Please stay on topic. Please don't be asses.
By an odd coincidence, my 14 year old daughter and I were discussing Martin Luther King as I drove her to summer school. I explained to her that central to King's strategy was making the rest of America aware of what went on in the South, and that one of the reasons that worked was because the networks were willing to show the firehoses and the dogs and the cops. "We need another Martin Luther King," she said. I had to break it to her that there could be half a dozen Martin Luther Kings, and we'd probably never know -- the media simply wouldn't cover it today.
Neither of us said very much after that...
But the media IS telling Americans what to think.
They should think that John McCain is a "hero" while Barack Obama is uppity.
Maybe the most important element is that we have a MSM corporately owned. Up through the 70s there was a corporate cultural ethos that you left the news division alone. Then management began to actively involve themselves in the format & orientation of TV news. At the same time, the RW realized they could shape American politcs by tilting what & how the news was presented. Over time, TV news began to tilt right.
Most liberals are not aware that the news is filtered. They still believe that it is fair & balanced. But some strange things have been happening. The very large demonstrations across America against the Iraq War got almost no coverage, union spokesmen never get on the news, nor do hard environmentalists (not the save the baby seal types), nor do critics of capitalism. Sadest of all, the average Democratic elected official has no idea the news is tilted.
Raise Hell!
Martin Luther King has been transofmred by the media into a consensus figure. Back when he was alive he was regarded as a radical by white and black alike.
This has gone right down the memory hole,never to be retrieved.
His now-famous "I Have a Dream" speech didn't get page one when it happened. Page one was reserved for expressions of white America's amazement that the March was not a race riot.
Man, I wish I were there hearing that crew live!
aimai
The quotable Ivins
She slices, she dices, she tosses and gores, but she never, never bores.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Dec. 12, 2000 | On the recent campaign: "It's like having Ted Baxter of the old 'Mary Tyler Moore' show running for president: Gore has Ted's manner, and Bush has his brain." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 10/25/2000)
On George W. Bush: "If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision thing,' wait'll you meet this one." (Progressive, June 1999)
Also Today
Molly Ivins
Balancing humor and passion, the proudly partisan Texas pundit elevates a profession dominated by mediocrity and received ideas.
By David Rubien
Print story
E-mail story
View Salon privately with SafeWeb
On Bill Clinton: "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili." (Introduction to "You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You")
"No one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal." ("You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You")
On George Bush Sr.: "Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short." (Mother Jones, February 1990)
"The next person who refers to David Duke as a populist ought to be Bushururued, as they now say in Japan, meaning to have someone puke in your lap." (Mother Jones, May/June 1992)
On Ronald Reagan: "You have to ignore a lot of stuff in order to laugh about Reagan -- dead babies and such -- but years of practice with the Texas Lege is just what a body needs to get in shape for the concept of Edwin Meese as attorney general. Beer also helps." (Progressive, March 1986)
(Responding to the Reagan warning that "The Red Tide will lap at our very borders.") "These sneaky bastards from Nicaragua -- there's 3 million of 'em down there, there's only 16 million Texans, and they've got us cornered between the Rio Grande and the North Pole." (Progressive, May 1986)
"I have been collecting euphemisms used on television to suggest that our only president is so dumb that if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards." (Progressive, August 1987)
On Texas: "I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram column, March 1, 1992)
On the National Rifle Association: "You can count on the NRA to put on a show that makes King Lear look like a master of understatement. I suspect they're all thwarted thespians: If we could just get them into show business we wouldn't have to listen to them carry on about how freedom is just another word for a .357 Magnum. (Progressive, August 1999)
On Berkeley, Calif.: "If there are hookers in this town, they wear Rockports." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 12, 1997)
On Camille Paglia: "Christ! Get this woman a Valium!" (Mother Jones, 1991)
On Jerry Brown: "Question: What would happen to Brown's face if he smiled? Second question: What would it take to make him smile?" (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 10, 1992)
On H. Ross Perot: "It's hard to envision a seriously short guy who sounds like a Chihuahua as a charismatic threat to democracy, but it is delicious to watch the thrills of horror running through the Establishment at the mere thought." (Time, June 1992)
salon.com
It helps that Krugman isn't part of the "fraternity".
THE INTERNET IS THE NEW THIRD POLITICAL PARTY AND THE BLOGOSPHERE ITS POLITBUREAU. Party politically at the speed of LIFE.
"Prematurely right" is the new "Prematurely anti-fascist".
"It is better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right."
Preach it, brother!
I seem to remember a Jules Pfeiffer cartoon in the wake of the Vietnam War showing someone asking why there were still war resisters in prison when the country as a whole had come to regard the war as wrong. Their crime, came the reply, was "premature morality."
A semi-smart person once wrote: In the Corporate State, corporate media are the State Media.
Wow, you mean Kos didn't use his military training to waterboard Krugman for the crime of being insufficiently deferential to the Anointed One? Or is PK now alright since Kos' own ox was gored?
Harold Ford can kiss my ass.
Great stuff...keep up the good fight, you guys are a treasure.
Harold Ford: a vehicle Tennessee voters can drive with three speeds in reverse, with the same comfort Connecticut voters gain driving a vintage Lieber-mamzer
all due respect to rick perlstein, but the press didn't start to go wrong as a reaction to the riots in Chicago in '68.
Rather, the press corps changed from a gang of blue-collar, low-paid pavement pounders into an elite cadre of college-educated strivers during the civil-rights movement in the early 60s.
Scores, maybe 100s, of ivy leaguers went south after graduation to papers in selma, hattiesburg, montgomery etc etc, to cover the civil-rights strife. It was noble.
they then moved on to jobs on the NY times, the herald tribune and the WaPo.
where they remain to this day, over-privileged from the get-go and very comfortable with the status quo.
Krugman's point about what I'd call 'acceptable contrarianism' is hugely important here.
You can get a byline in a major newspaper for saying that human-generated climate change is a myth, and even if it happens, it'll be good for people. If you want to say 'the age of cheap oil is over and it's going to transform the way we live' -- the Kunstler position, which is no more radical than 'yay global warming!' -- you get people fidgeting and making excuses to talk to someone else.
You can say 'torture's no big deal' in the op-ed page of the Washington Post. You can't say 'let's have some war crimes trials for Bush administration officials'.
Harold Ford and many others need to learn what it's like to live without a Constitution (our current state of affairs, except they don't know it yet). Perhaps the Constitution will "poll better" after that.
Anyone could have figured it out too early. But we live in a culture of Self-Delusion.
As a real estate agent it was clear to me and honest mortgage brokers that stated income and 0% down loans were ridiculously unsafe for the investors and buyers. I believe that most agents made the stated income loan applications fit what was necessary to get the loan. In my opinion Alan Greenspan, with his Ayn Rand hands off attitude toward the loan market and the financial industry, should be tried for treason.
the bottomlessly profound idiocy of the gasbags and Congress over being "unconventionally right" defies belief.
There was nothing unconventional about being against the Iraq war. It was obvious before it started that war was being ginned up out of nothing other than Dick Cheney's political needs and his paranoia.
there was nothing unconventional about suggesting that removing all meaningful regulation from the mortgage lending industry would lead, inevitably, to disaster.
In fact, Phil Gramm was monumentally stupid and irresponsible for spearheading the end of regulation in the mortgage business, as were all of his idiot colleagues.
Any fool could see how nearly everything Bush and his people wanted to do was just plain stupid..or, worse intended to benefit the wealthy few on the fascist right...and screw everyone else with a splintered broom-handle.
Unconventionally right. What a bunch of shit.
I know. I understand Krugman's point. But the assumptions underlying this crap are also crap and should have been rooted out and shit-canned eight years ago.
In 1932 the conventionally wrong gasbags would have said "oh, that Hitler fellow, he's a bit raw, but I'm sure it'll be great to have the trains run on time. And won't it be nice to have all those girly-men Weimar politicos out on their asses? Besides which, don't you just love Goebbels haircut?"
Krugman's argument is correct. It's just that it makes me feel like my head's going to explode.
(you will note, I did not use the word *fuck* even once.)
Dang, I missed Atrios, Digby, Krugman et. al. at 1:30 this afternoon. Went over to here Richard Clark talk about national security.
Some excerpts:
Clark says that believe it or not Gen. Tommie Franks and the administration were too incompetent to capture bin Ladin in Afghanistan back in the fall of 2001.
Clark goes on to say that no one in the military leadership (sans one) had the guts to say no to the Iraq invasion and that the military was not prepared to deal with a counter insurgency.
Also, Clark says both presidential candidates are stumping for a larger military, when we already have the largest on Earth. What for?
Great insights from the former national security guru.
I live in the San Francisco bay area. In our local newspaper we have a conservative columnist, Debra Saunders, who repeatedly wrote fabrications about WMD's inre our invasion of Iraq, and has repeatedly written fabrications denying pollution contributing to global warming, which at first she denied as some sort of science worker scam. She has never recanted on either count, nor have other members of the Chronicle staff called her to the carpet for these lies. This goes beyond opinion; one can be of the opinion that the invasion of Iraq was, oh I don't know, bound to give us a beachhead in the middle east to protect our energy interests there, or one can be of the opinion that the liberal solutions to global warming are not the most cost effective, etc. But lying about facts on the ground and never rectifying or admitting the truth, even after the evidence is available for all to see--should we have a special designation for such commentators: Liars. We should have special pages in our newspapers devoted to lies and urban legends.
where they remain to this day, over-privileged from the get-go and very comfortable with the status quo.
h gibson | 07.18.08 - 4:33 pm | #
Exactly right. Journalism went from being a difficult, demanding job where you (literally) had to get your hands dirty ("ink-stained wretches" and all that) to the powdered, white-collar corporate-track "career" it is today, and how we ended up with ego-inflated, blow-dried teleprompter readers like Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and all the rest. (As always, the trolls over at FOX are something else entirely; carnival barkers maybe, but never anything resembling a journalist).
All the president's men sounded the death knell for responsible, aggressive, "blue-collar" reporting. It made the reporters stars, which they'd only ever been in comic books (with a couple exceptions)...gave 'em position, made 'em fit to be corrupted.
pseudonymous in nc | 07.18.08 - 5:01 pm
Excellent point.
Why can't a "very serious person" tm say anything about war crimes?
I really want to know what you think, you are one of the most astute commenters. I'm trying to figure out the reason.
Is it because they will be attacked by the right-wing media?
What if they had hard evidence? What would be good enough?
"Nattering nabobs of negativism" (meaning the media) was, I believe, written by a young Baltimore County housewife named Peggy Noonan. Pearlstein is right though, that Nixon and Agnew's working the refs was key in the press turning into the useless Confederacy of Dunces they are now.
CitizenE | 07.18.08 - 5:30 pm
Yes, Sanders is a piece of work. But she is a sop to the right-wing people who have been told everyone at the SF Chron are commie liberals and Debra is "Balance" for 500 staffers who are card carrying liberals.
Here is a suggestion. Find out if Debra is an actual employee or just a freelance writer. That makes a difference. See if she has any kind of guidelines that as an employee she has to follow. And see if she is actually following them. So, for example, do the employees have to be factually true? Do they have to avoid plagiarism? Can they accept gifts from outsiders over 100 dollars? Can they work on contracts for a specific political party or person? Did they enforce this person or party for compensation and not disclose that to management?
Then if you can prove THESE things against her you can make an impact.
The people to contact are the HR people, not the managing editors.
Think Al Capone and taxes. If you go after her comment on the editorial page you will get some unthinking liberals defending her "right" to tell lies and some liberals who think that she is harmless or who worry that we will someone 'worse' if she is replaced. The misguided people on the left are a problem that also must be dealt with. Saunders doesn't have the "right" to be paid by the Chronicle. If she violates the Chronicle's policies about gifts or plagiarism that has nothing to do with her right-wing opinions. Even right wing nuts will have to admit that she broke the rules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b...h?v=b80Bsw0UG-
U
Surely you're familiar with the world in which we live.
Any speculations as to which managers were being made uneasy by Krugman's pieces during the run up to the American War in Iraq? Were the owners of the Times nervous or was it the managers they appointed to run the paper?
The low self-esteem problems of the national press are rooted in the fact that the US has been economically circling the drain for many years. The media is looked on by many people the same way that the health care industry is looked at by the same sorts of people, as a safe place to be in while other production/service related fields are foundering and in trouble. And I am not trying to make these people out to be extraordinarily nasty or amoral. It is really just a statement about the condition of our overall economy. When times were better, it was certainly true that journalism was not a particularly desirable field, but a lot of people have caught on that it is a safe one, and that seems to be a rarity today. People think that they can get into certain professions and not have to worry about the vicissitudes of the marketplace. After all, there will always be news, won't there? A lot of cops get into that field for the same reason. Military too. I know it's not polite to say so. Just like there will always be disease, death, and war, too many journalists think of the media as a safe haven, and their corporate overlords are perfectly aware of this fact, and are not shy about making demands on them, and they, being the security-minded sorts of people that they are, they are quick to follow instructions, lest they lose their cushy sinecures.
I used to be a dedicated reader of blog stories about how unfair the media was, especially when it had been documented since 1998, regarding the glee of impeaching and excoriating Clinton.
Over the years I've gotten sick of it, I can't stand it anymore. And I really hate it when I read about strange goofy explanations like "narratives from the 60s" to explain the naked bias of the corporate right wing media. Give me a break. No one who's been watching and reading for these many years really believes that stuff, do they?
And another thing. Journalists shouldn't be called journalists unless they really are. Most of the time they should be referred to as journalistic operators. [To borrow from Wolcott}
"There's something wrong with you if you actually figure this out too early." There's a narrow range of being counter-intuitive. It's acceptable, for example, to say "Bush is actually better on the environment than you think."
Day before yesterday's Premature Anti-Fascists are yesterday's House UnAmerican Activities Committee's prime targets, today's scapegoats for every conceivable ill, and tomorrow's sacrifice to (fauxgressive) political expedience.
Really, how many more times must real liberals be thrown into the sacrificial volcano? Not willing to name any names here, but c'mon, I'm sure as hell no virgin.
Why can't a "very serious person" tm say anything about war crimes?
About war crimes specifically? Because international institutions and jurisdictional models have a long-established bad rap. Because the American model of 'dealing with foreign bad actors' is militaristic.
There's a long-standing argument that extends beyond Very Serious People to the academy that arguing that even granting legitimacy to international elements of the post-WW2 world -- a level playing field -- is to challenge the freedom of action that comes with hegemony, and as such can be framed as borderline anti-American. They'll point to international relations and international law departments in Canada and the UK and elsewhere and say that such things are for weaklings.
Thus, John Bolton is 'respectable' and Noam Chomsky is not. Now, a lot of it's obviously underwritten by the movement's financial structures, which assign bullshit titles for bullshit foundations and bullshit sinecures with bullshit offices. I give you none other than Clifford May.
I know that you focus on a different stratum, Spocko -- the id of the movement, if you like -- but my interest is the 'deep state', the never-elected powerbrokers who look down on the ranters of the press and radio. (Call it Laura Rozen's beat.)
On 'acceptable contrarianism'? in general Journalists are lazy. Editors are lazy. 'Take conventional wisdom and give it a "private vices are public virtues" tweak' is an easy template.
Spocko, i think the reason no "serious person" (tm) can say anything about war crimes is that rhen it would be out there, being said by a serious person, and then somebody'd probably be compelled to actually do something, and then the new president would be in the enormously uncomfortably postion of having to prosecute his predecessor, knowing full well that by doing so e/he opens her/himself to the same sort of post-hoc vindictiveness, no matter how well or ill-deserved.
once the first card falls, it's all over...
"The long night of of human history is drawing at last to its conclusion. Now the air is hushed and the east is streaked with the rosy blush of dawn. Yet in the world we have always known evening grows deeper and the shadows lengthen toward a night that will know no end. One way or another the story of the foolish monkey is nearly forever over. Our destiny is to turn without regret from what has been, to face ourselves, our parents lovers and children, to gather our tool kits, our animals, and the old, old dreams, so that we may move out across the visionary landscape of ever-deeper understanding. Hopefully there, where we have always been most comfortable, most ourselves, we will find glory and triumph in the search for meaning in the endless life of the imagination, at play at last in the fields of an Eden refound."
(And thanks, Spocko. I might string together a few sentences, but you walk the walk.)
I do want to add something: the 'don't criminalize politics' meme is deeply embedded, to the point at which it's become a kneejerk, and translates to 'if you can call it politics, it's can't be criminal'.
I think it's bound up, in part, with the nature of DC, a one-industry town. You really don't see that kind of discomfort at the idea of politicians being crooks from London political writers, who generally have the freedom to spend their non-working hours outside the realm of politics.
(There's a curious class element to British political writing, too: the broadsheet journalists tend to consider the political class somewhat grubby. That cuts both ways, but it generally ensures an adversarial rather than a collegial relationship.)
....and Harold Ford. (who defended the Congressional vote on FISA by basically saying that the Constitution doesn't poll very well.........)..
What a complete prannock. That's like saying the idea of America doesn't poll well.
............ then again, with the high percentage of neanderthals who apparently inhabit the 50 states, perhaps he's on the something.
Ford's still a prannock though.
.....he's on to something.
"How The Media Learned To Bend Over Backwards
Sometimes a headline is so inaccurate that it makes reading what follows impossible. This one was a full 180 degrees out.
Dday, the media don't bend over backward -- they bend forward and grab their ankles.
http://therealnews.com/t/index.p...=74&
jumival=129
Live From Baghdad News Reports from
Real News.
Cool - actual news.
Why bitch at Harold Ford for backing up Obama's vote?
The big question is where in Austin are Digby, and DDay drinking tonight?
What will people do when the house of cards we call civilization falls down? When world war or computer-infrastructure crash combined with worldwide famine caused by ecological breakdown leads to a “Road Warrior” type post-holocaust wreckage? Billions of people struggling from one day to the next to survive…
What will people do? Well, I’ll tell you. To know what’ll happen, first look around at the world as it is now. Look at the predators in our society. The gangsters are just the obvious ones. But look at the others. Look at the fraud spammers who try to get you to send money to them on some pretense; look at the people finding those who are in danger of losing their homes and offering them “a way out” where they take over the deeds, promising to give it back to them later. Then it turns out they’re just scamming them out of their property. Look at the mortgage/home loan finance scams that offer rates that suddenly balloon so they take away your home. Look at the credit card companies that lie to people to get them in debt. Look at the junkmail you get that pretends to be a letter from the government or a cheque and you open it and it’s a scam to sell you something. Look at the con artists and scammers of a thousand varieties. Look at the Shopping Channel. Look at companies like Enron. Look at Union Carbide and what they got away with. Look at the so-called civilized world and all the people who get away with preying on other people and calling it legitimate…
Now picture those same people after civilization falls apart. The usual ways they prey on people are no longer available. The spammers don’t have the internet anymore–it’s gone. The mail is gone. Telemarketers don’t have the phone. Drug dealers can’t get through to their sources any more…so what do they do to get what they want? What do corrupt cops do, afterward? What do slumlords do?
After it all falls apart, the predators come out of their pretense of being legit, come out from under their rocks, and they come after you.
And they kill you. And take what you have. Because now there’s nothing to hold them back…
And then just before you die you’ll see them as they really were, all along.
And then just before you die you’ll see them as they really were, all along.
Anaximander | Homepage | 07.18.08 - 7:46 pm
yup...an' they look jus' like you...
What Krugman was describing is SOP at most corporations these days. I.e. it's ok to be wrong, so long as you followed procedure and didn't rock the boat, but it's not good to be right, even if it improved things, if you didn't follow procedure (or failed to do so in a way that was very politically savvy).
Corporations, like government these days, are set up to fail, because they're so conservative, risk-averse and inflexible, which is why so many of them do (or end up cutting corners or outright breaking the law to stay afloat). To succeed in either, you have to be either incredibly talented and hard-working, or incredibly politically connected and savvy. Which most of the time are mutually exclusive, with most "successful" people in them tending to be of the latter sort.
Krugman still writes for the Times because he's very talented and hard-working, and has a loyal following.
Why bitch at Harold Ford for backing up Obama's vote?
Patsi | 07.18.08 - 7:41 pm | #
Because it sucked.
~
William Safire was a propagandist and Spiro T. was a crook. Both worked to destroy the voice of the protest movement.
Why has it not occurred to our leaders that we will always fight in our defense with everything we have, but that wars of aggression are an entirely different story. Leaders have been trying to manipulate Americans since the Korean War to go to war on command without regard for the reason.
A reason is necessary for a free people; only those who are controlled go to war on command. This "problem" is the reason for glorifying Iraq soldiers. They do not want people to reason why. They want them to do or die. "Do not think, act. We'll have handled the thinking part by the time the people are given the command to fight," they say.
This is the goal of modern leaders. It is the reason for the dumbing down. It is the reason for using propaganda against the people. It is the reason that the Constitution and the rule of law have been abandoned.
They want the people to go to war without question. They demand the right to war with whomever they choose, whenever they choose, and wherever the choose. Freedom, independence, and reason are in the way of the control that they seek.
The change in the American people that they hated about Vietnam was that for the first time a plurality of the people was able to reverse foreign policy. Some government officials consider this a weakeness that must not happen again, but the reality is that it is one of the strengths.
It was not that the soldiers were weak, nor was it the people who protested. From the government's perspective it was its weakness that prevented the people from following like lemmings. It is knowledge of this fact that they have been hiding from Americans and from potential enemies.
When the republic functions in the manner it was designed to do, it is a strength. Due to the arrogant delusions of a few, who want the power of Stalin or Mao over the people, they reveal a lack of faith in America's principles and its people. Their desire for control is the real weakness, not the supposed loss of the war in Vietnam. People around the world perceived the protest movement as an American strength. They did not conceive that America's leaders saw it as a failure. This mistaken perception has been guiding foreign policy since Vietnam.
America did not lose the war in Vietnam, it chose to dump a mistaken foreign policy for a correct one. A smart foreign policy is what is needed in the Middle East, but the fear of the republican leadership is that once again it will not appear to have control over the people. Ego matters more than reason to the leaders and letting the world see that the people remain in conrol rather than a few manipulative creeps puts the poor babies in a terrible mood. Let the rhetoric be damned. America's strength is in its free people, not in the control the leaders have over them.
"America's strength is in its free people, not in the control the leaders have over them.
purpleOnion | 07.18.08 - 8:24 pm
I bet this would go a long way towards explaining why the Bush regime has spent the last nearly eight years dismantling, attacking, undermining, and subverting as much as it possibly could of the structures, institutions and instruments of law and custom to which wor with which the People might apply to restore their popular, democratic sovereignty. They are "traitors" in the deepest sense of the word.
Nelson, despite his victories, wasn't liked much within the RN/British Establishment. Too tactically radical.
Got things done......... just not the right way.
They go beyond politics. "It is better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right."
Ha! It's always about the psychology. Politics and every other human endeavor. Forget that at all our peril.
Ha! It's always about the psychology. Politics and every other human endeavor. Forget that at all our peril.
shep | 07.18.08 - 9:38 pm
Freud's favorite nephew and American amanuensis was the man called the "father of public relations," eddy bernaise, who helped Wilson sell the slaughter of WWI as the 'war to end all wars.'
fuuukin BRILLIANT
pseudonymous in nc and woody.
I'm a big fan of the Radio show Fresh Air. Terry has been booking some GREAT guests and giving great interviews.
Listen to this one.
http://www.npr.org/templates/run...&
view=storyview
People have been using the War Crimes phrase.
Listen to the whole show. It is really interesting.
"Digby dedicated this panel to Molly Ivins, who called for "sustained outrage" on the part of the citizenry against the instruments of power, admonishing the media for its too-cozy respect for authority."
Classy. No better location nor time to pay tribute to Molly Ivins.
Good on you, Digby.
I have an alternative interpretation.
The major media outlets have always been mouthpieces for the elite. What's changed is the values that the elites hold (and therefore the criticism they're willing to see and/or hear), as well as the political economy of the media. Essentially, the range of acceptable criticism has narrowed as the elites have continued to betray every promise they've made to the people and the propaganda has therefore had to bear a more and more tangential relationship with reality. In essence, Lippmann's conception of journalism has always been the dominant one.
I think Harold Ford's comment was to defuse some of Markos's false "peacockery."
He's right: many of the same Blue Dogs Markos supported in 2006 voted WITH Obama and FOR the FISA bill, including Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill.
So, his POINT, was that Obama is closer to Ford & the DLC in his policies than he ever was to Markos.
And that means Markos got played.
Sorry, dday. That's the bottom line.
It is MARKOS who has egg on his face, when all is said and done.
May I just offer my complements to the contributors to this comment section, especially this evening? Each argument and statement is equal if not more thought provoking than the next. All I can personally conclude is that our nation is absolutely fukked right now and needs a 180 degree adjustment by whatever means are successful.
Thank you all.
(P.S. is 'tokin librul' WGG?)
our msm is disappearing into irrelevance.
Some say "Premature anti-Fascist" was a term of art used by the FBI (Hoover), particularly referring to progressives that went to fight Hitler and Franco in Spain, to denote suspected subversives. This was not a good thing just after WWII closed and many "premature anti-fascists" were blackballed in the McCarthy hysteria.
No wonder MSM 'journalists' would rather be "conventionally wrong than unconventionally right."
Dday, I know many people will sneer at this as irrelevant but, if the food at the hotel is worth commenting on, might you provide some comments about it?
"It is better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right."
Ah, yes the "premature anti-fascist" idea of the post-WWII Red Scare elevated to a working method.
they are really good at just bending over. is that what's known as multitasking .......?
Yup, the MSM is telling us what to think. We're all supposed to follow the messiah. Even The Onion has caught on.
http://www.theonion.com/content/
...efinitive_obama
"There's something wrong with you if you actually figure this out too early."
Odd isn't it? I guess we will have to say we were tricked and go along with the next crazy ride? Then we can speak on the TEEVEE? >:P
Greenwald says toss the bums out and is leading the charge to elect folks that haven't been in DC for decades and we might "MIGHT" get to have real representation (NO BLUE DOGS). And no I am not picking on Nancy Pelosi cuz she’s a lady I am picking on her and the rest cuz they let Bush do what ever he wants STILL!!!
After they “won” both houses!!! They still can’t grow a pair and throw the bums out. They say “Oh we wouldn’t get anything done.” The GOP blocks everything they try to do so why not impeach them? At least it would be DOING SOMETHING!!!
Let the media cover that and cry at how unfair it all is to Sen. McCain!
the US corporate media story is simple: consolidation. When half a dozen corporations own the great majority of the information sources across the board: TV, print, radio, etc. its rather easy to control the information from the top down. And since corporate board are flush with republican cultists its not hard to cement the message:
republican/conservative = good,
democrat/liberal = bad.
there is NOTHING more important to recovering the US from the jaws of the insatiably greedy, despicably lying and deceiving, psychotically hypocritical, criminal cult of republicanism.
.
OOPS, forget the punch line: "there is NOTHING more important to recovering the US from ...criminal cult of republicanism" than breaking up Big Media.
I'll have to read Nixonland but this discussion makes it sound like Perlstein places too much emphasis on the antiwar and civil right movements.
It was Watergate that turned journalism to the right. The GOP felt that Nixon was run out of office for doing nothing worse than Democratic presidents had always done. So they endeavored to make that point with the American people. Carter's presidency was "scandal-plagued." There was the immediate Bert Lance "scandal." Its worth remembering that the NYT was actually asking GOP representatives whether Carter might be impeached over his brother's business dealings with Libya. William Safire began to affix "gate" to every scandal with the stated purpose of diminishing Watergate (Lancegate, Koreagate, etc). Finally, the GOP realized that they needed friendly reporters and made an effort to get them. I've never known whether its coincidence or not but a number of the most odious characters in recent journalism history worked for the conservative Washington Star prior to its demise in 1981.
Correction: they bend over forward. And grab their ankles.
Mary,
I haven't studied Markos in any depth but..doesn't he care about nothing except the fortunes of the Democratic Party Brand anyway, and how people who run under the Democratic Party Brand "succeed"? Since when did Markos care about policy outcomes or anything like that anyway? (Of course I am no expert, as
the ugly orange color and the user-hostile unwieldiness of the dailykos site keep me from reading it).
(P.S. is 'tokin librul' WGG?)
Bad Art | 07.18.08 - 11:32 pm
depends on who's doing the askin'...
/snark
Correction: they bend over forward. And grab their ankles.
easterpig | 07.19.08 - 2:12 pm
It took a full day before somebody shot that turkey. over 24 hours...I was watching...
Well, RU, I haven't gone to the Big Orange for months and months, but I did follow his supporting a lot of Blue Dogs in 2006; Webb and McCaskill were 2 of his favorites.
Markos cares about winning, only. He doesn't follow the candidates' policies as closely as Digby always has....she's much more interested in promoting progressive POLICIES, and not specific "popular" candidates.
There is some truth to both sides, of course, but my point was.....and dday won't like it.....that most of the major candidates Markos urges the progressive community to support have turned out to be center-right, including Obama.
And yet, Markos still peacocks, with nary a moment of self-evaluation or re-consideration of how those "progressives" completely played him. I never see dday or Bowers or any of the others go back and re-evaluate the choices Markos made , or give Digby more credit for better judgement in the long run.
Markos ain't all that. Not anymore.
Let me clarify my point:
If there IS a blogger leader for progressives, it's not Markos anymore.
It's Digby. Hands down.
Markos ain't all that. Not anymore.
Mary | 07.19.08 - 3:57 pm
markos has never been much interested in anything but "Markos," innit?
if he was briefly naive, that passed swiftly, and he soon began to see himself as a 'power.' and he liked it. hell everybody oughta have the chance sometime to be a big fish. it's fun.
does anyone doubt he's angling for a more "official" role in the future?
Let me clarify my point:
If there IS a blogger leader for progressives, it's not Markos anymore.
It's Digby. Hands down.
__
True that. Three Cheers for Digby!!
Too bad the panel is heavy on male viewpoint.
I sometimes poop in my pants when I read these comments.
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