Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

We still have time to mess this up!

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Republicans in disarray!

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

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

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Friday Night Open Thread: Predators Ballz

Friday Night Open Thread: Predators Ballz

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… The through line? Nothing nobler than TV ratings, which always were Zucker’s guiding light, his be-all and end-all and, ultimately, his fatal flaw.

Two decades ago, as an NBC executive searching for a way to goose the floundering network’s popularity, he gave the green light to a reality show, “The Apprentice,” featuring a flashy mogul whose soon-to-be-famous tagline was “You’re fired.” Trump had a checkered history of bankruptcies, racism and failed real estate projects, but his confident bluster made him a natural on television…

Zucker created Trump the TV sensation, which was the necessary foundation for Trump the candidate. Years later, after moving from NBC to CNN, Zucker recollected very well that Trump was a self-proclaimed “ratings machine” — a rare instance of Trumpian truth-telling.

CNN infamously took his campaign speeches live, sometimes going so far as to broadcast images of an empty lectern with embarrassing chyrons such as “Breaking News: Standing By for Trump to Speak.” You can’t buy that kind of media…

… I’ll note that CNN recently has done important work, including specials about the Jan. 6 insurrection and a new “Democracy in Peril” show in the 9 p.m. slot recently occupied by Chris Cuomo.

But why is American democracy in peril? Some portion of the blame — not a tiny portion — belongs to the network executive who couldn’t resist the “ratings machine.”

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  2. 2.

    FelonyGovt

    Anyone who was in New York in the 1970’s knew that Trump was a racist buffoon. The Apprentice legitimized him as a shrewd businessman and billionaire. The coverage of his candidacy was in a similar vein. Zucker has much to answer for.

  4. 4.

    HumboldtBlue

    Good thing for Sixers basketball.

    And Olympic curling, the news is an ever-worsening dumpster fire.

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    Our putrid media spent a few decades painting Donald Trump as a “billionaire playboy” who in fact was a bankrupt imbecile who had to pay vast amounts of money to have sex with whores.

  10. 10.

    HumboldtBlue

    NBC made sure to throw some whitewash on the Chinese Uighur genocide by portraying it in simple political disagreement terms and that China’s use of a Uighur carrying the flag in the opening ceremony was simply a “political riposte” to the western critics.

  11. 11.

    Mike E

    Speakina Sixers, insert your fave pithy metaphor here! One of the baskets is fubar halfway through the 1st quarter and the Mavs arena crew is now 40 mins into their seemingly endless struggle to replace the damned thing, heh.

  14. 14.

    CaseyL

    MOTU – all male, and 99% white – are in a mutual protection, promotion, and predation racket. Internationally, too.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    Well, today was ‘fun’. 7 AM, email and phone call saying ‘your COVID surveillance sample has been flagged, we need you to come in ASAP for a follow-up test’. Around 8, I’m standing at our test center doing the nasal swab thing and hoping that it’s either a false positive or someone else in the pool (for surveillance, we pool together a few samples and do PCR on the mixture). Then I’m presumed contagious until those results come in, so it’s back home and start sending out messages moving in-person meetings to Zoom. Every meeting starts with ‘are you feeling ok? Any symptoms?’. 4 PM, ‘your test is negative’. 4:01 PM, breath easily for the first time all day.

    Sigh. The world we live in.

  16. 16.

    Yarrow

    @Alison Rose:  The Daily Mail (ugh, I know) has an article on it with some excerpts of what was said in the meeting. Not going to link because Daily Mail but here’s the Acosta bit:

    Chief Domestic Correspondent Jim Acosta also weighed in, alleging the network’s core content and values will likely devolve in the wake of Zucker’s resignation, forcing CNN to face ‘pretty serious consequences.’

    ‘If we had not had Jeff Zucker here during the Trump administration, we probably would have been taken out,’ he said. ‘You would have something like “Fox News Light” on CNN right now, no offense.’

    He thinks it’s going to get worse now?

  19. 19.

    Dopey-o

    @rikyrah: I readily admit that I underestimated the misogyny that Hillary faced. I knew that it was bad… But not THAT BAD

    Penn said “No matter how bad you think Trump is, he’s worse.”

    Why would misogyny be any different?

  20. 20.

    cain

    @Yarrow: Good grief.

    I could see it, conservatives especially older ones will happily spend their entire day and night watching Fox News. It’s exactly the kind of people network tv would love to have more of. I could see CNN trying to chase those viewers.

    It’s a deal with the devil.

  21. 21.

    prostratedragon

    @rikyrah:  It [the misogyny] was screaming so loud it probably swamped your hearing, a thing I’ve learned to calibrate for. But what I’m learning now is how ubiquitous the underlying behavior was. Not every man is so devoted to things that would get them fired or sued.

  22. 22.

    prostratedragon

    Ooo, curling’s started? I wasn’t ready for Olympic hype so soon after the Summer Games a few months ago, but with no more ABC Wide World of Sports, where else am I going to see any curling? Did watch the Bulls last night and tonight for the first time this season, so I think I might be ducking some of the news myself.

  25. 25.

    Chetan Murthy

    @rikyrah: I remember her being talked-down-to by Lauer, by Rose.  Probably other incidents.  I remember all those guys denigrating her abilities and skills.  Halperin, the imbecile.  And on and on and on. I think we only know the half of what she endured on our behalf.  If that.

  28. 28.

    Starboard Tack

    I saw a segment today of a Joy Reid show from November 2020 that had a clip of Rush Limbaugh. I felt great satisfaction that he’s still dead.

  29. 29.

    Chetan Murthy

    @mrmoshpotato: He was execrable back then.  I can’t say that he’s done a ton of restitution, but others might be able to.  I wonder what he’d say about those tweets, if asked today.  I guess what I mean is, he seems to be on some road to redemption; maybe he’ll get there, maybe he won’t.  But we do allow people to redeem themselves: look at David Brock.

    Hope it’s clear that I’m not saying he’s done enough to be redeemed.  He did a ton of shit back then.  And hell, maybe he still hasn’t paid the child support he owes.

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    @mrmoshpotato: Did you actually read Walsh’s tweet, though?

    In America, you do not have a right to use violence to overturn the results of an election.

    I’m not gonna invite him to the next Balloon Juice meet-up, but he’s apologized for his worst actions, and (at least for the moment) he’s on ‘our side’ of the Great Argument.  Always remember — if no Conservative / Republican is ever allowed to change their mind, we wouldn’t have this here blog!

    @Chetan Murthy: Do you remember Milbank and Cillizza with their youtube drinking sessions, ranting about Hillary ?

    Milbank got smarter, Cillizza got dumber.  I’ll always refer to CC as the ‘Mad Bitcher’ because of that final drinking video.  But let’s be honest — Cillizza’s almost certainly making a *lot* more money than Milbank these days.  And he still has his ‘self respect’, because he’s pretty clearly a moron who measures his worth by his paycheck.

  32. 32.

    Tony Jay

    @The Pale Scot:

    Love me some Stewart Lee. Not afraid to take a valid point of opinion and ram it into the faces of his audience with the merciless authority of moral superiority.

    But, y’know, in a very funny way.

  33. 33.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax: ​
     

    Ted Turner looking better and better. Tanned, rested and ready?

    I was going to say Ted Turner must be rolling in his grave, but then I Googled him.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    I think Ted Turner is in the throes of dementia.  Lewy body dementia.  Terrible disease.

  35. 35.

    Tony Jay

    On topic, sort of, I’m steering well clear of the fucking Guardian today out of concern for my blood pressure.

    The cynical media outlet which spearheaded the daily campaign of hate and lies aimed at making the former Leader of the Opposition a monster in the eyes of millions is running articles bemoaning the horrors of Clown Prince Flobalob and asking “How did this happen?”

    I’ll tell you how it happened, you two-faced clutch of bastards. You made a deliberate decision to mainstream the propaganda coming from Israel’s hardest Right eliminationists and used it to redefine anti-Semitism into a catch-all term for anyone with an unfavourable opinion of apartheid and Occupation. Then you handed that blunt tool over to an ugly alliance of Labour’s careerist Right and Tory-aligned Jewish groups so they could beat the Labour Party flat with it and guarantee Johnson a majority.

    Now you’ve got scum like Freedland, who spewed garbage about a Leftwing Labour Government = Gas Chambers, blaming everyone else for letting a lying thug like Johnson get elected?

    Fuck you. This is your work. You wanted it. You made it happen. Go fuck your crocodile tears all the way to the big old bank your owners made out of your misinformation. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead and millions more have had their lives ruined because you chose to destroy a decent man who threatened your cosy status quo.

    Rant off.

    Fuckers.

  36. 36.

    Miss Bianca

    @rikyrah: I knew it was bad. Super bad. And yet the more that comes out about just *how many forces* were arrayed against her, and why, my teeth start to hurt from gnashing them.

  37. 37.

    Glidwrith

    @Miss Bianca: I once faced down my Kentucky in-laws who declared Hillary was such a weak candidate. I told them it took the combined effort of the FBI, Russia, the RNC and news media to just barely manage to defeat her. She is a fucking Goddess!

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