Tag: FOXnews

Why are you so popular?

Andrew Sullivan is worried about Sarah Palin, perhaps most especially because:

She can electrify a crowd. She has the kind of charisma that appeals to the sub-rational. and she has crafted a Peronist identity – utterly fraudulent, of course – that is political dynamite in a recession with populism roiling everyone and everything.

and yet the payload of that charismatically delivered speech:

was and is pure sophistry – a string of crowd-pleasing slogans with no content whatever, except for an endorsement of a global war on Islam, tax-cuts, populist attacks on Wall Street, a subtle but scary attempt to politicize the military as belonging to one party, cooptation of one religion in America, and, with the exception of nuclear power […] a desire for more carbon energy, not less (as long as it’s developed in the US).

Michael Wolff comes to a similar overall conclusion, but notes:

Now partly what this means is that all the things that make her so compelling are the things that will keep her marginal.

The problem with that is that she is not in any way marginal. The mainstream media reports on her comings and goings to a far greater degree than they do those of, say, Joe Biden or even their beloved St. John McCain. There were 200 credentialed media at this idiotic event, which boasted a total paid conference attendance of ~600. Does Obama pull 200 media credentials when he visits Elyria, OH or some other purely political stump?

And that gets us back to the key problem. The media will simply report her speech. It happened. Here’s what she said. Without context, it’s difficult for the low-information voter to grasp any useful information beyond “they’re reporting it, so they must think it’s important.” Likewise, when Palin appears on MSM shows, they refuse, categorically refuse to ask potentially illuminating questions. Witness this exchange:

WALLACE: Would you say that you’re more knowledgeable about domestic and foreign affairs now than you were two years ago?
PALIN: Well, I would hope so. Yes, I am.

which was followed by this incisive, hard-hitting prober:

WALLACE: I know that three years is an eternity in politics. But how hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?

Keep in mind, Chris Wallace is FOXnews’ investigative arm. Howsabout asking what the Bush Doctrine is/was? Who were the primary “combatants” in the Cold War? Where is China located? Asking “are you improved at…” simply begs the follow-on of “then prove it.” But, of course, this never happens. She will never be stopped until it starts happening. And Chris Wallace, being home court as he is, would be precisely the person to do it. But he clearly doesn’t care to. And neither does anyone else. So much better to report whatever maunderings have turned up on Palin’s Facebook than to, you know, actually do some work and break what would be a cataclysmic, career-making story in the process. Dog-bites-man, to be sure, but Palin: as dangerously ignorant as ever would sell truckloads of paper.

Even more depressing, though, is Bob Somerby’s entirely accurate summation:

To defeat Palin and Palinism, we’ll actually have to do a hard thing: We’ll actually have to build and promote a winning progressive politics. […] In the place of developing actual politics, [Olberman and these other] well-trained ad salesmen invent inane claims—shriek, clatter, mislead and howl.

Yep.

Stop Digging

Or: Brit Hume comes back for more.

You’d think he’d try to walk back his earlier call for Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity such that he might be saved. Instead, Hume doubles down when Bill O’Reilly asks:

“Was that proselytizing?”

“I don’t think so,” Hume said, before reiterating his comments from Sunday that Woods should convert to Christianity.

Hume said that given Woods problems, he “needs something that Christianity, especially, provides and gives and offers.” That includes, he said, the chance for “redemption and forgiveness.” Later in the segment, Hume said: “I think that Jesus Christ offers Tiger Woods something that Tiger Woods badly needs.”

Here we have the prime anchor of a “news” organization who is basically operating the 700 Club whenever he’s on the air. And but that the rest of the Washington Media villagers assiduously defend FOXnews as a news organization. We haven’t even scratched the surface of the network’s non-editorial content. Assuming we can find any, that is.

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith; he is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger is, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world’.

Brit Hume, broadcasting on FOXnews, and not kidding. Sooner or later one hopes that even most Christians will get tired of this shit.

Simple enough for Joementum

Let’s begin:

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt – $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

That was Lieberman on FOXnews (where else?) this Sunday past. Doubtless just posturing, but let’s take him at his word: the deficit (and, by extension, the debt) is and should be held in absolute primacy to any and all other spending or policy decisions (which, of course, also have direct spending implications). Fair enough. We take that as a first principle.

The current GOP “plan” (in that it’s not even a plan so much as a policy statement) has been scored over the 10-year window as potentially resulting in a reduction of budget deficits by $68 billion while helping 3 million folks get coverage they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The plan passed by the House, on the other hand, extends coverage to 36 million currently uninsured Americans while cutting the deficit by $104 billion over the same 10-year window.

Which of those plans is more deficit neutral, Joe?

Of course, third option is do nothing. Joe himself has pushed this idea. Here’s what that looks like:

By all means, MSM, continue treating Joe Lieberman as a sober, deficits minded fellow only out for what’s best for the country. Let’s not once pause to ask him: Joe, just how does the public option contribute to the deficit?

Your Liberal Media

Gene Lyons absolutely nails the seemingly insane FoxNEWS defense brigade that has materialized in the larger MSM (in response to the Obama administration’s shocking charge that FoxNEWS is little more than the communications arm of the far-right, fringe element of the GOP):

the reality is that celebrity journalists rarely, if ever, get hurt for abusing Democrats. Mistreat a name-brand Republican, however, and …

Well, remember “60 Minutes’” Dan Rather?

Democrats complain; Republicans get even.

Hence “mainstream” political journalists, who cower like beaten dogs for fear of ending up on Fox boss (and Nixon alumnus) Roger Ailes’ own enemies list, haven’t had to fear the Obama White House. Last week’s collective cringe makes it abundantly clear how badly they’d like to keep it that way.

It really is as simple as that. In response to a hopelessly biased hit-piece Democrats may lodge a polite complaint, Republicans harvest your job(s), then move on to destroy your reputation, then move on to your children’s activities, then try to turn you out of your house, then force you to kill and eat your dog. Dan Rather is but one example of the phenomenon, but a powerful one. Lost in the Rather nonsense was the fact that not one of the principles in the affair denied the content of the (possibly forged) memo. Some doubted its authenticity, in terms of it being the actual memo; none doubted that “such a memo” existed.

But, more to the point, the media at large has so internalized the myth of the Liberal Media that they immediately retire to the fainting couch at the slightest whiff of a complaint. They fancy themselves as social liberals, you see. They have a gay friend. Whatever. However, in reality, these celebrity journalists are quite the fiscal conservatives. They own several houses and make multi-million dollar salaries. They make all the right noises, mind you; Tim Russert was just a good-old-boy from Buffalo, as he endlessly reminded us, at least while not summering on Nantucket.

Media Matters and others have begun, begun, to turn the tide here. What was missing for the better part of a decade was any sense of “screaming” from the left. These folks still bristle at the “coarse” language of the internets and just don’t get any technology that happened post-TV: so it’s going to take a while. But, sooner or later and no matter what, this lost generation of self-absorbed Reaganite millionaires in control of our discourse will die or retire. One can only hope that whatever follows serves the industry and the nation in a better, more balanced way.

(via jimray)

Federal Communications Commission Chief Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd wants the FCC to force good white people in positions of power in the broadcast industry to step down to make room for more African-Americans and gays to fill those positions. Do you agree or disagree that this presents a threat to free speech?

Zogby poll question

Beck (and not the good one)

Ben Cohen tosses something out there, so by Cokie’s Law, we’re required to take it up:

Advertisers pulling their brands from Beck’s show is a signal that there are boundaries that cannot be crossed. It is a warning to Fox that their bottom line will be affected if it continues to promote such hateful speech, and that a growing cross section of the public are turning their backs on the Fox brand.

And the bottom line for Murdoch is that he cannot tolerate it for long.

And the problem with this line of reasoning? The various advertisers that have pulled their products have done so from Beck’s program, and/but not from FOXnews as a whole. The bottom-line is just the same; those ads just moved to another time slot, and less-caring ads moved from that other time slot into their place. The Masters has a harder time paying its way than does Glenn Beck, for Christ’s sake. And so, Murdoch, ever conscious of the bottom line without regard to particular policy (here Cohen and I agree) will say: gimme gimme gimme.