I’ve made it a habit to listen to some right-wing talk radio everyday so that I can understand how Real Americans think and feel. A few weeks ago I heard Jake Tapper on Laura Ingraham and wrote a series of vituperative, foul-mouthed posts about it. Last week, I heard Howard Fineman on the same show, and I have to say he was much worse. Granted, the topic was less inflammatory (they were talking about Obama’s low, Carterlike approval rating and how it spells doom for Democrats and liberalism more generally) and Fineman is not a straight reporter, so the situation was in some ways less troubling from a journalistic perspective. But Fineman was really kissing her ass, not quite as badly as Joe Klein and Mark Halperin have kissed Hugh Hewitt’s, but pretty badly. Tapper didn’t do that at all.
I suspect that all these guys have to do these shows in order to promote Newsweek, Time, ABC etc. It must feel awfully humiliating to have to do this, if one has even a smidgeon of a soul (which I think Tapper and Klein do — I’m not so sure about Fineman).
But it’s probably not as humiliating as taking programming advice from Ross Douthat.
I’m starting to wonder if we should all feel guilty about kicking these guys as their organizations slide into bankruptcy and they’re forced to do increasingly degrading things to drum up business.
El Cid
On this:
I’d feel worse for them if I didn’t have to work so damn hard just to pay the bills at a job I’m not crazy about and they’re raking in the millions of dollars for doing little more than saying things beloved of the right wing money establishment.
Emma
You are assuming they are humiliated by doing it — I think they’re all subs and love it. Even if they’re not, they weep all the way to the bank.
Midnight Marauder
We shouldn’t.
The Fourth Estate are American traitors.
Violet
No. SATSQ.
me
Fineman is happy to be yes man when he’s on Countdown too. What a wh0re.
Scott
The only thing I feel guilty about is not literally kicking them.
Violet
The top people at those organizations make a lot of money and have for a long time. If I were a lowly worker at those organizations, that would really tick me off.
tc125231
Why would you feel guilty? These people made a lot of money over the last two decades by assisting in making their industry worthless to anyone who actually cares about INFORMATION. They did this so more people would look at the ads.
Now, the people who would actually pay for their products have figured it out, and they are sliding towards bankruptcy, because the people who they have been pandering to were never interested in paying for their product at all, and the advertising gravy train is drying up.
So you have a bunch of greasy, unpriincipled old pimps doing ever more unnatural things to keep their income up.
Cry me a river.
Glen Tomkins
Afflict the comfortable
“I’m starting to wonder if we should all feel guilty about kicking these guys as their organizations slide into bankruptcy and they’re forced to do increasingly degrading things to drum up business.”
Lord knows that HL Mencken is hardly an infallible guide to life, but I think the famous definition of the journalists’ job as being, “To comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”, is pretty hard to argue against.
By that standard, sorry, Tapper, Fineman, Klein, et al, cry out for our continued affliction, until and unless they become so uncomfortable whoring themselves and their profession to the likes of Ingraham and Hewitt that they stop doing it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
At this rate it’ll be donkeys and ping-pong balls by the end of the summer.
Still won’t feel guilty. Just queasy.
Edit: What tc125231 said. Also.
sukabi
shouldn’t feel guilty at all… if they were actual journalists, their alliance would be to The Truth, Where Ever It Leads… instead, they’ve decided that their alliance is to The Company Line, and their personal Bottom Line.
They’ve bankrupted themselves.
The Grand Panjandrum
I guess it must have been doubly humiliating for Fineman to appear on Al Franken’s old Air America radio show with all 47 of us listening. But, Fineman was personal friends with Franken for many years prior to that so maybe Howard was just doing Al a favor?
slag
I remember hearing Fineman on Al Franken’s show back in the day. No. He has no scruples.
Brachiator
The funny thing is that in some major markets, conservative talk radio is starting to wane. In the LA area formerly all news station KFWB switched to a largely conservative talk format centered around Laura Schlessinger. Despite Dr Laura’s success, the station overall is 35th in the market with 0.8% audience share. The Laura Ingraham show has been replaced with personal-finance expert Dave Ramsey.
I don’t listen to right wing radio and try to avoid ideology based shows in general. But I notice that even the general news shows and even sports talk radio often feature angry white guy and gal hosts who keep pushing the message that Obama is a foreign tyrant who has seized America, and if hard working white people just hold on tight, the Republicans — the only real Americans — will ride to the rescue.
Tim Conway Jr recently put a guy on the air who refused to fill out his census form until he had a form that was 100% English only. And in between there is the standard bashing of the liberal media, including Time and Newsweek.
If Tapper and others believe that they have to pimp themselves out in order to try to save their publications, they are as wrong-headed — and as doomed — as print media itself.
The Grand Panjandrum
Oh, and in case you missed it, Fineman used to appear regularly on the pre-“nappy headed hoes” Imus in the Morning show. So he has a history of appearing on almost any show until they go over the top. Hence, he hasn’t been on Beck or Savage.
Joey Maloney
I’ll feel sorry for them when they’re required to do “Two Pundits One Cup” webcasts. Until then, they can cry all the way to the fucking bank.
Mark S.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. What’s next, Chris Hayes yukking it up on Hannity? Eugene Robinson on Savage?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
What goes around comes around. They’ve done the exact same thing to the whole rest of the country (do I really need to dig up links to what these same guys have written about the auto industry for example) without showing a trace of shame or guilt. Creative destruction bitchez! I guess it’s all good until the invisible hand of the market is resting on their thighs under the dinner table.
slag
Unfortunately, I clicked on your Douthat link and got to this part:
This is objectively untrue. From what I’ve seen on the intertubes, Maddow often debates Republicans. That is one of her strengths. One of her weaknesses seems to be that she’s sometimes unable to find a lot of high-profile Republicans willing to debate her.
Gregory
This discussion brought to you by the media that didn’t figure out George W. Bush was unpopular until the very end of his term, if that.
slag
Try Chris Hayes on Joe Scarborough.
Zifnab
In classic Bobo fashion, Douthat takes what many people are asking for – substantive debate between intelligent individuals that doesn’t devolve into a screaming match – and taints it as only a twat like him can.
Seriously? Comparing Stewart, Buckley, and Beck in the same breath? Can this man be any more vivid in spelling out his absolute cluelessness?
Sitting at the bottom of the barrel, CNN has a lot of room to get creative. I think everyone is cheering for the network to break out of the partisan mold. Because even the most rabid Maddow or Hannity fan needs a break every now and then.
But Douthat thinks Republican-Lite or Republican-Batshit-Insane is the answer. And CNN thinks that slapping FOX-style Fair and Balanced logos on everything will fix their ratings slump. So it appears that the network is completely lost and doomed.
Aunt Moe
A few months ago, I tagged Jake Tapper in a post, incorrectly naming him as founding editor of The Note. I corrected it quickly because I had an email from Tapper about ten minutes after publishing my post. Wow. Pretty vigilant.
AB
No. We do not. When you take the job of a journalist, you have a responsibility to *be* a journalist. If they can’t do that, they should find another job, even if they’re in the 95th percentile of skilled. If they’re not willing to resign, they should write strong, factual and relevant articles until they get fired.
So no, I don’t feel pity for them having to whore themselves out in the name of profit.
socraticsilence
Its petty and small but for some reason the approval rating thing might gall me more than the Healthcare= Iraq and/or Katrina thing- I think its because while the latter comparison could be justified if you have an insane ethical system, the former is quite literally an ignorance of reality- Obama’s been at 45-52% for about three months in almost all polls (this is either at or ahead of where Clinton and St. Reagan were at respective points in their first terms but forget that we already know Wingnuts don’t remember the Real Reagan- a man who signed Amnesty, backed off from terror in Beirut, raised taxes after he saw his initial cuts were too deep and increased FICA to save Social Security) Bush basically spent the last 3 years at 35% or lower heck during the runup to the 2004 election he was at a comparable level to Obama for all but a very narrow window following the crass exploitation of 9-11 aka the 2004 RNC; he won a second term because Rove, et al tore Kerry down, hyped fears with terror alerts and pumped base turnout via Gay Marriage initiatives.
All I’m asking is where was this slavish devotion to approval ratings during the latter part of President 24% term in office (seriously, the man rated lower than Nixon at the height of Watergate and that wasn’t a big deal but Obama’s had one or two polls with a negative approval/disapproval ratio and suddenly he’s in deep trouble?)
Jim Once
Slightly OT, but this all reminds me of a letter to the editor sent to my local newspaper this morning – from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA). Chuckles begins his letter by noting it’s a response to a letter from a Fayette IA consitutent, then goes on to say he’s the one responsible for all the parts of the bill that are good, and totally against the bad parts. He concludes with this astonishing passage:
OK, Chuck, you never used the words “death panel” – but you DID refer to a “government program that determines when to pull the plug on grandma,” which is essentially the same thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FetJskz9XvM
What I also find incredible is that the senator would even write such a letter in such a forum – and in that letter call his constituent a liar. I’m thinking that nasty letter I sent Grassley last autumn wasn’t nearly nasty enough.
Martin
I don’t know, would we feel guilty about kicking the Catholic church hierarchy as their organization slides into moral irrelevance and they’re forced to do increasing degrading things to drum up membership? I’ve had the local Catholic church doing door-to-door outreach like the Mormons and Jehovahs do.
The media outlets have brought this on themselves by whoring themselves out. And their solution? Whore themselves some more. And you think we should feel guilty for telling them why they’re fucking up?
Jim Once
Oh . . . if anybody wants to read the actual letter, it’s here:
http://gazetteonline.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/2010/04/05/grassley-letter-misrepresented-position-on-health-care
And the comments are scathing.
Violet
@ AB:
They may write good articles, but it doesn’t matter if their bosses won’t run them. Not saying that is what happens, but I’m pretty sure any one of us who works for someone else compromises a few things here or there and journalists are no exception. You write what you are asked to write or you go get another job. At this point, jobs are scarce. Is it better to compromise your integrity a tiny bit (and then a tiny bit more and so forth) or is it better to watch your family struggle because you’re unemployed? Unfortunately, in the world of journalism, compromises hurt all of us because what usually gets compromised is the truth.
Part of the problem is that news/journalism is a business. That means the main incentive of the employers is to keep profits up. They’re going about it the wrong way – telling the truth would help profits in the long run – but they don’t see it that way. So whatever short term method they can employ to prop up the system as it is – that’s what they’re going to do.
Gregory
Republican projection again (in addition to its obvious falsity). Joe Lieberman, among others, built a career out of going on TV to say nasty things about Democrats.
For that matter, a big part of the Ole Perfesser’s schtick used to be “I voted for Al Gore, but since 9/11 I agree with the Republicans an uncanny amount of the time.”
And don’t even get me started on the even-the-liberal New Republic.
kay
I feel as if they parcel out positive/negative coverage, in a ridiculous effort to make it “even-steven”.
If Obama has a good week, they have to smooth that out the following week, by finding something negative to say.
I don’t know what to do about political coverage. I don’t know how anyone “fixes” it. Critics take it apart and all that does it make pundits work harder to go to truly ridiculous lengths to make it “even-handed”. It’s so self-conscious and self-absorbed and insiderish that I feel as if it’s all but useless.
There is an objective reality. How can I listen to them if they won’t acknowledge that?
eemom
on the flip side of the coin, a certain self-described “leading progressive political site” is sucking its own dick today at moving up to NINTH place behind HuffPo. And Michele Malkin.
http://firedoglake.com/2010/04/05/sneak-preview-fdl-rises-in-april-wikio-rankings/
Congrats are in order.
debbie
From Douhat’s column:
And it’s what you get from the mad, compulsively watchable Glenn Beck, who’s an extremist without being a knee-jerk partisan: You know he’s way out there on the right somewhere, but you don’t know what he’s going to say next.
Not a knee-jerk partisan? I listened to him for an hour or so this morning, and when he wasn’t comparing his followers to Rosa Parks, he was relating how he had been so moved at his last public appearance that he’d spontaneously broken in to a rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
BruceFromOhio
I see plenty of others have got there first, and plenty’s already been said.
The sole source of my guilt is the knowledge that I didn’t actively tune out these soulless warmongering ratfuck sonsofbitches sooner than I did.
And Maddow will book ANYONE on her show. She has repeatedly asked various Republican lights to come on and give their piece on her show, and the booking agent doesn’t get the call.
jim
Bwahahahahaha!
Heeheeheeheeheehee! It’s too much! Oh God, no, stop! My ribs hurt!
Call me back when David Brooks is gnawing the heads off chickens on a reality-show, or Charles Krauthammer has to set up a pay-per-throw dunk-tank in his back yard.
The big fish in Wingnut Pond do not experience “bad times” – they have lavish grants at their disposal (some of them on the taxpayers’ dime, if you want a REAL example of adding insult to injury) ready to suck at whenever they go above & beyond the call of Stoopid & trash their own reps … & the Villager Idiots have enough of a permanent case of ADD that they usually just lay low for a few weeks or months & go right back to shovelling the same old horseshit – if they lose a major gig it’s a paid holiday, not a crisis.
Neither FOX nor any of the major networks is in any danger of growing either a conscience or an aversion to these hyenas – nor of going belly-up any time soon – & I’m guessing they pay real good scratch. Try not to let it keep you up nights.
me
I almost threw up on my keyboard.
Maude
Oh, yeah, I feel guilty. Fineman said that the press gave Bush the benefit of the doubt on the lead up to the Iraq War because of, you guessed it, 9/11.
What are these people being paid for exactly?
Montysano
/throws up in mouth
It only takes about 10 seconds of exposure to Ingraham until I think “At least I’m not married to that.”
BruinKid
Rachel Maddow should now try to get Ross Douthat on her show to set him straight. But he’ll probably be too chickenshit too to go on.
Death Panel Truck
Fineman’s a thoroughly unprincipled hack who tells the host of whatever show he’s on at the moment what he thinks they want to hear. He praises Obama on Countdown and vilifies him on Hardball and Morning Joe. He’s full of shit in either case. Everything he says is phony and false.
Martin
I’m guessing that too would be compulsively watchable to Ross. In fact, I’m not sure I could tell the two things apart.
me
I think that some of Olbermann’s and Maddow’s mini-success comes from their having styles that are similar to Jon Stewart. It may be that sarcastic and dry ironic humor appeals more to lefties than to conservatives.
Violet
A trainwreck is also compulsively watchable. Doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
As far as Beck not being a “knee-jerk partisan,” Douthat is probably trying to say that Beck styles himself as a “conservative” rather than a Republican. Most of the big-wig rightwing talkers do this. That way they can slam on the Republicans when they don’t do what
theytheir corporate masters want, too.slag
I’ll admit to feeling guilty about this at times. And then I think of all the unnecessary death and destruction these people have casually enabled and get over it quickly. It’s not like these “journalists” are innocent bystanders here. If they believed in themselves and believed in their profession, they would either be working for a reputable organization, such as McClatchy, or they would periodically go all Ezra Klein on their colleagues’ asses. That they do neither makes them willing accomplices.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Death Panel Truck #40:
The sad thing is, Fineman’s book The Thirteen American Arguments wasn’t bad. A little too schematic for my taste and light on accurate and detailed information, but overall I thought he did a reasonable job of highlighting key issues that keep coming up over and over in US politics – albeit in a ideologically bland and morally obtuse manner which demonstrated a textbook case of centrist pundit disease. A US history/civics class in high school could do a lot worse than to use his book as a starting point for seeking out better and more information on each of the topics he highlighted.
My conclusion: the man obviously isn’t a complete idiot, he just plays one on TV.
Bob K
“I’ve made it a habit to listen to some right-wing talk radio everyday so that I can understand how Real Americans think and feel.”
Sounds like you’re channeling Lewis Carroll.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” The White Queen – Alice in Wonderland.
Seriously – I hope you get combat pay. It kills off healthy brain cells.
sloan
Douthat thinks CNN went downhill when they cancelled the daily Novak/Begala slap fight, but the truth is it was already a shitty news network and keeping them wouldn’t have made it better.
As I’m writing this I’ve turned on CNN for the first time in months (years?) and see their top story of the hour – Tiger F’ing Woods is playing golf today. Top story! A horny golfer is playing golf.
*click*
I could tune in later and watch John King fiddle with an electronic screen he doesn’t understand. Or maybe I could see Wolf Blitzer regurgitate last weeks conventional wisdom with a healthy dose of false equivalence. Or I could watch a Twitter reporter or a Blog reporter (yes, they actually have people who do this) reading shit off the internet.
O. M. F. G.
Bonus fail – CNN has blog reporters but they didn’t know Erick Erickson was a kook. And that’s really all you need to know about CNN.
JabbaTheHutaree
Poor old CNN. They kissed Erick Erickson and he still has the same slimy skin, goggle eyes and ability to say “ribbet” to any question they ask him.
zhak
No, you shouldn’t feel guilty at all.
These organizations — under the umbrella term “mainstream media” — don’t seem to actually believe in democracy. They don’t report news, they report “news” with such a slant that it’s hardly credible anymore, but as long as they get ratings, they don’t care. I’ll give you an example — the various polls showing antagonism toward HCR. How many people pointed out that, hey, maybe the polls are going down because people were being fed a steady stream of lies? Did anyone do that?
Can you name one large business that actually promotes true democracy? I can’t. It’s all about making a buck regardless of who gets screwed over, and the evil of government (unless it’s military spending, which is A-OKAY!).
One day, sooner rather than later, they’ll realize how short-sighted such a path is, because the US and the world can’t keep going as it is now.
Brachiator
@Violet:
Good point that publishers decide “all the news that’s fit to print.”
But my cold-hearted answer is that if a reporter is truly concerned about compromising his integrity, then he or she should get into a new line of work, which is doubly advisable since the publishing industry is crumbling around us.
Admiral_Komack
“I’m starting to wonder if we should all feel guilty about kicking these guys as their organizations slide into bankruptcy and they’re forced to do increasingly degrading things to drum up business.”
-I don’t feel sorry about kicking the bastards; if they don’t like what they’re doing, they should quit.
Fuck them with a rusty chainsaw.
Da Bomb
What in the hell are they talking about? What Carterlike approval rating? Every week there is some story about how Obama has approval ratings in the toilet and they have been steady for a while.
We have definitely not hit Wingnut Peak Overload just yet.
JGabriel
Douthat:
Right. Because when you want objective reporting, you hire Erick Erickson.
Douthat is developing an almost Kristol-like record for accuracy.
.
JGabriel
Da Bomb:
Even Carter didn’t have “Carterlike” approval ratings. If you want paradigms of historically bad approval ratings, you have to go to Truman, Nixon, or, the current record holder, George W. Bush.
.
asiangrrlMN
Rachel Maddow has contacted Liz Cheney several times for her show. Cheney repeatedly refuses. She’s had Ratface Pawlenty on, and he never trashes the Republicans (especially now that he’s a complete teabagger running for president). She has repeatedly asked Scott Brown to be on her show. He refused. She’s had Pat Buchanan on her damn show saying our country was built by white men, for fuck’s sake. It’s not her fault if the Republicans are scared to go on her show because she’s smart, does her research, and won’t let them get away with shit. It’s hard to give Douthat any credit for his germ of a correct idea when all the support he gives it is such bullshit.
And, Stewart has conservatives on all the damn fucking time. Too many for my taste, really. I hate Kristol, Goldberg, et. al. Douthat is right in that CNN is floundering, and he may even be not completely wrong in the idea of honest debate, but his idea of an honest debate is so skewed, and Beck is NOT unpredictable, and sometimes I just want to shake Douthat until his teeth rattle.
As for Fineman and the rest, no, I don’t feel bad for them at all. They are part of the problem.
Pangloss
You forgot the trademark symbol after Real Americans™.
Tim I
Shorter Ross Douthat. “Go right CNN, go right, to the land of milk and honey that is Glenn fucking Beck!
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim Once #26: Is Grassey-Ass up for re-election this year? (Yeah, I know I could look it up. It’s easier to consult the collective.)
JohnR
Kick away. It’s fun, well-deserved, and at this point can’t do any real harm.
Quaker in a Basement
I know! We can start a cable news show called, “The Aristocrats!”
mclaren
Print magazines? Dead man walking.
Book publishers? Dead man walking.
Record companies? Dead man walking.
Ad agencies? Dead man walking.
IT profession? Dead man walking?
Programming profession? Dead man walking.
Graphic designers, accountants, office managers, data entry, tech support, architectural firms, engineers, all dead men walking.
Nobody on this forum seems to get it. You all seem to think this is just another recession. 2 or 3 years out, the economy bounces right back, everything’s hunk-dory again.
Uh-uh. Ain’t gonna happen. This is the convergence of two perfect economic storms — the internet is destroying most high-paying high-skilled professions by outsourcing ’em to the third world, and at the same time Peak Oil rushes toward us like a 10-mile-tall tsunami.
Those historic drops in state revenue? That’s the new normal. Get used to it. If you have a job that involves symbol manipulation, it’s going away. If you have a job that required a college degree, it’s going away (unless it’s law or you’re a doctor). If you have a job that involves delivery or shipping or freight haulage or anything that uses lots of oil…it’s going away.
Cliff
I’m starting to wonder if we should all feel guilty about kicking these guys as their organizations slide into bankruptcy and they’re forced to do increasingly degrading things to drum up business.
I don’t….what? I don’t understand what that means.