So there’s another gubernatorial debate tonight here in Florida. Jake Tapper is the moderator, god help us. I know some of y’all like Tapper. I think he’s a supercilious prick and yet another tiresome songster in Brother David Broder’s Both Sides Do It Tabernacle Choir.
I first noticed these traits in Tapper when he supposedly busted then-Senator Obama for smoking after Obama said he had quit:
As any close friend or family member can attest, I have an unusually keen sense of smell and immediately I smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes…
It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things — the war on Iraq, a major economic crisis — indeed, it’s miniscule. Hardly worth mentioning.
Except that I don’t like feeling that I wasn’t being dealt with honestly. And as much as citizens who are suspect of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we as a nation are confident is the right one. (Corny, I know.)
No, “corny” isn’t the right word. In the context of the then-ending Bush era and unfolding global catastrophes, making an issue of a candidate sneaking a butt fell somewhere between “self-righteous nanny” and “psychopath.”
So you could say I don’t have high hopes for tonight’s debate. I expect Tapper to focus on stupid shit like fans and flip-flopping rather than delving into the heavy-duty corruption and other shenanigans we’ve endured in Florida since 2010. But maybe he’ll surprise me.
Trentrunner
I’d rather somebody smoke than NOT KNOW HOW TO F*CKING SPELL MINUSCULE.
Jake Tapper, manchild.
Amir Khalid
@Trentrunner:
Worse, he concedes the triviality of his objections by noting
It’s not a big deal, so why mention it at all?
Baud
Except for my own bullshit.
tulip
Don’t bet on it… they all suck.
srv
Both W and O had sneaky issues, not sure if butt or fag is the correct context here.
dubo
Jake Tapper built his career on anti-Clinton hysteria after writing an article about how he went on a date with Monica Lewinsky
He was just as awful as the rest of the Village press, mysteriously forgot how to be an adversarial journalist during the Bush years, and came fell right back into the groove when Obama was elected
Just because he’s right twice a day and hits Obama on something Obama SHOULD be hit on, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know which side his bread is buttered on
“Our brothers at Fox News” indeed
Violet
Jake Tapper, you say? What an excellent opportunity to revisit the time Jake Tapper got butthurt when DougJ called him a careerist sociopath in a post here. Tapper showed up in comments and made lame attempts to defend himself. Good times.
Post one: Careerist sociopaths
Post two: Jake Tapper audio
dubo
@Violet:
Oh my god DougJ get out of my head
BGinCHI
If Christ is smart he will fuck with his opponent tonight with something. A change in rules or anything to knock the already stupid criminal off his game.
How the hell is this even a close race??
Oh, right. FL.
tybee
wonder how big the fan will be tonight?
KG
@efgoldman: there was ever a golden age of American journalism? like, for real?
Mike J
@BGinCHI: I’m hoping Crist comes on stage with a rotating bow tie.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Nope, he won’t.
BGinCHI
@Mike J: Squirting flower? Hand buzzer?
Knee to the balls for the win.
Baud
@Mike J:
Maybe he’ll come dressed as Superman.
SiubhanDuinne
I was going to make a snarky comment along the lines of “Some journalist he is! Can’t even spell “minuscule” correctly” — but Trentrunner got in there first and much better.
So I will ask, if Jake Tapper wrote that — as the jpt initials would suggest — why is the byline given as “By Saira Anees”?
Mike in NC
Nobody likes Jake Crapper outside of his immediate family.
SatanicPanic
Be careful, he’ll show up here and go all Greenwald on you
Mike in NC
On the subject of Florida, we’re considering a visit to Saint Augustine next month. Any recommendations on places of interest?
kindness
Maybe if Tapper can mention Colbert’s ‘python on ecstasy’ he can salvage the event for you Betty.
Violet
@SatanicPanic: See the links in my comment upthread for examples. He doesn’t like getting called out.
Librarian
I love that “corny” , as if he’s the one standing up for the old fashioned virtues of truth and honesty. What a sociopath.
dmsilev
I hope Charlie Christ comes out wearing one of those propellor-head beanie caps, and then hands it to Lex Luthor at the start.
Cervantes
Not I.
WereBear
@Baud: The fan under the podium would make his cape flutter most wonderfully!
Worth 10% right there.
Violet
Reminder to vote for Karen in GA’s schnauzer Iggy in the pet photo contest. Today is the last day. You don’t have to do anything but click Vote. No signing up or submitting email. Iggy is in the middle of treatment for heartworms and he has to stay quiet. They could use a little pick me up.
You can vote on multiple devices and apparently vote from different browsers. Vote early and often!
Anoniminous
It’s not a “debate.” It’s an extended interview with two interviewees and one to many knuckleheads asking inane questions.
JGabriel
Jake Tapper via Betty Cracker @ Top:
Oh, ferchrissakes, Tapper. Did it ever occur to you, whatever President Obama’s smoking habits, that he didn’t want to set the bad example of a president smoking for kids to emulate? Seems like a perfectly cogent and admirable reason to lie about it even if he does sneak a cigarette every now and then.
Hal
And as much as citizens who are suspect of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth
Violet
Jake Tapper:
It really is all about them, isn’t it? He doesn’t like the feeling. Awww…poor baby. Life must be such a trial.
leeleeFL
@BGinCHI: I was totally seeing Jesus at the podium tearing Skeletor a new one! Many thank!
Betty, we are on the same page re:Tapper and for the same reason. Maybe it’s the Florida air?
WereBear
@Violet: So he must be totally against the Bush Administration who lied us into a war, right?
That is something worth mentioning.
Major Major Major Major
I just re-read the Tapper thread, and while he certainly came off as a bit of a boy in the bubble I don’t understand the vitriol for him personally… it’s only human to try and preserve one’s station in life and some careerist sociopathy often seems like a good idea. Seemed like an OK dude and better than many village journos.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis#Paralipsis
” is a rhetorical device wherein the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up.”
It’s not normally a feature of reporting but rather political argument, which says something about Tapper.
BTW, I eagerly await as the google alert or whatever Tapper has set up alerts him to this thread, and he shows up to read it and marinate. Hi Jakie!
merrinc
For some reason, I always get Tapper and Halperin mixed up. In my defense, it can be hard to tell one Villager Idiot from the other.
dubo
@JGabriel: Reminder that the post doesn’t provide all the context; Tapper obsessed over Obama’s smoking habits for over a year and when he says “Obama lied” what he means is “an Obama staffer I talked to told me that as far as they knew Obama had kicked the habit, and I hold Obama personally accountable for what that staffer said”
And also that for Tapper Obama saying “I fell off and on the wagon a few times” is PROOF POSITIVE that at the earlier time Obama told people he had quit, he was deliberately lying and already planning to fail in quitting, because Reasons
Baud
@merrinc:
That’s me too.
Violet
@dubo:
Also, because Democrat. And because black.
Svensker
OT, but is anyone else having problems getting onto BJ? On my old laptop with Firefox, there’s no problem. But on my other computer with Chrome (Windows 7) BJ’s hanging up and never loads. This is a new problem. I’ve tried reloading, shutting off/enabling Adobe, and nothing works. No problem on any other websites.
Aargh-worthy.
Howard Beale IV
And to think people actually waste their time on these things rather that wait until its over and then go to their favorite clickhole and read their reguritated reflection.
Christ on a pony.
Roger Moore
@Mike in NC:
[Citation needed on immediate family]
Suffern ACE
@JGabriel: yep. I’ll believe they were seriously offended by a secret smoker as a campaign issue that showed true character if they would have held that up for us to compare with the way McCain left his first wife. Oh, I guess that would be delving into personal matters.
Cervantes
@dubo:
And not just any article — it was utterly devoid of honor.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
AAAAA, thank you! Apophasis is something we see around here, and I needed a term for it so that it could be properly refuted. The most ratfucky types love it. We got it in that CIA article a day or two ago, where somewhere hidden in the text was ‘I know Bush was at fault and not Obama’, but the whole article was written as an implication that torture was Obama’s fault.
For those not following, apophasis is a rhetorical tool where you explicitly deny something while implicitly suggesting it.
EDIT – A fine example would be writing a lengthy article which includes the statement that you don’t support Ron Paul, but the entire rest of the article is non-stop praise for him.
Baud
@Svensker:
The site sometimes hangs up with Firefox. No other issues.
PsiFighter37
I must’ve missed those threads – I would’ve had a good time telling Tapper what a tool of a journalist he is when he decided to sneak into the BJ posts.
Also, I hate that shit-eating smirk he always has on his face.
rikyrah
Phuck Jake Tapper.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
At least according to that Wikipedia article, that’s not quite right. It’s using a denial that you’re going to talk about something as a way of bringing that thing to people’s attention. The classic example would be something like, “I’m not going to make my opponent’s drinking problem a campaign issue.”
JPL
@Violet: Those were the good old days. Jake was a tad thin skinned. Now I’m going back to read the rest of the comments.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
They’re related terms. The full glossary says that apophasis is denying something as a way of confirming it, while paralipsis is bringing something to people’s attention by claiming to dismiss it.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Mike in NC:
Portland Oregon?
Steeplejack
@Violet:
Just racked up vote 871 for Iggy in Internet Explorer. Voted this morning on Firefox and tablet Chrome.
God, does Internet Explorer suck! That’s the first time I have fired it up in forever (version 11), and the interface has gotten so overgrown that I actually had a hard time finding the minuscule URL address field. I kept putting the “vote for Iggy” address in the Google search field. D’oh!
Turgidson
@Major Major Major Major:
“Seemed like an OK dude and better than many village journos. ”
Yeah I guess I can agree with this.
I mean, he probably is an “OK dude” compared to, say, Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier or Bloody Bill WRONG Kristol, who are almost comically self-absorbed, narcissistic, and strangely but profitably ignorant, assholes. Tapper, by contrast is only kinda self-absorbed and narcissistic and less ignorant. Compared to some of his colleagues, the guy is a saint!
“Better than many village journos” is the kind of faint praise usually reserved for a “Most Polished Turd” or perhaps “Least Mentally Ill” award winner. I can grant Tapper that one too.
shelley
Viewable outside of Florida? C-Span?
Violet
@dubo:
I had forgotten that. And out of morbid curiosity I went looking for it. I’m not going to link because it’s not that hard to find. Some gems:
That’s a shocker.
Yes, Jake. Tell us more about how third-tier cable-news anchorhairstyles are treated far better than they should be.
And this pretty much sums him up:
It may make him average in Washington, but that’s the problem.
Tree With Water
Count on it- there will be lame stabs at humor by each candidate making light of the very stupid fan story.
Just Some Fuckhead
The good news about Republican’s gubernatorial race is that no matter what happens, a Republican guber wins.
Citizen_X
Oh, Jake. Don’t you know weed when you smell it?
Kathleen
Slow golf clap followed by cleaning the chewed potato chips I spewed off of my screen.
Kathleen
@Baud: They all look – and sound – alike.
Smiling Mortician
@Violet: Holy shit. That’s a real treasure trove of asshole.
James E Powell
@Svensker:
I mentioned problems viewing the page a few weeks ago.
If I come here via Chrome it freezes and sends the temperature toward shutdown in about 30 seconds.
When I come here using explorer, it takes about a minute to load where I can scroll. It also sends the temperature up, but I can stay on the page for five minutes before it hits shutdown range.
I have no idea why this happens.
Violet
@Smiling Mortician: It certainly is. It’s an interesting insight into young Jake Tapper. He was kind of a jerk.
Snarki, child of Loki
OMFG, if someone sneaks some smokes, the next thing you know they’ll be falling off the wagon, drinking themselves into a stupor, choking on a pretzel and invading random countries!
…and that’s just unforgivable, amirite?
Petorado
How did Tapper forget his memes? Obama was obviously cutting a deal in a smoke-filled room.
/conspiracytheorist
In Tapper’s defense, he does work overtime trying to gloss over what the real story is and deflect the public’s attention onto the periphery of reality.
agorabum
@BGinCHI: how are any of these close races? Seriously? The Republican party is nuts and all their policy ideas are terrible plutocrat insanity. But 50% of the populace is interested in their proposals to cut taxes for the rich and gut middle class programs.
joel hanes
@KG:
there was ever a golden age of American journalism?
There were, at least, journalists with standards.
Eric Sevareid, for example.
And if you can find early Huntley/Brinkley newscasts, you’ll weep at the comparison to today’s TV “News”.
joel hanes
@joel hanes:
And if you can find early Huntley/Brinkley newscasts, you’ll weep at the comparison to today’s TV “News”.
Actually, you only need go back as far as Peter Jennings covering GHWB’s Gulf War I to get a sense how much we’ve lost.
acallidryas
rather than delving into the heavy-duty corruption and other shenanigans we’ve endured in Florida
since 2010since the Spanish landed in 1513Fixed it for you.
Sondra
“But maybe he’ll surprise me. “. Not…plus the station I was watching ran Scott commercials at each break!
NCSteve
Who the fuck likes Jake Tapper? He’s like all the trivializing amorality of his godfather Halperin with the chewing on aluminum foil grate of Michael Scherer.
I remember that post of that asshat’s like it was yesterday and truly, it was a moment of total despair over how utterly, irredeemably degenerate the MSM had become that I’ve never really gotten over.
SWMBO
@joel hanes: Walter Cronkite. LBJ said that if he lost Cronkite, he lost middle America.
SWMBO
@Mike in NC: Betty did you see this?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/gone-viral/os-state-of-south-florida-20141021-post.html
SWMBO
@SWMBO: Also Helen Thomas. God I loved her.
flounder
Tapper once tweeted out a story that a Chik-Fil-A had been vandalized by someone putting a LGBTQ sticker on the window. After I asked him here and there how his investigation into the the Chik-Fil-A sticker terrorist was going, he blocked me.
flounder
Here. Anyone that would tweet this out has problems.
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/234780432200249344
Birthmarker
I spent a few days in your lovely state last week, Betty. First, I was shocked by the sheer number of political ads. It was literally virtually every ad during the local broadcast hours. How do you all stand it? Also, if I knew nothing about Rick Scott, I would think he was sensible based on his ads. The Republican ads in general seemed geared to convincing the electorate that they are the calm mature candidates. I thought in general the dem ads sucked. Why can’t dems come up with a consistent populist message?
Also, my travelling companion watches local news, broadcast news, and the morning broadcast news shows, which I do not. I was shocked at how pathetic the broadcasts were, in particular the Brian Williams evening news. Half the show was crap off the internet or locally derived stories that have no bearing on the national interest. What a waste of what, 21 minutes of content? It’s like news for people who don’t use the internet.
I predict the evening news shows will cease to exist sooner rather than later. That coupled with the inevitable death of newspapers does not bode well for our society. It really makes me sad.
Cervantes
@Birthmarker:
Whatever you do, do not watch the Sunday morning “news” shows, no matter what your traveling companion — or God — says.
Birthmarker
@Cervantes: I wouldn’t be caught dead…
Honestly, I don’t even know who the Tapper guy is…I do not watch televised news shows at all, with the exception of a major happening such as an earthquake or tsunami. Just not interested.
Richard briggs
Watched the debate last night and Tapper didn’t seem that bad except for a snarky “Is everbody comfortable?” allusion to fangate at the beginning.
Birthmarker
Does Scott’s challenger have a realistic chance?
Cervantes
@Birthmarker: Looking at the polls, I’d say it’s a toss-up right now.
Julia Grey
The thing that turned me into a Tapper hater was the way he evaluated the Gore campaign’s press plane leaving him behind because he was a few minutes late.
That just typified the entire Gore operation, you see. They were careless and unfeeling, more interested in making their schedule than in checking to see that all the passengers were aboard. They neglected to count heads and WAIT FOR THE GREAT JAKE because Gore couldn’t even hire decent people to run his campaign’s press operation. Didn’t that reflect on his future ability to staff a a competent government? Huh? Didn’t it?
And so on.
What. A. Putz.
Epicurus
@Trentrunner: Sorry, dictionary.com tells me YOU are incorrect. No biggie, I’m just a spelling…policeman. (Can’t stand that “Nazi” construction.)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/miniscule?s=t
Cervantes
@Epicurus: “Miniscule” is a mistake.
(The OED calls it an “erroneous variant.”)