Dancin’ Dave has been an even worse MTP host than I had expected:
[A]ccepting a challenge from New York University’s Jay Rosen, interim host Jake Tapper has arranged for the St. Petersburg Times’ PolitiFact site to fact-check what “This Week” guests say after each program.An “interesting idea,” Gregory allows, but not one the NBC show will be emulating. “People can fact-check ‘Meet the Press’ every week on their own terms.”
What the hell does that even mean? I guess I don’t care anyway, given how completely irrelevant “Meet the Press” is.
Steve
I think what he means is that it wouldn’t look very impressive for them to copycat the competition.
mistermix
I ran it through Google Translate, Douchebag->English version, and it spit out “Fuck You, Proles”.
cleek
i – they don’t have no function
jl
Means Gregory is admitting he is an abject meritricious corporate hack.
IMHO.
Also.
Too.
Sentient Puddle
It means he’s too lazy to do his fucking job.
Bnut
Yay, another GOP meme waiting to happen. This country will believe it. GD it.
DougJ
@cleek:
Yup.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
“Everyone is allowed to have their own set of facts.” – David Gregory
John Cole
It means, loosely translated- “fuck you.”
Elizabelle
Blog hogging. Here’s my post on the Pulitzers.
Pulitzer Prizes announced. Politico did not win one. Pro Publica did.
The Washington Post took home four, including one to Kathleen Parker for commentary.
NYTimes got three.
Hank Williams awarded a posthumous Pulitzer citation because he “expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.”
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/washington-post-wins-four-pulitzers-new-york-times-gets-three/?hp
Well well about the Post. Surprising to me. (Anthony Shadid, Post international coverage winner, has moved to the NYT.) But still …
John Cole
We really should try to start a boycott of Meet the Press.
Lisa K.
How did Kathleen Parker win crapall??
Incertus (Brian)
@John Cole: Can I really boycott something I wouldn’t watch if you paid me?
Lisa K.
@John Cole:
I’m doing my part. I haven’t watched it in ages.
Elizabelle
David Gregory is such a disappointment.
What a jackass.
Isn’t fact-checking kind of, you know, the job of journalism and public affairs?
Can we help ourselves at home to some of his outsized paycheck too? I mean, since he’s outsourcing ….
DougJ
@Lisa K.:
You know, she probably is the best columnist at Kaplan other than Dionne and Ezra. For what that’s worth.
John Cole
Although, in fairness, it seems people started boycotting as soon as Gregory took over.
Elizabelle
Yeah, re Kathleen Parker.
At least it wasn’t one of Fred Hiatt’s team of “former G W Bush White House speechwriters.” I forget how many are on board now …
Loneoak
MTP should run a little box in the corner with Luke Russert nodding affirmatively with everything Graham, Lieberman, and McCain say for their “fact check.”
Rhoda
He’s such an unabashed nitwit.
At least Russert tried to screw w/the folks who came on his show; he’d dig through and put up the clips, put out the video, make them answer for changing their mind. It was obnoxious because folks should be able to change their mind; but at least it was confrontational.
That’s the job of journalists: to confront and challenge the powerful. Russert got that.
Dancin’ Dave is just gushing about his plasma tvs and that he can sit and stand now. Which was classic, that just made me laugh and laugh. I mean damn, that man was made to do weather and he’s stuck trying to fake being a reporter.
John Cole
Kathleen Parker is a pretty good read, actually. She occasionally thinks for herself, and it shows.
Elizabelle
I don’t watch MTP. Too early and don’t want to go Elvis on the TV.
Fareed Z seems to be the only Sunday morning show worth watching. Later online, or reading the transcript.
Bill Murray
I only follow the Bobble Speak Translations of MTP
http://moonshinepatriot.blogspot.com/
Violet
@John Cole:
Started doing that when Gregory took over. Gave him a week or two, then turned off the TV.
kth
Just occurs to me that ABC may have stolen this idea from the unwatchable ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption”, which has the inferentially-retarded, comically mis-nicknamed John “Stat Boy” Reali at the end of each show correct whatever errors made by Kornhiser and Wilbon that were blatant enough to penetrate his thick skull.
Good for ABC, but scary to think PTI is something for the Sunday shows to aspire to.
(edit) the google says that at least 3 other people on the internets already made this connection, including 1 here at Balloon Juice.
John W.
A sports show (Pardon the Interruption) has done this since they started years ago, but it’s an outrage to even suggest it for a political show?
WTF is wrong with us.
Violet
NBC may decide to dump Dancing Dave if this newfangled fact stuff helps ratings for This Week. Along with Amanpour, of course.
DougJ
@kth:
It is, though. More generally, national tv sports reporting is at a much higher level than national tv news reporting.
John W.
@kth 25
How the hell did you beat me to this by a mere seconds?
slag
Dancin Dave’s definitely not foxy to me.
eemom
“COULDN’T really give a fuck.” And “COULDN’T care less.” Please, on behalf our poor beaten language, these honorable words that long to retain their actual meaning and not be colloquialized into gibberish ………I’m begging you.
ronathan richardson
Fact check on your own terms=compare what is said to conservative mythology, decide if it is blasphemous; if yes, throw a fit.
jl
@eemom:
Sarcasm is an art, not a science.
And I hate English grammar. Phooey.
arguingwithsignposts
@DougJ:
PTI is hardly what I’d call “reporting.” It’s the sports version of Crossfire with an old hack who whines too much, and Wilbon, who at least seems to know what he’s talking about most of the time.
jacy
@John Cole:
I’ve been boycotting MTP for years and years. I’m a trend-setter!
prufrock
@kth:
For those scoring at home, “John” Reali’s given name is “Anthony”.
You could have used a fact checker!
El Cid
‘Fact checkers? What for? I got a show, damn it, and we get big names on there — BIG NAMES — and you fucks want to waste my time with ‘ooooh is this true is that true’? Get outta my fuckin’ way.’
Silver Owl
It means quality is not part of Gregory’s repertoire. He’s more of a fictional soap opera kind of professional. lol
cleek
@eemom:
it’s a song lyric.
Range Life.
eemom
and Kathleen Parker?? Puh-fucking-leeeeze.
Until this moment, I don’t think I understood quite how low our standards have sunk.
But all these emmessemm hacks win Pulitzers at some point, anyway, so who cares.
MattR
@DougJ:
I used to think that, but not anymore. To me the only difference is that sports facts are much more black and white which is the reason why PTI’s fact checking works. Nobody is going to dispute the career ERA of Greg Maddux. Politically, there are more shades of grey which allow both sides to claim that their version of the truth is correct no matter what the fact checker says.
Midnight Marauder
@John Cole:
David Gregory has been saying “fuck you” for a long time now.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
Back in the days of Lawrence Spivak, MTP was journalists asking questions that had some basis in rationality and some value in terms of being on point.
Today, the self styled pundits ask things that begin with phrases like “Some of your critics say ……” Now MTP is just an amplifier for whatever idiotic noise is on the wires at the moment. Little wonder that the noise machine operators have learned to play these shows like Wurlitzers. It’s easy, any eighth grader could do it.
As much as I would like to see MTP go away, I can’t get with a move to boycott it. That would just attract attention to it and make things worse.
The antidote to bad information is good information. The antidote to bad government is good government. The antidote to bad punditry is good punditry. Etc.
WereBear
To think I used to think David Gregory had aspirations to be a real reporter, just because he’d ask followup questions in the Bush pressers.
But, now that he’s moving up, the ass kissing has to turn pro.
kth
@prufrock: that’s right, it’s Tony. Not sure how I misremembered that, I used to have little enough to live for that I watched Around The Horn almost daily.
Dreggas
Gregory has said before that he doesn’t feel it’s his job to press people on issues or investigate/fact check anyone or anything. He just is a stenographer.
slag
@Midnight Marauder:
I seem to recall a certain someone else who made a very similar claim several years ago. Peas in a pod these people are.
ellaesther
“People can fact-check ‘Meet the Press’ every week on their own terms.”
You know what – no. Mostly? We can’t. That’s why we have a press. That’s why the fourth estate exists. Because the average Jane Six Pack cannot, in fact, fact check everything that gets said on a news or interview or commentary program.
In most cases, Jane Six Pack a) wouldn’t know where to start
b) would likely not know who to ask, or how and
c) might be in need of some of that good ol’ investigative journalism there, the kind that good journalists do WHEN THEY FACT CHECK, because maybe the people in power might just be trying to hide something!
(Obviously, there’s a level on which citizen journalists/bloggers/plain old news hounds do fact check and that’s great, and taking responsibility for your news consumption is a good thing — but to have David Gregory stand there and tell the world that he’s just going to leave it up to his consumers to figure out if he sold us prime rib or rancid chuck is so fucking lazy as to have me head-desking, even as I type [no mean feat!])
mistersnrub
Let’s take a look at the gem by Gregory this weekend:
:MR. GREGORY: Senator Leahy, isn’t it important that the president select someone who unites the country?
SEN. LEAHY: Well, I think that there is–right now, as Justice Stevens himself has said because of some of the decisions of the Supreme Court, they are beginning to lose credibility with the American people. Actually, and not for the reasons you may think, I agree with what Jeff Sessions has said, they have rewritten the law. This is a very, very activist court, the most activist court in my lifetime. They rewrote the law to say that–so they said that women could be paid less than men. They rewrote the law to say that age discrimination laws won’t apply if corporate interests don’t want them to. They rewrote the law to give ExxonMobil a $2 billion windfall. And they rewrote the law to say that corporations could come in and meddle in elections in this, in this country. All of those things went against the precedent…
MR. GREGORY: OK.
SEN. LEAHY: …and went against the laws of this country.
MR. GREGORY: Senator, the question I asked is whether you think a nominee should unite the country?”
I almost threw something at the television. I can’t tell if Gregory’s devout focus on “optics” in lieu of any substantive policy discussion stems from willfulness or abject stupidity. His enfeebled attempt to “pin down” Leahy on this fatuous question betrays the latter.
fourlegsgood
Gregory is an idiot. The average person depends on the press to point out when people are lying on these TV shows.
And that’s why I don’t watch his wretched show. I’d rather sleep in.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
The National Enquirer wuz robbed. They should have won something for nailing John “Loverman” Edwards.
Is that still on? I thought it had been cancelled and replaced with Dancing with the Politicians.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@mistersnrub:
I heard that exchange too. It must rank as one of the most shockingly stupid and inane lines of questioning in history.
I wish I had been Leahy that morning. I’d have said to Gregory, “Isn’t it important that Meet The Press unite the country, David?”
Eric U.
I always wondered why they had these shows. I think they were for people that were too lazy to read the Sunday op-eds.
maya
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, DD knows he only has temporary custody of MTP until Luke finished puberty. So why bother putting any effort into it?
DougJ
@mistersnrub:
Do you have a link for that?
Zifnab
@mistersnrub: GOTCHA!
John W.
I ran an anti-Gregory blog for a couple weeks, until i gave up when he was hired.
He’s’ the epitome of awful.
El Cid
Why should a billion dollar news corporation do all the work of “verifying” their stuff and “making sure” they’re looking into what are demonstrably important questions?
Heck, why don’t all you worthless jerks out there working your shitty jobs — you ain’t got nothing better to do — why don’t you get on the internet and do all the work?
It’s not our job to go on TV and worry “OMG is this ‘true’ or ‘important'” or not, it’s our job to go out there, look good, and talk to the Big Names, get the management and ownership feeling like they got somethin’ out of the show.
Look, if a bunch of important right wingers show up claiming that they have secret evidence which they can’t show us but they really promise that Saddam Hussein is about to kill us all with
magic beansnuclear weapons, it’s not our job to figure out of those claims are true; it’s our job to talk about it real serious and heavy-breathing like.Same way — a couple of right wing douchenozzles show up with a bit of video they claim that shows the nation’s largest advocacy group for housing and financial rights for the homeless and poor communities doing criminal stuff? We’re gonna run with it.
You schmucks can get out there and beat the pavement or “log on” and do all this grunt work, ’cause our work is done by getting these people who are Beltway and right wing favorites on the air.
Just think of how much work it would take to look into whether this or that or whatever is ‘true’ or ‘relevant’, and plus, all this just so some of our most valued guests would get mad at me and my show?
You can forget it.
PanAmerican
@mistersnrub:
Krusty: [chuckles] Good evening. Tonight my guest is AFL/CIO chairman George Meany, who will be discussing collective bargaining agreements.
Meany: It’s a pleasure to be here, Krusty.
Krusty: Let me be blunt: is there a labor crisis in America today?
Meany: Well that depends what you mean by “crisis”…
[Bart groans]
Mark S.
PTI : Around the Horn :: Paradise Lost : The Da Vinci Code
@mistersnrub:
Why on earth would a SCOTUS nominee unite the country? Has that ever happened before? Last I checked, people have pretty strong ideas about abortion, gay rights, etc. No nominee is going to unite the country.
geg6
Mr. Cole, I may very well be the one person on this blog who is proud to say that I am directly responsible for the huge ratings hit taken by MTP since Stretch took over. (He will always be Stretch to me since that was Shrub’s nickname for him. He should die and be buried with that name as a mark of shame.). I can say this now that it’s over. I was a Neilsen household, with the meters on the tv and everything, for the last five years. And I watched MTP every week. Not because I was a Russert fan (horrors!), but because I knew it was the most pure distillation of Village wisdom as anyone can find. And I watched the first show with Stretch and the next week, I started watching OnDemand or the Food Network, with a stop at This Week with George Stephanopolis’ Hair when he had someone other than McCain on or Krugman on the panel. Now, I know I’m not single-handedly responsible for the MTP ratings slide, but I like to think I can take some credit in making Stretch even more irrelevant than someone who is happy to be a backup dancer for Karl Rove already was.
ellaesther
@slag: Indeed.
Any fool who doesn’t think he’s made mistakes is no one I want to trust to take care of my dog, much less give me my news (or run the country, but thank God, that’s over!)
ellaesther
@geg6: And a humble nation thanks you for your service.
kay
@mistersnrub:
It’s just a ridiculous question. Did he get his cue cards mixed up, or something?
“Unite the country” around what? The Supreme Court nominee?
That seems like a heavy burden for one judge. I don’t really know if he or she can “unite the country” in hearings that no one watches. If we’re still fighting about abortion or health care after confirmation hearings the judge is a big fat failure? Wow. When did that become the measure? This is going to have to be one extraordinary nominee.
ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty
@El Cid:
Just have two words:
Richard.Jewell.
NBC really didn’t learn much of anything from that debacle, did it?
jl
@geg6: thanks from me too.
Gravenstone
As Colbert so presciently noted, reality has a well known liberal bias. Gregory doesn’t need any of that there liberal reality interfering with his well crafted bullshit talking points.
Chad N Freude
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty:
MikeJ
Hey DougJ, didja see Think Progress’s follow up on Paladino? Apparantly. he just forwards email without knowing whats in them, and it’s all the fault of Democrats.
geg6
ellaesther and jl: Oh, happy to be of service! I know they told me that I represented 25,000 people, so I figure I had BJ as a whole covered. At least, as far as the regulars go anyway.
kay
@Mark S.:
Agreed.
I think he has a laminated card that says “unite the country?” and he just asks that question no matter what the topic.
I would refuse to answer it. Leahy should say: “that’s ridiculous. Try again. I’ll wait”. Then he should start humming really loud.
El Cid
@ExtremismInTheDefenseOfLiberty: I’m sure NBC learned to be more cautious about how it phrased things so as to assume no network responsibility, retreating more into “officials” or “unnamed sources” said.
Did Judith Miller et al’s reign of false warhawkery in Gulf War II teach the New York Times to be careful about evidence and claims in the ACORN fraudulent reporting? Apparently not.
The billion dollar news media works to get names & spelling right, usually, but real journamalism? Sure, occasionally. But it’s not necessarily the rule.
Chad N Freude
@El Cid: Excellent manifesto.
El Cid
@kay: Leahy could give Gregory a Magic 8 ball and say that this one has many more questions, try this…
Midnight Marauder
@kay:
I hear that Harold Ford is available these days…
mistersnrub
Here’s the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36362669/ns/meet_the_press
I love how completely he has bought the line of bs that “activist judges” equals “liberals.” It’s like his brain short circuits with Leahy’s answer and he’s left sputtering, “but, but what about teh unitys and bipartisanship?”
EvolutionaryDesign
To fact check would be to forfeit cocktail invitations, which would forfeit the opportunity to invite BIG NAMES onto MTP. It really is the worst kind of shame spiral.
ellaesther
@mistersnrub: Wow. I just read this. Holy crow. That’s… that’s something else.
like @kay: said: Leahy should say: “that’s ridiculous. Try again. I’ll wait”. Then he should start humming really loud.
Chad N Freude
I think this should be a test for every presidential appointment. Any nominee who doesn’t unite the country before assuming whatever position he/she was nominated for, isn’t fit to hold whatever position he/she was nominated for.
Wait, maybe he meant unite the country after being approved. Then any nominee who doesn’t unite the country after assuming whatever position he/she was nominated for should be reject (before assuming whatever position he/she was nominated for).
That may be the stupidest question ever asked on TV news. Why didn’t Leahy ask him how a nominee for any position could unite the country? What could the nominee do to unite the country?
slag
@kay:
More likely he writes it on his hand every morning.
kay
@El Cid:
Leahy just sits there and stares at him. Watch him sweat. Tick, tick, tick..that stupid question would just be hanging there. I would watch that.
I can’t watch him because I hate how he screws up his face like he…can’t….manage…to…comprehend. Come on. It’s not like he asks difficult or specific questions. I’m thinking, “move it along, bud. We don’t have all day. You can catch up later”.
SIA
@geg6:
You could totally have your own kingdom.
mellowjohn
prufrock @ 36: if you’re scoring at home, why are you reading a blog, too?
h/t to keith olbermann
mistersnrub
Obama should nominate Justin Bieber to the bench, for the sake of unity.
CybScryb
The continuous lowering of expectations makes all things possible…even Sarah Palin.
kay
This is off-topic, but I’m going to stretch, because I think it’s great.
Mississippi’s declaration of confederacy month doesn’t mention slavery.
BUT, the NYTimes article about it included this, almost as a rebuttal:
In our numerous discussions of the confederate history month lunacy, several people kept posting the various state declarations when they seceded. I hadn’t read those, so I was interested.
And now the NYTimes is doing it too :)
Bravo. They can’t keep lying with these declarations floating around.
WereBear
@El Cid: Marvelous. The whole thing.
And, sadly, true.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@DougJ: No love for Eugene Robinson?
bayville
Is Meet The Press on Sunday or Saturday?
And David Gregory?… Is Tim Russert on vacation?
Mnemosyne
@kay:
I know that Haley Barbour wants to run for president, but I don’t think I’ve seen the press hate a Republican as much as Barbour since, well, forever. You’d almost think he was a Clinton.
If it was the Mittster or Huckabee, they would have covered for him, but they really really really hate Barbour.
The Grand Panjandrum
No tweeting for the Twit of Sunday Morning.
Shorter Dancin’ Dave: Get off my lawn, you whippersnappers!
Chad N Freude
@kay:
And why not?
ajr22
@mistersnrub: That would unite the twitter universe. I saw a minute of mtp this week and it consisted of Gregory heading to commercial with some bullshit like ” The Obama nuclear treaty, people are saying it is making us less safe. We will discuss when we come back” I wanted to punch him. Nice framing of the issue, he might as well of said “Obama’s nuclear treaty the republican framing is we are all gonna die, so we will discuss the topic based on their spin after the break.”
SRW1
Translation:
I got a pretty nice gig here and I’ll be damned if I agree to being shown up as the journalistic non-event that I am.
And besides, taking your cues from David Broder can’t be all that wrong. That guy get’s invited to all the fancy cocktail parties around here.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
It gets better. The confederate they contacted for comment (the governor neglected to respond) then compares the tea partiers to the confederates.
I don’t know that they can whine they’re being unfairly portrayed when they’re making the connection themselves.
Archibald Leach
@jl:
Seeing himself called meretricious would make Gregory beam with pride.
(Though he probably *would* know the meaning of “corporate hack.”)
ericvsthem
Nothing to add except my thanks to DougJ for the song reference. I hadn’t listened to that song in a while. It’s a lot of fun to sing to my 7 month old son :)
El Cid
Perhaps to “unite the country” the administration could create a living, breathing, human-sized set of smoking WTC towers, complete with an eagle shedding tears over it.
sukabi
@Steve: naw, what it means is that Dancin’ Dave is perfectly happy to have a fact-free show… it makes it much easier to be a ball-licker, and it’s much less stressful for him if he and his guests can just make shit up.
different church-lady
You could give a fuck?
Under what conditions will you do so?
Also: I guess what Dave means is that it’s now up to us to be our own journalists and wade through all the crap, insinuation, rumor, innuendo, and outright lying and try to pick out the grains of truth.
Y’know, all the stuff we used to think that news programs and journalists would do for us.
Stan
@eemom:
This crime wave is never complete.
WereBear
Apparently Gregory thought he was getting a talk show, like Chevy Chase.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
“Meet the Press”? The running joke about the show has been calling it ‘Press the Meat’. With his aversion to correcting/confronting blatant falsehoods that are regularly uttered on his show, may I suggest that Gregory rename it to:
Stretch the Truth
That name pretty much covers everything for me.
Culture of Truth
Leahy had once said something similar about a Bush nominee.
More ridiculous was Gregory’s terror that Iran is about to attack Bethesda and Obama isn’t doing anything to stop them.
prufrock
@kth:
Ah, yes. Jay Mariotti is reason enough to suppress the memory. Snarky objection cheerfully withdrawn!
DougJ
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
I’m not a big fan, honestly.
Mike in NC
Lovely. Must’ve been for all the mash notes to “Old Soldier” John Frickin’ McCain. Now she’s moved on to cheerleading for the teabaggers.
Sly
Not to get all contrarian, but fact checking doesn’t fit the design of Sunday Morning Shows.
I’m not at all being facetious on this point: The purpose of these shows is not to convey accurate information to their viewers. The purpose is to have on guests that create “buzz” for the following week. The ratings for these shows have been abysmal for years because they’re really not meant for an audience wider than the NYC-Beltway circuit. Same deal with Charlie Rose. Nobody really watches these shows, but the important people watch them, and thats all that matters.
p m
MR. GREGORY: What about the SCOTUS nominee? Does he unite the country?
SEN. LEAHY: I know him, and he does.
MR. GREGORY: Then you’re my fact-checking cuz’.
Lisa K.
@John Cole:
Kathleen Parker-unlike, say, Peggy Noonan or Michael Gerson-is one of those people I consider too smart to be as stupid as they are. Thus, I have absolutely no respect for her andf she can fuck off and die as far as I’m concerned. No matter what, she hasn’t done anything to win a prize.
raptusregaliter
Shorter David Gregory: “I’m a potted plant.”
Ben A
Nice Pavement reference. (in title)
NG in SoCal
@maya:
I think you might be on to something here.
brantl
@Rhoda: If Russert got that, then he had no excuse for very seldom DOING IT. His show became Cheney’s go-to place to lie his ass off.