As frustrating as it is for you and me to have to deal with our hopeless beltway media, imagine how frustrating it must be if you are Obama. Well, now you don’t need to imagine:
In a little noticed aside at the end of Thursday’s jobs summit, Obama effectively painted the press as an obstacle to not just the much-needed economic recovery, but to America recovering its 20th Century position as an economic powerhouse.
***But then Obama made a turn, and went after the press, specifically the group of network correspondents who had interviewed Obama on his trip to Beijing. The full passage follows after the jump.
Obama: But it’s not going to come easily and it is going to require a level of cooperation and a willingness to work strategically together that we have not seen over the last several years. And frankly, this town and the way the political dialogue is structured right now is not conducive to what we need to do to be globally competitive. And all of you are leaders in your communities — in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here — it is important to understand what’s at stake and that we can’t keep on playing games.
I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews. Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin’s book. (Laughter.) True. But it’s an indication of how our political debate doesn’t match up with what we need to do and where we need to go
.Pretty pointed stuff, and I have little doubt that the president was actually irked by this at the time. Through both the campaign and his presidency, Obama has made little secret of his disdain for some of the horse-race, tabloid elements of the press corps–though his political and communications staff are not above sometimes exploiting those same tendencies for their own benefit. Obama meets regularly off-the-record and on-the-record meals with columnists who his advisers see as more intellectually substantive (or politically influential). But he has not done the same with beat reporters, whom, as he suggested Thursday, sometimes do a disservice to the country with the journalistic equivalent of ambulance chasing.
Is there any doubt in your mind that Obama is not 100% correct about the press being an obstacle? Think of all the mindless crap churned up the last few months in the media. Christ, Chuck Todd’s twitter feed alone justifies Obama’s remark. At any rate, this reminds me of one of my favorite Obama quotes from last year:
I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ Instead of being appropriately [the tape is garbled]. So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f–––ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.
For some reason, I have this clip running through my head right now:
You get the point.
jwb
OT, John, could you give us a Sunday night football thread, please?
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: Yeah, that.
I think that if Obama started saying things like this on a consistent basis, the Villagers’ collective head will explode. I don’t see a downside to that!
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: Yeah, I’d really rather not hijack this particular thread, which promises to be a good one.
Max
And yet, those that need to hear this message most, can’t understand the truth Obama is speaking.
Warren Terra
I love that little “[the tape is garbled]”. I get to imagine all sorts of fully-justified profane outbursts into that gap.
With our shallow media, it’s like the old saying: if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
CalD
If you ignore them, they really will go away.
Their entire business model depends on not being ignored.
valdivia
For me this bit just exemplifies one of the things I love about Obama–he freaking gets it. He knows we are in deep shit, he knows that the media have no interest in actually doing their job and that because of that it is 1000 times harder to get out of the hole. The one thing that i find frustrating is that some people on the left would want him to play the media’s game, instead he is trying to get out of it. I rather have the latter any day.
Fuck the Village.
Shalimar
As much as I’m normally a fan of pointless profanity, the joke actually works better in the edited-for-TV version where the family name is changed to Moron.
Leelee for Obama
As stoopid as Spaceballs was, it remains one of my favorite movies. Made me laugh from beginning to end, and had many many great lines that could be used
Combing the Desert…”we ain’t found shit!”
“Smoke if ya got em”
“They’ve gone to plaid…”
“Merchandising, merchandising… ”
“I’m half man, half dog…I’m my own best friend!(God, I miss John Candy)
“Waiter…check please”
“I was your Father’s sister’s cousin’s former roommate”
and last, but not least,
“I see your schwartz is as big as mine!”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@CalD: Which would be fine, except we would only hear from McCain and Lieberman, all the time. And no one seems to care that they are the only ones we hear from most of the time right now anyway.
Sly
Well, the truth is Brian…
I think I’m gonna make that my ringtone. Bitches.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And not to pick on BJ-ers, but the football thread has way more entries than this one, and we’re supposed to be the thinkers. Just sayin’…
Bubblegum Tate
@Leelee for Obama:
I can pretty much recite all of Spaceballs verbatim. I’m not just talking about the more famous bits, either. I mean all of it. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend it’s Mel Brooks’ best movie, but it’s probably my favorite. I watched it so many times, it’s kind of ridiculous.
Adam Freeman
Some times you need football as a distraction from shit you can’t control.
John O
@valdivia:
Right on, valdivia. I sense this, too.
It’s a pretty hard job he has now at this particular point in our history.
The man is simply not a moron.
dSquib
I love the idea of being a politician who throws an obsequious softball question aside and tells the journalist asking it to grow up. Not that I would, likely.
valdivia
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Hey I am not into Football and I am pretty outraged about our media idiocy so I hope more people come and hang out here since on football I got nothing.
Steeplejack
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Hey, we multitask, we multitask. Sometimes better than others.
valdivia
@John O:
yes I love that he is not a moron at all. What a difference! Have you guys read his exchange with Bob Kuttner at the jobs summit? The man can think on his feet about really complex issues. And again, really too bad that the journalists don’t know anything about how to ask him pertinent questions.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I do have to say, though, that I’m glad we haven’t had a Tiger Woods discussion.
kommrade reproductive vigor
O NOES SOSHULIZM GONNA SHUT DOWN TEH NOOS!
I see the press as a large flock of sheep that’s decided to rest in the road. They don’t mean to block your progress (that would require intent, which would require some glimmering of intelligence). They’re just comfortable where they are and don’t understand the bright lights and loud noises coming from the big thing on wheels.
John O
That’s right. I’m both watching the game, and OT, btw, anyone who appreciates sustained excellence or longevity or skill should be doing at least a little tip o’ the cap tonight for one B. Favre, 283 straight games and counting at QB (! will not happen again in our lifetimes, at least most all of us), AND contemplating what I’m going to do when the country goes Mad Max.
That’s multi-tasking Meta.
katmaus
I like having a smart president.
John O
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Yep, just doing what’s in their own interest, personally. It’s not anyone’s fault, it is simply what is.
dSquib
the Villagers repeatedly reveal their own inadequacy by complaining that the Obama administration is the “egghead” administration, that Obama is “obnoxiously articulate” and so on.
Sadly the indications of his obvious disdain is not likely to spur these people on to better themselves. Quite the opposite, in fact.
mvr
John,
You’re channeling DougJ with your headline. One of my favorite features of this blog, btw.
On the merits, its true. But how do you get out of it? That’s our problem and his problem. Getting the problem is helpful, but figuring out how to get past it is harder yet.
WereBear
I love hearing this and I hope the President can make some steps into shaming the press into actually doing their job.
We’ve been on pretty much self-imposed exile from the MSM since our living room TV glowed its last on T-Bird weekend. We have a TV in the bedroom, but that’s for watching movies on. I haven’t seen network news in years.
Want to hear an emblematic story? I rambled onto an advice column, and a reporter wrote her to ask about some material he found on the company laptop.
The advice columnist had to tell him what he found wasn’t a dilemma… it was a story.
And there you are.
Corner Stone
I am not going to read a damn thing you have to say about this specific post Cole.
Because anything with Spaceballs is an AUTOMATIC F’NG WIN.
And we’re done here.
John O
@mvr:
Ain’t gonna happen until it has to, mvr. That’s just the way we roll as a species.
Corner Stone
@Bubblegum Tate: My hair, he shot my hair. Son of a bitch!
Notorious P.A.T.
Yeah Obama, the press sucks. Now stop f**king locking up people in gulags because they might hurt someone.
tenkindsagrumpy
Do you think he heard me? I’ve been screaming at the tele during all O’s press conferences.
Notorious P.A.T.
Not only that, but lklj qapoiuh huioppoop hsh heow heiwopopa huiepow hni poo x wo!
JoePo
@John O: Well, to be fair, his career has been more spottily excellent than consistently excellent.
My stance is that if the Packers retained him, he’d be circling the drain right now if he (theoretically, obvs) didn’t in 2008. Careerwise, I’d say Peyton Manning is the better quarterback, and I’d probably take the 2009 version of him over any quarterback ever, besides Montana in ’88-’89.
On topic — the Village reminds me of the English class I teach – during a discussion, they’ll be talking about something like immigration, it’ll seem like we’re getting somewhere important, and then someone’ll completely derail the class with a statement like, “But immigrants bring in diseases like swine flu.”
…only my students are actually fucking interested in learning.
valdivia
Also if you read the full post from Time, you will note that Michael Scherer, a wanker if there was ever one, ‘corrects’ Obama about the content of the interview he got in Asia. Except he still does not get it, both Major Garret and Chuckie asked him economic questions but they were very horse racy, zero analysis. The Major Garret interview was insane, he kept telling Obama “just answer yer or no”, cutting him off. Incredible bs. But of course for this idiot reporting on this, that is a significant interview content-wise.
You Don't Say
Yeah, I saw that Swampland post earlier. I can’t stand Scherer. What a whiner. Yes, Obama’s assessment is accurate, but what bugged me is the idea that Scherer thinks the President and the press should like each another. And that he’s crying that they don’t.
donovong
The fact that this was written by one of the biggest Villagers out there makes it that much more irritating. Michael Scherer was, quite literally, one of the biggest tire swingers out there last year.
And they are never going away as long as we all constantly refer to them, link to them and reference everything they do on various blogs and comment threads. All they want is more eyes on their scribbles, and they don’t care where they come from. Same as watching Press the Meat and the other Sunday talkies we all deride every week. As long as people watch, they win.
John O
@JoePo:
:-), JoePo.
I might agree with you about Manning having the overall better career, but he ain’t no way as fun to watch as Brett. I’m a Bears fan, bred to hate him, and I just can’t.
OT, The Villagers are useless at this point, sense it, are sensitive and defensive about it, but it will be 10-20 years before we see substantive change.
PaulW
Ah, Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right… I almost named my politics blog that title, but thought it too arrogant… nowadays, I realize I shouldn’t have worried. There’s no such thing as TOO arrogant on the Intertubes.
me
“This fucking guy slashes my face, and he cuts my fucking ear off! I’m fucking deformed!”
John O
@donovong:
I have successfully killed my Sunday teevee Villager habit (3 months clean!), but I can’t yet get past the excellent blogospheric ridicule of The Village.
When I was a kid, there was a Nazi march in Skokie, IL, and it was just loud enough for me to ask questions at my age. So I asked Mom. She said, “What if they gave a march and no one came?”
Mom is a pretty smart woman.
JK
@donovong:
Don’t feed the MSM it only encourages them. You’re better off getting your news from Democracy Now, GritTV, and Free Speech Radio News.
JK
@John O:
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Exhibits/Track16/nobody_came.html
Mike in NC
The Villagers keep wondering who the hell this Obama character is, and when is Dubya going to return to assign them cute nicknames.
John O
:-), JK.
I didn’t say Mom was a revolutionary or anything, just that she was and is a very positive influence.
She was about 27 in ’69, with a 10 year old son and 6 year old twin boys. I don’t know why I remember it, but I do.
bago
So a bunch of “the scene” in DC have to undergo lie detector tests affirming that they aren’t doing drugs, that they’re good patriotic Americans, and that they fit the mold. Conformity is highly prized in this town. This is what Josh Marshall means when he says it is wired for republicans.
Well that and the whole aristocratic aspect. Who do you know/ work for? Is often a greeting. That’s why discussing a party planner is pri 1 journalism. They want to be members of the courtesan class in the imperial court. How else would These people get laid.
jwb
@John O: I gave up on the TV back during the 2008 election. I agree that the intertubez ridicule has proven difficult to give up.
JK
@John O:
I didn’t mean to imply that. I just like the poster and appreciate the sentiment.
John O
I know. I’m not like the commenters at Pandagon, I always assume the best of intentions out here.
Thus the emoticon. Underrated, and I sense disdained in the political blogoshpere. I think tone is important for conversational medium without facial or other clues.
kay
He’s justified in objecting to the coverage of the Asia trip.
It was amazing to watch. The press were told the objective of the trip, by the White House. Admittedly, it was not a conventional Presidential trip, where the President essentially travels to publicize a specific completed agreement. He has it, he just wants a press event to announce it.
But that were told that wasn’t the point of the trip.
They were told the trip was a good-will effort to begin cooperation on broader economic issues.
They ignored that. They insisted on covering it within the context of what “deliverables” he brought back.
I think they have to start with his stated premise. They can’t invent an objective and then talk for a week that it hasn’t been met. They weren’t even clear on what objective hadn’t been met, actually, because, of course, they weren’t given one.
If he were somehow spinning them, covering for a inability to get a specific agreement, so using misdirection, that would be one thing.
But, he didn’t do that. He stated why he was going.
They just decided to cover it the way they wanted to.
It must be extraordinarily frustrating. It simply doesn’t matter what he says. They just wedge it into their conventional frame.
John O
Larry Fitz is awesome, and the Cardinals are blocking the snot out of the Vikings.
Good game, and I don’t have to work tomorrow. Might see the end of it.
valdivia
@kay:
I think they act this way with everything. They really do not care what *is* happening, they want to spin their story the way they scripted it.
John O
@kay:
Kay, I think I might need to introduce you to Bob Somerby, as far as I know the originator of the “narrative” meme. And his primary target is “left (ish)” pundocracy.
A bit like Neil Young in his one-notedness, but compelling, nevertheless.
Wile E. Quixote
I’d like to see President Obama spend the next four or eight years just shitting all over the White House Press Corps. Tell Jake Tapper that if he wants to ask a question he has to get down on all fours, run in a circle and bark like a dog. Tell Peter Baker that if he wants his questions answered he needs to eat a marshmallow out from between Robert Gibb’s buttcheeks, but only after Gibbs hasn’t bathed for a couple of days and has eaten lots of greasy Mexican food.
John O
Some kudos are also in order for Kurt Warner.
His Jesus stuff drives me nuts, but he has Great Big Stones and can throw a football where he wants to even if knows it is going to hurt.
Life lesson #2457: All professional athletes plus teevee make it look easy.
John O
@Wile E. Quixote:
I would do PPV for that.
kay
@valdivia:
As I said before, to me, this stuck out. It was unusually bad.
I actually watched the story line develop.
CNN began with the straight story, added pundits, and then it changed, and was a full-blown invented meme, complete with all of them repeating the word “deliverables”.
I, as a listener, lost them. None of the facts had changed, but the story went way the hell off into wholly created “story”.
Just supposition and guesses and “analysis”. They got ahead of me.
Jack
The corporate press is only an “obstacle” if you believe Obama is not a
corporate stoogeParty Democrat himself.valdivia
@kay:
I totally missed it because I don’t do the MSM anymore, I only found out about it from the blogs but I am sure you were not the only one who caught it.
kay
@John O:
Thanks. I like Neil Young, so I’ll give it a shot. One-note obsessives are weirdly compelling.
John O
@Jack:
Sorry, Jack, but I don’t think he wants to be, and I also think he knows what a powerful force he’s up against.
He’s made several remarks about the inanity of the national press, but alas, they (the national press) need their access, too.
All that being said, our POTUS is a very centrist, conciliatory, pragmatic, and puss-force Democrat.
I just don’t think he would be if he was King.
John O
@kay:
I certainly appreciate and enjoy Neil very much, full body of work considered, politics considered, right-place, right-time considered, storyteller-considered, but I don’t quite love him. We’re talking micrometers short.
Which is how I feel about Somerby.
wilfred
What a pathetic, manipulative question. Goebbels asked questions like that.
AhabTRuler
@John O: That is a very apt comparison.
Wile E. Quixote
@Mike in NC
Yeah, I think Obama needs to do that. Have Robert Gibbs get shitfaced drunk and give each member of the Press Corps a nickname like John Belushi did to the pledges in Animal House.
Gibbs: Todd, your White House Press Corps name is “Douchenozzle”.
Chuck Todd: Why “Douchenozzle”
Gibbs (belching drunkenly): Why not?
Gibbs: Tapper, I’ve thought long and hard about his and your White House Press Corps name is “Hamsterfucker”
Jake Tapper (wonderingly): “Hamsterfucker?” Did you hear that everyone? I’m Hamsterfucker!
John O
@AhabTRuler:
It’s not really mine, Ahab, but I agree with you. I have a childhood friend who has referred to Neil Young as “One note Neil” for as long as I’ve known who Neil was.
Jack
@John O:
Of course he wants to be. Obama is not a mystical force of goodness. He’s a guy who wanted to run an imperial machine, knowing full well that it is an imperial machine.
Wanted the job, with full knowledge of what that job entails.
And to whom he would be beholden, on his trip up the ladder.
Full. Knowledge.
Brian J
Here’s what I find so perplexing. There’s clearly a need and want, both in literal and a metaphorical sense, for smart, informed, meaningful reporting and commentary. If one news organization wishes to establish a leg up on the competition, why doesn’t it try to go that route whether or not it seems trendy? Perhaps it’s simply better business to go in the opposite direction.
Mike G
Our shallow, dumbfuck press corps is the reason we had the shallow dumbfuck Bush in the WH for eight years. He would have been rhetorically sliced, diced, julienned and laughed out of town way before he got near the corridors of power if we had ‘journalists’ who actually took the administration of government and policymaking seriously instead of treating it in the only terms these corporate-asskissing blow-dried drones can understand, a cross between a TV advertising campaign, catty junior high cliqueishness and a stupid horse race.
‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f–––ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.
Which if he’d actually said to Williams would become a week-long orgy of “He said ‘collective!’ Marxist! Flag pin! Arugula, Dijon mustard! This is good news for John McCain.”
Fuck them all with a rusty chainsaw.
Yutsano
What, I’m the only one who thinks it’s all kinds of awesome that Obama dropped an F bomb?
valdivia
@Yutsano:
Not the only one. I am with ya!
Totally OT but Obama’s intro for Mel Brooks at the Kennedy Honors reception was drop dead hilarious. So many funny lines. Just fantastic.
phantomist
Obama: What I didn’t mention at the last job summit, but should have since our newspapers are having such a rough time of it lately, is that there is a gigantic vacuum (Obama makes a giant sucking sound) for credible news right here in D.C. I might suggent this hypothetical news org. concentrates on the biggest news stories of the day, investigate, ask tough questions and have that entire article conform to the best scientific evidence.
Chuck Todd: Check out the big brain on Barack, wants us to use bigger words and stuff.
charles johnson
John, is it a coincidence that your song reference comes from a band called *Stealer’s* Wheels?
CJ + I don’t know several.
Mike G
There’s clearly a need and want, both in literal and a metaphorical sense, for smart, informed, meaningful reporting and commentary.
There is an automatic assumption in this country that profit-seeking, centralized private corporations are the best form of organization for all but a handful of operations.
But corporate ownership and an advertising-driven revenue model appear to lead only to many different flavors of lowest-common-denominator crap in newspapers, magazines, television and movies.
Producing smart, informed, meaningful reporting relies on having good capable writers at the front-line, which is anathema to most corporations. People like that demand appreciation for their quality of work (not just their celebrity, like pundits) and rewards, which in corporate life are jealously hoarded by management. In my experience the essence of corporate life is to treat the front line people like drones, design everything so that people are immediately replaceable and interchangeable and the organization is not reliant on, or really very interested in, them being particularly intelligent or savvy.
Money and management is everything (it has to be – how else can they justify being paid so disproportionately?), and ‘content’ is just a commodity like customers, treated with indifference as if it will continue to flow forever regardless of how it is mistreated.
gnomedad
@valdivia:
Considering the number of times Blazing Saddles was referenced here in the campaign, it blew my mind to picture Obama seeing it when he was ten years old.
Mike in NC
@Wile E. Quixote:
To paraphrase Dr. Evil: “Breathtaking. I shall call him
Mini-meHamsterfucker”. Bravo Zulu!Comrade Mary
Whoops! Once again:
Obama on Mel at the Kennedy Center
Blazing Saddles: Obama Edition
Oy! gnomedad beat me to one of these links while I was editing.
valdivia
@Comrade Mary:
LOL. I had forgotten about that. Thanks for posting.
valdivia
@gnomedad:
yeah and that Blazing Saddles Obama edition just makes it even more perfect. I really hope one day he uses the “excuse me while I whip this out” line. ;-)
Notorious P.A.T.
Well. . . if he totally got it, he wouldn’t be worsening health care reform in order to try and get Olympia Snowe’s vote so he can claim “bipartisanship”. Or going ahead with an Afghanistan surge with no plan whatsoever to pay for it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Notorious P.A.T.: Waaah! You didn’t throw a Merry Christmass in there!
Notorious P.A.T.
@Mike G:
Very well said.
Nellcote
John Stewart to CNN pundits “You’re hurting the country!”
That quote pops in my mind more and more frequently lately.
jcricket
@Mike G: Hell, even corporations with this slavish need to serve “shareholders” (read: whiny-ass-titty-baby short-term-EPS-minded stock owners) don’t do that good of a job building companies that last.
Outside of Costco and Nordstrom, I can’t think of many corporations that get the best way to stay in business for the long-term, and ultimately enrich shareholders, is to ignore every single thing a “shareholder” or “market analyst” has to say about running the company. Maybe google and Berkshire Hathaway should be on that list too. Not GE, some ridiculous percent of their actual earnings were manipulated by including results (hidden in the reports) from GE capital (which is sucking hard now).
I’m beginning to think that like 99% of the “business genius” that lead to record stock market performance of the last 25 years is actually due to earnings manipulation/fraud, collective insanity (“fundamentals don’t matter”) and forcing consumers to binge on ever higher levels of easy credit.
CalD
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I wasn’t suggesting that no one (but McCain) should talk to the media or appear on their shows. I was suggesting that we all stop watching, reading, and linking to their stuff. I there’s no actual information being presented then there’s no good reason to continue consuming their products. But as long as they keep getting attention (and by extension, ad revenues) for this kind of stuff they’ll just keep spewing it out.
There’s still such a thing as responsible political journalism in the world. Maybe not much, but it does exist. I guarantee there would be more of it if it sold better and/or the market for glorified gossip columnists dried up a little. So if you don’t like what you’re vote with your remote.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@CalD: Yes, you’re right, WE should ignore it. I was thinking in terms of Obama ignoring them. But I already do ignore them. I go to GOS for the morning pundit roundup, and then tune into tunch-lily-net the rest of the day, occasionally going to TPM. But I think the only thing that has done so far is make FOX look better because I never watched them anyway, and now the other news stations have one less viewer. Short of laying waste to the FOX transmitter, how does our ignoring news change much, since a large number of Americans like being told they are correct all the time?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jcricket: Which is why I laugh at the fact that so many CEOs think they are the business leaders that John Galt took with him. Most of them – except for the leaders of the companies that you list – are the very ones that sat there begging the government to force the American people to buy the same stuff every year.
Ian
From the newsweek article that John got the quote out of
ChrisB
@Leelee for Obama: So this thread would be “Spaceballs, the political commentary,” I suppose.
@Wile E. Quixote: Hamsterfuckee might be equally appropriate (though Hamsterfucker gets his penis size right).
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Part of the problem is that the ‘reporters’ of today want to make the news rather than report it. Real news, especially political news, is not ‘sexy’ so they have to sex it up in the drive for viewers. People will not talk about dry old news like they do the sexy stuff. If there is no ‘angle’ to the story, create one. Grasp straws or build strawmen, whatever it takes to sex it up and make it juicy.
Combine that with corporate owned news that are used to drive the various corporate/political agendas and you have the current mess that refers to itself as our news. Obama is right in pointing out that our press is obsessed with finding some controversy over meaningless bullshit while ignoring the important issues that face us. Whenever they do talk about important issues they present two (or more) viewpoints on any issue and treat them as equal points of view no matter how insane one side may be.
It’s like they have someone on to discuss child rapists and how horrible they are so to be fair they bring a child rapist on to present their point of view, which the ‘press’ then accepts as just as valid as the pov of those who oppose child rapists, seemingly agreeing that it justifies their raping children just as the other side is opposed to it. Then they ‘have to leave it there’ as an issue to revisit later just to do the same thing again.
You can’t fix something this broken, you can only wait for everything to fall apart before attempting a rebuild from the ashes.
Boney Baloney
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): “You can’t fix something this broken, you can only wait for everything to fall apart before attempting a rebuild from the ashes.”
There’s a term of art that applies here: you can’t unscramble an egg. It’s true, you know. Exceptionalism is the syphilis of empires. It goes away for a while, but always comes back in the end and rains fire from the sky. What are you gonna do?
Incidentally, is it true that Field Marshal Buzzcut is ThymeZone in drag? Because I doubt it. Actually challenging a screen name to a fistfight is like shitting your pants in the middle of a wedding reception; nobody with proper so-shul-i-zation would, or even could, actually do it. David Vitter would hesitate and then pucker his ringsteak, in the circumstances. Even Darrell would bugger off and find something more entertaining to do after winding people up to a certain point. I do believe we’ve got a live one here.
In FYWP’s name I pray, amen.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Even the driest subject can be written about in a way that is interesting, understandable and engages the reader. Of course, that requires a reporter who has 1. a good understanding of what the hell he’s writing about and 2. several sources he is certain also understand the subject.
Making things sexy, making shit up or just throwing in opinions of several different people is much, much, much easier. Almost anyone can do it and those people can be paid less.
Over the past few years, papers have consistently dropped the number of subject matter experts they have on staff and replaced them with the transcriptionists in the name of the all mighty bottom line. (Plus, I think there’s an attempt to make the compete with blogs to attract the whippersnappers.) That’s why we’ve gone from All the News that’s Fit to Print to All the News that Fits. Doesn’t seem to be working out too well.
WereBear
Obviously, corporate interests are the highest priority, even when they are short-sighted and will wind up killing the business. I see R&D and jobs slashed all the time, “to reach what Wall Street wants for profitability.”
Never mind that the company will collapse and die. There’s always another one to raid, since they think MBA’s are interchangable among any kind of business.
So the goal is not building a strong company with stuff people want. The goal is to rake in chips at the Big Casino.
Now our Press is the same way. Rack up ratings, and don’t get into facts and stuff; they are too hard to explain, there are no naked boobs, and itemizing all the mayhem is damn depressing… and will point fingers straight at their corporate masters.
When our TV burned out last weekend, we just replaced it with our older Mac desktop. I can photoshop on it, administer my blog if needed, and play music.
I can also watch TV on it; what I want, when I want it, and with far fewer commercials.
That’s what they fear. And they should.
Just for a moment… consider where we would all be without the Internet.
Thank you, Al Gore.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Yes.
For one thing, we, and he, we live in what amounts to an information blizzard. Never in history has anything like it existed. Never in that same history could anyone have imagined anything like it. Information is everywhere, and is everywhere available to pretty much everyone, all the time. The press is no longer essential to the availability of information … nor is it essential to the distribution of information by, say, an administration that wants to get its message out.
The Obama campaign basically reinvented campaign finance at the national level, using tools that are closely related to the information fire hose I am talking about. The right is busy using every information tool at its disposal to reach and stir up its base, and the left can do the same thing, at relatively little cost. And the administration is clearly stirring up awareness of the press’s dysfunctions and deficits, in much the same way that the right started doing full time about 40 years ago.
It’s one thing to say that the press sucks, which it does. It is another to act as if the press serves any essential role in information distribution as it did prior to the digital age.
It’s also another to pretend that there is any reliable correlation between the effectiveness of the press, and the perceptions held by the public. The public probably distrusts the press more than Barack Obama does. And rightly so.
I think the Obama administration is pretty smart. They are going to figure out that the way to deal with a press that doesn’t (literally) work, is to just go around it and not complain that it is an obstacle, but just treat it as one. Go around it, over it, or despite it, and stop treating it with any more deference than it deserves. When a stupid question is asked, treat it accordingly. “That’s not the real question, Brian. The real question is …..” Just do that relentlessly and without apology, the way the right does. Just hammer at the talking points.
The right is very adept at getting its message out every day. Surely we are smarter than those morons and can learn to do the same thing, even better?
Person of Choler
Curse the media. They can’t get it right; didn’t hamper Bush enough, don’t help Obama enough. We need government control of media NOW to set standards of relevance, accuracy and fairness. Time to start channeling all public information through one federally controlled Department of Truth.
slippy
@Wile E. Quixote: We also need to assign the name “Mr. Pink” to someone. Someone who will really fucking hate it.
Mayur
@Ian:
FTFThem.
Mayur
@Ian:
FTFThem.
LittleBit
@Yutsano:
Oh, me too!
Edit: I loves my edit funkshun!
CalD
BTW: According to a subsequent update to that Swampland article, it seems Mr. Obama may have bent the truth a little in the specific example he cited.
Now whether or not anyone actually reported on any of those relevant questions that apparently were in fact asked, is a question I can’t answer. But I figure these people have enough very real strikes against them that we don’t need and ought not to go making stuff up about them or exaggerating their faults. That, after all, is their job.