Reader J sent me a whole bunch of links this morning, but this one, from Alex Seitz-Wald at the National Journal, should be taught in Journalism schools across the country as an example of shitty narrative-based journalism.
Let’s start with the click bait headline: “How Adam Lanza Wrecked Obama’s Second Term”. Perhaps it’s just my peevish nature and small mind, but as far as I’m concerned there’s a special place in hell for anyone who decides to juxtapose the name of a loathsome child murderer with a decent public servant (of any party) just to get a few more hits on the Internet. That guy’s name should be mentioned as little as possible, and you should spit after you say it.
But, if you can get past the headline, here’s the heart of the argument:
Immigration was in an almost impossible bipartisan sweet spot: a singularly important policy goal for Democrats that could be a political boon for both parties. For Republicans, it was a way to fix a demographic problem revealed by the 2012 election. Still, they’d have to move quickly. The populist Right that had torpedoed immigration reform under George W. Bush seemed quieted by defeat, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
Then Lanza’s rampage altered the debate in Washington. Suddenly, priority No. 1 wasn’t immigration reform but gun control. The base that had just elected Obama was clamoring for background checks and magazine-clip restrictions, threatening to desert the president before his second inauguration. […]
Yes, it was the dirty fucking hippies who killed immigration reform. The nativist right “seemed quieted” (to whom? the deaf?), so Obama had his moment. If only those fucking hippies had shut up and tolerated a grotesque massacre of children, the DREAM act would have sailed through Congress.
How can someone who has functioning eyes and ears, and a neural pathway between them, believe this garbage? It’s been clear all along that immigration reform would live or die in the House, that the House is dominated by a band of zealots who have no intention of risking a Tea Party primary challenge, and that one sure way to encourage Tea Party challenger would be to champion “amnesty”, as it would be called in the campaign ads.
The distasteful fact that this piece is dancing around is that Republicans have been looking for excuses to kill immigration reform for years. (Here’s the previous effort that used Obamacare as an excuse.) Apparently under the reign of Ron Fournier, it’s also the National Journal’s job to help them make excuses, or at least create distractions.
aimai
Basically, this, in its entirety. And you are right about just how loathesome it is and how much it shifts the blame from a right wing (root and branch) who don’t want immigration reform at any price to the very people who are trying to make things better–as though the motives and the tools of those two groups weren’t also widely dissimilar.
Betty
What’s lower than pond scum? Need to find an appropriate designation for this guy.
dedc79
Sometimes I find myself thinking that they’re all playing a game of madlibs with a very limited vocabulary to choose from.
SnarkyShark
Ilike the way you seem to still think facts and reason matter to these people. Its cute the same way a kid believes in Santa Claus. Not so cute when the kid turns twenty. Facts and reason.
c u n d gulag
This isn’t even good enough to be tripe.
It’s what comes out after going through what makes up tripe, and comes out of the sphincter.
Cervantes
The author, Alex Seitz-Wald, works at the Center for American Progress in some capacity.
Which reminds me: I heard yesterday that John Podesta is going back to the White House to serve as a presidential advisor.
Ash Can
This doesn’t even make any fucking sense. A functioning government can’t address more than one issue at once? The Democratic voting base determines the Congressional agenda? That whole business with the Teahadis shutting down the government single-handedly because they have the fucking Speaker of the House on a leash never happened? Demands for gun control spoil everything?
What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty: Fish feces. Unlike pond scum, they sink to the bottom.
cmorenc
Fournier’s journalistic style of spinning cause-and-effect reminds me of the way many southern journalists 50+ years ago crafted editorial rationales for moving glacially, if at all, in beginning to dismantle segregation. The point is NOT that Fournier is pushing any racist points of view (he isn’t) but rather the way he seizes on an endless string of spuriously connected reasons why something that should be done can’t be done. Back 50+ years ago, it was those “outside agitators” that were making it difficult for whites and
negroesblacks to find ways to get along harmoniously, now it’s pushing for limiting firearms to homicidally insane folks that’s making it difficult for lawmakers to arrive at reasonable immigration reforms.dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Ash Can:
This one really gets to me. In addition to the love of THE narrative (not multiples), it’s also more excuse making for Congress, (or the Senate, really). It takes 47 cloture votes to pass one bill so in essence DC can only do one thing at a time. It doesn’t have to be that way.
gratuitous
Mr. Fournier’s next six reasons (in no particular order) why the House Republicans scuttled some bit of law-making in pursuit of some further demagoguery, but that he doesn’t want to give the game away:
1. It was too hot;
2. It was too cold;
3. The Yankees didn’t beat the Red Sox;
4. The Red Sox didn’t beat the Yankees;
5. The Super Bowl is being played in cold weather;
6. Uhhhhm. Oh! Benghazi, of course!
OzarkHillbilly
@cmorenc:
Not even the NRA wants only the homicidal lunatics to be the only armed people. ;-)
cmorenc
Unfortunately, the implicit premise of Fournier’s argument (focus on gun control killed chances for immigration reform) is widely shared among the mainstream media, to wit: at any given time, there is a finite limited supply of political oxygen available, and it’s only enough to permit legislative focus on one major issue at a time. Therefore, when progressives allocated substantial precious political oxygen to gun control issues post-Newton, that left immigration reform too oxygen-starved to succeed, and hence it died of hypoxia until at least after the next election cycle.
It’s not just Fournier who accepts this premise, it’s most of the mainstream media and many politicians themselves who accept the theory of limited political oxygen as as fundamental a principle as the law of conservation of energy in physics.
RaflW
The National Journal is pretty useless. But I noticed that Taegan “Affilate commissions are sometimes earned for products mentioned” Goddard had linked to this Sietz-Wald tripe yesterday.
I went off in the comments.
His minute by minute digest of conventional political “wisdom” is the stuff the Village pays attention to. Interestingly, so far, it seems that progs troll Political Wire more/better than the wingers.
But still, Alex’s piece was shite. For one thing, second term presidents nearly always have a harder time with their agenda. They passed (or failed to pass) the signature bits they first ran on lo those 5 or 6 years ago. the second round never has the same energy.
But to blame Obama for poisoning the well, which he squarely does, for responding to a national tragedy. Huh. Tells you how sick the country is, and how the right and the NRA have so totally locked the gun conversation that modest reform, that even then fails, well, all comity is off, fella!
Bullshit. All comity was off at about minute 3 of Obama’s first term. And it was the right that shat the bed.
Cervantes
@cmorenc: You’re misreading Seitz-Wald (not Fournier, by the way). He’s not making a “political oxygen” argument. He seems to be saying that the Republicans, weakened by their loss to Obama, might have been somewhat inclined to compromise on immigration — whereas gun control was a bridge too far:
I think the argument is pretty much delusional — Republican goodwill is an oxymoron and has been for a while.
Linda Featheringill
@Betty:
Pond scum actually has a place in the ecology and performs a service.
We need a new term for bad people and for those who suck up to bad people.
MattF
It’s always something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FFyYNNoxlY
Cervantes
@Linda Featheringill: Do we need a new term? “Bad people” works for me.
agrippa
There is no connection.
That article does not make sense.
Cassidy
But how is the NSA the bad guy in all this? There has to be a way their evil fingers were involved?
Mike in NC
@Linda Featheringill: We used to have a saying in the Navy, “Lower than whale shit”. Fits Ronnie and his pals, I’d think.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
ACA poisoned the well for working on the economic situation. Gun control poisoned the well to work on immigration reform.
Or…you know, [Insert Random Obama issue here] poisoned the well to work on [insert random issue GOP wants to stall on]
It’s all about seeding the continued idea of ‘Obama the Incompetent’ rather than put a light on GOP obstructionism and bad faith. Because the GOP is the “real” party in the country and anything else is just a bunch of usurper pretenders soiling our great vaunted political discourse.
MattF
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I think ‘bad faith’ needs to be underlined:
“…entering into an agreement without the intention or means to fulfull it…” Sound familiar?
handsmile
No argument from me that Ron Fournier is pond scum, fish feces, whale shit, one of the vilest of the Village scribes. But, as both dpm and Cervantes (#6) noted above, the author of this particular piece of garbage is Alex Seitz-Wald. So the ire directed at Fournier seems to me a little off-target.
As for Seitz-Wald, here is a link to other recent NJ articles. A quick scan suggests he’s not always so obtuse.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/reporters/bio/201
Perhaps I should add that I never read the National Journal unless someone (here or another blog) links to an article published there. Is the point that under Fournier’s editorship this article by Seitz-Wald is representative of its malignance?
lamh36
OT, In case you missed it, President Obama’s full speech at the Memorial for Nelson Mandela. It was one of his best speeches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RTch7y1RzVE
Mr. Longform
@Mike in NC:
Back in the day (the junior high day) we said “Lower than whale poop. And it don’t float.” which I doubt as a matter of biology, but which I’ve always liked for its expressiveness and cadence.
Cervantes
@handsmile:
What I can say (and I’ve said it before) is that David Bradley has ruined both the National Journal and the Atlantic. For the most part his hires (yes, including Fournier) have been, to use your word, malignant.
As for Seitz-Wald, as I said above, he works for CAP so I’d say some of the colorful encomia above are, well, let’s just say wasted. But this article of his is, I think, pretty much delusional. Why did he write it the way he did? Who knows? Maybe he was just looking for an angle, any angle, and forgot to engage part of his brain in the process.
MattF
OT, but who, exactly, would take Newsmax’s advice on ‘brain health’?
Cacti
Meanwhile, outside the provincial view of the US media…
President and First Lady greeted with a “deafening roar” of applause when shown on video screens at FNB Stadium for the Mandela memorial service.
Cervantes
@Cervantes: Why did he write it the way he did?
Other possible reasons: click-bait (seems to be working); humor (utter failure).
Chyron HR
@Cacti:
Their mindless worship of dear leader betrays them as Obotomized Obots, each and every one of them.
Cassidy
@Chyron HR: that’s how the cool, sophisticated kids let us know they’re cool and sophisticated. US history only started on day one of the Obama
failurePresidency, donchaknow.Roger Moore
Who says he believes it? This is pure excuse making, and the goal is to provide cover to people who don’t want to admit that the wingnuts were never going to let immigration reform pass. It may have a secondary goal of convincing the people who don’t have functioning neural pathways, or who haven’t been paying attention.
Elizabelle
It’s very sad that Ron Fournier has a job.
Point and laugh away; I don’t want to know anything more about this shabbiness.
And that is what this is. Shabby. And dishonest.
handsmile
@Cervantes:
Yes, “click-bait” would seem a likely enough explanation (Seitz-Wald appears to be no buffoon).
Though, of course, preferential seating in the most choice Village salons (proximity to the enthroned Woodward) is determined by how many hippies one has punched.
MomSense
@Linda Featheringill:
Emotional/Political/Ethical Black holes.
If only it worked the way black holes do and the suck ups got sucked up into the black holes so we wouldn’t have to suffer with them anymore.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
Only someone who genuinely needs some advice about brain health, IYKWIMAITYD.
J
@cmorenc: excellent observation!
kindness
I am thankful that when I tried to click over to the National Journal link it would not let me. Said it used some form of compression that it didn’t know how to deal with.
I’m thankful because if I had read it I would have been very unhappy and no doubt left a comment that would have had me banned for life. Sometimes not exposing oneself to the grotesque is the right thing to do.
Cervantes
@Ash Can:
You’re under the impression that we have a functioning government?
mophene
@lamh36: Thank you!
mophene
@lamh36: Thank you!
Villago Delenda Est
Whale shit is an order of magnitude higher than the vile creature that is Ron Fournier.
There’s got to be a piano, a 16 ton weight, a small planet, something, that can be “accidentally” dropped on this pustule on the universe.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF:
Their brain-dead target audience of shitty grade Z movie star worshiping slime.
Citizen_X
@MattF:
Ooh, wait, I know this one…uhh…zombies!
Jebediah, RBG
This refers to Fournier, right?
Jebediah, RBG
@Villago Delenda Est:
Sure, but I still like my idea: guillotine, feet first, take off a decimeter at a time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jebediah, RBG:
How about feet first into a wood chipper?
JoyfulA
@Betty: Below pond scum are dirty water and muck, in my experience.
Gravenstone
@OzarkHillbilly: Our old descriptor of life in the dorm, “the scum may rise to the top, but shit always settles on the bottom”. Of course, we dwelt on the top floor at the time.
Jebediah, RBG
@Villago Delenda Est:
But not till after 7 a.m. because it’s a bit noisy.
Waspuppet
@cmorenc: This, like all other political “rules” our so-called liberal media invents, goes out the window when Republicans take over, at which point they press relentlessly forward on all fronts and Our Media Stars call it “bold” and “ambitious.”
While we’re at it, evidently the 91% of us want background checks are the dirty hippies who spoil everything. Good to know how the Fournierists think.
Lurking Buffoon
I think my favorite part is where they made out Obama’s 2nd term as a past-tense failure despite the the fact that there’s 3 years to go. May all aspects of life be unflinchingly fair to the worthless excuse for a human being that wrote this.