This actually happened:
Ex-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and rightwing guerilla filmmaker James O’Keefe filmed an hour-long discussion trying to answer the question that has persisted through their careers: “Why do they hate us?”
“I think journalists who poke holes in comforting narratives tend to be subjected to a fair amount of scorn,” Miller told O’Keefe. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to poke holes in comfortable narratives. And I think that annoys people.”
She commiserated with O’Keefe about being “despised” by the mainstream media, saying that the two were united by “skepticism” and their efforts to get at the truth.
It’s becoming quite clear that one of the major qualifications for being a wingnut is to be completely and totally lackin any and all self-awareness.
Germy Shoemangler
She didn’t poke any holes in the Bush administration’s narratives.
dmsilev
Truly, those two deserve each other.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Germy Shoemangler:
The “comfortable narrative” is that we shouldn’t have punished the people of Iraq for actions taken by other, unrelated Muslims. Only a sissy thinks that way, and that the “narrative” Miller sees herself as having pushed back against.
Shorter me: Miller is a typical conservative asshole.
cahuenga
Judith Miller should pick up Dowd’s mantle of professional pot brownie reviewer.
It would certainly be within her abilities.
Punchy
Did O’Keefe’s parole officer join them?
Drunken hausfrau
not enough gin in the world… Jeebus.
Elizabelle
I’d give the dog more credit for ethics, responsibility and self-awareness.
Sure is a sharp dresser.
What’s sad: this is ABC, one of the big legacy 3 networks, and not Fox World or Newsmax. *sigh*
scav
@efgoldman: Sort of a rolling stone comment by FPer that allows an image?
Elizabelle
@efgoldman: Just seemed like it.
Lurking recently; send my best wishes for successful surgery and a happy pre- and post- retirement. You must come back to DC soon, and look forward to the Jeopardy appearance.
Comrade Dread
As I said elsewhere, I’m fairly certain that the writers of the Onion have found a way to hack reality and are simply fucking with us now.
Roger Moore
[Copied from the previous thread] It’s really about ethics in gaming journalism.
kdaug
Jesus, this is the sort of conversation one has over beers in the dark corner of some bar.
Filming it and releasing it?
That’s what makes you assholes, assholes.
Citizen_X
Here’s a comforting narrative: “Oh hi, I’m alive.” Here’s a discomforting narrative: “Oh no, now I’m dead because Judith Miller helped Bush start a pointless war.”
Sure disrupted that, Judith!
Garbo
Wow. Just wow.
Brendan in Charlotte
@Germy Shoemangler: Miller spent all her time patching the holes in the Bush administration’s narratives….
M. Bouffant
Not merely lacking self-awareness, they’re in states of acute self-denial, probably because facing the truth about themselves would be unbearable & lead to more psychotherapy than anyone or their insurance could afford.
Judge Crater
Of course. Judith Miller is a victim.
She should be forced to spend the rest of her life on the Neurology rehab ward caring for the Iraq Vets who got their brains and spinal cords turned to mush in the war that even the GOP presidential clowns now admit was a “mistake.”
Vile…
greennotGreen
I don’t think they lack self-awareness; they lack awareness…of reality.
Turgidson
Is Judith Miller gearing up for a run for the Republican nomination?
sukabi
Poking holes? Was she sporting a strap-on?
The only holes either one of them were poking were in common decency, ethics, and truth.
mainmata
I’m actually shocked since she must know that O’Keefe is not only not a journalist but is openly a small-time criminal and petty political grifter. I guess I thought Miller as a former NYT reporter was more serious. She clearly has become wingnut unhinged. (Sorry, I come from a family of serious reporters.)
different-church-lady
Wait, Sharyl Attkisson wasn’t available?
Arclite
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, and me. It’s all about me!
sukabi
@mainmata: other thing in common, both are convicts
singfoom
I’m skeptical that they understand the words they used. In that, they didn’t poke holes in any comfortable narratives. But hey, as long as you ignore all the wrong you’ve done pathologically, you can continue the grift.
Fuck you Judith Miller, you deserve to be in jail for aiding and abetting the W administrations crimes against humanity.
“Comforting narratives” my ass.
The scorn is for your lack of ethics, you assholes. I can’t decide which would be worse, if they believe their own bullshit or if they’re just spouting it to continue the grift…..
different-church-lady
@mainmata:
Maybe she knows it perfectly well and is exploring the pre-made grift market.
chopper
this sort of whine fest is sure to improve their images among the haters. way to go, guys.
Baud
I hope they make a baby together.
Elizabelle
Sometimes people are despised merely because they are, indeed, despicable.
All that quaking by aspens has unhinged Miss Miller.
chopper
@Baud:
did they have the interview on his boat? if so it may already be on its way.
shell
She was on NPR recently (Leonard Lopate show) plugging her book. He kept trying to prompt any kind of acknowlegement like ‘was she sorry,’ or does she feel the need to apologize for her cheerleading of the war? Nope, she was as chirpy and giggly as a teenager.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: EWWWW!
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Meh. Who cares.
My Kickstarter has flattened over the last week. But I’m making one last push to raise enough money to have a print edition as well as an ebook. So it’s not to late to join! Four days left!
SRW1
It’s becoming quite clear that one of the major qualifications for being a wingnut is to be completely and totally lackin any and all self-awareness.
Not quite: One of the ‘issues’ discussed by the lovely couple is why they are both ‘despised by the MSM’. Limiting this perceived reception to the MSM may represent a bit of rationalizing, but the two know very well where they stand.
The true wingnut qualification is to be able to banish this kind of nagging insight into some disused corner of one’s mind behind a large self-portrait of a knight in shining armour, respectively a personalized painting of the Maid of Orleans.
Chris
It’s actually remarkable how LITTLE we hate them. Or at least how little we’re willing to act on that hate.
Yes, I hate conservatives. I make no bones about it. Not just clowns like these two or their paymasters. The average joe conservatives on the street who yell at people in the soup kitchen line to get a job, line up in megachurches every Sunday to hear the preacher tell them all about the Untermenschen, line up in comments sections to snigger about the latest dead black kid and how he had it coming.
But hate or not, I can’t conceive of trying to deny these people food, or health care, or shelter, or job relief, let alone basing my vote around how to hurt them. And as I think the last health care thread about the unenrolled idiot trying to get to the front of the line showed, neither do most of us. Most liberals still believe that all people are endowed with certain inalienable rights, even if they’re the worst possible kind of human.
And that is far more courtesy than they would ever extend to the people they hate, because when it’s their turn, they do all that and more. In fact, they vote on little else.
People who bitch about how much liberals hate them have no idea how easy we’re going on them by their own standards.
SRW1
@SRW1:
Sorry, can’t edit on the tablet. The first paragraph is of course supposed to be a quote from JC’s post.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@singfoom:
“Comforting narratives” is genuinely a wingnut thing. You know, like liberals have all of these “comforting narratives” about how black people are not actually subhuman, and the wingnuts have to put us straight and disabuse us of our “comforting narrative,” like a jackass older cousin who smugly tells you there’s no Santa Claus. I’ve run into it before.
Howard Beale IV
Isn’t is obvious? O’Keefe is Miller’s pimp-but as fate would have it, no one’s buying that shriveled up poontang. Hell, I wouldn’t fvck Miller with Charles C. Johnson’s dick.
different-church-lady
@Howard Beale IV: Wait… Charles C. Johnson has a dick?
Howard Beale IV
@different-church-lady: Well, allegedly he is married..although he did not state what sex his spouse was.
jl
@Chris:
” It’s actually remarkable how LITTLE we hate them. ”
I can’t speak for others, but I’ll gladly settle for just finding a way to get people to ignore them when they spout BS, and defame people and organizations.
Chris
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
The jackass older cousin is on VASTLY more solid ground.
BillinGlendaleCA
@different-church-lady: Nope, Charles C. Johnson just poops on the floor.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Howard Beale IV: He has a ‘Hot Asian Wife’.
Howard Beale IV
@BillinGlendaleCA: (S)he could be a kathoey for all we know.
kc
You mean, this thing actually happened? It wasn’t a joke?
kc
This has got to be a brilliant hoax.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Chris:
Yeah, but I couldn’t think of a better metaphor that involved someone self-righteously “correcting” someone just to be an asshole. Feel free to substitute a better example if you think of one.
Shana
@Baud: I suspect that in her case it’s much too late. Thankfully.
David Koch
Yeah, that was false. Between April and June of 2003, Miller wrote 10 articles saying WMDs were found in Iraq. 10! All were wrong.
Howard Beale IV
Shit-I’m surprised they didn’t add Sheryl Atkinsson for a three-way….
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I know that back in the 80s, the heavily pushed cliche that ‘a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged’ meant that our liberal values of trying to help people were childish, and once you had experience with the world a mature, rational person would understand that you have to hurt people to help them. The media still eats this up, with any policy position that fucks people over being ‘brave.’
I’m not sure if that’s connected here, since the narcissist’s position is always, always, that he/she is the hero and it’s someone else’s fault.
different-church-lady
@kc:
Well, both actually.
David Koch
In other news, a rare documentary from the 1940s, staring Axis Sally and Julius Streicher, titled “Why Do They Hate Us” has been located in a Berlin museum.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Ick.
Ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick.
Ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick ick.
Howard Beale IV
@SiubhanDuinne: No worries: that factory has been shut down for 15 years.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think something similar when people talk about the need to make “hard choices” when they cut programs that help the needy in difficult times. They’re actually making the easy choice of hurting the powerless rather than the hard one of asking people to help out. Another hard choice that people rarely talk about is what to do when times are good. People are always taking the easy choice of spending on their favorite program- or cutting taxes, if that’s their bent- as if the good times are going to last forever. The really hard choice is to refuse to do those things and put the temporary surplus into paying down debt or building up a rainy day fund so you don’t have to cut so badly the next time things get tough.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Frankensteinbeck:
I mentioned in another thread that I’ve been reading Reddit’s Raised By Narcissists boards and everything you say about them is true. And worse.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Absolutely. The abuser says ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you’ to shift the blame to the victim. This is the thinking of the abuser, the narcissist, the alcoholic, and the Republican.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Thank you! Maybe with a family with three people in psychiatry in one role or another this stuff is obvious to me and not obvious to others. Now, notice that this kind of reasoning is bedrock both for the whole Republican Party, and for the punditariat. Scary as Hell, isn’t it?
CommishTheFirst
“Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find / They’re blind to own failings, others’ skills”
Felonius Monk
Does anyone else think that Judith Miller should be classified as a War Criminal? Were not the Nazi propagandists tried as War Criminals? Judith Miller was a propagandist for the Bush regime and certainly could never be considered a journalist. At the very least, she should be tarred and feathered and run out of the country on a rail.
Exurban Mom
Both of them must be full-on narcissists. Gross.
Kropadope
Don’t these two simply prop up the comforting (to some…) narratives sold to us by the MSM?
Cervantes
@Baud:
She’s nearly seventy.
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
No. Their job is to sell new narratives to the MSM.
Kropadope
@Roger Moore:
If I remember correctly, James O’Keefe’s first entry was “Acorn helps people abuse the welfare system.” Welfare abuse stories are old and and were truly coming into vogue around the time I was born.
Judith Miller was may have been at the vanguard of the Stenographers’ Fail Parade 2003, Iraq or Bust, but she didn’t organize the damn thing.
Cervantes
@Felonius Monk:
Goebbels and his wife killed themselves (after killing their kids).
Myiq2xu
OT: The guy who shot at George Zimmerman has been arrested and is facing 60 years in prison.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
That area residing immediately above his shoulders, yes.
KG
@Roger Moore: the other one is the old Churchill (?) line that “anyone who is a conservative at 20 has no heart and anyone who is a liberal at 40 has no brain”
It is a longstanding tradition. Personally I’m moving more to the camp of pragmatism, if I must subscribe to an ism, I’ll take that one
trollhattan
@Felonius Monk:
I think she should be appointed the new #2 at ISIS, then let’s see how her career arc proceeds.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: Thank you for not letting a good set-up go to waste.
jl
@KG:
‘ the other one is the old Churchill (?) line that “anyone who is a conservative at 20 has no heart and anyone who is a liberal at 40 has no brain” ‘
Well, now, that is a very out-of-date British conservative world view where one was allowed to keep either one or the other. Not much relevance to our modern up-to-date US conservatism.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
I’m here to serve. Does that mean I’m a Maker or a Taker? I get confused.
NotMax
Mark Twain poked holes in comfortable narratives.
Will Rogers poked holes in comfortable narratives.
Lenny Bruce poked holes in comfortable narratives
Edward R. Murrow poked holes in comfortable narratives.
O’Keefe is a cross between a dung beetle and a psychotic gadfly, for whom veracity is a suggestion best ignored. The only thing which he pokes holes into is credibility. He’s the bizarro Cassandra.
kuvasz
What the hell was that, an Assholes Anonymous meeting?
“Hello my name is….. and I’m a lying asshole and I haven’t lied in ten minutes, okay, five.”
MomSense
I can’t even stand to read her name. She was just one little piece of the clusterfuck that was the W years. It seemed like every single day there was some horrible fuck up or deception. And they were all so smug as if we were the idiots who couldn’t appreciate their decisive leadership. I still remember Cheney on Meet the Republicans This Week (I can’t tell those shows apart) quoting Miller’s articles in the NYT, articles they fucking planted, to build their case for war with Iraq.
jl
@NotMax: Trying to lure a journalist into a purported ‘seduction-yacht’ (euphemism alert) to humiliate her, and having to pay out lots of moneys on multiple occasions for defamation and torts committed on the subjects of one’s ‘journalism’ is not a comfortable narrative, either.
danielx
Was a time when Judith Miller would have cut off a couple of her own fingers and eaten them as appetizers before sharing the same room and air with the likes of James O’Keefe. Now she says they have things in common, professionally speaking? Besides the whole conviction thing, of course.
Every time I think we’ve entered the realm of the surreal, eventually something else happens that forces me to think, no, now we’ve really entered another dimension. What’s next, Newt Gingrich divorcing his wife to marry an intern? Oh, right…
Villago Delenda Est
I understand the World Irony Commission has issued an alert that all irony detectors,once exposed to Miller and O’Queef’s conversation, are likely to explode.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: what’s the unit for irony? Kilomorissettes?
Honus
@Roger Moore: I remember not that long ago when we had a trillion dollar budget surplus. We made the hard choice to out into a useless and unnecessary war.
trollhattan
So, this happened. Not much in the grand scheme of things but money does talk, and some ears can’t not listen.
Gravenstone
Edited for accuracy.
Gravenstone
@different-church-lady: Is/has, not much difference in his case.
Howard Beale IV
@Myiq2xu: Too bad he missed.
Fort Geek
@Elizabelle: Yep, but many ABC and Fox affiliates are owned by Sinclair, which is a wingnut-friendly parent company.
Howard Beale IV
@Fort Geek: And the locals aren’t averse to spin bullshit stories. They can generate a metric shitton of bullshit and will never be called out on it.
mclaren
It’s also becoming quite clear that one of the major qualifications for being a member of U.S. federal government is to be completely and totally lacking in any and all self-awareness:
“The US Congressional Intelligence Committee has labelled China’s top two telecommunications manufacturers a security threat and says Huawei Technologies and the ZTE Corporation should be shut out of the American market because they are open to Chinese state influence.” [October 2012]
“Obama defends sweeping surveillance efforts — President Obama on Friday defended the government’s collection of data on the phone records of millions of Americans, saying that it was a modest encroachment on privacy and one he thinks is both lawful and justified in order to identify terrorists plotting to attack the United States.” Washington Post, 7 June 2013.
“Obama urges China to improve human rights record amid dissident row,” The Guardian, 30 April 2012.
16 July 2010 Eric Holder memo declaring that the Constitution requires “due process” that can be provided by action of the Executive branch alone, without judicial review or action — for actions up to and including execution of citizens without trial and without even accusing them of committing a crime.
“White House criticizes Israel for ‘indefensible’ deaths at UN school — The White House on Thursday pointed the finger at Israel for the shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza, calling the incident `totally unacceptable and totally indefensible,'” The Hill, 31 July, 2014.
“White House defends U.S. drone strikes,” USA Today, 2 May 2013.
And so on, ad infinitum.
Howard Beale IV
@mclaren: It’s even worse than that. It used to be that if you made anything for the military the Feds had the right to seize everything in the event the manufacturer of said goods ran into problems. And that not only included the end products, but also all of the tooling as well.
Now? Fuck that shit. Core chips made in PRC could have trapdoors in them and we’d be screwed six ways from Sunday. But do the MIC care? Fuck no-It’s another case off I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Stürmer, was put to death at Nürnberg as a war criminal..
liberal
@Felonius Monk: I had the thought awhile ago that many of these non-state actors are war criminals.
Brachiator
@Felonius Monk: Leni Riefenstahl was arrested, kept under house arrest, tried four times, but never convicted. She lived to be 101.
yodecat
Why pay any attention to such sorry scum? Real scum is much more interesting and much more useful: for example, one can make beer of certain sorts of ‘scum’. BTY whadda you got against dogs?
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, and frankly, with Goebbels, if the advancing Soviets had caught him alive, I’m pretty sure they’d have shot him right then and there, without observing any of the niceties.
Bill
Pure Dunning-Kruger.
Just Some Fuckhead
I recognize James O’Keefe as a propagandist in the war against Acorn but who is Judith Miller?