I watch CNN I just get aggravated.
The Daily Show has trouble doing a parody that’s effective of CNN becasue the network itself is a parody.
beltane
I do not understand this. Wasn’t their original argument that a stimulus wasn’t needed at all? Except, of course, for tax cuts for the small group of people who are thriving off of everyone else’s misery. And laying-off teachers is a benefit to society as they belong to a union, and undermine our freedoms by educating children.
Leelee for Obama
This struck me as funny-CNN is on in the background at my house, and I missed this entire thing!
CNN=white noise?
stevie314159
Well, at least he wanted to spend stimulus money, instead of tightening the old gov’t belt around our necks, or cutting the capital gains tax.
Doesn’t sound like a Bushie to me.
Rey
And we will have to leave there……
Max
Yesterday, during the breaking news of the Ft Hood tragedy, I was at work, so I couldn’t watch tv to hear what was going on.
I have the Sirius ap on my iphone, so I tuned in CNN. MSNBC is not on Siruis, I so wish they were.
I lasted for about 5 minutes with Wolf Blitzer before I had to turn it off. It just wasn’t worth it. CNN in unwatchable at this point.
I got better info and real time updates from Twitter.
Savage Henry
If it was a Bushie he would have been promoting spending the stimulus dollars on more illegal domestic surveillance programs and maybe another war against brown people.
Leelee for Obama
@Leelee for Obama: OK. I had put the TV on pause-the bow-tied one is blathering right now!
Heidi Collins never has reminded me of a reporter-so there’s that.
Maybe if the tax cut part of the Recovery Act that the Repubs wanted had been targeted at infrastructure? I thought they didn’t like the infrastructure part of it at all?
Emma
Again, it reminds me of the times where I’ve been traveling in the UK and watched the news. The majority of those people are pitbulls — some official makes a statement like that and they better be able to support it.
I nearly had an orgasm the day I watched Tony Blair being interviewed and he said something or other about the war and the interviewer said but that’s not really true, is it?
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
Where’s the “I watch this stuff so you don’t have to?” tag?
It really is amazing how so-called “high-end” journalism is nothing of the sort, in so many ways. It’s not just unwatchable, it’s degrading the discourse.
I’m about to hit the Conventions section of Audacity to Win, and Plouffe’s ire is far more at how the media constantly mis-read what the Obama campaign was doing, than at the Clinton campaign (which mostly stunned him with their missteps). You get the sense, for example, that the only reason Chuckie T started looking at the delegate numbers was because Plouffe et. al. kept yelling at them about it!
This isn’t rocket science.
The Grand Panjandrum
Must be maddening to think of all those teachers and administrators keeping their jobs so they can continue the pro-Obama indoctrination going on in our schools.
I can see the handmade signs carried in by the teabaggers at the next schoolboard meeting: GUMMINT OUT OF ARE SCHOOLS!
Max
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: I was thinking about ordering that book, is it worth it?
lol
Sorry John, we’re going to have to leave it there.
Coming up next, did Levi Johnson’s Twitter account get hacked by the Internets? We have an exclusive report!
MattF
It’s effective politics, though. Do whatever it takes: lie through your teeth, but make it sound like it’s stuff that every child knows is true, blame Congress and/or an “evil genius” (blaming Pelosi is a twofer), and whatever else you do remember that anything that happened before January is ancient, fossilized, and completely irrelevant history.
Brick Oven Bill
Education only adds value when practical skills are taught. This is why the Morrill Act, as signed by Abraham Lincoln, mandated that land-grant universities teach agriculture, engineering, and military tactics. Most of the money spent by this Administration is a total waste.
If the money had been spent instead on electrifying the railroads to a national standard, accompanied by a jump-program of new nuclear power plants, unemployment would probably be around 6%, our dependency on foreign oil would be reduced, and greenhouse emissions would be reduced (to appease the Believers).
lamh31
OT, but seriously, Jon Stewart’s writers at the Daily Show have got to be the best damn political “comdey” writers ion TV, SNL needs to take note. (BTW, Colbert if also great, but they share writers with the Daily Show right?) This was too funny. Jon Stewart Does Glenn Beck: Touts Conspiracy Theories, Cries (VIDEO)
Tattoosydney
Um. How about “Educating our children better is a good thing, and costs money”?
Scott H
I saw that guy. I don’t know the value of an expert who damns his own previous predictions. I’ve tuned into cable news (CNN) for the first time in weeks. I’ll watch until the pressure in my skull gets to be too great.
Anyway, I just called my Representative’s office (Mollohan, WV-1). His office says Mollohan will be supporting HCR. I had heard he was “on the fence.”
General Winfield Stuck
@Brick Oven Bill:
President BoB from his propeller head compound.
Zifnab
Oh bullshit. Why do we need to spend money on roads and infrastructure? Can’t we just give all the construction companies tax cuts and let the free market sort it out?
I don’t see why my hard earned tax dollars should be going to pay for some limousine liberal on the East Coast to go drive up to Massachusetts and get gay married with his elitist Hollywood friends.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Max: So far, there’s been very little that you couldn’t guess or assume from the wall-to-wall coverage. But I also think that’s just because there wasn’t a lot of “behind-the-scenes” drama; it was all up-front!
It’s more than readable, for all that; Plouffe’s not a awful tale-spinner, and it’s given me a lot of insight into why the White House works as it does, in this season where everyone seems to be in a panic over them “doing nothing.” That, to me, has made it more than worth it.
kay
Why doesn’t anyone ever mention that a third of the stimulus was tax cuts?
Or that former President Bush tried the “send checks to individuals” approach several times, when he was making his lame efforts to stave off disaster?
matt
Rahm is an Israeli spy, just like his dad was an israeli terrorist! He was a concentration camp gaurd with the IDF in the first gulf war…so basically he is willing to fight and die for israel, but only profit and promote pro israeli laws when in the US….how did this douchebag who wants a rethug based military even get a security clearance?
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Because the only real tax cuts are GOP tax cuts. SATSQ.
Zifnab
@MattF:
Up to a point.
The GOP has completely trashed it’s brand identity. This works on CNN where a nondescript random “expert” with unexposed party id gets to blather on about how this policy or that is bad for America. But the moment Michelle Balkman or John Boehner stand up and start saying the same thing, everyone throws up in their mouths a little and changes the channel.
How do you get elected when putting an (R) next to your name is toxic? All the wingers can do at this point is concern troll the dominant political party.
kommrade reproductive vigor
It’s simple: Democrats want X, Democrats are bad, therefore X is bad.
The fact that he picks on Emmanuel instead of Nazi Pelosi shows he is a Serious Person.
geg6
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill:
See now, you’re gonna make me go out and buy it. I hadn’t heard anyone say that and I had hoped Plouffe would give some insight into how Obama-fu works, but lack of this information led me to believe I wouldn’t get it. No one has given a decent review of this book. And by decent, I mean one that actually tells you something about what is in it, not what makes a Politico headline.
kay
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
He has no earthly idea what he’s talking about. Teachers unions are furious with Obama, because of Arne Duncan’s ideas on reform. If they intended to “buy” teachers unions, they massively failed.
I have an easier explanation. They put stimulus money towards retaining teachers, because without a teacher in each classroom, kids weren’t going to be able to attend school.
Sometimes things aren’t complicated and devious.
Third Eye Open
@Brick Oven Bill: I don’t know BOB, I thought the Atheist re-education camps, and barista training programs for out-of work Birkenstock sales-staff were spot-on investments. Although, I do think that the solid gold statues of Marx were a bit superfluous.
slag
Anchoress? Are you saying the CNN anchor was some kind of nun?
Rest of the post seems pretty right on.
Elizabelle
May I put in a “thank you” here to all the BJ regulars who inform us what is occurring on the news networks (cable and broadcast), so that we do not have to go there and be misinformed on our own?
Just cannot watch anymore.
CNN = Constantly Negative News. Dumbed down, too.
I missed Campbell Brown’s comment that “Some of us like my colleagues here at CNN are still trying to do journalism.”
What’s that you say, Mrs. Dan Senor?
And can you, Campbell Brown, really not tell a difference between Fox and MSNBC, aside from partisan slant? Really?
(Whoever’s thesis that “our media’s finest” suck up for Fox because they might work for Murdoch some day holds up again.)
LATimes: CNN Downplays Ratings Slump
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-cnn5-2009nov05,0,5188962.story
danimal
Stimulus jobs are supposed to be for men doing manly things like building roads. Jeez.
LoveMonkey
If you read between the lines of the ratings stories, you will see that less than one percent of the population is watching the cable news leader on average.
Also, the story describes the plight of CNN, whose decline in ratings has followed its decline in quality over the last year.
I’m not sure that the media experiment has failed yet. It’s my impression that the relevant experiment is the larger American experiment, and I don’t see much evidence that the media is doing any actual, measurable harm to that ongoing initiative.
People who bitch that the media isn’t “this” enough or “that” enough seem to me to be asking the media to do what government and politicians and the voters themselves cannot do, which is to get things mostly right most of the time. It sounds as if these people expect the media to do their work for them. Being properly informed is like eating a good diet. Don’t blame the fast food operators for your cholesterol level. Take responsibility for your own information health.
Where is DougJ when you need him?
Cat Lady
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have cracked the MSM code, so that everything one sees on cable news now, from Beck to Cramer to political punditry, can only be seen with ridicule and contempt. All of the cable stations that are trying to pretend that they’re peddling news or information better find something else to peddle, because the jig is up. The joke’s on them now.
ISLM
Actually, my guess would be that it was economist Peter Morici, who teaches at the business school of UMD. He’s a Clinton-era hack, who specializes in international trade. He was CNN’s go-to hack economist during the stimulus debate last January, where he consistently said that the stimulus was too big. Ironic, isn’t it.
LoveMonkey
Sorry, this link goes with my previous post.
Robert Waldmann
Minor compared to the general idiocy of Mr Bow Tie Esquire but the money for teachers was in the form of grants to state governments not the Department of Education. Basically, he’s saying he is opposed to federalism and thinks the US gov should force states to spend money on highways even if the states want to spend it on teachers.
Just goes to show (again) that no one really gives a damn about federalism (I sure don’t).
Redshirt
The problem with CNN’s ratings, of course, is they have to go up – money must be made! And how do you think ratings will go up? By hard hitting analysis and deeply investigated reporting? Or MAD TALK and other “Pundits” spewing controversial ideas?
Watch for CNN to start emulating FOX, in other words.
And I always feel like a crazy when I mention this (part of their trick), but what are we to expect from the MSM when they are owned, whole cloth, by corporate titans. Is GE – i.e. MSNBC – really liberal? Do they really have an objective bias?
The real problem, as with health care, is profit: Maybe the news shouldn’t be a profit making endeavour, just like saving people’s lives and well being.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@geg6: I’ve really not read other reviews, but Audacity to Win (so far!) is pretty much the opposite of “breathless speculation”, is only slightly more sensationalist than my old Calculus textbook, and is pretty much what you’d expect from a guy like Plouffe.
And the explanation is more in the “doing”. There’s a lot of discussion, for example, about how they kept sticking to the plan, and when that succeeded (mostly) and when it failed (the OH/TX debacle, to his estimation.) There’s bits about the couple of times Obama got really mad (the Clinton Punjub episode and Rev. Wright’s speech right before Obama cut him off at the legs, for two).
Yet it’s far from a “tell-all”, and it’s much more about execution and planning — and then running head-first into reality — than anything. In that, I easily see the current White House strategy, for both good and bad, from how they ran this campaign. And it’s better in that regard than Wolffe’s book Renegade, which I also enjoyed, but for different reasons.
Does that help?
Elizabelle
Love Monkey: astute comment. Although I think the media — some of it, primarily TV and cable — is doing tremendous harm by trivializing the whole process. It’s pervasive and fast, served up to a weary and cynical audience.
Woodrow: will have to read Plouffe’s book.
Here’s a TIME excerpt from it.
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1932963,00.html
Kirk Spencer
@Brick Oven Bill: Yep. We never got anything from nuclear physics or philosophy. (sarcasm)
(And yes I know you’re a spoof but I couldn’t resist.)
Lisa
“Anchoress”…..
LOL. Okay Don Draper.
Good post though. I am continually pissed off that these wankers get airtime and the bonehead anchor/interviewer just sits there and lets them talk out of their sphincter.
lutton
If it was an R touting more infrastructure spending, I’ll take it. Even if they throw in some demagoguery along the way.
Betsy
“Anchoress?” Seriously?
ericblair
@Robert Waldmann: Just goes to show (again) that no one really gives a damn about federalism (I sure don’t).
C’mon, it’s a great stick to beat people with. Don’t want the public health care option? States’ rights! Don’t want right to die laws in Oregon? Try to get the federal gummit to shut ‘er down! Consistency? Who cares!
The Saff
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: Thx. I bought the book on Wednesday and will start it soon. I watched the HBO documentary the other night on the Obama campaign and enjoyed it. It was nice to relive the campaign knowing the outcome was the one I wanted.
smedley
I’m thinking “Fact-Checking SNL” could be another category here.
Scott H
I suppose you damned kids are too young to have felt nostalgic during the Howard K Smith cameo in the 1983 “V” recent rerun? Too young, probably, to remember when CNN did hard news – and MTV did music.
R-Jud
@Emma:
It is getting more Americanized over here, sorry to say– even in the not-quite-five years I’ve lived here I’ve noticed the downward slide. The Guardian, especially, is becoming a whiny middle-class lifestyle rag. Their best columnist is forced to cover celebrity gossip, ffs.
There are a few pitbulls still working out there: John Humphries of BBC Radio 4 springs to mind. But everything else is being slowly Murdoch’d. Except for Private Eye. It’s the only news thingie I subscribe to. We could use one in the US; it’s one half The Onion, another half actual dirt-digging bare-knuckles reporting.
LoveMonkey
@Elizabelle:
Thanks for the reminder, I want to get Plouffe’s book.
Brick Oven Bill
People mock me. Mock away at your own peril.
Forget the military-industrial complex. The Education System-Idiot Complex (ESIC, pronounced E- Sick, noun) is more ominous, especially to the most vulnerable members of our society:
The Wall Street Journal: SAT Scores Drop as Achievement Gap Widens
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: SAT Scores Normalized for Class, by Race
Every time you hear some new administrator come into a district, they talk about closing the ‘achievement gap’. And yet the achievement gap continues to grow. Europeans and Asians stay about the same, but Hispanics and blacks see their scores dropping.
The reason for this is HBD, and the coddling of underperforming groups, which hurts them. Forcing all groups to earn their own way in the world, promotes the family structure, discipline, and better student performance. A muscle not exercised atrophies. We all need to struggle to succeed.
The feminization of the school system, and HBD Denialism has destroyed the black family, and is in the process of destroying the Hispanic family. We need to have the courage to have an honest discussion on race in America. Instead we get:
“Give me money and I will close the achievement gap.”
This has become a religion. Religion cannot survive the Third Liberal Art of Logic. It demands instead ‘Faith’. The Military-Industrial complex was not a religion, just a business, and at least we got some cool guns out of the deal.
Obama’s money has been wasted on Faith, and is, in fact, counterproductive. Electrify the railroads. Down with the ESIC.
Da Bomb
Damn you Rahm!! Damn you!
Why did he waste money on education? Judging by the stupid and inane political discourse that I have had the pleasure or removing myself from over the last week, I believe that the American public in general is a lost cause. And so are the so called pundits from inside the beltway.
geg6
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill:
This:
is why I read these kinds of books in a perfect world. The old undergrad major pull keeps me a political geek mostly more interested in analysis of campaigns and initiatives and legislative battles than in the gossip and horse race aspects the MSM love so much.
cmorenc
QUERY: How much of some CNN anchors/interviewers failure to skeptically probe or challenge various assertions by their subject interviewees is due to:
– lack of preparation or intelligence by the anchor;
VS
– direction by their senior producers to keep the appearance of “neutrality” by avoiding any appearance of adversarial inclination?
Some anchors, e.g. sometimes Rick Sanchez, DO seem willing to take on b.s. by their subject interviewee, others (Wolf Blitzer comes to mind) seem to affect genial obliviousness. So there has to be at least a bit of the former (lack of prep or sufficiently probing intelligence) going on – but I also suspect the latter is in play for may anchors who don’t have quite the “star” patina of some others.
YellowJournalism
I think Jon Stewart was scaring himself last night. His Beck impression was almost too accurate, to the point where I could actually see Glenn Beck spouting off the same theories on his own show.
The joke about something coming on two pages was hilarious, too.
catclub
Betsy @ 44:
The brits have it right: newsreader.
Non-sexist and accurate.
El Cid
We Americans are completely opposed to stealing from the future in order to pay for so-called necessities today.
That’s why so few of us take out mortgages, preferring of course to parsimoniously save up and purchase our houses outright, rather than indebt our future selves or who knows who else by asking some ‘bank’ to just give us a house if we ‘promise’ to pay it back.
The Saff
@geg6: Here’s the link to Jon Stewart interviewing David Plouffe the other night on The Daily Show.
They Live By Night
@Brick Oven Bill:
I think you meant to write Rahm. He’s the one running things, remember?
tripletee
@Scott H:
I wasn’t nostalgic over Howard K Smith, but I thought it was charmingly quaint that the hero who revealed the Visitor’s insidious agenda was a TV newsman. In the remake, the TV reporter is a shameless hack who jettisons his principles in return for access – much more realistic.
BTW, John, do we really need a separate “Media” tag? The “Assholes” tag seems more than sufficient.
LoveMonkey
@Brick Oven Bill:
People mock you? Don’t sell yourself short, Billybob.
The animals and the birds mock you too.
For example, the next time you hear a donkey going “hee-YAW!”, that’s about you.
Zifnab
@El Cid: Also why we don’t use credit cards and the payday loan industry in this country is dead. And we have a huge sovereign wealth fund, rather than a looming national debt.
American people are some of the most prudent in the world like that.
The Populist
Wait a minute, weren’t we told that stimulus doesn’t work? Now they are clamoring for it? What?
Tony J
Ahem, not quite. In the original miniseries the hero was an intrepid TV cameraman first shown risking his neck to report on the CIA’s role in El Salvador, while the hack who sold out her principles in order to become the Visitors’ propaganda mouthpiece was an ambitious TV News talking-head, and the hero’s ex-girlfriend.
I guess the writers thought the idea of anyone involved in modern TV News being portrayed as a heroic truth-teller would un-suspend the disbelief of their viewers.
The Populist
Okay, you are clueless. The problem is, I am not mocking you but pointing out the obvious.
To mock means I call you a buffoon and a know nothing sheeple.
The Populist
And No Child Left Behind has been a waste of epic proportions YET I don’t hear you chastising the right for that piece of bullshit legislation.
The Populist
You mean the ones that the right leave to rot in the inner cities?
You mean because school boards are being stacked in heavily red states with creationists with hardcore agendas that do not push for more learning of the basics but for religious education in public schools?
Yet, people point the finger of blame at educators yet nobody dares to call out parents who allow their kids to watch tv all night long, play video games and other lazy stuff in lieu of making them study? Gee…in world where every resume that crosses my desk has spelling and grammar errors up the wazoo I wonder if maybe it’s a cultural thing that kids just don’t care because PARENTS don’t care?
Kids who achieve do so because they are either goal driven or they have solid role models in parents who are involved. When my wife, who is a damn good teacher, goes to parent teacher conferences maybe 4 parents show up. Sad dude. Blame the system all you want but if the parents can’t be concerned enough to come to an event held 1 night a year to meet with their children’s teachers, I give up.
Keep pushing the rightie meme my friend. Your agenda is showing.
The Populist
BTW BoB:
Why is it that schools in these RED STATES can’t teach their kids the basics? Everybody points to inner cities and big city school districts YET states like Oklahoma obviously care not one wit about teaching their children.
White folks, for example, in white areas can whine about administrators trying to bus in some inner city kids to mix in for diversity to their heart’s content, but it does not change the fact that everytime a kid does not learn something it can’t be heaped on the schools for lack of motivation. If we truly are a free society where personal responsibility should reign, why is it that parents can’t look in the mirror and accept a lot of the blame for their failures too?
tripletee
@Tony J:
You’re right, I totally forgot about that character. Been a while since I’ve seen it.
I’m still amused that the idea of a heroic truth-teller coming from the ranks of cable news seems more implausible than alien lizards masquerading as humans, though.
John T
It should be pointed out that Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D) does good work, and he wears a signature bow tie. I wish he wouldn’t though, it makes him look like a smug little twerp.
HyperIon
that’s the second time in 24 hours that you have used that expression.
in what way are our media an experiment?
is our government an experiment?
the failure part i get completely, though.
Comrade Kevin
@R-Jud:
Private Eye really is an awesome publication. I have subscribed to it for about 20 years. The American publication closest to it was Spy magazine (coincidence? nope), which went under quite some time ago.
TheHatOnMyCat
@HyperIon:
He appears to be borrowing from the phrase “The American Experiment” which is often associated with the inquiry of Alexis de Tocqueville …
It’s a turn of phrase, and I suppose one can apply it to the media. But one can apply it so many things. All of human activity can be called an experiment in one sense or another. This blog is an experiment. I can write a booklet about how my participation in this blog is an ongoing experiment, and was deliberately crafted to be a particular kind of experiment with specific aims.
The main issue I have with the idea is that on a relevance scale of 1 to 10, I judge that the bloghosts see the media experiment up in the eights and nines, where I see it down in the threes and fours.
SFAW
And I think you meant to write Bill Ayers and/or Jeremiah Wright. After all, they have weekly meetings at the non-White House, right?
CambridgeKnitter
@John T: Senator Paul Simon also wore a bow tie. A current politician who wears a bow tie and has a great sense of humor is Tom Stohlman, who most recently ran for city councillor in My Fair City, Cambridge, Massachusetts. See him and another candidate, Minka van Beuzekom, in a delightful video about avoiding the flu during campaign season: .