So I wonder what the deal is behind this story, but that’s not the interesting part.
Late Tuesday evening, a press release went out to numerous political journalists with stunning news. Mega-union SEIU had voted to withdraw its recently bestowed endorsement of Barack Obama. That’s certainly not unimaginable — SEIU often takes its own path and has a conflicted relationship with the Democratic party establishment.
Only it wasn’t true.
It was a pretty real looking hoax press release that managed to snare a number of reporters who posted the news on twitter.
The interesting part is not who is behind it, the interesting part is the fact that whoever did it knew that a professional beltway type like Josh Marshall finds the notion of a massive union withdrawing its endorsement of a Democratic president plausible and almost irresistible, and would miss the irony of how that little piece of conventional wisdom completely fooled a number of “journalists” last night who couldn’t resist the notion that THE LEFT HATES OBAMA ZOMG.
Exactly who else would SEIU endorse, Josh? Newt? Ron Paul? Mittens? Bachmann? People so openly hostile to organized labor they want them eliminated completely, who regularly call them thugs and criminals and blame them for the state of the American middle-class?
Especially after already declaring for the President? Are we that certain inside the beltway of the conventional wisdom that everyone secretly hates President Obama and that SEIU would pick up its ball and go home, knowing that the only real alternative to the President is people who want to see them utterly annihilated? SEIU completely backs the President. Is that more or less plausible?
So very eager for those emoprog stories, aren’t we, liberal media. It’s to Josh’s credit that he didn’t fall for it, but he certainly thought long and hard about running with it, didn’t he. Whoever pulled this little stunt knew exactly how it would fall out, and just how successful it would be. They got Politico’s Ken Vogel, National Journal/Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, and more than a few other people to bite on it.
But even after debunking the story, the beltway types admit “Yeah, this was still plausible”. And that’s all the proof you should need to know that our brave Village betters need a long, long vacation out in Actual America for some much needed perspective.
[UPDATE] Well, judging from the comments, suggesting that Josh Marshall showed his ass by implying that a major union would abandon the President three weeks after giving their endorsement (itself a completely ludicrous implication) makes me an errant schoolchild that needs to be corrected by his betters for starting food fights on our loveable, traditional blog.So sorry to have ruined anyone’s day with the opinion of mine. Having said that, I believe a break is in order. See you cats down the road.
Mnemosyne
There’s no story the MSM loves more than “Democrats in disarray!” I just wish we didn’t have so many Democratic legislators feeding that story to them (Joe Manchin, I’m looking at you).
General Stuck
Sometimes Josh lets his mouth run before his brane has thought about it.
Calouste
Q: How do you keep a reporter busy for an hour?
A: Give them a sheet of paper with “see other side” written on both sides.
feebog
Did any of these so called journalists think to check with SEIU HQ before running with the story? Doubt it.
jl
Mistakes are only remembered if they concern reactionaries. So, by Politico standards, Marshall is just a total loser (as opposed to half loser in this post), since he did not ‘win’ whatever hour of the day that the story broke.
But then, TPM’s core audience might be a bit more discerning than those of other outlets, and remember a big goof, no matter what group it concerns.
Steve
McGovern didn’t get union support in 1972, so it’s not like the concept would be unprecedented. The only real difference between the two scenarios is that Obama may not have as good a chance at winning in 2012 as McGovern did in 1972.
kdaug
@feebog: No. That’s why they’re “so-called journalists”.
SATSQ.
The Moar You Know
Not one of these people thought that checking the story – something that would have taken a 5-minute phone call – was worth doing.
I don’t know what disseminating stories without bothering to check your sources is called, but it’s not journalism.
Basilisc
The fact that some beltway journalists fell for it says something about beltway journalists. But it says a lot more about the circular-firing-squad tendencies of Democrats.
Why do you think experienced political observers, Josh Marshall included, thought it was plausible that a stalwart pro-Democratic union would turn against Obama? Well, maybe it has something to do with the way a lot of stalwart Democrats did nothing to sell healthcare reform in 09-10. Or the way a lot of Democrats sighed, emoted loudly over their disappointed and unfulfilled souls, and sat out the 2010 midterm races, handing the House to the GOP. Or the way Democrats undermined Clinton in 1993-94, handing the House and Senate to the GOP. Or the way so many “moderate” Democrats became gaga over GWBush and supported his insane fiscal and foreign policies from 2001 to 2006. Etc, etc, etc.
Yes, SEIU dropping its endorsement is entirely plausible. And that’s all the proof you need that Democrats have a long way to go before they can shape the country’s disgust with the GOP into a durable governing coalition.
MikeJ
Too good to check.
shortstop
Was the release filled with misspellings, comically awkward constructions and assorted grammatical monstrosities? There’s no way Josh could resist running that after adding a few dozen solecisms of his own.
Tone in DC
@Steve:
You are aware that Obama is currently the president, correct?
Just checking.
Redshift
Exactly. Who would think it’s not “unimaginable” that a union that endorsed the president unusually early would decide three weeks later that he hasn’t done enough, which would torpedo their own credibility and do nothing to influence Democrats?
It’s not “unimaginable” that some teabagger group would be disorganized and incompetent enough to do that, but a major union, no.
not motorik
Josh Marshall is a fucking moron.
Woodrowfan
speaking of TPM, anybody else find that when you go to that site it freezes your browser for a while? It’ll freeze Firefox for me for up to 30 second to a full minute.
catclub
@Steve: Of course, that was more along the lines of not getting Teamsters and AFL-CIO union support. A Great deal of hippie punching involved in that non-support.
A tad different from the Obama-SEIU relationship.
Are you suggesting that the reporters who fell for this knew that unions had not supported McGovern? Definite facts not in evidence territory.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Just this.
The Villagers (and unfortunately, Josh is showing signs of becoming one, too bad, the boy had promise once) fall for this shit every single fucking time.
The sad state of American journalism. Run with the rumor, don’t bother to check, accept everything on face value. Only total idiots do what Josh did.
Steve
@Tone in DC: Too obvious, I thought, but I pressed the submit button anyway.
Mike Goetz
Unfortunately, it was not all that implausible. We’ve become used to people insulting Obama and embarrassing themselves in the process.
Reporters fell for it because they always do. This “story” was of the same species as “Black voters abandoning Obama,” “Jewish voters abandoning Obama,” “Hispanic voters abandoning Obama,” “Gay voters abandoning Obama” etc. that give political reporters stiffies.
carpeduum
All this dog bites man story proves is that the village is overwhelmingly populated with old white guys. The one demographic which seems to have a consistent minority with a stubborn irrational dislike for obama.
They are used to the guy in the Whitehouse being old white guys just like them I guess.
Joel
@Steve: Sometimes trolls make me laugh, in that ironic way.
Redshift
@Basilisc and @Steve: We’re not talking about refusing to endorse here, we’re talking about withdrawing an endorsement that was made just a few weeks go, and made news because it was done early in the campaign. That doesn’t say “we’re disappointed, shape up” it says “we don’t know our ass from our elbow.”
General Stuck
@Woodrowfan:
Yes, annoying as all get out, I’ve even found myself skipping over TPM on my usual news run.
jl
@Redshift:
“some teabagger group”
I conjecture that the same reporters who went with it are also the ones who deem teabaggers as the defining political movement of our time.
So, teabaggers should be exemplars of model effective political behavior to us all, right?
Edit: Not sure I used ‘exemplar’ correctly. Hope that does not totally derail the thread.
Brachiator
I’m surprised that this crap wasn’t closely followed by some “draft Hillary” punditry.
Comrade Javamanphil
Many years ago, a listserv I belonged to had a member forward around a chain email about deodorant causing cancer. I quickly posted a link to some site (snopes?) that debunked the email. The initial poster’s response? “Well, I’m not going to take a chance and will never use deodorant again.” It’s nice to know she found a job working in the press corps.
Amir Khalid
These political reporters should have asked themselves, what could have happened in the few weeks since SEIU endorsed Obama to make the union change its mind so drastically? They should have checked with the SEIU spokesperson, at the very least, before tweeting the story, let alone running with it. They were too anxious for a hot story, they forgot basic journalistic caution, and they got used by a ratfucker.
Anya
The most annoying thing about TPM, is that in order to read a simple story you have to make 3 different clicks. What’s up with that?
@Redshift: I think they’re confusing SEIU with Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann.
Redshift
@feebog: Ambinder says that he called the Washington number on the press release, and it was answered by someone claiming to be SEIU, so the hoax was a bit more elaborate than just a press release. But you’d get a comparable response if you replied to a Nigerian spam email, so you’d think someone who gets paid for this stuff would be a little more careful.
Anonymous37
Can someone post a link to Josh Marshall uncritically posting or linking to the press release? The two links above don’t seem to note that he did this.
Redshift
@jl:
Oh, right. Never mind.
Soonergrunt
No, he didn’t.
From the original article, posted at 0155 this morning:
Two hours to interview the guy, check a couple of other sources, and then publish the story? That’s pretty good, over all. Was Josh Marshall even woken up by his reporter? I doubt it.
Amir Khalid
@Redshift: Did Marc Ambinder confirm first that the phone number on the press release matched an actual SEIU phone number? That the contact person named in the press release was an actual SEIU spokeperson? Any US publication that does political coverage should have a reporter on staff who maintains labor-union contacts and can verify such information.
Egg Berry
You could probably count the number of labor reporters in the US press corpse on one hand.
chopper
“the fact that i thought it was true is just a sign that obama’s lost the working class white vote”
shoutingattherain
Twitiots.
guy44
While this reflects poorly on the reporters who bought the lie, I don’t think it reflects poorly on TPM at all.
TPM survives in part by bringing you political news at light speed. This gives them a very non-Village, legitimate business reason to publish groundbreaking news ASAP. This press release obviously went out to many different people who could publish its contents at any moment, and Josh/TPM knew that, yet despite that he was sceptical, did his homework, and reported two hours later that the story was a lie.
It sounds like he did his job perfectly. Why are this post and so many commenters getting so incredibly mad at TPM for doing its job perfectly and correctly identifying this as a hoax?
John Cole
I don’t understand this post on multiple levels.
I have a lot of issues with the bedwetter/permanent whiner set of the left, but I simply fail to understand why they are somehow to blame or due some scorn because a bunch of knucklehead journalists fell for a fake press release.
I also don’t understand what it has to do with liberals falling out of love with Obama. If the SEIU had unendorsed Obama, it would be a big deal, not because of the media finding liberal angst stories to be irresistible, but because a massive labor org unendorsing the Democrat would be a big deal in and of itself. If the NRA had unendorsed Bush in 2004, it would have been a big deal just because it was happening, not because the media loves “conservatives falling out of love with Bush stories.”
Linnaeus
@Amir Khalid:
Aye, there’s the rub. Labor beats at US media outlets have shrunk down to basically nothing, which I’m sure has seeped into political coverage as well.
gelfling545
@Woodrowfan: Yes. It’s a problem – it freezes the entire computer while loading.
MikeJ
@John Cole:
If the NRA had endorsed Bush and three weeks later a press release says they unendorsed him for no reason, no reporter in DC would have run the story without checking it. It would have been considered too stupid.
A liberal organization unendorsing Obama? That’s too good to check. The story had to run right away because it proves how Dems are in disarray.
Mr. Poppinfresh
Not to mention, labor unions have been some of Obama’s biggest left-wing critics. And given the fact that the TPP is basically NAFTA on steroids and the join US/Canada border security arrangement announced today is further doubling down on NAFTA (hmm, I seem to recall a campaign promise to that effect…), it’s not totally beyond the pale to think this could have been true.
Most of you aren’t fit to be Josh Marshal’s ballwashers. Dude has done more for journalism with the US Attorney scandal story alone than any of you will achieve in your entire fucking lives.
El Cid
@John Cole: Not to mention the story could have been some sort of disagreement or disorganization within SEIU. If such a decision had been actually made, it would be more of interest at that particular moment (especially given its sudden and unwarned reversal) for what it said about SEIU, and not about Obama.
Calming Influence
The SEIU would only withdraw their support for Obama if Scott Walker was running.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole:
It’s the “if,” though. If someone had put out a fake press release saying that the NRA had withdrawn their Bush endorsement, I think most of the MSM would have been skeptical enough to investigate it.
Fake press release that claims that liberals and/or Democrats hate a Democratic president? Must be true, so run with it! It’s not so much the firebagger problem as the fact that the MSM lurrrves the idea that the Democrats are fighting amongst themselves. It was their bread and butter in the Clinton 90s, and they’re dying to get back to those glory days of panty-sniffing instead of all of this serious reporting.
Mr. Poppinfresh
Citing some evidence for those of you who live in a deluded fucking bubble.
Chuck Butcher
@John Cole:
Well hell, it gives commenters a chance to punch DFHs and that’s good enough in itself. Hippie punching doesn’t require facts or evidence – see ’10 elections being about DFHs staying home. Even though it was their beloved “middle” that stayed home.
Mnemosyne
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Dude. You got taken in by a hoax. Just admit it and don’t whine about how, like, totally plausible it was because everyone knows unions hate Obama.
You got snookered because they told you a story you wanted to hear. Period.
ETA: And who did you think they were planning to endorse instead of Obama if they were withdrawing their endorsement? Romney? Gingrich? Which of the Republican clown car denizens did you think was more acceptable to the unions than Obama?
Baud
@Mr. Poppinfresh: What is that supposed to be evidence of? As a bubble-dweller, my interest is piqued.
Mr. Poppinfresh
@Mnemosyne: Pretty hard to say I got taken by a hoax when this dumb post was the first I’d heard of any of this shit.
The amount of projection you people throw around is astounding. Just fucking astounding.
Next you’ll call me a firebagger, when in reality I’d probably have a lengthy mental debate about hitting the brakes if I saw Hamsher crossing the street.
Brachiator
@guy44:
No. It doesn’t.
Unsourced, unverified, unconfirmed stuff sent out at light speed is not news. It’s gossip.
@Linnaeus:
All news coverage is shrinking as “old media” gets clobbered. No one is singling out “labor beats” for special cutting.
I didn’t take this as blaming the left. I see it as the official start of the dirty political tricks season. Or an attempt to up the ante on slime ball poltical tactics.
But I agree that reporters and pundits who consider themselves to be seasoned veterans with sharp instincts are demonstrating that they are just another bunch of rubes.
Mr. Poppinfresh
@Baud: Gee, maybe that unions are not lockstep supporters of President Obama, but can in fact demonstrate independent thinking now and then?
None of it amounts to a reason for OR against him, frankly- just that, if you actually know what the fuck you are talking about, the idea of a major activist left-wing union being bitchy about Obama is not some unthinkable logic paradox.
This was just lazy journalism, and ascribing some kind of evil beltway motive to it is so surpassingly dumb I am at a loss.
David in NY
@Soonergrunt: This
Did Josh Marshall “think long and hard” about running the story? Absolutely no evidence he did. By 1:00 a.m. he or his staff had investigated a midnight statement, and within an hour they posted a refutation.
I think everyone dissing Josh and TPM on this one is entirely off base.
TenguPhule
Perhaps our media can make a decent pot of soup. They certainly aren’t good for anything else
Chuck Butcher
That unions have not gotten a lot of what they wanted from Democrats isn’t a newsflash – they also have not gotten dedication to their destruction from Democrats…
If you’re ready to believe that unions can’t tell the difference between a gun to the head and a wish list – well, your respect for such people shows…
cokane
@Basilisc: as relates to organized labor, you really have no clue what you’re talking about. Organized labor campaigned very hard for HC reform, more than any other left group I would be willing to wager. And organized labor campaigned very hard in the 2010 midterms–why the hell do you think the 2010 winners came out swinging hard and heavy against organized labor?
Baud
@Mr. Poppinfresh: Ok, well I never thought unions were “lockstep” supporters of Obama, so we’re good there. I would be surprised if any major union failed to endorse Obama in 2012, however, and much more so if one withdrew an endorsement already made.
Mr. Poppinfresh
@David in NY: Yes, but those two hours of fact-checking were pregnant with potential ThoughtCrimes!
MikeJ
@David in NY:
Agreed. TPM were the good guys on this one.
I also don’t see any hippie punching in the post, but a lot of people seem to get mighty defensive about it.
feebog
I agree with Soonergrunt and Guy44 completely. This does not reflect poorly on Josh Marshall and TPM. They did their job, investigated and determined that the story was a hoax in quick time. The inference that Josh would have liked to have run the story is completely unfounded.
Mr. Poppinfresh
@Baud: I’m glad you didn’t think that. Too bad tons of other people seem to!
El Cid
Uh oh, looks like Al Gore is paying off all the scientists with money from his big house so he can sell more books and impose Marxist soshullism.
Ha! We’ll show Mr. Fancy Pants Williams at the Royal Reading Ballet there what we damn well can possibly object to!
However, we await further verification from John Huntsman and some university somewhere maybe Scotland, also too.
[Note: this is *always* how I explain global warming to people — we know the energy coming in, and we can measure the energy leaving, and there is one and only one method by which the Earth can re-release significant amounts of heat back into space: the escape of longwave IR photons from the upper atmosphere. It seems to work well with most people.]
AA+ Bonds
No, I’m pretty interested in that.
Y’all better get interested in it, too. The KKK ratfucking is gonna be worse this year than ever before, and the Schurick business is gonna be the model.
Trace the money here, and you’ll find the people who are going to be behind black voter suppression in 2012.
Please tell me that interests you.
David in NY
@Brachiator:
True, except TPM did not send out any unconfirmed stuff; they discredited the stuff that other people sent out.
I mean, have fun with Politico and Ambinder for getting suckered, but I have no idea why Josh Marshall got dragged in here, except he’s the only reason anybody here even knew about this. Go ahead, kill the messenger.
JasonF
There’s two possible explanations. Explanation number one is that an SEIU endorsement withdrawal is plausible. Explanation number two is that reporters are a pack of retarded lemmings who will repeat any damned thing they hear if they think it will generate page views.
Which explanation would you prefer if you were a reporter?
AA+ Bonds
@El Cid:
^ What the hell is this bullshit supposed to be
AA+ Bonds
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Man, Koch employees out in force on this one. Almost like they were behind it!
Chuck Butcher
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Thank you Saint Ronnie, and here I thought you’d actually died and gone that “place”
Spaghetti Lee
Zandar, I think you kinda jumped the gun on this one. It’s not like TPM ran the story on the front page and then had to retract it. Their first reporting on it was that it was a hoax. And from this you take that he secretly wished he could run it? “Even if X doesn’t believe Y, I have deduced that he secretly does” never really works well as an argument, I don’t think.
Brachiator
@David in NY:
I wasn’t knocking TPM. I was disagreeing with the idea that TPM has “a very non-Village, legitimate business reason to publish groundbreaking news ASAP.”
Especially with stuff like Twitter, Facebook, etc., it is easier to disseminate crap than ever before. Fortunately, some people who are big users of social apps, etc., function as unofficial curators and backstops for the craziest stuff. But I can easily see political strategists trying to exploit these services for bad purposes.
AA+ Bonds
Now do y’all believe me?
How many labor ratfucks gotta happen, how many stories I gotta post from WSJ/Fox that are labor ratfucks before it becomes clear that the labor ratfuck is THE ratfuck of 2012?
What the Kochs and Karl Rove are counting on is that the Democrats won’t rally behind unions, even as Americans long for power in their jobs and guarantees of their rights as workers.
They’re doing it – attacking our strengths. Don’t let them.
El Cid
@AA+ Bonds: What do you think I mean? Let’s say that this happened, that SEIU retracted an endorsement. This would be a huge reversal, an indication that something had happened at SEIU. What? Did different people make this decision than the original endorsement? Was this retraction supported by the union leadership strongly, was there a division, etc.
David in NY
@Brachiator: OK. Sorry about that.
AA+ Bonds
^ this place is just swarming with self-hating liberal arts undergrads who clicked on that Koch Facebook ad. Watch out, stay sharp.
AA+ Bonds
@El Cid:
Except none of that happened and there’s no evidence that any of that happened so talking about it is kind of weird because you’re just making crap up?
AA+ Bonds
@El Cid:
Except none of that happened and there’s no evidence that any of that happened so talking about it is kind of weird because you’re just making crap up?
Chuck Butcher
@El Cid:
Let’s also propose the sun rose in the west and that’d be…
Calming Influence
I think the most interesting part is not who’s behind it; it’s whether or not Zander is deliberately starting Balloon Juice food fights.
Steve
Everyone’s story seems to be a little off here, my own probably included.
Some people apparently think Josh Marshall got taken in by the hoax, at least for a short time. There’s no evidence he did. He didn’t post about this until he wrote it was debunked.
Some people think Zandar is one of those people who mistakenly believes Josh got taken in by the hoax. But this post doesn’t say that. Zandar is criticizing Josh for his after-the-fact statement that the hoax was “certainly not unimaginable.”
Having said that, Josh is still taking too much heat here. I don’t think he’s doing anything more than being gracious towards fellow journalists who fell for a scam, as opposed to the alternative of taking a victory lap because he saw through it and they didn’t. Yes, you had to be pretty clueless to fall for this one hook, line and sinker. But Josh isn’t a terrible person for being polite instead of crowing about it.
El Cid
@AA+ Bonds: I didn’t fucking make anything up or defend the article, you nut! I have no fucking clue why you’re thinking I’m disagreeing with you. I’m suggesting only that had the story been true it would be of interest most likely as a report on something going on in SEIU.
I’m not ‘making crap up,’ you idiot — I posed a fucking hypothetical. Take a fucking breath. Stop assuming things on my part I didn’t say. God, damn, but do people here do that.
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher: That’d be what?
Warmongerer
@Amir Khalid:
The contact person listed on the press release was the actual name of the SEIU’s press person – Mark McCullough. And if you called the Washington phone number on the press release, you got someone claiming to be Mark McCullough. Plus it was put out at a time of night that the real Mark McCullough wouldn’t be likely available.
The hoaxer definitely put in the extra effort to fool people.
@Spaghetti Lee:
He’s referring to Marshall’s remark that SEIU withdrawing its endorsement was “not unimaginable“.
Baud
@Calming Influence:
If so, Zandar’s choice for the title of this post is rather naughty.
Chuck Butcher
Hypothetical???
Calming Influence
@Steve: Your comment right after mine might make it look like my comment was serious. It was, of course, not.
boss bitch
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Oh please. You think the administration doesn’t keep labor unions in the loop about such deals? If unions had major issues with the deal they would have publicly and loudly say so before doing anything as dramatic as pulling their endorsement. They would even try to get some concessions before pulling their endorsement.
Calming Influence
I think the most interesting thing is how exactly anyone quantifies “certainly not unimaginable.”
priscianusjr
I hope they find out where this came from and turn the tables on ’em.
Marci Kiser
Yeah, that dumb ol’ John Marshall, correctly pegging a hoax and calling out the same, but daring to say that it wasn’t ‘unimaginable.’
What an objectionable statement. What an inglorious cur. How dare he say something is capable of being imagined at the *exact same time* that it is indeed being imagined by half the damn press corps?
CTFO, Zandar. Find some setting between ‘off’ and ‘venom-spitting’. The cure for emo-prog is not hysterical smugness.
David in NY
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
How silly of me to have overlooked that.
@El Cid: @AA+ Bonds:
I think you guys are like ships passing in the night. I hope you would both agree 1) that, as Cole noted, it would have been a big deal if it were true, 2) that since it’s not true, the real story that people should be investigating is who was doing it and why, and 3) the people who forwarded this “news” without taking adequate steps to verify it were idiots, given its facial improbability and the obvious BS the guy on the phone was spinning.
If there’s any real dispute left here, let me know in the morning.
BTW, the TPM story actually shows how not taken in its reporter was.
Quiddity
@Tone in DC: You are aware that McGovern had the ILRU endorsement, aren’t you?
Chuck Butcher
@David in NY:
It isn’t just that it was untrue – it was un-fucking-reasonable. I suppose you could go ahead and imagine that the sun came up in the west…
er, I already said that.
Calming Influence
@David in NY: I believe the phrase is “sheeps passing in the night.”
magurakurin
@Steve:
This is, quite simply, the stupidest thing I have ever read here.
El Cid
@David in NY: I was already agreeing with Cole openly, and I didn’t disagree with points (2) and (3) — I just gave an example of why, in my view, it would likely have been a big deal if it were true. I didn’t even think I was disagreeing with anyone.
I’m pretty down with the notion that empirical claims about what is true must be true, and that people can tell how it is you know them to be true, and that the responsibility for accuracy increases as the story’s impact or unlikeliness does.
Omnes Omnibus
@magurakurin: Oh, come on. It’s up there, but no helicopter were laughing, it’s not WAI, and, well, I guess that’s about it.
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not sure this applies to Mr. Poppinfresh, but it certainly applies to the reporters who went with it. If you look at the type of political reporter who traffics in this stuff – Mike Allen, Halperin, etc., it’s pretty obvious they are complete nerds with no life. That’s why they love similarly insecure politicians like Gingrich and McCain who also seem to have no life outside the proverbial Washington as “Hollywood for ugly people.” They hate the President, not because he thinks poorly of them, but because he doesn’t think of them at all. They’re small, small people. (And Halperin is a “dick” also, too.)
Chris
“The press is geared up for its favorite blood sport: Democrats attacking each other.”
Quote from the President in one of the latter-day West Wing episodes, that jumped to my mind the minute I read this story. Except they’re so desperate for such stories that they’ve apparently decided to start making them up altogether rather than report the boring news.
Chuck Butcher
The levels of stupidity some of you are willing to attribute to organizations that are not center right is damned astonishing. Honest to pete I sometimes wish the GOP would let you back in…
No, not sometimes – all the time; for the good of both of you and especially for what passes as liberalism.
Calming Influence
Half of you, including perhaps Zander, are interpreting “certainly not unimaginable” as something along the lines of “not unlikely”. Considering that there are, some of us that are interpreting it as “maybe on the order of getting struck by lightning”, I’ll ask again: how do you quantify “certainly not unimaginable”?
eemom
@Steve:
will you STOP with that “reading the post and the links and actually thinking about the thing before running my mouth” schtick. You’re making the rest of us look bad.
Also too:
In BJ-speak, “gracious towards fellow journalists” and “being polite” are just euphemisms for “Yup, he’s a Galtian Overlord Villager now.”
Chris
@Basilisc:
I was a tiny little kid in 93-94, so if it’s not too much of a bother for someone, can you just give me the CliffNotes – what did Democrats do to “undermine” or “abandon” Clinton in that time? This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the charge.
Soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: OK. I LOLed.
Chuck Butcher
@eemom:
So, it’d be really polite of me to not mention to you that your left tit was hanging out?
Steve
@magurakurin: :(
J
@David in NY: Agreed!
Calming Influence
In a post that was about not getting taken in by a hoax, someone freaks out about the phrasing describing the hoax as “certainly not unimaginable.”
O.K. What if Josh had simply said the SEIU withdrawal of support was “certainly unimaginable”. Would that have made more sense?
It’s a figure of speech, fer crisake.
Chuck Butcher
@Calming Influence:
What the fuck do you think language is for? One thing means one thing and another means something completely different and you’d make them equivilant?
El Cid
Credit to Tim Kaine for a few strong returns in his debate with Macaca Allen. Also via TPM.
Even better, Allen takes on ladyparts:
I want to see major debates on basic knowledge.
Why do things fall? What does blood do? Does everyone think in English? Do ghosts weigh a lot? Why is there light and heat here on Earth?
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: How many angels can dance on a pinhead?
eemom
@Chuck Butcher:
no, given the misogynist piggery of that hypothetical I’d view it more along the lines of evidence that you needed some new material to jerk off to.
Calming Influence
@Chuck Butcher: I’ll say it again: It’s a figure of speech, fer crisake. You’re assigning a value to a throw-away line way beyond what it’s actually worth.
My getting a new car is “certainly not unimaginable”. A giant meteor striking earth and destroying life as we know it is “certainly not unimaginable”. Of course they’re not equivalent, because it’s a fucking figure of speech!”
Chuck Butcher
@Calming Influence:
In order to make the thing approach the reasonableness of a chance of a meteor striking the earth you’d have to assume extreme stupidity on the part of SEIU which they have not demonstrated. Weasel away if you like, I take it as written by someone paid to do that writing and it has meaning despite your attempts to make it something else.
magurakurin
@Steve: seriously? Are you aware of the 1972 Election results?
Do you honestly believe that Obama will only win Mass. and DC in the 2012 election? Against Newt? or Romney? whatever.
Chuck Butcher
@eemom:
Since your “handle” doesn’t indicate that you’d have a dick hanging out…
Lady, I’ve been married over 20yrs to an independent tough woman and I can’t think why anything you have going would bring me to masturbation.
It isn’t politeness to minimize the extent of a problem, it is asskissing and closing ranks. so – KMA very much.
I didn’t use “fly is open” for the simple reason that it minimizes the extent of the problem. KMA
Benjamin Franklin
Just a few words…
The Teabags are engaged in cannibalism which rivals the Donner Party. Liberal Democrats have been a little too nice in response to the Horde and it’s antipathy for all things human.
Have we devolved as an evolutionary response to the challenge? I hope not.
There is a iittle too much acrimony over stupid disagreements that don’t amount
to much in the way of substance. It’s not like we have to become LIKE them, to defeat them.
eemom
@magurakurin:
um. It was snark.
AxelFoley
@Steve:
You gotta be trollin’ us. You gotta.
magurakurin
@eemom: If so, then instead of the stupidest post I ever read here, it is the worst attempt at “snark” ever. And I’ve failed miserably before so the bar was pretty fucking high.
Calming Influence
@Chuck Butcher:
O.K. It has meaning. Tell me, as a percentage (+/-5%), what the likelihood of occurrance that the phrase “certainly not unimaginable” indicates.
Please provide peer reviewed sources with your answer.
Chuck Butcher
“there is some reason to think it” is sufficient and it fails that.
Calming Influence
@Chuck Butcher: So you’re going with “absolutely impossible”. That’s a really really really stupid position. (See? That’s 3 times more stupid than just plain stupid.)
AxelFoley
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
But I see you’re fit to suck said balls.
Chuck Butcher
@Calming Influence:
It is about the offering of a figleaf of politeness where none is due. It moves the discussion away from the utter unreasonableness of the story to something within the realm. It is not within the realm of reasonable unless you assume utter political suicidal tendencies and extreme teabaggery levels of stupidity on the part of the SEIU.
It lets be played the card of political dissarray in the face of actual evidence. The DFHs will vote for Pres Obama because they’re horrified by the GOPers, not because they think it will advance their POV despite the bullshit propagated around here. Those people who won’t vote wouldn’t vote Obama or not, that’s not what they do is why they don’t.
Rihilism
People, people. Why are our swords always locked in battle, why are we always fighting?
The truth is, we have locked shields, not swords…{sniffle, fake tear}…
General Stuck
Out of boredom and curiosity, I surfed over to the FDL front page, and couldn’t find any mention of this story. But happened to notice what appears to be a major depression of comments on their thread posts. The numbers were closer to my mothballed blog, than a powerhouse of the so called DFH’s. A sham, really.
Maybe a FP here should put up an FDL memorial thread post, so we can all mourn properly.
Chuck Butcher
@Calming Influence: I see that the equal liklihood of me getting struck by lightning while cashing the winning Powerball ticket with the SEIU doing this is relevant debate. You want to play at this while ignoring that phrases are used for ends, that language is used at levels outside mathematical certanties? I’m not playing at being a pedant and correcting somebody’s typo or “your” for “you are”. The word “unimaginable” was used with several qualifiers to move it into the realm of reality.
No, there is not one single reasonable cause to have gone with this story. There may be agendas, but that is entirely another thing.
AxelFoley
@Omnes Omnibus: Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Lojasmo
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
That is evidence that on December 7th SEIU president Henry praised Obama for saving the auto industry…dumb-ass.
AxelFoley
@General Stuck:
Fuck ’em. We should piss on their grave.
Omnes Omnibus
@AxelFoley: No, but I swam in an Austrian fountain with a naked British girl. Does that count?
Calming Influence
The person who put so much meaning in “certainly not unimaginable” was not Josh Marshall, but Zander and the rest of you. If you’re going to ascribe deep significance to (again) a figure of speech that a.)really wasn’t the main thrust of the post, and b.) might have been written at 2 in the morning, you might want to ask Josh Marshall what he meant by this insidious phrase before you firebag him.
General Stuck
@Calming Influence:
Not moi. Big Marshall fan, but he does jump the gun sometimes, but like someone said upthread, his site is geared toward breaking news, and a big reason I visit there so much. Same with Raw Story, and both sometimes jump the gun and screw the pooch. As long as they correct themselves, I don’t assign any lasting bad feelings if they get one wrong. It is the nature of the beast for the first blush service they try to provide. Gonna make mistakes with that MO. inevitable.
Calming Influence
@Chuck Butcher:
I’m not playing. Based on one phrase, you seem to want to take down someone who the vast majority of the time does damn good reporting, and has not shown any bias against unions.
Why are you doing this, on such weak evidence?
Calming Influence
@General Stuck: He didn’t fucking JUMP THE GUN! HE didn’t PUBLISH the fake rumor, he uncovered it and REPORTED IT! What the fuck is wrong with this picture?
Calming Influence
@Omnes Omnibus: Of course it counts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Calming Influence: Cool. I had rather hoped so.
MikeBoyScout
Zandar and BJ Front Pagers,
CHALLENGE!
Can you find ONE example of Union Thugs ever releasing a false press release to discredit their opponents?
I’m asking because despite hearing repeatedly about Union Thugs and voter fraud on the part of Libruls, what I SEE is those who traffic in the accusations are more commonly the perpetrators. Maybe I’m wrong…, but I don’t think so.
General Stuck
@Calming Influence:
Well, I admit. This nonsense non story is so brane dead, I just haven’t been able to muster the energy to explore what happened in any detail. So I will defer to you, on this one. But Josh and TPM have gotten things wrong before, but like I said, it doesn’t bother me one whit, long as they keep on it and correct the record. And it is certainly not some kind of deep antipathy toward liberals and liberalism behind anything on that web site. Josh is a news guy first, trained that way, and a dem, or left of center second. That is how I view his little place on the web over at TPM, that I would hate to do without.
Calming Influence
@General Stuck: Sorry, that was a little much directed at you. I meant the OTHER assholes. ;)
Calming Influence
@General Stuck: This.
Calming Influence
@General Stuck: Of course, as Josh’s TPM Multiplex Empire grows, he’s going to succumb to Rupert Murdock style delusions of grandeur, so we need to be ready…
Omnes Omnibus
@Calming Influence: Hasn’t he started to affect an Aussie accent?
AA+ Bonds
In happier news, from NPR’s All Things Considered:
For Unions, Democratic Convention Means Business
Listen as a union press shop owner in the South explains why his shop is union, how he sometimes has to hide it from reactionary customers, and how he’s finally getting his due from the Democratic National Convention.
Check that picture of Mr. Mullaney. He looks like one happy guy. Good lesson for us all: in the end, guts pay off.
General Stuck
@Calming Influence:
LOL, I’m not too worried about that. I think Josh is one of us, a space cadet with nerdish tendencies. They almost never become media moguls, trying to rule the universe.
Calming Influence
@Omnes Omnibus: Damnit, your right! (I’m bad with accents, and thought it was Hindi). Please disregard all of my previous comments (but only on this thread!)
Michael
@General Stuck:
Except he didn’t get this one wrong…they never ran the story, they researched it and found it to be a hoax and reported it as such.
The fact that when reporting it as a hoax, they didn’t call it OMG TEH STOOPIDEST HOKES EVA though is apparently a mortal sin…
Keith G
There must be another hoax going on. I read that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA on giving the Plan B ‘morning after’ pill nonprescription status. That must be a joke. Obama’s HHS would never overrule the science for a better political outcome. He promised.
Must be a joke. Silly guys.
AA+ Bonds
@Keith G:
Keith G, I’m curious if you’d like to post a working link to your blog since the one in your name doesn’t work and in fact seems to go nowhere.
Michael
@Keith G:
You must know that what you wrote is inaccurate. Sebelius did overrule the FDA on giving Plan B non-prescription status…to girls under 17.
Plan B already is non-prescription for women 17 and older. And has been since 2009 when this Admin approved it.
Calming Influence
@Michael:
I’m ROFLing just a little bit…
bin Lurkin'
@Keith G:
Women cannot be trusted with their own bodies.
Bearing and raising children on the other hand they are absolutely trusted to do all by themselves.
AA+ Bonds
Soooo many Kochsuckers, I can’t even count ’em . . .
Ya might as well close thread . . . I mean I know you don’t do that but still
ChrisNYC
@bin Lurkin’: You have no clue what you’re talking about. On Plan B, women are decidedly trusted with their own bodies. You walk in a pharmacy, show id to prove age, they give you the pill. Idiot.
PS: Eleven year old girls are not women. Keeping this fact in mind will help you in all sorts of situations.
jefft452
@catclub:
“A Great deal of hippie punching involved in that non-support.”
not so much
McGovern had a Lieberman like ability to vote against labor when it mattered, then point to all the pro-labor votes he cast when his vote just added to an existing majority to claim he was a great friend of unions
And the unions were right
In the 80’s he bought a hotel in my town in CT – the first thing he did was a lock out. He succeded in breaking the union, then all those non-union workers lost their jobs when he ran the hotel into bankruptcy
AA+ Bonds
1972 doesn’t matter at all since the Teamsters called the Sotheby’s protestors “Merry Pranksters” as a compliment, QED.
The hippies are the unions, the unions are the hippies, and they are both the 99%. Let’s follow their example and bury the hatchet, shall we?
Steve
@magurakurin: You are making me so sad.
AnotherBruce
Can someone actually tell me if TPM was duped by the story? Because the link provided shows that TPM was saying the story was a hoax. And if that’s all there is, why the hell is everybody whining?
General Stuck
@AnotherBruce:
Nope. This thread is surreality, like an acid trip back in the day. Nothing anyone said made much sense, but the colors rawked!!
eemom
@General Stuck:
k, that does it. Clear the decks. If FDL is, in fact, circling the drain, I shall be forced to quit my job and spend all my time, henceforward, 24/7, live-blogging its descent. REGARDLESS of the PTSD toll it may take on my already-wavering psyche. By God, someone has to step forward to serve as eyewitness to history, however unspeakably tragic, and if no one else is up to doing the Lord’s work, by God I am, cost me what it may.
[trumpets or something]
General Stuck
@eemom:
LOL
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Um, wow.
csloz29
Way off base. Marshall simply wrote that the SEIU withholding support was not “unimaginable.” He’s right. SEIU is a pressure group. Its influence is only as great as its willingness to walk away. That doesn’t mean they have to support someone else; it only means that until they get what they want they sit on their cash. Hardly unimaginable.
Unbelievably naive, this post.
Uriel
I have to say, after all the absurd equivocation, deleberate obtuseness, high-test hyperbole, and a smattering of what seems to be intentional offensiveness- This may have devolved into the stupidest thread on the Internet. Jus’ pointin’ it out, not judging or anything
Robert Waldmann
This post just will not do. It is not up to Balloon Juice standards. A correction (not an update a correction) should be posted as the new first line.
The whole post is about how the fact that people fell for the hoax shows that Josh Marshall is unreliable. I had to read line after line of juvenile gloating to learn that Josh Marshall did NOT !!! fall for the hoax !!!
Someone has to tell Zandar about the most elementary standards of adequate blogging (I nominate John Cole for the unpleasant task). First, second and third, you can not assume that people read the whole post. Second, don’t report the results of ESP as facts. Zandar may, indeed, be able to read Marshall’s mind, but he (or she) should only discuss what he (or she) reads on Marshall’s blog.
There seems to be personal hostility here. No, not me, when I woke up, I had nothing against Zandar. I had a favorable view of him (or her). But why the hell denounce Marshall who didn’t fall for the hoax and only mention people who did on line … well waaaay to many to count anyway.
Rihilism
While Marshall may or may not be the Anti-Christ {steps back as the poo-flinging recommences}, I do have to give his site credit for running with this photo….
Robert Waldmann
Dear Zandar
I am trying to figure out which supernatural means enabled you to read Josh Marshall’s mind. As far as I can tell (with just one google search) the only connection of TPW with the hoax is this post reporting that it is a hoax. I think it might be necessary to explain to you that Josh Marshall and Ryan Reilly are not the same person.
Dear John Cole
I know you like to give a whole lot of freedom to contributors, but it would be only fair for someone (not me) to claim that “John Cole” reports on what he reads in people’s minds and considers unmasking a hoax to be proof of gullibility. You wrote this horrible post to exactly the same extent that Marshall wrote the fine post which it derides.
I actually hope to read an update which puts the fact that no one at TPM fell for the hoax at the beginning of the post and notes that Josh Marshall and Ryan Reilly are two people with a total of two brains and, as far as I know, four legs and four arms. I wrote this should be classified as a correction, but I don’t really hope for that.
Sebastian Dangerfield
@John Cole: This.
Someone seems to be looking for “emoprogs” (or whatever the current puerile term is for left-leaning Obama critics) under the bed.
And, while SEIU’s un-endorsing Obama would certainly be odd, it would not have been entirely out of character. Recall — or learn if you weren’t paying attention — that after SEIU endorsed Kerry, and days before the election, Andy Stern gave a speech in which he said that it wouldn’t be the worst thing if Kerry was defeated.
Robert Waldmann
TPM also reported that people were incorrectly claiming that Obama had incorrectly described the income needed to get in the top 1% when in fact he correctly described the income needed to get in the top 0.01 % By Zandar’s logic this shows that Marshall is inclined be believe that Obama’s claims of fact are incorrect.
Anyone who has read TPM for a full day understands that they report on hoaxes even if they are not tempted to fall for the hoax. That’s part of what they do. It’s called journalism.
Bloggers don’t have to do such things (it’s a medium not a role) but it would be nice if they knew what the word meant. Clearly Zandar either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.
I notice that Balloon Juice does not limit comments in a short interval of time. I don’t want to bore everyone. I am still angry and very upset, but I will try to stop typing (no promises about achieving that goal but I will try).
Sebastian Dangerfield
Corrections: Stern made his remarks in a WaPoo interview, and it coincided with the Democratic National Convention.
David in NY
This thread shows a dangerous tendency of B-J commenters not to read the goddamned links, particularly the second link in this case.
Larv
Jesus, Zandar, take a page from our host and learn to just admit when you’re wrong. Hell, Cole gets shit wrong all the time, he cops when called on it, and everything is fine. But instead of updating with a clarification, you’ve dug in and written this semi-GBCW update. Maybe you could actually engage with your critics in the comments instead?
Look, the notion that Marshall has somehow “showed his ass” here is just risible. They were sent a hoax press release about an extremely unlikely event. They investigated, determined that it was a hoax, and reported that. But instead of focusing on those who were taken in by the hoax, or the possible perpetrators, you’ve decided that the real story is that in reporting the hoax Josh Marshall called it “not unimaginable”. And it’s not like it was just an aside, the criticism of TPM is the entire focus of your post! You’ve also written it in such a way that it’s not at all obvious to the reader that Marshall wasn’t taken in by the hoax at first (in fact, it implies the opposite, at least up until paragraph 4). Seriously, you’re better than this.
UncommonSense
@El Cid:
F***in’ magnets, how do they work?
ExtremeLiberal
Excellent piece, Zandar. I think you are dead on in exposing the “Emoprogs” for who they are…people that qualify everything with “yeah but” or “not unimaginable” or any number of other ways to not give credit to the president or concede that he does have a shitload of support in the country.
You gave a perfect example of it in your piece about Josh typing “not unimaginable” when it is completely unimaginable. The SEIU has been very loyal to the Obama administration and the president has been standing tough against the Republicans who want to rip apart unions in this country, with no fucking help from the emoprogs, that’s for damn sure.
Stories and snark like Josh Marshall’s help the GOP in their quest to weaken the president, whether they know it or not. What pisses me off about these supposed “progressives”, not necessarily Marshall, is how they don’t understand how their sole focus on “holding the president accountable” is helping the Republican meme generators. They love that shit, and use it to further weaken the president and elect Rethugs. It’s one thing to criticize when appropriate, it’s quite another to say shit like “not unimaginable” which basically is a wink and a nod to the Obama haters.
Rihilism
@Robert Waldmann:
Oh, come now, BJ has no standards.
Seriously, the quote from JM on TPM’s front page is:
Zandar was not reading JM’s mind when he suggested that JM stated the bolded section. It certainly appears from that text that JM may think that SEIU’s withdrawal of their endorsement is actually imaginable, based solely on the the apparent “conflicted relationship” between SEUI and the Dems, which, given the current political climate and the fact that apparently nothing newsworthy has happened to indicate a change in the relationship between Obama and the SEIU since the endorsement was given, seems like a pretty weak rationalization for believing such a dramatic move is in the realm of possibilities.
The question is whether it was a throw away line or whether it can be viewed as a symptom of liberal’s desire to despair, always assuming the worst outcome is the most likely. I tend to think the former, but I can certainly understand the frustration with emoprog’s. I just think in this case, it’s probably not warranted.
I like both Zandar and JM. IMO, JM wrote something stupid and Zandar overreacted. But these over the top condemnations of Zandar for daring to besmirch the good name of JM and not living up to BJ standards are just silly…
Knockabout
I did warn all of you.
Glad to see I was proven right and that he’s managed to piss off several dozen of you with his complete lack of integrity and standards. Maybe you’ll listen to me more when I say things like he was fired for gross incompetence and that for the two plus years he was part of our team, he had managed to alienate every single one of his coworkers by being lazy, incompetent, or a liar.
All traits he has demonstrated here, I see.
Hate to be the one who said “I told you so” as he scurries off into whatever little personal hell he has now to lick his wounds, the thin skinned little asshole that he is.
Hey, maybe if enough readers complain, he’ll leave or be forced to.
It’s better this way. I can tell you from experience.
Rihilism
Zandar, my only major problem with your post is this line:
I still think you overacted to JM’s poor use of “certainly not unimaginable”, though do I think that phrase is horribly non-specific and editorially sloppy. But the bolded line is also sloppy and assumes things that are not supported by any evidence.
Rihilism
@Knockabout: You sir or madam, are a total freak….
John N
“Well, judging from the comments, suggesting that Josh Marshall showed his ass by implying that a major union would abandon the President three weeks after giving their endorsement (itself a completely ludicrous implication) makes me an errant schoolchild that needs to be corrected by his betters for starting food fights on our loveable, traditional blog.”
It’s really annoying when writers on blogs do this. This is clearly a ridiculous strawman and has no place, well, anywhere, really.
stinkdaddy
Today I learned that allowing for theoretical possibilities makes one a tool of the right-wingers, and quite possibly a paid Koch operative.