Let’s all plunge ourselves face first into the toilet and put our hands together for “Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell Present: John Pierpont Morgan’s Nite of Laffs 2015.” — Jeb Lund, liveblogging for the Guardian
Now that all the frantic primping and lavish self-congratulation is over, here’s Jay Rosen “On the deep grammar of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner“:
Have you ever come to know members of a family who collaborate in staying silent about something bad that happened in the past, something no one wants to talk about because to talk about it would probably tear the family apart?…
The Washington press corps is like that big extended family with a terrible secret that cannot be confronted because everyone knows how bad it would be if the discussion ever got real. The event at the center of this neurotic system: the failure to detect a phony case for war in 2002 and 2003 and more generally to challenge the Bush forces after 9/11. And this wasn’t just any failure. For a press that imagines itself a watchdog, failing to detect a faulty case for war, then watching the war unfold into the biggest foreign policy disaster in memory… that is an event so huge and deflating that it amounts to an identity crisis.
Now add to that very specific failure a larger lesson that is also too painful to face: in Washington access journalism has been a bust. It doesn’t work… After a maximal failure like 2002-04 there needed to be a critical reckoning with the whole idea of “access to inside sources as reliable route to scoops.” You can’t maintain that idea and think of yourself as a watchdog, an adversarial force.
But what if you still want both? Your scoop system, and your self-image as a watchdog. Your insider status, and the critical distance that with the right story could make you a hero of the republic. What if you want your parties with the powerful, and your check on power. What if you have to choose between these alternatives, but you can’t choose because the family has no history of making difficult choices like that. In circumstances like this, you are going to pick denial…
The Washington press corps needed the equivalent of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to sort through these glaringly obvious conflicts. Instead they just moved on. No one made that decision consciously. But it happened….
***********
Apart from SODH (shaking our damed heads), what’s on the agenda for the evening?
(Title changed by popular request)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Chapter 1 of Becoming Phoebe is posted. The Kickstarter has definitely slowed down in the last couple of days. I need to come up with some new places to promote it. If anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
http://melancholy-donkey.com/Becoming_Phoebe/chapter-1/
khead
When things like the events in Baltimore happen I eventually wonder:
To which wise black person will white America turn for wisdom and the words to express the anger they feel? For the wingnuts it’s usually Carson or West, etc. For some folks it’s Barles Charkley. But this time?
Congratulations Ray Lewis! If FB is any indication, YOU are white America’s new favorite black person! For today at least. Your video is burning up my FB feed based on sharing by people that normally wouldn’t care what you had to say even if you paid them to listen. I especially enjoyed the folks that shared the video while adding that they “usually don’t like Ray Lewis, but he’s right on the money here”.
srv
This is all demonstrably crap. Look at the scooping watchdog work the MSM is doing on Hillary.
Next?
Brachiator
There are two certainties in journalism. Pundits decrying reporters who become comfortable insiders, and the same pundits trying desperately to become comfortable insiders.
What’s on for this evening? Hopefully, a quiet night and catching up on Episode 4 of “Wolf Hall,” and the latest episode of “The Flash.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
The press is utterly and completely broken in this country. In most of the world, for that matter. The reasons are many. This is one, and frankly a small one in the grand scheme of things.
Atonement for their failures leading up to the Iraq disaster isn’t going to help the press regain legitimacy or accuracy in the face of the undeniable fact that the press is owned and does the bidding of the world’s billionaires.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@srv: Award-winning world class fiction.
jeffreyw
I’m sure I would have been more popular in high school if all those girls would have just picked up the phone and called me.
jl
I think that the current scoop system started with Watergate and the WaPo investigation by Bernstein and Woodward. It has been degraded since then (and Woodward had a role to play in degrading his own good work from earlier in his career). Yes they had access to anonymous and important players, and they had a scoop. They also had a scoop that was more than a gotcha, and the access was risky, but risky for an important story.
Now the scoop is often a cheap gotcha against an easy target, and the access is safe access for safe stories that bless the reporter’s or editor’s preconceived notions, or used to boost ratings. It is a gimmick.
Also, I think the linked piece is too kind to our corporate hack press. Many guilty of journalistic malfeasance have been quite aggressive in expressing outrage that anyone dares call them on how lousy they were at their jobs. As in: “It is very very rude and unfair and uncivil to point out that I got everything wrong and facilitated one disaster after another”
I suggest Wilmore as the comedian next year’s nerd prom Or maybe Louis CK, or Chris Rock. Have they done it yet?
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Ooh. I’ll give that a read for sure. On the phone right now though.
As for juicing a kickstarter, don’t they tend to flatten out in the middle usually? I wouldn’t worry too much.
lahru
When news programs started being successful based on ratings………………..we, the American populace, lost any abject news reporting.
WaterGirl
@jl: Chris Rock would nail the media to the wall, just like Colbert did. In my dreams they pick Chris Rock.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Hey, that’s my beat. Go away, Washington reporters.
WaterGirl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Don’t despair, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has to wait until I get paid on the 1st.
jeffreyw
Thread needz moar kitteh!
dmsilev
There’s a reason Washington Punditry got all defensive after Colbert’s bit.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@WaterGirl: I’m not really despairing. In fact, I’m really, really pleased with how this has gone so far and I’m confident that I’ll reach that $8,000 primarily. (Really, really confident, because I have an ace up my sleeve on that front.) At this point, it’s about trying to find new outlets and raising as much as I can above that goal. There are many things I would like to do that I won’t be able to afford at the basic goal level, like having a print edition. I figure that to go all out, including a print edition and marketing, I’d need about $12,000-$13,000. If I happened to raise more than that, it would give me a start on getting the next thing (a collection of short stories, which is basically a publishing graveyard unless you’re already really established as a pro) published.
I don’t think I’ll get to that higher goal, but I want to push it as close as I can.
Violet
It’s not #NerdProm. It’s #HackProm.
Brachiator
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The press is always broken. With allowances for brave exceptions and moments of brilliance. Even “Citizen Kane” nailed the sad slide from idealism to cynical institutional arrogance.
Roy G.
There were other antecedents as well; Immediately the 2000 election and The Village’s response to the Clintons spring to mind.
srv
@CONGRATULATIONS!: If it was fiction, there wouldn’t be Pulitzers.
@Violet: It’s OK to beat up nerds. Even on liberal blogs.
Villago Delenda Est
Truth and Reconciliation Commission my ass.
Tumbrels.
Violet
@WaterGirl: Good point. Maybe Tissue Thin Pseudonym should have a Pay Day Promo type of thing.
Hal
@khead:
To a large portion of white America, the only time they will care about race opinions is when those opinions are critical of the black community as a whole. Throw in a jab at Obama or Eric Holder, or Al Sharpton (especially) and you will find yourself internet famous for awhile.
If only Chump was black, he would have a statue erected in his honor for this:
nominus
https://twitter.com/AnarchoPhysics/status/592921383849492480
Cervantes
@srv:
Why not?
Howard Beale IV
@jl:
Jon Oliver. He’s absolutely killing it with Last Week Tonight.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Violet: Hmmn. If you contribute on payday, and show me your pay stub to prove it, you get a bonus short story. I’ll have to figure out which one. Probably either “Living After Noon” or “The Sacrifices of Company B.”
Violet
@srv: Not sure how that is relevant. Calling them nerds is incorrect. They are hacks. “Nerd prom” was coined by Ana Marie Cox in 2009. It’s a wildly incorrect way to describe the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an evening where hacks get dressed up and hope they get to meet celebrities.
Cervantes
@jeffreyw:
Russert was incompetent even at making excuses for himself.
Cervantes
@Violet:
I agree. “Nerds” is not even close to what they are.
Tree With Water
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Even so, I think a respectable enough number of congressional democrats disregarded their journalistic malpractice, and voted accordingly. But even they ultimately chose party over country by turning a collective blind eye towards both those republicans who successfully plotted the war, and their fellow democrats whose complicity proved vital to the catastrophe; democrats who knew better, yet supported Bush-Cheney nonetheless. The rot runs deep..
Jeffro
You know, speaking of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner…that skit W did where he was searching for the missing WMDs has to be one of the top three outrages of that whole 8 year failshow (other than seeing the daily body counts of our soldiers mount).
3) the Oval Office search for WMDs
2) pinhead Ari Fleischer reminding everyone to “watch what you say”
1) then-Secretary of Education calling teachers’ unions “terrorists organizations”
Wait…also anything and everything Rumsfeld said…Cheney too…
srv
Disenstablishmentarironicalism. How’s it work?
Kay
I don’t think ti’s denial, though. I think it’s a belief that exceptional people don’t need to avoid “insider status” and don’t need “crticial distance” because they can rise above what could be perceived as a conflict of interest and act ethically and objectively despite insider status.
It’s a kind of conceit. I see the same thing in judges and prosecutors who won’t voluntarily and easily avoid a conflict and recuse because they take it as some kind of insult to their personal integrity. It’s ego. It’s putting yourself ahead of the work you’re supposed to be doing, it’s saying “while mere mortals may need to follow these ethical norms and rules because they’re vulnerable to capture and careerism, I do not.”
RSA
I have no special thoughts about the substance of the piece, but as for the title… “Let me borrow some authority from linguistics by using a term like ‘deep grammar’ that may or may not mean anything but conveys a sense of gravitas.”
Come to think of it, that title is perfect.
LanceThruster
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
However, this ignores the element that says ‘we want truthful and thorough investigative reporting’ but only up to the point that it doesn’t do damage to a particular horse we’ve backed.
Warts and all coverage can be disturbing as we want assessments without rose-colored glasses, but validly fear that too much truth will pave the way for a spoiler to neutralize our chosen lesser evil.
The Cornel West / Michael Eric Dyson dust-up comes to mind.
shell
Just had someone in to fix my clogged dishwasher, and went in to find it’s leaking from the front panel and a pond of water on the floor.
Violet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: People may not want to show you their pay stubs, but you could do that on a trust basis. Have people tell you they just got paid and they get a bonus. Even if they didn’t just get paid, it’s probably not going to be enough people to be a big deal.
Other ideas: Take a page from NPR and if you’ve got another person willing to donate waiting in the wings, maybe they could offer to match donations on a certain day.
May Day is coming up, which is Labour Day for the rest of the world. For all donations on May 1 you’ll promise to donate $X to a Labor organization. Or ACLU or something.
Other places to advertise:
Your high school/college/university–see if they might highlight it on something.
A writer’s group at University of Minnesota because the story is set there.
Anyone affiliated with the hockey team that has an online presence.
Those are just thoughts. Might not work. But thinking along those lines might turn up an option you hadn’t considered.
trollhattan
@srv:
That fraud Monckton is still alive? That’s too bad.
Mike E
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Filling out an application for a position that by all accounts (except the official ones, natch) will be mine
Sorting laundry for the ‘mat at 7am
Figuring out a bad ass acronym for T.U.M.B.R.E.L.
WereBear
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Well, I put it on my Facebook page. Good luck!
srv
@shell: Now you know how W felt.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: Oh, you torment me so. I have such a craving to get another cow-cat.
I mean, we have four, but none of them are cow-cats.
Turgidson
That post is interesting, but it gives the media credit for having any amount of self-awareness about their gigantic, heinous failure at all. I do not believe such credit to be warranted.
My view is that the vast, vast majority of them have engaged in no meaningful reflection because they don’t think anything was wrong with how it went down. The least, absolute least they would have done if they thought they’d screwed up was to agree not to put Bloody Bill WRONG Kristol in front of their cameras or lease out column space to him ever again. (I exempt Fox News from this of course, for obvious reasons) And yet, he’s all over the fucking place, and somehow more arrogantly certain in his cowardly bloodthirsty stupidity than ever.
WereBear
Dude, if you get into S.H.I.E.L.D. that will be awesome!
And for those that missed it earlier, my new blog has a new post.
It’s women’s health and the shoddy state of medical diagnosis. Mainly.
the Conster
@Turgidson:
David Gregory flat out said that sorting the truth from the lies was not their job, and that he was proud of the job they did. You won’t get a more honest and pathetic answer from the horse’s mouth than that.
trollhattan
As we consider our messed up law enforcement and judicial system, we can still ponder the yet unplumbed depths so wonderfully explored by Indonesia.
Mr. Prasetyo sounds like the soulmate of Alberto Gonzales.
Kay
They could just not get involved in these situations where people have to question their “critical distance” and then they have to do their defensive and cranky denials where they insist they are objective and we just go around and around on their personal ethics and values. We don’t know them. That’s why they have to stop “embedding” themselves. Then no one has to wonder and they can stop feeling put-upon and attacked. We’ll all win! :)
khead
@WereBear:
I feel your pain. That cat is adorable.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mike E:
SHIELD is hiring?! Why wasn’t I told? Dream job even if Patton Oswalt’s assistant.
Mike E
@WereBear: Well the tech isn’t as flashy, but the danger is ever present!
eta wtf is with the ad of someone holding the turd/phallus shaped gherkin?! Eww.
Tree With Water
@Turgidson: Yeah, it’s usually disturbing when forced to confront the notion that particular individuals and/or groups are neither incompetent or corrupt, but are in fact true believers.
Litlebritdifrnt
@srv:
I wish people would stop calling Monckton “Lord Monckton” he is not a fucking Lord, he inherited his title after 1999 when hereditary peerage was done away with. Sure he is a “peer” in the fact that he has a totally useless title that entitles him to nothing. He has attempted to be elected to the House of Lords four times and has been defeated every single time, in at least one instance receiving no votes whatsoever. The man is a fucking lunatic and the fact that the right glob onto him shows just how shallow their fucking bench is. The next thing you know is they will be quoting David Icke saying that the Royal Family are rat eating lizards.
Tenar Darell
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Aren’t there a lot of hockey fans on Lawyers Guns and Money Blog? I think efgoldman might know for sure, but he’s sick today.
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
Great minds, etc.
Turgidson
@the Conster:
David Gregory’s somehow even more pathetic successor (how the hell is that even possible?) Chuck Todd has said similar things a couple times. Once, he gave the GOP credit for “messaging well” on the ACA, saying it wasn’t his job to call out their lies – the White House had to do that singlehandedly. Another time he whined that he couldn’t ask tough questions of his guests because they might not come back on the show if he does. He seems to only worry about that with known liars and Republicans, but I repeat myself.
It’s hopeless.
Chris
Once more, the thing that kills me the most about the state of the media isn’t even how broken it is. It’s that no matter how blatant they get, the biggest chunk of the public continues to think of it as “liberally biased.”
WereBear
@Turgidson: I saw Wolf Blitzer interviewing someone critical of the media, and he must have been parroting what he’d been told: “This is a business.”
jl
Sanders in as Democrat. That is good news.
Now we have a race, what the stupid press wanted. Test for the miserable US press.
Will they give Sanders the same attention as they habitually have given, and are giving now, to GOP teabaggers who have zero chance? Will they pay attention because it now officially is a race? Or will they dismiss Sanders because they say he has no chance (even though Sanders has more chance than people like Paul and Cruz because Sanders is sane and competent and honest and diligent)? Or will they continue to focus on bogus HRC scandal BS?
How many email beers to people want to bet? I go with continued BS from the corporate media.
Anyway, let the Sunday talky headcounts begin. I expect to see Sanders’ ass in Sunday talky seats for next couple of weeks on a regular basis (yes that is sarcastic, I don’t think I will)
If O’Malley gets in, the Democrats will have a very good constructive primary focusing on solid issues people want to hear about.
Bernie Sanders to announce his presidential candidacy
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-to-announce-his-presidential-candidacy/
WereBear
@Chris: Little did the Democrats know that by passing Medicare they would extend the lives of their bitterest enemies.
Baud
@jl:
Welcome to the club, Bernie. :-)
Mike in NC
@Violet: #TurdProm
Litlebritdifrnt
Totally OT but I need some advice. My neighbor found a three legged cat at the grocery store. Apparently in addition to only having three legs she has Asthma and has obviously some sort of hair loss. Anyhoo, she is really the most adorable cat on Earth. My neighbor seems to think that letting her “escape” the house on a regular basis is okay and of course she ends up at my front door eating the food that I leave out for the ferels and trying to get into the house. I have had run ins with Animal Control in the past and I am concerned that they are going to find her at my front door and charge me with animal abuse because of her condition. What do I do?
jl
@Turgidson: In other depressing news actor/diva news. John Dickerson is replacing the barely tolerable, sometimes slightly better than average, courtly gracious pillar of journalism, GOP hack and crazed ancient hick, Schieffer, for Face the Nation.
Yuck.
WereBear
@Litlebritdifrnt: Well, you have legal connections? Can you take a picture of the cat and have it notarized as NOT your cat?
The poor thing. It sounds like she was let out too often already.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Violet: I was just joking about the pay stub part. I was kind of joking about the whole thing because, to be honest, most of the things I have up as rewards are things I would happily do for free anyway. I try really hard to get people to go to games with me; I won’t let not pledged $125 get in the way of introducing someone to women’s hockey. I’m still at the stage of giving my stories away to select people just because I want to have more people read them; all I ask is that you do not post them anywhere online because that would make it harder to sell them.
So, yes, I am MORE than happy to just trust people that it’s payday and send them an extra story. That can’t happen until after the campaign is over because that’s when Kickstarter releases all of the information I need to contact contributors individually. But it will certainly happen if someone wants.
Kay
@jl:
The NYTimes had “Bernard Sanders” which I loved for some reason. I felt good that they used his full name.
I was afraid it was going to turn into a horrible thing where they treat all the far Right candidates as serious yet are disrespectful to Sanders as “far Left” or something.
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I remember when the House of Lords web page had a front-page announcement that Monckton was not in fact a Lord and should instead fuck off with that nonsense.
They said it more elegantly than I just did.
Some Republican asshole (but I repeat myself) dragged him into congress to testify that “CO2 is plant food!” and other great climatology insights. Am sure it was well received on account of the accent.
Mike in NC
@the Conster: Watchdog press? More like lapdog press, especially when the Villagers are interviewing Republicans.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Here’s hoping they do the very same with John Ellis Bush. Every time.
Turgidson
@jl:
Sanders will get attention through this week’s Sunday shows, so that the media can dismiss him as having no chance in as many venues as possible. Then they’ll reconvene their all-star panel of braindead pundit gasbags to pontificate about how Hillary’s candidacy might be doomed by [latest nontroversy]. And they’ll make that transition without a hint of irony.
Are we sure we don’t want domestic drone strikes? OK, that’s too far. I’ll leave that kind of rhetoric to Villago Delenda Est.
jeffreyw
@WereBear: Sweet Pea sez she’ll be right here, waiting.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Tenar Darell: I’m not a regular at LGM and I’m kind of reluctant to just show up at a site and introduce myself by soliciting pledges for my novel. And none of the other blogs I read and participate at have the kind of freewheeling, talk about everything in the comments section, culture that exists here.
But I may put that reluctance aside if people think that it wouldn’t be horribly inappropriate. I have no confidence in my ability to sense where boundary lines like that are.
Patrick
@Turgidson:
So what Gregory and Todd are admitting is that they both are vastly overpaid stenographers. They most certainly aren’t journalists.
Kay
@trollhattan:
The only time you’re going to hear “John Ellis Bush” is at an inaugeration so let’s hope that day never comes to pass.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Options:
1. Talk to the neighbor and explain the situation and ask the neighbor to keep the cat indoors.
2. Stop leaving food out
3. Leave food out and risk Animal Control
4. Take the cat and make her your own cat and keep her indoors. Telling the neighbor is optional
I may have missed some. What options are you considering?
Baud
@Turgidson:
The MSM will try to fan internecine war flames. They won’t let Bernie talk about the issues.
Turgidson
@jl:
Or as Charlie Pierce might say, John Dickerson replaces “former Council of Trent correspondent Bob Schieffer”
Great. So one of the Sunday windbag hours will be a series of idiotic SlatePitches with some wannabe-Russert gotcha questions thrown around. Just what the country needs.
Warren Terra
The best of the few WHCD takes I’ve read was Ezra Klein making the point that Obama can express his beliefs more clearly as a comedy routine delivered to a bunch of smug half-drunk asshats who aren’t really listening than he can the rest of the time.
Mike E
@Kay:
Worse: He’ll remind them of their serious Journalism 201 professor who was passionate about “facts” and “ethics”, and made them do lots of homework…they’ll pinch off their own noses in disgust, most likely.
Wouldn’t it be cool if he ran his campaign with no damns/fvcks left to give?
Mike in NC
@Steeplejack (phone): We’re going to miss Constable Bob from “Justified”.
Violet
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I think whatever you can do to update the Kickstarter throughout the campaign is a good thing. If people are watching it but maybe are on the fence about donating an update might push them over the edge–matching gift incentive (if allowed by Kickstarter), update on the campaign, etc. Do updates influence getting your Kickstarter on the front page of Kickstarter? I remember you posting something about reaching a certain goal meant you had a better chance of yours being profiled on the front page.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I’lll be watching. People who treat Ted Cruz like he’s mainstream better not be making any comments about the “far Left Bernie Sanders”
Patrick
@Jeffro:
I remember seeing it and I remember the audience (the media etc) laughing. It was just beyond the pale. One of our country’s biggest foreign policy disasters, which caused so many deaths, yet here the media which was laughing it up. This would be the same media that refused to ask any questions and basically acted as cheerleaders for Dick Cheney to get the war started. I don’t think I will ever have any respect for our media again.
trollhattan
Am occasionally asked, usually by in-laws, when we’re “going to move to the foothills and get away from all that crime?” As much as I like the sticks in general, I tell them it’s because I don’t want this guy as my neighbor, so I’ll keep taking my chances here in crimeville. And to think he’s not even Florida Man.
Mike E
@Violet: #4, since cats tend to choose their owners, as li’l Trey seems to have already done!
Turgidson
@Baud:
Right. It will go something like this:
“But Senator, polls show you at 3%. So why are you running? What is it about Hillary that you can’t abide? You realize you’re the longest of longshots, so why do this unless there’s reason to believe Hillary will self-destruct? Why might Hillary self-destruct? Thanks for your time, Senator. Coming up next! Democrats in Disarray? Does having more than one declared presidential candidate prove that the Democrats are hopelessly divided? Peggy Noonan and Cokie Roberts will be here to barf up a bunch of word salad.” Cut to commercial.
Kay
@Mike E:
When I hear Sanders talk I think “breathe!”. I do the same thing when I’m all worked up. He’s lightheaded midway thru one of his “5 paragraphs in 4 seconds” commentaries, I guarantee it. He may keel over in the debates.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet: I would take her in an instant if I thought that she could survive in my rambunctious household with two dogs and six other fully functional cats. I am concerned that if the dogs decided to start “playing” with her, as they do with my other cats, she would not be able to protect herself and get up on the bookcases the way the other cats can.
Violet
@Turgidson: If he’s not ready with “Republican candidates X, Y and Z are also polling at 3%. Did you ask them the same question?” he needs to get better advisers.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: You could offer some sort of time limited reward: The first X people get a character named after them, frex.
Mike in NC
@WereBear: There’s an 80 year old single woman in our development who insisted that her cat loved being kept in the back yard tied to a leash. Poor cat now has three legs after apparently being mauled by one of the local predators (alligators, coyotes, wild dogs, raccoons, possums, etc.), yet she still keeps the cat outside hours every day.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Well, then you’re down to the other options. I forgot some other options:
5. Take her to a shelter
6. Find a foster home for her.
If you haven’t talked to the neighbor, I’d recommend you start with that. If the neighbor refuses to keep the cat inside you’ll have to make your decision.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mike in NC:
He’s all over the place! He just got shot at as the mayor of Battle Creek in the series of the same name a week or two ago.
Turgidson
@Violet:
Agreed. That probably won’t knock the host off their “stir up discord with Dems” agenda, but he needs to throw their laziness back at them regardless.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Violet: I no longer have any faith that I know what gets you onto Kickstarter’s front page or featured list. My problem with updates is that I don’t know what to say in them. Obviously, I had one today since I actually posted something new. And I may do one tomorrow or Thursday with either an additional reward of a story with a pledge, or just linking to a story and letting people read it.
Mike in NC
@Turgidson: Evidently Bob Schieffer finally decided to spend his Sunday mornings golfing with his close acquaintances in the Bush family.
Howard Beale IV
@srv:
Only in his dreams.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet:
I am down to one. The people at the shelter would look at her with three legs, asthma and hair loss and euthanize her within the first five minutes. I have spoken to the neighbor and her daughter said “we are trying to find another home for her” this is code for “we took her to a farm” ie., dropped her off at the side of the road just to get rid of her. I am thinking that my only option at this point is to try and introduce her to the dogs. The other cats are used to her being around so that shouldn’t be a problem, I just have to make the effort to have the dogs smell her butt and have them accept her as one of their own. I know I am a fucking fool for doing this but who else is going to adopt a three legged cat with asthma and hair loss?
Tenar Darell
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Yeah, that’s why I mentioned efgoldman, because I think he’s quite active there. Best ask him, when he’s feeling better from the “touch of pneumonia.”
jibeaux
A local woman, six months pregnant, was shot twice in the back and killed by her boyfriend. The baby has lived so far. The boyfriend showed up in court without a scratch on him. He’s white, of course. My question is, if the cops absolutely positively just have to kick some asses sometimes, why can’t they ever do it to a guy like that? People’d be like “oh, ran into a wall, huh, that’s a shame.”
lamh36
All day at work, all I was seeing on FB was about the rioting and looting last night. Got home and I see PEACEFUL PROTESTS in Baltimore happening now and going on all day as I can tell. So how many post have I seen talking about these PEACEFUL protest…barely 2 or 3 in the last hour. Was just watching MSNBC and I can see that the media is just waiting for the curfew to be up in 2 hours. The media wants riots and chaos and they will do what they can to “shape” that narrative!
I think people are starting to realize that the media and police and the usual suspects wants to see Black folk rioting and causing chaos. So the community came out and are now “regulating” themselves where the police won’t. I just saw a young man who seem to be agitated and if not screaming, but he was talking very angrily to police while the cameras were watching. Another young man, got in front of him appeared to be giving him a bear hug and actually lifted the other young man out of the frame of the cameras.
Citizen Scientist
Not to beat a Baltimore horse, but just thought I’d share these thoughts from a friend who’s lived in Baltimore for more than 10 years and just closed on a house in the city last week. He’s an anthropologist that travels a lot to shitty (and not so shitty) 2nd and 3rd world countries.
“The events of the weekend have given me the opportunity to see people from all over the US talk shit about my city and my neighbors. Most of you have no idea what you’re talking about, especially if you’re getting your news from any of the TV networks (and most of the newspapers). This is definitely a city with deep internal problems, but the worst of what has happened could have been avoided with better leadership and more accountability.
The best parts of what has happened – the civic unity, the defiance of the status quo, the peaceful gatherings, the deep opposition to injustice, the desire to heal our city – is most of what is happening. Almost none of that makes the news, but it lies at the heart of why those of us who choose to live here love this city and still have hope for its future.”
MomSense
@jeffreyw:
The kitty I co-parent is a magpie and he is the absolute sweetest. Unfortunately my pup isn’t good with other animals so I have to go visit him but I love him so much.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: He is a member of the hereditary peerage, but he is not a member of the House of Lords. See the first sentence of your link.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
How about:
5) Give the kitty a beautiful collar and name-tag with her humans’ contact information on it.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: Ack! What a darling.
My cow-cat, Myron (he had a yarmulke!) was the world’s most domesticated cat. The other cats would watch the hamsters in their wheel: “Run hamsters! Run!”
Myron would rub his face on their cage. “I love you hamsters.”
And he did.
WereBear
@Mike in NC: Oh for god’s sweet sake! Isn’t there someone you could report her to?
Here in NY, if you report a dog tied outside in all weathers, they eventually get confiscated.
Violet
@lamh36: “If it bleeds it leads” is nothing new. The media hoping for more dramatic images is pretty typical.
FWIW, NBC Nightly News did show some of the cleanup and peaceful acts today.
Howard Beale IV
@srv: Ah, he’s playing the ‘British Peer’ game. Ok, he’s Britiish peer. He’s also an flaming asrhole. After all, when you’ve pissed off even Nigel Farage of UKIP, you’re definitively a few fries short of a happy meal.
WereBear
@Litlebritdifrnt: Oh, I see where you are going there. And where the neighbor is at.
And while nothing can be done about the missing leg, good food and love might help with the asthma and hair loss.
Bless you. Give it a whirl.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’d take her. The last three legged, health-challenged cat I had was the greatest cat ever, though he didn’t lose a limb until I’d had him for four years. But I know what you’re talking about; the reason I adopted Eddie in the first place is that I was afraid no one else would adopt a sweet cat that was missing an ear, had a large scar on the top of his head, and whose jaw didn’t fit together quite right.
chrome agnomen
they didn’t fail to detect it, they failed to acknowledge it. millions of people with absolutely zero access saw it plainly.
the Conster
@Citizen Scientist:
I’ve been following Justin Fenton’s twitter feed. This is happening now. I’ll bet you a million bucks it won’t be shown on the “news”, because there’s a narrative, and the narrative is the narrative and must be served.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@efgoldman: So advice on whether I should post something at LGM, and if it would be good, how to go about it? Hell, maybe it would give me another community to belong to and maybe it would be one that didn’t fuck up my browser like FYWP does. (Oh, look, another script not functioning error just locked up my computer again.)
Aleta
@Litlebritdifrnt: do you have a room with a door so she and and the dogs can sniff each other through it, for the first few days? what part of (this?) country do you live in?
SiubhanDuinne
deleted because stupid linky didn’t work
Tenar Darell
@efgoldman: I’m glad you’re already feeling better. You made me laugh with the Python reference, but my father had walking pneumonia, didn’t know it, fell over cracked some ribs, and that made something easily treatable much worse to get over. I worry about “touch of pneumonia” reflexively now.
Hal
@Turgidson:
Chuck Todd’s job on MTP is to give handy’s to John McCain under the table while McCain fantasizes about being President.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Hal: But who sees the starbursts?
Mike in NC
@Hal: John McCain can’t remember how many properties he owns, but Chuck Todd has enjoyed the guest bedroom at all of them.
WereBear
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: That’s right! I remember Eddie!
Now the book you could write about HIM… that is one I could sensibly feature on my cat blog :)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@WereBear: Eddie made a short (one paragraph) appearance in early drafts when one of Phoebe’s teammates described a cat she had as a kid. I’m pretty sure that scene got cut along the way, though. I think I have a way to bring him back, alive this time, as a metaphor for Phoebe.
Tree With Water
@Citizen Scientist: San Franciscans know how you and Baltimore feel. Bill O’Reilly fairly recently wished a terrorist attack on San Francisco because.. well, because he’s an republican asshole (forgive the redundancy). Throw in another 30 years of my hometown serving as an always inane punch line for comics worldwide, and I could not be more sympathetic, either.
BruceFromOhio
@Mike in NC: LMFAO, Gaia help me, THIS.
Cats, it even rhymes.
Bex
@Litlebritdifrnt: Cat bleg on Balloon Juice?
Howard Beale IV
@jl:
Now that he’s in, he’s got my support 1E+100%. Hillary can be the doting grandma she should be.
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV:
Too old to be barefoot and pregnant?
Howard Beale IV
@Mike in NC:
During the Shrub years, Blair was rightly known as Bush’s poodle.
MomSense
PBS is showing a documentary called The Day the 60s Died. It brought back a lot of memories so I’ve been crying and yelling at the tv. Up next is The Last Days of Vietnam. I think I’m going to have to watch another time.
Also too fuck Pat Buchanan. If there were ever a justification for bringing back tarring and feathering he is it.
Peale
@Corner Stone: is sanders old enough to be her father? Shouldn’t he do the great grandpa thing?
Mothra
If one more person posts that video of the mother smacking her kid and pretending that the reason for the rioting is lax parenting I am going to lose my mind.
Germy Shoemangler
Just watched “the end of the ’60s” on pbs.
“McGovern won the people’s republic of MA” was a quote from Pat Buchanan. It wasn’t a quote from 40 years ago, it’s something he said for the documentary.
He also talked about what a sensitive man Nixon was.
Cervantes
@Howard Beale IV:
He is a few years older than she is.
I think perhaps you have some explaining to do.
Baud
@Mothra:
This. I saw it about 10 times this morning. How quickly will she be on the Today show?
Cervantes
@MomSense:
The anniversary is almost upon us.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone:
By about 15+ years or so, I’d say, unless she underwent some novel reproductive medical procedures. She already has one ganddaughter (Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky)
Corner Stone
@Peale: Not sure why Sanders isn’t doing the doting grandpa thing, as he should be.
Howard Beale IV
@Cervantes: Simple. She’s a hardcore neoliberal. Benie’s a dyed-in-the-wool soshulist.
Hilary will bring about the Grand Bargain. Bernie won’t.
Any questions?
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: I…uhhh…hmmm.
Mike in NC
@Tree With Water: NYC is huge, so statistically it’s no surprise that it gave us Rudy Giuliani, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, and many other wingnut FOX News bottom feeders. I’d take SF any day of the week.
Germy Shoemangler
Oh great… now “the last days of vietnam” is on, and the first person I see is Kissinger sharing his memories.
Pat Buchanan, Henry Kissinger… they live forever and they write history.
Howard Beale IV
@Germy Shoemangler: My brother keep using that phrase. He bough a Place in For-I DUH. Can’t wait when he relocates then for retirement.
Mothra
@Baud: She’s going to be on the CBS morning show tomorrow. : (
I don’t blame her for doing whatever to get him back in the house, under the circumstances. I’m just sick of the reaction to it by a public who wants to blame everyone but the cops who did this.
Mandalay
@Turgidson:
Perhaps, but the gold standard for this is Judith Miller, who is currently doing the rounds promoting her book. She is completely unapologetic. Not only does she give herself a free pass, but she also gives the Bush Administration a free pass, arguing that errors over invading Iraq arose solely from faulty information provided by our intelligence services.
Now that astonishing position invites an obvious question: is she really just a stupid and gullible reporter, or does she know that she is a hack stenographer and a brazen liar? I go with the latter.
Major Major Major Major
Holy shit, Truvada is $1200 a month without a coupon. And here I was thinking insurance covered it.
That’s more expensive than HIV treatment…
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: (He grins as Corner Stone walks right into the bear trap HB IV laid….)
Germy Shoemangler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg
I posted this in an earlier thread. Inside Amy Schumer shows the double standard of how older actresses are regarded vs. older actors. I suppose it could apply to male and female politicians as well.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
Yup I’m sitting on my hands so I don’t throw something at my tv.
Howard Beale IV
@Major Major Major Major: And with a coupon?
Baud
@Mothra:
I don’t blame her for anything. The media sucks, tho.
Howard Beale IV
@Germy Shoemangler:
Remember-the best tunes are played on older instruments…..
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: Maybe consider potential policy positions as an argument, and not a barefoot and pregnant nanna comment?
Germy Shoemangler
@MomSense: I was going to poke my own eyes out when Pat Buchanan was talking, but my cat jumped on my lap and scratched my hands away.
Major Major Major Major
@Howard Beale IV: $0, not a typo
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: You’re an idiot.
Gravenstone
@Mothra: Rather ironic that anyone would point to that video as an example of “lax parenting”. She’s parenting just right, beating some sense into her boy’s head before he does something else stupid and ends up dead.
Baud
@Gravenstone: I think the lax parenting refers to all the other mothers.
Mike E
@MomSense: Last night’s The Draft featured Rumsfeld. Prominently.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: No way, no how will I ever vote for Hillary if she is the Democratic 2016 nominee. If necessary, I’ll invoke my alternate citizenship rights and leave.
Mothra
@Gravenstone:
You misread my comment. I did not say that she was lax.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mothra: What does lacrosse have to do with any of this?
Tree With Water
@Litlebritdifrnt: I did not know that Lords could be elected. I thought they either inherited their seats, or were booted into them by party leaders. I know the House of Lords figured problematically into the equation when time came for Chamberlain to pass the baton to Lord Halifax or Winston Churchill of the House of Commons; and I seem to recall that Churchill later kicked some trouble makers upstairs (i.e., into the House of Lords), but I may be mistaken about that. But elected? I didn’t have a clue.
Cervantes
@Howard Beale IV:
Several come to mind, but I think you’re already in the process of answering them.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: And you’re an anal sphincter.
MomSense
@Mike E:
Rumsfeld, Kissinger, and Buchanan oh my.
MomSense
@Germy Shoemangler:
Saved by the cat. It’s reassuring to know I’m not the only one having this reaction.
Mothra
@Baud:
Yes, thank you.
The media, and Rand Paul, and apparently everyone who uses Facebook, is posting this video gleefully and claiming if other mothers were like this, there wouldn’t be any riots.
How about if the police didn’t break a man’s spine. That’s the problem, a man’s spine was severed. This video is a diversion from the problem of police violence.
Mothra
@Omnes Omnibus:
; 0
Howard Beale IV
@Cervantes:
Come again?
Cervantes
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Well, he did inherit the title but not the membership in the House of Lords.
You will recognize this letter.
Mike in NC
@Germy Shoemangler: George McGovern was an actual WW2 hero who piloted B-24 bombers on many dangerous missions over Nazi Germany. Pat Buchanan was given a 4F draft rating in the 1960s due to his lousy physical condition. You won’t ever read about that in our corporate media. They adore Pat.
Cervantes
@Howard Beale IV:
See what I mean?
Betty Cracker
@Mothra: Maybe Paul should shut his stupid yap and go pound some sense into his own repeat-offender spawn. Gyad, the nerve, the unmitigated gall, the sheer effrontery of that arrogant fuck-nugget lecturing other parents! The mind. It reels.
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: I’m trying to hold back the shit you’re trying to express?
germy shoemangler
@Mike in NC: just saw this tweet from bill kristol:
“Winning GOP message: Against anarchy & chaos, at home & abroad. Cheney-Giuliani 2016 probably too much to hope for…But if not them, who?”
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV:
Oh, sorry to get it so late. You’re making a blatant parody here.
Nicely done!
trollhattan
@germy shoemangler:
Gotta be a spoof. Even Bloody Billy…oh, nevermind.
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
Neither McGovern nor Massachusetts is ashamed of that.
Well, he’s been saying it for decades, the sot.
germy shoemangler
@Betty Cracker: Watching these ’60s PBS specials, I’m reminded that Nixon was swept into office in a landslide because the “silent majority” was terrified by all the social unrest.
Could we see a repeat of that phenomenon in 2016 for the GOP?
Mothra
@Betty Cracker:
Priceless, isn’t it? Driving drunk is such a frat boy crime, that’s totally different from real crime, like looking at a cop and then running away.
germy shoemangler
@Cervantes: I remember in the 1980s, Hunter Thompson worrying for Buchanan’s health. Buchanan’s secretary chuckles and says “He’ll outlive us all.”
She was right.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone:
Ah, yes. Dumb as a box of rocks, not knowing what my personal situation is. No matter. I can execute against it, and you’d never know. All the better.
Mike E
@Mike in NC: Yep, only the GOP can turn a bona fide WWII hero into punchline…and their own cowardice, a mere inconvenience.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike E: They played the same game in 2004.
Anne Laurie
@germy shoemangler:
Hell, why do you think the Media Village Idiots are making so much noise over a burned-out CVS and some rock-throwing (from cops as well as protestors)?
The young CREEPsters who made their bones hiding everyone’s Watergate-era crimes but Nixon’s are now the “senior statesmen” in charge of the GOP… and most of the news media. They’re jonesing for a repeat of the “ghetto riots” that did so much to entrench Nixon’s Southern strategy.
And Nixon didn’t even have a African-American president to run against!
germy shoemangler
@Anne Laurie: How it must frustrate them to see Baltimore residents cleaning up their neighborhoods and sweeping up broken glass.
fuckwit
@Violet: Co-sign. Please change the headline. Stop with the nerdprom. Nerds actually care about facts, science, and the search for the truth. The WHPC are hacks, which is the whole point of your excerpt. It’s #hackprom. OKTHXBYE.
Elizabelle
@Anne Laurie:
It’s all the Ebola they’ve got at the moment.
AND PLEASE CHANGE IT TO #HACKPROM.
Nerds are smart; occasionally cool. Next we’ll be calling them geeks. No no no.
germy shoemangler
@Mike E: John Kerry vs. George W.
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: Hey, friend. You’re the asshole who said a female candidate for President would be better off changing diapers and baking cookies.
Maybe you could argue something beyond her old ass gender?
Mike in NC
@germy shoemangler: Sadly, a Goering-Mussolini ticket is unlikely to materialize in time for 2016.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: Dude, I said that Hilary was a neoliberal, which is reason enough not to vote for her. Anyone who’s willing to support any neoliberal should be drawn and quartered after the damage they have inflicted the last 25 years.
Mike in NC
@Anne Laurie: Millions of the Silent Majority are now pushing up daisies, yet millions more are still among us like The Walking Dead. Rotting in their recliners watching “Fox and Friends”.
Original Lee
@srv: The Pope is a chemist and a Jesuit; he is an unusually clear and logical thinker on the interaction between science and faith. I’m sure that’s why we have so many squid ink clouds of concern trolling over this encyclical.
Scott Alloway
The mainstream corporate media is an incestuous group, protecting its family secrets from the public and attacking all who challenge their veracity. Beltway media, protecting their own since god knows when. And to think I used to trust them. I shudder.
Scott Alloway
@jeffreyw: You and I had the same problem. If I only know then what I know now. It’s be human.
Howard Beale IV
@Original Lee: You’re leaving out the nastiest group that’s trying to influence the pope: the Heartland Institute, who seems to believe that second-hand cigarette smoke doesn’t cause cancer, while being funded by Big Tobacco.
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: No, what you said was that Bernie was in and Hillary would be better served to be baking cookies, knitting mittens and packing Christmas stockings.
Don’t be fucking stupid about what you said. It’s right there.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: Bernie would be better Than Hillary. Now if you want to attack my rather patriarchal remarks, fine. Guilty as charged. But NO WAY NOW HOW WILL I EVER VOTE FOR HILARY. And if you can’t accept that, well, tought shit, motherfucker.
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV:
J R in WV
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
There are a ton of people who post at B-J who also post at LGM, so I don’t think you would run into a rude introduction. Look at the posters who you recognize, Aimie and Villago Delenda Est, and me… just for starters.
“Tell ’em I sent you! That’ll do the trick!” Har, har, har!!!
Really you could email a front pager, like BSpencer, the art division of LGM, or Eric Loomis, the labor historian, or Robert Farley, founding Diplomat. They are all good folks.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: I hate their nested/tiered/whatever threads.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: That shit needs to die in a fire.
Howard Beale IV
@Corner Stone: Congratulations. Here, have a cookie.
Cervantes
@Howard Beale IV:
Yes, you did say it — and that part is easy enough to understand.
What was odd was the way you said it.
And by the way:
True — and you know that fact — but do you know how many grand-children Sanders has?
Corner Stone
@Howard Beale IV: I’m always a little awed that people who say shit, then get pointed out saying shit, take umbrage when people quote them saying shit.
You said she should shut the fuck up and start baking cookies and knitting socks.
The fuck you meant something else. Go fuck yourself and stick your cookie right up your ass, punk bitch.
Cervantes
Yes, the new one fits them precisely — thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: The post now lacks a “Readership Capture” tag.
Howard Beale IV
@Cervantes: Irrelevant.
@Corner Stone: Perform aerial intercourse on a torus-shaped pastry, you nanocephalic slackjawed mouthbreather.
Cervantes
@Howard Beale IV:
What’s irrelevant?
Or if it’s easier: what’s relevant?
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: Dude, you were called out because you defaulted to ageist and sexist tropes. You know it. Deal with it. Call her out for her perceived neo-liberalism or hawkishness. Hell, I’ll admit to wondering if her age and health should be a factor, but, when you go ageist on a women in the service of advocating for someone who is older than her, it does say something.
Howard Beale IV
@Cervantes: Since when is the ‘how’ an issue, versus the issue (‘what’) itself?
Cervantes
@Howard Beale IV:
Only since the beginning of language.
Anyhow, I have to quit now. Have a good evening.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a fact that her being a woman gives her an 6 to 8 year additional lifespan against males, is it not?
And that’s exactly what I’m calling her out on-she’s an uber-neoliberal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: Bullshit. You are ignoring the first rule of holes.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: OK-tell me why I should care.
Tenar Darell
@Betty Cracker: If I had Twitter I’d try to see how many people he had to block in the next 24 hours who mentioned the gall of his bringing up anything about anyone’s parenting.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: That is up to you. It is a blog. You can invest exactly as much emotion into it as you want. OTOH, the ageism and sexism you casually tossed out was pretty clear. That’s all I was saying.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: Hillary is in the race only for Hillary.
Once you realize that, things become clear. As I have already stated, if Hillary is the 2016 Dem monimee, I won’t vote for her.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: Yeah, people called out your sexist and ageist comments and you have responded with bullshit. Whatever.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: WATB.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: To what do you want me to respond? Happy to try to do so.
Mike G
The corporate press realized it’s a much cushier life being pets of the powerful rather than a watchdog for the public interest.
WaterGirl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: This is just my opinion, but I would recommend against posting about the kickstarter at any place where you’re not a regular.
You could think about outright asking people here to consider posting the kickstarter info to their Facebook page if they do Facebook and like your first chapter.
Also, I thought a couple of Violet’s suggestions were good.
Sherparick
@CONGRATULATIONS!: There are usually institutional and other incentives ($$$) at play with the long demise of the “free” press as dominated by the MSM and the VSPs. And history helps. One advantage of being old and being raised by a family of news nerds is that I watched the morning news shows in the late sixties and seventies. Believe me, Lawrence Spivak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Press) and reporters he had on the show did not care if they asked some politician or administration official a difficult question about Vietnam or Watergate they did not worry about whether he or she (mostly “he” in those days) would come back on the show. Where else would they go in a world of 3 networks and just starting out PBS, (which at that time was really being run by hippies and radicals)? Also, the reporters were not getting agents and being invited to do speaking fees for $25,000 a speech (and they would have been fired if they had done so). I expect Spivak, who was the producer and entrepreneur behind the show did do speeches, but I expect the rate then was more like $2,500 plus expenses. In the 1980s that all started to change. First, Reagan’s FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine Rule and pretty much made a dead letter of requirement that broadcasters, TV and Radio, “serve the public interest.” The news divisions of NBC, CBS, and ABC and the local stations went from being “prestige” loss leaders that satisfied the Government to being organized into cash cows for the corporate owners. The purpose went from delivering news to delivering infotainment and personalities that delivered the best ratings were rewarded with the big pay checks, celebrity status, and the gold mine of the speaker circuit to all the lobbying associations of Washington. CNN started up in competition and politicians and the hacks who serve them like Karl Rove started playing off reporters against each other, reporters now with incentives to get on that gravy train that would make them part of the 1% and a VSP. Reporters like Ron Fournier, Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, John King, et. al who played along got rewarded with access and scoops. They became me members of the “Club.” And with the “Club,” the whole Iraq War and all the dead since 2003 are disappeared into the fog of the past (because there is not history, only the meme that everything was Awesome to the Black Guy became President on January 20, 2009). In the 1990s Fox came along with the purpose and business plan to provide the “information” a large section of the population wanted to believe, a single network dedicated to articulating, and proclaiming, the resentments and prejudices of the Babbits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_%28novel%29 of white America, particularly the Neo-Confederate Babbits, whether Southerners or Northerners with “Southern Sympathies,” and the Club saw this as the audience they must pursued even as they aged into walkers and powered wheel chairs (paid for by the Government they claim to loathe). But the MSM and VSPs can’t say any of this, about their own corruption and the increasing nuttiness of 40% of the population, because there is “a Club,” (their Club, and we are not in it) that gets to tell comforting stories about how wonderful they are and how flawed the mass of Americans has become since the “good ol’ days.” http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-church-of-lyintology.html
s 0
brantl
THe McLatchey (sp?) papers caught all (or most) of the falsehoods leading up to the Iraq war, nobody paid attention, least of all Congress. Why people in congress weren’t finding it with normal diligence, is disgraceful. If there isn’t a party-based news-culling/consolidating/deseminating operation for the Democrats, there damn well out to be.
Procopius
Do you think they really see themselves as watchdogs? Now that all the television networks and cable companies and newspapers and magazines and radio stations are basically owned by six people? Are they really that lacking in self-awareness? Have you noticed the reporting on events in the Ukraine the past year? Do you really think that’s just pig-ignorance at play?
Paul in KY
@Kay: I think you are being kind to them, Kay. It was money, plain & simple. If you became their stenographers & regurgitated their BS, riches would (and have) follow.
That’s all it was and is.
Paul in KY
@Litlebritdifrnt: Tell them that’s not your cat & point them to the house of the owner.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Paragon of the master race ™ there.
Paul in KY
@Litlebritdifrnt: No ‘No Kill’ shelter in your neck of the woods?
Paul in KY
@WereBear: He may have just been marking the cage as in ‘these are my hamsters for future eating’. :-)
Paul in KY
@Mike E: Sen. McGovern didn’t run the greatest campaign. His staff should have pushed back much, much more than they did (IMO).
Paul in KY
@Howard Beale IV: Thank you for being a purity dickhead. She may be a ‘neoliberal’, but a neoliberal Democrat is much, much, much better than any ‘deathtoanyformofliberalismkillthemall’ Republican that she would be running against.
Joel
@srv: Is the Pulitzer comment meant to be ironic?