Ocho Oh Noh!
Archives for 2009
Will the circle be unbroken?
It’s not every day that I say this, but I think Matt Taibbi and Nate Silver are both fundamentally wrong about Sarah Palin. Lady Starburst will not be the Republican nominee and she is not a “supremely gifted politician”, because she is not a politician at all anymore. She’s a huckster. She’s not about changing Washington or the Republican party or any grand cause other than herself. Her book and the way it is being promoted are perfectly calculated to sell books and not all calculated to get herself elected president. Flamboyant bridge burning, a book tour that pisses off fans while generating lots of media attention, a bizarre war of words with a trou-dropping teen-ager — these are all things that sell books and lose votes.
I don’t think this is so uncommon. Maybe Sarah Palin is the first figure who has completely blurred the line between reality tv contestant and presidential hopeful, but I don’t think Newt Gingrich is so different. He’ll never make a serious run for president, but showing up on MTP every week helps keep him and his nonprofit in the pink. And it’s not just politicians — most of the regular “journalists” on the gabfests make a lot of money via speaking engagements.
It’s easy to miss this, of course, because it’s so rarely discussed. Howard Fineman and Cokie Roberts would never describe George MItchell and Tom Daschle and Billy Tauzin and Fred Thompson as the whores that they are, because what Cokie and Howard are doing isn’t so different. It’s all a big, lucrative circle jerk and no one involved wants it to stop.
I’m an idiot.
Nevermind. Should have checked the dates. That was last year.
Steelers
I didn’t know this
My favorite provision requires that all members of Congress give up their federally-funded health care benefits and join the health care exchanges that will be set up by this bill. This is brilliant politics, addressing the tide of populist anger and fears of incipient socialism. But it also makes an important substantive point. The future of health care reform in this country will depend on how effectively the exchanges–health insurance super-stores–are working. If members of Congress have to participate in this system, you can bet they’ll insist on a array of choices, similar to the system they currently use, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.
Anyone who’s ever taken the subway to Ronaldus Magnus National Airport knows that Congressmen know how to look after their own interests (the thing is so convenient you feel like you must be in a foreign country). Forcing Congressmen to get health care through the exchanges is a simple way to make sure that someone in the government is trying to make sure the exchanges don’t suck.
Gimme a Break
Before I start this, I want to say that there are some really great folks to follow on twitter. William Beutler is great, Jay Rosen is invaluable, Roger Ebert is amusing, and there are lots of others who are really worth reading.
And then you have Chuck Todd…
Apparently some blogger, somewhere, harshed on Chuck’s Sunday morning buzz and this was the result. Who or what upset Chuck is beyond me, because he never directly addresses anyone. He apparently has decided that the best use of twitter is undirected and untargeted outbursts of random nonsense. Was it something I said (and I seriously doubt Todd even knows I exist)? Who knows? Was it Atrios? Again, who knows- because Chuck never tells us. It could be something anyone said- all we know it is some meanie blogger or some member of the “twitterverse.” In essence, he is defending himself from charges he won’t disclose.
At any rate, on to his whinge. He is mad at something someone wrote somewhere about the media coverage of the Asian trip, brushing off the criticism as just partisan bile from bloggers who aren’t capable of critical thinking. Of course, it wasn’t just bloggers, it was established journalists who were pointing out the failure of the media. James Fallows has had a multiple part series going (part 1, part 2, and part 3) in which he offered up the following assessment:
It’s not just me. Two colleagues with different perspectives — from each other’s, and sometimes from my own — marvel at how badly the mainstream American press distorted the picture of what happened during Barack Obama’s just-ended tour of Asia.
***I wasn’t in touch with Howard French or Tish Durkin (to say nothing of Amb. Jon Huntsman) before we all expressed the same amazed and negative reaction at the way our colleagues had missed the main point of what just happened in America’s relations with a very important part of the world. We’re all familiar with one “crisis of the press,” the business collapse. This is a different kind of crisis, though it makes the business crisis worse: the distortion of reality by compressing every complex issue into the narrative of the DC-based “horse race.” As you can tell, this really bothers me.
That wasn’t a potty-mouthed blogger.
Open Thread
Supak, Consoling.
Mike Dresslar, Lost Game Face.
Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.
Click on the photos for a link to the photographer’s website. To see all photo threads, click on ‘photo blogging’ at the bottom of the post.
If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.