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I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

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if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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You are here: Home / Tramps and Thieves

Tramps and Thieves

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Salon’s War Room blog is collecting the Hack 30 — the 30 biggest hack journalists in our fine country.  This is certainly fish-in-a-barrel territory, but the Tucker Carlson entry is pretty good:

A long time ago, Tucker Carlson was a good journalist. He wrote interesting magazine features with actual reporting involved. TV had a hand in ruining him, but his essential dickishness consumed him.

Full disclosure: Carlson has promised to destroy me. (In those words!) (He also said “I will destroy you” to a video store clerk he got fired for blogging about how Tucker Carlson had opened an account at his video store.)

Speaking of Tucker, I found this the other day in an article examining fair use:

A reader pointed out The Daily Caller, and I was shocked by the flagrant use of copyrighted material. In this particular post, they have not only lifted 646 words directly from the New York Times, they took the photo and attributed it to the NYT instead of Getty Images. While thumbnails are considered fair use, I don’t believe a reasonable person would consider this example fair. There is no value added, and this is clearly an attempt to take a piece of an article and have it stand on its own so that users won’t click. Lawsuit waiting to happen… too much.

Is it surprising that Tucker’s latest vehicle is the worst offender at keeping clicks on his site by excerpting almost-complete stories from other media outlets?

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  4. 4.

    Alex S.

    Wow, Brooks, Carlson, Kurtz, Kaus and Goldberg at places 20-30. They would have made a solid top ten already, I can’t wait for the rest. Who will be nr.1? Broder? Halperin?

  6. 6.

    eemom

    If they will only do justice to Maureen Dowd, I can die a happy woman.

    ETA: ‘course, if they throw in Ruth Marcus, Kathleen Parker, and Anne Applebaum, I can die an even happier woman.

    I’m betting Richard Cohen is a contender for top 3. Also too.

  8. 8.

    geg6

    Heh. Number 20 is a personal one for me. Howard “I’m just a poor boy from Pittsburgh” Fineman.

    Mr. Fineman is from Squirrel Hill originally. A quite nice and mostly upper and upper-middle class neighborhood (mostly professionals, politicians, and academics from Pitt and CMU) where Mr. Fineman would not really have mixed with many of the blue collar proles before he went off to Colgate and Columbia. But he always is on my teevee telling me what “the people,” based on his Pittsburgh upbringing, want.

  9. 9.

    Napoleon

    @Alex S.:

    I was going to wait until I made my guess but I think I am going to go with Halperin, but in a way it will be great if it is Broder since it will send the villages into a tizzy.

  11. 11.

    Alex S.

    @Dennis SGMM:

    Hehe true…it also depends on what they call a hack. Even Karl Rove has become a pundit, but he’s probably not the kind of “serious journalist” Salon is looking for. But still, you could easily make a list of 50 names within 5 minutes.

  13. 13.

    eemom

    and George Will. Please, please……George Will. HATE that lying, smug motherfucker.

    Krauthammer. Though to be fair, maybe he’s technically more of a batshit crazy, mouth-foaming fanatic than a hack.

  15. 15.

    Alex S.

    @Napoleon:

    If it was up to me, I’d put Tucker Carlson at the top, and the only one who rivals his douchbaggery wrapped in a suit and smeared on paper is Halperin.

  17. 17.

    eemom

    @Sly:

    I’m sure he’ll be up there.

    Now that you mention it though, prior to this project, Salon has been pretty much a hit parade of ever-worsening suck these days.

  25. 25.

    El Tiburon

    Funny how this top-30 list seems to be congruous to the 30-Most Teh Awesome PUndits!! as compiled by the Villagers.

    Friedmann should win – by a mustache.

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    My personal top three:
    3) MoDo
    2) Richard Cohen, whose “fool or a Frenchman” and “therapeutic violence” columns could only be knocked out of the top spot by
    1) The Broder.

  28. 28.

    peach flavored shampoo

    OT:

    ruh roh. Whoops. Oops. So some guy with brown skin, a beard, and a love of all things Borat milks the US gov’t out of probably millions. Nice job, Betrayus.

  31. 31.

    Phoenix Woman

    @El Tiburon: Why, yes, yes, it is.

    Or as I like to think of them, the thirty persons who best exemplify Upton Sinclair’s statement regarding the difficulty of getting someone to understand something when that someone’s salary depends on their not understanding it.

  33. 33.

    cleek

    Is it surprising that Tucker’s latest vehicle is the worst offender at keeping clicks on his site by excerpting almost-complete stories from other media outlets?

    just for fun, go look at some well-respected blogs. see how many do not do long excerpts.

    Ta-Nehesi currently has a 510 word excerpt of an article on Alberto Gonzalez.

    a recent post on ObWi excerpts 3700 words of Taibbi’s piece on foreclosure fraud. (i thought 3700 words was a bit excessive)

    the current top post @ Digby has a 796 word excerpt.

    Wolcott’s current top post has a 588 word excerpt.

    etc

  34. 34.

    liberal

    Not nearly in top 30 list, but the person who wrote the hacked up s$*t about the deficit “solutions” in the WaPo (I think it was Lori Montgomery?) is a total hack. Dean Baker rightly called it an opinion piece.

  35. 35.

    Suffern ace

    The fact that this list is not long enough just shows how rotten the public sphere is in the us. Its like the country is dying and salon is leaving a note to future undergrads in history as to who not to read to figure out why.

  36. 36.

    eemom

    you know, fun as this is, it would have saved a lot of time if they just compiled a list of emmessemm journalists who are NOT hacks. I think that would be less than 10.

    Krugman
    Bob Herbert
    Eugene Robinson
    Harold Meyerson
    ?

    well ok, maybe less than 5. (and no, I would not include “stealth” concern troll Frank Rich)

  37. 37.

    geg6

    @Phoenix Woman:

    Much as I hate Howard, I’m not sure what we are getting at here. I believe Sheri “GOPer media consultant hack” Annis is Howie Kurtz’s wife. I think Fineman is married to some anonymous woman who is, I’m sure, not a hack. Mainly because I have never heard her name because Wiki tells me it is Amy Nathan.

  38. 38.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @cleek:
    I think the larger problem with the linked article on Daily Caller is that it’s just a rip from the Times article (including the photo, which is small enough that you could argue fair use) with no additional commentary or context.

    Unless the Daily Crapper has a licensing deal with the Times, they’re pushing the envelope. And being dickish in the way only parasitic aggregation sites can be.

  42. 42.

    Scott

    Everyone in the world should strive to get angry, threatening calls from Tucker Carlson. His angriest flails would be no more troublesome than tongue-baths from adorable kittens. And possibly even more hilarious.

    Tucker Carlson is the most impotent person on the planet.

  43. 43.

    FMguru

    After getting fired from all three 24-hour cable news channels

    I hadn’t realized he’d managed that trifecta. Has anyone else ever done that? Is that some kind of record?

  46. 46.

    Napoleon

    Mistermix and other front pagers. This is an interesting/fun thread. I hope there are follow up post as we get into the top 10, top 5 or whatever.

  47. 47.

    Napoleon

    Mistermix and other front pagers. This is an interesting/fun thread. I hope there are follow up post as we get into the top 10, top 5 or whatever.

  48. 48.

    Bullsmith

    It’s a good list they’ve going over there. I personally love putting Bobo dead last on it, based on sheer the sheer laziness of his wankery.

  50. 50.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Bill E Pilgrim: D’oh. I was editing and the stupid thing stopped responding.

    “Republican shock doctrine sabotage is working, apparently” was the sentence, but then you knew that.

    I was just trying to separate the links (there are two in my comment) to make it more evident that there were two.

  51. 51.

    Citizen Alan

    There are probably scores of conservative pundits worse than Tucker Carlson, but very few who inspire as much visceral loathing in me as he does. Just seeing his name makes my flesh crawl. Only Bug-Eyed Malkin and Bobo (who has the Innsmouth Look, I think) have that effect on me.

  53. 53.

    jonas

    The hack of all hacks who gives hackery a bad name is of course Fred Barnes. He’d call the earth flat and the sky green if he thought it would be of some advantage to the Republican Party to do so. If he’s not nr. 1, there’s no justice in the world. Nr. 2 is definitely Broder, who believes Republicans should stick to their principles and Democrats should also stick to Republican principles — in the name of bipartisanship. I’ll take Tom Friedman for nr. 3, who has somehow parlayed about three relatively banal observations about the world into several bestselling books and a thousand pointless columns (usually via the following formula: f (X)/Y = LO, where X is some denizen of a Third World country, Y is a technological device and LO is a Lesson for Obama).

  54. 54.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    I hope George Will for the win. I’m not seeing any votes here for Douchehat or Thiessen (must now clean keyboard for typing that name).

  55. 55.

    Poopyman

    I can’t believe they put Bobo as high as 30. You would think that a candidate’s forum (NYT) and influence (as in # times referenced) would be part of the equation here.

    That said, my money is on Craphammer being Top Ten, but probably won’t crack the Top 5. And Cal Thomas has to show up somewhere, though I’d rather he just went unmentioned.

  56. 56.

    Anya

    If he’s a cowboy, he’s the reluctant warrior, the Shane in the movie, strapping on the guns as the last resort because he has to, to protect his family, drawing on the emotions of 9/11, tying them to Saddam Hussein, using the possible or likely rejection vote from the U.N. as a badge of honor.

    Did Howard Fineman really say that? This is so awful, it’s hard to imagine how he lives with himself after that. I always thought he was a harmless hack but that is really bad.

  57. 57.

    quaint irene

    After getting fired from all three 24-hour cable news channels

    So how is this guy making a living these days?

  59. 59.

    Bullsmith

    @Anya:

    Yes Fineman’s quote is a hell of a doozy isn’t it. I left a comment suggesting it should be bronzed and Howard should be smacked in the face with it every morning, in memory of the blood he justified spilling.

  60. 60.

    El Tiburon

    @quaint irene:

    So how is this guy making a living these days?

    Some form of wingnut welfare.

    Really a very easy gig to get.

    Evidently wingnut millionaires love to toss dollar-bills from their tax-supported incomes to literally any entity who can type any form of fragmented sentence together that mocks liberals and calls for tax cuts for these same millionaires.

  61. 61.

    Poopyman

    @quaint irene:

    So how is this guy making a living these days?

    Are you kidding? That kind of a record qualifies him for lifetime wingnut welfare.

    (ETA – scooped by E.T. !!)

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anya: Oh, he didn’t say it. He wrote it. Which means he thought of it, typed it out, presumably re-read it, polished and pared that turd, submitted it to an editor, who didn’t hand it back to him and say, “Howard, what the fuck?” and then somebody hit “publish”.

  63. 63.

    geg6

    Gotta say that I’m disappointed with Tina Brown as #18. Yes, she’s a hack but one that is relatively harmless since she’s into gossip more than actually destroying countries and whole classes of people. I just can’t get excited about a typical gossip monger the way I do real pieces of shit, like MoDo, who should rightfully own #18. But perhaps she’s further up the list. One can only hope.

  64. 64.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @quaint irene:

    So how is this guy making a living these days?

    Mummy is heir to the Swanson foods fortune (or is it Birdseye?), Papa has a collection of canes valued at one million dollars.

  65. 65.

    Marty

    Am I the only one rooting for Thomas Sowell to win this contest? Maybe mine is the only local newspaper that is desperate enough to run his column.

  70. 70.

    jonas

    It should be noted that “hackery” is not the same as being a shitty pundit. If this were about shitty partisan punditry, Bill Kristol would be nrs. 1-29, with Ann Coulter at 29.5 and Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer tied for 30. That’s why David Broder is far worse, for example, than Ross Douthat. Everyone knows Douthat just needs to get laid more and doesn’t really take anything he writes seriously. Broder, on the other hand, is a Very Serious Person who, despite being completely wrong about everything all the time, is still held in high esteem by other Very Serious People, like Howard Fineman and David Gergen. In addition to producing carefully-crafted viewpoints that conform to a certain partisan or villager CW that need not take any account of Reality to be accepted, there’s a cliquish, circle-jerk element to true hackery that just isn’t there with clearly out-of-it loons like Cal Thomas, who doesn’t always toe a predictable line.

  71. 71.

    eemom

    @geg6:

    Agreed re Tina Brown. In general I’m a little concerned that, as great an idea as this is, that guy at Salon isn’t the one to do it justice. I’ve never been impressed by his other writing. (see Salon sux, above)

  74. 74.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jonas: What you said. I think to qualify for this sort of thing, there has to be some degree of Establishmentarianism to their writing/thinking, which is why MoDo, Friedman, Fineman and a few others belong on the list, even though if you offered them a vague checklist of issues– abortion, gay rights, the environment, even fiscal policy– they’d probably agree with most people here. But they also think Al Gore lost the 2000 election, Barack Obama is aloof, John McCain is a foreign policy expert, Dems should be able to work with someone like Lindsey Graham, etc etc etc.

  75. 75.

    eemom

    @TooManyJens:

    it’s because there is such an embarassment of riches on this topic, it is virtually impossible for even the most committed hack-hater to remember them all.

    That said, you’re absolutely right, that godawful simpering twat TOTALLY belongs on the list.

  76. 76.

    Poopyman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    Which is why it perplexes me that Bobo is only at #30, with the likes of Tina B. up at #18.

    The line between “hack” and “pundit” is in the eyes of the beholder. You and I might think of Krauthammer as a hack, but he’s absolutely seen as a VSP by a lot of folks, and I’m betting he’ll show up on the list.

  77. 77.

    Anya

    @arguingwithsignposts: Isn’t Tina Brown the one who wrote about how Obama is turning Hillary into “his Saudi wife”? She deserves the hackery distinction for inflicting Meg McCain on us, and for hiring Howard Kurtz.

  78. 78.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @jonas: I agree with your description of a hack, meaning a mercenary, basically, as opposed to an ideologue pushing what he believes.

    The one exception is that Tucker Carlson always looks like to me someone for whom it’s complete coincidence that he actually believes the evil right wing partisan ideas he gets paid to peddle. If he thought he could make more money pimping exactly the opposite, he’d do it.

  82. 82.

    Bullsmith

    I’m assuming Tina Brown makes the list more for hiring Megan McCain and Howie Kurtz et al than for her own mindless pap.

  83. 83.

    catclub

    Tim Russert should still be in there somewhere.
    Even if he is dead.

    I also think that the people at the top will take it as a point of pride.

    Just like in science, a scientist is important to the extent he can hold up progress in his field.

  84. 84.

    catclub

    @Marty:
    Lucky guy! I get Sowell, Murchison and Cal Thomas in my fishwrap, plus Nat Hentoff and Diana West.

    Has anyone else mentioned Cokie (Hawaii is too exotic for real Americans) Roberts and Morton Kondracke?

    They should be in the running.

  85. 85.

    Nellcote

    @cleek:

    just for fun, go look at some well-respected blogs. see how many do not do long excerpts.

    My understanding of fair use on blogs is 3 paragraphs OR whatever with permission of the author, word count not relevant.

  87. 87.

    Jay

    Jamie Kirchick belongs in the Hack 30, as does most of PJM (Salon has Barone on the list. I think he still works for PJM.). Also, there absolutely must be a special spot for Peretz.

  88. 88.

    cckids

    @Marty:

    Am I the only one rooting for Thomas Sowell to win this contest? Maybe mine is the only local newspaper that is desperate enough to run his column.

    No, he runs here in Vegas, in our POS paper, where he looks sane & reasonable next to asshat extroidinare Wayne Allen Root. That man writes as though he has to chew through the restraints to get to his computer each time.

  89. 89.

    Poopyman

    Kristol at 17? Seems the obvious Top 10 choices are falling out early.

    OK, who here’s been rigging the vote for Bristol Palin?

  90. 90.

    fraught

    Modo should get listed twice, #10 for her own columns and #1 for her stupid brother Kevin’s fucked up screeds. Who gives a shit what Maureen Dowd’s childhood family members think? If she were married (either gay or straight) and had kids she wouldn’t burden us with crazy talk from her big brother.

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