I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Well, Nedra is from Michigan.
It must really blow going through life with the last name of Pickler..
Not that I have gobs of sympathy for ol' Nedra..
When Atrios says that Nedra Pickler has written an article almost favorable to Democrats, he neglects to mention that they are all married to Jewwy-Jew Jew-Jew, Heeby, Hooknosed, Red Sea Pedestrian, Yellow Star Wearing, Christ-killing whores of Babylon Jewesses and should all be ritually disembowled on a 10-Commandments Idol.
When Tugent mentioned that Nedra Pickler is from Michigan, he failed to point out that she's from Flint, which many believe should make her renounce -- rather than promote -- the GOP.
Is she capable of writing a simple declarative sentence without a subordinate clause? I'm starting to think there is no Nedra Pickler. She might be a bot...
When Dr. Pedant comments on Nedra's overreliance on the subordinate clause, he fails to mention that he isn't really a doctor of grammar.
Nedra Pickler fails to mention that the Democratic candidates who criticize Bush's economic performance fail to mention that a recession began two months after Clinton left office.
There has to be a Nedra Pickler-John Solomon connection. It can't be coincidence that his most recent article on Dean reads like prime Pickler, whereas Nedra's latest could have come from anyone.
Seriously even though her writing style isn't all it could be, I've noticed that her last two pieces have toned down the editorializing. Since I'm on Pickler-Watch, I've been hard-pressed to take anything out of her last two pieces to complain about, even her choices for quotations. She gets some of them from the Lieberman campaign.
I think it is a great demonstration of what we can do with the right-wing media when we act together.
I didn't think the Solomon article was egregious. He's probably been assigned to cover Dean's campaign.
What did you find so offensive, papa? Maybe I'm not looking at the right things....
pickler is a very poor writer. i do not know what martian conspiracy allows the woman to be able to publish her work.
as a previous poster stated, pickler seems incapable of producing a straight forward, declarative sentence and i wonder if it is because she can't think clearly.
the level of psuedo-intellectual affectation in her writing style masks a mind full of cotton candy.
Is she capable of writing a simple declarative sentence without a subordinate clause?
I think the answer in clearly no. Probably has something to do with having shit for brains.
Anybody notice the article is in the Guardian? could the improvement have something to do with having a REAL EDITOR? just asking. 
See, there's a logical explanation for just about everything.
Sorry, that was "is clearly no"
Four legs:
that story has been picked up in Michigan and environs with the same language. Clearly someone has toned her editorializing down.
Almost? What part Picklered ya?
Cat, we can only hope so. I'm going to stand by my comment on her brain power.
Four legs, I don't disagree at all. But I'm encouraged given that her stuff goes all over the world, that the egregious bias that she displayed in several articles last month is missing in her latest pieces.
Good behavior must be recognized and applauded. At least it worked with my kids.........
Perhaps a little experience will tighten up the writing style..
Wait a minute... isn't the Guardian a super respectable left-leaning broadsheet? Are the editors on vacation? How could that trash possibly slip through the cracks?
greg,
but compare the current article to this pickler special which set off the whole pickler movement:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
uslate...3485626,00.html
papawasarollingstone: There has to be a Nedra Pickler-John Solomon connection. It can't be coincidence that his most recent article on Dean reads like prime Pickler ...
The article isn't even fishwrap (more like birdcage liner), but I also wondered if Solomon wasn't picking up Nedra's slack.
From AP: Dean Was Warned on Lax Vt. Security
By JOHN SOLOMON and DAVID GRAM, Associated Press Writers
01/03/04
"Presidential hopeful Howard Dean, who accuses President Bush of being weak on homeland security, was warned repeatedly as Vermont governor about security lapses at his state's nuclear power plant and was told the state was ill-prepared for a disaster at its most attractive terrorist target."
The article discusses a post 9/11 state report that criticizes security and performance weaknesses at the Vermont Yankee (nuclear facility) dating back to the early nineties.
But it omits any look at GW Bush's pre-9/11 act
part deux
But it omits any look at GW Bush's pre-9/11 actions (including his record as governor) related to nuclear facilities, nor any specifics of his post-9/11 actions on homeland security as a whole (eg, stonewalling the 9/11 commission's report). Implicit in these omissions is that Bush's record is beyond reproach -- literally, since the article doesn't go there.
"Once Governor Dean got that report there was swift and thorough action," [State Auditor Elizabeth M. Ready] said.
Solomon and Gram helpfully "balance" that positive remark from Dean's critic -- she spearheaded the report -- by pointing out that Ready is a "Democrat and Dean backer".
Since the article is being framed as "Bush Critic Dean a Big Fat Hypocrite" then it should present some shred of evidence that Bush's policies on power plants are the same or better.
Another fallacy of the article is that it tries to use Dean's record on one power plant to negate his right to criticize Bush
aaargggh Haloscan
Another fallacy of the article is that it tries to use Dean's record on one power plant to negate his right to criticize Bush on homeland security, which criticisms include saying it was dumb to divert attention and resources from hunting al Qaeda to invade and occupy Iraq.
Here's the url again:
http://tinyurl.com/2km4w
When Atrios states that the Pickler article published by the Guardian is "almost favorable," he neglects to mention that the Guardian has intelligent editors who are conscientious about upholding journalistic ethics and standards, and that these editors may have removed some less-than-objective elements from Pickler's article such as we've come to expect.
Wait a minute...that was waaay to logical. I'll never get this "write like Nedra Pickler" thing down.
I thought from the beginning that Ms. Pickler might be more misguided and naive than a kool-aid dispenser. I wonder if she took the complaints she got to heart and has tried to be less subjective.
Her writing otherwise is typical of AP stuff. To call it "bad" like some of you are is to misunderstand beat journalism.
Then again, maybe the AP took our complaints to heart and are editing her more closely.
I thought she was a composite
Picklerish:
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is more tepid in his assessment of Dean.
...
When asked whether he is comfortable with Dean, Levin responded, ``I've not concluded who the strongest candidate is.''
... which is not actually an assessment of Dean at all, but a very purposeful, studied neutrality from a very senior Democrat.
What do I win?
IMHO, while neither the Pickler or the Solomon pieces are perfect, I just don't see the kind of screaming bias in either one that was present in Pickler's piece about the debates.
Peanut, we can disagree that Solomon would be obliged to write about Bush's record in his piece. To me, the piece is about the primaries. Now if they were in the middle of the general, I'd think he should make a comparison. But I think his piece opens the possiblity for Dean to discuss his record, which could be a good opening. After all, this all happened a long time ago. We were all more casual about it back then.
Solomon's the guy who had his phone tapped by the FBI a couple of years ago.
off-topic - ann coulter is debating susan estrich on fox news at the moment.
ann gave her thoughts on the valerie plame affair. obviously it was akin to opening a sewer. she called wilson a clown. she said his uranium investigation consisted solely of asking an african dictator if the rumors were true.
i'd really like to wake up tomorrow and hear wilson is suing ann for slander for that last bit in particular. i know i won't, but i can hope.
oh, and ann and susan agreed for most of the time.
ah, fox news democrats, it's just lovely.
Where were all you guys when I was
the only one in Nedra's camp? I knew
she could do it! Go girl!
When Bartolo states that he was the only one in Nedra's camp, he neglects to mention that getting Tiger Balm in your eye really fucking hurts.
When George W. Bush says that the Democratic candidates who criticize his economic performance fail to mention that a recession began two months after Clinton left office he fails to mention that the preceding Dow's dive corresponded closely to his rise in the pre-election polls.
OT, but,
Dammit, I've been banned from posting at LGF..... What shall I do?
OT: The latest ravings from Adam Yoshitler:
We Stand at Armageddon
In this, the two thousand and fourth year of Our Lord, we have a chance to annihilate the Democratic Party once and forever. We must either have their unconditional surrender, or we must grind their bones to dust. Republicans should consciously set out to make the 2004 campaign the most vicious in memory: there must be no surrender, no retreat and, most of all, no quarter for our enemies. The Democrat Party needs to be wiped from the face of the Earth.
Whatsamatter Adam, pissed off and full of self-loathing that you're home alone and dateless yet again on a Saturday night?
Adam Yoshitler,
I remember when I had my first beer.....
even funnier: When he says "we must...", who the hell is "we"? He's Canadian!
I'd never read the Nedra article on the debates. Wow.
I mean, like seriously, wow.
What young Adam fails to mention is that he is an exremist, right-wing radical, and that he advocates the murder of those that don't think quite the same as him.
Film at eleven.......
adhesive mailing labels reading "Hello, I'm... ATRIOS" are popping up on street signs and lampposts all over West Philadelphia..
I think it's quite possible that yoshitler is an escaped mental patient.
Loser is right. Nedra Pickler was simply following the AP style of nut-graph followed by but-graph, although far too slavishly. That's the AP's simple-minded recipe for balance, such as it is. She's probably just inexperienced, not biased.
It's also possible the 'balancing' comments were added by editors, and not Pickler's original writing.
However, I can't help but note the, ah, brilliant political analysis in this story:
If Dean has a strong lead in delegates from the nine states that vote before Michigan, a win in the state could seal his fate as the nominee. A win for one of his opponents could propel their candidacy.
Wow. Who'd a thunk that winning in Michigan might help a candidate?
But seriously, "seal his fate as the nominee"? Is it really such a terrible thing to be the Democratic nominee that it's Dean's "fate"? More evidence of Pickler's youth and inexperience, I suppose.
Given what the eventual Democratic candidate will be subjected to this year, "fate" may not be too far off the mark.
"The participants opened their meeting by talking about what brought them to the Clark campaign."
There you go--that's clearly and undoubtedly a statement without a subordinate clause.
Here is another Solomon article that ran Monday that is worse than the one from today.
"Dean criticizes Cheney task force, but had own secret energy group."
http://tinyurl.com/2kcom
It seems like he has it in for Dean.
When he says "we must...", who the hell is "we"? He's Canadian!
Exactly: He is trying his damnedest to make sure that no Canadian votes Democratic in the 2004 Presidential Election. It's his higher calling.
I'm sorry, but
"The winner in Michigan will have proven mettle to win an industrial swing state that has suffered a loss of manufacturing jobs and unemployment above the national average during the past three years..."
is a very silly and almost meaningless construction. To say candidate X has the proven mettle to win means that you are predicting that candidate X will win. Maybe she meant: "The winner in Michigan will have proved his mettle by winning an industrial state..." or "...will have proven mettle after winning...", or maybe she was just babbling mindlessly.
" think it's quite possible that yoshitler is an escaped mental patient.
four legs good"
Why escaped? Perhaps the more enlightened Canadian medical system provides Internet service to the Thorazine set. Like for good behaviour, or something....
sorry for the off-thread posting, but couldn't find a better place to express this sentiment.
are there many sweeter words in the english language than:
Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman are on vacation.
?
amen.
sorry for the off-thread posting, but couldn't find a better place to express this sentiment.
are there many sweeter words in the english language than:
Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman are on vacation.
?
amen.
Why escaped? Perhaps the more enlightened Canadian medical system provides Internet service to the Thorazine set.
Yes, but medical marijuana is legal in Canada, so we would have mellowed Adam out by now, if we could get our hands on him.
When La Pickler noted that Gore beat Bush by 5 points in Mich., she omitted remarking that G also beat B by 1/2 a million nation-wide.
Isn't the noun clause after "talking about" subordinate?
A couple of John Solomon's recent classics within the last week:
Dean Hits Cheney Task Force but Had Own
AP - Sun Dec 28, 3:56 PM ET
AP: Dean Was Warned on Lax Vt. Security
AP - 1 hour, 48 minutes ago
Upon examination both stories are basically shams but get exposure nonetheless...
Yes, but medical marijuana is legal in Canada, so we would have mellowed Adam out by now, if we could get our hands on him.
I object to wasting perfectly good pot on that asswipe. Why don't we just give him to the chinese?
A couple of John Solomon's recent classics within the last week:
Dean Hits Cheney Task Force but Had Own
AP - Sun Dec 28, 3:56 PM ET
AP: Dean Was Warned on Lax Vt. Security
AP - 1 hour, 48 minutes ago
Upon examination both stories are basically shams but get exposure nonetheless...
Susan Estrich hasn't had an original thought or written a decent article since the 70's. Why anyone wants to listen to her is beyond reasonable thought.
I often find her tone annoying, but she does make some good points once in a while. I actually agree with her comments in a recent column --
http://www.creators.com/
opinion_...ColumnsName=ses
since I wrote her letters taking her to task over her slanted coverage in the pt, i felt it was only fair to write & thank her for her more balanced piece.
Wow, I didn't realize Nedra Pickler was personally responsible and a composite of blame for everything that's wrong in American journalism.
Granted, that piece about the debates was quite awful. But I'm with Loser, Cat and others who attribute the shortcomings in some of her pieces much more to inexperience than to venality, and I'm pleased to see some folks give her credit her for improving on her previous work. And like several folks pointed out, she writes for the AP, which means that in order to get paid her pieces are required to be pretty formulaic.
(FYI: she's in her late 20's or early 30's, and I think her only previous political journalism experience was covering the Michigan politics, primarily the legislature.)
In as short as possible, Democrats need to become a lot more savvy about picking out bias in articles and a lot less willing to excuse the Picklers and Solomons of the media world for biased articles. If nothing else, singling out a couple of journalists and exposing them as hacks (Particularly if they haven't already made respectable names for themselves. Give up on shaming Russert or Matthews) will probably go a long way to keeping the media in line.
Remember, this is high school. If Pickler wants to fit she needs to learn that the proper way is to be fair not to follow the "Democrats are losers" pack.
DH,
When I was in my late 20s early 30s, I was quite accomplished at things I'd been doing earlier in my career.
Jeff
I posted this over at interestingtimes.blogspot.com, but it is also relevant here.
Why is the Solomon nuke story a hit piece?
1. The headline. Yes, I know, writers don't write their own headlines. But who cares who writes them? People still read them and this one is implicitly concluding that Dean's accusations are hypocritical.
2. The framework of the article. It takes six paragraphs before you get to one that isn't negative of Dean and/or Vermont nuke security. Yes, it does include information that is contradicts a charge that Dean was lax on security. But overall, look where the information is and how it is presented (e.g. State Auditor Ready is identified as a "a Democrat and Dean backer" not inititally but only when she is giving a quote favorable to Dean...undermining her credibility, but only after she has given an unfavorable quote that is useful).
3. A thought experiment: What would a non-biased article look like? Like everyone else, I have read many
DH,
Pickler isn't a composite of blame for bad journalism. Some on this blog, myself included, have taken on the task of "Somerizing" (i.e. Somerby's Daily Howler) specific journalists who consistently display egregious lack of journalism standards and ethics. We hope that pointing out their lapses in a fair and consistent manner will assist them in perfecting their craft.
Since choosing Pickler, I've been hard-pressed to find anything to Somerize. I will not complain about her use of grammer, but am looking for instances of bias, including who she uses as source quotes. In a piece last month, she used a right-wing millionaire posing as a Democrat, but recently she's been using sources apparently provided by Lieberman's campaign. I think that's fair.
Unless I picked the wrong week to stop smoking crack.......
3. A thought experiment: What would a non-biased article look like? Like everyone else, I have read many articles in my lifetime. Including political articles. It is almost impossible to notice that writers are almost pathological in their desire to "present both sides" of a story unless one of the sides is of a pedophile or ax murderer. So one would presume that an objective journalist would start with the question "Dean has been criticizing Bush, how is his record?" and present both things that look good and things that don't.
But that is not how the story is framed. The article essentially presents Dean's alleged hypocracy as truth but includes enough defensive quotes to generate plausible deniability to the charge of "hit piece".
Susan Estrich hasn't had an original thought or written a decent article since the 70's. Why anyone would want to listen to her is beyond reasonable thought.
I saw her on At Large with Geraldo Rivera and Ann Coulter on Saturday.
My question is: HOw can ANYONE stand to listen to her??? She sounds like Carol Channing on crack. I hate her voice but I must say that between she and Geraldo, they took apart stupid Ann Coulter, so that was very satisfying.
In addition, I just witnessed a disgusting scene on Sunday Morning Fox and Friends of Hilter. At first they tore into Dean about the power plant dirt that someone managed to dig up on him. Then they stated that Dean didn't react right away, even upon learning about the security issues. They failed, however, to give Dean's actual response to the criticism. That Power Plants Fall UNDER FEDERAL Jurisdiction, so basically, it was the Federal Government who dropped the ball on the nuclear power plant, just like they dropped the ball
Space, your excellent analysis gave me a lot of food for thought. I'm not surprised that Fox used it as grist for the mill. I still think that it might be a good opportunity for the Dean camp to respond...
Seriously even though her writing style isn't all it could be, I've noticed that her last two pieces have toned down the editorializing.
The power of blog on trashing newspaper reporting everywhere...
Atrios and the web's followers clean the press's clockwork... Good job. Lets hope it last, at least for awhile.
I was reading the WaPo editorials this morning, and wondering when the page was taken over by the Bush family. Good grief.
hehe, i love this bit of idiotic pseudo-logic from adam: "At the present time Osama Bin Laden and Howard Dean have exactly the same objective: the defeat of George W. Bush. From this perspective, it is hard not to conclude that every vote cast for Howard Dean is a vote for al-Qaeda"
i guess if adam's objective is to ever have sex, he has the same goals as many a terrorist? why does adam support al qaeda?
stupid stupid canucks.
I guess if defeating G.W.Bush is as sweet as sex, then sex must be as sweet as defeating G.W.Bush. QED. Traitor!
god is love
love is blind
ray charles is blind
ray charles is god
IIRC Nedra is 26. If she did graduate work/took time off/worked her way through college she could be only a couple of years out of the ivory tower. Many people I know still live at home at that age. This also seems to be her first year doing major AP wire pieces.
That doesn't mean she gets a free pass, hammer her if she's biased, but it also doesn't mean she's a Hannity or Coulter or Safire .... yet.
She needs to cut down on the number of times she uses "but" in an article but then it wouldn't be Nedra.
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