From The Colbert Report:
Barack Obama loses the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, and Chris Christie uses Monty Python to attack Jon Corzine.
Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead gives Ed Schultz a hard time for chasing the bright shiny object or as she calls it "the Jiffy Pop thing" along with the rest of the "news" shows out there instead of covering the real news.
Schultz: Hey have you seen any balloons in your neighborhood lately?
Winstead: I’m so mad at you. What are you doing? Stop talking about these box balloon people. Ed you’re bigger than that. What are you doing? This is not a story for you. And the only reason you should be talking about a balloon floating across America for two hours is if the TARP money that we’ve lost is in it. Ed, seriously…get a grip!
Schultz: Did you go to dinner with Arianna Huffington last night to get schooled up on this? The world is talking about this. This has got tremendous intrigue. What parent treats his kids like this? Come on.
Winstead: Ed you do not—don’t be part of the chatter of bad parenting that is on T.V. now. What who’s next? John and Kate are going to co-host with you? I’m disappointed in you. Ed, look at this Jiffy Pop thing. This is not news! You’re showing a Jiffy Pop thing.
Schultz: Is there popcorn in it?
Winstead: Ed the breaking news is…
Schultz: I thought there was some popcorn in it.
Winstead: Ed, here’s the breaking news—thing floats out of back yard. This is what you’ve promoted for the first ten minutes of your show—thing floats out of back yard. Ed, where’s the TARP money? We don’t have enough troops to go to Afghanistan. Bobby Jindal shut down a mental health facility. We know you. Those are the things you should be talking about. I’m going to—I’m scolding you. I’m going to spank you.
From The Daily Show:
Rio de Janeiro claims the 2016 Olympics because of its compelling presentation and its new Double Dome Stadium.
From The Daily Show:
President Obama makes a case for the Olympics in Copenhagen, leading Republicans and the media to ask if he's ignoring more important issues.
From The Daily Show:
Sean Hannity scares and confuses with grainy footage, Lou Dobbs demands a birth certificate, and Glenn Beck calls Obama a racist.
Nice "fair and balanced" opening there Wallace.
Uncle Sam wants you driving one of his cars, writing checks at one of his banks, and using his health insurance. Are we saving the economy or headed toward socialism?
(Originally posted on Sunday Jun 07, 2009 7:53pm)
John Amato:
I'd like to remind Chris Wallace that Uncle Sam under George Bush gave us terrorist attacks, two wars, torture, illegal wiretapping, a stock market crash and almost destroyed the world's global financial markets and much much more in eight years. I could think of many more, but you get the idea.
I swear, I thought this was an Onion piece when I first saw it.
Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website.
You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot wrap my brain around the logic of going after one of your own affiliates, even if you were unaware that they were embedding videos from your YouTube page. Isn't this why companies decide to become affiliates?
Way to go, AP.
Just about all the Village teevee bobbleheads -- especially the Foxheads -- have been trying to find ways to shuffle the blame for the economic disaster now upon us onto the man Americans hired to fix the problem: Barack Obama.
It seemed like everywhere you turned a couple of weeks ago, we were hearing about the "Obama Bear Market." Mind you, they were positively gleeful about it; after all, they know their own future success hinges on Barack Obama's failure. And it worked for a little while: the mau-mauing over Obama's recovery plan certainly didn't help the market.
But now that we're at over 8,000 again? Crickets. That's all we hear.
So now they're crying "socialism" -- or is it "fascism"? -- and hysterically warning against One World Government. I think we can all see the direction this is heading, and it's not a healthy one.
The public sees it too: A Washington Post poll reveals some unpleasant truths for the right-wing pundits who pat themselves on the backs for keeping the flock of True Believers who plump up their ratings, these masters of the media who wield the power to alter public opinion.
Because it ain't working anymore. The rest of the world is gradually abandoning them:
Media Matters has more:
The Washington Post/ABC News poll, released on March 31, asked respondents who they thought "deserve[d]" the most "blame" for "the country's economic situation." Results for who deserved a "great deal" or "good amount" of blame are as follows:
* 80 percent said banks and other financial institutions
* 80 percent said large business corporations
* 72 percent said consumers
* 70 percent said the Bush administration
* 26 percent said the Obama administration
...Or reason #7,589 why the Media is hurting America.
This clip is so unfocused that I think it perfectly exemplifies how the media dumbs down the populace so that the average American hasn't a clue what's going on.
Chris Matthews starts the segment by bemoaning that the Obama administration has no really strong spokespeople out there to sell their economic plan. So far, no argument there. The Republicans have been much better in throwing sand in our eyes and giving these easily digestible soundbytes that sound good on the surface. Of course, that's when Matthews goes off the rails a bit and says that the Obama needs someone as clear as Limbaugh to speak for the administration, but as Clarence Page suggests, that's only if you want to convince a very small portion of the citizenry:
MATTHEWS: You know who can talk? You know who can talk? Limbaugh. You don’t have to like the big guy, but you know what he does? He defends capitalism. What he says is, “You, Mr. President, are out there raising taxes and getting rid of deductability and itemization and putting more injury on those of us who are already injured. You’re hurting the people who are driving the truck.”
PAGE: Right, and nobody believes that but dittoheads. The fact is, Bush has already done the same darn thing. That argument isn’t working right now. People know that government is in a spend mode, and by the way, you know we’ve been in….
MATTHEWS: Limbaugh’s numbers are doubled. Barack Obama’s numbers are not doubled.
PAGE: That’s his job, though, look at the numbers. About 18% of the public agrees with Limbaugh. You don’t win elections that way, you get radio ratings. But ever since Reagan, we’ve been on a trend of taxing lower income people and giving breaks to the upper income. Obama has slightly reversed that now, and I don’t see a revolution in the streets.
Nice of Matthews to go ahead and echo the ratings/audience share exaggeration for Limbaugh. Who needs facts?
The panel then admits that Wall Street are looking for immediate solutions with no pain to them. Gosh, that's not an unrealistic outlook at all, is it? The continued focus on the tax increases on the wealthiest 2% of the population is simply intended to scare the rest of us schmoes not making that kind of cash...and as CNBC's Trish Regan admits, won't even come into play until 2011. Rick Stengel has the money quote (literally):
STENGEL: Look, I confess that some of my best friends are investment bankers. You know, I won’t…you shouldn’t hold it against me. But they are… to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. They are just looking at the things that help them. They are not looking for the wider economy, the relationship between Wall St. and actual value of companies has never been wider. And by the way, I’d say to Rush Limbaugh, and as he says to his folks, how is capitalism working for you these days? Not very good, right? I mean, these people are hurting and people want to have the government do something.
That's it in a nutshell, isn't it? These "economic experts" like Limbaugh are big WATBs complaining because THEY are hurt. They couldn't care less about the country as a whole. But to further obfuscate the issue, Matthews' Meter Question asks if we should blame the Obama administration for some of the economic doom and gloom:
Um, excuse me? Didn't we just agree that all this hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over the stimulus plan is due to economists looking for an unrealistic quick fix that offers no pain to them, even if it's not in the best interest for the country? How's that the Obama administration's fault. Even reliable GOP mouthpiece Kathleen Parker (who voted yes) admits that the stock market performed worse under Bush.
Once again, the Fourth Estate abdicates their responsibility to inform the public.
Digby directs us to a perfectly dreadful portrait of George W. Bush by the AP's Ben Feller. As Digby sez, it actually mostly confirms some very basic suspicions about Bush -- namely, that he's an spoiled, authoritarian frat-boy jerk. And this was supposed to be a flattering piece.
But the piece actually tells us even more about our dysfunctional press corps. It's really a regurgitation of the basic theme of Bush coverage we got back in 2000: He's a swell fella you wouldn't mind having a beer with. A guy who will always "do the right thing" regardless of consequences.
Even if it means running the economy off a cliff, getting us into a costly and needless war on false pretenses, and tearing up the Geneva Conventions. Because, you know, "the right thing" is in the eye of the wealthy beholder.
Not that any of this is mentioned in Feller's piece. We do get told that Bush has deep emotional feelings for "the families that died" -- though his policy record shows little evidence of this. Indeed, what his record shows is a self-absorbed recklessness with those lives.
The entire portrait is pure fluff. We learn nothing of consequence about the man, nor do we get any insight into how his thoughtless policies have bounced back. In a man worthy of the presidency, his deeds and the countless lives lost under his carelessness would at some point provoke some deeper reflection; but we clearly need not concern ourselves that such thoughts will ever disturb George W. Bush's pretty little mind.
Nor do they ever seem to cross the reporter's mind. It's emblematic, really, of the obsequious coverage of the Bush presidency throughout from the White House press corps particularly and the Village generally -- obsessed with nonsequiturs and trivia, incapable of examining serious issues or dealing with the real-world effects of his policies.
I guess that's why we have a blogosphere.
Check out David Shuster's MSNBC reportage on the story dug up by Murray Waas yesterday regarding Dick Cheney's rewriting of White House talking points about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.
Notice anything missing?
Yeah, we noticed it too: There's not a single mention of Murray or his reportage. Shuster briefly alludes to Joe Gandelman's Moderate Voice blog -- which was one of many who picked up and linked to the piece. And who does he have on to talk about it? A reporter from the Washington Post -- which so far has not even mentioned the story either in its pages or on its website. (And then he and the NBC reporter talk about it as if Cheney were admitting this as part of his media legacy tour -- when in fact it was dug up out of an FBI interview conducted several years ago.)
I mean: WTF?
I know that reporters in the mainstream media like to think of themselves as the real journalists in the evolving post-Internet world, while we dirty hippie bloggers are mere parasites who help distribute the information they create -- add-ons, as it were.
But the reality is that not only are bloggers doing a lot of real journalistic work these days, there are real journalists who have turned to blogging as the chief means to publishing their work. I happen to be one of these, and so does Murray.
If this had been carried in one of those mainstream outlets first, MSNBC and Shuster would certainly have credited them with the story -- or they'd have had to face the wrath of their colleagues. Failure to cite reporters who originate breaking and important news is considered a major ethical faux pas in the journalistic business.
Well, the same holds true for we dirty hippie bloggers, including those of us who happen to be actual journalists.
These people owe Murray Waas an apology. And they need to update their ethical standards to reflect the reality of the business they're in today.
UPDATE: Commenters have noted that Shuster took pains to credit Waas in later broadcasts. If so, it should be duly noted (we didn't catch those broadcasts); but the failure to do so in this case was also quite real.
UPDATE II: Editorial note: Shuster has in the past done excellent work and often credited Waas on previous stories, so we are working on the assumption that this was an anomaly and probably not a mistake created by Shuster, but rather the show's producers. We're not trying to single out Shuster here, but rather raising an issue that happens all too often to independent journalists working in the blogosphere.
Sondre Lerche - "Say It All"
I read the most extraordinarily un-self-examined op-ed piece by WaPo's Leonard Downie yesterday: Could We Uncover Watergate Today? and I had to laugh at the cluelessness of it all. For the last eight years, we have had an administration that is WORST than any Watergate atrocity (from a man who knows firsthand). How well has WaPo (or any of the remaining corporate media) done in uncovering atrocities that we in the blogosphere have been regularly finding? And they wonder why newspapers are going bankrupt. I'm just sayin'...
And this weekend is another perfect example that Deep Throat and the Watergate scandal is a distant memory in journalism, supplanted by the uncritical regurgitation of talking points. Don't believe me? Catch the Revisionist History Tour with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on "Meet the Press" and Darth Cheney himself on Fox News Sunday (a network on which he could eat babies and STILL be defended). The man has already admitted to approving torture. Think any other war crimes will come to light?
ABC's "This Week" - Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
CBS' "Face the Nation" - Kerry Kennedy, cousin of Caroline Kennedy; Reps. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y.; Peter King, R-N.Y., and Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.; Joel Klein, chancellor, New York City Department of Education.
NBC's "Meet the Press" - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
CNN's "Late Edition" - Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Eric Cantor, R-Va.; Laura Tyson, former Clinton economic adviser; Carly Fiorina,
"Fox News Sunday" - Vice President Dick Cheney.
"The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Joe Klein, Katty Kay, John Heileman, Helene Cooper. Topics: How big is Obama's mandate for change? Is Caroline Kennedy a smart choice to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate?
So what's catching your eye this morning?
Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece this week exploring how the concept of "balance" corrupts any sense of honest media analysis. Case in point: The Washington Post's Dan Balz trying to equate Barack Obama's attacks ("erratic","uncertain","lurching") to John McCain's attacks ("he's an untrustworthy, un-American terrorist sympathizer").
Balz’s article is about the increasing use of “character attacks” in the presidential race, and rather than state the truth — that the McCain/Palin ticket is now relying almost exclusively on some of the ugliest and most outright dangerous character smears seen in a modern presidential election — Balz instead pretends that this is a phenomenon of which both sides are guilty in equal measure.
This clip from the Chris Matthews Show is yet another fascinating example. Tweety, Howard Fineman, Gloria Borger, David Ignatius, and Cynthia Tucker simply can't bring themselves to state the obvious.
In a rational world, a legitimate attack on your opponent's unsteady and erratic leadership during times of crisis is light years away from the vicious, dangerous types of character assaults we're hearing from the McCain camp. I mean think about it: They're not even trying to sell policy anymore. Instead, they're linking the terms "Barack Hussein Obama" and "terrorist" to the point where John McCain is forced to remind his traveling lynch mob that Obama is not, in fact, a "scary Arab." And when he does, he gets viciously booed.
We shouldn't underestimate the significance of John Lewis' recent remarks. There's a reason McCain told Rick Warren that he's one of the wisest people he knows.
