Our Media

Atrios: I Know Nothing Of The Things I Write About

This attitude is really quite incredible.

• Foser: Author of Time's Beck profile digs a deeper hole 
  
  

  Charles Kaiser offers this pitch-perfect description of Time's profile of Glenn Beck: "Von Drehele's piece is so humiliating on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin."
  Kaiser interviewed Von Drehle about the Beck profile, with hilarious results.  Like this, from Kaiser's Full Court Press post:
  

  Von Drehele identified the boycott as "a boon" to Beck's ratings; but he didn't say that it now includes more than sixty corporations, including Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Procter & Gamble. 
  FCP asked Von Dehele if sixty wasn't a rather large number-one perhaps worth mentioning in his piece.  "Well," he replied.  "There are millions of companies."
  

  See, Von Drehle didn't mention the fact that 60 companies are boycotting Beck's show because there are millions of other companies that aren't.  Got it?  Millions of companies that have never advertised on Glenn Beck's show make the fact that 60 companies that used to do so now refuse to meaningless.
  Oh, and Detroit automakers are doing just fine. Sure, they've lost a lot of customers over the years -- but literally billions of people haven't stopped buying their cars!  Bonuses all around!
  Then there's Von Drehle's justification for drawing an equivalence between Beck and Keith Olbermann:
  

  Von Drehele also seems to think that the progressive hosts on MSNBC are really just like the right-wing crazies on Fox.  But when FCP pressed him about that, he admitted that had no basis whatsoever for making any comparison:
  "I haven't seen Keith Olbermann for at least a year and a half," the Time writer said.  "And I've never seen Rachel Maddow.  I have four children and a wife.  I don't sit around watching cable TV.  I don't understand why anybody watches any of these shows.  I know what these opinions are based on: they're based on nothing."
  

  David Von Drehle doesn't watch Olbermann or Maddow, you see, because he already knows their opinions are "based on nothing."  The hypocrisy is jaw-dropping.
  My own take on Time's profile of Glenn Beck is here.  Hint: It isn't positive.
  

  
  

Sully: American Exceptionalism - As Farce

The Washington Post demands that the US put torture of prisoners on the agenda in talks with Iran! No, seriously. No irony. Just pure denialism:

The cases of torture and rape of prisoners courageously documented by opposition presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi should be as worthy of discussion as the non-nuclear subjects that Iran wants to bring up.

Has it occurred to Fred Hiatt that the days in which America could lecture any other country on torture of prisoners are over. Does he believe his own paper's cowardly refusal to call it what it is has any resonance outside the U.S.? Until president Bush takes full responsibility or the architects of the torture program are brought to justice - the US has scant moral or legal standing to challenge any abuse of prisoners in other regimes. Greenwald:

I don't think this is a case of conscious exceptionalism-based double standards.  I think The Washington Post Editors have brains which tell them that the U.S. continues to be the world's leader in human rights, due process, and accountability for abuses, and that it's perfectly natural that we would go around demanding reform from other nations in these areas and do so with moral credibility.  As bizarre as it is, that really seems to be the mental world they occupy.  And they're far from alone there.

This is my formulation of the point:

America is exceptional not because it banished evil, not because Americans are somehow more moral than anyone else, not because its founding somehow changed human nature—but because it recognized the indelibility of human nature and our permanent capacity for evil. It set up a rule of law to guard against such evil. It pitted branches of government against each other and enshrined a free press so that evil could be flushed out and countered even when perpetrated by good men.
The belief that when America tortures, the act is somehow not torture, or that when Americans torture, they are somehow immune from its moral and spiritual cancer, is not an American belief. It is as great a distortion of American exceptionalism as jihadism is of Islam.

Benen: MEMORIES OF A BYGONE ERA..

 This argument comes up from time to time, and it's always frustrating to see. Megan McArdle is the latest, but by no means the first.

I'm reliably informed that the Democrats think they're better off doing this alone than not doing it at all, and so it has to pass. If so, it will be the first time in history that I can think of that a single party passed anything of this size -- certainly not a major new entitlement. Medicare and Social Security both had considerable Republican votes, something I don't see this time around.

About a month ago, Michael Goldfarb made the same argument -- landmark progressive legislation used to get Republican votes. "Maybe President Obama should stop wee-weeing and start trying to get some Republican support for his bill -- as both Johnson and FDR successfully did. Getting a bill like this is not, in fact, always messy," Goldfarb said.
For McArdle and Goldfarb, Republican hostility for reform points to a Democratic failure -- if the health care proposals had more merit, they'd have GOP supporters. After all, just look at all the moderate Republicans who backed Social Security and Medicare.
This is nonsense. Scott Lemieux had a good item on this yesterday.

Noting that Medicare and Social Security had significant Republican support is about is relevant as noting that prior to 1992 it was extremely unusual for a Democrat to win the White House without carrying Mississippi. The rather obvious difference with the current situation and the laws that McArdle cites is that parties have become aligned ideologically. Of course Medicare and Social Security had lots of Republican support: There were lots of northern liberal Republicans in Congress, whose support was often needed to counterbalance the reactionary segregationists in the Democratic caucus. In the current context, conversely, the liberal northern Republican is virtually extinct, and the few remaining ones are 1) subject to much stronger party discipline than was the case in 1937 or 1965, and 2) are more heterodox on social than fiscal matters. So thinking that the same kind of legislative coalition was viable would be silly.

Given how obvious this is, I cringe a little every time I read the complaint from the right. FDR and LBJ governed during a time when moderate and center-left Republicans were still fairly common. Neither Democratic president had trouble finding sensible GOP lawmakers who were anxious to work on progressive policy goals. President Obama, however, is stuck trying to find common ground with a right-wing reactionary party that not only opposes common-sense reform measures, but is running a scorched-earth campaign to destroy his presidency.
Harold Meyerson recently explained, "[B]ipartisanship ain't what it used to be, and for one fundamental reason: Republicans ain't what they used to be. It's true that there was considerable Republican congressional support, back in the day, for Social Security and Medicare. But in the '30s, there were progressive Republicans who stood to the left of the Democrats.... Today, no such Republicans exist."
Nicholas Beaudrot put it this way: "[I]t's simply not meaningful to compare the present circumstances to those faced by Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt when it comes to bipartisanship.... Barack Obama faces partisan polarization not seen since Woodrow Wilson was President."
Stepping back, it's certainly possible that McArdle and Goldfarb are aware of this. Indeed, the talking point, such that it is, likely intends to put some kind of historical asterisk next to health care reform, should it ever pass. Sure, they'll say, Obama and Dems delivered, but it doesn't really count since Republicans voted against it. This is about undermining the historic victory, if it happens -- success isn't success unless it's bipartisan success.
I tend to think voters will know better. For the typical American family, reform would be judged on its efficacy, not on its ability to clear legislative procedural hurdles and satisfy the demands of opponents.