Within the past 12 months, Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw (among others) have badgered leading Democrats to proclaim “the Surge” a success. In each case that I’ve seen, the Democrat (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Edwards) has given a serious and accurate response, to which the reporters have been dismissive, pushing on with their same insistence – ‘Say it! The Surge has worked! Hallelujah!’ There’s some good reporting on Iraq in the newspapers, particularly from McClatchy, but the reporting on television is often frustratingly misleading. As we’ve often discussed, any drop in violence is most welcome, but the supposed purpose of “the surge” was to buy time for a political reconciliation that hasn’t occurred yet, and may be very far off. The drop in violence has multiple causes, including the escalation of American troops, but there are other extremely significant factors it would be dishonest (and folly) to ignore. That said, while things may no longer be horrifically dreadful, they’re still quite dreadful. There are still 4-5 million displaced Iraqis, a staggering number especially give the population size, and basic services such as water and electricity are still below pre-war levels for many Iraqis. There is some sincere disagreement on whether withdrawal is the best move, and at what pace - although given the feelings of the Iraqi people and the position of the Maliki government, currently all American troops would be out by 2011 (we’ll see how that plays out). Regardless, there’s much less room for wild disagreement when it comes to (ahem) serious discussion of the realities of Iraq – realities which are complex, thorny and dire. The occupation cheerleaders rarely mention those realities, preferring to present an extremely narrow, misleading, sometimes Pollyanna view. Some go further, and add the vile McCarthyist rhetoric employed by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham at the Republican National Convention, where he all but denounced Barack Obama and other Democrats as traitors. Some of this is an extremely repulsive breed of politics, some of it’s myopic zealotry, some of it’s a fervent desire for vindication - but it’s all dangerous. Read more »
David Broder just can’t be bothered with reality. Barack Obama’s greatest obstacle isn’t McCain; it’s appalling “journalism” like Broder’s. Broder’s Sunday column, “Change vs. Change” is a short piece easy to read in its entirety, but here are some key excerpts (emphasis added):
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Change is coming, change you can count on.
That is the simple, central message from the two presidential nominating conventions held in Denver and St. Paul during the past two weeks.
Whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain going to the White House in January, the new president will understand that his mandate from the voters is to cleanse Washington of its excessive partisanship and attempt to break the gridlock that has prevailed on almost all the big issues.
The good news is that Obama and McCain, for different reasons, have about as good a prospect of achieving that change as any two politicians you could find.
The acceptance speeches they delivered will not find places in many collections of great campaign oratory. But rhetoric aside, the clear intent of both candidates was to signal that they understand the frustration of voters of all parties with the poisonous status quo of recent years in Washington.
The Palin circus has drowned out almost everything else, but you may have seen that the Obama campaign has pushed the Department of Justice to investigate the group behind the Ayers ads for possible violation of FEC guidelines. Meanwhile, The Politco reported late last week: Read more »
Silly or asinine coverage is nothing new, but I was struck last night by a few mind-numbing passages in Obama-VP pieces. Those concerns have been eclipsed by Ron Fournier’s AP hit piece today, though. Still, there’s a continuity in that the press continues to insert themselves into the story, and for the ill.
In dragging out the announcement of his vice presidential nominee to almost the eve of the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama has at once demonstrated his willingness to defy conventional political expectations — and to hold the news media in his thrall while doing it. Read more »
We have some great political reporters in America. We also have a large number of vapid, shallow, gossipy twits, with the percentage going way up among TV journalists (and even higher among cable TV journalists). No offense to the good reporters, but there are times that I despise our political press corps as a whole with the heat of, well, maybe not a thousand suns, but a solid nine hundred. Now is such a time.
“Tonight, more on Edwards and the fallout from his admission today about a sexual affair: Is this another skeleton in the Democratic closet that Barack Obama must struggle to overcome?” Gregory also said that, “now, questions about his [Edwards'] future abound in the party and whether this creates another shadow over Barack Obama as he gets ready for the conventions.”
Of course the Edwards affair is going to be covered. But this treatment is weak, insipid stuff worthy of the sex-obsessed David Broder or Maureen Dowd, and sure seems to be an attempt to try to justify covering a tabloid story as legitimate campaign news, when of course it isn’t. Meanwhile, it just happens to smear the entire Democratic Party and their nominee. Gregory’s approach is symptomatic of a wider problem. Read more »
I think I first read about this interview in Dan Froomkin’s column back when it occurred, but Crooks and Liars posted the video. It’s really quite remarkable:
I think my favorite part might be when Bush stops speaking, Coleman says something, and then he testily gives another round of “Let me finish!”
Several aspects are striking. It’s refreshing to see the sadly rare sight of someone just not buying the bullshit Bush is selling. Bush acts as if Coleman is being rude, when his own behavior is brusque, and his answers are themselves insulting, because they are so simplistic, misleading, non-responsive or flatly false. I think Bush actually believes much of the crap he’s shilling here. But it’s interesting that he’s positively indignant that anyone could possibly view things differently – and that he would have to converse with them. His bubble has always been pretty strong, exactly as he and his handlers have wanted. Most of all, this interview shows a Bush who simply cannot believe that someone would dare ask him to speak as an adult to adults about important matters. Read more »
Seymour Hersh’s latest New Yorker piece “Preparing the Battlefield,” about the Bush administration’s “secret moves against Iran,” has justifiably gotten a fair amount of attention. Read the article if you haven’t. Meanwhile, here’s some of Hersh on CNN, on NPR’s Fresh Air and Democracy Now! Meanwhile, via Dan Froomkin, there’s this gem caught by ThinkProgress (they have the video, too) from Hersh’s conversation with Andrea Mitchell, after she asked Hersh about the possibility of the U.S. attacking (or supporting an attack on) Iran:
Hersh: “Oh, you know, how the hell do I know? . . . What I can tell you is we’re loaded for bear. And we’ve been looking at it for three years… If Israel goes — I’ll tell you what Cheney says privately. . . . What he says privately is, ‘We can’t let Israel go because, first of all, they don’t have the firepower, we do. We have much more firepower. And secondly, if they go, we’ll be blamed anyway.’”
Via Howard Kurtz, actually, here’s one of the best pieces I’ve read recently on McCain. It’s from Kevin Drum on 3/24, and I’ll quote it in its entirety: Read more »
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
” ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”
What the MSM lacks in accuracy, it makes up for in persistence.
You may have caught Jake Tapper’s atrocious rewriting of Bill Clinton not long ago. Sadly, No! has the best write-up I’ve seen, and I’d recommend reading it first, but I’ll provide a basic recap. Tapper’s headline was “What Did Bill Clinton Mean By “We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy” to Fight Global Warming?” Tapper wrote: Read more »
With the recent arrival of MLK Day, it’s time once again for doctrinaire conservatives to pretend that liberals are racists and if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he’d be a conservative. Think I’m kidding? Check out this year’s assessment of such rhetoric by Mister Leonard Pierce of Sadly, No! Meanwhile, Rick Perlstein provides some welcome historical perspective on past opposition and this attempted appropriation. (Roy has a slightly different take.)
Of course, if conservative pundits had any integrity, they’d also have called out Jonah Goldberg for his noxious piece of disingenuous, revisionist crap, Liberal Fascism, weeks ago, and Goldberg himself would have actually responded to the “serious” criticism he claims he welcomes. Not content to level the ludicrous accusation that progressives are the real descendents of fascists, Goldberg recently accused them of being the real racists, as well. It’s all the more striking given that Goldberg works for the National Review, which had a long history of supporting segregation (and check out the vintage Goldberg Roy linked in the post linked above). Read more »
Horse Shit Cigarettes are made from the finest grade of domestic and imported horse shit obtainable. Only fresh midd horse shit is used. NOT MULE SHIT. And they are roasted to keep that mild, sweet taste.
If you like the taste of Horse Shit Cigarettes, you might want to try a genuine Horse Shit Cigar. Each one lasts an hour, perfect for watching an episode of Hardball, especially since each one smells like a mix of Aqua Velva and Chris Matthews. Mmm-mmm! That’s some mighty fine Horse Shit!
(Okay, the second paragraph doesn’t appear on the package. But it should.)
The problem with a horse race is that it produces a lot of horse shit. Sure, it’s fun to mock the boastful swells in the press box for losing all their bets on New Hampshire, but they’ve been wrong plenty of times before in this election season alone, and it’s not as if they all learn their lesson. A day after Chris Matthews said he’d “never underestimate Hillary Clinton again,” he said that the reason she was elected senator was because “her husband messed around.” Of course, in addition to peddling his own special brand of horse shit, Matthews is virulently anti-Clinton, a sexist and often seems delusional. But he’s far from the only prominent pundit with a short memory or no shame. As one of Matthews’ colleagues observed:
“The pirouettes are amazing,” says Brokaw, who was analyzing the campaign on MSNBC. “The utter confidence with which everyone had been wrong 20 minutes earlier, they have the same utter confidence about what produced this surprise. It’s intellectually dishonest.”
No more tears, please. I don’t mean from Hillary Clinton - I mean the media saying that she cried, which isn’t accurate, as far as I could see. The Yahoo page yesterday showed the graphic above. If you can’t read it clearly, it says “Debating the crying issue.” “Analysts have turned Hillary Clinton’s tears into a national debate.” It also links a Huffington Post entry titled “Double standard?” and has a video link called, “See her tears.”
(Good grief. Had it been a slower news day, one of the networks would’ve grabbed the post-Brit-Brit Dr. Phil for his special brand of obtuse comment wrapped in faux-folksy Texas cornpone psychobabble. But there’s still time.)
There’s other copies of the video out there, but check out this YouTube version:
She gets choked up, her voice quavers, she’s emotional. But she doesn’t have a public breakdown. And I don’t see any tears. Do you? And really, is this that hard for the press to get right? Read more »
Joseph Menn
The Los Angeles Times
cross posted at Huffington Post
The mogul asks three reporters to stay. Some question how hands-on he’ll be with the paper.
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t yet own the Wall Street Journal, but he’s already flexing his muscles.
In the last two weeks, the chairman of News Corp. has called at least three reporters who were considering leaving the top financial publication and asked them to stay, people familiar with the calls said Thursday.
Some journalists in the newsroom took the gesture as a sign of Murdoch’s commitment to keep the staff’s quality high. Others said it showed that Murdoch would take a hands-on approach in newsroom affairs despite a special committee established to keep him from interfering in coverage.
News Corp. agreed this month to pay $5 billion for Dow Jones & Co., the owner of the Journal.
Murdoch, who has been vacationing in the Mediterranean in recent days, made the calls to the reporters from his yacht, the Rosehearty, named for the Murdoch family’s ancestral home in Scotland.
Murdoch called reporters Tara Parker-Pope, Kate Kelly and Henny Sender, according to five people at the Journal who asked not to be named for fear of upsetting the new owner. Parker-Pope and Kelly were weighing job offers from the New York Times, which Murdoch sees as the Journal’s biggest rival, while Sender was considering a post at the Financial Times, the leading business paper in Europe.
Murdoch told the reporters that they would be making a mistake to leave, that he valued all of the Journal’s coverage, and that positive changes were in store. Since announcing the acquisition of Dow Jones, Murdoch has publicly promised to invest in the Journal and expand its coverage.
Wednesday, September 17th
