In a post this afternoon Matthew Yglesias gets to the heart of the scam being run by modern conservative media in print, online, the radio and on the teevee:
At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct—and Andrew Breitbart’s—for their movement. Beyond the ethics of lying and smear one’s opponents, I would think conservatives would worry about the fact that a large portion of conservative media is dedicated to lying to conservatives. They regard their audience as marks to be misled and exploited, not as customers to be served with useful information.
I’ve got nothing to add, so let’s go Open Thread.
Cheers
El Cid
Re
Feature — nay, main purpose — not bug.
Likewise, carnies and scam artists don’t much respect their marks either.
freelancer
Also, Sully touched on this in June and I circled around it in a post I wrote today on SHERRODGATE.
Wingers have inverted this syllogism and believe that Politics is a continuation of war by other means. Fuck “problem-solving”, the purpose of governmental power is total dominance. Scorched Earth War. Politics, for them isn’t about policy, that’s why their proposals are all negative arguments, they aren’t FOR anything. Politics is about the systematic dismantling of their ideological opponent. For them, it’s a substanceless zero sum game.
WereBear
In today’s conservatism, you’re either the scammer, or the scammee.
Wouldn’t they say it’s the scammee’s own fault? If they were smart, they could scam people too!
b-psycho
Found this interesting. Oakland city council is shuffling their medical marijuana market into corporate-style factory farming.
gmf
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but Matt’s wrong.
Despite their being “lied to” about this – lots of “conservatives” *may* have heard this was a setup, but the initial story – that a black woman said she held out on helping a couple because they were white – is what’s going to stick.
Sure she realized she was wrong & rectified her mistake – but there’s lots of brown-type folks who discriminate against whites & don’t do anything about it. The fact that this ONE redeemed herself doesn’t negate their view that this goes on all the time (by individuals AND the system in general).
Nothing about how this turned out will change the minds of their lunatic base & much of it only reinforces their feelings of victimization.
Tom Hilton
There’s no downside for ‘conservatives’ here. Let’s say the marks wise up and realize they’ve been scammed all along. What we end up with is a buncha people who don’t trust any information source–which is a win for ‘conservatives’.
Because ‘conservatism’ today is really nihilism. We want to build things, and they want to tear things down. Building things requires a shared reality and a shared sense of purpose; tearing things down doesn’t.
Corner Stone
As a good friend of mine always says, “It’s all about the grabey.”
He’s referring to the gravy that goes with certain dishes he makes for friends and family.
I’ll just adapt that a little to say, “It’s all about the grift.”
asdf
“At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct…”
Oh, come on. This didn’t begin yesterday. The truth does not matter.
How many times in the last ten years might this same thing have been said? Did this sort of reflection happen then? No. Will it happen now? No.
We are dealing with the Borg. Get used to it.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
One of the most cogent observations on the subject I have seen in a while.
I need to check in with my righty pals down here… how does it feel to get all your news from a source that basically is in the business of just treating you like rubes all the time?
Or, how does it feel to get all your news from a source that panders to people who think the earth is 6000 years old? Doesn’t it occur to you that maybe they aren’t giving you the whole story?
Sigh.
b-psycho
@lamh32: Broken Code is Broken.
Comrade Mary
Clean-up on aisle 4? Looks like some broken HTML in comment 10. (Nice catch, though!)
ETA: I’ve emailed John. Let’s all act like little Fonzies now, all right?
Lolis
And then all these dummies they have force-fed their stupid slogans to actually believe them … then they turn on Republicans (briefly) for voting for the bailout or other things they don’t like. They have literally created a base so out-of-touch with reality that many Republican leaders are now afraid of the crazy.
freelancer
@lamh32:
Iz in ur html, kill ur layooots
lamh32
don’t feel like blockquoting, so be forewarned that what follows is pasted from Plumline
White House to media: You lap up Breitbart’s nonsense, too!
“Okay, Robert Gibbs made a really interesting point at the briefing just now: He delicately pointed out to the assembled reporters that their news organizations had also been too quick to accept the Breitbart video at face value.
This is important, because it hints at a frustration inside the White House that it rarely voices publicly: White House officials are often forced to respond to stories ginned up by the right because other news orgs too readily give them credibility.
The key moment came when Gibbs was asked by a reporter if the moral of this story is “don’t trust the internet.”
Gibbs replied that news organizations had asked the White House for a response to Breitbart’s two-and-a-half-minute video, when the speech was more than 43 minutes long.
“I had a lot of people asking for a response to the two and a half minutes,” Gibbs said. “My guess is you heard from a lot of your editors saying, Go get reaction to this story.”
Gibbs then described the media process. “You all see it, you all want reaction, we get reaction,” Gibbs said. He lamented that news orgs then aired the two-and-a-half minute snippet, as well as the White House reaction based on that snippet, without seeking fuller context themselves.
Gibbs then suggested that media orgs, too, should ask themselves if they handled this properly: “I don’t think there’s anybody involved in that chain that wouldn’t think, from start to finish, that this shouldn’t have been handled differently.”
Translation: Maybe you all should stop using Breitbart as your assignment editor.
Obviously there’s no excusing the administration’s conduct, as Gibbs himself repeatedly said. And the administration, by letting itself get duped by Breitbart, both fell prey to and enabled the process Gibbs is complaining about.
But Gibbs did make an important point here: Big news orgs are far too willing to take their cues from people who are known to cook the facts on a regular basis. It’s true that Gibbs didn’t directly call out right wing media, but his point was clear enough, and one can only hope media figures give it a passing moment of thought and don’t just cynically dismiss it as spin….”
WereBear
The class = “yarr”
Have we been boarded by pirates?
dmsilev
Holy broken blog, Batman!
Sgt. Jrod and his Howling Commandos
I think the better question is what Shep Smith has on Murdoch.
merrinc
Tell me I’m not the only one who’s been humming “American Idiot” today. Green Day hit that nail right on the head.
Josie
@gmf: That doesn’t mean Matt is wrong. It just means that misleading these low information voters is that much easier. The actual conservatives he is addressing are the thinking conservatives (cue the raised eyebrows and chuckles at the use of this phrase) who are bright enough to take stock of the situation.
General Stuck
@freelancer:
Well yea. As a party GWB and CC republicans exploded the GOP in about every way. Not only did their policies not work and created disaster, they violated their own preachings on spending, nation building (shouldn’t do) and a long list more.
The party collapsed in on itself and we got our first black presnit that rubbed their faces in it more, especially the crazies who got off their butts and created a movement of crazy to fill the void. Filled with people against everything, and for nothing other than hating liberalism double for also too bringing black into their White House.
These people can barely spell their own names. What kind of policy, other than non stop attack. This time they picked a target that ricocheted and hit their own foot, in a big way. Not only did they concoct phony evidence to smear a black person, they picked a black person whose own father was murdered by their own kind of white supremacy. And who overcame the natural distaste for the white race to become nothing less than a role model for the way out of our racially nasty past and present.
Oliver Stone couldn’t have penned a more altruistic script for the advancement of racial reconciliation, and exposing the nasty ass right wing.
Kryptik
Oh hay guys, guess what the Politico’s esteemed Mr. VandeHei says!
He says the NAACP is getting off the hook because they provoked Breitbart by calling out the tea party! They’re to blame for the whole thing since they called out those esteemed patriots!
God, the ratfuckery never ends, does it?
lamh32
damn, what did i do…
darn cut and paste!
Linda Featheringill
@gmf:
Racists [and other jerks] come in all flavors.
But I guess the folks on the right either don’t already know that or they don’t want to know that.
TooManyJens
Countdown to JC calling us jackasses in 3 … 2 … 1 …
General Stuck
@lamh32: You somehow opened the gate to WordPress Hell. A velly velly bad person you are.:)
tatere
Couldn’t you substitute “American” for “conservative” in that Yglesias quote pretty easily?
Tonal Crow
If they’ve got to lie to sell their ideology, what does that say about its worth?
Bender
That’s rich, on the day we find JournoList liberal reporters/pundits telling each other to lie to their liberal readers about who’s a “RAAAAACIST!” in order to deflect criticism of Obama.
They must regard their readers as marks to be misled.
Comrade Mary
I sense a — a disturbance. It’s as if I can’t see out o’ one eye, clunk lopsidedly as I walk, and have somethin’ loud and sharp attached t’ me starboard shoulder.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not being a regular Fox viewer, I was taken aback when Gretchen Carlson (I think is her name–the woman on the Morning Zoo Croo), who I know from reading the internets is a graduate of Stanford who spent a year at Oxford, was pretending that she was shocked when she “looked up” the word ‘czar’ and was shocked to learn it meant ‘king’. I knew George Will and his preppy sort, and the money people like the Bushes, looked down on the proles that kept them in power, but that moment really drove it home.
anybody else’s page view all screwed up ?
The Dangerman
This will teach everyone to have an extended discussion on taking (a) dump(s); this may be the WP retaliation for it.
Dennis G.
@lamh32: There is an error in the link which due to a FYWP issue I am unable to fix. Perhaps somebody else can…
El Cruzado
While I don’t doubt a lot of that is going on, I think we underestimate the powers of self-delusion. Remember that for many people if it FEELS true, it must BE true.
freelancer
Hooray!
Comrade Mary
Dennis, I think the Invisible Hand (or some guy covered with dog hair) has taken care of it now.
Lev
It’s good news for John McCain, somehow.
Wait…actually, it is, because he can bullshit a bunch of feelings to try to prove to the teabaggers that he’s one of them. It’s easy enough to fake feelings. If it were a battle of facts, Republicans would dump him on entirely objective grounds. But since it’s all about emotion…easily done.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Yep – every comment after #10 is formatted differently.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
It’s fixed!
Dennis G.
@El Cruzado:
That it feels ‘true’ is how every con always works.
Somehow when these wingnut media potentates get together for fava beans and a glass of a nice Chianti at the end of the day, I expect that they joking refer to their followers as ‘The Filth’. Their contempt for their audience most be boundless.
Cheers
r€nato
It’s easy to understand. Today’s conservatives only want to have their beliefs validated. They aren’t the least bit interested in reality, if it disagrees with their preconceived notions.
Telling conservatives what they want to hear = easy money for Ann Coulter, Limbaugh, Beck, Murdoch, etc etc etc.
Whipping up conservatives into paroxysms of fauxrage generates votes and contributions for Republicans.
It’s one big, happy circle jerk. And it would be fine with me, so long as actual Republicans never got their grubby little fingers on the levers of power. But, every so often they do and they fuck things up royally when reality comes crashing in on their fantasies.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Holy Bat, Shitman! This remarkable rant, written in today’s NYT apparently by none other than Tom Friedman?
It’s true, I didn’t make it up.
——// rant begins
That is pathetic. Rather than think seriously about our endless dependence on oil, the G.O.P. has focused its energies on making “climate change” a four-letter word and labeling any Democrat who supports legislation that would in any way raise energy prices to diminish our dependence on oil as a “carbon taxer.”
Unfortunately, Obama and the Democrats never effectively fought back. They should have said: “O.K., you Republicans don’t believe in global warming? Fine. Forget about global warming. That’s between you and your beach house. How about this? Do you believe in population growth? Do you believe in the American dream? Because, according to the U.N., the world’s population is going to grow from roughly 6.7 billion people today to about 9.2 billion by 2050. And in today’s integrated world, more and more of those 9.2 billion will aspire to, and be able to, live like Americans — with American-size cars, homes and Big Macs. In that world, demand for fossil fuels is going to go through the roof — and all the bad things that go with it.
“If we take that threat seriously now and pass an energy bill that begins to end our oil addiction, we can shrink the piles of money we send to the worst regimes in the world, strengthen our dollar by keeping more at home, clean up our air, take away money from the people who finance the mosques and madrassas that keep many Muslim youths backward, angry and anti-American and stimulate a whole new industry — one China is already leapfrogging us on — clean-tech. Nothing would improve our economic and national security more, yet Republicans won’t lift one finger to make it happen.
“They would rather we send more Americans to fight terrorism in the Middle East, let petro-states hostile to our interests get richer and let China take the lead in the next great global industry than ask Americans to pay a little more for the gas they use or the carbon pollution they put into the air. If OPEC, China and Russia could vote, they would be 100 percent supportive of the Republicans.
“How about we stop honoring our soldiers and our military families and start helping them? Nope. The Republican view of fighting the war on terrorism is that rather than ask all of us to make a small sacrifice to weaken our foes and buttress our troops, we should ask only a few of us to make the ultimate sacrifice. And that’s called being tough?”
—-//
Monkeys with typewriters, Shakespeare, etc?
Whodathunkit.
WereBear
Since this is an open thread, do a good deed for the voiceless today:
The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (H.R. 4733) is a federal bill that would require the U.S. Government to purchase animal products only from entities that do not keep animals in gestation crates, veal crates or battery cages.
Click here to sign the petition.
Don’t let that outrage go to waste!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So Journ-O-List is the new Trilateral Commission? Or Flouridation? or Secret Triumvirate of Queen Elizabeth, the Pope and D. B. Cooper?
lawnorder
From my personal observation, the “Marks” know they are being lied to. They don’t mind. They just want plausible denyability and a good sounding excuse to vent their anger and selfishness.
How many seniors screeched about “death panels” and went to Townhalls ? They had signs and t-shirts about it. Where they in any sense afraid they would be put to death ? Nope. They were afraid of losing their privilege, angered at being out of power, furious at their party being viewed as a national catastrophe. But that doesn’t make a good soundbite and doesn’t win elections.
The media figures of the GOP are just providing a good script for willing, aiding and abetting actors. So they could act out convincingly and try to get that damn “colored” out of their White House.
sven
Not surprised but here is Shepard Smith discussing why he didn’t get on board with Breitbart:
(link tag isn’t working suddenly, ugh)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/07/the_lone_holdout.php#more?ref=fpblg
Smith makes a clear statement about what happened and why they chose not to run a tape they had not investigated.
I cannot help but note that everything he says is both basic journalism and yet impressive in that we see it so rarely.
Hal
If they weren’t concerned about the lies that led to the Iraq War, HCR, Obama’s nationality, Gay Marriage, Ronald Regan, etc. why the hell would they suddenly be concerned about this lie.
I highly doubt that an issues of race wakes up conservative America. Plenty of these people are still trying to justify what was said and done by shifting the blame, to Obama, to the NAACP and it’s audience. They aren’t concerned with being lied to. In fact, I’m pretty sure conservatives all but demand the lies.
The Other Chuck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Why would you be shocked? She’s another of Fox’s JournoBarbies. She didn’t even get the translation right (it’s a Russian derivation of “Ceasar”), so god only knows where she looked.
Hell, I saw an interview with a sign-carrying *teabagger* who knew what the damn word meant. Fox news anchors are dumber than teabaggers. Think on that.
Alex S.
Some people even like being lied to.
MikeJ
@lawnorder:
The thing to remember about cons is that they don’t work on honest people. There’s always an element where the mark feels like he’s getting away with something.
You can’t cheat an honest man. David Maurer wrote about it, Fox news proves it.
daryljfontaine
@lawnorder:
The right-wing zeitgeist is one of perpetual WHARRGARBL (pic), an impotent, incoherent rage that will not be abated.
D
The next to last samurai
I missed a discussion of dump-taking? Oh, poo.
r€nato
@sven: Shep Smith is an island of sanity in the sea of crazy that is Fox News Channel.
Really. Watch his show sometime. They play the news fairly straight. Shameful that a show on FNC showed more journalistic integrity than the so-called liberal media that took this story and ran with it.
bootsy
Matt’s was a good point, but I think it’s important to keep reminding ourselves that there are not many people involved in this “Sherrod”-Gate and all of the related smears that wanna-be KKK guys like Breitbart are involved in. So, whether or not these birther-bagger-confederates are being lied to is not the problem, (though they do certainly seem to like being lied to).
The real problem is the ‘mainstream’ news that just repeats this stuff.
Fox News loses money.Very few watch it. (Balloon-Juice Trolls who are persistent, but not very numerous included.) Fox News only exists to convince members of the in-group, which are the same supposedly ‘liberal’ press to listen to the tiny kkkonservative fringe.
Note: I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of racists. But the Republicans really only engage a few of the more committed.
If we had a mainstream press that did its job instead of loudly repeating every thing its’ corporate masters want, Fox and Breitbart (and the National Review) would be left howling in a vacuum.
DB
The circle is now complete: Rep. Darrell Issa may launch investigation into firing of USDA official
Can’t wait until they have control of the House again.
Cacti
If it wasn’t clear before, it’s crystal clear now that race will be the shiny object that transfixes the media’s attention throughout the Obama administration.
If there’s any wild-ass rumor that anyone even obliquely connected to President Obama said something racially incendiary, or that could be twisted into such, the media will credulously chase after it at a full run.
Pancake
Sounds as though Yglesias is engaging in a bit of pot versus kettle argument. God knows it’s doubtful that there is a more mendacious writer out there under the age of 30 then he. Well, maybe Ezra Klein.
Beej
From here on out, anytime the Obama administration is asked to comment on something that was first broadcast on Faux Not News, their answer should be something along the lines of: “Since this story first broke on Fox, we will not be commenting on it until we have had the chance to check the facts to be sure that it is, in fact, accurate. As you know, Fox does not have a good track record of vetting their stories or sources. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
asdf
“Fox News loses money.Very few watch it.” Bootsy, I think that’s incorrect. As I understand it, Fox lead in cable news. There are lots of marks out there and they are eating this stuff up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just caught this on the WaPo politics page, I don’t know how to do one of your fancy “screen grabs”, I think the young people call it, but this is how fucking stupid they are
This is about the Congressional seat in the district Obama lived in as a child. I don’t know if he ever voted in Hawaii, I’m sure he never ran for Congress there. To the author’s credit, this idiocy is not repeated in her story, but I assume whoever wrote this headline is some kind of editor.
asdf
Jim, Foolish Literalist, being literal about things like the facts? We should be so lucky.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@asdf: Their highest rated show (O’Reilly, I think) averages less than 2.5 million viewers per night, less than half the lowest rated network news show (CBS). I believe FoxNews is subsidized by the Simpsons and Dancing With The Stars.
K. Grant
The people who watch Fox and listen to the right-wing types do not think of themselves as the marks, they think of themselves as the ones spotting the marks. There is an inherent sense of superiority, even in the midst of their clear misreading of reality. These people know they are right, and simply cannot comprehend why anybody would see the universe differently than they.
Proof of their knavish idiocy simply doesn’t register. They are ‘right’, and everyone else is deluded by the nanny state.
Martin
What bullshit. Readers aren’t your customers – advertisers are. Readers are your advertisers customers, not yours. So long as advertisers are happy with what the media outlet runs, then who fucking cares what the critics think?
bootsy
@asdf: And who watches cable news? Very few. Fox occasionally has a large slice of the tiny pie.
Note how often they try to pump up the perception that there’s a lot of people watching or coming to misspelled-racist-sign-rallies, etc.
kid bitzer
treating the republican masses as marks got reagan elected twice, and bush elected twice.
treating them like responsible citizens got bush sr. voted out of office and vilified by the party.
there’s really no question which way the right wing will go.
freelancer
@asdf:
2 million is a lot for a cable audience, but as a % of the US population, it’s less than 1% though.
trollhattan
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Also, too, just when I think the Governator has sunken to a new low, he comes out swinging…at the awhl companies(!)
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/07/schwarzenegger-says-oil-compan.html
Go, Arnie. (And stop messing with Your State Workers.)
bemused
Bah, you can lead a republican to facts, but you can’t make him look at them.
Far too many R’s who aren’t complete goobers still would rather get their “info” spoon fed to them. It’s what they want to hear. If they had any doubts, they’d look it up for themselves. They don’t or push doubts away because they don’t really want to know. Changing the way they have viewed the world their whole lives is way too scary.
trollhattan
Hey, what was that Justice Dept. thing about the rising threat from right wing militias that had the wingers’ panties twisted last year? Something like this?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/organization_targeted_by_anti-govt_ca_shooting_suspect_was_frequent_topic_on_glenn_becks_show_video.php?ref=fpb
Keith G
That is really fucking pathetically stupid.
Liars worrying about people lying?
Mnemosyne
@K. Grant:
IIRC, the con man’s favorite mark is the one who thinks s/he can’t be conned, because they’re the easiest ones to fool.
sneezy
@bootsy:
According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, Fox News is the most profitable cable news channel. (I tried to provide a link, but it was removed.)
asdf
As bemused said, that’s what they want to hear.
If it sells soap flakes, it’s the truth. That’s the American way.
Keith G
@Pancake:
1. Ben Shapiro
2. Fuck you
Dennis G.
@Martin:
You prove the point.
Readers do not matter. They are only ‘eyeballs’ that you call monetize through advertising. The more chumps you bring along by playing to their fears, bias and hates–the more you can charge advertisers. Your readers/viewers/subscribers or whatever exist only to be played for suckers.
Thanks for backing this up!!!
Bubblegum Tate
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
An alarming number of them don’t. I’ve even seen the notion that it is impossible for the planet to ever be overpopulated.
scav
hey lookie lookie! Reality is being constructed as we watch by the self-proclaimed masters of it! I’m shocked, simply shocked to find reality et cetera et cetera . . .
seriously, it’s well known to be in the single digit pages of the GOP playbook.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The customers are getting exactly what they want. In church they want to hear “I’m going to Heaven and all the people I don’t like are going to Hell.” When they watch the “news” they want to hear “I’m right and everyone I don’t like is wrong.”
SAIEW.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@sven: And I have to wonder how he’s still on Fox News.
sherifffruitfly
Are you guys stupid or something (Yglesias, etc.)?
Americans in general, and conservatives even more so simply don’t *care* what’s true and what’s false.
All comments such as Yglesias’ are relevant only against a background of responsiveness to the difference between truth and falsity. Conservatives, even more so than the average American, exhibit *none* of the behaviors associated with such responsiveness. (Alternatively, consider the simpler proof: if they cared about the difference between truth/falsity, they wouldn’t be consumers of the conservative media – durr.)
Their media is giving their customers precisely what those customers want.
Zandar
My response to Yggy:
Horseshit. They’re junkies. Stop being so friggin’ naive.
Jane2
You can blame the wingnut faction all you want, but the fact is that they are playing to their base and winning the day.
The real problem is the willingness of the cable news wurlitzer to ramp the bs up and now senior administration officials reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to it.
eemom
Olbermann took a break from his vacation and is Special Commenterating his brains out…….
Alien-Radio
@sneezy:
That’s like being the tallest midget, They still lose money.
sven
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): Shep was obviously much better than anyone else on Fox but was anyone at CNN this professional? Are the ‘news’ folks at MSNBC (not counting Rachel) reporting the story as directly as Smith’s lead-in?
If I were setting up a network right now he’s someone I’d really fight to get! (and Bill Moyer as Managing Director of whatever the hell he wants)
Proper Gander
Daniel Boorstin, in his book The Image, tried to explain the American appetite for fictions. He noted that (as far as I recall) “behind the scenes” type shows were popular for a time because the viewers seemed just as interested in how the fiction was constructed as in the fiction itself. There is something validating about penetrating the illusion, but that does nothing to lessen the illusion’s appeal.
I think that there are few right wingers who are fully taken in by their own mythos. But that does not prevent them from using that mythos to validate themselves and their anger, to feel righteous and cover their emotional voids. They know the emperor has no clothes, but why stick your neck out when cheering along with the crowd makes you feel so good about yourself?
toujoursdan
News Corp is losing money but Fox News is profitable. They are number #1 in ratings but it’s important to remember that higher ratings don’t necessarily mean more viewers. CNN has more viewers, but Fox viewers tune in longer, which makes their ratings higher.
The average age of Fox News viewer is 65. So at least half of those Fox News viewers are collecting Social Security and are on Medicare.
geg6
Matt, as usual, gives these assholes (witness one of our dimmest trolls screaming incomprehensible stupidity about Journolist, which no longer even exists) too much credit. They eat up the lies and smack their lips and ask for multiple servings. The worst thing anyone can do to them is to force them to look at reality. They only want to be reinforced in their stupid, racist, misogynist, greedy beliefs and nothing else will. They are small people in every way that matters, small minded, small hearted and they know it, deep down, which is why they insist on being right and that everyone else must conform to their views. They are really a bunch of insecure bullies. I treat them as such. I was taught, and my experience has always confirmed the truth of this, that you don’t back down from them and you don’t ignore them. You stand up to them and you reveal them as the cowards they truly are. I am hopeful that the administration has learned the same lesson. I have no hope that the dimwits of the msm ever will.
Resident Firebagger
Following on geg6’s comment, check out this drivel from AP:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_black_racism
Doesn’t put the “furor and confusion” over Sherrod’s remarks in context. Doesn’t acknowledge that Bush’s DOJ dismissed charges against the “group of black militants accused of intimidating voters.” Doesn’t point out that Breitbart’s original vid was edited. Quotes Breitbart, another conversative radio host, a conservative black — vs. an African American studies prof at Princeton and some random (?) citizen.
Most amazing thing about this is one can reasonably assume from the reporter’s name (Jesse Washington) that this was written by a black person…
Shalimar
You’re thinking of Fox Business Channel when it was launched a few years ago. After a few months the average audience was still under 10k. I’m guessing they have far more viewers now but haven’t seen any recent numbers.
Bender
I’ll use smaller words for you if you find the big ones incomprehen– ummm, too hard.
It would be hard to mention a less relevant fact or a weaker argument than “JournoList no longer exists.” I struggle for a reason you would even type such idiocy.
Here’s an example of relevance: The lefty writers and profs on JournoList advocated lying to you and calling opponents “racist,” and Ball-Juicers all defend them and excuse them, while castigating the right for (what you perceive as) the same offense (which is actually a much lesser offense than JournoList’s at this point, but that’s another discussion).
So borrowing from Yglesias and this page, you guys must crave being lied to. It must be in response to a desperate need to prop up an unsustainable, failed ideology. It must be a psychological defect.
lawnorder
@Zandar and @geg6:
Yup.. Not only that, but most of them lack the ability to create some semi-coherent lie – see Palin, Sara. But they need some sort of argument to brandish about to annoying lefty relatives, co-workers, etc..
So they like, more than like, need the “bright lights” of right wing pundit / politicians to furnish them with an endless stream of fresh convincing lies.
Junkies. They need their fix of lies
Lies not to convince themselves, but to convince you and me, and their co-workers, and the others who disagree with them, that they are the only “real americans” and we should worship them.
matoko_chan
@Dennis
Thing is, they think their base is too stupid to learn. They make fun of them behind their backs, like Weigel (who got caught) and David Hume/Razib Khan of the Secular Right.
if they actually gave a shit about the base they would try to educate them…they think they are too stupid to learn.
Douthat is the absolute worst….he wants to remove Jeffersonian talent(IQ) and virtue(honesty) as meritocratic traits and replace them with something that conservatives are better at.
;)
The problem is an old one…..how do Jefferson’s noble yeoman farmers (NYFs) get self-representation?
In theory, the natural aristoi can arise anywhere– look at Obama.
But in practice the natural aristoi are selected out or driven out of the conservative tribe.
Ross has it backwards– we don’t need to level meritocratic values like “virtue and talent”, or give conservatives skillups so they can play…..
virtue and talent need to be selected FOR instead of selected AGAINST in the conservative base.
Shalimar
@Bender:
I haven’t seen the excerpts in question, but that would be a big deal if you are characterizing it correctly and if lefty writers have in fact lied in their posts. It is certainly worth exploring more even though I suspect you are completely full of shit about what they actually said.
sneezy
@Alien-Radio:
No, they do not, at least not according to any source I know of. If you know of one, please provide it.
According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, Fox News earned profits of $534.8 million in 2009, up 19% from the previous year.
Midnight Marauder
@sven:
L.O.L.
+6
michilines
Why no discussion of farm issues. Both the Sec of Ag and Sherrod offered that as a topic of discussion.
I know you all are all pup or employment law all the time.
Why did Sherrod have that job anyway?
Sly
Matt presumes that conservatives ever feel the need to ask themselves anything. He forgets that they are adherents to an ideology that, at its mildest, seldom engages in self-reflection and, at its worst, considers self-reflection to be a personal weakness.
Chris Johnson
Holy crap, look at Shep Smith go. I think he was really angry- I thought I saw his eyes kinda twitching, but it could have been my cruddy laptop.
Every time I see that guy do a new thing I’m reminded that the South is a culture of honor, and that cuts in all kinds of interesting directions. It seems like Smith is in a weird situation, working with ridiculous charlatans like Glenn Beck (whom he’s mocked quite devastatingly) and more and more he’s stubbornly taking his own course of what he thinks is right. I have no idea why he’s allowed to stay on that network- popularity from being white, Southern and utterly charming? But he’s waaaay too good for them. He’s the living image of a Fox male talking head, positively Aryan, but he is putting forth a power of example and I didn’t realize until now how deep it ran.
The lone holdout? He should be fucking well proud of himself, and as an American I’m proud as hell of him. THAT’S how we’re supposed to be.
matoko_chan
And since im on a tear I fuckin’ HATE Douthat!
Sully and TNC treat that pustulant oozing scumbag misogynist like he is actually making sense……in truth he is an order of magnitude more toxic than Beck. He just makes apologia for bad insane ideas, and then blames liberals for making the conservative base crazy, like during Dr. Tiller’s assassination by rightwing terrorist where he blamed the left for not overturning Roe so his base could get sane.
McMegan did that too.
Douthat and McMegan are holding us all hostage to the tyranny of the stupid.
Plus he is a creeper that loathes women.
You can’t be pro-life and be feminist….if we can’t have control over our own bodies we are slaves.
One would think TNC would be a tad sensitive to that.
priscianusjr
No, they regard their audience as CUSTOMERS to be misled and exploited. It’s the American way. Ever hear of advertising?