God damn. Richard Cohen files for divorce, and he wants the kids, the house, the car, and the dog. He is pissed.
Also, Mark Halperin was on Anderson Cooper, and I have no idea what happened to the guy who just three weeks ago was insisting that McCain’s housing gaffe was bad for Obama, but he was playing things straight down the middle and calling McCain’s lies… lies.
donovong
He’s lost Cohen?
Time to call and check the temperature in Hell.
r€nato
Blind squirrel finds a nut. Film at 11!
Octavian
What the hell is going on?
Matt McIrvin
And I was astounded when he lost Joe Klein.
KG
This is going to get ugly. I don’t know how ugly, but I’m thinking that it’s going to be that weekend in Jackson Hole when you don’t quite remember how much you had to drink and you can’t tell if that’s a guy or girl in the morning ugly.
Jon H
And you find out that you actually spent the weekend at home, in some guy named Jackson.
Jon H
Cohen’s just faking it. He wants the makeup sex.
dorkboy
The thing about Halperin on AC360 was that he had to be the “rational” voice after Candy Crowley did her usual “they’re all doing it” routine.
She had the obligatory list of ways that Obama “wronged” McCain/Palin and I was waiting for more of the same when Halperin spoke. But pigs do fly I guess.
Radon Chong
He didn’t just lose Cohen, mind, he got Cohen to admit that he’d been in the tank for him all along. It’s like bizarro world, except no goatees.
Balconespolitics
These guys like to at least PRETEND that they’re serious journalists. Well, this year the McCain campaign decided to just go into open mockery of the role of the press …
It’s one thing to fool someone consistently at 3-card monte. But the McCain campaign has been akin to constantly picking the right card, and having the dealer refuse to acknowledge that the Jack of Hearts on the table that you’re pointing to is really a Jack of Hearts. He’s saying “no, sorry, that’s a 6 of diamonds” and grabbing your money.
The sad thing is that with a little finesse, McCain could actually mend these fences and have all these guys back in his pocket within a couple weeks.
Balconespolitics
These guys like to at least PRETEND that they’re serious journalists. Well, this year the McCain campaign decided to just go into open mockery of the role of the press …
It’s one thing to fool someone consistently at 3-card monte. But the McCain campaign has been akin to constantly picking the right card, and having the dealer refuse to acknowledge that the Jack of Hearts on the table that you’re pointing to is really a Jack of Hearts. He’s saying “no, sorry, that’s a 6 of diamonds” and grabbing your money.
The sad thing is that with a little finesse, McCain could actually mend these fences and have all these guys back in his pocket within a couple weeks.
Louise
It’s a measure of how beaten down I am by the last eight years that even after reading the Richard Cohen column, I’m still sure the media will turn around and embrace McCain again in time to doom us all in November.
But fuckitol, I laughed so hard at how you set that link up, John. Thanks for the therapy.
TheFountainHead
Hu buh whaaaa?
I really thought I was dreaming reading that. Gotta stop blog browsing in bed.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
That was laugh-out-loud funny. Probably because it’s so true.
*sigh* We’re really fucked is this McCain creep can’t manage to lose the election, aren’t we?
Louise
(apologies if this is a repeat — I haven’t been through the other threads)
Did you all see this? Tell some conservatives about a false claim and about 37% will still think it’s true. Tell some conservatives about a false claim and present them with the proof it’s false — and 68% will think it’s true!
*sigh*
(BTW, it doesn’t work on liberals.)
blogreeder
Ha Ha. Sure it does. Did you ever hear the one about statistics?
GSD
Sarah Palin didn’t blink, but the rest of the nation’s elite that don’t want to see America evaporated in and Biblically inspired apocalypse by a career climbing fundagelical moose killer just did blink.
-GSD
chrismealy
Richard Cohen, September 18, 2007: “After Petraeus Is Slimed, Spineless Silence”
Richard Cohen, September 17, 2008: “The Ugly New McCain”
r€nato
Hey conservatives – experts say that if you jump off a 20-story building, you will probably die.
Delia
Conclusion: it must be the lovely Sarah. Maybe there’s something about her they haven’t told us yet that has the Villagers screaming and tearing their hair.
Conservatively Liberal
Holy shit, Cohen really laid into McCain! I am glad to see some ‘names’ calling the selection of Palin what it is, window dressing, and not putting the interests of the country first. All in the name of winning. These guys have been eating all of the shit that the right has been feeding them but it took the industrial strength shit that McCain and his campaign are doing and putting out to make them realize what it is they have been eating.
Sounds like they don’t like the taste of shit, eh? Probably realizing that it gives them bad breath. For some reason, that article smelled minty fresh! ;)
SpotWeld
$5 says McCain goes “Wild Weasel” on Cheney and/or Rove.
The Dangerman
Depends upon the source of the proof; if it had come from “recognized experts” like Limbaugh or Hannity, the number would have gone down. If it comes from an entity like the rest of the media or, even worse, someone that is educated, or, even worse, educated and a known liberal….
Regardless the end result on 11/4, there is a problem when one Major Party can nominate such a demonstrably incapable fuck (I’m referring to Palin, though you can take your pick, I suppose) and have people literally swoon over the selection. It’s beyond a nightmare that we could have a President Palin with a couple of unlucky breaks in the future. It’s almost to the point where one is going to have to call in the deprogrammers (remember how they were calling Obama followers cultists? that’s called projecting your faults onto others) to eradicate this horrible potential nightmare from ever occurring again.
DougJ
He’s lost all the “centrist” pundits but Broder. Even George Will, David Brooks, and Krauthammer are skeptical of Palin.
At this point, it’s just Kristol, Broder, and the Kagans who are completely on the tire swing. Everyone else has at least one foot off the tire.
DougJ
And I was astounded when he lost Joe Klein.
Totally unfair comparison. Cohen makes Klein like Edward R. Murrow.
DougJ
It’s beyond a nightmare that we could have a President Palin with a couple of unlucky breaks in the future.
I would argue that the fact she’s even gotten this close means we’re fucked. It’s never too early to start teaching your kids Mandarin.
Martin
Scandals are the bread-and-butter of the media. “McCain is a big, fat liar” is something they can dig into and sell big for weeks on end.
Nothing but truth there…
zuzu's petals
I think they’ve shot their wad with Palin.
I mean really, there’s nothing more that they can tell us about her, all the fascinatin’ frontier woman stuff is out there, all the “reformer” bio stuff is out there … and it’s all starting to fall apart.
Geeze, from what I can tell, they can’t even come up with a new speech for her.
The question is whether the falling apart will be complete before November, I guess.
fledermaus
please Cohen only changed his tune because someone threatened to give him a swirley if he didn’t
The Dangerman
Absolutely true; nonetheless, Obama could win (oh, Please God!!!) and then we can go about trying to get ourselves unfucked. The mess that the Right has given us (and I’m not talking energy or environment or similar; it’s that there is a large block of voters where science is superceded by Faith or truth is superceded by who is telling it) is staggering.
I never thought the Soviet Union could dissolve without things really going to shit (sure, there were/are problems, but, basically, the dissolution occurred reasonably well); imagine the irony if things continue to go to shit in the U.S. and President Palin becomes a reality? It could be the U.S. that becomes the destabilizing country with all it’s nukes (and I’m from a side that believes there is a LOT more to the story of the loose nukes flying across the country several months ago).
AnneLaurie
“McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir—the person in whose hands he would leave the country—is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for.”
Shorter Richard “Caligula’s Horse” Cohen: “That cheating bastard McCain swore he would still respect me in the morning! And now he’s showing up at all the best parties with that… that pitbull!”
Just wait until Richie & his friends here back from their brokers tomorrow. The Rovians doubled-down all their bets, with the idea they could wring one more election (and a few extra millions in bonuses) from what’s left of the American financial system. When the Media Village Idiots figure out just how badly their personal savings have been looted, I don’t think we’re gonna hear much more sympathetic discussion of ‘global paradigms’…
upgrayedd
What’s going to happen is, one very hurt journalist is going to bring it up during the debates. S/he will ask Obama first in order to be balanced. Obama will say, look, we’re all human, and we’re fallible. There are exaggerations and untruths, especially when you’re sure the other side’s doing it worse. This has happened to everyone ever since arguments were invented. But if the last 8 years have taught us nothing else, it’s that the means matters every bit as much as the end. A noble goal can be corrupted by evil-spirited or dishonorable means. Now, I haven’t seen every political ad ever aired, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time anyone has accused the father of two young girls of wanting to teach them about sex before they can read, and I think that’s both evil-spirited and dishonorable. So I’ve got to ask you, Senator- do you approve of that message? Are you John McCain?
Then, unless they’ve been putting downers in McCain’s deodorant, you are going to see the future all-time most viewed shit fit on YouTube, and you’re going to see it live.
Tattoosydney
From your keyboard to God’s ear….
Calouste
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat also gives us some straight talk:
McCain better get the BBQ out really soon.
Texas Dem
Speaking of bizarre, check out these comments from the Mittster calling out McCain on his lies:
openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8253
And remember Karl Rove’s comments on Fox Noise the other day. What the hell is going on here? It’s very rare for Republicans to go off message like that. Do you suppose they’re worried Team McCain is blowing it or are they worried McCain’s going to win?
Andrew
Nope. From the article:
Conservatives actually do have negative confidence in experts now.
zuzu's petals
He updated to say it was actually from the primaries, but interesting that McCain was doing it even then.
Michael Brown
Looks to me like they’d like to prep a walk-back on all this horseshit they’ve been catapulting across the country for nearly a month. But how exactly they can walk back the consequences of a month full of projectile horseshit…that’s pretty mysterious.
psycholinguist
This one is just bizarre; lying about hanging out with the press, to the press?
an MSNBC story quoting her press secretary regarding the S&L skit: “According to her spokesperson, the governor and the press corps watched the sketch in the back of her plane, laughing at Fey and Poehler’s satirical take on the two politicians.”
msnbc.msn.com/id/26725961/
Now, that just seemed strange – Palin joshing it up with reporters? Here’s the report from two ABC reporters
“There were howls of laughter from the sizeable press corps covering Palin’s first foray on the campaign trail without her running man as a chaperone. But, from the front of the plane, silence. The flight attendants assured us Palin and her entourage were watching. What she thought, though, is anybody’s guess.
Palin has yet to say so much as hello to the press corps.
The campaign is doing its best to keep Palin well away from inquisitive reporters, going so far as to book the press corps into a separate hotel from the candidate.
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/live-from-new-y.html
zuzu's petals
And now, David Brooks actually weighs in .
You have to slog through a fair amount of pure BS (WHO has called Palin “parochial” for not summering in Tuscany?), before reaching what is for him, a rather startling conclusion:
JGabriel
r€nato:
And I can prove it!
.
zuzu's petals
Wow, even the WSJ is running front-page stories about Palin’s cronyism:
low-tech cyclist
Dylan told you “there was no actor anywhere better than the Jack of Hearts,” so maybe he successfully impersonated a 6 of diamonds. ;^)
I think he could reel some of them, including Cohen, back in. But I think some of them are lost to McCain forever.
What’s scary, though, is how long they kept making excuses for him. McCain was on the right side of some of my hot-button issues both before and after his 2000 campaign, so by 2004 I was a big fan of his. But it was easy enough for me to see that, from the moment he endorsed Bush, he pretty much turned his back on everything he’d supposedly stood for over the previous 6-8 years, other than being pro-war of course. How did the press not notice, when this is their day job?
dslak
You, my friend, have an antiquated notion of what the job of the press is.
Scrutinizer
Morning Joe assures us that this is good news for the Palin*McCain campaign. Those nasty liberal pundits like Cohen should just leave Palin alone!
jhh
I read the article about the study that shows that conservatives, when presented with refutation of their held opinion, cling ever more strongly to that belief. (ie, given a picture from space showing the Earth is round, they re assert that in fact it is flat). Nobody likes having their beliefs challenged, but I have observed that conservatives hate the principle of having their beliefs challenged even more than the substance of the challenge itself, and this resentment causes them to cling even more stubbornly to the original opinion—and hate the challenger even more for having shown them up. I suspect this is what is going on in the reported studies.It’s an authority/insecurity thing. And it is also a behavior that is characteristic of teenagers. So we can expect tha the GOP wingnuts will be getting ever more wingnutty as McCain and Palin’s lies are laid out more and more clearly in the coming days and weeks. But at least the press has—after 8 disastrous years—stopped caving (for now) to the bluster.
jdrhoades
Which response will they trot out, do you think?
1. Cohen sounds like a left wing blogger!
2. If he felt this way, why didn’t he say something earlier?
3. He must have a book coming out that he’s trying to promote!
4. How dare Cohen attack Sarah Palin! Sexism! Sexism!
5. John McCain! POW! POW!
etc.
slightly_peeved
The thing is… he won’t.
It’s a lovely vicious cycle –
McCain perceives the press as paying too much attention to Obama, so he starts being mean to the press.
He’s mean to the press, so the press don’t feel like they have to carry any water for him.
Because the press aren’t carrying his water, he blames the press for being an ‘elite’ and ‘biased’.
The press get really pissed, and start calling him on his lies.
McCain gets defensive, and hides Palin away from them.
Since the press can’t talk to the Republicans about Palin, they actually do 10 minutes of research and find out about how thoroughly corrupt Palin is.
And meanwhile, Obama and Biden are friendly as you like to the press, doing plenty of interviews and going on O’Reilly.
It’s incredible to watch – someone so outraged that you’ve pointed out he’s screwed the pooch his response is to go get a bigger pooch. Eventually, he’s fucking an Irish Wolfhound yelling “WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME DO THIS?!”
Apologies for the image.
Napoleon
Everything about the so called conservatives, from the lowliest Rush listeners to the leaders in Congress, the Bush Administration and McCain campaign is defined by the level of maturity and thinking you get from male teenagers. From bumperstickers like “piss off a liberal today” to a foreign policy worthy of a punk 14 year old.
Chruch-lady
Lesson: don’t have your pit-bull attack the press.
DougJ
Absolutely true; nonetheless, Obama could win (oh, Please God) and then we can go about trying to get ourselves unfucked.
Not sure I agree. She got this close for a reason, even if she doesn’t win. A system that let Sarah Palin get within a Cokie’s hair of the White House is a fucked up system.
The Chinese are going to dominate.
Georgette Orwell
“Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman.”
I think there’s a typo here–“destroy” most assuredly ought to be “create.”
sparky
it’s what AnneLaurie said upthread–it was fine to make this a game since they (the reporter class) would be fine whoever was in charge. it’s not fine for them if they have to sell the house in the Vineyard because their broker just called and told them their AIG and Lehman stock was worthless.
this is the one thing that had to have happened to put “some skin in the game” for the uberclass. and they are now confronted with the possibility that yes, Virginia, the GOP really is turning the US into a version of a failed state. and there is no escape, even for them, from the consequences.
Jake
Yeah let’s not get ahead of ourselves too much here. A lot of these guys fell off the tire swing around the same time McCain stopped talking to the press on his bus. I’m not sure we’re talking about a principled bunch here.
That being said, I’m not sure I see McCain going back to his old ways of getting comfy with these guys anytime soon. They have A LOT of questions for him, and even more for Palin.
Xanthippas
Indeed. She won’t destroy it, so much as she’ll replace people with her own corrupt cronies that she can trust.
Jake
So I haven’t seen the video, and consider the source as I write this, but apparently McCain blew his top on Morning Joe this AM.
Krista
That’s what I’m wondering. She has no substance, just style. So we already know about the style. It’s been thoroughly covered. So what’s left?
And I know that the “all style, no substance” charge was applied to Obama, but look at it this way — he’s been at this for what, 2 years now? And people still want to hear his ideas and his plans. Palin’s been at this for a couple of weeks, and the shine is already wearing off of her.
Comparing Palin to Obama wrt experience is like comparing a pair of $10 knockoff slingbacks to a pair of fine leather shoes. They might look similar at first glance, if you don’t look too closely. But after wearing them a couple of weeks, the cheap shoes have given you blisters and the stitching is starting to go. The fine shoes might have a couple of creases in them from wear, but it only makes them look better, and they’re getting more and more comfortable everyday.
The difference is quality. Obama has it.
b. hussein canuckistani
Here’s one I like – McCain taking a stand against science education:
boonagain
McCain didn’t lose it.
He just flashbacked to his POW days and was reminded of his Vietnamese captors by the harsh interrogation of Mika.
He WAS a POW, don’t you know?
bartkid
McC losing Halperin is worse than Johnson losing Cronkite on Vietnam.
Not My Fault
I saw the edited McCain tape, including the “swipe”
That is “blowing his top?” Not even close. He made a calm comment that the talking heads didn’t like.
Poor, poor talking heads. bullied by the mean old guy.
I Like Daily Kos because it has so much content … but so much of its content is utter crap.
I need to stick with this site and learn to be content with “WordPress Error.”
liberal
sparky wrote,
But the outrageous thing is that, despite the clear and present danger that someone like McCain presents to America, the Establishment is doing nothing against him.
Yeah, OK, a few reporters/op-ed columnists are raising some doubts. BFD.
The Establishment will have turned against McCain when news reports unambiguously point out that he’s a liar with no honor (without the usual “both camps are engaging in this” crap), and when media outlets start to refuse to run his ads.
Until then, the Powers That Be are public enemies.
SGEW
When I was a 14 year old punk (weird hair and chains and boots and the sneer and everything – you should see the pictures) I had a much more mature foreign policy than McCain does now.
scott
I think one of my blog’s readers had the best take on the Cohen/MSM/McCain divorce:
“the delightful thing is not just that all these guys have gotten over their man-crushes on mccain, it’s the way they are all acting like jilted 13 year-old girls now and vehemently trashing him to try and soothe their bruised egos. face it bitches (richard, andrew, etc.), all those super-awesome things he told you were just so you’d blow him in his car and he could get into your pants. and once he was done with you he laughed at you behind your back and told his friends you were an easy (and lousy) fuck. deal with it.”