It’s similar to the way you’d treat a toddler who kept his pull-ups dry during the night, but James Fallows and Jay Rosen are both lauding the efforts of mainstream press in calling the Romney/Ryan campaign lies for what they are. I don’t want to praise with faint damns: some of those pieces are very good, including this one by Ron Fournier that analyzes why and how Romney is playing the race card.
Please understand that Miller [Fournier’s interview subject] and working-class whites like him have reason to be angry and cynical. First, life is tough and getting tougher for the shrinking middle class, regardless of race. Second, as the National Journal reported in the story involving Miller a year ago, minorities are steadily pushing their way into the middle class, which was once the province of whites.
The shift was most pronounced over the past decade, when 1.7 million Latinos joined the middle class and 1.5 million whites fell out. […]
Working-class whites, in other words, are already more prosperous and secure than working-class minorities, but they’re less optimistic because they don’t believe they’re climbing anymore. They’re simply trying to hold on to what they’ve got, and see others grabbing at it.
Thanks to Romney, they see minorities grabbing at their way of life every day and all day in the inaccurate welfare ad. […]
I’m sick of the term “race card”–it is a far too reductive and savvy dismissal of a divisive and resentful tactic. But if use of that term is coupled with some discussion of the shrinking middle class, that’s a hell of a lot better than the usual discussion over who transgressed the status quo, which about as far as “race card” discussions ever get.
The Romney campaign is betting that reporters like Fournier and papers like the LA and NY Times, which are two other examples Fallows and Rosen use, aren’t going to make much of a dent in the general press’ inclination to just repeat Romney lies without interpretation. I still wouldn’t bet against that, but there are some encouraging signs.
Emma
The elephant in the room is that it’s not a race war, it’s a class war where the enemy uses race to keep one part of the middle and working classes at the throats of the other.
hep kitty
I don’t believe this was the case back in the day (70’s, in the south, mind you) but that’s based purely on perception – don’t have numbers but I would be interested to see them. As far as I can tell, we have been regressing on that front for about 30 years. Also, hard to believe with AA unemployment being what it is that there is currently a creeping encroachment on the white middle class.
Marc
I think the opening line of this post was written for me personally. Fortunately, the media seem to be doing a little better than the boy.
The AP and Jonathan Bernstein have also been good about pushing back against Ryan’s incredibly dishonest speech.
hells littlest angel
I expect the press to turn on Romney and Ryan sooner or later. Even the laziest and most craven journalist gets sick of being treated with contempt. John McCain had enough sense to feed them barbecue and let them sit on his porch swing. Romney expects them to kneel on his kitchen floor wearing nothing but a ball-gag while he pisses on them. The man does not know the art of flattery.
Rhoda
Apparently, Wolf Blitzer pointed out that there were fact checking issues immediately following Ryan’s speech. Yesterday on Nightly News, Brian Williams came at Ann Romney saying Mitt Romney was needed to save America and how America would be destroyed if Barack Obama won another four year term. He clearly illustrated how offensive the comment was; even invoking what if Michelle did it.
The press is really pissed off and they KNOW that with the millions in the bank;Romney can keep repeating his lie and it’ll become the truth in certain quarters. This is what happened with the death panel lie. What is making them angry isn’t that; it’s being MOCKED and RIDICULED by the Romney team. These are humans and the Romney team shit the bed with the main stream media; it’s a big factor in how the convention got covered and how the debates are going to be interpreted in the fall IMO.
hep kitty
@Emma: YUP!
El Cid
Whites just fear Obama’s Kenyan relatives coming in and taking their property just like Mugabe’s taken the white farmers’ lands. It’s not about race, just about liberty and whatnot.
colleeniem
OT, but not really–did anyone else hear the near-CLANG event during the NPR report re: Obama addressing a veterans group this morning? It was just a participant, but I wish I knew why she was the only voice I heard from audience at the event.
How does our First Lady not look like a First Lady?
/sorry for the derail
hep kitty
deleted, got my my “serious” journalists mixed up. too early in the mo’ sorry
Linda Featheringill
Mitt & Co. obviously crossed a line somewhere and the MSM turned. I really would like to know what exactly happened. It’s very possible that we’ll never know.
Sure is nice to see, though.
And pushing back on the race baiting would be good for our entire society and therefore the country.
Cassidy
@El Cid: “Where all da white wimmen at?”
The Ancient Randonneur
Wow. Even Ron Fournier is willing to write about it. That is actually quite shocking. Ron Fournier? Who’s next? Mark Halperin? Joe Scarborough? Say it ain’t so! We still need a few knuckle dragging atavists outside the Fox News/WND/Breitbart Axis of Feeble Minded Know Nothings to mock.
Cassidy
@Linda Featheringill: It was the foreign despair trip when they shut the journolists out.
Comrade Mary
@colleeniem: Can you clarify? Are you saying a woman shouted out that Michelle didn’t look like a First Lady, or did she shout “Nigger!”, or what?
gene108
The more Mitt gets covered in the media, the worse he does. I was talking to my mom in June.
She’s pretty liberal on a lot of issues and a reliable Dem vote. She said she was frustrated and thinking of sitting the election out.
In July, as more and more info about Romney had come out, she said she was going to vote because Romney’s such a jackass.
Hopefully all this responsible journalism can reach a few more people out there and get them motivated to vote and not sit this election out because Obama hasn’t lived up to expectations.
Also, too any criticism of Romney/Ryan in the MSM will just reinforce right-wingers belief the liberal MSM is in the tank for Obama and just feed their internal self-justification for voting for Romney; I do not understand how these people can be so divorced from reality.
Linda Featheringill
@Rhoda: #5
I missed something somewhere. Aside from sneering at the factcheckers, what has Team Mitt done to mock and ridicule the press?
ETA:
Cassidy: “It was the foreign despair trip when they shut the journalists out.”
That was fairly insulting and degrading.
Comrade Javamanphil
@colleeniem: I heard this too. Absolutely appalling. Why Ari Shapiro did not followup with “What does a First Lady look like?” is disgraceful.
Ash Can
I think this goes back to how Team Romney just flat-out abused the press corps on the European Vacation World Tour — which, in retrospect, may have been only the tip of the iceberg. And there’s no way someone like Romney is going to suddenly learn graciousness or empathy, or even how to suck up to people, in time to stop treating the press like his own personal scullery maids and cabana boys. Chickens, meet roost.
gene108
You are right that whatever passes for race-baiting-Southern-strategy type tactics is more complicated than appealing to people, who just don’t want minorities around.
The tactics appeal to a different set of insecurities in the electorate that aren’t purely driven by overt racism.
colleeniem
Sorry, she didn’t shout the word, but it was almost as plain as that; I’m trying not to mess this up, but the quote was like “I can’t stand looking at the President, and I especially can’t stand looking at his wife. We need a first lady who looks like a first lady.”
Schlemizel
Its easy to see that the majority of wingnuts are isolated in FAUX News and talk radio bullshit so they will be unmoved by Willard being called out for his lies. Its easy to see to see that the majority of Obama voters are well aware that Willard is a liar. So no votes are going to change because of these editorials
But, lets be honest, the people who have not yet made up their minds are not paying attention to anything in particular. Certainly not print. Maybe if Brian Williams called them out but even then my bet is most of the undecideds also believe the liberal media myth. So the GOP knows they can lie and not suffer. As turdblossom explained “. . . when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities . . .”
Linda Featheringill
@Ash Can: #18
So we might know only part of the whole insulting story? Good point.
Kay
That’s probably the best sign of all. When they’re explaining, they’re losing.
I would love if Paul Ryan’s speech ‘o lies would be eclipsed by debates about how much and to what extent Paul Ryan lies :)
Discuss: Paul Ryan. Big Liar or Biggest Liar? That would be a good result, and what he deserves.
Robin G.
@Emma: Bingo.
hep kitty
So much for Ann’s speech, the First Lady is going to be on fire next week and I’m sure she’ll get me all teary-eyed talking about her dad, gets me right here. Oh that girl is something else! For me, she is a more compelling speaker than her husband. Unlike Ann’s speech, no tepid applause for her. She’s gonna rally the troops like nobody’s bidness.
To say Ann “knocked it out of the park” just goes to show how desperate republicans are at this point. Digging for flecks of gold in a dung heap.
TheMightyTrowel
@hep kitty: Re: media on Ann R.: Low bar. getting lower. limbo party.
Napoleon
As much as I hate Fournier I have to give credit where it is due. His piece is excellent reporting/analysis/conceptualizing the issue.
Laura
Wait, is he seriously saying that white people being angry that minorities are becoming successful is totally ok???
Schlemizel
@colleeniem:
Thats an easy one – NO FIRST LADY has ever had such a broad nose or thick lips and you just know that is not her ‘real’ hair.
See, its not racist at all – obviously she does not look like a first lady based on her looks. Its not about race at all & you are the real racist for trying to say it is!
Ash Can
@Schlemizel: Sure, but even the people who aren’t paying attention pick up on memes sooner or later. And if the meme becomes “Obama may not be all that, but this Romney guy lies his ass off at every opportunity and openly admits that he’s campaigning on lies,” they’ll hear that. And if the press keeps saying it, it will become a meme.
mai naem
I just wonder if the Romney people are so bad at fluffing the press that the press is and will continue in giving them crappy coverage. Maybe if they give them some access, some juicy stuff, they would get better coverage. Also, I have to wonder if family members of the press and the members of the press themselves(the print media industry sux) who’ve been affected by this especially longer and tougher recession and the usual Repub talking points are working this time around???? The Tribune Co. was taken over by Sam Zell and he pulled something very similar to a Bain takeover and the employees lost their pensions. I have to believe this stuff affects your coverage.
Valdivia
@Rhoda:
wait Brian Williams committed this act of journalism???
El Cid
These days “racism” is portrayed as something very clear, precise, and consciously recognized and willed, and it sounds like a particularly horrible, offensive “accusation”.
All the different levels upon which people resent, fear, discount, and dislike people or activities or policies or imagined policies but which are based upon symbols or notions based upon racial and ethnic real or imagined characteristics are something “else”, and not so bad.
So apparently there’s “racist” in which someone consciously says inside their own heads “I hate
blahblack people,” for example, and “Because I hate black people I support X candidate,” and this and only this is immoral and publicly worthy of condemnation; and anything less hammer-blunt than this is in some hazy world in which everything is open to interpretation, is fuzzy, maybe isn’t so bad, etc.Ash Can
@hep kitty: I’m liking the fact that the DNC comes after the RNC. People won’t be able to help drawing comparisons between the two parties in general. And specifically in the case of the candidates’ wives’ speeches, the difference will be stark. You just know that if Michelle and Ann went mano-a-mano in a debate, Ann would last about three minutes before running off and locking herself in the ladies’ room for the rest of the night. I do recall reading something about a Harvard law professor saying that Barack Obama was the second-brightest student he’s ever had in his class, after all. ;)
colleeniem
@Schlemizel: Heee, I know. I’m (more) upset by what she said, but also that she was the only participant quoted and I know that veterans are not like that as a whole.
Also I think I got by suckered the travesty of it, which is probably what they are trying to do.
Suffern ACE
@Schlemizel: Whatever it was the veterans on my fb are a flutter that the president has pissed them off this morning by disrespecting them. I’m not certain what it is this time. The veterans on my fb tend toward the melodramtic, so who knows.
giltay
There’s a lot of fuss on the Twitters this morning about the Fox News piece Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words. (tl;dr: the three words are dazzling, deceiving, and distracting.) And worries about what will happen to the writer.
Kane
The perfect storm is coming with Romney taking the stage tonight. The sharks are in the water just waiting for Romney to lie.
Rhoda
@Valdivia: Even AFTER she gave him cookies, lol. I was shocked too.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#48834596
Basilisc
This is a must-read.
What happened is that, in the mid-1980s, some banks made the epic mistake of lending money to Bank Capital’s “mother ship”, Bain & Co. Of course it’s stupid to lend money to a business consultancy, since their only “asset” is the ability of the partners to generate money, and the partners can bolt at any time leaving you with nothing. But the banks did it anyway. The partners then turned around and gave a big share of the firm’s cash to (who else?) Bain Capital. A few years later, we’re in a recession, Bain & Co was about to go bust, so Romney rode back in on his white ass from Bain Capital and convinced the lenders to give them a two-year grace period. Now it’s 1992, and they still can’t pay. So Romney tells them to cut the loans to 35 cents on the dollar – or else he’ll take what little cash is left and pay it out to the executives in bonuses. The banks (including one bank which in the meantime had gone bust and is now owned by the FDIC, ie taxpayers) say no. A few months later, Romney pays the bonuses, and says the offer is now 30 cents on the dollar. And apparently the banks finally knuckled under. Loss to taxpayer is at least $10 million.
What can we learn from this?
– Romney’s business success owes a lot to his willingness to be, as needed, a mo-fking asshole.
– If that involves screwing over the taxpayer, all the better.
Valdivia
@Rhoda:
must have been very bad cookies! :)
Emma
@giltay: Jeebus. Either that guy’s in the bread line by the end of the day or Murdoch has pulled the plug of Mitt.
rikyrah
nobody has yet say the magic words to these working class WHITES:
‘ When are you finally gonna stop voting against your own economic best interest?’
‘ When will you finally tire of them using you and placating you by telling you – at least you’re not a nigger?’
Svensker
@giltay:
My wingnut rellies have already explained that it was only opinion so it doesn’t matter at all.
No, I don’t get it, either.
giltay
@Emma: She’s billed as the progressive voice on the Fox News site, and has written several articles critical of the GOP. I suspect she may be the token lefty there so Fox can call itself fairandbalanced.
giltay
@Svensker: What, the column or Ryan’s speech? Either way, buh?
slightly_peeved
@Linda Featheringill:
I think it may have happened in plain sight. Plenty of candidates lie to the press,but at least they’re sincere in their lying. Vulture and Voucher aren’t. They’ve admitted, in public, that they don’t care what journalists think. The press corps may get in the sack for any politician, but they at least expect the politician to buy them dinner and tell them they’re handsome.
Svensker
@giltay:
The column was “only opinion,” so no one needs to pay any attention to it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Laura:
My reading was that he’s saying they have reason to be angry, and the ‘at minorities’ part is being fed to them.
Omnes Omnibus
The MSM may be whores, but they have always been been the “get me a nice apartment and lease me a BMW” whores. R&R have been treating them like streetwalkers – offering them $25 to do it in the alley. Their amour-propre has been injured.
giltay
@Svensker: I suppose the piece isn’t Serious, then.
Chris
@gene108:
That’s kinda been me over the last year. I was always going to vote against Romney because, y’know, he’s a Republican in this day and age which makes him fucking nuts…
But the more the election progresses, the more I want to see him get stomped on because he’s just such a fucking asshole on every level, quite apart from his party affiliation. I’ve never in my life seen someone so badly in need of being slapped in the face with the fact that there are some things in life you can’t buy no matter how much wealth you were born into.
Napoleon
@Chris:
There is a quote from a Boston area academic (poli sci or something like that) that I have seen several times to the effect “to know Mitt is to dislike him” which he said relative to the fact that the better known he became in MA the worse his poll numbers became.
Chris
@rikyrah:
I wish I could find it again, but in the last few days someone here made an insightful comment that what the Republicans were selling above all was a belief in hierarchy – where everyone has a place and even if it’s not very high up, at least they still have other people to look down on.
Since egalitarianism’s usually been done by leveling things out at the bottom, there’s a lot of people who feel like they don’t have anyone to look down on anymore, and it makes them angry. That’s the first thing that occurred to me while seeing this post…
Anoniminous
(Reposted from previous thread)
The major media companies are losing money and market share in their consumer markets, e.g., print readership is in a steady, decade long decline. Advertisers are getting better measurements of the demographics of actual audiences for broadcast media and are forcing ad-rates downwards.
I think the turn towards Truthiness is the MSM discovered they lost their cred a long time ago and nobody is buying, i.e., paying hard coin, for their bullshit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My take on this is the media is just in shock right now. No one has ever lied this badly and blatantly. Typically its spin or surrogates, not the candidates themselves.
Over Talking Points Memo they were opining on what happens when the Media finally calls Mittens on it. The press hates him enough to savage him badly. This could be the first presidential candidacy that was outright vetoed by the press and not the voters. And that’s new territory.
Chris
@Napoleon:
I believe it…
...now I try to be amused
@Emma:
Yes! It’s Divide and Rule, made from zero-sum thinking and fear of The Other.
japa21
The next step, and I hope Obama takes it, is not just to point out the lies, but to ask why the GOP feels the need to lie. Could it possibly be because their plans for the country are so bad they know that even a lot of the RWNJs would vote against them if they really knew what they were?
Bobby Thomson
@El Cid: Not exactly a new thing. I remember my high school history teacher explaining to some kids in my class that if they agreed with the statement “I would not date or marry outside of my race” that really did mean they were prejudiced;i.e., people didn’t have to “hate” other races to be prejudiced. He got a lot of push back.
These days he probably would be fired within a week for saying something like that. It’s possible that using the softer term “prejudiced” helped.
schrodinger's cat
@colleeniem: When did this happen? Do you have a link?
Chris
@Bobby Thomson:
I’ve come to hate the term “hate” as applied to racism – it’s a massive oversimplification which makes it sound like you can’t be a racist unless you’re burning crosses and lynching people (which, indeed, is the definition white conservatives cling to with religious fervor).
You don’t have to hate nonwhite people to believe that they’re inferior; you could be one of those sick bastards who believed it was “for their own good,” or another idiot who thinks because it’s always been that way it’s how it should be, or just one of these people who doesn’t give a crap and thinks freeing minorities is too much trouble to be bothered with. But if you’re any one of these people, you’re helping a system of racial supremacy, and yes, that makes you a racist.
(The immense emotional need of conservatives not to be seen as racist is another matter…)
Chris
@Bobby Thomson:
I’ve come to hate the term “hate” as applied to racism – it’s a massive oversimplification which makes it sound like you can’t be a racist unless you’re burning crosses and lynching people (which, indeed, is the definition white conservatives cling to with religious fervor).
You don’t have to hate nonwhite people to believe that they’re inferior; you could be one of those sick bastards who believed it was “for their own good,” or another idiot who thinks because it’s always been that way it’s how it should be, or just one of these people who doesn’t give a crap and thinks freeing minorities is too much trouble to be bothered with. But if you’re any one of these people, you’re helping a system of racial supremacy, and yes, that makes you a racist.
(The immense emotional need of conservatives not to be seen as racist is another matter…)
jibeaux
@japa21: Sure. One thing I’ve been thinking is about how they’re so clearly trying to spin the Medicare thing as not affecting any seniors. Democrats are trying to scare seniors, we have no plans to change Medicare for seniors!
So….if you’re so compelled to maintain it as is for seniors, why don’t the rest of us get that? Conversely, if you think vouchers are a super idea, why not get started on them right away so everyone can benefit?
quannlace
And to point out the blatant lies won’t have an affect on a lot of them. To many stalwart Romney supporters, it’s the end justifying the means. What’s a few lies if it helps get the Kenyan usurper out of the White House?
jwb
My initial read from my media feed on Twitter this morning is that the GOP is having to spin Ryan’s speech awful hard. That suggests that it did not go down well and the GOP is in full damage-control mode. As @Kay mentioned above, the fact that they are explaining here means they are losing, and that in turn suggests that for the moment at least the post-truth strategy seems to have hit a wall of sorts. We’ll see if it continues. On the other hand, the Dems are probably going to have to be extra scrupulous in their convention because the media is going to want desperately to declare that both sides do it.
Cassidy
@Bobby Thomson: But, do a class assignment that involves bullet holes in the POTUS’s head and why, that’s just free speech and a legitimate assignment in the curriculum.
dandelion
@schrodinger’s cat:
Here’s the link to the NPR segment that colleeniem referenced:
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160293862/romney-courts-veterans-at-american-legion-convention
JustAnotherBob
@Comrade Mary:
“I don’t like him. Can’t stand to look at him. I don’t like his wife; she’s far from the first lady. It’s time we get a First Lady in there that acts like a First Lady and looks like a First Lady.”
—
Bobbi Luciere, as quoted on NPR Morning Edition.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Racism as its practiced in this Year of Our Lord 2012: “Broad sympathy for some, broader skepticism for others.”
This is the racism that the Confederates can-and do– exploit with dogwhistles.
JustAnotherBob
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
NPR has done a major takedown of Ryan this morning. They’ve gone through his lies one by one and made it very clear that he lied over and over in his speech.
feebog
@ Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Don’t know about that. I think the MSM did a pretty good hit job on Al Gore in 2000. How many of them refuted the “Gore invented the internet” meme? And how many of them declared Lil’ Smirky the winner of one or more of the debates when he clearly sucked in all three?
JustAnotherBob
Yahoo News is leading with a story on Ryan lies.
Washington Post has a high-front page take-apart of his speech and it’s the most highly read at the moment.
Gretchen
I grew up in Detroit about the same time Romney did. I vividly remember the 1963 Detroit riots, and smaller riots afterward. In fact, years later, I caught myself thinking, when out late on a hot summer night, that I’d better get home because it’s “riot weather”. He should know the terrible cost of stirring up racial hatred first-hand, and anyone who knows this and does it anyway has ice where his soul should be. I remember National Guard tanks rolling down the streets, burned out areas that stayed that way for years, and my dad telling my mother where the shotgun was kept before leaving for work. Maybe Romney was safe out in the suburbs at Cranbrooke Prep while I was in the city, but anyone who grew up in that time and place knows, or should know, the fire he his playing with so carelessly.
Violet
@Anoniminous:
I agree. I said a day or so ago that the media are starting to figure out that if they don’t do their job, they won’t have a job to do. People are sick of the “both sides do it” crap. They want–and expect–truth from their media. They can see with their own eyes and share it and get the word out on social media. The media’s fluffiness has lost it’s usefulness. Where they still can add value is to dig into stories and find out the truth. I think they’re starting to figure this out with the help of R&R’s egregious lying.
Chris
@Gretchen:
I don’t think he cares. He doesn’t figure he’ll ever be affected.
The Lodger
@hep kitty: Ann “knocked it out of the park”?
This park maybe.
(My favorite line from the link: “In February 2006, the park was temporarily relocated during road construction to a planter outside the World Trade Center Portland…”
Bill Arnold
Re the “waiving of work requirements”, here is the letter that the Republicans are confused (or lying) about. (via quaker in a basement at Kevin Drum’s blog’s comments)
IMO, anyone who misreads this the way that the Republicans are mis-characterizing it in adverts and talking points should perhaps be declared incompetent to sign contracts.
xian
@colleeniem: i heard that.
xian
@colleeniem: also said “she’s *far* from the first lady”