Now that the coverage of the Pope has died down, I found myself in the unfortunate situation of watching Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger on CNN. We have now had more reporting on the WH Tours than we have Dick Cheney’s Office of Special Plans.
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Zifnab
Damn you, liberal media!
bemused
Wolf and Gloria….why would you subject yourself to this?
dance around in your bones
Oh, Jeebus H. Christ, NEVER watch Wolfie and Gloria! I mean, just never.
I’m actually breathing deeply and ginning myself up for watching Tweety (left coast). I find that I can kinda skim over his obnoxious bits like I do here with the trolls that I don’t pie.
But Wolfie is a bridge too far.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, too, The DEFICIT!, Obama’s lack of outreach (has anyone ever heard a Gregory or a Brokaw mention that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner declined to take Obama’s call on election night?), Benghazi (is anyone curious that Pittypat and McPalin seem to no longer believe in a cover up? I guess interest in those commercials flat-lined in So Carolina).
Things we don’t talk about: unemployment, income inequality, climate change, racism, voter suppression, filibusters of judicial nominees at the behest of the NRA (where are you Jake Tapper? Our nation turns its plaintive eyes to you)
gene108
To be fair, Cheney didn’t give out any public information for reporters to report on, with regards to his Office of Special Plans.
There’s plenty more material available publicly for White House Tours.
bemused
@dance around in your bones:
Tweety drives me nuts too, he talks too fast for his brain to kick in. He does have his moments though, such as “Waterboard Cheney to find out why we were in Iraq”.
cmorenc
@John Cole:
You’re voluntarily watching Wolf Blitzer? Is this some modern suburban version of wearing sack cloth and ashes as penance for your worldly sins, both real and imagined?
MattF
“Failed” doesn’t seem strong enough. How about “Sucked through the Gates of Hell and into Satan’s anus.”
Baud
You just couldn’t stand being happy, could you, Cole?
dedc79
One thing that drives me crazy is when people say crap like “I don’t know what happened to CNN. It’s gotten so bad over the past years.” It has been, since it’s very first day, a journalistic abomination. Sure it has gotten worse, but it’s not like it ever had any glory days to reminisce about fondly.
dance around in your bones
@bemused:
I think he’s actually been good lately – calling out the Repubs for their BS and defending Obama. He gets a bit hung up in the horse race aspect of politics (HA!) and that’s when I kinda tune him out. Oh well.
WereBear
@bemused: That was a good one.
Tweety is basically an Id in a suit.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Time to end the disastrous democratic experiment.
Villago Delenda Est
Leslie Blitzer…the guy who who argued with his expert guests about whether or not the “balloon boy” could actually be in the balloon.
“It’s not a question of if he can fit into it, it’s a simple question of weight ratios, Wolf…”
sharl
One of the few media folks who seems to even remember Dick Cheney these days is kinda-sorta media person Harry Shearer, via his satirical “Dick Cheney Confidential” bits (e.g., scroll down here) on his Le Show radio program (for those of us who appreciate non-lethal doses of The Grim and The Melancholy mixed in with some humor).
Suffern ACE
Well, my FB feed is aflutter with the $1.8 Billion for Obamavacations while the President ruined my vacation to DC.
I didn’t know so many people were planning to go to DC over the next few months…
MattF
@dedc79: I used to watch it when they had that slightly cross-eyed reporter– but after she was gone, it was a lot less amusing.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: He stabbed himself in the hand last night. Why not this?
FoxinSocks
I don’t know why they’re so obsessed with the White House tours when thousands of Americans are losing their jobs and suffering because of the sequester.
I guess the lack of White House tours is somehow personally annoying to them? Maybe it’s an instance of ‘see no evil’ and the loss of the tours is a constant reminder that everything isn’t all right.
dance around in your bones
@Suffern ACE:
Well now, see – that’s why you should not have a Facebook feed at all!
At least, that’s why I don’t.
Gin & Tonic
@dedc79: Uh, I dunno. Gulf War I, Peter Arnett in Baghdad with 100 large sewn into his coat. Bernard Shaw? I don’t think things were that shabby.
Suffern ACE
@dedc79: I don’t know. At one point it was nice to have a news broadcast (not opinion shows!) on a 1/2 hour loops, changed a few times daily.
Violet
@FoxinSocks: No one is losing jobs. The sequester is a big fat nothing. At least that’s what wingnuts say.
Hill Dweller
Today’s WH press briefing was mostly about the WH tours.
The ABC hack brought up the cost of Obama playing golf relative to closing the WH tours. It was word for word a Republican talking point.
The flap over the WH tours is another example of the wingnuts leading the Village around by the nose.
jamick6000
It’s hard for me to imagine the white house tours thing becoming a thing, but I guess if conservatives are talking about it..
bemused
@dance around in your bones:
Yes, he will have a longish streak of making good sense and then say something incredibly goofy but that’s Tweety. He does like the sound of his own voice…a lot. Recently, I had a good laugh when I heard him say he never brags or talks up himself or something like that.
Sometimes, I yell at him to shut up, quit interrupting and let people finish what they were saying. He goes off on other tangents, his brain on speed and I have to laugh at the panel’s faces. They don’t have any idea where he is going either.
FoxinSocks
@Violet:
Many wingnuts also believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and that Obama was born in Kenya, your point? There’s real pain and the media is determined to ignore it.
FlyingToaster
John, you do know that there are other channels on the TV, right? Try to watch something that isn’t a 24-hr cable news channel. Please. The powers-that-be don’t even make Bradley Manning watch this shit.
bemused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Grunwald got that right.
Violet
@FoxinSocks: Wingnuts lead the media around by the nose, as Hill Dweller pointed out. So if they say there are no job losses and the sequester hurts no one, then that’s what the media will report. Yes, the media ignores it. They live in a bubble where no one they know is suffering. Did you expect something different?
Trollhattan
Don’t look now, but there’s another Romney considering a run for office. The heck with that clan’s odd kid names? Ronna Romney?
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130312/POLITICS03/303120459#ixzz2NSeGGzy2
kindness
John needs to quit his job as Ring Leader of the 3 ring BJ Circus and get a real job if he’s reduced to watching CNN.
Dude, go back to smoking pot.
FoxinSocks
@Violet:
Yes. I know it’s an uphill battle, but even if I don’t succeed, I think we should do our best to change the narrative. First, by talking about the pain the sequester is causing and by clearly linking it to the Republicans. Second, by calling our reps and continuing to apply pressure.
I can’t just give up, this is hurting my family too much.
max
Now that the coverage of the Pope has died down, I found myself in the unfortunate situation of watching Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger on CNN.
Dude. That’s what the internet is for. I watched the Vatican TV feed on the CNN website. Listening to some dude rattling on in Italian was way better than
annoyingawfulhideous felching news hosts.max
[‘The trick is to reflexively hit mute all the time. This cures many symptoms of teevee-induced diseases.’]
fuckwit
BRIGHT SHINY OBJECT!! LOOOKEE LOOKEE HERE!!!! PREEEETTTYY!!!!
Fucking media.
dance around in your bones
@bemused:
That’s one of my pet peeves with Tweety, is his going on and on and on with his questions (for his ‘guests’) and never letting them answer. He will sort of ask and answer his own questions. He’s kinda entranced with his own voice.
But I think he has a more open mind than most ‘journalists’, and I love the way he laughs, so I still watch the dude.
Now Wolfie? Fuggadaboutit. Insufferable.
Maude
@kindness:
You do know John has a real job and that the blog is a hobby, right?
Baud
The response to the White House tour issue is easy: Pass Obama’s plan to end the sequester or STFU.
Why waste words?
Violet
@FoxinSocks: A day or so ago I was in the car and caught the very end of some morning program on NPR–might have been Diane Rehm. They were talking about the sequester/budget/deficit stuff and said that President Obama’s approval ratings had dropped “significantly” in the last few weeks and that a new poll showed that the American people trusted Republicans on the deficit more than Democrats.
I do not know how to fix stupid.
geg6
Holy fuck, Cole. How can you watch those assholes? Reverend Al is more reality based than both of those two put together. And Tweety will be on soon and he’s been on a bit of a roll lately, just taking the GOP to the woodshed continuously and calling out their utter insanity. Yeah, he’s annoying in many ways, but he’s one of the few pundtwits whose gotten more liberal lately.
ETA: Oh, and it looks like I get my new family member next Saturday. Thanks to BJ!
Baud
@Violet:
You don’t. You defeat it.
Hill Dweller
@Violet: The recent WaPo poll has Obama leading by just 4 points on who to trust on the economy(that was before the Ryan budget), but that is the only good news for the wingnuts.
Only 29% approve of congressional Republicans(74% of independents and 81% of moderates disapprove of Republicans).
People blame Republicans for the sequester by 14 points more than Obama.
Original Lee
@FoxinSocks: I’m still trying to figure that out, too. Apparently the White House tours are supposed to continue because it’s The People’s House, and instead the three calligraphers should be laid off and the President and his family need to staycation for a while.
Mike G
Didn’t Texas Chimp shut down White House tours for years after 9/11?
Was there any Villager wailing and rending of garments back then?
dance around in your bones
Ok, so instead of watching Tweety I ran across Pulp Fiction on the TV machine and right now am watching Uma and Travolta doing the twist contest.
{{{spoiler}}} They’re gonna win!
MUCH more entertaining than that bird!
ETA: PLUS! I remember when our daughter got married, that was the song my husband wanted to play when they did the dance – “It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well” etc etc – even tho they weren’t teenagers. Gads, memories…
Original Lee
Well, John, you could be reading Drudge. Apparently everybody is now mad at Michelle Obama because she’s throwing herself a massive birthday party on the taxpayers’ dime.
Um, what? I think the Obamas pay for this stuff out of pocket, don’t they?
JoyfulA
@Violet: Just listened to my R rep’s telephone town hall. Callers were bitching about the 20% paycut for civilian DoD employees and a cutoff of military tuition.
maya
So, who has the biggest, shiniest, spikiest gate in the Village community? Woflie, Gloria or Tweety?
Baud
@JoyfulA:
Best news I’ve heard all day.
jnfr
I had the opportunity to take a White House tour in 2011, and it was an incredible experience, one I treasure.
But it wasn’t more important than the years of my childhood I spent going hungry. There would have been many more years without the federal AFDC program. And the 775,000 women and children being thrown off the WIC program are more important than the people who won’t get their White House tour. I’m sorry for that disappointment, but nothing like I am for the people who are actually getting crushed in this fake austerity drive.
Of course none of it will touch our masters in D.C., so you won’t hear about how it’s hurting the unemployed. They’re only whining about the tours because constituents are complaining. The poor are too busy starving to complain.
MazeDancer
While journalism is usually extinct, The Ed Show tonight is riveting. Scott Prouty the guy who filmed the 47% video of Mitt – yes, he was part of the staff at the dinner – is the entire hour.
It’s remarkable TV. And Mr. Prouty is an amazingly impressive patriot. DVR the replay, watch it online later.
Somehow I had missed the detail that the fundraiser was 50K a plate for each of the attendees.
Prouty also said it was the remarks about China that made him eventually decide to try to make the video public.
gopher2b
The sad party about this is the outrage probably started with angry constituents calling their Congressperson because their Spring Break trip to DC is ruined. RUINED!!!
Guns? No
Global Warming? No
Civil Liberties? No
Every growing security state? No
“Can’t wait in line for 2 1/2 hours to see the Blue Room!!!! I’m completely %&$& outraged. For Christ’s sake, it’s on the teevee and I want to see it in real life!!! I’m calling my Congressperson!”
Yutsano
@geg6: YAY NEW PUPPEH!! I know Koda is gonna have a great home with you and John! :D
kd bart
Wolf Blitzer: The low fat vanilla of the DC press corp.
kindness
@Maude: My apologies for this late response.
You are aware of this thing called snark are you not? My statement was full of snark. Except my advice that he go back to smoking pot. I meant that. It makes CNN much more tolerable and really, if you were high, you’d do the right thing and change the channel.