Balloon Juice - I Smell a Pulitzer! Archives

I Pity Anyone Who Isn’t Them Tonight

by $8 blue check mistermix| April 13, 20108:04 am| 40 Comments

This post is in: I Smell a Pulitzer!, Our Failed Media Experiment

At the Pulitzer site, the page on the commentary prize explains a hell of a lot about our current media culture.

For example, “witty” seems to be Pulitizer-code for conservative. Like Kathleen Parker (“perceptive, often witty”), Krauthammer’s ’87 prize called him “witty and insightful”. I think Parker’s alright, but how perceptive is it to file a whole column on the Stupak compromise without even mentioning the Hyde Amendment?

As for Krauthammer, I suspect he was better before the war, which might explain his ’87 prize. Not so for Friedman, who got the prize in 2002 for “his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.” Suck on that.

That page also lists every Villager who will never be fired, including MoDo (’99), Ruth Marcus (runner-up in ’07), and of course Broder, who was the third recipient of the commentary prize in 1973.

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Not Worthy

by $8 blue check mistermix| April 8, 20107:25 am| 103 Comments

This post is in: Sports, General Stupidity, I Smell a Pulitzer!

Under the headline A Masters win would be too much too soon for Tiger Woods, some Kaplan sports columnist writes:

We know that bad things happen to good people. We cope with it. But when great things happen to people who have acted badly, especially if the bonanza comes fast and arrives ringed with robes of glory, don’t we have to draw the line? I’m forgiving, but my brain hasn’t turned into pimento cheese. If Woods has a tap-in to win the Masters, I hope his conscience helps him yip it and lip it. Win any other week. But not here. Not now.

Are all sports columnists this fucking stupid, or did I just happen to glance at the sports part of the webpage on a bad day?

If this guy wins a Pulitzer (which I’ll grant is pretty unlikely), I hope he’ll have the common decency to give it back if he cheated on his wife or girlfriend. Because I can’t deal with the cognitive dissonance of someone’s hard work and talent being rewarded if they’ve done anything wrong in their personal life.

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BREAKING NEWS- PREZNIT STILL BLACK!!ONE!ELEVEN!

by John Cole| April 2, 20107:30 pm| 100 Comments

This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Our Failed Media Experiment

From the front page of the online NY Times:

It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.

A White House spokesman confirmed that Mr. Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, checked African-American on the 2010 census questionnaire.

I’m going to start drinking now.

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We’re All the Politico Now

by John Cole| April 2, 20105:57 pm| 135 Comments

This post is in: Clown Shoes, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Manic Progressive, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!

Steve Clemons has a piece that will generate lots of links because of the title: “Communications Corruption at the White House.” Sounds exciting, until you read it:

What I have learned after discussions over the last several days with several journalists who either have regular access to the White House or are part of the White House press corps is that there is a growing sense that access is traded for positive stories — or perhaps worse, an agreement that things learned will not be reported in the near term.

The White House is working hard to secure deals that yield fluffy, feel good commentary about the Obama White House. One American White House reporter used colorful terms to describe the arrangement. The reporter said, “They want ‘blow jobs’ first [in the press sense]. Then you have to be on good behavior for a bit or be willing to deal, and then you get access.”

That’s quite a catch there, Steve! Hoocoodanode that a WH communication operation might offer more access to people who will write positive stories? SHOCKING! I wonder if Bob Woodward knows this!

Meanwhile, the entire piece is based on “unnamed sources” who have lots to say, none of it on the record so we can verify. This is inside baseball at its absolute worst. A sensational headline with a charge of corruption, a nothingburger of a report with not one piece of original information or a shred of verifiable evidence, all allegedly supplied by anonymous insiders.

Pathetic. I wonder if Robert Gibbs is the new Rahm for the manic progressive set.

*** UPDATE ***

I’VE JUST LEARNED THAT THERE IS AN ENTIRE BUSINESS OPERATION IN THIS COUNTRY DEDICATED TO MAKING PEOPLE LOOK GOOD. THEY CALL THIS CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE PUBLIC RELATIONS, OR PR FOR SHORT. WHERE’S MY PULITZER!

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Teabagger v Closet Case

by $8 blue check mistermix| March 29, 20107:09 am| 30 Comments

This post is in: I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To, I Smell a Pulitzer!

Reading some of the coverage of last night’s Crist/Rubio Fox News debate, and the coverage of the race in general, just makes me think about things that cannot be discussed.

One of the real issues in voters’ minds must be the recent poor track record of beard-loving closet cases. Setting aside homophobia, there’s a real practical issue of whether someone like Crist, who seems more of a Massa/Craig style of closet case than the Lindsey Graham model, will be caught in some airport restroom during his first term.

The other issue is that the role of a Republican Senator from the South could be accomplished by some form of trained animal. It merely requires voting against anything that comes to the floor and taking one’s turn blocking appointments and threatening filibuster.

Instead of confronting these two issues, we get questions about whether Florida should have a sales tax or higher user fees, a real hot topic in recent Senate debates.

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It’s So Easy

by $8 blue check mistermix| March 26, 20109:32 am| 117 Comments

This post is in: I Smell a Pulitzer!

John can’t post at the moment, but he sent over this AC360 transcript. After Dana Bash discusses the stray bullet hitting Eric Cantor’s office, David Gergen hits her slow pitch out of the park:

GERGEN: I do. I think there’s a chance of an incident, isolated, to be sure, but I think there’s going to be some wing nut out there on one side or the other of the political aisle, or somewhere, who is just out in Never Never Land, and a lot of guns out there. (emphasis mine)

It takes almost no work to push any political conversation into the “both sides do this” story outline. Eric Cantor at least had a slightly credible story line, but it wasn’t really necessary. If John Boehner had stood up and claimed that someone threatened to take away his tube of bronzer, he’d have gotten the same result.

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Hackfest

by $8 blue check mistermix| March 22, 20108:42 am| 46 Comments

This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Clown Shoes, I Smell a Pulitzer!

The DC press corps’ candle in the wind, Mark Halperin, bows in the direction of perceived power :

The President, however, may be indifferent to the acrid fussing of his Republican foes. He will be able to bask once again in the glow of positive press coverage (accented by a momentous signing ceremony), which will focus on four areas helpful to the Democrats’ prospects in November: the masterful display of White House patience and competence that got the job done; the elements of the legislation that are in fact consistently popular with large numbers of Americans, such as its insurance company crackdowns; the return of the meme that Republicans are the party of “no”; and the accompanying rising poll numbers for the administration and the new law.

This is a guy who turned in columns titled Obama is Making the Same Mistakes as Bush and Can Obama Fend Off Failure Attacks in the last few weeks, not to mention What Obama Can Learn from Reagan.

(via Rhoda in the comments)

HackfestPost + Comments (46)

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

“But what about the lurkers?”

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.