Not sure if you saw this last night:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
White House M.D. | ||||
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The only reason I mention it is because on CNN just a minute ago was another “analyst” with the Republican made-up chart that Stewart lampoons. I never fully appreciated back in the day how very easy it was for Republicans to just churn up nonsense and mainstream it, but it really is impressive. The only time they ever get called on it is when they so over-reach that they do something like release an “alternate budget” with no numbers on April Fools Day. Then, even Wolf Blitzer has to call bullshit.
media browski
It’s a sad time in America when clowns are doing the journalists’ jobs for them, journalists are doing the politicians’ jobs for them, and the politicians are doing the clowns’ jobs for them.
Trinity
Rey
We need another celebrity death today, let’s say around 1:20pm cst. My vote goes to G. Gordon Liddy. Anybody check his pulse this morning after his appearance on Tweety?
peach flavored shampoo
Our country is truly fucked. the Today Show AGAIN led off their broadcast with a diddy on GatesGate. Glad to see that’s the most important thing happening in our country today.
Ash
I haven’t said much about this health care thing, because honestly, I don’t understand much of it.
But I’ve been really stewing about this, WHAT THE FUCK kind of healthcare plan do these idiots have where they get to choose exactly which doctor they want? I sure as hell have never had the chance to do that. And what’s this BS about “rationing”? Yeah, because there’s nooooo rationing under the system now. Oh, and HAHAH, of COURSE you never have to wait months and months and months and months to see a specialist in the US of A. Oh wait, except…..YOU DO.
Are all these idiots who are against reforms really that fucking rich that they can just walk up to hospital whenever they want and just pay for everything they’ve ever wanted?
[/end rant]
Crashman06
@peach flavored shampoo: Maybe I’m more naive than I realized, but I really am shocked that Obama’s throwaway line on the Gates issue has become such a big story.
joe from Lowell
You know, I’m not sure if conspicuous displays of stupidity while while dealing with complicated issues is quite as effective a policy stance as the Republicans seems to think it is.
At least, not six months after the end of the Bush presidency.
Just Some Fuckhead
Jesus, I guess Jon Stewart is a racist too.
Leelee for Obama
I am completely disgusted with CNN, and will not even put MSNBC on my set until 8PM, most of the time. I do not think Obama handled the question badly, but I do think the MSM will make hay with this until doomsday. No one would have asked a white President what he thought about the incident unless it happened to Colin Powell, and maybe not even then. The fact is, as soon as Skip Gates identified himself as the resident of the home, he should have been treated as a possible victim of a possible crime. Crowley should have called CSU to look for evidence of an attempted break-in and conducted a search of the home, with permission, to assure Gates that no one was in the home. Everything else was pure BULLSHIT whether race was involved or not. End of rant.
Brick Oven Bill
Well hey, here’s a chart. The April mistake was completely mine. But what’s four months between friends?
The good news for Obama is that the majority of Americans will identify with the wealthy Harvard African Studies professor who chased the cop out of his house yelling about the cop’s moma, who will soon be making the rounds on the TV circuit, and not the stupid policeman who responded to the breaking and entering call, or the stupid police unions.
This will help Obama’s poll numbers.
David
I didn’t realize Kenneth the Page worked for Fox News when not filming 30 Rock episodes.
ronin122
As funny as the clip was….sadly, I no longer watch the Daily Show regularly because of stuff like that and can only muster the clips I happen to cross in my blog browsing. After getting heavy into watching how the MSM sucks more and more each passing week for the last couple years, doing what we all know they do, it no longer is funny to watch but angering and depressing. It stopped being funny in 2003 with Iraq, and the potential to be funny again died in 2004 (Stewert on Crossfire). Now that they’re allowing the economy and health care reform to crumble and basically be a mouthpiece to the dipstick party of no (no brain, no heart, no talent, no reason to be considered credible), I’ve pretty much had it.
ellaesther
What made me shout at my teevee machine last night was all the news anchors saying in that clip that the “the topic was health care but it was the comment at the end that has everyone talking this morning”….
(Shouted in my best Jon Stewart imitation): YOU’RE THE ONES DOING THE TALKING!!!
Would it have killed the Today Show people to have Matt Lauer say “The President’s comment at the end of his press conference about the arrest of an African-American Harvard professor is sure to get a lot of buzz today, but he spent the first 55 minutes talking about health care, so we’ll start there.” And then fine — at the end of the show: Skip Gates! Would it have fucking KILLED them?
Perhaps. Perhaps it would have. Who am I to say?
ironranger
Speaking of racism, I haven’t seen Pat Buchanan on the tv screen for a few days, since the Maddow show. Pretty noticeable when the guy seems to live at msnbc 24/7. I know it’s too much to hope that it’s permanent.
YellowJournalism
@Ash: The short answer? Yes.
And I’m not sure I understand the health care plan, either. I’m sorry, but I have to agree with the court jester here: no more wacky analogies! (That goes double for you, Republicans.)
kay
@Brick Oven Bill:
You didn’t say Rasmussen, Bill. You know that. People were smart not to take your bet. You would have switched charts.
Scott de B.
The good news for Obama is that the majority of Americans will identify with the wealthy Harvard African Studies professor who chased the cop out of his house yelling about the cop’s moma,
You forgot to mention Gates had a bone through his nose and shouted “ooga booga!”
Dulcie
@media browski: It’s the circle of life! Hakuna Matata.
The Grand Panjandrum
@ironranger:
He and Liddy are sitting by the pool at the Watergate throwing a few scotches and planning a break-in at the Hawaii Dept of Vital Statistics.
David Hunt
@Ash:
They’re in Congress. They have great healthcare. It’s a formal benefit of the position. People who would otherwise be uninsurable, like John McCain and his five melanomas, don’t have to pay a dime for their healthcare because the taxpayers are covering it. But to add insult to injury…
For the most part, yes they are. There are some Congressmen who aren’t wealthy enough to do whatever they want. Some even sleep in their offices because they can’t afford to maintain a separate residence in Washington. However, for the most part, they’re rich guys who would never want for medical care even is you and I weren’t paying for every dime of it. And a depressing number of them also grew up with money and have never known want. And these are the people deciding what options you have when negotiating the healthcare system.
Max
@Leelee for Obama: I agree. I live in Oakland and once, while I was at the grocery store, my house alarm went off. By the time I arrived back home, my alarm company had called the police.
The police arrived shortly after I did and they:
1) took my word for it that I lived there. Didn’t ask for id.
2) drew their guns and went in to “clear” the house to make sure it was safe for me, asking me to wait on the porch while they did it.
3) once they determined there was nothing wrong and no one was in the house and nothing was missing, told me to have a nice day and left.
That should have been how it went down in Cambridge.
Zifnab
@Trinity:
This.
Any journalist worth half his salt would have half a dozen interviews with liberal and non-partisan policy makers spelling out exactly what the health care systems being proposed by the administration are.
Instead we get “the chart”, a bunch of hand waving, and an opposition party screaming “It’s too hard!” as their primary argument.
I have only the vaguest understanding of the various bills floating through Congress, and then I get that information almost entirely from private blogs because cable news and corporate journalism are entirely dominated by the conversation of budget and political ideology. If I want real information, I need to go to the blogs, because apparently the only people interested in reporting on the biggest legislative issue of 2009 (perhaps of the decade, perhaps of the century) are the policy wonks on the internet.
gizmo
Check this one out. I subscribe to e-mail updates from the nitwits at RedState just for the sake of keeping an eye on them, and they are usually hilarious and entertaining for their buffoonery. But this one goes over the top. They are now accusing Democrats of pushing seniors toward euthanasia.
———————————–
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: A RedState source sat behind a top aide to Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) and heard the aide admit that “the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.” As you know, Democrats have been open about their desire to push seniors toward euthanasia as a cost savings option. In fact, the Democrats already have in the legislation a provision requiring senior citizens to receive instructions every five years on dying with dignity.
It’s always great to hear liberals speak when they think no one is listening.
Rep. Paul Tonko is a freshman Democrat from Albany, NY. He’s a typical non-descript eastern machine politician whose a robot for Obama and Pelosi and doesn’t have too many original thoughts. Earlier this week one of his top aides was flying to Washington from the district. She was accompanied by what appeared to be a special interest Washington DC lobbyist, who probably came to Albany to attend some type of big money golf, gambling, and cigars fundraiser for Tonko.
Anyway, unbeknownst to them, a hero of the conservative movement sat quietly behind them. It was impossible to avoid listening to their boisterous conversation, and Tonko’s aide didn’t disappoint.
Naturally, most of the banter dealt with the health care bill, and here are a few of the gems:
The two were talking about whether Tonko would even be given time to read the bill. She told the lobbyist, “well he pays me to read it for him”.
“[The] costliest part [of the Obama healthcare bill] will be the physician’s rate cut,” she said. Lots of political capital is going to be spent to get that through.
And, for the crowning glory, the aide feels that “probably the best part of the bill is the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.”
This seems to prove the argument that the Obama bureaucrats will eventually decide who lives and who dies.
Isn’t “hope and change” wonderful?
Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
Forward This Email to a Friend
RedState.com | One Massachusetts Ave., NW | Washington, DC 20001
amk
@Brick Oven Bill: Bitter too much ? And a rasmussen poll to top that ? tch..tch..
kay
@gizmo:
Why do they think hospice care is euthanasia?
Do a lot of idiots think that? I’m amazed.
Dulcie
@ironranger: I’m convinced that there’s a crypt in the Green Room at MSNBC that they keep Pat in, and they bring him out when they need a crazy old white guy to rant. Have you seen him anywhere else besides MSNBC in the last few years?
Shibby
Yet another example of the BS that passes for “news”. My girlfriend loves CNN so I have to watch it sometimes. 24 hours of Jackson and celebrity coverage that is all being used to simply distract the masses from the fact that they are being f***ed in the a**. One of news anchors had the gall to ask the question “Health care reform is going to take sacrifices from all of us, what are you willing to give up?”. Might as well ask a rape victim to pay for their rape kit. Why oh why can’t we get this done?
b-psycho
While the overall point about the media preferring issues that are easy to paint in black & white terms is accurate, it isn’t like Obama said anything particularly new & informative.
The real failing is that the media saw so much value in the Gates statement, when anyone with a lick of sense would’ve saw it the same or worse. Showing up to a suspected break-in only to find out that the person is actually getting into their own home, then arresting them anyway is fucking stupid, regardless of the pigmentation of the parties involved.
Anne Laurie
Charley Gibson, Matt Lauer, Lou Dobbs, Diane Sawyer, even Jon Stewart? Yup, they can pay for as much gold-plated top-of-the-system health care as they want. The Rethuglican yawpers and their Blue Dog enablers? They’re getting the same best-in-the-wurrruld services, courtesy of our generous involuntary contributions.
But if the rest of us peons are to get something approaching universal coverage, it will require some level of sacrifice — however modest — from people like Gibson, Lauer, Dobbs, Sawyer, Blitzer, et al. It is therefore very much in their (short-sighted) interests to do their best to convince Idiot America that not paying 40% of our health-care dollars to Bill Frist’s family is soshe-alism! ! ! And the elected representatives of Idiot America are only too willing to sing along, because (a) no skin off theirs; (b) half of them have been bought & paid for, and the other half are hoping for a prime slot in the next auction; and (c) quite a few of the most intransigent congresscritters are, leave us be honest, Idiot Americans.
SATSQ!
ironranger
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’d laugh but that’s probably not completely farfetched. Liddy must be msnbc’s old fart stand in for Pat until they decide they can’t live without their most reliable resident bigot any longer.
@gizmo:
More republican logic: Dems want to give those senior citizen free loaders govt handouts while simultaneously euthanizing them to save money. Doh.
Aaron
@Zifnab:
Well it seems to me that one important aspect of this is that the media (particularly television media) hates policy discussions . . . absolutely hates them. You will very rarely see substantive policy discussions on tv. A few reasons for this are:
1. tv is a visual medium. Policy discussions do not lend themselves well to pictures and video.
2. Policy discussions are complex. Tough to sum up health care policy in a soundbite, and news stories only have a very small amount of time. Add to this the fact that most journalists seem functionally retarded, and you have a recipe for complete ignorance of policy issues.
3. Policy discussions lead to balance issues. If the news media were to discuss policy issues, they would be expected to actually know something about what is happening, as well as be willing to call out guests who lie about it. This is not good for the bottom line.
The news is all about drama and ratings, not policy and informed citizenry. That is why the race question is getting all the play and the important information from the rest of the press conference is treated with disdain. Covering the race question is just drivel, covering the health care substance would require time and knowledge, two things news outlets do not specialize in
Brick Oven Bill
kay is keeping me honest. But hey, here’s another chart. By my eye, that was 61% on or about July 1st, and 55% today. By my magical powers of extrapolation, that puts Gallup on track for 50% on or about August 14th. What is five months between friends?
We really need Harvard African Studies professor Gates to get on our TV screens and complain about how it is unfair to be him, that as he was returning to his wealthy Cambridge neighborhood, to prepare for another grueling week of hard academics, that he had to scream at the stupid cop who had responded to a breaking and entering call at his home.
This stupid cop has the audacity to be talking about filing a defamation lawsuit. This uppity stupid cop needs to be exposed for who he is, a racist cracker ass. Professor Gates, the prominent scholar, must get on TV and expose him. And a little birdie keeps telling me that he will. Go Professor Gates go.
Lupin
Here in Europe, we get (via satellite) CNN and Fox and I have to say that the news from the US would be hilarious, in a weird performance art sense, if it weren’t so sad.
At this point, I don’t think there’s anything to the right of the Democratic Party that’s even remotely sane. It’s like a Monty Python sketch.
mcd410x
It truly is amazing how they introduce the crazy and turn it a mainstream viewpoint. Evolution, climate change … now health care and birthers … if they all scream loudly enough, long enough, all it really takes is one person in the media picking it up and the rest of the media play monkey-see, monkey-do like the chattering class they are. Investigate the krazy klaims — that’s for someone else. We’re just reporters.
It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see birth certificate Congressional hearings.
Lord knows, they don’t govern worth a shit, but this they do very well.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dulcie:
.. and they feed him the brains of their on-air personalities. Suddenly it all makes sense.
Leelee for Obama
@ Kay
There a many who believe that Hospice care is legalized euthanasia. I had a friend who works in assisted living who said it constantly. Because hospice is not about prolonging the inevitable, they think you are consigning your loved one to death. Everybody gets a death sentence , it’s called a Birth Certificate. I am presently my Mom’s sole caregiver, She will be 90 in September. She probably needs hospice, but I am afraid to call for fear they will make her go to a facility instead of hospice at home. Why people cannot accept that people shouldn’t live forever( because they aren’t living, they’re existing) is beyond me. I have been through the hospital, doctor, health care jungle for 6 years now, and, honestly, I’d rather go Thelma and Louise than allow this to happen to me and my kids.
ironranger
@Dulcie:
He shows up occasionally on CNN & Fox too.
Hope he is taking a long vacation.
Maude
OT: At the non profit computer center I tech at, they are having a blogger’s class on Monday evening. The guy who was going to teach it can’t be there. The guy who will be, asked for help with how to blog.
Can anyone give pointers on this? This is a novice class. I can pass it along.
Trinity
@The Grand Panjandrum:
kay
@Brick Oven Bill:
The only honest response to my post is: “I lost the bet. Congratulations Kay”.
You really don’t need all those extra words.
shoutingattherain
@ronin122:
After 8 years of non-stop anger I now try to limit myself to one outrage per day. Anger will make you old, real fast.
When I feel my blood pressure going up I just turn off my computer and walk away. Most days thats usually before noon.
Zifnab
@Brick Oven Bill: I find it amusing you quote the Rasmussen poll.
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama.php
That’s perhaps Obama’s worst performing poll, dipping some three or four points below the national average.
You wouldn’t be quoting polls in a cherry picked fashion, now would you?
Also might be worth noting that a large amount of the dissatisfaction is coming from:
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-dems.php
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-inds.php
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-reps.php
THE REPUBLICANS! It’s almost as though month after month of Hannity-esque race baiting and Beck-ish pants wetting has finally cracked the support off the Obama Republicans. But Independents and Democrats are largely unphased.
Clearly, the problem with this administration is that it has failed to cater significantly enough to the minority ideology in the country. If Obama would just stop his crusade for universal health care, end his support for unionization, charge back into the Grave War on Islamic Extremist, and quit being that awful dusky color, I’m sure he could recapture the FOX News demographic that he has hinged his political fortunes on.
Fulcanelli
@gizmo: After the Tom DeLay era in the House any Republican who even mentions a Democratic “Machine” in public should be scourged a la ‘The Passion of the Christ’ and have live spiders sewn into his skin. Unless of course you’re referring to a Rube Goldberg style contraption run by the Keystone Cops, and then it makes sense.
joe from Lowell
Brick Oven Bill is right.
That Reverend Wright stuff is going to finish Obama.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Maude:
1. Drink heavily
2. Write
3. Sober up
4. Issue some retractions or qualifiers
The faster you perform these steps, the bigger your readership will become.
media browski
@Brick Oven Bill: “Old Man with Cane Chases Gun-Wielding Cop Out of House by Yelling”
Racists never realize how ridiculous they actually sound.
bob h
The Republicans rely on a kind of cognitive dissonance. It is hard to get your journalist head around the possibility that one of only two great political parties in the oldest democracy in the world, one that gave us Lincoln and Eisenhower, is batshit insane and intellectually bankrupt.
Just as it was hard for journalists to get their minds around the possibility that a President of the United States could be a dishonest scoundrel.
Just Some Fuckhead
@joe from Lowell:
No time, Lucy is holding the football for me and this time I’m going to kick it 50 yards or more.
Legalize
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul
Democrat spine sighting. Sorry, I don’t know how to imbed links (or anything else) without the buttons.
GregB
GOP-er Primer 101.
Presidential polling during a Republican presidency is conducted by leftist media elites and none of the statistics are to be trusted and besides it is a badge of honor to have low poll ratings because the American public have been unduly influenced by the liberal media.
Presidential polling during a Democratic presidency is indicative of the will of the people when poll ratings are sinking.
High poll ratings are to be ignored due to the factors cited in ‘polling during a Republican presidency’ paragraph.
-G
Brick Oven Bill
I lost that bet (the bet that nobody took me up on). Congratulations kay.
The new bet is over/under August 15th, Gallup, 50%. I take the under. This is because I have an in with the Fraternal Order of Police, and I have suspicions about the content of the prominent scholar Professor Gates’ character.
Zifnab
@Brick Oven Bill: I do find it amusing you quote the Rasmussen poll.
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama.php
That’s perhaps Obama’s worst performing poll, dipping some three or four points below the national average.
You wouldn’t be quoting polls in a cherry picked fashion, now would you?
Also might be worth noting that a large amount of the dissatisfaction is coming from:
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-dems.php
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-inds.php
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-reps.php
THE REPUBLICANS! It’s almost as though month after month of Hannity-esque race baiting and Beck-ish pants wetting has finally cracked the support off the Obama Republicans. But Independents and Democrats are largely unphased.
Clearly, the problem with this administration is that it has failed to cater significantly enough to the minority ideology in the country. If Obama would just stop his crusade for universal health care, end his support for unionization, charge back into the Grave War on Islamic Extremist, and quit being that awful dusky color, I’m sure he could recapture the FOX News demographic that he has hinged his political fortunes on.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
The hospice volunteers here are really nice people. I’m sure they’ll be interested to know red state thinks they’re knocking off old people.
I’m sorry your mother isn’t well. There are regular letters to the editor here thanking hospice for caring for a relative. People seem to love that approach. Maybe they don’t know it’s a secret plot?
Napoleon
@Legalize:
Good for Waxman. Someone has to tell the Blue Dogs to fuck off.
kay
@Brick Oven Bill:
“I have suspicions about his character”. I don’t have any “suspicions” about yours. You’ll weasel out of a bet unless someone calls you on it. You just did.
Fulcanelli
OT, but predictable…
Yet another Repiggie can’t keep his pork in his pants.
GregB
By the way, how is it in the warped rightwing minds that the so called nanny state left, who they claim is dedicated to offering a free ride to everyone and their brothers, especially the elderly, with things like Medicare and Social Security have suddenly become heartless advocates of the Soylent Greenization of senior citizens?
Goes hand in hand with the belief that the left is full of effete, weak, vegitarian, gay surrendercrats who are at this moment plotting the ruthless destruction and elimination of the great white Christian nation.
-G
gnomedad
@Aaron:
True dat. Read just about anything by Neil Postman. Actually, I’m guessing you have.
kay
@GregB:
Democrats should remind seniors that conservatives wanted to take their pension insurance and invest it in Wall Street.
To keep the Bush Bubble going. And stay in power.
Aaron
@gnomedad:
Indeed :-) I am actually a media studies major – and I have done a lot of research on tv news. Neil Postman’s books were always great to read.
Cyrus
@Maude:
If the teacher or even the substitute teacher needs help on using blogging software, they probably also need help on using a Web browser and a mouse, so I’d refer them to one of those classes first. The technical side of blogging is easy. Pick a layout you like – there are templates – go to the “new post” button, type what you want to say, and click the “publish” button. Most blogger services give you buttons to click to insert pictures and, if you don’t know HTML, hyperlinks and formatting.
If they’re talking about a personal blog, then fill them in on anonymity/pseudonymity stuff, make sure they know what can be found on a search engine (there’s a way to make Google not index your blog, right? Do they want to do that? Is it worth it, considering that there are a lot of search engines out there?). If someone wants to start some kind of political or issue-focused blog, JSF has the right idea. Write a whole lot. On the other hand, if it’s just because someone at the would-be blogger’s company decided that they should have a blog and they don’t particularly care about readership or anything, just post links to and summaries of press releases and news stories. None of the blogs here get read, but who cares, that’s not the point.
Although you might not want to mention that option. Telling an erstwhile blogger that many are are just semi-automated lists of links to press releases is like telling would-be journalists that they’ll never get off the obit page.
Legalize
Rahm must have given the green light to Waxman. This thing can get done if Barack does the public selling and Rahm is in charge of putting heads in vices.
geg6
Leelee for Obama: Hospice was the saving grace of my mother’s end of life. Her hospice workers became a part of our family for over a year and a half. They were selfless and truly caring people and we still keep in touch with two of them 8 years later. They were more emotionally upset when my mother finally had to go into a home and died ten days later. We’d been through 15 years of battling her cancers and knew she was ready to go. I can’t think of people who embody respect for life more than hospice workers. No one I’ve ever met for sure.
Evinfuilt
So let me get this straight.
I’m supposed to be afraid that the elderly on Medicare will be forced into a govt run healthcare system which will then euthanize them…
Ooookay, and Medicare is what exactly? How stupid do you have to be, to be a republican these days? They literally just make crap up and say boo afterwards.
*edit: should also add my thumbs up to Hospice care. For my partners uncle who passed rather young from Cancer, and her Grandmother, they helped a lot. They also found the sepsis on her grandma that led to her passing (nursing home failure.)
Zifnab
@Aaron:
The GOP and it’s trusty chart would disagree with you. If you can’t conduct a policy discussion with charts and graphs and visual data… you’re just not professional and you should get out of the media business. I don’t know what else to say. CNN pumps out a new flashy graphic every other week. They can visualize health care. I’m confident.
Again, tell it to the GOP. They pump out sound bites and blurbs for complex issues all the time. You think trying to convince 300 million people that the wrong Middle Eastern country needs to be invaded because of weapons it doesn’t actually have is easy? You think the Bush Tax Plans of ’01 and ’03 were simple and easy to digest? Did you take a look at the plan to privatize Social Security, or the Medicare Plan D Act? They were all bureaucratic monsters. But the GOP was able to handle each in turn with varying degrees of success.
If the opposition party can do it, we can do it. And the fact that we have hard numbers, real stories, and legitimate economics at our backs should make our job easier.
Bullshit. There will always be controversy and disagreement. This isn’t just a matter of getting a fiery story on the air to capture eyeballs.
The debate over health care is already heated, the public interest is as high as it’s ever been over a domestic policy, and there is no need to add fuel to the fire.
If the media wanted to discuss policy issues, they could spice it up to engage viewers without devolving into he-said she-said. Every news show has “Medical Mystery” segments and “Doctor Knows Best” series that capture plenty of viewers. This isn’t an issue of “can’t” but of “won’t”. The journalists reporting from these sources just don’t want to take the policy road. They are the intellectual lazy ones, not the American viewer. Their own bordem translates into the medium and kills policy conversation.
I’ve seen more than a few Frontline pieces that capture my attention. Sicko did an excellent job of dramatizing the health care crisis. The idea that network media is incapable of airing news that both entertains and informs is simply false.
This is deliberate laziness on the part of the networks themselves. They are attacking the news from a “safe” and trivial angle that avoids offending sponsors. They are hiring on prom queens and cabana boys to play at news anchor. This is a management decision made not by necessity but by choice.
horatius
@Brick Oven Bill:
Shorter BOB
He’s a nigger. Therefore, he is a criminal.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet […]
horatius
Brick Oven Bob outed
Punchy
There’s a lot of funny here.
Leelee for Obama
Thanks for all the good testimony on Hospice. When I can get some info on a Dr. that will say she is eligible, I will feel better even if they think a facility if the way to go. She will really be upset if they do, but it may come to that. I keep hoping she’s completely out of it by then. I think Hospice is one of the best programs available myself, hope no one thought otherwise. I see no reason to drag out the end if the end is on it’s way. That’s for others, not the person who’s finishing up their life..
Tsulagi
To counter, Dems could create a flow chart based on the depth of the numberless 4-page R-health care proposal. Just a single box in the middle of the chart containing the words “TAX CUTS!” on a background of erupting starbursts. Side benefit is the same chart could be used for their numberless 19-page federal budget.
Brick Oven Bill
I said nothing of the sort horatius. Prominent Harvard Scholar Professor Gates was the one calling names, he even yelled things about the policeman’s mother. Since this incident, we have heard from Professor Gates, and we have heard from Officer Crowley.
Officer Crowley seems to be quite a bit more articulate than the Professor. Officer Crowley has a strong record. He also seems to be principled. President Obama may have called the wrong cop stupid.
President Obama will likely dump Professor Gates sometime next week, as the internal polling rolls in. This will not stop Professor Gates from going on TV and giving speeches. This is his chance to outdo Cornell West and make some cash for another vacation. Controversy in the grievance industry = cash. The American people will be interested in watching this = ratings = coverage.
Equals the under. Unless the Hollywood-Wall Street types pay the hush money. This is the wild card.
Aaron
@Zifnab:
I agree with you that many national journalists are intellectually lazy. My points were not meant to excuse the lack of policy discussion on the nightly newscasts, as i think the fundamental purpose of news is to create an active and informed citizenry, not to make money for corporate shareholders. If that makes me a dirty commie, so be it.
Surely, journalists and news outlets could delve into policy issues, but they have no desire or motivation to do so. The GOP is great at getting their “policies” on television (if you count drill baby, drill as a policy, for example) because they are much better at coming up with catchphrases and slogans.
The issue with charts and what not is just a general statistical issue. Democrats have often been overly forthcoming with statistics and quantitative data. Republicans just go with something truthy (Westen and Lakoff have written extensively about this).
News outlets, particularly considering the consolidation of media entities, have many incentives to not “rock the boat” and cover superficial crap as opposed to policy issues. This is why we have a good portion of the population that still think Iraq was behind 9-11 and that scientists are really torn on this climate change issue.
lotus
Peggy Noonan’s been running her brain against healthcare reform so hard, she’s just plumb tuckered. Best she can come up with is that, if we had it, kindly docs would lose the occasional opportunity to cut a poor patient a secret break. Waaaaaah.
I’m not making this up.
KG
you know, the best part about the health care chart that the GOP runs? There is pretty much a straight line between patient and doctor, the big thick white line along the bottom.
They can’t even lie well anymore. Fucktards.
John S.
Through all of BOB’s bullshit slips a little ray of truth.
This is EXACTLY what all the Birfer nonsense is about, what FOX News is about and what the wingnut/Republican nexus is all about. They whine the loudest, the longest and the most often. Because they truly believe that the white conservative male is the Jew of Liberal Fascism. And as everyone knows, the Jews get paid!
Cash Rules Everything Around Me, motherfuckers.
lotus
What do y’all think of Waxman’s latest idea to confound the Blue Dogs — to skip his committee and take it directly to the floor?
ronin122
@shoutingattherain:
No worries, I have my own mental stuff to deal with and I learned that just calming down and not letting things get to me helps. Who knew psychiatric advice would help with dealing with our sh!t media. Though I suppose I can learn to walk away more, since I think it also gets my bp up. But noon? Usually I’m done by 10am (central time).
bvac
OT: This just cracks me up for some reason – http://imgur.com/o7Uu9.png
ironranger
@lotus:
Noonan is such an airhead. She may be a New Yorker but I always picture her as an 18th century southern belle draped on a sofa fanning herself on hot days and dabbing her neck & brow with scented water.
Redshirt
I don’t know what political scene y’all have been watching the last 15 years or so, but as soon as Obama dropped the word “stupid” in relation to Gatesgate, I knew that was it, and would be the talking point on Drudge et all for days. It’s tailor made for them.
Regarding the noise machine, it all makes sense if you consider the republican agenda since Reagan is a post-modern movement designed to remove the idea of “fact” or “truth” from the public sphere. As Rove famously put it, “They make their own truths”, and this is what you see daily: headline comes from Drudge (who gets it from where?), that enters the clique of MSM reporters who run with it, which then causes other news organizations to pick it up. If it has any legs, it’s off.
Fox news is the most perfect example of this post-modern effort, of course. The entire enterprise is devoted to the principle of “subjective truth”, in which you can’t trust the MSM (which Fox is not part of, from their viewer’s perspective – forgetting the fact, of course, that Rupert Murdoch is the biggest media mogul in the world), but you can trust Fox, as they see through the lies.
It sets up the dynamic we see quite clearly today: Truth depends on where you get it — thus, “facts” from the NY Times can be discarded out of hand.
Woody
It is ‘easy’ because our MSM is a complete fucking joke.
In the Corporate State, corporate media are State media…
jwb
Why didn’t the Democrats have a chart immediately in response of health care today—referrals, authorizations, pre-approvals, in-network, out-of-network, etc., etc.? The chart for the current system has to be at least as complicated as the one the GOP produced. That one struck me as a no-brainer, and really it shocked me that the Dems didn’t have something out within 24 hours.
some guy
Heh. Well, the Cambridge PD may not be racist, but then they certainly are a bunch of whiny pussies. “Waaah! The old man said mean things about my mommy! Arrest him!”
Woody
Cops will do to the disfavored whatever their communities will permit them to do.
“Reporters” can only report what their editors will put in the paper/broadcast.
Cops learn what their limits are, along with the locations of the donut shops that give freebies.
Reporters learn soon enough what stories will get pazst the editors and which won’t and act accordingly…
The function of the press as the “fourth estate,” that part given Constitutional protection, is dead as the passenger pigeon. The press is no always and only an instrument of the corporate state propaganda machine…
Brick Oven Bill
Glenn Beck has had the #1 New York Times best-seller, for a while now. This makes me happy. I am glad some guy off the street made it big instead of one of these rich-kid Yahoos from the Washington Post or the New York Times. Now imagine this:
Glenn gets a full-hour where Prominent Scholar Gates and Officer Crowley sit down to have an honest discussion about the house incident and their feelings. This way Glenn Beck would have the #1 rated TV show, in addition to the #1 New York Times best-seller.
This would be a good show. It would also be a mechanism to potentially diffuse the friction that seems to be developing between certain elected officials and certain security services.
Or it might end up like a Jerry Springer show. I bet even SGEW would watch this Glenn Beck show, as she seems so willing to have an open and honest discussion about race.
Maus
“Any journalist worth half his salt would have half a dozen interviews with liberal and non-partisan policy makers spelling out exactly what the health care systems being proposed by the administration are.” Hey, they interview Republicans, and they interview Industry Lobbyists. The truth must lie somewhere in the middle!
Morbo
LOL at the new banner ad (and it’s flash too so I actually had to follow the link, boo). “Democrats are scared, click here to find out why.” Because the Senate’s going to recess without passing health care reform? Because Afghanistan and Iraq are Obama’s problem now? Because unemployment continues to get worse and worse?
Nope, because they know the influence of GOPAC. It is to laugh.
Trinity
@lotus: I say “Do it Harry!”
F the Blue Dogs.
jwb
@redshirt
You have to figure that Obama knew this as well. It doesn’t strike me as something he would miscalculate. I have to think he wanted to have this discussion.
Morbo
@Brick Oven Bill: Amazing what bulk buying does for sales, no?
Woody
Aaron.
Postman’s a windsock. He’s never had an original thought (and I’ve been aware/reading him since his days as an educational critic, in the ’70s.)
if you’re into media scholarship, there are a couple of fundamental texts, foremost being Boorstin’s “The Image,” followed by Ellu’l’s “Propagandas,” and Stewart Ewen’s “Captains of Consciousness.”
Bertie Wooster
@kay
Unfortunately, there is some tendency among the more religious wingnuts to see hospice as euthanasia. Both of my grandmothers were seen out by hospice workers – whom I hold in the highest regard – but the most recent one had one daughter who was in the thrall of Schiavo types, and resisted like hell. Quality of life, life vs. existence arguments just don’t work.
It’s as if they have finally taken Bill Hicks’ advice to pro-lifers: “If you’re so pro-life, do me a favor. Don’t block clinics, lock arms and block cemeteries. ‘She can’t come in!'”
Brachiator
@Brick Oven Bill:
How do you know whether or not Gates is wealthy?
Gates is not an African Studies professor.
MOMA is a museum.
Your momma.
Redshirt
@jwb
I hope you’re right. I love me some Obama, but he’s not perfect. If this is intentional, however, I wonder what the goal is? Distract the media from the health care debate? Further racial healing through discussions (on that, feel free to read the comments on Boston.com from the supposed Ultra-Blue State of Mass — a thronging pack of nitwit rascists)? If this was intentional, to what end?
asiangrrlMN
I have to confess, I have bailed on the healthcare debate. Why? Because it’s such a fucking joke. It’s disheartening to read about all the machinations the GOP (and the Blue Dawgs) are going through in order to derail substantive reform. It seems like such a no-brainer to me, I can’t bear to watch it go down the drain.
As for the Gates controversy, I was with the cop up to the showing the ID part. Once Gates showed his ID, though, that should have been the end of that. I want one traditional media type to say, “Look, this is much too complicated an issue to talk about in sound bites. Besides, we have a more pressing issue at hand–healthcare reform.” Won’t happen. It’s the reason I don’t watch any traditional media, and I read very little of it. The shallowness and vacuity of the ‘reporting’ is mind-numbing.
kay
@Bertie Wooster:
I’m amazed by that, because it’s such an acceptable charity here, and I live in a very conservative area.
It’s one of the favored charities of our local “business leaders”, and their wives. You’ll see the obligatory lineup in the local paper when they’re handing out checks.
It’s a very Republican crowd. I think they’d be honestly surprised to find out that they’re at all controversial.
I think this view is well out of the mainstream, if local conservatives are any indication. There’s a lot I don’t know about modern national Republicanism, I guess. They’re way the hell out there, if they’re to the Right of people here.
freelancer
OT
Via Media Matters:
Limbaugh: “Before Obama’s through folks, we’re all going to have a mugshot.”
You don’t say…
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&ei=IP5pSqPiJJGiMef8jZcL&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=rush+limbaugh+mug+shot&spell=1
Bertie Wooster
@kay
In my experience this was more of a religious issue than a partisan one. Even so, I was surprised to see the rift.
In my heavily Republican city hospice is supported by all the major business leaders as well. I don’t think this is a mainstream Republican issue, just a religious fringe thing.
But it will be interesting to see if this meme gets stirred up further in the health care debate. There was a time when I would have been shocked to see Congress whipped into legslative action over one family’s end-of-life decision.
I’ll hope not. Bill was trying to be ironic, not prophetic.
kay
Cambridge has called the arrest “regrettable and unfortunate,” and said that dropping the charges was “in the interests of justice.” Crowley himself now says that he “regrets that I put the police department and the city in the position where they have to defend something like this.”
Crowley changes his story a lot. That’s what he said last week. I guess he no longer regrets his actions.
kay
“I put the police department and the city in the position”
That was last week. Now it’s someone else’s fault. Crowley’s lawyer is going to tell him to stop giving interviews.
Davis X. Machina
@Redshsirt
it all makes sense if you consider the republican agenda since Reagan is a post-modern movement designed to remove the idea of “fact” or “truth” from the public sphere.
It’s a bit older than post-modern. Remember that Pravda, “Truth”, was the Bolsheviks’ St. Petersburg newspaper from 1912. The utility to the Party of a statement, and not the degree to which it comports with some external reality, is the measure of that statement’s truth. That’s revolutionary truth, that embraces, and transcends, the outmoded bourgeois antithesis between ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’.
From about 1980 on, we’ve been effectively ruled by Leninists — and they’re not the Democrats — governing on the principle that organs of the state exist to serve the interests of the Party, because the Party, and not the state, is the vanguard of the Revolution.
gnomedad
OT, I am about ready to resign from the “give Obama time” club:
Drug Czar states “No Medical Use For Marijuana”
Mother. Puss. Bucket.
joe from Lowell
The new bet is over/under August 15th, Gallup, 50%. I take the under. This is because I have an in with the Fraternal Order of Police, and I have suspicions about the content of the prominent scholar Professor Gates’ character.
I’ll take that action in a heartbeat. I just saw Obama’s statement. God, I hope the GOP spends the next month trying to paint him a black militant.
He did miss one opportunity, though. When describing the phone conversation with Officer Crowley, after the part where Crowley suggest he, Gates, and Obama have a beer at the White House, Crowley asked “How can I get the press off my lawn?”
The President failed to respond, “Trying going up to them and talking about health care.”
jwb
@redshirt
I admit that I’m not sure what his goal is, though media distraction seems likely. It just struck me as I watched his answer that he was ready for the question and knew exactly what he wanted to say. Given that, I have to think that it was a conscious decision to make this the main topic of discussion. (He, of all people, had to know this would be catnip to the media, and the “stupidly” seemed deliberate in its provocation—he was choosing to escalate; note also that he hasn’t walked it back at all, though he’s had several opportunities to do so.) In any case, one thing it has done is keep the Senate’s postponing of the health care vote from becoming a dominant media thread. Politically, not having a long screaming contest right now on the failures of the Senate probably helps the chances for passing something after the recess.
General Winfield Stuck
Bugs Bunny Toon Chart
DonkeyKong
Gates-Gate………Shit, at least the Romans got bread with their circus.
mcd
What dday and digby said.
We get the national discourse we deserve.
Tony J
I think I recall saying yesterday that I was expecting the GOP to start calling Obama “The Candyman”. Because, y’know, they have a list of racially charged nicknames they want to use, and painting Obama as a hook-handed supernatural monster with a history of despoiling white women goes over – really – well with the Bunker Base.
But I rather stupidly gave them six months to get around to it. What a fool am I! They’re going for it already.
“I call it Candyland. I don’t know what that means.”
How close does the Wingularity have to be for a theory to be proven by observation within a 24 hour period?
Redshirt
Well, with Obama’s latest statment on Gatesgate, it looks like he’s “triangulating”. Seems like he and Sgt. Crowley have hit it off nicely. So, I’ll assume soon enough Crowley will be with Obama, and yet still the Reichtard Talking Heads will be going on and on about how Obama hates copes, hates white people, yadda yadda.
iluvsummr
@Brachiator:
Oh snap!
For the lawyers out there, one detail of Gatesgate has been puzzling me. The police report describes Officer Crowley being on the porch and Gates indoors during their initial encounter. The officer can see Gates through the glass pane of the door. When Gates shows him his Harvard ID, Officer Crowley describes himself as being inside Gates’ home. Would the normal procedure be for the occupant of a home to get his ID and show it to the officer at the door or does the officer have the right to walk into the home since the occupant might be a suspect? Does an officer who shows up at your door have the legal right to enter your home uninvited if he/she is not charging you with an offense?
gbear
@joe from Lowell:
That would have been perfect.
Today’s little ray of sunshine: Al Franken gets his first bill passed.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/40260/franken-veteran-dog-bill-defense#more-40260
jwb
@Redshirt
Agreed. I hadn’t seen Obama’s latest statement when I posted above. And Obama’s original statement hadn’t accused Crowley of anything more than “acting stupidly” (he specifically hadn’t accused Crowley of racism) so it would be relatively easy, one presumes, for Obama to tell Crowley that Obama had similarly “acted stupidly” himself in making that comment and the two could find a bond over it.
Xenos
@Brachiator:
Good point. Like Edward Said, he is a literary critic / English Prof. Thus the Mellon Fellowship (ha!). He is, however, head of an African Studies department.
The most unapologetic marxists I have ever known have been English profs. They even have a softball team in town, complete with hammer-and-sickle emblems on their hats. But this guys have so much irony pumping through their veins that I have no idea if they really are marxists after all.
Splitting Image
@horatius:
I’ve always assumed BOB is MyIQis2xu. They both have (or had) a habit of playing up Obama & co.’s reverse racism and being overly concerned about the sexism that afflicts people like Hillary Clinton and poor Sarah Palin.
I could be miles off-base of course, but I basically tune out BOB for the same reasons I ended up tuning out MyIQ.
Davis X. Machina
Does an officer who shows up at your door have the legal right to enter your home uninvited if he/she is not charging you with an offense?
Under narrow circumstances, yes.
Link is to MA ‘exigent circumstances’ exceptions in search-and-seizure….
Napoleon
@Redshirt:
He didn’t have a goal, he just stupidly opened his mouth on a subject other then healthcare and it cost him 2 days in the healthcare debate. His big town hall meeting in cleveland did not get a single second of coverage on the 3 network newscast last night.
Comrade Darkness
@Brick Oven Bill: This will be followed by 10,000 former
men of harvardcambridge college students individually reciting their Cambridge police are thorough jackasses stories.It’s unfortunate race got thrown into the mix, it’s really a distraction from what is a loooooong-running problem.
kay
@Napoleon:
I’m with you. He screwed up. He speaks publicly constantly. He’s going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable.
Comrade Dread
Not sure why this would surprise you. As I’ve told a lot of folks on the Right, Obama isn’t a radical change agent that everyone pegged him as. He’s a very orthodox conventional liberal politician who will not depart that often from the Establishment.
He will no more end the war on drugs than he will turn the nation into a socialist proto-commie tyranny.
Brick Oven Bill
“I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement.” Translation: what is wrong with you?
His statement was not planned. The President’s self proclaimed ‘I have a gift Harry’ is based on his experience in college where he would go to the black dorm (commonly self-segregated) and say one thing, and then go to the regular dorm, and say something else. He has honed the skill of telling isolated groups of people what they want to hear in an ambiguous manner.
At the press conference he slipped and his arrogance and biases came out. The private call to Crowley and the offer of the beer is an attempt to get back to dormitory communications. This is a teachable moment for Obama to stay on the teleprompter, reading the words written for him by Rahm.
Gus
BOB is right about one thing, “the majority of Americans will identify” with Gates. Anyone who’s ever dealt with an asshole cop will definitely understand. My experience with cops hasn’t even been that extensive or bad, but I would say I’ve had about 50% assholes in my limited dealings. That’s being charitable.
lotus
The thing in Obama that I may prize above all else is his modeling of how an adult behaves — to include, when appropriate, dignified admission of error and assumption of responsibility. He’s a wizard at the care-and-feeding of grownup-ism, and luckily, his own kids aren’t the only ones able to benefit from that.
gbear
Why? It was never a teachable moment for Bush. Why does Obama have to be the penitant one? You sound like Linsey Graham scolding Sotomayor.
Obama didn’t just ‘stupidly’ bring this topic up. He was asked a question about it by a reporter and he spoke his mind. The fact that the press has ignored the previous 55 minutes of discussion about why the current healthcare system is tearing this country apart in order to concentrate on this issue is insanity.
Martin
Actually, I took it broader than that – that the police (plural) acted stupidly.
Crowley was the guy on the scene and things always look different to the first responder, and I’ll give the police extra latitude to make a harmless mistake there (provided it gets addressed). But what about the guys that showed up after Gates had produced ID that Crowley had called in? Gates wasn’t yelling at them, they didn’t even presume at any point that Gates was guilty and there was no emotions/danger/etc. to cloud their judgement. Why did they go along with this? Why did the chief go so far as to process Gates? It seems that once the emotions of the moment had passed, there were plenty of opportunities to go to Crowley, tell him he’s overreacting and draw this down – and they let too many of them go.
The stupid actions weren’t at the beginning from my POV, but from the point Crowley decided to entice Gates outside in order to cuff him onward – and there were plenty of participants beside Crowley at that point. I don’t think that Gates is an exceptional case, just a high enough profile one that it’s worth some energy to question whether our processes are working fairly. I also agree with one of Sully’s stand-ins that there are far more egregious cases of police getting it wrong than this one that should be addressed first.
kay
@gbear:
I would just say that it was stupid because Obama knows the effect. The press love the race issue. It’s their absolute favorite thing, because you can just weigh in with an opinion, or personal anecdote, and it’s easy in that way.
Obama knows that. So, in that sense I think it was unwise to give them an opening to discuss their favorite thing.
They bent over backward to keep the focus of his campaign as race. He had to actively work to keep them off it, and talk about issues. He knows this game. You don’t hand the four year olds a hammer. They won’t put it down until he grabs it back.
kay
This is hysterical. I just loathe Lou Dobbs. My hope is he’s completely a joke now, although that should have been true years ago, in a just world.
CNN is all worried because they hired a lunatic.
CNN President Jon Klein wrote an email last night to “Lou Dobbs Tonight” staffers telling them the Obama birth certificate story is “dead,” TVNewser reports.
“It seems this story is dead,” Klein wrote, “because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”
He sent the email just before Lou Dobbs went on the air. He included information CNN’s political researchers had gotten from the Hawaii Health Department — information which “seems to definitively answer the question.”
Woody
My formative experiences with the constabulary occurred circa ’68-’73, opposing the USer invasion of vietnam.
I consider myself to have been consistently ill-handled by them, having been struck, kicked, punched, tear-gassed, and trampled by a police horse.
These experiences have, I freely admit, colored my appreciation for the services the police perform. But it led me to explore, at one time, ethnographically, the socialization in/of cop culture.
My conclusion is that the cops learn on the job what their communities will tolerate in the matters of suppressing despised or marginalized populations within the communities. They learn it along with the locations of the donut shops that give freebies, and they generally stay within those parameters, unspoken though they may be.
So, in a structuralist sort of way, you can read back from cops’ treatment of despised or marginalized groups the “true” or “embedded” tenor of a community.
Gates’ real crime was acting like one of the cop’s bosses, and demanding his name and badge #. I.e., acting like a white person…
When he did it, the cop had to introduce some ambiguation into the matters. Gates in his own words originally consciously stayed in the house, from which he could not have been removed without a warrant. But he allowed the cop to draw him onto the porch, eventually, where the Cambridge SWAT-UPPITY-NEGROES squad awaited him in full regalia.
and the rest, as they say, is HISTORAY!
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
I had just about forgotten this until today’s presser with the police union and the belligerent blue wall that gets thrown up when something like this happens. It’s always proposed by cops, that other cops were completely innocent and did NOTHING wrong. A kind of us against the world mentality that the ungrateful public should never question what we do, that we might have done some things wrong.
And there is no way the cop here used flawless judgment as you state. It is a wingnut stance devoid of self analysis and it pisses me off.
gbear
@kay:
But the question was asked, which instantly put him into a damned it I do, damned if I don’t situation.
Given the way the press operates, the question itself was going to be enough to derail the health care presentation. Was Obama supposed to say “Whoa, Babe. Ain’t gonna go there! No way. Heheh.”? Obama did what he always does: He answers the stupid question.
I think the press would have found something to go bonkers over even if he hadn’t used the word ‘stupid’. Like you said, they’re leaning over backwards to keep the focus on race.
chopper
@Aaron:
tv is a visual medium
TV is a medium because it is neither rare nor well-done.
jenniebee
@ironranger: I’m still disappointed with Maddow for not being able to snap back when Buchannan ran the “white men wrote the constitution… all the people who died at Gettysburg were white… all the people storming the beach at Normandy were white.”
First off, if it hadn’t been all white guys writing the constitution, the original wouldn’t have come complete with the 3/5 clause. I can’t think of a better argument for diversity in our leadership by any means necessary, including affirmative action, than that it would allow us to avoid future rank embarrassments to our country on par with the 3/5 clause. And the Dred Scott decision. And Plessy v. Ferguson. And the conviction of Alice Paul. And the list of travesties of justice goes on and on…
Second off, if you don’t know about the involvement of black troops in the Civil War, you don’t know enough about the Civil War to be using it as an example on national television.
And that’s before we explain to Pat that making it illegal for a group to serve and then using that group’s lack of service to justify discriminatory practice is the MO of a bigot.
Andy K
@Brick Oven Bill:
Don’t you have a road to grade, or a Navy SEAL team (or 2/3 of a ménage à trois) waiting for you to get things going?
Alternately:
DougJohnTimWhoever is behind the curtain, you can overdo it, you know. Smaller doses, please.MikeJ
Every time somebody goes into a church or a school and shoots leventy jillion people, the wingnuts scream that everything would have been all right had the other people just been armed.
I wonder how well it would have turned out for Prof Gates had he been armed and defended his home when somebody came in. You would wind up with either a) a cop doing his duty, acting on a b&e tip getting killed or b) an innocent homeowner killed when the cop saw him standing there with a gun.
In case (a) Gates would still be in jail trying to get a bail hearing. In case (b), the cop might be on administrative leave for a few days. In either case somebody would have been killed.
Travis
@Leelee for Obama: indeed, it is even worse than that in multiple ways, because the alternative to hospice care is more hospital care. In turn, this leads to more iatrogenic diseases (like MRSA – Multiple-drug Resistant Staph), and more expensive care. Appropriate end-of-life care is a major concern for anyone grappling with the medical system — it’s where the majority of the money is spent, it’s where the hardest moral questions are.
People who have never lived through it with their family members want to prolong life in the abstract, forever. The right-wing has learned from the Schiavo debacle, even if it was only a cunning, feral type of learning. From now on, activists like Erickson will just label the democrats as grandma-murderers, and not deal with the complexities of end-of-life care. It’s messy and policy-based, and not just as with Steele, they don’t do policy.
amk
@Brick Oven Bill: You don’t really do nuance , do you ? But then as a guy who drools over beck is short of intellect to begin with. So, that’s understandable.
Woody
Aaron:On “covering the health care substance would require time and knowledge, two things news outlets do not specialize in.”
You may not be old enough to remember when the great newspapers–there were about 50-100 of them, nation-wide–had bureaus and desks wherein and upon toiled reporters and editors who had actual knowledge of the topics about which they wrote. And who were, often, willing to expose questionable behaviors.
Of course, not every reporter on every paper was “educated,” nor was every paper crusading in every desk. But in the days of beat reporting, one did develop a certain ‘eye’ for the likely story.
We can see, obviously, that such devotion and expertise in wholly incommensurable with corporatism. By the time Reagan unleashed it completely, in the early ’80s, what Bagdikian and others called “the concentration” of the Press by corporatism was well begun.
The much-mourned decline of the local newspaper may be traced since Reagan, to the the corporate ‘concentration” of ownership of “the Press.” You know Liebling’s quip: “The press is free to those who own one.” And a corporate press is not a press likely to be very critical of the interests or practices or motives of the corporations which own it or the state, which is the wholly owned subsidiary of the same corporations.
It has been remarked that,”in the corporate state, the Corporate media are State Media.”
It all worked out so nicely, didn’t it? What with the impending disappearance of institutions capable of supporting in-depth, labor-intensive, investigative reporting and then bringing those findings to pubvlic consciousness, and all.
And the way the “Big Lie” beds so comfortably in the 24-hour news cycle?
Nobody could ever imagined, I’m sure…
The function of “the Press” which is protected by the First Amendment
JM
At the press conference he slipped and his arrogance and biases came out. The private call to Crowley and the offer of the beer is an attempt to get back to dormitory communications.
Except that the beer suggestion came from Crowley, and ‘bias’ was the word Obama used to introduce his opinion, dumbass.
You may now return to your fantasy world.
slippytoad
@BOB
Hilarious. One of the most natural, off-the-cuff speakers in recent political history is getting a lecture from some buttwad with a keyboard and an IP address, about speaking extemporaneously.
kay
@gbear:
I know. But he’s unique. He knows that.
He’s going to be asked about race, because they are obsessed with listening to themselves talk to each other “about” race, and he’s the First Black President.
I mean, for God’s sake, this same press corps just spent two weeks focusing exclusively on a “wise Latina” comment, so they would not not be forced to read a summary of court cases and stay on topic.
He knows this. I’m willing to give him a pass on his screw-up because he’s human.
joe from Lowell
Gee, Professor BOB, do you have any other lessons in political communication for the guy who beat Hillary Clinton and John McCain?
Have you ever noticed that you predict doom for Obama about a different alleged gaffe every couple of days, and it has never, ever worked out that way?
Have you ever noticed that Barack Obama has not once, not a single time, come off worse when the Republicans start up a fight over race?
Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
“B..b…but…Mike Dukakis!” Whatever, grandpa.
kay
@gbear:
There’s one other thing, gbear. I saw it coming, and if I did, he should have.
They spent the three days prior to the press conference discussing Gates, in the context of the First Black President. It was inevitable. Having tired of Michael Jackson, they had already decided on the nest theme. All they had to do was get Obama in a room.
My hope is he was working and not listening to them during the run-up to Gatesgate, which is probably what he should be doing, but they were teeing it up.
He says he doesn’t watch cable news. I believe him.
ironranger
@jenniebee:
I think my mouth was hanging open preventing me from my usual swearing at Buchanan when he ranted about the white men doing it all. Whew. It was astonishing.
I think Rachel was able to get Buchanan to expose that & more of his bigotry. I remember when she, another woman whose name I don’t remember but she was african american & Buchanan were debating something. Buchanan kept talking over the other woman but she wasn’t letting him do it when Buchanan told her to shut up. Rachel reprimanded Buchanan for that on the air.
A few others have challenged Pat on msnbc but he has gotten away with so much crap for a long time.
I am getting more curious about the marked absence of Pat. I wonder whose idea it was to have him lay low.
Maybe his bile has made him ill.
Bob In Pacifica
Tomorrow I’m going to have a post up at my blog, South Of Heaven, which deconstructs Sergeant Crowley’s police report and shows what really happened.
I’ll point out two things here:
In Crowley’s report he never mentions Professor Gates’ driver’s license. In Gates’ statement he says he handed over to Crowley both his license, which he said had his address on it, and his Harvard ID.
Now put yourself in a cop’s place. You are investigating a possible break-in and the man you meet at the door identifies himself with a college ID. Or a Costco card or a library card. Something insufficient, which is what Crowley seems to infer in his report. What do you automatically do? You ask for his driver’s license. In fact, under these circumstances to not ask for his driver’s license would be, well, stupid. But Crowley doesn’t mention it in his report. Why not?
Because if Gates properly identifies himself Crowley has no business there and is tresspassing. And it exposes Crowley as up to no good.
The second thing: Gates keeps asking Crowley for his name and badge number. Crowley plays this sly, saying he said his name, then saying he said he said his name, which could be a lie that he truthfully quoted himself as saying. Then he says that he “began to” give his name and badge number. In copspeak “began to” means, “No, I did not give my name and badge number”. Now in Massachusetts uniformed officers are supposed to have that information displayed on them. They are supposed to give this information to people for precisely these kinds of situations when things like this happen. I would not be surprised that cops in Cambridge carry little business cards that they hand out when requested. It’s clear that Gates was deliberately not giving the information to agitate an already agitated man.
I think Obama has played this well. I suspect Crowley will refuse to show up. He already knows his story won’t hold up to any scrutiny. The question is how and if the above information ever gets out to the general public.
Bob In Pacifica
However, I do want Obama to apologize for Nat Turner and Michael Vick.
Bob In Pacifica
Even if the bogus charge of disturbing the peace were in any way valid, most of the time cops give you a citation and you show up in court and argue the case. Why is it necessary to cuff a sixty year-old man who walks with a cane for getting upset that a cop accuses him of burglarizing his own home? Why? Because Crowley was really busting Gates for “disrespect of cop”. Quite simply. It will be interesting if anyone goes through the proper protocol BS and picks this story apart.
Chris Johnson
Nice!
Obama’s like, I’m going to talk about health care. I’m going to say what we have now is crappy, I’m going to say that what I’m proposing is twice as good and six thousand dollars less expensive, in simple terms that everyone can understand, and you know what?
Everybody is going to accept this as a given without one word of argument- not one news program will run a story saying it’s unreasonable- because they’ll be too busy arguing about whether a cop arresting a homeowner for getting into his own home is ‘stupid’.
Nice.
And the news programs are openly seen to be whining about that ‘stupid’, and telling each other that Obama talked for an hour about health care but ‘what everybody’s talking about’ is the bit at the end.
I guarantee that there are Americans who are talking about health care. Hell, I’ve seen them talking about it on this blog.
This is some judo shit. Lest we forget, the MSM is not our friend, and placing them in a position where they are expected to supply opinions for citizens is bad. Placing the MSM in a position where regular Americans might well say “…and? So what” is not a bad tactical move.
jenniebee
@ironranger:
East of Richmond, there are the remnants of a Civil War fort (a lot of Civil War forts, but this one in particular) called Fort Gilmer. It’s one of a chain of forts that were dug in the early days of the war, but didn’t see much action until Petersburg fell and Grant was mounting the final attack on Richmond.
In September of 1864, there was an assault on all the forts on the line. The job of taking Fort Gilmer was given to several battalions, including the 5th and 9th US Colored Troops. It was a slaughter – commanders sent their troops in in long, thin formations, one at a time, just awful stuff. The 9th got closest, to the moat around the fort, but they took 50% casualties getting there. They didn’t retreat, even though they knew that being captured was almost certainly a death sentence – it was the policy of the CSA to execute any black troops caught carrying arms. After the battle, a confederate officer giving a tour of the fort to a visiting official said of the 9th “they died bravely.”
I bring this up because that officer was a man who was willing to sacrifice his life rather than let anyone tell him he wasn’t allowed to keep black people as slaves. By any definition, that man was a racist. But even he was willing to acknowledge a service to their country by black men that Pat Buchannan would prefer to ignore.
Ecks
@bob h: The US is the oldest democracy in the world?
What exactly were they doing in Athens 2000 years before anyone even got around to imagining that something like the US could even exist?
Perhaps you mean “oldest continually running democracy.” Oh, except that would be Iceland.
Honest to goodness. This is what happens when you have an educational system more dedicated to inculcating its citizens with the national mythology than imparting any real understanding of the world.