I’m not going to link it because I hope Tucker Carlson’s vanity project fails and I do not want to support it in any way, but the series about Journolist have been pretty tragic. The Caller tries to gin them up and give them sexy titles, but really, the title to each one could be “SHOCKING NEWS- Liberals Have Opinions, Talk Amongst Themselves.”
Today’s installment has the headline: “When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists coordinated the best line of attack.” The piece then goes on for three pages and demonstrates that actually, the Journolist folks reacted exactly the same way we did here:
At any rate, the Caller really is looking quite silly with this string of stories. Beyond the fact that it is pretty amusing that their idea of journalism is sifting through private citizens’ personal emails in attempts to embarrass them, the reality is there just isn’t anything there.
FormerSwingVoter
Off-topic, I know, but how come people aren’t more riled up about Dems punting on climate change yet again?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40018.html
We need to start making phone calls. This is ridiculous. Sure, we may not get cap-and-trade, but we need to get something done, and soon.
Culture of Truth
Two years later it’s ‘John who?’
Bubblegum Tate
Correct, John, but in Greater Wingnuttia, this is, of course, a huge (and still-growing) scandal that demonstrates once and for all that, you know, LIEBRUL MEDIA BIAS!
El Cid
What was even more disgusting was how the entirety of the librul lamestream Eastern Establishment medja united to mock Trig Palin and call for that younger daughter to be repeatedly raped by major league baseball players. We modern conservatives will rise up and stop this slaughter of our American heroes like Sarah Palin who kept this nation safe from Russian attack as Commander In Chief of the Alaska National Guard.
cleek
oh no. the reality (for them) is that liberal journalists conspired to make sure they were all singing from the same lyric sheet. it’s a cabal ! zomg. it confirms their “liberal media” narrative pretty well (if you ignore that most of them were opinion writers, that is)
i find it a bit disappointing that so many would participate in such a group, frankly. it does seem a little too cliquey – a little bit like a Jr. Villagers Association.
Culture of Truth
More real Americans know Bristol and Levi than old man McCain
NonyNony
John you haven’t been away from the wurlitzer long enough to misunderstand what’s going on here, have you? This is PROOF! EVIDENCE! A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY TO CONTROL THE MEDIA! So yeah, Tucker’s little vanity project is probably getting a lot of hits from wingnuts who like to use this as proof that there really is a liberal media
And of course Tucker Carlson is doing this because he’s an asshole and nobody likes him and he knows it. So this is his way of “getting even” with all those guys who wouldn’t let him into their clique. He’s persecuted because he’s a conservative, don’t you know, and so he needs his revenge. If only Tucker weren’t such a giant asshole perhaps he’d have more friends and he wouldn’t feel so damn persecuted. Ah well, if he weren’t such a giant asshole he wouldn’t be Tucker Carlson, would he?
Cat Lady
When the journo-listers get their own network where all the bobblebots and all the programming and all the guests and all the pundits are all spouting the same talking points given to them every day by the White House political office and the head of the DNC, I’ll give a shit, and I’d give a shit because I’d be all for it.
CalD
And as it turns out, we were right the first time.
J.W. Hamner
I was certainly SHOCKED to find out that liberal think tank blogger Matthew Yglesias didn’t have nice things to say about Sarah Palin. I can’t help but think that this clear bias clearly biased his clearly biased blogging.
Kryptik
@Culture of Truth:
If only. Of course, the Sunday Talk and cable news shows are rather eager to remind us that hey, McCain is a serious person and he used to be a Maverick until the right was apparently shown right or something. He’s more important than that swarthy brown guy who fires racists, after all.
@cleek:
It may be clique-y, but until it’s proven that this was a group meant for the express purpose of trying to manipulate the news cycle, then who gives a fuck? And if they were trying to manipulate the news cycle, all I have to say is: ‘That many guys on your list, and that’s the best you were capable of? Fuck all.’
It’s just laughable at the idea that ‘Journolist’ was somehow a secret shadow media twisting things to help liberals, when the past 2 years seem to have been nothing but nonstop hippie punching.
El Cid
It’s always a shame when a politician of such great accomplishments and wisdom is smeared as some sort of fraudulent grifter ignoramus by an evil librul medja.
FormerSwingVoter
How did we get to the point where “people talk about things sometimes” is the same as a conspiracy, anyway?
This is stupid. These people know less than nothing. If they were to make things up at random, they’d be right more often than they are by parroting the conservative media.
GregB
Has there been news today from Andrew Breitbart, the most trusted name in race baiting?
Mike in NC
After Jon Stewart whipped his ass on national TV, you’d have thought this twit would have gone off to hide in a cave for the rest of his worthless life. But you’d have been wrong.
Kryptik
@FormerSwingVoter:
It’s not about being right. It’s about projection. It’s about tarring the other side with charges that you KNOW to be true about you and your side. It’s about delegitimization, essentially trying to bury someone alive AFTER you’ve cut their legs out from under them.
tim
Pretty dug in on this position, eh John?
Couldn’t possibly be ANYTHING to learn from these Journolist emails and posts other than what the wingnuts claim is there?
If I say it’s raining out because moist, warm air has collided with cool dry air overhead and a wingnut says it’s raining because Jesus is weeping tears from heaven, the fact remains that it IS raining.
Journolist was an innapropriate circle jerk( as opposed to the fun, appropriate kind) for groupthinking, insecure tribal types pretending to be credible journalists.
Just because Fox News would agree doesn’t mean their claimed REASONS for agreeing are legitimate.
Besides, I’ve no doubt the former Journo’s are already reorganized with a new secret handshake under some other, far more secretive regimen. :D
cleek
@Kryptik:
well, i don’t really give a fuck. but i don’t think anybody has to prove anything about “express purpose” before people can reasonably think it’s a bad idea for journalists to participate in such a thing.
noncarborundum
John:
It’s only “private citizen‘s personal emails” if there’s one and only one citizen involved. Otherwise it’s “private citizens’ personal emails.”
It amazes me that people don’t learn this in school or, if they do, don’t retain it. It’s not rocket science.
Culture of Truth
GregB,
Yes Breitbart is breaking a scandalous video proving David Gregory is an incompetent hack.
Apparently it’ last week’s episode of Meet The Press.
SpotWeld
I agree with you up to a point. Supermarker Tabliods look silly when they have cover stories about alien lizardmen. But when someone making hit-lists of politicians and setting up an armed bunker, you really can’t chuckle all that much.
We just had an insident where a mentally unstable man went out with guns and a list of liberal organizations based on the “silly” notions laid out by outlets similar to the Caller.
The Caller is creating the mythos that center, and center-left journalists are the insidious enemy. The secret 5th column underminding America and selling out all “real Americans” to socialists-marxist-Chinese-Arab-terrorists-etc.
This is the start of it… if it continues then I will not be surprised when another unbalanced individual takes it apon themsevles to silence journalists for thier perceived “dangerous opinions”
Kryptik
@cleek:
I’m just wondering how it’s technically different from the cliquey Washington bubble cocktail party circuit we know and loathe, aside from the fact that it’s electronic and some people occasionally use foul language and memes?
matoko_chan
and im still happy. :)
im much dirtier than you, Cole.
i was the derbyshire/instapundit token young/cool/scient person.
shortstop
This made me laugh because of the unearned vanity Carlson brings to every project.
Culture of Truth
From now on I’m going CC Tucker on all my e-mails.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
My conceptual model for Journ-o-List is that it was something like a SIG on a BBS (or the comments area on a blog)– group of people all talking at once about what interests them, displaying different levels of intelligence and maturity.
If you go through every word looking for any fragment that might be offensive, you will inevitably find it, because there are always one or two loose cannons.
I’m sure someone on the list, when Palin was announced, said “Never seen her before– she’s pretty hot.” It would not be shocking if someone else said “Think she has nude photos like most beauty pageant winners?”
That everyone else said nothing signifies that these comments were not the consensus view. But looking for controversy roll out the “but no one denounced it”. And then everyone who was sick or in a meeting– or not willing to feed the troll– gets tarred.
It’s amazing that people who use “off the record” to let their buddies smear targets can’t figure out that private conversations are private.
cleek
@Kryptik:
not much different at all.
as i said above: Jr Villager’s Association.
seems to me that they’re both potentially (to be kind) damaging to the discourse.
shortstop
@Culture of Truth: Beautiful.
Shalimar
Wait a second. Rightwingers seriously think maintaining message discipline is evil in some way? Jesus christ, how do their heads keep all the bullshit straight?
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
If I had one wish, I’d return us to the mindset of “Sarah who?”
Seriously, those two sentences from the original post are the bees knees.
Wapiti
@Kryptik:
Isn’t the Washington cocktail party circuit different in that the national press seems to have been co-opted into the Washington social circle of the very people they are supposed to be reporting on?
The JournaList sounds much more like the bar near the newpapers’ offices where the reporters go after work. That might have only happened in movies, but that’s the setting I’m seeing in my mind.
Kryptik
@Wapiti:
Yeah, I was gonna lead into that. Cliquey journalism networking and community is hardly a new thing. And we already know how badly the cocktail party circuit has skewed things.
We’ve yet to find any kind of proof that there was any serious attempts at skewing anything in the wider discourse from the Journolist things. I don’t know why this is causing more cases of the vapors than the DC media bubble we all know to be well, true, and detrimental to actual journalism.
Church Lady
@tim: They have, although smaller in scale. It’s called Cabalist. Catchy name, huh?
NonyNony
@Mike in NC:
Tucker Carlson would have to be capable of shame in order for me to think that, and as far as that goes all empirical evidence points to “no”.
Stewart just fed into Carlson’s persecution complex. The folks at CNN and anyone that was still watching Crossfire needed to hear what Stewart was saying, but if the purpose was to get Carlson to feel ashamed of being what he is then it was doomed to failure from the start. I don’t think it was, though – I think Stewart’s mission was to shame the people watching the damn show into realizing what they were enabling. And on that front Mission Accomplished.
Stav
I was just having a quick laugh thinking about the shocking “Journolist” SCANDAL.
What made me laugh was those old Daily Show bits where they would just line up clips of dozens of Bush administration members, conservative pundits and FOX News Anchors all repeating the same exact sentence with not one even word changed. I guess an private email exchange between a bunch liberal writers at a bunch of small liberal rags is not as effective at coordinating a message as Karl Rove was.