Shocker In Ohio

From a local NPR affiliate:



Listening to this, I got the feeling that I was hearing the famous Left-Leaning Bias that 'conservatives' are always carping about.  But when I listen to the national shows on NPR (eg: All Things Considered), there's nothing even approaching this.  The Repubs have done such a thorough job of brow-beating CPB, nobody has the balls to say anything bold on the air. All we ever get is the notion that every side of every issue is perfectly valid, and oh yeah - "both sides do it".

Am I to understand that some random 3rd string nobody on public radio in Ohio is actually The Liberal Media?  And how long before the anti-media harpies swoop in to pluck out his eyes?

Let Herman Be Herman

Cain has spent some time trying to defend having 2 or 3 different stances on the abortion rights issue over the last coupla weeks. So Bob Schieffer brings him on CBS's version of the Sunday morning Wave-Your-Dick-At-America show, and plays at being a real journalist by pinning Cain down on his abortion position. And Cain nails himself to the Pro-Lifers' cross like a dutiful little Repub who feels the need to pander to the crazies, and ol' Bob just smiles and nods 'cuz that's all according to the script. But then Cain goes on to make the usual ridiculous assertions about Planned Parenthood, and about how Margaret Sanger's real intention was to launch a genocide against black people. Schieffer "challenges" him for proof, and Cain pulls the standard malarkey out of his ass - "If you look at the history..." And ol' Bob just smiles and nods - way to get tough there, Bob.


So fast forward to the question of that goofy campaign ad. Schieffer asks a coupla puffball questions, and then we get to the real meat of the story - smoking. And now ol' Bob is on the attack 'cuz suddenly it's not about some esoteric nonsense of a political party fucking half the US population out of their rights; it's all about Bob and how Bob survived a bout with a smoking-related cancer; and how Bob feels so strongly that smoking ain't cool. Jesus H Fucking Schwartz.

Koch Bros

My main question is always something like: Why do I have to go to Al-Jazeera to get this perspective?

--or--

Where the fuck is this Left-leaning Mainstream American Media we keep hearing about?

Occupy Dylan Ratigan

Here's an old-ish rant from a Dylan Ratigan show that aired a few months ago.  I dunno if this is really what it's all about, but it's pretty close.  The corrosive influence of money has to be addressed.   And I love the passion - reminds me of what I get criticized for all the time.  I kinda like the overly dramatic soundtrack too.

Yay James Fallows

From The Atlantic:

'Enabler' problem: The reluctance of the mainstream media to call this what it is, and instead to talk about "partisanship" and "logjam" and "dysfunction." Yes, those are the results. But the cause is intentional, and it comes overwhelmingly from one side.

I tend to read Fallows as a "goodguy conservative".  ie: He has a point of view that's generally "more right-of-center" than mine, but he understands (and has begun insisting) that policies have to be in line with facts and not ideology.

I think I see many more signs that a real shift could be taking place.

Mainstream

Has anyone ever heard either Roger Ailes or Rush Limbaugh say that their organizations present a general viewpoint that ISN'T widely-held?  Don't they at least intimate that their political bent is in agreement with a big majority of the American people?

How do these bozos get away with bitchin' about "the mainstream media" when they ARE the mainstream media?

Caption Contest

1) "Bachmann reveals truth about what it takes to get a Republican nomination."

2) "And now, my impression of my husband - the girls at the club love this one."

Michelle And The Debt Ceiling

Michelle Bachmann says she has a titanium spine.  Yeah - that and a reinforced concrete skull.

btw: Bill O'Reilly snickers at a Republican populist in this clip. Did anybody else just feel the earth shift on its axis?

Isn't It Interesting?

The biggest deal in the last 20 years of Rupert Murdoch's media empire (his attempt to buy BskyB in the UK) is stalled and may be dead because Murdoch has to prop up the share value of News Corp by accelerating his buy-back program - and of course the reason he has a stock price problem is because he had to shut down his single most profitable daily newspaper in his UK operation because of his suddenly revealed trouble concerning illegal wiretapping (and maybe fraud and obstruction and official bribery too) and gosh - not a single word of any of that is to be found anywhere on foxnews.com or Fox Business or Fox Nation; and there's been no ink all in The Wall Street Journal.

A multi-billion dollar deal that may go in the tank, and a major scandal involving one of the biggest media players in the world - and WSJ... uh...what?  They missed it?  It just slipped by unnoticed?

The good news is that maybe this finally rips the bandaid off and we wake up to what these assholes have been doing to us.

The bad news is that maybe this is how the real collapse starts.

Watch out for what happens in Italy in the next few months. (read this at The Agonist)

Tabloid Politics

Or maybe we could call it Pin-up Politicians; or Political Porn.  Whatever it is, it is not a development that I can call serious.

Here's a look at what Newsweek thinks is journalism.

 

Made In China

(Anticipating the standard response to this revoltin' development): Let's be sure we figure out a way to make "the unions" out to be the bad guys here. We have to remember that no matter what happens; if it's bad and it's something the "Libruls" don't like, then we need to Blame America First. And if it's bad and it's something the PseudoCons don't like, then we Blame Americans.

Whatever it is, we must never be allowed to look past our own biases to see a problem resulting from a policy or a law or a regulation or the lack of regulation that was put in place at least at the behest of a lobbying effort - if not something that was bought and paid for outright as the result of the decisions of some sliver-spoon fuck in the executive suite of some very large and very wealthy corporation.

We must be kept distracted. While we're busy bickering on a level that's really nothing more than Red Team vs Blue Team, these Dons of Corporatopia are free to continue bleeding us dry.

As If Truth Even Existed

There is only Info-tainment in service of a political agenda.  Wherever you think you wanna be on the standard spectrum, you can find a thousand "news" outlets to help you confirm your bias.  There are still some places you can go to get fairly old-school, evenhanded reporting - Christian Science Monitor, McClatchey, AP (kinda), et al - but they're mostly pretty boring.  And there's the problem as I see it.  We've come to see straight up news as boring.  We want spice; a little salsa.  And a really smart guy like Roger Ailes knows exactly how to give it to us.

By Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone

To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late- October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party. As a political consultant, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. "He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo."

Lots of great take-aways in this thing, but I think my favorite is the term "liberal bigots".  It has a great ring to it, and captures the perfect combination of conservative self-loathing, white-bread aggrievement, and guilty projection.

Another one:

Dwell on this for a moment: A “news” network controlled by a GOP operative who had spent decades shaping just such political narratives – including those that helped elect the candidate’s father – declared George W. Bush the victor based on the analysis of a man who had proclaimed himself loyal to Bush over the facts. “Of everything that happened on election night, this was the most important in impact,” Rep. Henry Waxman said at the time. “It immeasurably helped George Bush maintain the idea in people’s minds that he was the man who won the election.”

And the Big One: DumFux News has become the model, so it probably just gets weirder for a good long while.

The Game Of Opposites

"What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals actual uniformity."
--Joseph Goebbels