Corporate whore and totebag hero Adam Davidson has one of the worst New York Times pieces I’ve ever read. His point: Obama’s and Romney’s economics policies will be exactly the same because
Both men strongly support expanding free trade and maintaining close to the same level of Social Security and welfare benefits.
Romney’s running mate would turn Medicare into a voucher program. How is that not a big difference?
You can read the S.H.A.M.E. project profile of Davidson here. Here’s a snippet:
Over the years, Davidson has boosted for the Iraq War and whitewashed the occupation of Iraq, praised sweatshop labor and “experimenting on the poor,” attacked the idea of regulating Wall Street, parroted libertarian propaganda about the government’s inability to directly create jobs, argued for “squeezing the middle class,” and shamelessly fawned over Wall Street for allegedly blessing Americans with “just about anything that makes you happy.”
[….]In May 2009, in the heat of the banking industry’s massive pushback, Davidson essentially mugged Elizabeth Warren, the chief architect of the financial consumer protection bill, in an interview that took a sharp and bizarre hostile turn early on. Davidson surprised Warren and his own listeners with uncharacteristic personal smears, trying to portray her as a clueless, power-hungry ideologue. Davidson’s attack on Warren was so out of line and uncharacteristically hostile that it sparked a torrent of criticism from NPR listeners who couldn’t understand why Davidson or NPR would do such a thing. Keep in mind, this was in the spring of 2009, when unemployment was still shooting through the roof, the future of the economy was in doubt, and talk of a 1930s-style Great Depression-2 was still front and center.
I know you get sick of me using the word “totebagger”. Once someone here pointed out it’s hard not to Godwin when you’re taking about hippies Nazis. It’s just as hard not to totebag when you’re talking about NPR.
Punchy
What the fuck is a “totebagger”?
Ktanxbuy.
Betsy
CAN someone please take the NBC video clip in the thread below off auto-play?
Betsy
CAN someone please take the NBC video clip in the thread below off auto-play?
Schlemizel
@Punchy:
off-handed ref to the Nice Polite Republicans who often give away totebags to people who send then money during one of their quarterly begging periods.
Yutsano
Nice Polite Republiccans indeed.
Balconesfault
How does Davidson really know what Mitt supports?
I sure as hell don’t … although I know the error bars take us into some territory I really really don’t like.
LittlePig
NPR is so worried about the damn pittance they get from the government that when that ax falls they will be shocked to discover that the “oh, well, our listeners will kick in the difference” expectation has been kicked in the ‘nads.
How damn stupid do you have be to figure out THEY WON’T EVER LIKE YOU, even if Rush becomes the sole host of All Things Considered? Meanwhile they keep pissing on their base.
The New Coke debacle is now in textbooks for a reason.
Schlemizel
@Betsy:
Its my understanding that almost nothing can be done about the ads here (or anywhere on the tubes really). John could go to a begging mode I suppose but that would mean quarterly campaigns, which might lead to totebages!!
Ben Franklin
Here’s the money shot…
Crudely speaking, Franklin D. Roosevelt shifted the nation to the left during the ’30s, and the nation has spent the last four decades moving slightly right. We are now in the process of fine-tuning
Fine tuning…heh.
jrg
@Schlemizel: Firefox has an ad blocker add-on.
I hated to do it, but when BJ started howling at me about a free $1000 Walmart gift card a couple of years ago, I finally did.
It also helps keep malicious code from running in your browser.
Schlemizel
@LittlePig:
I have given up on their weekend ‘news’ programing as it has become Brooks levels of shitty. Car Talk, Wait, Wait, This American life and PHC are still worth listening to but the ‘magazine’ style shows On The Media, About Faith and whatever that dreadful weekend America thing is that they do are not worth the time.
I had a fairly hot exchange with the host of that last one (whos name escapes me) back when they claimed that the Dems had no alternative to Bush’s plans for Iraq. I called him on it & got several large loads of BS back that always started with “well, yes, the Dems DO have an alternative but its not like the GOP plan at all”
Shawn in ShowMe
Davidson thinks most Americans consider an additional $500 billion in tax cuts to 120,000 rich families a rounding error? Must be getting his info from Rasmussen.
Schlemizel
@jrg:
Me too although I white list BJ. I meant there was nothing the site can do about a lot of this sludge. But I should have mentioned ad blocker. thanks
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@LittlePig:
This, a thousand times this. When I tell people I’ll never give a dime to public radio and they say “but you want to support your local station”, my answer is “no if any dime of their money goes to pay for NPR programming.
Fuck. NPR. I stopped giving in the late 90s during their craptastic coverage (hah, coverage, that’s a joke) of the Clinton impeachment and *nothing* they’ve done in the decade plus since then has ever convinced me to start donating again.
Corey
That SHAME piece is really terrible, DougJ, and you’re usually smarter than getting gamed by tools like Mark Ames. I’m surprised.
taylormattd
Oh Doug, when will you ever learn?
It’s not a difference, because this one time in a speech, Bill Clinton mentioned Simpson-Bowles.
Therefore, Linus Lucy football shit sandwich hippy punch throw under bus slap in face.
artem1s
OT but if you are inclined, CSPAN Radio is broadcasting Senator Sherrod Brown’s debate today against Josh Mandel.
catclub
@Shawn in ShowMe: Intentionally misreading the writer isn’t that helpful.
But it worked for Mitt Romney and Obama’s ‘you didn’t build that’ statement, so why not adopt it here.
aimai
I’ll be working the polls, hopefully as a poll watcher for the Warren campaign on election day. Here in MA we don’t have early voting as a right–you have to sign an affidavit that you can’t make it to the polls that day so we can’t vote bank early which would have been a huge benefit. I’m happy to finally be doing something but this race is just too damned close and the attacks on Warren are just at the sweet spot: meaningless but mean that makes rebutting them really hard. Brown settled on this weird charge “she’s not who she says she is” and managed to transform a life which has been an open book and really quite calm and banal into something creepy. When, of course, its Brown who is fully funded by the financial services industry and who represents interests he never discusses in public.
aimai
Tractarian
OT:
Astute political observer Andrew Sullivan at 11:38 AM:
Sullivan at 12:17 PM:
Great. So as long as Obama stops running from his record, and stops protecting his record, he should be all set for tomorrow!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not me, and I am one! I don’t listen to Planet Money, but the Juan Williams case I think identifies the problem with NPR, pretty much simple Villagitis.
The two issues where Romney would essentially be acting alone, the Supreme Court (I like Harry Reid more than most of the left blogosphere, but I don’t know if he could mobilize a filibuster) and foreign policy are what make him truly fucking dangerous.
on the subject of NPR: Has This American Life gotten worse over the last year or so, or have I just gotten tired of the schtick?
amk
@taylormattd: lol @ the firegabagger line at the end
Eric U.
I used to give regularly to NPR until they screwed Gore so badly. Every once in a while the local station calls me, and I tell them when they stop being a republican propaganda outfit, I’ll give them money. It’s just for fun, they aren’t going to stop. I used to get really annoyed during fund drive weeks, now I don’t listen so there is no problem with that.
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@Corey:
I linked to a New York Observer piece that rated the S.H.A.M.E. piece as generally fair. There may have been parts of the piece that were over-the-top but the parts that I excerpted are correct in my opinion.
gene108
@Punchy:
NPR listeners, who get totebags as donation gifts and also are enraptured with the idea that “both sides do it”, as NPR tries to prove to Republicans that they too are “fare and balanced”.
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@taylormattd:
ha ha ha ha
taylormattd
@amk: It’s their main complaint about the black guy right now, that he is going to end Social Security when he is re-elected.
Upper West
Doug —
I will never tire of you or anyone using the term “totebagger.” But I think the commenters above don’t have the definition exactly right. (btw — it should be, but is not yet in the BJ Lexicon — and would fit perfectly right before “Toxic Victim Syndrome.”)
Totebaggers are not NPR management, but subscribers who get totebags, mugs and t-shirts and believe they are listening to wise people when they hear David Brooks, Tom Friedman or other hacks on NPR or Public TV. Apparently, DougJ is surrounded by them.
I heard snippets of NPR coverage yesterday, and they were busy banging the drum for the Republicans on Benghazi.
amk
@taylormattd: Though you omitted catfood, a dkos fav.
schrodinger's cat
Adam Davidson, I see pernicious lies under his byline repeatedly. He is like the Bobo of financial news, i.e. regurgitating Republican talking points under the guise of a disinterested observer.
some guy
@Corey:
care to supply some evidence for your assertion, sweetie?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Upper West: I would add: Social liberals who feel like they really should vote Democrat, but are looking for excuses to vote for lowering their own taxes, or what they think their tax rate is
(Watching a clip of Uncle Brokaw on NBC yesterday, calling for ‘everyone to sacrifice’, which means to the (I’m confident in guessing) hundred million dollar man, ‘cutting social security’
Violet
I think he’s been using McMegan’s calculator.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think there is some topical medication for that.
some guy
this is the ur Davidson story:
rightwing conspiracies: check
disseminating disinformation: check
self-justification for propaganda: check
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Brachiator:
If so, then I’m sure the pharma company that makes it underwrites NPR programming.
If cleaning up Villagitis were that easy…
Cris (without an H)
I don’t get that. It’s hard not to Godwin when you’re talking about Republicans, whose policies often seem quite nostalgic for the NSDAP. I’m not sure I see the hippie thing though.
Shawn in ShowMe
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
The typical NPR listener is 55 years old, makes $86,000, is white and believes both sides do it. In other words NPR programming targets upper middle class moderates who are close to retirement. Outside of the 1%, that’s the most comfortable group in America.
If NPR were too responsive to the concerns of the unwashed, partisan masses, they would alienate their base and their corporate sponsors. See America, Air.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@LittlePig: I cut them off as both a listener and contributor in 2003, when they decided to go all in backing the war.
Count me as being not too upset about the prospect of Romney putting a bullet in the head of their bullshit faux liberalism. That’s just about the only thing that I don’t get too upset about regarding Mitt’s Fabulous New Mormon America plan, but that’s for another time. Fuck NPR.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Schlemizel:
Scott Simon, prime defender of Juan Williams and general all around Obama hater? I quit listening to his show when he was interviewing a middle-aged woman, 50+, who had gone back to college and taken an unpaid internship as part of her new career plan. It was a serious story and the woman was clearly taking some drastic steps to get through a hard time in her life. Simon insisted on simpering, cutesy questions treating her as if they were in on the same joke, “Have you met any boys?”. It was appalling.
Cris (without an H)
You probably live in a market where you have a choice. Out here in the vast expanses, we have a fantastic station with a significant chunk of locally produced programming, the only place on the dial in most towns to hear classical, jazz, folk, environmental news, and even Noam Fucking Chomsky.
But they also air All Things Considered, so I guess I should pull my contribution and let them starve so I can go back to a full time diet of classic rock, Christian ministries, and Rush Limbaugh.
Felanius Kootea
OT – but don’t know if someone has already mentioned the CEO who sent his employees a letter essentially saying they’ll lose their jobs if Obama wins the election.
hitchhiker
I heard that Warren/Davidson thing at the time . . . he was truly ugly with her. This was when Planet Money was getting a lot of attention for being able to cutely explain the concept of credit default swaps while 750,000 people were losing their jobs every month.
As far as All Things Considered and the Morning Edition, that’s been over for such a long time. I turned them off for good the day they had Karl fucking Rove on the air, talking and joking just as if he weren’t an evil person bent on destroying everything I care about.
I could listen to Rush and get that.
ranchandsyrup
Quit NPR back in the summer after the “Joe Olivo is the only small businessman” thingy. Much much much happier. Got into it with the NPR Ombudsman (who is a sorry excuse for a sentient being), who tried to say that NPR really didn’t do anything wrong.
Violet
OT–this is interesting:
Mitt can’t handle strong women. He wants women to be obedient. If they don’t, he doesn’t know how to handle it, especially in an on-camera situation where it would be politically damaging for him to be domineering.
I used to work for a misogynist like Mitt. I know that type.
chopper
so would romney, at least based on his answer in the first debate. now ryan also talks about privatizing social security, which i’m not sure even romney is stupid enough to agree with. but i’ve been wrong about that before.
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: He can’t face the women of the View, what a manly man he is. Has any body noticed how orange Mitt looks these days? Does he really think that fake tan will endear him to the Latino voters?
Violet
Relevant article in NYMag by Jonathan Chait about the Ryan plan and getting rid of Medicare and how fast it would happen.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat: He just looks creepy all around. I saw a clip on a morning news show of Mitt at some campaign rally yesterday. His hair at the front was limp and stringy and kind of flying around in the wind. He looked like what central casting would pick for the pedophile character. It was creepy.
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@Cris (without an H):
I meant to say Nazis. They must be linked in my head.
Brachiator
@Violet:
In general, the GOP appears to have a game plan ready to put in place if they win, and a strategy for obstruction if they lose. The Dems, on the other hand (apart from Obama himself), seem to be surprised that they are any part of the government.
If the president wins in November, and the Dems make any gains in Congress, they have got to move faster and more decisively.
Ash Can
@Violet:
Lulz. I wonder if that was his decision or the campaign managers’.
Violet
@Ash Can: Maybe they’re afraid off how the debate will go and want him to be in friendly crowds.
LD50
@Cris (without an H):
Unless you’re a teabagger, why bother listening to the radio at all?
gene108
@Cris (without an H):
Is there a way to designate what your donation is used for?
I know with some charities, you can designate funds for a particular disaster or specific project they are working on.
Like you said, there’s some local programming I’d support and even a couple of national programs – Science Fridays on ToN or Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me – but I’d rather starve a lot of the other programs.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Rosie Perez mentioned this in her devastating Mitt takedown posted here recently.
Yutsano
@Violet: Well Joy Behar can be shrill. And Lizzy Hasselbeck can only carry Willard so far.
Ash Can
@Violet: I’m sure that someone’s afraid he’ll come off as a complete dick/pants-wetter/drooling moron/all of the above in the face of the questions he’s likely to get from the women on the View, which is of course a fair assumption. I’m just wondering whose assumption it is.
Hill Dweller
Speaking of shitty journalists, I just read Charlie Pierce’s Monday takedown of the Sunday shows.
Brokaw apparently claimed both campaigns thought the VP debate was a draw on substance, but the American people, who are upset about partisanship, didn’t like Biden’s behavior.
Brokaw also pretended to be a surrogate for “a lot major business leaders” when saying they wanted Romney elected and they weren’t ideological.
Brokaw is a hapless charlatan.
jimmiraybob
I consider myself more of a NPR coffee-cupper, never having gone for a tote bag. I like to think of the coffee-cupper as more of the Joe sixpack, coffee-not-Latte NPRer.
I should point out though, that I’m not throwing my totebagger brothers and sisters under the bus. We stand united.
Schlemizel
@Tractarian:
My advice to Obama on this matter is the same advice I will gladly give you – IGNORE THE FUCK OUT OF THAT FUCKING FUCK SULLY!
that is all
the Conster
@Hill Dweller:
I don’t know anyone who watches those shows, and I’m in the demographic they’re after. I think the audience is just other Villagers, really, in which case Brokaw is just doing the sock puppetry for his, and their corporate masters.
Upper West
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am really tired of people telling me they are “social liberals” but “economic conservatives.” Exactly what does that mean? Probably, “I like abortion but don’t want my tax money to go to poor people.”
But these people are as big or bigger suckers than the Thomas Frank “Kansas” working class voter who votes GOP. Unless they are making over $800,000, they are likely getting screwed by the AMT. Even if they are not subject to the AMT, any Bush tax cut they have gotten has been offset by cuts in college aid, education, etc.
Further, unless they are wealthy, their taxes are mostly going up to the very rich or defense or tax scams like Romney’s much more than down to the “47%.”
But even if they are getting a marginal gain from GOP tax policies, they morally bankrupt because they are considering on only their (perceived) self-interest and don’t care, e.g., that 50 million are uninsured, about global warming, about wars, etc.
So I have to resist the temptation, to say go fuck yourself when someone tells me “I’m social liberal, but economically conservative.”
schrodinger's cat
@Upper West: I think most of the MSM coverage fits into that box, socially liberal but economically conservative.
Schlemizel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
THANKS for reminding me!
BTW – just to be fair, both Money Plannuts and that Simons show are produced by Pubic Radio International. PRI grew out of Minnesota Public Radio who has more money that god & spends it to buy radio stations all over the Mid-West & even in LA (they own LA Public Radio).
It is run by the Wayzata Yacht Club crowd (think Gross Point in Mich as more people are familiar with that place probably). They really are the nicest Republicans you could ever want to meet. Not racist, not really anti-social & they do feel some sense of noblesse oblige that makes them at once better than 99% of the GOP and also insufferable.
Schlemizel
BTW – those Wazata clubbers? Full of names you would know right off from funding shout outs if not from the family business
Pillbury
McKnight (Children of 3M & Honeywell)
Bush (not THOSE Bushies but the Bush family foundation)
some Daytons
ThresherK
@LittlePig: Now, now, LittlePig, I’m sure the next self-debasing groveling apology from NPR is the one which will make the right-wing stop beating them.
Seriously, though, if I’m a right-winger media hack who needs that IV drip of “How They are wasting YourTaxDohlerz”, I’d say it’s well worth giving a hobbled, piss-pants scared of being liberal NPR, getting 2.x% of their annual budget.
The right’s need to howl in victimization is so vast, and the payoff, the whining they get to do, is so outsized compared to the actual monetary cost, why would they ever want to change that?
The GOP reminds me of an octogenarian relative who was described as “not being happy unless he had something to complain about”.
Kay S
@Schlemizel:
You must never listen to “On the Media,” or you wouldn’t trash it. Listen to it and learn something. It can be astonishingly informative.
Kay S
@Schlemizel:
You must never listen to “On the Media,” or you wouldn’t trash it. Listen to it and learn something. It can be astonishingly informative.
Cris (without an H)
Not really. Our station is pretty good about listening to people’s feedback, and lots of people like to list what they do and don’t like when they send their pledge, but it’s not binding.
Public radio membership is a lot like Democratic Party membership. You have a polyglot of interests, with a lot of questionable elements and just plain bad ones mixed in with the good progressive components. We have to change the organization from within, and we don’t get anywhere by ragequitting in the name of purity. It’s frustrating, it’s compromised, and we always feel like we’re getting steamrolled by corporate interests. But we have to get active, stay involved, keep making our voices heard, and remember that however bad it looks, the alternative is worse.
Betsy
@Schlemizel: No, it’s the Saturday Night Live clip in one of the posts — not an ad.
catclub
@gene108: “Is there a way to designate what your donation is used for?”
Why not ask the group you are considering? They might _know_.
ThresherK
@Cris (without an H): Hey, I’ll check out MTPR.org.
As long as it’s okay to pimp public radio stations which have distanced themselves from the NPR mothership, I encourage you to head over to WAMC.org or CPBN.org sometime.
I happened on WAMC when, up north of Albany in the summer of ’98, I heard this one guy saying “Bill Clinton is being hunted, it’s all bullcrap, and the people who call themselves journalists and are clutching their pearls over this sex act are an embarrassment.”
Until that point I wondered if anyone who could say stuff like that, then, could ever get on radio except in a call-in show.
trollhattan
@Kay S:
It’s a very good show and occasionally, essential. Have always thought TDS is at their best when dissecting the media and that’s what OTM does, weekly.
Betsy
Oh, how I despise Scott Simon. His Saturday-morning lowbrow humor — his chuckling anti-intellectualism — his discomfort with anything that’s tootoomuch.
AA+ Bonds
Thanks for posting the S.H.A.M.E. link. S.H.A.M.E. kicks ass.
Chris
@Upper West:
And when they get to the voting booth and have to choose between the two and it’s a choice between screwing the billionaire and screwing the inner city single mother, guess who the “socially liberal but fiscally conservative!” crowd throws under the bus ninety-nine percent of the time?
Reklam
@Upper West: Dead on accurate. “I am ok with LGBT (only look down a little); I am pro-choice – for Lena Dunham types philosophically and ‘teh poors’ pragmatically; & maybe even anti-death penalty – though pro-Guiliani/Bratton/Kelly and 3 strikes and maybe not even anti-Rockefeller drug laws” But anything that impinges on their status in the Outer Party and “transfers”/fair chance to “moochers” is wrong!
So I think Totebagger is a locution that surpasses Post-Punk David Broder and should stay.
Another Halocene Human
@Shawn in ShowMe:
If Air America’s product sucked so much, why is their best host now a US Senator and their 2nd best host (she’s improved so much, bless her heart) now a prime-time cable news anchor/opinionator?
We’re lucky to have MSNBC by grace of our corporate overlord for now, until they decide to pull the plug again. It’s not about money, it’s about power, it’s not about ratings, it’s about toy sales. That’s why the hotly popular STATIC SHOCK cartoon got canned. The mass TV audience and all the awards it got weren’t pushing enough plastic crap from China.
If MSNBC ever started in deep on the environmental/energy extraction issues we’re facing as a nation, their fossil fuel underwriters would toss them off the air.
Reklam
@Another Halocene Human: I think you two (and I) agree.
Don’t forget Marc Maron going from Air America to WTFPodcast.
Look their primary goal isn’t news. It isn’t making money via news directly either. We all know that…well, not NPR totebaggers probably…
Reasonable 4ce
@Punchy:
Also too: New Yorkers who voted for Giuliani and Bloomberg (and are probably deluding themselves into believing Romneytron 2.1 is a “centrist”) are a big subset of the Totebagger species.
Jebediah
OT but if you all haven’t seen it today’s Google doodle is fantastic.
Cris (without an H)
I’d like to add that the great thing about “local public radio station” vs “NPR” is that there actually is a marketplace with actual competition.
Gone are the days when NPR is the only content option for a public radio station; a lot of popular programming, including stuff that used to be distributed by NPR itself, now comes from PRI and American Public Media. The real niche where NPR still seems to have dominance is in all-day news, but I imagine you could even get around that with the BBC World Service.
burnspbesq
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
When your local public radio station craters, I DO NOT want to hear one fucking word from you.
dance around in your bones
I have to say I listened to Air America religiously when I lived in Mexico – the only other English language AM stations you could get were Rush and Savage and Beck and etc, and Air America was a breath of fresh air (pun intended). Could only get NPR if I did a convoluted dance with the wire antennas in the living room, and it was rarely worth it.
Al Franken and Randi Rhodes and Sam Seder and Thom Hartmann and Rachel Maddow were…. the best.