Mark Halperin sat out his #MeToo issues for almost two years (14 dog’s years, people!) and now he has another book with interviews of 75 Democratic operatives, including this list of co-conspirators:
Jill Alper, David Axelrod, Bob Bauer, Donna Brazile, James Carville, Tad Devine, Anita Dunn, Karen Dunn, Adrienne Elrod, Jennifer Granholm, Ben LaBolt, Jeff Link, Jim Margolis, Mike McCurry, Mark Mellman, Amanda Renteria, John Sasso, Kathleen Sebelius, Bob Shrum, Ginny Terzano, and David Wilhelm.
Fuck all those people, collectively and individually.
It has been nearly two years, so it’s worth recalling what conduct Halperin was accused of in 2017. Back then, I spoke to multiple women who said that Halperin sexually harassed or assaulted them. The stories of harassment ranged in nature, from him propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one’s breasts against her will.
Three women who spoke to me described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed. One woman told me Halperin masturbated in front of her in his office, while another told me that he violently threw her against a restaurant window before attempting to kiss her, and that when she rebuffed him he called her and told her she would never work in politics or media.
Halperin apologized in 2017 for some of his behavior, but he denied grabbing a woman’s breasts, pressing his genitals against women, masturbating in front of anyone, and threatening the career of a woman.
I’m trying to imagine the inner dialog that caused these folks to talk to Halperin: On the one hand, we have women risking their careers to report a sexual predator. On the other hand, some of my friends/competitors are getting quoted in a DC insider’s book. Nobody reads those things anyway, so I’ll talk to this guy, even though he’s personally despicable and political poison for Democrats.
Halperin’s strategy is painfully obvious: apologize for the less awful things, deny the more awful things, hide and resurface like a turd you can never flush. If it succeeds for Halperin, then it’s going to succeed for a bunch of other predators.
coin operated
Driftglass has a word or two about this:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2019/04/since-i-already-wrote-about-inevitable.html
Mnemosyne
Tad Devine?
TAD FUCKING DEVINE?!?!
Well, at least we have a good list of Putin’s collaborators, because I don’t know who the fuck else would act as though Devine was just another failed Democratic consultant.
JMG
This is a list of 1. People with won-loss records worthy of the Orioles. 2. People who aged out of the politics game about a decade or more ago. Like John Sasso worked for Mike Dukakis for mercy’s sake.
ruemara
Considering he’s interviewing Donna Brazile & (echoing Mnem’s outrage on) Tad Devine – a number of those people are DINOs.
But I have yet to see a world where this strategy hasn’t worked just fine.
MattF
There’s a little lesson in a list like that. Look up the names you don’t recognize. Oopsie.
Spanky
So what kind of publisher agrees to give this guy a platform?
Via WaPo’s article “‘He doesn’t deserve another platform’: Mark Halperin’s new book deal blasted by sexual harassment accusers”, in case anyone wonders what their stance is on this.
But … Regan Arts. Never heard of them.
zhena gogolia
And Glenn Thrush is back on the front page of the NYT, “analyzing” Joe Biden’s rocky relationship with Obama.
Kylroy
“If it succeeds for Halperin, then it’s going to succeed for a bunch of other predators.”
I think we’re past “going to succeed”, it’s more that Halperin’s following an established plan that’s worked out before for others. Though the fact that he’s interviewing minor players for an unknown publisher means it may not work out for *him*.
Duane
Seriously Halperin, who do you think gives a fuck what you or any of those has-beens and never-were losers think. That rag won’t even sell in the Dollar Store.
MattF
@Spanky: The Judith Regan who published OJs ‘If I Did It’.
Spanky
@Spanky: Uh-oh! Regan Arts publishes “Preservation Pantry: Modern Canning from Root to Top & Stem to Core”. Cole will be heart-broken.
germy
We need Matt Lauer to moderate the presidential debates. Maybe a sort of town hall type of setup.
Yarrow
Damn. Seriously? What the hell?
All these assholes need to be dragged. *angry face emoji*
rikyrah
Just trifling. Trifing…everyone who did an interview with him.
germy
I predict guys like Thrush and Halperin are planning some nasty reporting if Democrats nominate a woman for president.
Yarrow
@ruemara: Donna Brazile? The one who took a photo with Sheriff David Clarke when she was shilling her book? The book she sold on Tucker’s show? At least she told us who she is.
Turgidson
Of all the fatuous pundits whose careers are more indestructible than cockroaches and even more useless, Halperin is the one that makes the absolute least sense to me.
1) He has never had an original insight that didn’t turn about to be 100% wrong and often just plain embarrassing. He’s the “good news for John McCain!” guy for fucks sake. He called Trump the greatest politician of his lifetime based on Trump’s tin pot fascist screeds he calls speeches. He’s a goddamn moron about the very subject he’s supposed to be an expert on.
2) His “analysis” is based in very large part in his personal feelings towards the subject being analyzed. “Obama was a kind of a dick”, he says because Obama said something mildly curt to Ed Henry (I think that was the incident?). He had almost nothing positive or even respectful to say about Obama in nearly a decade of covering his candidacy and presidency and it sure felt like personal animus drove that.
3) He even seems like a revolting piece of shit in front of the cameras. Some of the useless twits we are stuck with at least seem to have a bit of charisma. Cillizza is just as big a hack, but seems like a nicer guy on TV. Chucklehead Todd at least appears thoughtful on occasion. Halperin is just a fucking asshole all the time with the charm of a pet rock. His prior prominence had to have been based pretty much entirely on access and connections, but why did he even have those?
germy
Yarrow
Have Joe and Mika announced when he’ll be on their show to promote the book?
Baud
@Yarrow:
Right. And Bernie’s Tad Devine is a centrist now?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Turgidson:
His dad.
Yarrow
@Baud: Nah. Bernie’s Tad Devine is a Putin puppet, as Mnemosyne said.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy:
She’s from LA, eating avocado’s pretty popular here.
randy khan
All of those named “experts” understand that the book will be read by only a small number of people, but many of those people will be interns for the people who do the bookings on cable news shows.
laura
Circle of jerks. Fatuous villager also rans. Remoras to the powerbrokers. Ass kissing fawning amoral shills. Not a one worth a bucket of spit. Low tumbrel numbers for everyone.
Betty Cracker
The argument that pisses me off the most is the “don’t we believe in second chances” shtick. It’s not about second chances. Nobody is putting the piece of shit in jail for his gross and potentially criminal behavior. We are exercising our right to not trust a misogynist to analyze and opine on politicians who are women in a fair and objective manner. We don’t want misogynists to set the political narrative. Why is that hard to understand?
Spanky
@Turgidson: Point of order: Chuck Todd appears thoughtful when he cocks his head quizzically, much like a cocker spaniel.
And that’s about it.
Tony Jay
@germy:
Poor old ‘Randy Andy’. Imagine having to put out an actual statement insisting that you had no idea people were raping children at these parties you liked going to over the course of decades.
The Firm used to have people to do this for them. How standards have fallen. I blame that woman. What’s her name, the dusky piece. You know the one. s/
Spanky
@Betty Cracker:
I’m gonna go with that being a rhetorical question.
Cermet
But a giant orange turd that also stinks that can’t be flushed managed to be elected president so that method does appears to work thanks to our supportive media.
Uncle Cosmo
Careful, mixie, I don’t really think you want to go there. I have on my shelf a copy of Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson, a gifted prose stylist & Anglo-Catholic RWNJ, in which he asserts that a whole slew of leftish “intellectuals”[1] were awful human beings & therefore their ideas are invalid.
Logically that is, of course, utter bullshit. But it’s also the mirror image of your little rant.
My take: The only time one can justify conflating the opinions of experts[2] with their personal qualities[3] is when said opinions are crafted specifically to benefit theirownselves. If you want to argue that vs. the aforementioned crop, be my guest – you can probably make it stick for most of them – but make it clear those are the terms of argument.
[1] Can’t retrieve my copy at the moment, but the Amazon blurb identifies “Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, and Noam Chomsky, among others…”
[2] Or more generally, those who are not universally acknowledged as “expert” but are know to have some experience in the areas under discussion.
[3] Good or bad, but usually bad.
zhena gogolia
@Turgidson:
Good analysis.
Amir Khalid
Mark Halperin. Now there’s a name I thought had been deservedly and thoroughly forgotten since his downfall. He was never much of a journalist, as far as I could tell, yet TIME used to pay him and his creepy lopsided smirk for a page of “political coverage” every damn week.
rikyrah
???
Someone dressed a Pomeranian dog up as Paddington Bear and now the world seems a slightly better place to be in than it did yesterday pic.twitter.com/9sv2b3Azph
— Frankie (@francisobrienUK) August 17, 2019
zhena gogolia
@germy:
That avocado headline is real!!!!! WTF?????
rikyrah
@ruemara:
OT, but, when you do your citizenship ceremony, please tell us.
We can throw you a Welcome to America BJ CyberParty :)
waspuppet
@JMG: 3. Mostly on TV constantly, so you don’t have to buy a book to find out what they think.
rikyrah
‘I’m a nurse, what are you?’: Tennessee lawmaker humiliates anti-choice activists in brutal public grilling https://t.co/DZHxN4itsf
— (((RuggedAmethyst))) (@GrooveSDC) August 18, 2019
MattF
@Tony Jay: The piano player never knows what’s going on upstairs. “Yeah, there were lots of women. They’d go upstairs and then I’d never see them again.”
rikyrah
It is celebration worthy that women earned the right to vote 100 years ago today.
But, not all women.
Asian Women -1952
Native American Women -1957
Black women -1965
To all my sisters – please exercise your right to vote! Now more than ever!!#19thAmendment
— Patricia Suflita Wilson (@pilarwish) August 18, 2019
zhena gogolia
@Uncle Cosmo:
He’s part of an industry that shapes the mass perception of political candidates. When one of the political candidates is a woman, as was the case in 2016 and will probably be again this time, the fact that the “expert” is also a sexual predator is entirely relevant, as it was for Lauer as well.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: Sounds like ruemara has a more intimate setting for her citizenship ceremony than Madame had, her’s was at the LA Convention Center and my whole office group came along. I think there were about 1,000 new citizens taking the oath that day.
germy
@zhena gogolia: Yes. The Daily Mail is garbage.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Cosmo: I stand in something vaguely resembling awe at a 3-paragraph blog post with three footnotes.
Ladyraxterinok
@Duane: Axelrod?? Granholm?? Sibelius?? Thought they were pretty good dems in their day
Turgidson
@Spanky:
True. Which still makes him more thoughtful than Halperin!
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Thank you. FFS.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Exactly. Thank you for saying it so succinctly.
cmorenc
@rikyrah:
The response of those she humiliated (and their extreme anti-choice fellow travelers) amounts to:
LA LA LA LA we can’t HEAR you, we get to pick (i.e. make up) our own facts, therefore we’re right(eous) and you’re wrong. After all, righteous makes right, and alleged “scientific” facts are an illusion created by the devil.
amirite?
JoeyJoeJoe
@Turgidson: the one thing I like about Cilizza is his knowledge of classic Simpsons. He used to host political trivia competitions in DC, and there were a lot of them
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
CLAP CLAP CLAP
Tell that truth.
zhena gogolia
@Turgidson:
Haha, yeah! Halperin can’t even do the cocker thing.
H.E.Wolf
@rikyrah:
Seconded! (That is, if you want to). Looking forward to giving you an ovation.
I recently realized that I don’t know the date on which my father, a naturalized citizen, was sworn in.
I do remember his delight, one election day, that my signature on the list was before his. (We were first and second, respectively.)
Tony Jay
@MattF:
“Would you be willing to repeat that statement under oath, Your Highness?”
“Now… now really… is that strictly necessary, Superintendent? I mean… surely… no one is saying I knew anything about what might have… might have… um… are they…?”
“They? Your Highness? Who might ‘They’ be?”
“Oh, this is too much. Can’t a man even have a canape anymore?”
Ladyraxterinok
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When my SIL from China was sworn in as a citizen, my brother’s entire second grade class was able to attend as part of a school-authorized field trip!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Betty Cracker – Thank you, I am so sick of the – Ok it’s been a year, two years since this person, who has done almost nothing to show that they are aware what they did was wrong and seriously trying to make amends, was exposed as a sexually assaulting, sexually harassing ass. Haven’t they suffered enough!?
This phrase from one of the linked articles always annoys the hell out of me : “hasn’t done enough to atone”
Some of the people harassed were chased out of jobs and had their careers damaged…but lets worry about the poor asshole who did it, he didn’t realize it was wrong!(insert “he’s from a different time, culture, generation”) /barf
Uncle Cosmo
@zhena gogolia: I thought it was clear my beef with mixie is that he seems to be encouraging us to dismiss everyone on the list of sogenannte “experts” as self-evidently awful human beings – which (I repeat) is, logically, utter bullshit.
I would read Halperin’s book – once I could do so without providing the SOB a cent in royalties (e.g., dollar-store, other remainder racks, The Book Thing of Baltimore) – to see what the Blunder Lizards (Alsoranosaurus drex) of Campaigns Past have to say about Campaigns Present & bang it against my own (admittedly limited) understanding. Identifying what sounds like BS & (more importantly) working out why it’s BS is IMO a means to improve that understanding. YMMV.
Betty Cracker
@Uncle Cosmo: In addition to the massive flaw in your logic that zhena gogolia pointed out at #41, there’s the fact that for sexual predators like Halperin, maintaining women’s second class citizenship IS beneficial personally.
Baud
@Uncle Cosmo:
The bullshit is that lefties are generally awful, not that someone’s awfulness can’t cause their credibility to suffer. I’m not taking advice from Donald Trump on race relations or listening to Dick Cheney’s views on national security policy.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: The intent of the footnotes was to attach relevant[1] asides without turning the text into an intensely-convoluted Updikean[2] monstrosity. If I coulda done it via hyperlinks, to further compress the aspect on the screen, I woulda.[3][4]
[1] IMHO.
[2] Cf. pretty much any fiction the guy ever wrote. I stand in awe of JU’s ability to construct page-long paragraphs as verbal cathedrals of Gothic complexity where a reader could actually navigate nave, tread transept & amble around the ambulatory without expiring of fulminating hemorrhagic logorrhea. :p
[3] Awaiting the day I figure out how to set up a website.
[4] BTW, FWIW, your sarcasm is noted without prejudice. :^D
Kay
Yes, the controversy has “dogged” the campaign. It has dogged the campaign so much that Warren is running the best campaign in the D field.
The refusal to admit that what matters to Donald Trump, CNN and The NYTimes political team may not matter as much to Democratic primary voters it amazing to watch.
Dog it. Chase it like they chased the emails. But don’t pretend it’s about “voters”. It isn’t. Donald Trump told them what was important about Warren and Warren’s campaign and they accepted that as “truth”, and will now act accordingly.
jl
Halperin has done damage for years. He was one of the influential talking heads who promoted reality show politics over policy substance for years. One of the founders of the cynical savvy school of politics.
Of course, if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. These people, in their professional capacity, are very replaceable.
Was travelling recently and found that I simply cannot watch TV anymore, after exposure to it at length in airports and hotel rooms. Just an endless stream of empty celeb news actors, ignorant pundits with an act and rancid political operatives. It’s become corporate media entire business model. A fool’s paradise reality and dog and pony show. Just irritating useless misleading garbage to tease you on to the next adult diaper commercial.
Kay
If you don’t find Halperin’s predatory sexism objectionable, go back and look at how he covered Obama in both the primary and general in ’08 and ’12.
He’s got some other issues. He hinted over and over and over that Obama was somehow “the other” and should be treated with presumptive suspicion and caution. It was disgusting. Sneaky, cowardly smears.
I don’t know why some Democrats work so hard to promote his career. He’s terrible for Democrats.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Exactly. I don’t know that the media jackasses will be able to extract as much mileage out of “but her DNA” as they did from “but her emails,” but by God, they’re going to give it a shot.
Gretchen
@JMG: And Sasso came out of retirement to work for Dukakis!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
This might be fun for us though, because it might fail. I admit I thoroughly enjoy when the public rejects a narrative.
I would love it if they’re like “Pocahontas? What?” :)
THE CONTROVERSY, dumb ass voter! That you care about.
catclub
@Spanky: I was thinking it was related to Regnery.
catclub
@Kay:
My guess is his father was much better ( see Romney, Cuomo, and Wallace) and they don’t realize the son is much worse.
Gretchen
@Kay: Since women voters especially are sick of his bullying, making everybody talk about a bullying nickname that disrespects both a particular woman and an entire ethnic group, might make him even less popular.
Kay
@Gretchen:
I don’t think “women” are a voting group. Democrats can respect women and promote equal rights but they are going to have to do that because it’s right, not because it’s politically beneficial. Women just don’t vote as a consistent, meaningful group on women’s issues. IMO it’s part of why it’s been so hard to make progress on them.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I still hope it will fail. The MAGA horde has already taken it as an article of faith that Warren lied about her Native American ancestry for professional gain — that was always a given. I’ve seen a couple of rabid boosters of other Democratic candidates repeat a less overtly racist version of the same Republican talking points, but it doesn’t seem to have much traction so far.
The thing about the emails story was that, though it was truly a nothingburger, it really was somewhat complex and could be conflated with a lot of other things, like the hack of the DNC emails, Anthony Weiner’s laptop, etc.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
Those are all cricketers,
BruceCosmo.West of the Rockies
@ruemara:
Yes, quite so. Brazille is also now on Fox News, another foolish choice.
SFAW
I commented somewhere (LGM? Don’t recall) that I half-expected to see the name of the completely fucking worthless Bob Shrum, thinking that no one with two brain cells to rub together would interview him for a “serious” strategy discussion. I guess the only moron Halperin left out is Mark Penn?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Right. Because it fits perfectly into Right wing grievance politics. Affirmative action! That’s why it’s so embarrassing the NYTimes and CNN went along with it when Trump decreed it mattered.
I think the liberals who think it’s a huge problem for Warren don’t support Warren- which is fine. All of these candidates have issues. Rigth now I hope rank and file Democrats can be ruthless and unsentimental about cutting Biden the minute his polls drop- my fear is they’re going to want him in their back pocket as insurance. Cut. The minute he drops. Because I think he will drop. His share isn’t going up and it should be. It has to be up. Can’t be down. That’s Bernie’s problem too. He should not be going down, bottom line. They can scream and yell all they want- Bernie has to increase.
Betty Cracker
Trump is on Twitter tweet-screaming about Google manipulating the vote in 2016 and how it robbed him of an even more impressive victory. Anyone have any idea what the orange pustule is babbling about?
Gin & Tonic
@Kay:
Well, obviously he would if the system weren’t rigged against him by the corporate interests at the DNC.
germy
@Betty Cracker: It’s a vast left-wing conspiracy.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
These “brilliant” CEO’s are going to so regret kowtowing to him. He thinks he bought them with that tax cut- he did- and he wants a return on that investment. They’re so horribly short sighted. He operates exclusively from self interest. He does not understand why they won’t perform their part of the bargain, which is retain HIS power.
Spanky
Steve King (Asshole-IA) truly is a leader in the Republican Party:
(WaPo)
Demonstrating that the go-to tactic of blaming the messenger that quoted your very words is fer-shur gonna work this time.
Brachiator
@jl:
I worked at home for a stretch of time, and could not watch most tv news and commentary programs. After a while, I got equally disgusted by political talk radio. I found myself listening to a sports talk radio station when I needed a distraction, even though I generally don’t care about sports.
I pretty much never turn the hotel tv on when traveling for work. Just can’t be bothered.
Spanky
Ah yes. In moderation for quoting Steve King. Figures.
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
You shouldn’t go from 40 to 15. That’s the wrong direction. He was supposed to get more popular, not less :)
Like, oh I don’t know- Elizabeth Warren. UP.
Rob Massing
So everyone will say either (1) nominate a white male; or (2) nominate a “moderate” (i.e. a white male)
Douglas P Gardner
@Betty Cracker: He’s so abysmal as a pundit that he shouldn’t have had a first chance. Regardless of personal behavior and/or crimes he committed, he’s just awful at what he chose as his profession. Isn’t that enough?
Spanky
@Brachiator: Our limit came almost 10 years ago when we noticed the TV hadn’t been turned on in over 2 months. Cut DirecTV right after that and sent the boob-boxes to Goodwill.
Anything worth watching usually winds up online in short order.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: I never read Trump-on-Twitter. Eventually, his posts will be collected and collated as source material on personality disorders, and, I reckon, there will be a ‘Trump Scale’ to assess the rationality of posters by matching their tweets against a gold standard. But for me– no thanks.
Baud
@Kay:
Forecast calls for clouds and shadows.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
It is amazing that great swaths of this county doesn’t consider this to be a racist nation, yet there are lots of women alive today who were in a class that did not allow them to vote. There are women alive who wouldn’t have been allowed to vote because of their gender. I know one white woman who is 91- and she’s a die hard republican. Maxine Waters, a representative in congress was old enough to vote before she had the right. At least she’s fighting for equality.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m going to a D meeting Tuesday and that’s what I’m going to say. “I know you people and you will hang on to Joe Biden WELL past the point you should. Cut. Walk away without a backward glance” :)
It’s like a Biden hotbed, so this should be fun. I told you one of then whined to me- “can we get a MAN this time?” This time. To me. Oh, did you not get a MAN that ONE time you giant baby? Poor you!
VeniceRiley
Wasn’t Judith Regan the publisher of half the whack right wing screed and conspiracy books during the Clinton presidency as well? Either on her own or before she hung her own shingle?
Halperin? I am soooo beyond tired of guys like him not being banished for good.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
More soft authoritarianism. A while back, Trump held a meeting with right wing and fringe media people who like to claim that Google is unfair to conservatives, not displaying as many search results for the right as they do for liberals, or returning more negative search results. And of course, for Trump, any negative story is absolute truth of unfair bias. And so, obviously, this must stop.
Spanky
BTW, the bottom of Halperin’s Wikipedia page has this:
MattF
@Kay: I think female candidates should carry a box labelled ‘testicles’. If anyone raises the subject, they can point to the box. “I’ve got some right there.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Oh, he’s beyond that. Trump is claiming that Google changed as many as 16 million votes.
EDIT – As in, directly altered the vote count, not influenced people. He got it from Judicial Watch.
EDIT EDIT – @MattF:
Remember when commenters here were saying that Hillary would bomb Iran just to prove she had bigger balls than the men in DC? Good times.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Waters was born in Missouri and later moved with her family to California. When did she not have the right to vote?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Haha, you’ll have to give us a full report!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: I don’t understand what he’s saying.
Spanky
@JPL:
Yes, truly another day ending in “y”.
Ruckus
@Kay:
My only question would be, did trump actually have to even mention it slightly for them to go after a perceived flaw of EW? I’m betting that he didn’t. It’s a perceived gaff, not even a actual one, it’s something millions of people do but in her case it means any thing the press wants it to. @zhena gogolia: said it perfectly – these are the people who take their jobs of shaping public perceptions seriously and they have a chance to make their choice of candidate look bad. And they jumped on it. I’m not sure if it’s the publishers who push them, the reporters who follow the crowd, that the big guns get paid very well to spew whatever crap they can think up, that they get a chance to work for their favorite candidate, that they get to protect their privilege, all of the above or something that just eludes them, like they hate powerful women because they can’t control them or because they don’t believe women have agency, like every other human alive. Hell they have to call some inhuman to allow themselves to believe their bullshit.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
How did they do that? How did they get access to voting machines?
Even Trump knows this is one of his whoppers. Actually, maybe not. He might even tell this lie all day every day at his rallies. But his larger goal is to try to pressure Google to be more “fair” to conservatives, not just with respect to search, but also YouTube and related properties. Google recently changed some policies which resulted in a number of political YouTube channels being downgraded. Right wing nut jobs predictably screamed the most.
Kay
@Ruckus:
I think Trump knows two things really, really well. He knows his base and he knows how to manipulate media. They all pretend they’re in on the joke but who was the big beneficiary of their Trump coverage for 40 years? Donald J Trump. His plans don’t always work but it’s never because media didn’t go along- sometimes they’re just duds with the public. The Caravan is an example. Everyone tried to make it “game changing”. It was literally their “October Surprise” in ’18. The public just didn’t think it was important.
prostratedragon
Mark Halperin gets to resurrect with a book deal while Dana Loesch has to hawk the heretofore arcane benefits of eating beets on the rerun channels. (No link, but I seen it!)
Gender inequality!
JR
@Kay: I think people forget how far the consensus is among the inside baseball crowd is from the view from the bleachers.
The village effect is real and even generally decent people can become villagers, often without even realizing it.
Ruckus
@jl:
When the news was 15 minutes and then 30 minutes a day, it was not bad. But 24 hrs a day and you run out of things to say, you have to have a helicopter to show 2-5 hr car chases, you have to have something to say for that 24 hrs. When it was one show not so bad, when it’s every channel and internet as well as TV….. There is only so much to say that if you go to an airport waiting area you can tell who doesn’t watch TV news, they are the ones looking at the TV, either mad or mouth open/can’t believe their eyes. Everyone else is used to the bullshit and barely gives it a second glance. It’s not shut out, it’s on background, the bullshit has to sneak in, which it does. Most of us don’t dress any longer like the news presenters do, in made up hair, expensive dresses/suit and tie, these people must be important. Must be believed. Town I grew up in had a paper, I delivered it on my bike. Long gone, now we have a newspaper that covers an area over a million people and it barely rates up to what that paper of a city of 35 thousand did. The papers that get noticed are big city papers NYT, LAT, WP, WSJ. It’s rare when any news but these and TV get noticed at all, other than by news/political junkies. They are influential by their existence not by their quality, although most of them can have some quality, some times.
daveNYC
I’ve got two thoughts on this.
1) There’s a club and you aren’t in it. Not original, but quite obvious here.
2) Political operatives are mercenaries. DINO, RINO, doesn’t matter. They only difference between them and Kellyanne Conway is their success and whatever microscopic fraction of a soul they still possess. And I’m iffy on the second bit.
Wapiti
@Kay:
I think this is likely a good move on Warren’s part. Native American voters are a solid part of the Democratic Party coalition, and deserve to be addressed like any other voting bloc. If other candidates don’t go to them, good on Warren for doing so.
I’ll note that Lisa Murkowski won a write-in campaign for Senator in part because the Alaskan tribal communities ensured that their members knew how to spell “Murkowski”.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Some democrats are awful as well? It’s a big party, not all of us are the same. Bill Clinton got a consensual blow job in the oval office. I thought that went too far. Not that the act was wrong by itself but that he thought it was OK there and then. Most of us hold ourselves to a higher standard at work. Obviously some do not.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
You have just left the thought process of Trump and most conservatives far behind. I know you personally like completeness, so I’ll fill in that the actual thought process here is to know The Truth, dismiss any contrary facts as bias (‘fake news’ is only the latest term for this age-old process), and if someone says something that sounds like it backs up The Truth, add that to their argument.
@Ruckus:
I think this is huge in the evolution of the Village effect. With not enough to say, the people who prospered and became social leaders in national news were bullshitters who prefer dragging out a factless conversation for hours. You can see the results of that everywhere, such as their contempt for actual experts and affection for friendly liars.
SFAW
@MattF:
The only problem would be finding a box small enough for the presidential debates in the general election
SFAW
@Ruckus:
From what I’ve read in some places, he practically raped her, as well as making her continued employment contingent etc. etc.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
No one has a clue what trump babbles about, including trump. It’s babbling, it may be meant to be important, understandable but it comes out of him, so it has little relation to reality, likely none.
Brachiator
@Wapiti:
Good points. A CNN pundit notes…
I agree that the focus on policy is a good approach.
ETA. The crap about “brand” and “narrative” makes me gag. This is such nonsense, but pundits just can’t let it go.
SFAW
@Kay:
Yes, it’s “dogged” it so much that there’s now a 24-hour news feed on the latest developments. Every respectable news outlet has it as their banner story every night.
JHC, where do they find these morons?
Downpuppy
@SFAW: I thought Shrum was long gone, (his last of 8 losing presidential campaigns was Kerry in 2004) but at 76 he’s slightly younger than Biden or Sanders.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
I would be OK with it, if the pundits were honest/even-handed about it. For example: Trump’s “brand” is: lying, grifting, lying, dissembling, lying, making-shit-up, lying, and spouting insanities on a daily basis. And lying. And grifting. And did I mention lying?
ETA: Almost forgot! Also: lying
germy
Cheryl Rofer
Highest-ranking Democrat to support impeachment
Yutsano
OT: the cop who killed Eric Garner was fired.
germy
@Yutsano: Good.
But how long before Fox or Sinclair hires him?
(((CassandraLeo)))
@SFAW: Did you get lying? I think you forgot lying. And what about lying? Make sure not to omit lying. :p
@daveNYC: I just feel compelled to link Carlin’s routine because he said it so well.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Before 1965. She was 21 in 1959. Couldn’t vote as a black woman till 1965 according to @rikyrah’s: comment. That was more about Jim Crow than the 19th so maybe that Maxine lived in CA meant she did get to vote. But many black women did not until the Civil Rights act of 1965.
germy
New York’s Attorney General:
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Again, Trump’s claim about Google is nonsense. So, the question is what does Trump really want from Google?
Hell, it might even be that Trump intends some executive order that might harm Google, and he wants to provide some bullshit cover for his actions. Trump loves to punish people and organizations which displease or defy him.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
How about a ring box? May still be too big but few men would not get the meaning.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
You are treating this as if it is the action of an intelligent, rational person with plans. Frankly, those aren’t all that common in the regular population, and Trump is the bottom of the heap. He is a narcissist. What he wants is for everyone, all the time, to cater to his every wish and tell him he is the greatest. He was told that the reason he wasn’t acclaimed the greatest is that he was cheated. There is nothing else. There is no need for anything else. Maybe this will develop into some idea to punish Google. Maybe he already doesn’t like Google. The primal cause, and the entire reason he’s complaining, is because he feels slighted that he lost the popular vote and someone validated his belief that this means he was cheated.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
I’ve said here before, many times, I worked in professional sports. I have one person who I knew before I worked full time there who doesn’t like me. He got caught several times cheating. Lost every appeal, unanimous every time. I left that job 14 yrs ago, he blames me for every bad thing that has happened in his life. Even since then. Not everyone is rational or even truthful about things that most eye witnesses agree on.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Waters never lived in a state which denied her the vote. Also, all black persons of voting age were affected by Jim Crow era voting restrictions. Why are you singling out black women?
bystander
If the slippery slope theory obtains, we will soon be treated to hearing from venerable sage Charlie Rose. Just when the few bright spots of the past three years still twinkled in the journalist firmament.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
For Deadbeat Donnie, the Lying Littledick? There’s no “may” about it.
SFAW
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Damn! I KNEW I forgot something.
Thanks!!
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
To the contrary, Trump is a childish, vain, vindictive bag of resentment. With plans. As Adam Silverman notes, Trump is not just a narcissist, he has this constantly burning anger that people and countries have been unfair to America (and thus to Trump) and that he will have his revenge. This coexists with his demand for loyalty and worship. It is a deep well of insecurity and anger which has not been cured by his becoming president.
Trump can’t let shit go. If he can find a way to exercise his vindictive will, he will do so. This is how he rolls.
Yarrow
Good Lord, this is an image:
WhatsMyNym
@Brachiator: It started with this
Doug R
@Mnemosyne:
To be fair, the chapter on Tad Devine should include interviews with fellow consultant Paul Manafort and Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhH9KBDX0AELZ6n.jpg
Yarrow
@Brachiator:
The bolded part is backwards. He thinks people and countries (and anything else–companies, organizations, media orgs, etc.) have been unfair to Trump and thus to America. As a narcissist it’s all about him. In his narcissistic view, since he’s President he is America.
JPL
So the day that Scaramucci goes on CNN to talk about trump’s mental state, trump tweets that google stole votes intended for him.
It appears that someone took his phone and the president is now in a time-out.
Brachiator
From CNN’S chief pundit. This passes for political analysis.
So, Trump has got a lot of free time on his hands to watch Fox News and to unleash Twitter storms.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/18/politics/elizabeth-warren-native-american/index.html
Doug R
@MattF:
I think Kamala Harris had a box labeled “Uncle Joe’s ass” but I believed she handed to him.
Steeplejack
@Spanky:
“Incest” no bueno.
oatler.
@prostratedragon: Have you seen Chuck Woolery’s emu lotion spots?
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
ouch
Dan B
@Brachiator: The Google thing started when they removed a few million bots from his Twitter followers and then YouTube removed some crazed video. The base doesn’t draw clear lines between platforms. Trump doesn’t either as far as I’ve noticed. And then there is Judicial Watch – Deep State watchdog. So there was harm to Trumps ego plus conspiracy theories to stoke his paranoia. And a cause: make the intertubes promote us, or else!
randy khan
@rikyrah:
Actually, it’s 99 years ago – the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. There are lots of events over the next year.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
I would love someone to blow the Daily Mail’s minds by clueing them into the fact that many people in California have backyard avocado trees.
Raoul
I’d bet actual money (which I’d give to a Dem female candidate) that half of the people interviewed never, not even back in 2017, thought “he’s personally despicable and political poison for Democrats”. They’re too self-absorbed and on-the-make to have the capacity for value judgements like that.
How does Mark Haplerin’s misogyny poll? That they might wonder.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Fair enough. I originally wrote it that way and then switched it. Yeah, he is often full on Louis XIV:
Dan B
@(((CassandraLeo))): The lying is obvious but what disturbs me is Trump, and his enablers in the GOP and MSM, demeans so many people. He practically drools at the cruelty. He has zero use for the Golden Rule. He would attack Jesus for saying the most important thing is to love one another and what you did to the stranger you did to me.
Trump’s brand is rage, with a side of outrage. The lies are just a sideshow.
Anya
I don’t know some and the rest I didn’t expect much from them but I am disappointed in Anita Dunn and Jennifer Granholm. Somehow, I expected better from them. What do these assholes need to do to become a persona non grata?
James E Powell
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I always want to play that Carlin routine for my high school students, but can’t because of the language. I do tell them to look for it and hope that they do. The downside of it is that it proposes no response other than cynical withdrawal, which seems to be quite appealing to teenagers. So I think of it as planting seeds of thought.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
As others have pointed out, I’m afraid that tweet is “mostly true.” African-Americans in most Northern cities could vote, so Black women could vote there after 1920. IIRC, that was part of what spurred the Great Migration — Black people moving to Northern cities where they could get better jobs and be allowed to vote.
If you ever see “His Girl Friday,” there’s an exchange talking about how “the colored vote” is important in the city — in the original play “The Front Page,” it’s Chicago, but it’s NYC in “His Girl Friday.”
It wasn’t true in all areas of the north — there’s a reason why Alameda County, CA, was one of the named problem jurisdictions in the Voting Rights Act — but it wasn’t routine like it was in Jim Crow states.
tybee
@Doug R: LOL
VeniceRiley
On another depressing “me too” redemption unearned: TJ Miller is in the Kristen Stewart movie Underwater. I just watched the trailer and heard the distinctive voice.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@SFAW: Happy to help!
@Dan B: Yeah, as Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic, the cruelty is the point.
@James E Powell: Would it perhaps fly if you played a version with the swears bleeped? It’s 2019; I’m surprised people are still offended by the language in his routine in the first place, but if you got any pushback, it would probably be more because of what Carlin is actually saying rather than how he says it, even if how he says it would be the pretext for the pushback. If that makes any sense.
Carlin’s routine on “shell shock”, which is sheer poetry, actually doesn’t have any profanity at all.
I do agree that the lack of a solution in Carlin’s routines is one of their bigger problems. He also was against voting, which seems outright pernicious in today’s world. I suspect, had he lived to see Dump run for president*, that might’ve changed his mind.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
EthylEster
@Mnemosyne: people in Florida also. But real avocados, not those weeny Hass ones.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I thought that this was a later action related to voting access by Spanish and Chinese speaking citizens.
Brachiator
@Dan B:
I think that Trump would be psychologically stuck: “I love gold. But I hate the rule. Can we keep the gold and just forget about the rule?”
Oh, yeah. I can just imagine.
“Jesus was such a loser. I prefer Messiahs who don’t get crucified. And you can’t love strangers. Gotta keep them out. Too many strangers are rapists. And Jesus hung out with Mary Magdalene. I hear she was not a beauty. Definitely not a 10, like my daughter and chief political adviser, Ivanka.”
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Some have/had front yard avocado trees. Me for example. Thing gave off about 20 paper shopping bags full or more, every year. What we couldn’t eat we gave away, huge things, totally unlike what is in stores, amazing taste. If one ripened and fell on your head it could really hurt you. Used to have to go out with a cutter/bag on a pole and take the ripe ones before the fell. Fun times.
J R in WV
@Spanky:
IIRC, and I’m not going to look them up, won’t give them even a click on a search engine, but IIRC they’re a standard issue RWNJ publishing house who mostly sells in bulk to people who pass the fascist books out at rallies.
That’s why you haven’t heard of them, you’re not a RWNJ author.
Major Major Major Major
(removed, total misread of OP)
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Brachiator: Dump accusing others of being rapists sure sounds like yet another case of projection on his part to me. Besides, there are very fine people on both sides and some, I assume, are good people //
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I can’t do a full search on my phone, but at least 2 counties in California were on the preclearance list in 1968, which IIRC was before the language access provision was added to the law. Here’s the list from the DOJ:
https://www.justice.gov/crt/jurisdictions-previously-covered-section-5
The counties covered in 1968 were Yuba and Monterey.
J R in WV
@Spanky:
Well, I’m sorry about King’s outrage — but I saw and heard him say that, there’s video of the event. So Fuck ’em.(1)
EFGoldman…
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Short comment in moderation? Maybe too many footnotes? HELP!!
J R in WV
@Spanky:
You too? Me too!!! Something wrong with that quote we can’t see, maybe!
J R in WV
@VeniceRiley:
Shouldn’t that guy still be in jail for assault? Let alone sexual assault!!??
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Kay:
The best political reason I can think of for her to do this is that the whole mess is a big issue for many Native Americans, and although they are a very small voting block they are good at using social media to make a noise, which can then be picked up by white progressives who are determined to dwell in the hallowed halls of Moral Purity (after all, they won’t suffer whoever wins and also Nach Hitler, uns), as well as the fifty bajillion bots out there stirring up shit.
So meeting with this group and going through the Q&A is astute, as it enables her campaign to take knock away one side of this combustion triangle.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Democratic Centrist = “Whoever’s willing to talk to Mark Halperin”, now. Apparently.
Miss Bianca
@Uncle Cosmo: Speaking as a woman and a scholar and admirer of Brecht’s, for example – the fact that he shamelessly co-opted/stole/passed off a bunch of women’s work as his own and appears to have been a serial seducer/harasser of women his whole life, DOES make me think less of him. His ideas – since they appear to be a melange of the aforementioned women’s work along with his own – maybe not so much.
cain
@Spanky:
There is a lot of cock in this post. What are you really saying about Chuck Todd? :)
opiejeanne
@EthylEster: We grew Fuertes in our garden in Riverside. When there was a cold snap one November they all fell at once. The acorn woodpeckers were very happy and so were the ‘possums and raccoons. The kids scooped them up for us and sold them by the bagful on the sidewalk in front of our house, we took them to work, gave them to the neighbors who didn’t have trees.
When we lived in Anaheim our neighbors had a mystery tree with fruit slightly smaller than footballs. mr opiejeanne said they were delicious. I don’t eat the things.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@J R in WV: FYWP’s spam filter doesn’t like a certain term which I’m going to represent with symbols like such: ¡π¢€$†. I’m guessing there must be a colossal number of spammers using it. Or maybe FYWP is just stupid. Either way.
@J R in WV: …also I should note, especially since we’re honouring efgoldman’s esteemed memory, that the correct spelling is fuckem. Thank you for your help in maintaining Awareness of All Internet Traditions.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.