If he were capable of shame, this would be a deeply, deeply embarrassing piece.
Reader Interactions
37Comments
Comments are closed.
by John Cole| 37 Comments
This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment
If he were capable of shame, this would be a deeply, deeply embarrassing piece.
Comments are closed.
Elia
Politico really is our version of Versailles.
Kryptik
Simply hacktacular.
Suffern ACE
I have a comment, but am at a loss for words.
Violet
I can’t believe I went to Politico. Retch.
People like Roger Simon really do believe they are the center of the universe, don’t they? Everything that happens, even revolution in other countries, should be done for their benefit and on their time schedule. Arrogance barely begins to scratch the surface of describing the rot of people like this.
I did find this bit somewhat amusing, though:
I have to admit I always notice the jackets and khaki vests network anchors wear when they visit war zones or developing countries. It’s like the suits they wear in the studio aren’t “authentic” enough to be worn in less pristine locations. It’s all News Theater.
Dennis G.
Wow.
That is an amazing example of fail.
And yet, it is also a perfect example of the prose coming from Pravda on the Potomac.
Violet
@Suffern ACE:
Heh. Great minds.
I do always notice that news anchors dress in a certain type of “developing country attire” when visiting those locations. It’s almost insulting to the country they’re visiting. Why can’t the news anchors just wear a suit? Why the need to put on the khaki vest?
Ash Can
A shallow, substanceless column from a shallow, substanceless person.
Gin & Tonic
@Violet:
I remember visiting CNN HQ a number of years ago, where they have a sort of museum. One of the items on exhibit is a jacket worn by Peter Arnett when he went into Iraq during the first Gulf war; it was specially modified so he could smuggle in $100k in currency.
Needless to say, this was a long time ago, when CNN was in the news business.
Jay in Oregon
I should have stayed in the boat.
As it was, I literally could not read any further than the opening sentence:
Dave S.
Much more embarrassing for whoever green-lighted this for the site, unless Simon is too important to be constrained like that.
Poopyman
@Jay in Oregon: Well, my response to his supposedly rhetorical question was “yes, it is just you”, and stopped reading. Did scan the first page for anything substantive, though.
Wasted time.
giltay
@Jay in Oregon: The start of that sentence is promising. Perhaps this could have been a critique of how news just goes away when it’s been around for a while, and we forget about it. Like pollution or wars or corporate crime, which are still happening, but we don’t talk about them because they’re not new, so not news.
But then I read a little more and gave up, too. It’s one thing to point out that attitude, it’s another to justify it.
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: OT, but I had to add truly interesting peripheral point. In checking some facts about Peter Arnett for my post, I found that his daughter is married to John Yoo. Yes, that John Yoo. I wonder how the holiday dinner-table conversations go.
giltay
Maybe I’m just a little bitter that The Media mostly dropped the story on Tunisia when Egypt happened.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
Every single comment above is accurate. What an gigantic embarrassment. Though I admit I did not make it beyond the first graf. Ick.
Cat Lady
Shorter Simon: more dancing girls with my peeled grapes plz revolutionaries.
geg6
So a peaceful revolution sucks in Roger Simon’s world? Apparently there were too many well-dressed correspondents and not enough beatings and killings to keep him interested?
Man, I’m reading The Hunger Games and thinking that today’s media would totally love it. Except for that one year, when it was in the desert and too many of the contestants just died of hunger and thirst and heat and not enough of them through graphic violence. That’s just boring.
JGabriel
I read the whole thing. I feel like Cole just rick-rolled us in an excessively violative fashion.
.
gbear
Just wanted to point out that C&L had a posting recently titled Egypt Proved Change Is Possible, Sexy and Cool!
This doesn’t make Simon any less an ass.
RP
@giltay: I didn’t think he was trying to justify it. In fact, I thought he was mostly making fun of the media. But it was still a stupid column because he didn’t saying anything substantive. It was just blathering.
piratedan
good to know that being a narcissistant sociopath isn’t as big an obstacle to finding work as it should be, ty Mr. Simon.
Chris
Most unintentionally ironic line in the entire article:
Of course, this doesn’t apply to the “instant experts” at Pajamas Media that gave us at least one or two articles a day about Egypt for most of that 18-day cycle. Most hilariously, the one and only Egyptian I saw interviewed there was a blogger who described himself as secular and pro-Bush (yeah, that’s a real snapshot of the Egyptian street).
As for the general tone of the article, again, I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. Shame is a lost value in this country. I’ve read conservatives argue that the inferior social safety net in America is worth it because it makes life more “exciting;” I’m not at all surprised that these same people would turn away from foreign coverage because it was “boring.”
geg6
@Chris:
Like I said, we’re living in The Hunger Games. For real.
Jay in Oregon
@Poopyman:
That was pretty much my reaction as well.
catclub
@giltay: The population of Egypt is 85 million. How many in Tunisia?
I am not surprised. Egypt really is the center of gravity in the Arab world. And they have hardly any oil.
arguingwithsignposts
@JGabriel:
No, at least a rickroll comes with a song. It’s more like he goatse’d us.
vtr
Never drunk type.
Alwhite
@arguingwithsignposts:
yup, this!
In fact I feel dirtier than after having been goatse’d – thanks Cole.
Malron
John, this story may have something to do with why Roger “Tire Swing” Simon suddenly announced Americans are bored with Egypt:
Maybe Simon’s auditioning to be on Murdoch’s new IPad infotainment app? We report, you decide.
Malron
John, this story may have something to do with why Roger “Tire Swing” Simon suddenly announced Americans are bored with Egypt:
Maybe Simon’s auditioning to be on Murdoch’s new IPad infotainment app? We report, you decide.
Chris
@Malron:
Are Simon and PJM part of the NewsCorp machine?
Svensker
Every day things just get more depressing. I just looked at Simon’s bio. All that cred and this is what he’s come to?
Chris
Correction: I saw Roger Simon’s name and thought it referred to Roger L. Simon, the CEO and one of the writers at Pajamas Media. Looking at the bios, though, looks like this Roger Simon isn’t the same person.
Suffern ACE
@Svensker: I think the worst is that all that cred just allows him to talk about himself and his friends. I know, Politico is supposed to be all “insider all the time and aren’t us insiders saavy,” but Roger Simon can go sit on a tack. His title is “Political” which means it is supposed to provide analysis of our poltics. But no, he can’t help himself but talk about the media and it’s performance. If he were a “Media Analyst”, that would be fine, since that is what media critics are supposed to do.
But golly, isn’t there any information he could uncover that would provide us some insight into what happened in Egypt other than the insight that reporters were over there and people were also back here talking and talking? Something that wasn’t about the members of his class and how they looked?
giltay
@RP: Ahh. I didn’t get that far; like others here, I stopped caring about one paragraph in.
@catclub: But the two revolts are linked, and I’m interested in how both turn out. I understand that Egypt is larger and more powerful than Tunisia and probably a bigger story. I’m just saying that there seemed to be almost no news at all from Tunisia for the past couple of weeks.
Although now that Mubarak is gone, my local news has started reporting on Yemen and the UAE and Kuwait.
brantl
If he were capable of shame, this would be a deeply, deeply embarrassing piece.
The evidence is in; he’s NOT.
El Cid
@Gin & Tonic:
I wonder if they demanded the vest back when he was smeared with lying about the US’ bombing a civilian bomb shelter filled with innocent people in the first Gulf war and subsequently fired.
As the Reaganite right wing media attack dog “Accuracy In Media” wrote as it launched a hysteria campaign against Arnett,
Likewise, the DOD and Gulf War cheerleaders seized on any bullshit that ‘proved’ that all the reporters who visited and inspected the charred remains were duped and missed the clear evidence of secret command and control chambers on hidden levels that no one saw, as confirmed by the same Chalabi-pushed / Wolfowitz source / FoxNews valued commentating bullshitter who lied about knowing Saddam’s WMD details. (Source georgewbush-whitehouse DOT archives DOT gov/ogc/apparatus/crafting DOT html = moderation defense.)
There you go. Proof that all the pro-Saddam commie pinko ‘journalists’ were besmirching our fair reputation as super-accurate super-truthful smart bombers targeting only the absolutely correct targets.
Of course, Arnett was right. “He” in the sense that he reported the same damn thing as every other ‘foreign’ correspondent like the BBC and other nations’ who entered after the slaughter of hundreds of civilians and found no evidence at all for it being anything but a bomb shelter.
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the bombing (Google Ray McGovern and Amiriyah and Valentines) of the air shelter, and the fierce coordinated propaganda attack by the US government and much of the media against those reporting it correctly. (Interestingly, George Fwill and Sam Donaldson, among others, said that Arnett’s reporting appeared accurate.)
But, hey, war is about adopting whatever line the government’s pro-war line is. And if those civilians fried in a clearly-marked bomb shelter didn’t want it, they should have overthrown Saddam Hussein.