The same exact people who have spent the last six years telling anyone who would listen that Obama doesn’t represent or speak for them are absolutely furious that Obama… didn’t represent them at the unity marches in Paris:
Our leader may not have stood with you, #ParisMarch, but we the people do. We are sorry he was absent.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 11, 2015
Because what the Paris marches needed was a massive secret service presence.
Baud
From the people who brought you Freedom Fries…
Southern Beale
These are also the same people who dreamed up “Freedom Fries” and poured French wine down the drain because of Iraq.
Baud
Oh. And who cares?
Jacks mom
Oh Dana…..words fail & thoughts? How can anyone be that obtuse?
SatanicPanic
This woman is so transparent it’s amazing a camera could capture her image.
Corner Stone
And we all notice her Twitter image is her fondling a scoped semi-auto rifle.
That’s like Spring time in a bowl, right there.
Punchy
Nothing says solemn and reflective mourning like 3 enormous bullet-proof limos, choppers and snipers, and 100+ SecServ agents banging hookers during the visit…
jharp
I find Dana to be the most vile and hated filled conservative profiteer.
Mustang Bobby
Lindsay Huckleberry McPantspisser carried on like white trash in a hurricane over at Fox; he clutched his sphincter so hard that it took two EMT’s to unclench his ass (and they were hunky!).
mai naem mobile
I follow the odious(senile?seeking Fox gig?) James Woods on the Twitter machine. Inexiplicably he went silent in September. I noticed a tweet of his a few days ago. Apparently he came back in full force late December. He’s as krrrazy as the kook Mel Gibson plays in Conspiracy Theory. I don’t understand why you have actors like Alan Alda who don’t go nuts when they become old and.then you have Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight and Woods who’ve gone nuts with a black president. Anyhoo,Woods had a tweet similar to Loesch.
Corner Stone
Oh, hello there Taken 2.
Haydnseek
I used to have a110 gallon freshwater aquarium. Dana Loesch is orders of magnitude more disgusting than the shit I used to vacuum out of the gravel every month. Satanic Panic has it right. She defines that point where arrogance, ignorance, and outright viciousness intersect. Add shameless, incredibly cynical hucksterism to the mix, and you have the perfect wingnut.
Comrade Dread
It’s very simple. Ask yourself the question, “Is Obama still black?”
Then he has failed as a president to conservatives.
Corner Stone
@Haydnseek:
So is she like Milla’s character in 5th Element? Dana is…Peak Wingnut?
waspuppet
How big a delegation did the NYPD send?
No, seriously. How big?
Mike in NC
Who the fuck is Dana Loesch?
Haydnseek
@Corner Stone: Close. She has a lot of competition, however. Thanks for reminding me of that movie, by the way. I haven’t seen it in a long time but remember enjoying it very much.
kindness
If the White House had a bidet those same folks would bitch Obama wasn’t buying American toilet paper. It’s their go-to line. It’s their fallback line. Doesn’t matter what the issue is. That’s all they got.
Bex
@Punchy: The RWNJs just would’ve screamed that the trip must have cost eleventy trillion dollars and why isn’t the taxpayers hard-earned money being spent on (fill in the blank)!!?!
sharl
@Corner Stone: Leeloo Dallas Multipass
Zinsky
The French have shown Americans how to deal with terrorism. Our moronic, brain-damaged president ran and hid in a cornfield in Nebraska and then told people to go shopping and invaded a Muslim country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. Some leadership…
Haydnseek
@kindness: It’s absolutely true. A friend of mine nailed it. He said that if Obama invented a drug that cured every form of cancer but everyone in America would have to pay ten cents into the U.S. Treasury, the wingnuts would go apeshit because in didn’t cost 5 cents, and besides, this is Socialized Medicine in it’s most monstrous form!! And what about the poor cancer specialists that he was throwing out of work? Job killer! Communist!
…….and the hell of it is, 47% of Americans would agree with them.
Patricia Kayden
@Mustang Bobby: Dying! Thanks for the belly laugh. I can picture Lindsay “Always Hysterical” Graham so vividly. Funny how he was so calm during Shrub’s flawless presidency.
Patricia Kayden
@Mike in NC: You’re beyond blessed not to know.
sm*t cl*de
Lindsay Huckleberry McPantspisser carried on like white trash in a hurricane over at Fox
He wasn’t in Paris?!
Tommy
Since when do the wingnuts like the French? Don’t most of their jokes end with the French being wimps or something. Can you say “Freedom Fries” instead of “French Fries.” I long ago realized that NO matter what Obama does they will savage him. I am sure if Obama went they be ranting about that just like they are ranting now he didn’t go. The Republicans have become “cartoon” characters and they are not funny.
Violet
@Tommy: They don’t love the French. They like anything they can use to beat up on President Obama. In this case it’s France.
PaulW
If Obama went, the Fox Not-News nuts would be screaming that Obama was hogging the spotlight.
Obama didn’t go, and Fox Not-News nuts scream about him ignoring a nation they’ve been pissing on since 2002.
I only hope to God the Dish boycott of Fox Not-News is ongoing. The fewer people plugging into that stupidity the better.
Frankensteinbeck
@Violet:
It is also important here that they can use this event to back up their claim that Muslims are evil. ‘Obama is soft on those evil Muslims because he hates good white Christians’ is one of their major beliefs.
I am really sorry to describe it that way, Khalid, but that’s how they think. We have a major racism problem in this country, and when 9/11 made anti-Islam racism acceptable to say out loud they wanted as much as they could get.
GregB
Had he gone, surely we’d have been regaled about how much money was spent getting Obama to a photo op in France.
It doesn’t matter what the fuck he does.
Citizen_X
I’m sorry; is she jerking off a rifle in that picture? What the fuck?
Mike in NC
@Tommy: Wingnuts hate the French because they failed to join the Coalition of the Bribed during Dubya’s glorious invasion and occupation of Iraq. Also, too, they never did a damn thing for America except for that Yorktown thing, but that was way back in 1781, when John McCain was still in diapers.
Wag
Cleek was right and will always be right when it comes to RWNJ
Tree With Water
I’m beginning to wonder if David Brooks is cracking up. He’s just begging his critics to (once again) publicly eviscerate his already shredded reputation. And that’s a mistake, because a number of those critics make hilariously good sport of him whenever he does say something particularly stupid (even for him, I mean). Take what he said just today, for example.
“And I would say, say you’re in college or say you want to give money — ‘Oh, we give money to bed nets [for malaria prevention], we give money to clean water or all that anti-poverty stuff’ — the central anti-poverty program is law and order,” Brooks remarked. “You can’t get rich if you’re afraid of getting shot in the back of the head at night.”
“And so, if you’re giving as an individual, if you’re thinking as a state, giving to law and order groups — like International Justice Mission, things like that — that is actually the basis to get anti-poverty programs,” he continued. “So [U2 singer] Bono is doing great stuff with the diseases, the Gates foundation — law and order comes first.”
Woodrowfan
@Mike in NC: plus they were in Afghanistan with us at the time.
Honus
@Citizen_X: yes, she’s holding an assault rifle, some iteration of the AR15. Sort of inappropriate to show solidarity with and sympathy for a group of unarmed victims killed by a gang with assault rifles.
Tommy
@Violet: Exactly. It is mind numbing. Now the French are our BFF. But I recall not that long ago we were pissed off at them for all kinds of things. Like maybe not wanting to bomb the heck out of Syria for one. Republicans are such small people.
Side story: I did this website for a county park in Calfornia and their local area government. They just had an election and a group of far, far right people won every position throwing out the liberals I worked with in the past. Got a call on Friday from the new Executive Director. He said he had serious problems with the site. I am like OK, what is that. The names on the Board of Directors need to be updated, and all the blog posts, with authors from the previous Board must be remove this very second, or the author changed to him.
Or put another way, his first action in calling me to talk about their primary way to communicate w/ the community was just to wipe any history of the previous people from the site. I said my hourly rate was $100, sign an estimate and I’ll do it. He said he shouldn’t have to pay me to do this. I said, “sir I think it might be best for you to find somebody else to work with.” He wasn’t happy and that in fact made me very happy.
Like I said, Republicans are “small people.”
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Tommy:
They only like the French because they hope the French will become Islamophobic and start deporting all Muslims. Ain’t gonna happen, but some people in France are nervous that their right wing (including the odious Le Pens, pere et fille) will be even more empowered by this.
dmsilev
@Tommy: I hope you called him a moocher before hanging up.
wasabi gasp
Twitchy links are inexcusable no matter how hot Loesch looks in evil.
gratuitous
Maybe President Obama couldn’t feature appearing in Paris at the same demonstration as Netanyahu, whose government killed 17 journalists among the 2143 Palestinians Israel snuffed last summer.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: He said he shouldn’t have to pay me to do this
Why in the world would he (a Republican) expect a contractor to work for free?
Schlemazel
I have not been paying attention, how many world leaders were there in Paris?
Je suis Ahmed
Gin & Tonic
@gratuitous: Or, say, Lavrov, Orban, Shoukri, Davutoglu — all those beacons of free speech.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemazel: The Gray Lady says 40.
Probably half were there trying to whitewash their own country’s lack of press freedom.
ira-NY
What they do is outrageous. That it works is more outrageous. So damn tired of it.
fuckwit
@mai naem mobile: Eastwood may have made Bird, but he also made Dirty Harry… which, after not having seen it for some 30+ years, stands out as some embarassingly racist bullshit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mE6ba3qj8
“I gots ta know?” Really?
However, I do have to thank Eastwood for yelling at an empty chair on prime time TV, which perfectly summed up the angry old white man campaign of 2012.
Tommy
@dmsilev: @Gin & Tonic:
At the end of that initial call he asked for Admin access to his WordPress account. I told him, as I tell every client, that with Admin access he could “blow up the site.” He’d have to try, but it was possible and I always feel it is important to tell clients this. I offered to do a 1.5 hour training session for FREE. He talked to me like I was a four-year-old. He knew everything.
I get a frantic email a few hours later, he had totally messed up the site. My response was my rate is $100/hour. All I said. Not heard anything back :).
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
There’s a fine old Southern expression you may have come across when you lived in NOLA: “Can’t win for losing.” Poor Obama can never win for losing with this crop of Republucans.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
Hang tough, and if there is more to the story I hope you’ll fill us in tomorrow :-)
Brendan in Charlotte
@SiubhanDuinne: There’s another fine old Southern expression “Bless her heart…”.
Everytime I see or hear anything from her, all i can think of is Ghostbusters “There is no Dana, only Zuul”
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: I am not stressed in the least. I did the work at like a 80% price cut (never even expected further work from them). Each month/quarter/year I try to find a few causes, non-profits, underdog candidate running for office, or an organization where I can help with the skill set I have. I’ll do the work for free or a huge cut in my rates. I like to try and give back. Makes me feel good but also helps others at the same time. A win/win.
100% of the time when I do this people are so happy. So polite. Giddy. They send me gifts. All kinds of stuff. That this yahoo doesn’t first get this and on top of it wants to talk to me like I am a four-year-old and demand things of me like I am a surf, just makes me, well both laugh and cry at the same time (if that makes sense).
danielx
And a month from now those very same people will be raving about cheese eating surrender monkeys, no doubt.
Violet
@wasabi gasp: How in the world did Michelle Malkin start using “Twitchy?” It seems like such an unflattering horrible name for a website. It’s not funny nor clever. I don’t get it.
magurakurin
@Baud:
First comment I read….but you are the winner. So exactly true. It’s fuckin’ sad that America is cursed with these rubes and morons. They are the descendants of the slave owners and the guardians of America’s original sin.
sharl
FYI/FWIW, Harry Shearer – the voice behind a number of characters on The Simpsons – weighed in on the Paris murders a couple days ago, in a 6-minute interview with the infamous Don Lemon (whose questioning could have been better IMO, but he at least managed to avoid stepping on his own dick/tongue/other appendage).
Shearer made the same points in an interview with Lloyd Grove posted a few days ago at The Daily Beast (where he took a well-deserved swipe at Bill Maher).
One thing Shearer said in the CNN interview (start at about 4m37s to hear that Q&A) – “Respect has no place in satire” (‘in journalism, maybe, but not satire’) – is currently being quoted somewhat widely in social media, sometimes with the last bit left off. You can kind of tell where folks stand by how they edit/truncate that quote, and/or whether they like it or find it troubling. For me it works, but as the pros of satire know, it can get you killed (unless you’re the kiss-up/kick-down kind of “humorist” whose personal business model is to comfort the already comfortable and afflict the already afflicted).
The CNN interview referred to a Reza Aslan interview that had just taken place; I assume that was this (2m25s), but not 100% certain.
eta: couple minor typo (spelling) fixes
Villago Delenda Est
Dana Losch should shut her fucking fascist piehole.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Springtime for a certain leader of a certain Central European country about 80 years ago.
Or one to its south, same time frame.
sharl
@sharl: Realized too late that I was clearly wrong in (at least) one spot in my comment – couldn’t edit it before the window closed on me
From all descriptions the killers were not from France’s “comfortable” socio-economic class, unlike the killers/torturers/jailers of satirists in other countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc.
I regret the error.
delk
@Honus:
It’s the cover of her new book, “Hands Off My Gun”
Mike J
@sharl:
A pretty moronic thing for somebody who was in Spinal Tap to say. That would have been a shitty movie if the love for the characters and genre that was being satirized didn’t shine through.
Another Holocene Human
@Haydnseek: Her glamour pix are photoshopped, also, too.
And didn’t her husband do the knickers/n-word “rap” in tri-corner hats at CPAC two years ago? Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.
She’s a downmarket Ann Coulter. All the hate and half the education.
sharl
@Mike J: That goes into a whole nuther philosophical realm there, one I’m not well equipped to address. But I would ask: do you mean romantic or familial love (respect HAS to come with that), or love that is more pure passion, which may better describe the love you {IMO properly} ascribe to Shearer?
I once read some slasher/porno fanfic “starring” the two main protagonists (Mulder and Sculley) of ‘The X-Files’, authored by one or more people who clearly loved the show, but they certainly didn’t “respect” the show in their particular expression of love/passion.
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah I am embarrassed she is from my hometown of St. Louis. Her radio show that airs here is a train wreck that almost makes Rush seem moderate/normal/sane. I am all for free speech of almost any kind, even if I don’t agree. But she walks right up to the line, if not over it, of straight-up hate speech about Muslims on a daily if not hourly basis.
Another Holocene Human
@PaulW: I just fucking Googled it and, wow, Dish still has FOX blocked!
What do you bet satellite viewers skew younger and want sports and entertainment, while FOX-bots are mostly on cable anyway.
I will be rejoicing the day that Murdoch has to pay real money to spew his propaganda instead of getting remunerated for it. Print media is already there.
Another Holocene Human
@Wag:
Marx brothers, also, too.
Another Holocene Human
@Tree With Water: Cracking up, or, as the British so elegantly put it, taking the piss?
With him, one strongly suspects the latter.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): DINGDINGDING we have a winner
Another Holocene Human
@Gin & Tonic:
Everything for the party?
IOKIYAR?
IGMFY?
Axis B Personality Disorder?
I don’t know how you do your job so it must be worth nothing?
All of the above?
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: I like that:
Dish is giving a big middle finger to the cable industry of late. Dish just launched Sling, which is like a la carte Internet-based TV service.
I got rid of cable April of last year. I was just pissed. I had to buy the most expensive package they offered to get the channels I wanted. Stuff like BBC American, the Green channel, Science, History Channel International. I came to realize you add in AMC, FX, HBO, Showtime, and the “educational” channels I watched a fraction of what I was buying.*
I was just sick of it, plus I found my cable channel had overcharged my $35-$40 for two years for my “bundled” deal and I was just done with them. That I pay $40,05/month for a 15GB Internet connection and not $215/month is welcome. That money now just goes to Blue Apron and Omaha Steaks.
*Yes I understand you have to pay more for these channels to make up for like the huge fees cable providers have to play a channel like ESPN.
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: It’s a very appropriate name given that she is an angry rage junky who was trying to turn a keyboard commando flying monkey twitter army into her new claim to fame. (And then she sold it … the ways of wingnut welfare are mysterious ways.)
Another Holocene Human
@magurakurin: You mean spiritual descendant of slave owners. I am the blood descendant of slave owners but you don’t see me defending that shit. FUCK that shit.
Another Holocene Human
@sharl: He also played the smarmy American dickface in Run Fatboy Run opposite Shaun/Scotty.
Gopher2b
Not trolling, but why didn’t Holder go? He was in Paris. I’m guessing it’s bc they would complain he was enough of a heavy weight? (They would complain about something).
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est:
She’s like that loser kid from The Wave who joins the Nazi party so she can finally belong and be somebody.
(be somebody = kick other kids around)
Belafon
@Gin & Tonic:
Because they expect people to work for them for free. The city I work in prides itself on 1) being conservative and 2) keeping taxes low by getting people to do stuff for free, like firefighting and park upkeep.
Violet
@Gin & Tonic:
Why would he not? He’s a Republican. It’s what they do.
magurakurin
@Another Holocene Human: point taken and my apologies to you.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: Not to be a grad school educated “elitist” but I love her Wikipedia profile. In the sidebar where it lists her brief bio, where/when she was born, occupation, where she lives, next to education it just says: Fox High School. Guess she didn’t want to go to some college where they’d teach her things like science, reasoning, logic, you know liberal stuff like that.
Another Holocene Human
@magurakurin: No need to apologize to me, I just wish to deny these assholes their talking points. Don’t you love that old chestnut about how white privilege doesn’t exist because MY ancestors came over after slavery was over? Shuddafugawwwp.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: From the same profile: She attended St. Louis Community College at Meramec before transferring to Webster University to study journalism.[3] She dropped out after meeting her husband, Chris, with whom she homeschools two children.[3]
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: Damn, I actually would have pegged her as going to some sort of safety school and majoring in partying and hypocrisy, but it just goes to show, doesn’t it? Ignorant and vicious are one hell of a combination, aren’t they?
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: hahahaha, she’s a full time RW troll but she’s homeschooling three kids. Riiiight.
But if she admitted she hired tutors like some sort of Roman aristocrat it might give away the game to some of the rubes.
ETA: wait, maybe Chris is doing the homeschooling, first of all his “rap” sounded like a 4th grade project and secondly, WTH has he done lately? Hmmm.
Cervantes
@Tommy:
She did attend college but was never graduated. George Will, on the other hand, went to Trinity College, from there to Magdalen (Oxford), and from there to Princeton. Other than better punctuation, how do you tell his work apart from hers?
Another Holocene Human
Damn you balloon juice for making me google Chris Loesch. Apparently he twitter twats a LOT. I mean a LOT.
Also, too, no major news about him since 2012.
Yeah, I’m going with he’s unemployed right now. Poor kids. What’s the curriculum, Texas Board of Education standards, the first draft? Heritage press releases? McMeghan’s calculator?
Another Holocene Human
I thought wingnut welfare and social climbing was all about getting your brats into the “right” exclusive private schools. Loesches: yer doin’ it rong.
Hal
These are the same people who claim the Obama’s spend tens of millions of tax payer dollars every time they have a date night at a local DC restaurant. The same folks who claimed Michelle Obama’s vacation in Spain cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But dammit, Obama should be in the streets of Paris right now.
Also, from the Buffalo Beast’s 50 most loathsome of 2013:
Violet
@Another Holocene Human: Depending on where she lives, homeschooling requirements aren’t necessarily stringent. I know people who homeschool. Some of them treat it like a full time job and their kids are amazingly well educated. Some of them don’t spend enough time on it and their kids are very poorly educated.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic:
Ralph Nader basically suggested his employees work for free. One of the many reasons to loathe the asshole.
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: I must differ. I do see daylight between a second-rate also-ran Liar for Conservatism and a stupid, vicious, ignorant and combative 3rd-rate spleen.
ETA: who uses a heavily p’shopped photo of herself as her profile pic, I mean who does that? facepalm
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: PIRG is a few sacrificed goats away from LaRouchie political cult territory. Call him Wage Theft Ralphie.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
I was being facetious about the punctuation.
Morzer
You’ll never guess which side of the American divide is calling for genocide against Muslims:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/44205_All_Over_the_Right_Wing_Media_Sites_Commenters_Calling_for_Genocide_of_Muslims
I have to tell you, life in the Land of Morning Calm is so much saner and more peaceful. God knows how America turned into the world’s shining fuck-up on a hill, but I don’t see it getting better any time soon. My commiserations to y’all.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: You are a better person than myself, I couldn’t get past the first graph or two of her Wikipedia bio before I started to get sick to my stomach. My issue with her is I bet the same as most people here. I don’t mind for a second we hold ideas to the far left and far right of each other. I mind how hateful she is. Just flat out mean.
I’ve said/told this story her a few times here. As a kid I was never home on break or during the summer. I was outside playing all day, from almost dawn to dusk. But I had to be home, hands washed, at the dinner table at 5:30. Period, no excuses. We’d eat as a family and talk about our day. World events. If the St. Louis Cardinals were going to win the World Series. You name it.
I often disagreed with my parents on just about everything. We never yelled. We never put down another family person. Dad would often say something that is kind of a mantra for me now, “Two intelligent people can agree to disagree.” I like that statement and I think it is also 110% true.
Using that thinking in both my personal and professional life has served me very, very well!
I bet Dana Loesch would never, not for a second, be able to grasp this pretty basic concept!
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy:
I could have told you that.
Morzer
@Tommy:
I have doubts that Dana Loesch has grasped the handwashing concept, much less civilized debate.
lamh36
So anyone hear anytHong about the 2000 Nigerians killed by Boko Haram.
I mean I was told to understand the with the NAACP bombing that hey nobody was hurt so as an explanation why it didn’t recrice coverage.
I mean 12 people died in France and “Je suis Charlie “, yet..
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: okie dokie …
Tommy
@lamh36: I did, but on a totally non-mainstream media outlet. Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. But only a quick one minute or so blurb at the top of her show here she does “headlines.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: You opened the door; I merely walked through. Wanna play it as serious or joking?
Cervantes
@lamh36:
Since Friday I’ve seen at least two items about Boko Haram in the Times, both by Adam Nossiter.
Morzer
@lamh36:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/09/boko-haram-deadliest-massacre-baga-nigeria
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: I could really care less.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: It is on CNN but not the front page.
Violet
@lamh36: I don’t read the New York Times so can’t speak for them. The Guardian covered it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: “couldn’t care less.” Right?
Another Holocene Human
@lamh36: Americans are so ignorant of that country that I saw commenters on a liberal blog the other day* bitching about the lack of coverage the other day and then opining that the lack of (alleged) calls for US military intervention could be attributed to Nigeria not having oil.
#infiniteloopofPicardfacepalms
*not saying it was Rawstory but it was Rawstory
Cervantes
@Tommy:
For what it’s worth: I saw it as a joke.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: He could care less and so don’t I.
Valdivia
hey it’s not just the wingnuts. the whole village is in a tizzy about it. Huge article in Politico so it will be the outrage of the week!
lamh36
@Cervantes: thx.
aside from the NYT aspect, this is still an example of a story that was delegated to either online press or non MSM press.
12 people killed in France, 2000 in Nigeria…if it bleeds it leads was my understanding, so 2000 dead Nigerian don’t warrant coverage of 12 French journos?
I guess, I Am Nigeria doesn’t have same ring to it as “Je suis Charlie”…
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: It was intended as a joke. It might have had an edge based on commenting history, but it was meant as jocular.
Cervantes
@lamh36:
No question the coverage was lop-sided.
I’m with you. This is what our world is like — until we change it.
(Incidentally, there was also a report in the Post, by Terrence McCoy.)
Tommy
Well this is pretty cool. An article on the creative direction The Nightly Show is going to take:
Yes thank you. I’ve always wondered why on shows like this they can’t they just interview some famous and/or interesting person. At least to me they don’t always have to be “pimping” some product. In fact that annoys the heck out of me. On the Daily Show and Colbert Report, unless the guest is somebody I really, really like I often don’t even watch the interviews.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: The easiest explanation is a Stalin quote: One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: Panel discussion like the old UP/C Hayes + MHP weekend lineup or panel discussion like DL Hughley or Bill Maher. Because if it’s the latter, pass.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: The story doesn’t say. But in the next graph after the one I quoted above he said they are going to start doing “test shows” this week. Which to me says they are focus group testing their concepts. That worries me, but I guess when you have a show like this, a studio, network, and a lot of money invested, it is just something you have to do in 2015.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: The real answer is that the right wing is emotionally invested in Europe/immigration/Muslims/terrorism and doesn’t give a flying fuck about some murdered African villagers. And frankly the interest level on the other side of the house is spotty at best although to be fair when you back out corporate establishmentarianism or 1%er social columns there isn’t much in the way of liberal media in the US anyway and what there is, many of you aren’t following.
Reading about Abubakar Shekau frightens and depresses me. I feel more empowered to do something about killer cops in the US than that shitwit. Apparently the murder junkies are getting mysterious flows of money and arms that the US can’t practically do much about.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: Test shows might be smarter than how MSNBC manages their valued added content. IDK, Comedy Central seems to know what they’re doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human:
No, it isn’t. I think my answer was closer to the truth.
FlyingToaster
@Another Holocene Human: Test shows are used to work out timing and pacing for the writers; if something’s really dragging, or it’s going so fast that no one understands it, you can deep six a show.
It wouldn’t work on MSNBC, because they have to please liberal wonks (viewers) while placating the oligarchs that own them.
LosGatosCA
At least Obama could have released a taped statement from that airbase in Louisiana you know like C+ Augustus?
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911barksdale.htm
Too gutless to run to Louisana? How can you call yourself leader of the free world – the world wonders?
Violet
@lamh36: Don’t forget that the media sees themselves in Charlie Hebdo. The journalists and cartoonists were killed during an editorial meeting. Every journalist has been in an editorial meeting. It could have been them, or so they think. It will get massive coverage party because of that.
Another Holocene Human
@LosGatosCA: He needed to be closer to his oil.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Dead black people can’t be victims of terrorism because they are the real racists. Or so Fox News used to inform me.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh36: The people who died in Nigeria are not actual people, because they’re black.
I mean, how difficult a concept is this to grasp?
Arclite
She just wanted him to go in the hopes that the terrorists would take him out.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Guys, perhaps you are both right?
sharl
Obama was in a no-win position in this case, but I suspect the negative PR from not going to Paris has been far less damaging than the negative PR that would have resulted from going. That would include (as noted upthread) stuff like attention-diverting Secret Service/security logistics, as well as dredging up memories of those responsible* for empowering Al Qaeda and its successors (*that would primarily be us, in the form of Dubya’s faith-based Misadministration).
So…good decision to not participate, Mr. Preznit! Best you could do under the circumstances.
On the other hand, Haaretz reported this:
There’s kind of a non-Shermanesque, mealy-mouth non-denial denial from the Israeli government cited at the end of the article, so I’m gonna go with the title/subtitle as a better representation of how things went down.
Villago Delenda Est
@sharl: Bibi is an asshole of Cheneyesque proportions.
Sherparick
This stuff goes out as mass text from Roger at Faux News to all the minions of the Right-Wing Wurlitzer. Almost the evening of the Paris incident, the memes for criticizing Obama went out 1. He did not call it “Islamic Terrorism” and declare it a religious war; 2. Soft on terror because not willing to torture; and 3. Because he did not bomb Syria in 2013 and withdrew from Iraq in 2010 (Because then it was so much easier for Terrorists to kill Americans and Westerners who were conveniently patrolling an occupied Arab country. Basically, it his played off the them “Obama sucks” and anything bad that happens in the world is his fault.
Chris
@Tommy:
Like I said earlier, that’s why I have so little use for their sympathy (among other reasons).
They hate us. Pop open any one of their blogs and you’ll find far more virtual ink spilled on how much they loathe and despise Europe in general and France in particular than they ever spend on Russia or China or North Korea. Only when there’s a clear cut case of white heritage threatened by savages brown hordes do they suddenly care.
(Same applies to New York City after 9/11, for that matter. Although at least Falwell and Robertson had the honesty to not change their tune).
Sherparick
Also, the thing about “all Muslims,” with a lot of Fox News hatred directed at Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, serves the agenda, of Saudi Arabia, which as Reza Aslan points is the UR-source of all this stuff:
“All of these have, as their source, a single sect, Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia. And as most people know, Saudi Arabia has spent approximately $100 billion over the last 20, 30 years, spreading this ideology throughout the world. And so we do have a problem within the Muslim community. But that problem tends to be very much localized within a particular ideology that must be confronted first and foremost by Muslims themselves.”
The only error is that it has been 40 years. And Rupert’s desire to blame all Muslims certainly takes the focus off Saudi Arabia and the second biggest investor in News Corp. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi
This perhaps also explains Rupert’s and Fox News “Climate Denialism” and advocacy for fossil fuel use, the “raison d’etre of the Saudi Kingdom.
keestadoll
@Punchy: I’m sorry, but given the attendees, don’t you think snipers, bullet-proof limos, and secret service agent (equivalents) were already there? If you’re the leader of a country ostensibly known for it’s codified free speech, you show up in the strongest of ways for a world leader-attended rally on free speech.
Cervantes
@keestadoll:
Right. When they hold a rally for free speech, you damn well better show up or be exposed as a fascist.
SenyorDave
@fuckwit: Eastwood was the perfect metaphor for the modern GOP: an angry old white guy yelling at an imaginary black guy about how he was ruining the country.
slag
I don’t care about Secret Service presence. I just don’t want my president galavanting around the globe getting all up in everyone’s business all the time. This is part of our problem as a nation–we have boundary issues.
Good on France for conducting their affairs in a peaceful manner and not invading random countries in the process. We could learn from that. In the meantime, a sympathy card from the White House is more than perfectly acceptable.
Heliopause
I see from today’s news that yesterday’s wingnut fauxtrage is today’s mainstream fauxtrage.
For once the U.S. didn’t lead the world in worthless political posturing. You’d think they’d get some credit for that, but no.
danimal
I believe this is an outrage to the mediots because they see themselves; “nous sommes Charlie” is fairly accurate from a reporters perspective. I can’t see this becoming a big deal, because outside of the Beltway bubble, no one gives a hoot if the POTUS attended a parade. This will blow over like a fart in the wind, and it’s only use is as an identifier of mediots and right wing blowhards.
Richard
Was Dana Loesch even physically there? If not, she should STFU about Obama.