Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Come on, man.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

This really is a full service blog.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Friday Night Fights Open Thread: Both Sides!…

Friday Night Fights Open Thread: Both Sides!…

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… Craven *and* venal = SAVVY!


But SAVVY! is job security, and it pays so much better than, eeewww, reporting…

Peter Baker, “Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times”, also very SAVVY:

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I remember when Weisman was at the Washington Post and used to take part in these weekly online chats, he was extremely combative, some might say obnoxious, with questioners he didn’t like.

    In those chats, questioners were mostly ID’d by their hometown, and I came to look forward to comments from a guy from Rochester– I remember David Broder responding to one of his questions by saying something like, “Ah, my old friend from Rochester who keeps a vigilant eye on my many errors” in a show of faux bonhomie. I later learned through the blogosphere grapevine that “Rochester” was a guy named DougJ who blogged at a place called Balloon Juice. That may well be how I got here.

  2. 2.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I am just tired of the current big time DC journos. I don’t like Bob Woodward but I’ve never thought him stupid. The current ones are just not that well read, just not that smart and not really interested learning.  Its all about getting on teevee, writing columns, getting substack deals off the ground and basically increasing visibility. Not sure how much actual reporting you’re doing if you’re sustacking daily, writing a column, writing/doing media for a book, twittering, getting hair and make up done for a teevee shot and  attending a WH/State Dept/Defense Dept daily briefing . All that in addition to regular life stuff.

  3. 3.

    Raoul Paste

    Great.   Another infuriating reminder of the corruption in America, just for a nightcap.  Somewhere on the spectrum between Pollyanna and doomsayer is where most of us are, trying to realistically assess things

  4. 4.

    Ohio Mom

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s a great story.

    Ohio Dad’s brother is a newspaper writer and his wife is a retired newspaper editor. They are incapable of any critique of their field.

    Not defensive, just share a huge blind spot. They completely believe that both-siding things is how they stay objective and fair. It smacks my gob that they can’t see what is actually in front of them.

    ETA: They are on my mind because they are visiting next weekend.

  5. 5.

    Urza

    @Ohio Mom: When ones livelihood depends on believing something its really hard not to believe what they’re trained to, even after retirement.  Just because a worldview is so obviously wrong given all the evidence doesn’t mean a humans going to let it go if they still have reasons to hold onto it.  That is obvious all over human history.  Its nice we’re at a point where we might climb out, but thousands of years of evolution is a hard enemy to conquer fully.

  8. 8.

    Ohio Mom

    @Urza: Yeah, it’s their entire self-concept. It’s ironic because they have no skepticism in a field that is supposed to be about skepticism.

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    Deficits were already rising when Covid hit

    The deficit rose itself!  It’s sentient!  Run for your lives to a country where one major party isn’t a bunch of greedy, moronic assholes!

  11. 11.

    The Oracle of Solace

    Political journamalism has been so very bad for so very long. It was only in the Trump years that I realized these people weren’t very bright, and they let things get out of hand. I realized that my amateur analysis was better than their professional work when the Mueller Report came out and nobody would do their job and report on it in detail.

    On the other hand, their incompetence did get me to start YouTubing as a hobby, starting with my own Mueller Report explainer. That’s been unexpectedly fulfilling and life-enriching. However, it should not be up to bloggers and other political hobbyists to do the work they won’t. It’s no wonder a third of Americans who could vote choose not to get involved.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, Requiem wants to chew on my ankles. Bad kitty!

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    So, in the eyes of the Beltway press, the Republicans are simultaneously successful bare-knuckle political fighters and delicate snowflakes who melt when someone utters mildly pointed criticism of them?

    I mean, sure, have your coverage driven by a narrative, but can you at least pick one narrative with a modicum of self-consistency? “Plot and characters more plausible than the _Twilight_ books” should be at least an initial goal; I’m not asking for much.

  14. 14.

    the pollyanna from hell

    I am descended from a long line of winners, there are no losers in my four billion years of ancestry, and I’m not much good at taking no for an answer. They put me in charge of my own vote, and that makes it my duty to have an opinion, whether I know anything or not. I just remind myself that the talking heads are wrong, and it’s all easy after that.

  15. 15.

    Ruckus

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    It’s a job that pays reasonably well, gets their persona attention, warranted or not, and as long as they toe the line that the publisher/owner want, they have a gig. And most of the owners are not small fish in a big pond, they are big fish in a smallish pond. Money is their social currency, that and access to those that set policy that keeps the money flowing in their direction. A reporter that screws that up has a half life of days, the number of days is dependent upon how much exposure/bad press the boss feels.

    And these days it’s like cops. Those that think for a living have been replaced with those that follow orders in both what and how. This country is big business and big business isn’t letting anyone forget that.

  20. 20.

    Chetan Murthy

    @dmsilev:

    ​in bondage gear

    Pfft.  My image for all these bastards comes from the ending of Fargo.  Feet-first, baby. Feet-first.

  22. 22.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ohio Mom:

    They completely believe that both-siding things is how they stay objective and fair.

    Well, I guess you can forbid discussion of politics; that’ll make things bearable.  I can understand people working in some execrable business, who convince themselves that it’s OK.  Sure, I did it: I worked in enterprise software, and specifically in the end that debugged all the nightmares at customer site.  So, y’know, I got to see just how shitty it all was: the software we sold, the consultants, and the customers.

    But the day I quit doing that, I was able to finally tell myself the truth: that enterprise software customers deserve everything they get, good and fucking hard.  Good.  And.  Fucking.  Hard.

    I think it’s a sign of an unreflective mind, that even *after* no longer being beholden to some awful system, they’re not able to actually assess what that thing was, and what one’s own role was.

  26. 26.

    eddie blake

    it’s really stunning how they basically edited out the gop filibuster when reporting on the debt ceiling fight. the WHOLE reason there WAS a debt-ceiling fight. just noped it right out of existence, like that one VITAL omission lets them plug the sequence of events into the “feckless dems in disarray” story which is apparently the only one they’re allowed to write about.

  27. 27.

    Cameron

    The media I pay for is a bit limited: Bradenton Herald, Christian Science Monitor, and The Week.  I read a lot of freebies, too, of course.  No NYT or WaPo; my favorite US opinion dude is Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer, and internationally Pepe Escobar and M. K. Bhadrakumar, who I usually read for free at Asia Times.  Latter two seem somewhat hostile to USA, but I don’t care about that – I like interesting writing.

  29. 29.

    Redshift

    @The Oracle of Solace:

    Political journamalism has been so very bad for so very long. It was only in the Trump years that I realized these people weren’t very bright, and they let things get out of hand. 

    I’m trying to remember who it was who wrote about talking to journalists and finding that people who buy into the mindset that you must have no political opinions to be “neutral” invariably have an extremely shallow understanding of how politics actually works.

  36. 36.

    eddie blake

    @Chetan Murthy: i just figure if you’re gonna do a book about a girl being introduced to the bdsm lifestyle, you MIGHT wanna RESEARCH that lifestyle. i don’t think james bothered to do any.

    apparently the pervert community thought they weren’t portrayed positively or for that matter, remotely accurately.

  37. 37.

    MomSense

    @eddie blake:

    I have so many friends/aquaintances who were obsessed with those books.  I finally told my friend I would read the first one and – ugh.  I couldn’t get through it.  It was so bad.
    Almost as bad as those summers I spent working at the hotel where the White House press corpse stayed when HW was in K’Port.  Those assholes are insufferable.  I’ve got stories which I try to forget.

  38. 38.

    eddie blake

    @MomSense:  the vampire ones or the bondage ones?

    yeah, i couldn’t get through the sparkly vampire book. clearly i’m not the target audience.

  41. 41.

    eddie blake

    @MomSense: teenage mormon afterlife fantasies. yeesh. and here i thought the weirdest thing to come out of the LDS church was davey and goliath.

    eta- oops, davey and goliath was made by lutherans

    eta II- for the record, teenage mormon afterlife fantasy would make a killer band name.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @eddie blake

    (Paraphrased from memory) quote from Lauren Bacall about being dragged to see Twilight by a niece:

    “When it was over I wanted nothing so much as to hit her in the head with my shoe.”

  44. 44.

    something fabulous

    Sorry for O/T but: BREAKING! My now-senior kitty Gigi (elder kitty Milo passed in January, am currently also fostering 3 teens she DOES NOT LIKE) is fully indoor, except! She went on walkabout at around 5 when I went to throw out the trash and was AWOL for seven hours! just came home a bit ago and has deigned to snuggle on the couch with me here for a bit (kitten teens still sequestered in bedroom  from when I had the doors open hoping for her return. Phew! Good, terrible, girl!!

  46. 46.

    Morzer

    @dmsilev: You’ve now forced me to imagine Joe Manchin in the role of princess Leia chained to Jabba McConnell’s throne in horribly revealing fetish gear.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    Flashing back to one of the Leather Goddesses of Phobos text game responses: “But the brass bikini is so becoming.”

    …In 1988, Tom Clancy named Leather Goddesses of Phobos one of his favorite computer games, stating “I’d like to meet whoever wrote that. I just don’t know what asylum to go to”. Source

    :)

  53. 53.

    lowtechcyclist

    contemporary political journalism as i understand it is the republican party flying the plane into the mountain and democrats attempting to stop it and journalists trying to debate the relative merits of flying the plane into the mountain.

    It would be a major improvement for them to have that debate, if they did so in substantive terms – like the effects on the plane and passengers of hitting the mountain v. not hitting the mountain.

    Unfortunately, the debate is all about how the crash or averted crash will affect the political fortunes of the two parties and their major figures.

    If a news medium chose to report on our politics in terms of the effects on the plane and passengers, rather than the ‘who’s up and who’s down’ crap, it might actually inform people. Guess we can’t have that.

  54. 54.

    mrmoshpotato

    MLB: what do fans want this postseason?FANS: announcers who like the sportMLB: how about gambling— charles “old hoss” radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) October 8, 2021

  56. 56.

    206inKY

    Thank god for balloon juice and especially for Anne Laurie. I’d lose my mind without this place and its common sense.

  57. 57.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    now that journalists are getting the peace prize, why not us?​?

  61. 61.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Chetan Murthy: Have you read HAMNET? It’s about Shakespeare’s life in Stratford from his wife’s POV. Anyway, we know that she was pregnant when they married, and the book includes the sex scene where the baby is conceived. Only you don’t see Shakespeare and Anne/Agnes. It focuses on the apple storage shed where the sex takes place. Apples were apparently stored on racks so they didn’t touch, since they’re less likely to rot that way (the things I learn from reading fiction). And the narrator keeps talking about how the racks are rocking and the apples “mustn’t touch, mustn’t touch.” I was erotic as hell. Weird, but erotic.

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    Some news from yesterday: President Biden signed an order restoring 2 million acres to Utah Bear’s Ears and Grand Escalante National Monuments. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and a number of Native Americans attended the signing. The order also restored areas to a major marine preserve off the Massachusetts coast that were removed by the previous crappy president. From the Deseret News by way of @Xeni (Jardin).

  63. 63.

    evodevo

    @NotMax: Yeah…my co-worker’s 20 yr old daughter was obsessed with those books/movies.  The whole family trends fundie Xtian and this series was the kid’s attempt at “edgy” lol

  64. 64.

    Betty

    Eric Boehlert and Dan Froomkin are my heroes. We need more like them. Truth tellers. Does not seem like it’s possible though.

  65. 65.

    MomSense

    @eddie blake:

    I haven’t thought of Davey and Goliath (but Daaaaavey) in decades.  I remember hate watching it on the weekends when we ran errands or something happened that caused us to miss the Saturday morning cartoons.

  66. 66.

    The Oracle of Solace

    @Redshift: All too true. I’ve heard of this “view from nowhere” and I think it’s nonsense. I honestly don’t know if political journalists are actually this shallow, or if having a high-visibility job like “D.C. correspondent” requires shallow output to pacify the bosses. Either way, a preference for “balance” over accuracy makes for garbage media coverage of politics.

  67. 67.

    The Oracle of Solace

    @joel hanes: I just finished reading Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland, and the shallowness of how the press covered Reagan’s many gaffes and his embrace of the alt-right (or “New Right” as they called themselves back then) was striking. It presaged their coverage of Trump.

  68. 68.

    The Oracle of Solace

    @opiejeanne: I did! While having a black kitten named Requiem probably increases my witchy-gothgrrl credibility, this is a kitten who really needed a home. She’s the runt of a barn cat’s litter, weaned on dog food and whatever else she could forage. From almost the instant she came home, she’s been so affectionate. Now, after months of proper nutrition, she’s catching up on missed growth, has a glossy coat, and lots of energy. Her third vet visit is today, as it happens.

    I may try to catch her at a photogenic moment for the BJ pet calendar…

  71. 71.

    Miss Bianca

    @MomSense:

    I watched the first twilight movie and it was like a 2 hour Calvin Klein fragrance commercial.

    And yet somehow it was still better than the book!

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