Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Let there be snark.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

This fight is for everything.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

This really is a full service blog.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

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Reader Interactions

42Comments

  2. 2.

    Citizen Alan

    I’ve always wanted to meet Dana Milbank, just so I could ask him the following question:

    “Was there ever a moment, even just a brief second of clarity, as you were filming that ridiculous Internet skit with Chris Cilizza that you suspected you and he might come off as the biggest douchebags in the history of journalism?”

  3. 3.

    Violet

    What the hell? Lots of people had man crushes on Obama. Wasn’t he elected in a two party system? And hugging someone isn’t the same as a “man crush.”

    Honestly, how does Dana Milbank even have a job? He doesn’t even understand basic facts.

  4. 4.

    Sly

    You could draw upon lots of examples to drive the false equivalency point home.

    When Liberman was facing a challenger in Lamont, the majority of the party establishment still supported Lieberman. Even after Lamont won the nomination. They supported someone who wasn’t even in the fucking party anymore. Marcy Winograd is challenging Jane Harman, never a friend of progressives, in California from the left, and even the House Progressive Caucus is supporting Harman. Florida Democrats like Wasserman-Shultz have been repeatedly criticized by the left for not going after Republican members of their delegation, like Ros-Lehtinen. Yet they still refrain from doing it anyway.

    And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

    James Carville, of whom I am no fan, once remarked that a Democrat will say 2+2=5, and a Republican will say 2+2=5,000,000. But members of the National Washington Press will always say in response, “Hey, they’re both wrong!”

  5. 5.

    Josh

    @Violet:

    Honestly, how does Dana Milbank even have a job? He doesn’t even understand basic facts.

    In today’s media environment, this is EXACTLY why he has a job.

  6. 6.

    Josh

    To really clarify my point, it seems today that the most misleading journalists are the ones that are the most popular. Sean Hannity is one that comes to mind.

    The biggest problem with our media is that it has, essentially, become an entertainment industry. You can point your fingers at many social and technological reasons for this, but I am firmly of the opinion that it is just a natural evolution of our media system.

    And, sadly, I believe it is just an inherent problem with the sort of capitalism that America has. Even the news must monetize and grow. How do you do that in a society that has a short attention span and basically no open free-time?

    You have to make it worth their while. Competition amongst the cable news networks isn’t about who can get the story first anymore, or who can get the most access (I’ve seen instances where Fox has used claims that it can’t contact lawmakers as a way to boast or strengthen their claims). It’s about who can have the biggest shock-jocks. It’s why, even after advertisers left Fox in droves, Glenn Beck stayed on the air.

    It’s why CNN hired Erick Erickson and why crazy assholes can come on and spew their shit and meet only mild resistance. SHOCKING! EXPLOSIVE!

    I can only surmise that the current form of media is a direct response to what a lot of people really want.

    So Dana Milbank has a job because says outrageous, false things without any sense of shame. That’s what a journalist is these days.

  7. 7.

    demkat620

    The only reason a far-right candidate such as Rubio is competitive at all is because this year heavily favors Republicans. In a normal election year — 2012, perhaps — Republicans will rue their purging of the Crists and Specters who could have kept them competitive.

    Win or lose, an independent Crist candidacy would remind Republican leaders that ideological cleansing has a cost. That’s why Crist should be encouraged to run. Hug him if you wish, kiss him if you must, but show Charlie Crist some love.

    Na Ga ha pen.

    They will simply tell themselves that the candidates they ran were not conservative enough. He really has not paid attention for the last ten years.

  8. 8.

    SteveinSC

    Maybe it’s a case of “even the blind p(r)ig finds an acorn every now and then.” On the other hand I liked the article. It just means that Crist is being purity purged like William F. Buckley’s son and David Frum (round two of this at HuffPo.) They can all go live on the Island of Unloved Douchebags, kind of a Republican Purgatory for neo-Heretics. It’s a helter-skelter rush to embrace the worst inmates in the Asylum for the GOP (allusion intended).

  9. 9.

    mistermix

    From Benen’s piece:

    Does “both sides do it” really have to go into every piece?

    Simple answer: Yes.

  10. 10.

    mai naem

    @Josh: Sean Hannity is not a journalist. He’s a talk show host. You can say he’s treated as a journalist but he’s not one. Speaking of Fo bimbos, the one woman in the news show kind of BJ ad looks like Megan Kelly.

    Back to the journos. Some of the left blogs like to beat up on the papers. Esp. Kos. He makes fun of them for trying to charge for articles etc. yet his own blog links to them several times daily. Bitch all you want about the NYT and WaPo but there’s some damn good reporters there and if there’s not some kind of profitable model for them you can’t pay for those reporters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chile, JoBurg, Delhi, Beijing,London, Sydney etc.

  11. 11.

    Mike Kay

    @mistermix: Actually, no.

    When the Dems do something wrong or controversial, or dare I say, partisan, then beltway media always fails to included the equivalency excuse.

  12. 12.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @Citizen Alan:

    I’ve always wanted to meet Dana Milbank, just so I could ask him the following question:

    I’ve always wanted to meet Dana Milbank, just so I could put him in a sack and hit the sack with a stick. But hey, to each their own.

  13. 13.

    licensed to kill time

    __

    Does “both sides do it” really have to go into every piece?

    They’ve looked at news from both sides now
    From Left and Right and still somehow
    It’s Right’s illusions they recall
    They really don’t know Right…..at all

  14. 14.

    Mike Kay

    @mai naem:

    Some of the left blogs like to beat up on the papers. Esp. Kos. He makes fun of them for trying to charge for articles etc. yet his own blog links to them several times daily.

    Oh quit with the hippie punching, you meanie.

  16. 16.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @John Cole

    You’d think someone who publicly fellated John McCain for a decade and a half before a rather embarrassing and revealing public break-up would know a thing or two about man crushes.

    Probably, but not as much as Lindsey Graham knows about man-crushes. And tea-bagging (in the fun sense) and that special glory hole that he used to share with Larry Craig in the Senate men’s room and those fun parties with Mark Foley. Oh, wait, you were talking about some kind of metaphorical thing here. Damn you and your metaphors, and your rhetorical questions!

  18. 18.

    Anne Laurie

    Nah, see, Dana is defending the concept of “man crushes” as a valid political strategy. Which is a central problem of the Media Village Idiot stranglehold on our political discourse — Milbank’s “centrism” is best defined as “I pick the politician who gives me an emotional chubbie, because whatever makes Dana feel warm and safe is obviously the best possible solution to all our problems.” Yes, we all tend to ‘bond’ with those politicians who stroke our prejudices, but when the Very Serious Person concensus can’t go beyond, “Politician X is so cute! I just wanna hug him! And coincidentally, he just happens to reinforce all my most cherished biases!”… that’s not political activism, that choosing a sports team.

  19. 19.

    eemom

    @Mike Kay:

    another thing that’s interesting is how the nonstop bashing of the “ESTABLISHMENT” media comes to a sudden screeching halt when the NYT publishes something that, say, agrees with Greenwald’s jihad against Elena Kagan……or acknowledges the existence of Marcy Wheeler. Then suddenly the evil vile Village dwellers are transformed into the Prophets of God.

  21. 21.

    Warren Terra

    Can we get some scorn for the New York Times Editorial Board, who sorrowfully ran a “Whatever happened to our tire swing?” editorial about the “newly” partisan, blinkered McCain late this past week?

  22. 22.

    Honus

    So we have to save the republicans from themselves by supporting a 3rd party Charlie Crist or something? I’m a capitalist. Fuck them. And if Florida is stupid enough to elect Mark Rubio, fuck them too. If we (the voters) put republicans back in charge of the country, then fuck this country. There’s a lot of other places to live. I don’t want to move but I can, and more to the point, my intelligent, productive children can even more easily. I first began to feel this way in 2004, and it has been eased somewhat by the last two elections, but if this really is the teabaggers’ country then so be it, it won’t be mine. I won’t live in a place where Sean Hannity is a respected voice.
    As Fred Exley said, “…I feel the same way about suicide….negative faith though it be. For what thinking person among us has not…seen the fascists, apes, and thugs among us and not contemplated suicide…ultimately suicide becomes one’s eloquent and dramatic way of announcing one will not live in a world controlled by goons.”

  23. 23.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

     

    They Can’t Go Under Fast Enough

    If the Titanic had the flotation and damage control capacity of the WaPo, they’d still be out there today floating around somewhere in the North Atlantic, wondering where all the icebergs went (AGW dudes – too bad for you it came 100 years too late). Of course the band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” would have died of old age by now, there would be no caviar and oysters left in the first class dining room, and the lower berths would be still be full of water and corpses. But aside from all that unpleasantness it would make a nice museum of soshul attitudes frozen in time from a century ago.

    Substitute David Broder for the “Nearer, My God..” folks, convert the ship into a retro-decor’d floating casino and luxury hotel for neocon conventions, and that’s your good old Washington Post right there.

  24. 24.

    Alan

    @Honus:

    The Dems have an unknown black guy running. In comparison to the name recognition to Crist and Rubio AND that it’s a southern state, I have a sad feeling this will set up a win for Rubio. I can see Crist splitting the Dem vote more than his taking more GOP votes than Rubio.

  25. 25.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

     

    They Can’t Go Under Fast Enough

    If the Titanic had the flotation and damage control capacity of the WaPo, they’d still be out there today floating around somewhere in the North Atlantic, wondering where all the icebergs went (AGW dudes – too bad for you it came 100 years too late). Of course the band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” would have died of old age by now, there would be no caviar and oysters left in the first class dining room, and the lower berths would be still be full of water and corpses. But aside from all that unpleasantness it would make a nice museum of soshul attitudes frozen in time from a century ago.

    Substitute David Broder for the “Nearer, My God..” folks, convert the ship into a retro-decor’d floating casino and luxury hotel for neocon cruises, and that’s your good old Washington Post right there.

  26. 26.

    Brian J

    Actually, while Crist might be getting screwed over for trying to be slightly independent in his mindset, I don’t think he needs a hug. He’s risen far enough in life that he won’t have to worry about finding some way to make a living even if he doesn’t continue as a politician. So no, he doesn’t need a hug.

    Dana Milbank, on the other hand. needs a punch in the head for taking the salary of someone who could instead be investigating the finance industry as he writes such nonsense.

  29. 29.

    DBrown

    Here is a story I got from Lawyers, guns, and money – read and weep:

    – Suicides among United States military veterans ballooned by 26 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to new statistics released by the Veterans Affairs (VA) department.

    “Of the more than 30,000 suicides in this country each year, fully 20 percent of them are acts by veterans,” said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki at a VA-sponsored suicide prevention conference on Monday. “That means on average 18 veterans commit suicide each day. Five of those veterans are under our care at VA.” –

    So a media type is asking people to hug a wealthy pol because he might loose a position of power yet this asswipe dosen’t care or write about the fact that 18 vets A DAY KILL THEMSELVES! Jeus christ! Have we gone down that far!?

  30. 30.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    There’s nothing gay about hugging, asshole.

    Christ, I learned that back in Boy Scouts.

  31. 31.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @Anne Laurie:

    Milbank’s “centrism” is best defined as “I pick the politician who gives me an emotional chubbie, because whatever makes Dana feel warm and safe is obviously the best possible solution to all our problems.” Yes, we all tend to ‘bond’ with those politicians who stroke our prejudices, but when the Very Serious Person concensus can’t go beyond, “Politician X is so cute! I just wanna hug him! And coincidentally, he just happens to reinforce all my most cherished biases!”…

    And this is why Rich Lowry is better than Dana Milbank. See. Dana Milbank picks the politicians who give him an emotional chubby whereas Rich Lowry who picks the politicians who give him an actual chubby. Because whoever gets Rich off and leaves him all starbursty and gasping for breath is obviously the best possible solution to all of our problems. Sure, Dana Milbank bonds with the politicians who stroke his prejudices, but when it comes to bonding with politicians and stroking things Rich Lowry knows no equal.

    Sure, Dana Milbank goes all gooey and says “Politician X is so cute! I just wanna hug him! And coincidentally, he just happens to reinforce all my most cherished biases!” but Rich Lowry, well it takes a real man to say “I’d like politician X to put on a strap on, dress up as Howard Roark and re-enact the rape scene from The Fountainhead with me dressed up in something slinky and black and playing Dominique Francon, and coincidentally, she just happens to reinforce all of my cherished biases Take me, take me now Sarah! OMG, the Starbursts!”

  32. 32.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @Honus:

    As Fred Exley said, “…I feel the same way about suicide….negative faith though it be. For what thinking person among us has not…seen the fascists, apes, and thugs among us and not contemplated suicide…ultimately suicide becomes one’s eloquent and dramatic way of announcing one will not live in a world controlled by goons.”

    What a pussy. I see the fascists, apes and goons and contemplate homicide. The only way I’d give those fucks the satisfaction of committing suicide is if I could ride the bomb down on a bunch of these fuckheads. And I’d be screaming and yelling and waving my Stetson with a big old shit eating grin on my face as I did so.

  34. 34.

    thomas Levenson

    @DBrown:

    Jeus christ! Have we gone down that far!?

    A: Yes.
    SASQ.

    I do actually think we are in a U shaped media recession. Long story cut way short — but as an old line media guy, once upon a time (started stringing for Reuters, then Time and so on) — journalism survives media.

    For all the moves to an entertainment model that the major organizations have takes (some, NYT, less than others, e.g. WaPo) the combination of the Web critique (see, e.g., this place, not to mention my own sporadic efforts, among much much else), with a slowly emerging set of alternatives for original journalism is starting to give me some real hope.

    Put it another way: Broder has been a tool for decades now. It’s only in the last few years that even the beginnings of an alternative reputation for the “Dean” (Wormer?) has made itself felt, not least, on occasion, with the man himself.

    Or another way: does anyone think that Milbank will have a run of influence even remotely close to as long-lived as Broder’s. He’ll be toast in a very few years…

    Thus spake Zarathustra-evenson.

  35. 35.

    Josh

    @mai naem:

    I guess I should have clarified. I don’t believe talk show hosts are journalists, but they get treated as such. Especially when they’re on cable news channels and talk about the news.

    The problem is that words don’t really mean anything anymore.

  36. 36.

    Belvoir

    Hugs and kisses and “man-crushes”.. what could Milbank be trying to telegraph here about that Crist fellow?

    (Quick thought- does growing up as a boy named “Dana” make one more prone to gay-baiting innuendo, impugning the masculinity of others as weak , girly, needing hugs? )

    And “The crucifixion of Crist..” line makes me so irritated I want to …go home and just..bite my pillow!

  38. 38.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @Belvoir:

    And “The crucifixion of Crist..” line makes me so irritated I want to …go home and just..bite my pillow!

    Well maybe if Crist had some Passion he wouldn’t be getting crucified. Ba-doom boom! Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here through Thursday. Try the chicken, it’s great!

  39. 39.

    tony

    I’m sure kos will give him a huge hug. He has a giant man crush for the supply-siding, anti-choice, HCR repealing, Everglades destroying, life long Republican. Maybe he’s in love with Crist because his skin matches the Daily Kos color pallet.

  40. 40.

    tc125231

    @eemom:

    the nonstop bashing of the “ESTABLISHMENT” media comes to a sudden screeching halt when the NYT publishes something that, say, agrees with Greenwald’s jihad against Elena Kagan…..

    What’s the big deal? A stopped clock is right twice a day. Do you think these maroons do that well?

  41. 41.

    Citizen Alan

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    It’s a question of priorities. Once I got my answer, I’m sure I would beat him about the head and shoulders bellowing obscenities at him all the time. But I just have to know whether he was really so self-absorbed that he had no idea how embarrassing to the entire journalistic profession that skit was.

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