For the fourth consecutive day, the top stories at memeorandum and in the media at large are Anthony Weiner’s pecker and Sarah Palin’s magical mystery tour.
I’m not sure if this is the end, but it has to be close.
by John Cole| 80 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, Our Failed Media Experiment, Serenity Now!
Comments are closed.
cleek
i believe it’s called a “slow news day”.
EdTheRed
I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream; that’s my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor… and surviving.
Nemesis
24 hour cable channels have loads of dead time to fill.
Is Paylin wearing Prada hip-waders today? Inquiring minds want to know.
Fred
Which isn’t Wieners pecker. But don’t let facts stop you from trying to do your part in keeping that idea in the media glare……as you pretend you don’t like it being in the media glare.
eric
….and from the heavens there will come a sole rider on a massive black steed and she shall lay waste to the great nation of the earth…and her coming shall be heralded by a great horned monster who shall show himself to all as the harbinder of the end….and all shall tremble, but for the saved and they shall rejoice in knowing that His return is imminent.
M-Pop
Can we just call a moratorium on SP reportage? That would be very nice, as it fills up my intertubes and I cannot see the real news.
Bulworth
Are you an assassin? You’re an errand boy, sent by clerks, to collect the bill.
Comrade Javamanphil
All three network morning shows had a story on the arctic snowgrifter dining with the multi-zillionaire comb-over at the exact same time. I switched to PBS and watched Arthur (my kids are 15 and 12.) We all agreed we learned more from Arthur.
bcinaz
Maddow’s right. Palin is becoming Sarah Putin, an image utterly and completely concocted.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Oh hell, you’ve got Fred all riled up. Why doesn’t someone refer to Freddie or EDK or link to the League and get whatever-nym-matoko-is-using-this-week-to-screw-with-those-who-set-pie-filters so it can be a free for all. Heh.
The end may be near. Or it’s a slow news day.
Scott P.
@Bulworth:
Excellent.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Krgthulu say, “Yes, it is”:
.
jheartney
Dropping cable several years back was one of the best decisions I ever made.
WRT morning network news shows, I think they are built to destroy at least 1 IQ point per minute. It’s in the design specs.
MoeLarryAndJesus
I can see Anthony Weiner’s pecker from my house.
Bulworth
Saigon. Sh$t. I’m still only in Saigon. When I was home it was worse. I’m here a week, waiting for a mission. And for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up like room service.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Dana Bash did a fine job of repeatedly hammering at Weiner about her questions.
It’s a shame that the useless bitch couldn’t find that some intestinal fortitude when talking to Rumsfeld, or Greenspan, or Cheney, or DeLay, or some economic Master of the Universe.
nancydarling
Jon Stewart was very funny about weinergate last night. He says Anthony Weiner’s weiner is just not that big.
MattF
So… I guess the Rapture actually did take place, but nobody qualified for Heaven. We’re all damned for eternity– and the incontrovertible evidence for it is that nothing has changed.
Rosalita
yeah, that bimbo was one of the leading stories on the Today Show this morning…I had to walk away. I can’t believe we are reduced to this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Comrade Javamanphil:
I have kids about the same age. We find the morning news shows VERY educational, if having interesting conversations about the movie Network and Idiocracy and what it must have been like to live in the USSR where everything in the media was propaganda, and what you do to try to keep yourself informed in a situation like that count as being educational.
Redshift
Speaking of which, I made the mistake of tuning into Maddow a few minutes early. Does anyone know who the idiot punditina was that Chris Hayes had on? She was insisting that it was somehow suspicious that Rep. Weiner wouldn’t “address” the issue — I’ve rarely seen someone more transparently begging a public figure to churn a story for the benefit of the media.
The only appropriate response to her would have been “are you stupid or do you think we are?”
arguingwithsignposts
@JGabriel: Chill out, JC. Everything would get better if college graduates would just get married and contribute to society instead of being greedy narcissists, or something (bobo link).
OzoneR
This is, of course, a failure of Democratic messaging.
beltane
@arguingwithsignposts: Everything would be better if our talentless, overpaid pundits were made to wash dishes and scrub toilets instead of polluting our public discourse with their intractable stupidity and viciousness.
Roger Moore
@arguingwithsignposts:
Not getting off the boat.
Bulworth
It could be worse. The top news item could be another article on how even though they worked, the auto bailouts really, really s%cked, from The Atlantic’s Business and Economic Editor.
JGabriel
@arguingwithsignposts: Gah! Damn you, I read that Brooks link and lost ten IQ points!
.
Comrade Javamanphil
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: We usually do too as we discuss why the anchors are wrong and the debt isn’t really that big, or indeed, big enough, how anybody that compares a government’s budget and a household budget can be instantly ignored as an idiot and why is President John McCain always on my TV? The Palin Fail Parade w/ special guest Donald “I’ll put my name on anything for a buck” Trump was beyond our collective ability to bear this morning. Arthur was good as it was the episode where they retell the Odyssey.
4jkb4ia
That Weiner story is the lead on Political Wire. Political Wire! And evidently Jon Stewart led with it, too.
nancydarling
@4jkb4ia: To be fair to Stewart, the MSM had already injected him into the story by claiming that Weiner and Stewart were room mates when they were younger.
Tom
‘Never get out of the boat’… absolutely goddamn right.
Paris
I haven’t been following either of these stories but all I can picture is something like an episode of Benny Hill.
JGabriel
beltane:
Take pay cuts to 75% of the median salary, pay for their own health insurance, and were only eligible for raises based on the merit of their prognosticatory successes — but never higher than inflation. That is to say, subject them to the same wage demands they make of teachers, public employees, union members, postal workers, janitors, laborers, and service workers.
.
Comrade Dread
Yeah. We’re screwed.
But hey, look over there, it’s a politician’s dick!
RossInDetroit
@beltane:
For the sake of public health, in that order.
alwhite
What has surprised me is that the MSM has not run wild with the wiener story. The usual Wurlitzer notes are being played as hard as any have been for this bullshit and yet the usual suspects have not come wagging along behind. Is it too much to hope that are media are learning?
The more the press fauns over Palin the more I think she has figured out a highly effective scheme for bilking even more money out of the morans. If she really is delusional enough to try for the nomination it is just crazy enough to work.
Zandar
Also, let’s not forget the most credible journalist in America right now is Andrew Breitbart and the Dems are about to fold on the debt ceiling hostage situation.
The end? You’re soaking in it.
nancydarling
@Comrade Dread: On my less than better days, I think we are screwed, too. McKibben of 350.org was on DemocracyNow a few days ago. He says we have 10-20 years to get off the fossil fuels. I still believe it can be done. Germany is moving to get rid of nuclear and into sustainable and non-fossil sources of energy. While I believe we could do it, I have serious doubts about the political will to get us there.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/26/bill_mckibben_from_storms_to_droughts
RossInDetroit
OT shout out to this gorgeous Michigan morning. 67 degrees, breezy and clear. This should be unremarkable but after the 6 week run of record rains a mild day is enough to make you tear up with joy.
alwhite
@JGabriel:
You forgot to take away any retirement benefits but, other than that, I think you are on to something.
Chinn Romney
Sister Sarah skipped the Philly Cheese steak altogether, apparently. Then compounded her sins by eating pizza with a knife and fork. How gauche. Will the base forgive her?
gypsy howell
Smells like… victory.
Suffern ACE
@JGabriel: Good lord! Given the choice between Snooki and Brooks as commencement speakers, I would have to go with Snooki. Nothing like a dose of dour pessimism and moral scolding to wow the kids at West Midwest State Tech Ivy.
cat48
Weiner didn’t make the Front Page of the NYPost today, so maybe it’s getting better for him. He was on the front page yesterday. This story will probably continue now though b/c the Press is upset he won’t answer every stupid question they might have. Even Luke Russert keeps saying: “He follows a lot of young girls!”
Montysano
@Roger Moore:
The mangoes are ripe and juicy. Trust me.
Suffern ACE
@cat48: I’ll see what Wolf Blitzer does today. He had on some expert of some sort to tell us what to think about this as the 2nd item on his program yesterday.
Gramsci
The only person truly up to the task of covering Sarah’s tour is Banksy.
In fact, at this point I’m wondering if Sarah Palin IS Banksy, and “The Undefeated” is just a scene within a larger movie, “Exit Through the Voting Booth.”
Roger Moore
@Chinn Romney:
Of course they’ll forgive her. Her Real American(TM) credentials are not in doubt. After all, she has a (R) after her name, which means nobody can ever question whether she’s lost touch with the common man.
Villago Delenda Est
The American media has become a version of WoW trade chat: all penis, all the time.
arguingwithsignposts
@Montysano: I should say that the comments on that bobo pile of steaming manure are worth reading more than the original article. Not a lot of support for the social animal there.
Sentient Puddle
@arguingwithsignposts: Dude, it’s the first of the month, and you want us to spend one of twenty on that?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@alwhite:
Well, if you want to be a cockeyed optimist about this…
Ghanima Atreides
The Wingularity is Near.
We have passed the knee of the exponential curve and are now approaching vertical slope. There is no order of transinfinity great enough to approximate Peak Wingnut, so we will simply warp into the full Wingularity…where the specific gravity of wingnuttery will deform the very fabric of reality.
Now Patterico’s top THIRTEEN posts are on weiner’s weiner.
Ed in NJ
Since we seem to take Memeorandum at its word that its the “day’s must-read political news and opinion pieces”, does anyone know who runs the site and determines what goes at the top of the page?
RossInDetroit
@Ghanima Atreides:
At the asymptote of this curve the distance between any two points becomes infinity and matter ceases to exist.
The expansion of our political universe is caused by the negative pressure of the recently discovered “Dark Politics” that comprises 78% of the known universe.
Scientists continue their research…
Redshift
@cat48:
Heh. Even ignoring the fact that the allegation came from Breitbart and no one has offered any actual evidence to support it, the level of cluelessness necessary to assert that anyone can even tell if someone on Twitter is a young girl is pretty impressive.
Mnemosyne
@alwhite:
I think it’s more that the whole “scandal” has been extremely sketchy right from the start, and they don’t want to look like idiots when the whole thing falls apart in a day or two.
Not that that’s going to stop them from milking it for ratings now.
Citizen_X
Upriver? That’s Cambodia, Captain.
Redshift
@Ed in NJ: I don’t. I pretty much assume that at best, it has no protection against the equivalent of googlebombing by paid conservatrolls.
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: I also think it’s hilarious that the wingers (and their media sycophants) are desperately trying to panic Weiner into “responding” and hurting his case.
He has a lawyer and he’s not commenting (as well as refusing to be distracted.) Despite assertions from the same suspects, we don’t know if there’s a criminal investigation, but even if there isn’t, it may be because that’s hard to prove. But since the responsible parties are looking pretty obvious, it’s less difficult to sue their asses and perform a public service killing this BS for others in the future.
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: I also think it’s hilarious that the wingers (and their media sycophants) are desperately trying to panic Weiner into “responding” and hurting his case.
He has a lawyer and he’s not commenting (as well as refusing to be distracted.) Despite assertions from the same suspects, we don’t know if there’s a criminal investigation, but even if there isn’t, it may be because that’s hard to prove. But since the responsible parties are looking pretty obvious, it’s less difficult to sue their asses and perform a public service killing this BS for others in the future.
RossInDetroit
Anyone remember what the top national news story was on the morning of 9/11/2001? Gary Condit. An intern he was having an affair with had disappeared and the media were playing the story that he was involved in her death. No other option was even considered. Not salacious enough. It had been going on for days and days in constant rotation.
Ed in NJ
@Redshift:
In the wingnut world, David Vitter can be re-elected but Anthony Weiner must be brought down at all costs for maybe, possibly tweeting a picture.
gypsy howell
Weiner don’t surf.
jimmiraybob
@cat48:
Even Luke Russert keeps saying: “He follows a lot of young girls!”
This is a double win narrative for the evil-twit propagandist Breitbart, it attacks a hated political foe and it marginalizes the voices of young women by assuming the only reason to twitter/blog follow them is out of prurient interest. Score for the meathead.
As to the young Russert, if he’s repeating this unsubstantiated bullshit line then he’s a bigger jackass that I realized.
Villago Delenda Est
If Luke Russert were the assistant night manager at a Burger King, he’d be way beyond his level of competence.
Patrick Eagan
This proves once again that we are a nation of morons!
satby
I think Rep Weiner was hitting a little too close to home with some of his rants, so this is the VRWC attempt to cut him down to size (so to speak).
Ghanima Atreides
@RossInDetroit:
haha that is pretty creative.
for the non-geeks here, dark energy and dark matter are hot topics right now.
dr. luba
@Redshift: I saw that, too. The newsmodel was someone named Alex Wagner(?) from the Huffington Post. I was also appalled. WHy is this level of insistence never applied when it matters?
Mnemosyne
@cat48:
This is probably my favorite part of this whole story: apparently wingnuts have been claiming for years that Weiner’s gay, his wife is Hillary’s lesbian ex-lover, and their whole marriage is a sham. And they’re actually continuing that meme while grafting the new “he loves young girls” claim onto it.
I’m not quite sure why they think gay men spend all of their time (or, really, any of their time) trying to seduce hot college girls, but this isn’t the first time that wingnuts have seemed unclear on the concept when it comes to homosexuality.
Ghanima Atreides
@RossInDetroit: stealin this
It even makes sense under Zeilingers Hypothesis, that information is reality.
DonkeyKong
Someday this War is going to end…………
maus
@cleek:
Oh bullshit. I hate this excuse. It’s called a “fucking lazy media that has no balls to cover the myriad of stories they may not even be allowed to handle in the first place by their uppers, so why bother?”
There is never so little going on in the US and elsewhere that we’re justified talking about the things the media latches onto.
Sixers
So we’ve agreed not to talk about how Weiner won’t deny its his “picture”? Nothing to see here!
maus
@Sixers: Awesome, we’ve got Truther-trolls, Birthers, now Weiner-s!
Ultimately I don’t give a fuck whether it’s him or not.
Considering the attitude of the lady-
“Ms. Cordova also dismissed the Twitter post in a response she wrote for The Daily News, stating: “There have never been any inappropriate exchanges between Anthony Weiner and myself, including the tweet/picture in question.”
It’s none of your business either.
maus
Really, though, are you THAT interested in seeing Weiner’s cock?
Just download Grindr if you’re obsessed with getting cock pics sent to your phone.
Sixers
Oh totally! It’s tough to find cock shots on the internet. Hey if a congressman looking into a camera and possibly lying through his teeth doesn’t make you question his integrity well than I guess you’re just a real trusting person.
Tell me you watched that Russert interview and didn’t for a second have doubts about if he’s telling the truth.
D-Chance.
Weiner can’t tell if his weiner is his weiner, or spot a fake weiner claiming to be his weiner?
Uh-huh.
I haven’t any idea, but Weiner is not handling his… uh… “affairs” very well, at the moment.
Sixers
In his defense when you take 100 underwear clad bulge pics as we all do in a year you can’t be expected to remember if its your’s at first glance.