Apparently, Bill Frist and Mark Halperin are on Charlie Rose discussing today’s summit right now. (The good news is that Ezra Klein is on too.) I’d watch but I have no desire to take my own life this evening.
There are a lot of people out there who believe that our sorry state of affairs is caused by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and, if they’re really deluded, they’ll add “and on the left, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann”. I know plenty of people who say things like this.
The truth is, it’s more the fault of Charlie Rose and Tom Friedman and David Brooks. Glenn Beck didn’t get us into Iraq.
Wile E. Quixote
But the good news is that John McCain is going to get an exclusive interview on Press the Meat with David Gregory this Sunday, and I for one say that it’s about time that the liberal media gave John McCain a chance to speak his mind.
mike kay
PBS displaying their famous liberal media bias.
Gregory
On the other hand, the even-the-liberal NPR had only a Republican Congressman on to give his response to the summit.
Not another dime from me.
freelancer
C’mon DougJ,
This is what you do. You get out of the boat, so we don’t have to. If worse comes to worse, I know Stuck has a mallet you can borrow.
But yes, this point must be made, we have as much to fear from the “levelheaded” centrists as we do from the lunatic fringe. As you said, Glenn Beck didn’t get us into Iraq, and on that same token, Limbaugh defended Abu Ghraib as a frat prank, but everyone knows he’s gonna tow the line. It is when Tweety and Blitzer dismiss possible Criminal Investigations into torture and war crimes; in the plutocratic brush-off of such inquiries as “shrill”, “partisan”, and “unbecoming”, that our democracy dies in small, but more substantive increments.
DougJ
@freelancer:
Yeah, I know I should have watched it. I wussed out.
kwAwk
I’m not sure that I agree. It was people like Beck and Limbaugh that kept that 28% who stayed in Bush’s corner through the end of his term in his corner. While these guys may not have been leading the way on invading Iraq, they were the ones who were riling up those who wished to shout down anybody who put forward an opposing viewpoint.
DougJ
@kwAwk:
It was people like Beck and Limbaugh that kept that 28% who stayed in Bush’s corner through the end of his term in his corner.
I’m not sure how much difference that made. The damage was already done.
Joe Buck
But no one who thinks the public option is important gets on the TV. Ezra’s a middle-of-the-road wonk, so he’s as far left as is permitted.
bayville
…and Tim Russert.
JGabriel
bayville:
And if we can’t speak ill of the dead, I ask you, whom can we speak ill of?
It’s not as if they’re gonna come back to bitch about it.
.
freelancer
@DougJ:
It’s late, it’s okay. We all know the story. Documenting it for posterity is a chore. I don’t know why, but I’m working on a piece using the GOP position expressed from today that they live in a bubble that is completely unaware of anyone, voter or otherwise, that makes less than 100k. It seems a bit redundant: “Republicans stump for rich fucks, No fucking shit”, but today, I feel like the things they said were blantant in their disregard for Middle America. HSA’s as a solution to your hospital bills? Go to the ER if you don’t have insurance? Are you fucking kidding? This is something that needs fixed poste haste as a moral issue, and as a political issue, the Dems are fucking retarded for not using it as a Wedge to split the GOP from low-info, hick voter, Regular Joe, Middle America, REAL America.
So yeah, tons of links and quotes in a draft, but it’s too much work for relaxation time, and it’s too frustrating and obvious to convert all that to prose right now. (That, and I’m just an amateur, and I can trust that pros out there will see it and say it better than myself)
DougJ
@freelancer:
Let us know when you’re done with the piece. It sounds interesting.
dww44
Like DougJ, I always wuss out. I can only take so much screaming at the teevee. I do enough of it in my car, and happened to be tuned into All Things Considered and the host (whose name I forget) is talking HC summit with the female Health Care reporter (don’t know her name) , oh about 6:10 p.m. EST tonite
Damn, if they didn’t frame the whole issue in political terms: that Democrats believe in more government managed health care, and Republicans believe in less. They never talked about the overriding issue of whether this country believes that all of its citizens have a right to basic health care. Never did they address the real pain too many Americans are suffering. Never did they address the issue of what “for profit” health care has done to our economy.
This is partly why the whole health care debate has not progressed. It’s all about the politics of it and who has been bought by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
No wonder Democrats have a hard time taking control of the message. Our supposedly unbiased and neutral media, including NPR, are on the Republican team. With rare exceptions. There is no equivalency between KO and RM and what passes for pundity on the right. And, for pity’s sake, Ted Turner needs to buy back CNN and give us some real media. He has morphed into a progressive in the best sense of the term. I bet he would get the agenda changed over there.
Mike Kay
@Joe Buck:
Ezra supports the public option. Just because he doesn’t threaten to “primary” bernie sanders wth all the power of his blog doesn’t make him “middle of the road”.
jnfr
I’m watching Charlie Rose now, and it’s fairly benign, so far at least. Frist is talking up the Republicans but in a quiet, explanatory way. Ezra is fact-based as always.
I do like that Rose doesn’t play that “shouting heads” kind of scenario.
Martin
@Mike Kay: Ezra supports the public option insofar as it accomplishes the modest things that it does. He doesn’t pretend it’s a game changer or anything like that.
But I wouldn’t call Ezra ‘middle of the road’ unless ‘middle of the road’ is some euphemism for ‘realistic and fact-based’.
Keith G
45 minutes into Rose….Halprin says that Lamar Alexander has a history of working with Democrats, but has not recently because he is in leadership and there is no one across the isle to work with.
I am currently drawing bath water while locating the razor blade.
Sly
@freelancer:
So, you’re basically writing a modern version of this, but on that is a reflection of actual policy and not intended to be satire.
Doug
@Keith G:
Halperin was in rare form on Charlie Rose. He kept blaming the lack of bipartisanship on Obama, ignoring the fact that the HCR bill is basically centrist and Republicans have absolutely refused to vote for anything.
The bill is bipartisan, whether any Republicans vote for it or not.
Klein told the story of Obama asking how many GOP votes he would get for including tort reform and being told to expect none.
What the heck is Obama supposed to do? Pass an entirely GOP written bill? They didn’t win the elections!
Yutsano
@Doug:
DUH! Of course he is! That would show he’s being truly bipartisan!
bob h
Listening to Frist and Halperin on the HCR summit is like contemplating the end of the Universe. Did Charlie remind Frist that he had first urged Republican support of the Senate bill?
scojo
no dude, Limbaugh deserves plenty of blame. Fact is, a vastly larger number of people listen to him than Rose, Freidman, and Brooks combined. Have to disagree with you on this one.
Steve M.
Friedman is often not horrible these days. He keeps bitching about Republicans’ refusal to participate in governing and he’s always complaining that China is kicking our asses on the development of green technology.
At this point, I’d actually rather live in Tom Friedman’s idea of utopia than in GOPFilibuster/WimpDemistan, which is where we live now, where no progress can ever be made.
Comrade javafascist
Milbank was on Morning Edition today and started off his commentary by bemoaning the fact that he got hazard pay to watch the whole health care summit and if the GOP was the party of “no”, the summit was the party of “No-Doz.” Hysterical. Dana, perhaps you should have a midlife crisis and find a job that interests you?
John B.
Charlie Rose is a terrible interviewer. It’s always all about him. Find a transcript and add ’em up: he always rambles on and on, far more than he lets his guests talk. The man acts like the solo guy at the end of the bar — stewed to the gills, unknowingly stupid, and eager to recite for you every hackneyed cliche he can remember. He’s the Tom (“Suck on this”) Friedman of the airwaves.
DanF
I can’t count how many times I’ve had the conversation with my liberal cohorts that Brooks is far worse than Limbaugh. He advocates for the exact same things Rush does, but he seems oh so reasonable. Oh so sensible. He lulls you into thinking that if someone this calm and rational can think this, maybe there’s something to his position.
If he was reasonable and sensible, there’d be a little more daylight between him and Rush, but there really isn’t. Not on the things that matter to the hyper-wealthy.
Cugel
The “moral” dimension of the people’s suffering is apparently irrelevant and outside the bounds of conversation. The REAL issue is “we can’t afford this” — (i.e. any kind of public health care benefit for average Americans).
The media still act like “Medicare for all” is some sort of crazy idea that the DFH’s came up with to bankrupt the economy. The fact that the rest of the world have already managed is irrelevant.
The real problem with government and the media is that it is corporate owned. Period. From the beginning Obama decided that you couldn’t do what is logical and necessary to fix the broken system because corporations and the politicians they have bought would never stand for it.
In short “it’s not a viable option”.
Matthew H
NPR’s queen of mainstreaming extremism, for decades now, is Cokie Roberts.
She had a classic piece a few weeks back wherein she explained that because George H. W. Bush and Clinton are now friends, all the partisan fighting in Washington is really only just kidding around, and isn’t it unfortunate this is the way our country has always worked?
So never mind the GOP track record of the 1990s and 2000s (from impeachment to the K Street project), the unprecedented obstructionism of Senate Republicans this session, the complete capture of “conservatism(TM)” by lobbyists, the complete lack of logical coherence and consistency displayed by the likes of Boehner, nor the consequences for, say, 25 million uninsured people. Its all really just a big game they’re all playing. To paraphrase, “Shouldn’t we all be above it, like me?”
And Roberts continued (I paraphrase again), “As the teabaggers have explained repeatedly, everybody absolutely hates healthcare reform, anyway!”
So never mind that the GOP is a rump minority, and that majority public opinion is clearly behind the core principles of reform in the House and Senate bills. Nevermind that the core teabaggers are really an extremist fringe group of rebranded John Bircher birther lunatics thrust into the limelight by astroturfing corporate funders and Fox News.
NPR won’t be getting another dime from me, either. If this is what they’re offering up, they really wouldn’t be missed. At all.
broangelico
Charlie Rose, yes. I’d go much further than Friedman and Brooks. They are open apologists; slippery thinking is their brand.
But PBS + NPR + Charlie Rose + = the end of a serious press as a check to power = the end of a serious political press =, when you come down to it, the end of a serious press.
This can’t be said enough, but isn’t said enough.
To which, add the BBC World News. They too, as in their coverage of the health summit last night, seek where the cat fight is.
And I’m temperamentally a moderate. I get it that issues are complex, and I start out wanting to get around a table and start talking: with the information I have, with the questions this information leaves me with, with uncertainties, and with good faith. These institutions lose me with the last of these most of all.
NPR can still do stunning and courageous work as long as it isn’t political. But I stopped sending money to them (shame, Scott Simon: I looked to you for more….as for Cokie Roberts) or PBS (shame, shame, Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, and others) six or seven years ago. Unable to swallow the insult to our intelligence and to their ethical obligations that was their coverage of the run-up to and the history of the Iraq war and of the Bush years.
RF
PBS displaying their famous liberal media bias. February 26th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Right-
The daily dc megaphone for everything CArgill, Boeing, and Archer Daniels Midland-
They have Always Liarson, Wrong Williams and FEATURE David Brooks along some dried turd you can never hear-
NPR is definitely one of the media problems that leave me wondering if alphabet intelliAgencies are leaking onto Disney, GE, Viacom and the CPB
jjcomet
Hear, hear John! An example of how rotten the discourse on NPR has become:
This morning I was listening to what was supposed to be a news item about the upcoming conference on providing better legal aid for poor and indigent individuals. The reporter, in setting up the story, quipped “Some would see this just another way to help criminals go free” (quote not exact – sentiment exact).” Mind you, he never quoted anyone as saying that, nor even mentioned *who* would believe that. Just threw it out there for…what reason? Why in hell would a reporter needlessly inject that note into a story? Especially when, immediately afterward, the story goes on to quote some prominent conservatives – including freaking Kenneth Starr! – who believe the initiative is worthwhile. Basically, it was an editorial comment, made without any reference to the facts of the story. Fox couldn’t have done it better if they tried…
inkadu
So we all like Ezra here, apparently.
I do, too.
Just noting.
inkadu
So we all like Ezra here, apparently.
I do, too.
Just noting.
Deadeye Dick Cheney
Why is it that Democrats forget all of the horseshit that Republicans spewed when they were in power? Ask Republicans why we should listen to them at all. Then tell them, “Elections have consequences,” and use reconciliation to pass an HCR bill that helps Americans, regardless of what the party of No desires.
liberal
The truth is, it’s more the fault of Charlie Rose and Tom Friedman and David Brooks.
IIRC this is the kind of thing that Bob Somerby (“The Daily Howler”) emphasizes.
slag
I admit I like Charlie Rose. I enjoy long, rambling conversations about policy and politics. I do. And while I realize that the breadth of discourse on his show is stifling as hell, I still value the format. Of course, it probably helps that I don’t see it very often.
As for NPR and the rest, forget it. My local public radio station hasn’t seen a dime or an hour from me since before the 2004 election. It’s like NPR has gone as crazy as the rest of them. Their “news” segments are now dominated by useless gossipy bullsh#t. And that’s just the beginning of my issues with them.
liberal
@Steve M.:
Huh? Friedman helped get us into Iraq.
Oscar Leroy
Well, no one in the press did, either. You can blame the spineless Democrats more than any talking head. As Stalin would say, how many divisions does the media have?
MBunge
I can understand how folks can compare Olbermann to O’Reily because they’re both blowhards. I can even imagine someone taking KO’s most over-the-top commentary and comparing it to Beck’s paranoid hysteria. But in what way is Maddow at all like Beck, Sean, Rush or the rest?
Mike
Mike in NC
The only possible explanation for this is that Gregory has to be one of McLame’s many bastard sons.
Steve M.
Huh? Friedman helped get us into Iraq.
Well, I’m talking about the 2010-model Friedman, who is not noticeably to the right of, oh, say, the president of the United States on most issues, and actually seems more pissed off by Republican intransigence.
Aris
#13: I listened to the same segment. It was Julie Rovner, health policy correspondent, asked to tell us if the Democrats and the Republicans had their facts straight.
She’s specifically asked to offer her opinion on the exchange between Lamar Alexander and Obama over what will happen to health insurance premiums in an overhauled system. Alexander declared that they’ll go up. Obama told him it wasn’t true and proceeded to explain that, “The costs for families for the same type of coverage that they’re currently receiving would go down 14 percent to 20 percent. What the Congressional Budget Office says is that because now they’ve got a better deal, because policies are cheaper, they may choose to buy better coverage than they have right now, and that might be 10 percent to 13 percent more expensive than the bad insurance that they had previously.”
Rovner is asked who told the truth. She says that both are sort of right. Both! One says “up” the other “down,” but both are sort of right.
She proceeds to repeat almost word for word what Obama said, as her analysis. She obvioulsy agrees with Obama’s explanation as being the valid one. But they’re both right!
The discussion ends by Rovner and Robert Siegel agreeing that “It’s complicated.” It’s complicated? WTF? Isn’t their job to explain what the “complicated” stuff?
Republicans can lie with impunity and their lies stick because they do get away with it.
____________________________________________
RF
Dang Bullseye
rdale
I’ve totally stopped listening to NPR for these reasons; the other day I was driving a work van and the radio was tuned to NPR. There was a segment about James O’Keefe and the whole ACORN thing, and it was all presented as a straight story as if O’Keefe wasn’t a fake and a grifter and associated with white supremacy groups, not to mention an alleged felon. Not a word from anyone except the ACORN people who said they were shutting down their operations. It’s the reason I never give a penny to NPR (No Problems for Republicans) or PBS. They bend over backwards to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase, and try to appeal to people who already hate them anyway. Sorta like the Democrats in Congress!
Wes F. in Hapeville
Eternal vigilance and all that. Just yesterday, I e-mailed a local TV station here in the Atlanta area to point out that using reconciliation was not the “nuclear option.” The response was basically, “Yeah, we know, but they’re close and we’re not legislative experts.”
I…just…gah….sputter.
WF
fish
Glenn Beck didn’t get us into Iraq.
No, but Ezra Klein did.
Bex
I stopped watching the NewsHour for the most part two years ago. I sent them a note asking why, if they had to have pundits, why they couldn’t find some more relevant voices than Brooks and Shields? Those two are hopeless. I can’t remember the last time I watched Washington Week. Same problem. The kings and queens of conventional wisdom appear week after mind-numbing week, playing who’s up and who’s down insider games. And, of course, they always agree “we have to leave it there.” I’m leaving it there, too. Not contributed to and not watched.
Bloix
“Well, no one in the press did, either.”
Someone here has forgotten that blockbuster, “Judy Miller and the Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
les
I have to disagree about Charlie Rose; maybe he talks too much, but he’s not in the same category as the rest of the listed idiots. He’s not a commentator or pundit, to my mind. You don’t get Charlie’s interpretation, so much as he gets his guests to put themselves and their ideas on display. If his guests are flaming assholes, well, you get assholery on display. He has to be friendly for the gig to work; but I don’t see him generally supporting or excusing, just getting people to talk. He’s the one who elicited the mustache of doom’s “suck on this” obscenity–Rose didn’t say it or agree with it, but he let us see what a monstrous douche Friedman is. I find Rose valuable, and he often has just plain interesting folks on.
Nellcote
@MBunge:
Dylan Ratigan is MSNBC’s equivilant to Beck.
DonkeyKong
When Charlie Rose had Tom “the Moostache” Friedman on and let him get away with saying that irqgi families would have to “suck on this” without stopping him in mid sentence to say “GET OFF MY SET YOU SICK MOTHERLESS FUCK!” That was the day Charlie lost me and joined the Village.
Charles
Doug says, “Glenn Beck didn’t get us into Iraq.”
You seriously underestimate Glenn Beck’s power to rearrange reality.
broangelico
les: I respect your comments on Charlie Rose, and welcome your willingness to put a word in for him. It’s true that if you know how to correct for him, so to speak, you can hear fascinating people, or see the corrupt or mediocre for who they are.
But I agree with the earlier post that Rose simply talks too much; most of all I continue to think that in his simulation of an inquiring mind, he illustrates how the bar has been lowered for what counts as such a mind.
I have in mind an interview he did with two Iraqis a while back, where under the pseudo-Socratic method you could see the rigid limits within which his conversations have to take place (they don’t seem rigid till they get tested).
I think he is open to only a narrow range of possibilities, ruling out of court as extreme what I find to be somewhere in the middle between the center and, say, Alexander Cockburn. That’s a serious shrinking of the conversation. And I think this shrinkage is the new normal, from the New York Times to Jim Lehrer.
I’m quite persuaded by the idea that these pundits share a social world, and that they have settled into the group-think of privilege, In Washington, this culture tilts Republican (Krugman is great on how careerism corrupted many economists, journalists, and Wall-streeters who once upon a time thought of their careers in different terms, namely, as socially useful and helpful). I’d love an invisible shadow at Rose’s shoulder, mapping his social movements and their gratifications.
Macjazz
Charlie Rose does sometimes have good guests on. But more often his show serves as a platform for the toxic bullshit coming from War Industry shills and corporate whores.
As for Friedman … Rose did NOT substantially question The Moustache of Freedom’s summary of why the Iraq invasion was “worth it” (We had to hit ‘them’ … in that region … to show that we were serious) – paraphrasing, but that ‘s the gist of Tommy’s defense of our action. Friedman’s statement cried out for factual rebuttal, but there was precious little.
And Rose has had Friedman, and others of his ilk, on the air repeatedly to spout their crap, at a much higher rate than people like, say, Amy Goodman (whose statements Rose HAS actively opposed). Doug is right, Rose is definitely a problem.
HTML Mencken
And Ezra Klein.
sevenboats
HTML Mencken,
When the Iraq war was debated and begun, Klein was an 18-year-old in his first or second year of college. Care to rethink your criticism?
HTML Mencken
Who was a big enough blogger even then. In 2004 he was a big enough blogger to be credentialed for the DNC. At that same time he was still defending his liberal hawk bullshit.
Krugman’s rule of punditry holds just was well for Ezra as for any other pro-War douchebag who was stupid and wrong and evil and got rewarded for it.