Thursday, June 24, 2010

Conservative Media Follies

John Cole (BJ): Meanwhile, At alt.fantasy.wargamer.redstate

A real gem:

While the narrative might veer toward suggesting this is MacArthur-esque, the MacArthur here (the pompous, overconfident, know-it-all that won’t listen to his closest advisors) is Commander-In-Chief Barack “I have no clue what I’m doing but I’ll be damned if I’ll allow myself to be criticized by underlings” Obama…

That’s just flat-out word salad.

Meanwhile, Jeff Emanuel, last seen creating his own reality in the Somali pirate situation, offers this up:

In Obama’s skin-deep understanding of policy, 30k troops + Petraeus = Automatic Victory in Unwinnable War Or, “Barack Obama wants to be George W. Bush so badly he can hardly stand it”

That’s the title. It goes downhill from there.

We have to be approaching the wingnut event horizon, because now they’re just sputtering and throwing words around and I can’t even make enough sense of the gibberish to mock it. I’m also reasonably sure they both just forgot to make a Hitler reference. This time.

Aravosis (AB): FOX News' tipping point

From Eric Boehlert:

So the stimulus bill was evil and un-American. Bailing out GM and Chrysler was evil and un-American. Passing health care reform, of course, was evil and un-America.

But securing $20 billion from BP to pay for the cleanup and to compensate working Americans for the damage done to their livelihoods. That was evil and un-American?

According to Fox News it was.

And with that audacious claim, I'm wondering if Fox News isn't pressing up very closely to its tipping point; to the moment where Fox News reveals how certifiably insane it is by rushing to BP's defense, and just how distant its programming is from the American mainstream.

I don't mean it's the tipping point in terms of there being some sort of collective realization within Fox News that its signature form of partisan Obama hatred has jumped about 19 different sets of tracks and its incessant campaign of smears and lies makes a mockery out of the news business, as well as does real damage to democracy. (I'm pretty sure everyone at Fox News already knows that.)

I'm referring instead to a collective realization among people outside Fox News and the GOP Noise Machine that there's something fundamentally wrong with a so-called news organization siding with BP after what the oil giant has done to the Gulf of Mexico and the reckless, cavalier way it has ruined the livelihoods of countless of residents.

That there's something just plain wrong and illogical in being so robotically ant-Obama that the Fox News team would consciously side with today's version of Public Enemy No. 1 and insist, with complete conviction, that it's the president of the United States who's to blame for the big oil disaster, and it's the president of the United States who should be attacked, smeared, and ridiculed for getting BP to set aside $20 billion in damages.
Anne Laurie (BJ): The Atlantic Has Found Its Perfect Idiot

Remember a couple weeks back, when I linked to Ken Layne’s Wonkette post about The Atlantic’s search for “29 journalists and an idiot”? You know, the ad looking for “individuals made for – naturally wired for – original insight, original frames for comment on the large, national issues. Economist rigor; Tom Friedman insight.?

Well, Marc Ambinder, who really should know better, is thrilled to announce that they’ve hired Karl Rove’s second-favorite fluffer, Ron Fournier:

“Ron will be the first editor responsible for all of the editorial product of the National Journal publications including the National Journal magazine, nationaljournal.com, CongressDaily, The Hotline, the Almanac of American Politics and Global Security Newswire.

Though we met only three years ago, Ron’s name has been whispered to me since my first days in Washington journalism. With genuine admiration, some of our most-talented colleagues have talked about Ron as among that small handful of the finest political reporters and editors in generations of Washington reporting. His particular gifts, unceasing focus on breaking news and original political analysis, are the first-among-equal disciplines we need to advance within our publications…”

I’ve tried to believe that Mr. Ambinder is merely practicing an unusually dry form of tongue-firmly-in-cheek-fu, but reading him suck up to someone who took such pride in sucking up to the Turdblossom is one tonguebath too far.

From Media Matters’ 2008 column, “The AP has a Ron Fournier problem”:

... [W]hile investigators for the House Oversight Committee were looking into the 2004 death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former NFL player whose story was promoted by the White House before it was revealed that he had been killed by friendly fire, they discovered that top political aide Karl Rove had exchanged emails with the Associated Press’ Ron Fournier on the day the news of Tillman’s death broke.

In one email, Rove asked, “How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?” Fournier responded: “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.”

That sign-off, which seemed to indicate an allegiance between the two men, raised hackles all over the Internet. That kind of correspondence (“Keep up the fight”) between a reporter and a partisan White House aide during a campaign year lands way outside the boundaries of acceptable newsroom practices…

Fournier was declaring sides. That was the implication of Fournier’s note: “Karl, you might think the media are liberal, but you can trust me. And give me access and return my emails. Because I’m on your side.”

The Fournier revelation came as no surprise to anyone who has read his recent campaign work, which has routinely been caustic and dismissive of Democratic contenders. In two “Analysis” pieces and a column, Fournier questioned whether John Edwards was a “phony,” announced the Clintons suffered from “utter self-absorption,” and claimed that Barack Obama was “bordering on arrogance.” That’s the right of a pundit. But at the same time, Fournier avoided raising any doubts about Sen. John McCain, and in fact rushed to his aid in print during the senator’s time of campaign need…

Just in case this isn’t perfectly obvious, just in case people might be wondering if it’s common for objective political reporters to email partisan operatives off the record and behind the scenes, urging them to “keep up the fight,” the answer is a resounding no. Because it violates the basic journalistic guideline of maintaining neutrality. Especially at the AP, that kind of correspondence should be considered breathtakingly inappropriate.

Read the whole Media Matters article, and remember: “Economist rigor; Tom Friedman insight.” Republican Ratfvcking, no extra charge.

But I’ll bet Fournier is a master at pairing exquisite canapes with just the right vintage, which is all that the Media Village Idiots really care about, after all.

Think Progress: Rep. Louie Gohmert Cites Sowell’s Comparison Of Obama To Hitler On House Floor, Calls Him ‘Brilliant’

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) drew a comparison between President Obama and Hitler in a speech on the House floor last night that quoted a recent op-ed by conservative columnist Thomas Sowell. In his op-ed, Sowell argued that Obama’s call for BP to set up an escrow account to help oil spill victims in the Gulf was a sign that “American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes.”

Gohmert praised Sowell as a “brilliant man” and used his words to warn that there are “useful idiots” who want President Obama to be a dictator:

There’s a brilliant man named Thomas Sowell. And, um, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I sure would have voted for Thomas Sowell. This man, well, his article says quite a lot. His editorial, um, says here — and it’s just been posted this week — but it says, “When Adolph Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920’s” — and I’m quoting from Thomas Sowell in his editorial:

‘leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. ‘Useful idiots’ was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.’

And this isn’t in the article — this is my comment — but we do have useful idiots today, who are heard to say, ‘Wow, what we really need is for the president to be a dictator for a little while.’ They know not what they say.

Gohmert then read another section of Sowell’s editorial that claimed that Obama’s push for the BP escrow fund violated the Constitution. “Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation?” read Gohmert. “Nowhere.” Watch it:

This is not the first time Gohmert has made radical, sensational claims. For instance, in 2009, he said that Democrats want another terrorist attack in order to pass a jobs bill. It’s also not new for someone on the right to equate the Obama administration with Hitler’s Germany. (HT: Political Correction)

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