Compare/ Contrast

 

October 2016:

 October 2024:

So, "But her emails" (splashed over six columns with a picture) is more newsworthy than "New evidence of Trump's treasonous insurrection involvement" (one column and no picture)?  Shouldn't it be "All the news we see fit to print"?  Shame on them.

(h/t Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis)

Truth And Bias -- Media's Failure Risks Democracy

 

With the stipulation that Democrats often commit political malpractice in their messaging, fail to mount sustained attacks on their right- wing adversaries, and scatter like sheep at the first clap of thunder (what a party!), we have to once again point out the long- term failings of the political media through our proxies this morning.  Margaret Sullivan focuses on "what" the current failure is, while Steve M. focuses on the "why" there's such disproportional, biased coverage of the two presidential candidates.

Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian

... First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.

Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.

That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.

Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025.  [snip]

Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?

“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”

There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.

Nor is there much self-scrutiny or effort to course-correct. Only self-satisfaction and an apparent commitment to more of the same...

Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog 

... [E]ven if you believe that Trump's brain is full of failing neurons rather than right-wing disinformation, it's hard to believe that the media has a categorical bias toward portraying major-party candidates as coherent. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had months of stories in the media questioning the mental fitness of Joe Biden.

What we have instead is a bias toward normalizing Republicans, a process that's usually accompanied by an "othering" of Democrats. This has been going on for decades: Walter Mondale was a gloomy wimp, Michael Dukakis was an effete Ivy League weirdo, Al Gore was a prissy egghead, Hillary Clinton was a cackling ballbuster. Their opponents were Real Americans, fond of country music, pickup trucks, and plain-spoken common sense. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden fought against this narrative and won some victories, but the idea that Republicans are normal and Democrats are peculiar is ingrained in our politics, and allows Republicans to embrace genuinely extreme policies -- on guns, abortion, climate change, taxation, regulation, torture, and many other issues -- while Democrats are the ones branded as out-of-step extremists. It doesn't help that Democrats regularly praise at least some Republicans (a favor that's never returned), or that Democrats regularly proclaim that some fellow party members really are ideologically beyond the pale, something Republicans know will lead to instant banishment if it's attempted in their party.

It's because we're accustomed to all this that our political culture struggles to define Trump as a mentally ill person or (more accurately, I think) as a dangerous radical. But we're used to marginalizing Democrats. In Biden's case, we're marginalizing him based on perceived mental fitness, but we nearly always do this to Democrats in some way or another, unless, like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, they're very good at fighting back. 

The key to this is being better at fighting back, not only at MAGAt Republicans but at their enablers in the media.  It seems every election cycle we have those same two opponents, and every proceeding election cycle the stakes get even higher.  We can't expect or rely on these conditions to change;  we can only do everything we can to win in every election until Christosfascist Republicanism in America is beaten back in our culture and politics.

BONUS:  Seconded --

The news seems to forget everything Trump says a day or so after he says them. Could the media be in cognitive decline? I am calling for them to step down.

— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) July 10, 2024

 

 

Frittering Away American Democracy, One Tweet At A Time (UPDATED)

Many media outlets appear to have learned nothing from how Putin puppet Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump used them to amplify his rancid messaging in 2016, or perhaps they don't give a damn:

Major media outlets failed to rebut President Donald Trump's misinformation 65% of the time in their tweets about his false or misleading comments, according to a Media Matters review. That means the outlets amplified Trump's misinformation more than 400 times over the three-week period of the study -- a rate of 19 per day.

The data shows that news outlets are still failing to grapple with a major problem that media critics highlighted during the Trump transition: When journalists apply their traditional method of crafting headlines, tweets, and other social media posts to Trump, they end up passively spreading misinformation by uncritically repeating his falsehoods.

The continuing passivity of many major media -- whose truth- telling is supposed to be one of democracy's guardians against a would- be autocrat like Trump -- in clearly disputing Trump's Niagara of lies signals that the run- up to the 2020 election will be marked by the same both siderism and false equivalencies that gave us our "young, vibrant" presnut.

The worst offenders?  The Hill, with 3.25 million Twitter followers, which passes along Trump lies and misinformation without rebuttal or context 88 percent of the time;  the main Twitter feed for ABC News, with 14.3 million followers, failing to dispute Trump 74 percent of the time;  CBS News, with 6.71 million followers, failing to dispute 87 percent of the time; and NBC News, with 6.52 million followers, failing to dispute 52 percent of the time.  MSNBC?  Even the "librul" cable network's Twitter, with 2.41 million followers, failed to dispute 55 percent of the time.  With friends like them...

Among the better media:  the Washington Post Twitter feed, which failed to dispute only 11 percent of the time.

Not mentioned in the article was the New York Times, but we can offer some anecdotal evidence from the past week that would suggest placing them squarely in the offender camp:

"Instead of calling Trump’s lie a lie, the Times used the euphemism 'revived an inaccurate refrain' in a tweet that was widely mocked." https://t.co/6S5AFjVqXC Via @dangillmor

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) April 29, 2019

Then we have perhaps the most dogged flogger of the "Hillary's emails!" nothingburger inserting a phony Trump "spying" narrative in a tweet about why the FBI was alarmed at the Trump campaign's ties with Russia:

NEW: The decision to aim a US gov't investigator at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the FBI during the '16 election and gives ammunition to Trump who claims the FBI spied on his campaign. w/@adamgoldmanNYT @MarkMazzettiNYT https://t.co/13n4mqjJXT

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) May 2, 2019

These smug corporate media and their jaded "journalists" are the same ones Masha Gessen warned about, those that choose to fall in line to preserve their access.  The difference is that now we've seen the damage they've done, and they're being called out more forcefully and systemically.  Whether that's enough or not remains to be seen. But as Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it" -- and he didn't say it on Twitter.

UPDATE:  Schmidt's tweet/ story pleased a certain "young, vibrant person." Mission accomplished: access protected.

Finally, Mainstream Media is getting involved - too “hot” to avoid. Pulitzer Prize anyone? The New York Times, on front page (finally), “Details effort to spy on Trump Campaign.” @foxandfriends  This is bigger than WATERGATE, but the reverse!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2019

Am The Media Learning? (Part Infinity)

We linked to some articles on Monday that expressed concern over many in the media's focus on trivialities and tropes in covering the nascent Democratic candidacies.  Here are two more writers who caution that we may be seeing the beginnings of a replay of the disastrous coverage of the 2016 election, and a suggestion for the media to correct its style of campaign coverage.

Brendan Nyhan focuses in on "chickengate," a perfectly (to mix metaphors) nothingburger incident involving Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, as a prime example of the brainless "authenticity narrative" style of political reporting:

The incident, just the latest entry in the growing pantheon of political food gaffes, reveals how the media too often covers presidential candidates on the trail. With most candidates’ speeches and rallies generating relatively few headline-worthy sound bites, reporters and commentators often instead turn their focus to theater critic–style assessments of a candidate’s strategy and campaign skills. In its most dangerous form, this form of coverage centers on manufactured narratives about a candidate’s personality. 

These narratives often center on whether the candidate is “authentic” — a media construction that ignores the reality that all candidate behavior is strategic. Bizarrely, many reporters appear to believe they can determine candidates’ inner beliefs by observing their behavior in the artificial, high-stakes world of presidential campaigning. Those candidates who are less skilled in campaign trail rituals are often skewered as inauthentic, especially if their failures seem to reflect a character flaw... (our emphasis)

Nyhan then references how such reporting came to define John Kerry (and, we might add, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton).  That worked out well for America, didn't it?

Will Bunch identifies some of the egregious behavior and has a suggestion, based on an argument forwarded by media maven Jay Rosen:

There’s still nearly a year before the Iowa caucuses — plenty of time for political scribes and their newsroom bosses to change their ways, and there’s no shortage of good ideas. Jay Rosen, the New York University professor and media critic, has argued the answer isn’t exactly “more issues coverage,” which has become such an eat-your-broccoli chore that it’s usually done poorly. Instead, Rosen has called for newsrooms to canvass their communities to develop “a citizens’ agenda” of what voters actually want to know about the candidates — and then deploy their resources accordingly. 

That’s a great idea. It’s a lot easier to focus on what we know journalists shouldn’t be doing — “horse race” reporting and polls, turning one-day stories into one-year scandals, and of course “the chicken thing” — than what we should be doing. But I think it’s critical to remember that good coverage is more than just “where do the candidates stand on climate change” (which is still important, though) but also telling readers what would this woman or man be like as president. Because we need to do better than Tweety McTweetface.  (our emphasis)

This upcoming election is too important to trivialize candidates and issues, and to offer false equivalencies and "both sides" narratives.  Journalists covering the campaigns need to do a better job than they did in 2016.  They'd be truer to their profession, and they might just help save what's left of American democracy.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Jay Bookman names some names in his op/ ed about who shouldn't be the Democratic standard bearer in 2020.  Here's his rationale:

Whatever else it will say about him, history will see Donald Trump as a marker in time that divides what came before him from what will come after him. He is a ridiculous figure, especially as president, but the fact that he was elected anyway demonstrates the bankruptcy of that previous era and the repudiation of an approach to politics that had grown stale and unresponsive. [snip] 

Today’s challenges — climate change, unsustainable economic disparity, technological disruption, the rationalization of a dysfunctional health-care system, the restraint and redirection of nationalist passions, the growing despair and addiction in those parts of America left behind by change — these are the troubles that must now be addressed. Voters will want and deserve fresh voices and insight into tackling them.

We're willing to let the year play out a bit more before we start crossing people off the list. (Speaking of lists, Vox has one on who's running, or expected to run, for President here.)

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog writes about the media's propensity for taking discrete troubles of various Democrats and blowing them up into a larger meme, and contrasts it with their treatment of the news that universe- class hypocrite Donald "Rump" Trump has been employing undocumented immigrants at his Bedminster, NJ, golf club for decades:

After every bad story involving a Democrat, the media stokes the expectation of a second-order effect: Not only is Elizabeth Warren expected to be embarrassed about a decades-old form on which she called herself a Native American, she now should expect to lose credibility when talking about the disproportionate power of the wealthy, which is a completely unrelated subject. Not only is a racist photo of Ralph Northam a mark of shame for the governor, it's expected to be toxic for everyone in the Democratic Party for the next 21 months, until Election Day 2020. 

But Trump? As far as I can determine, not even Ann Coulter has called him on the hiring at Bedminster. Hey, he's a hypocrite -- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It's okay if you're a Republican.

It's the media's broader, updated version of "but her emails!"  Steve has another piece on this general topic here that's also worth a read.

Paul Waldman picks up on the theme of the media focusing on building narratives ("stories") that distract from what's really important to know about a candidate's campaign:

...[W]e get consumed with "issues" like that one that seem to exist only within the four corners of the campaign, not because we think they're actually meaningful or revealing but because we assume they'll have an effect on voters. Meanwhile we completely forget that we're trying to figure out who would be the best president. [snip]

... Once these "issues" take hold with reporters, they use them to frame what that candidate does from that point forward. "Still reeling from controversy over her racial identity, Elizabeth Warren announced today." "Trying to refocus attention away from the allegation that she mistreated her staff, Amy Klobuchar traveled to Iowa." Nothing they say or do can change it, yet everything they say or do is described as an attempt to distract from it. 

The project of figuring out who candidates "really" are (as opposed to who they'd like us to think they are) is a perfectly worthy one, and if there's one lesson we should have learned it's that as president they're the same people they were before. Bill Clinton cheated on his wife before he was president, and while he was president. George W. Bush lied a lot about policy while he was a candidate, and did the same as president. Donald Trump was a corrupt liar his whole life, and still is. 

The key, though, is exploring the connection: Here's who the candidate has been and is now, and this is why it would be important to their presidency. That's the part so many reporters seem to forget about once politicians start trudging through Iowa. But if there's good news, it's this: It's not too late for coverage of the campaign to get better. Those of us in the media just have to decide to do something different.

We keep seeing this movie over and over, to the detriment of our democracy.  The media seems incapable of self- correction.  Sustained, assertive push back from us is the main weapon in our arsenal.

Keeping with the media, Newscorpse reports the prime time shitshows on Fox "News" are continuing to shed audience and advertisers, with implications for further, future revenue decline:

... With MSNBC taking the number one spot in most of the primetime cable news market, Fox News would have to lower their ad rates because advertisers aren’t going pay a premium for a number two network. And with that change in leadership comes an even bigger problem for Fox. Like every cable channel, Fox News makes most of its profits through licensing fees from cable system operators. They currently have a very lucrative contract that was negotiated at the height of their ratings success. Now that they are no longer the leader, those contracts will decline in value when they are up for renewal. 

All of this is due to Fox’s determination to advance a radical right-wing agenda and to serve as the State TV mouthpiece for Donald Trump. It’s an unsustainable business model as the nation wakes up from its temporary lapse in judgement and rejects Trump and the sycophantic, cult-like GOP that he commandeered.

That story was found over at Infidel 753's link round- up, one of many he regularly collects so the rest of us don't have to do the work of plumbing the internet for interesting items.  Go take a look at what else he's discovered!

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Unless there is powerful push- back, the "mainstream media" is on track to pull another 2016 on us, using false norms and "both sides" asymmetry to bring progressives down to the level of existential threat Donald "Rump" Trump.  Paul Rosenberg has a good read about how Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is the first example out of the box in the 2020 cycle:

This is precisely what’s happening again with Elizabeth Warren. And it will happen with every single Democratic candidate, which is why they ought to have rushed immediately to her defense in solidarity. What’s especially striking is how this is already playing out against a woman who has arguably been Trump’s leading target in the potential 2020 field ever since the 2016 election, precisely because she is his arch-nemesis: a good-government progressive, a woman and a genuine self-made success. 

Warren’s supposed stumbles or difficulties are not actually about anything she has actually done, but rather how the so-called liberal media has been hacked to turn against her. They never effectively recognized or responded to the racist “Pocahontas” slur when Trump first deployed it, or when he doubled down on it, much as they failed to respond to Trump’s tireless promotion of birtherism. Nor did they take much notice of the Boston Globe report that cleared Warren of charges that she used her ancestry claim to gain unfair professional advancement. To top it all off, they badly mischaracterized her follow-up release of her ancestry DNA — a move she clearly saw as routine, following the Globe report. [snip] 

If Warren was guilty of anything, it was failing to recognize how badly the so-called liberal media had been hacked by decades of right-wing ideological warfare. She’s not alone in this, and it can’t be separated from everything else going wrong in America today. It’s exceedingly difficult to grasp just how badly the media’s false balance and other misleading norms have been twisted to produce such high volumes of misleading propaganda, usually without the slightest awareness of what they’re doing. (our emphasis)

Rosenberg goes on to promote Jay Rosen's "citizens agenda" model of campaign journalism, where voters are placed in the role of identifying their issues and forming the questions journalists would be asking candidates, while offering additional thoughts on reforming how elections are covered. (Also: FFS, Anderson Cooper!)

But, it seems, you'll always have Fox "News." Robert Brent Toplin takes the chaotic events of December 20 to illustrate how that Republican media organ responded to the meltdown:

What kind of reporting does the Fox News viewership receive through prime-time reporting and commentary? Consider the lessons viewers learned on Thursday, December 20, 2018, an extraordinary day of troubles for Trump’s presidency. Leading print and television journalists outside of Fox expressed shock that Trump suddenly announced plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and quickly draw down half of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. [snip] 

General Jim Mattis’s decision to resign as Secretary of Defense, also received abundant commentary on December 20. Mattis’s letter of resignation communicated strong disagreement with the direction of U.S. foreign policy. [snip] 

On the home front, President Trump led congressional leaders to believe that a compromise was workable on temporarily funding the government. But Trump suddenly reversed his position, insisting there would be no settlement unless Congress provided $5 billion for a border wall. On December 20 the stock market tanked on this news and other developments. The next day Wall Street closed with its worst week since the financial crisis of 2008. [snip] 

Even though the real “news” on December 20 was about struggles in Congress to keep the government running, Fox’s prime-time programming highlighted stories about an immigrant invasion. Commentators asserted falsely that Democrats advocated “open borders.” They accentuated a report about a violent undocumented immigrant in California. In each program hosts and commentators left viewers with an impression that the big news of the day concerned security threats from aliens. Speakers praised President Trump for his determination to build a wall.

As long as there's a Fox "News" and other right- wing media, their loyal but credulous followers will continue to be gulled into thinking everything is just fine -- except for existence of the damn libs. It seems quaint now to think how, less than two years ago, the ascendance of the sons of Rupert Murdoch at Fox was seen as a moderating turn by suckers in the media =cough= New York Times =cough=.  How's that workin' out for ya?

Paul Krugman compares the tax policies supported by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) with those of the Republican caucus:

Why do Republicans adhere to a tax theory that has no support from nonpartisan economists and is refuted by all available data? Well, ask who benefits from low taxes on the rich, and it’s obvious. 

And because the party’s coffers demand adherence to nonsense economics, the party prefers “economists” who are obvious frauds and can’t even fake their numbers effectively. 

Which brings me back to AOC, and the constant effort to portray her as flaky and ignorant. Well, on the tax issue she’s just saying what good economists say; and she definitely knows more economics than almost everyone in the G.O.P. caucus, not least because she doesn’t “know” things that aren’t true. (our emphasis)

We can't resist Krugman's companion tweets on the subject:

This is a member of Congress who danced in college and recently called for a change in tax policy based on the work of leading economists. Washington considers her a flaky nitwit 2/ pic.twitter.com/7wR4SFcyUz

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2019

Finally, please check out Infidel 753's comprehensive link round- up. If you can't find something there that's funny, thought- provoking, infuriating or surprising, you may want to check your pulse!

Forget Fake News - Here's How "Real" News Isn't Covered

Beyond the miasma that is right- wing "fake news," our elite mainstream, "liberal" media is also enabling the corruption of American democracy by assiduously downplaying the emerging conflicts of interest scandals of neo- fascist con artist Donald "Rump" Trump.  As this tweet points out, the "liberal" New York Effing Times made just such a decision yesterday on what was "important" for its readers to know:

(click on image to enlarge)

Here's the NY Times front page today. That blockbuster about Trump taking business meetings during transition? It ran on page A20. pic.twitter.com/6aFsI1gRKo

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 20, 2016

BONUS:  Notice the lower left column article: Rump son- in- law Jared Kushner is a "steadying hand?"  Do they mean the guy who is "leading the infighting" on the transition, pursuing a vendetta against Gov. Chris "Krispykreme" Christie and his original transition team?  That's one helluva beat- sweetening gambit, intrepid reporters (one whom is Rump- curious and boo- averse Maggie "Miss Manners" Haberman)!  Thus begins the process of members of the elite media selling their souls for access.

Sic transit gloria, America.

UPDATE:  The latest conflict of interest/ shakedown by Trump, Inc., that you won't hear or read about in the "mainstream media."

The Role Of Our Broken Media In Russia's Propaganda Campaign For Trump

Eric Chenoweth, co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, has a must- read op- ed today excoriating the media for its role in catapulting propaganda into politics:

Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy has posed many challenges to U.S. media. In at least one frightening respect, it has failed: News outlets are actively abetting an authoritarian and imperialist foreign power’s attempt to manipulate a U.S. presidential election to aid its favored candidate, Trump, and sanctioning an assault on the individual and civil liberties of all American citizens.

Chenoweth goes through examples of the media abetting Russia in its campaign to undercut destabilize the American political system through its agent, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange,  neo- fascist useful idiot Donald "Rump" Trump, and his network of advisors (past and present) with direct and indirect ties to the Russian government.  This is accomplished through the time- tested approach of floating a story in Republican media outlets, which is then "out there" and fodder for "mainstream" media:

The full fruits of this effort can be seen daily on Fox News and Breitbart, the leading propaganda organs of the Trump campaign. Every offhand remark is turned into an offense by the DNC, Clinton, her husband or her aides. Nothing needs to be proven. It is sufficient for the emails to be published and accepted by other media. 

What we are being introduced to — and what the free media is not defending itself against — is the confabulation of state propaganda and intelligence organs of the Russian government. Russian state television and other state-directed media frequently report actual and fake information all blended together with the intent of promoting fear of the West and of the civilizational collapse that Western democracy supposedly brings. As Post columnist Anne Applebaum has warned, such propaganda is being channeled even through Trump himself (for example, doubting that a Russian missile took down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and asserting that the election of Clinton would mean the start of World War III).

Added to this, of course, is an intelligence agency of the United States Government -- the Federal Bureau of Innuendo Investigation -- which is populated (at least in the New York field office) with Republican partisans and headed by a Director who (at the very least) is subject to political pressure from within and outside the agency to damage Democratic prospects next Tuesday.

History will judge these players harshly, but only if we get a win at the ballot box.  The bigger the better.

Guess Who The Media Hates The Most! (UPDATED)

The media definitely doesn't like someone.  We wonder who:

The biggest news outlets have published more negative stories about Hillary Clinton than any other presidential candidate — including Donald Trump — since January 2015, according to a new analysis of hundreds of thousands of online stories published since last year.

Clinton has not only been hammered by the most negative coverage but the media also wrote the smallest proportion of positive stories about her, reports Crimson Hexagon, a social media software analytics company based out of Boston.

(click on image to enlarge)



No doubt the Rupert "Aargh" Murdoch bullshit empire of Fox "News", the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal contributed heavily to the negative coverage of Clinton;  the hundreds of hate radio outlets have been peddling the same hair afire nonsense as well. (But it's also some ostensibly "liberal" sites, which is why we're finally through with the " -- Busters" at "Salon"* -- buh bye linky).  The faux scandals that the "Republican puke funnel" has been feeding to the willing corporate media for the last year (Benghazi! e-mails! Clinton Foundation!) also have played their part. There's no doubt in our mind that this is the kind of attention Sen. Bernie Sanders would be getting if these outlets thought he would be the Democratic nominee (although it's rather shocking that Bernie already gets roughly the same negative coverage as full- blown neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump!).  WTF!?

In the meantime, it looks like many in the media have fallen for the story line that Gov. John Kasich is (relatively speaking in the Republican Party) a "moderate."

 Yeah, right.

"Moderate."

*UPDATE:  Wonkette is fed up with "liberal" Salon, too. 

Feel Us Bern

The usual front- page anti- Clinton agitprop at the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle is finding some "Bernie or bust" nitwits in a place where, for Koch's sake, they should know better:

Would Teresa VanDoorn, 44, a homemaker who had become a familiar face at the Sanders office, support Clinton if she became the Democratic presidential nominee?

“No,” VanDoorn said. “Voting for Hillary would be approving of the status quo and establishment — and I don’t approve of that. I would write Bernie’s name in. I consider Hillary equal to the GOP candidates, to be frank.”

First of all, Oh.  My.  God.

The intrepid Republican moles reporters cherry pick interview a few more thumb- sucking Cheeseheads who, after years of reactionary Republican rule in their own state, still apparently can't tell the difference between a Democrat and neo- fascist blowhard Donald "Rump" Trump or a smarmy theocrat like "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz!  Do we believe these are your typical Bernie Sanders supporters?  Let's hope not, although some polling is showing upwards of a third of nominal Sanders supporters wouldn't vote for Clinton if she wins the nomination.  Twenty- five years of unrelenting right- wing attacks on the Clintons have clearly made it into the "thought" process of a not- insignificant number of people calling themselves "progressives."

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog takes aim at those who don't believe there's a difference between someone like Hillary Clinton and someone like "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz:

... If you seriously believe that politics is divided into "relentlessly progressive" and "not relentlessly progressive," and that all "not relentlessly progressive" governments are alike, you apparently have overlooked the category of reactionary governments, such as GOP-dominated Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, and Georgia.

I understand why a lot of people loathe Hillary Clinton. But she is not going to sign a national right-to-work law or a national 20-week abortion ban. She's not going to put justices on the Supreme Court who'll vote to eviscerate labor law and voting rights. No, she's not a flaming lefty. But she's not Ted Cruz.

Also, Paul Krugman would like to have a word with the Sanders campaign:

... [T]he Sanders campaign needs to stop feeding the right-wing disinformation machine. Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC. If Sanders really believes, as he says, that it’s all-important to keep the White House out of Republican hands, he should stop all that – and tell his staff to stop it too.

We've heard nothing comparing to this "Bernie or bust" sentiment from the other side, perhaps as a function of the fact that when you're ahead you don't need to make threats.  We also have to believe that a lot of this talk is in the heat of the campaign, and just like most of the "PUMAs" posturing about Clinton in 2008 eventually returned to the fold, we think the vast majority of Sanders supporters will as well.  To be clear, we would enthusiastically vote for either Sanders or Clinton in the general election.

But, once again and probably not for the last time, we would like to offer this expert opinion on the Democratic candidates from one who should know:

"On our worst day... We are one hundred times better than any Republican candidate" -@BernieSanders #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/SG8msqGHB6

— Mashable News (@MashableNews) February 5, 2016

 BONUS:  More reading here and here.

Worst Year In Washington? Narrative Pundits Like Chris Cillizza

Hunter, at Daily Kos, turns the tables on the "narrative pundits" who come up with lists like "Worst Year in Washington," like, um, say Republican- wired Chris "Lizard" Cillizza.  Cillizza, who thinks covering politics like a horse race is the best use of his time, just dropped his "Worst Year" deuce on us:  it's J.E.B.! and (wait for it) Hillary Clinton (!).  Because... both sides?  In this excerpt, Hunter gives us the short version of Cillizza's opus, then gives us his take on who had the Worst Year in Washington: 

... Short version: She was too snippy in defending herself and in pointing out that her email policy was both accepted practice at the time and legal and that her predecessors had done the same thing for the same reasons. She came off as "angry and legalistic" in her observations that not a damn speck of it was wrong. And this enforced The Narrative, which is the longstanding, decades-old notion that Hillary Clinton is malevolent and hiding something, promoted exclusively by Republicans Who Say So and pundits who Write That Down, and so Hillary Clinton has had the Worst Year in Washington because Republicans keep attacking her and she faces, in the primary, a single formidable opponent.  [snip]

Who had the Worst Year in Washington? I would say any of us who were looking to the press to tell us who was honest, rather than just mulling over which lies were told with the most conviction. Any of us who were looking for a knowledgable free press to winnow through the scandals and tell us which were real and which were invented, or anyone reading a paper who wanted to know if this or that pronouncement from one of our national leaders was accurate, rather than immediately wandering off to a sentence about how some other fellow on the opposing sporting team didn't think highly of it.  (our emphasis)

Amen to all that.

Let this be Exhibit (infinity) of how our puerile corporate media has gone along with and, by their cowardice and abdication of journalistic ethics and responsibility, abetted the tectonic shift of the Republican Party farther and farther to the right and into the swamps of neo- fascism over the past 40- plus years.

Oh, and Chris Cillizza is a douchnozzle.

Hallucinating Washington Post Reporters See Republican "Mainstream Practicality"

Here's the lead paragraph from a front- page story on last night's Republican recitation of talking points "debate" in the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle by Republican- wired "reporters" Philip Rucker and Ed O'Keefe:

The leading Republican presidential candidates clashed sharply over immigration policy, military spending, and other intractable and emotional issues in a debate here Tuesday night, bringing into sharp relief the party’s fault line between rigid conservatism and mainstream practicality.

"Mainstream practicality."  You mean John Kasich and J.E.B.! saying Donald "Rump" Trump should stop talking about building a wall and deporting 11 million immigrants (Translation: "Shhh! Let's get elected first, then we can talk about how to kick them out!")??  We think this so- called "mainstream practicality," which really hasn't existed since the days of Chuck Percy and Nelson Rockefeller, isn't going very far, but these corporate "mainstream media" reporters will continue pushing that meme anyway.

UPDATE:  Here's how "mainstream" those practical Republicans are (click on image to enlarge):

(ABC- Washington Post polling:  Scott Clement)

Worst Thing That Happened To Journalism - Washingon Post Edition

This morning we have another example in the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle of "political analysis" that's skewed Republican.  In the godawful Chris "Lizard" Cillizza's "The Monday Fix" political racing form, Amber "Waves of Grain" Phillips gives us the "Best Thing That Happened To Republicans" last week (no link):

Democrats listed pretty far to the left in their first presidential debate.  The five candidates onstage Tuesday debated the merits of socialism, and each tried to outdo each other on how tough they would be on the gun lobby and big banks... Skewing to one side in a primary is natural part (sic) of the political process, but Democrats are arguably further away from the center on issues such as gun control and welfare spending than at any time in recent memory."

Ignoring the whole issue of what make the "center" so sacred for now,  Ms. Phillips thinks the Democrats are "far to the left" on gun control?!  Apparently unbeknownst to Ms. Phillips, America has shifted under her feet (or she's just been reading GOP/ NRA press releases).  Here's what a poll conducted by GfK Knowledge Networks for researchers at Johns Hopkins University and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2013 has to say:

Majorities of the respondents supported all but 4 of 31 gun policies (see Table 1).  Public support was particularly high for measures prohibiting certain persons from having guns, enhancing background checks, and instituting greater oversight of gun dealers. Even policies banning the sale of military-style semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines were supported by more than 65% of the general public.

Then there's this most recent poll.  That seems to be in line with the Democratic candidates positions on gun control, don't you think? 

When it comes to "welfare spending" it seems it all depends on how questions are asked, who thinks they're entitled to what (white middle class entitlements vs. programs targeted to the blacks poor), perhaps mixed with some confusion about what constitutes government "welfare" ("Get your government hands off my Medicare!"). But, a Pew poll from February 2013 on government spending on the poor shows that 71 percent of Americans want that spending to either stay the same or increase; only 24 percent (likely including Ms. Phillips) want it to decrease. We'd say that represents a consensus that places the Democratic candidates a whole lot closer to the majority opinion in this country than the drown- it- in- the- bathtub nihilist Republicans occupying their presidential clown car bus.

But what are some pesky facts when you're busy constructing a meme?

"Republicans Gone Wild"

There's a timely interview at Bloomberg View with political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, whose 2012 book "It's Even Worse Than It Looks," laid the blame for political dysfunction at the doorstep of the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party.  Since their thesis was contrary to the media's "both sides do it" narrative, it was largely ignored.  Now, with the meltdown of the House crackpot caucus, it's more difficult than ever for the media to ignore the obvious (but, trust us, they will).  Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Mann: This is a Republican Party problem, which has serious implications for Congress as an institution and for American governance more broadly. Republicans are paying the price for having encouraged government-hating candidates to seek office with the expectation that they could undo Obama's 2009-2010 achievements. Their constitutional ignorance and political naiveté was breathtaking. But Republican establishment leaders, who had few policy differences with the new radicals, soon became victims of the forces they helped unleash. Their party reminds us of the nullification forces in the antebellum South. The champions of "The New Nullification," as we refer to it in our book, have left damage and chaos in their wake. More is likely to follow.

In the course of the interview, Mann and Ornstein discuss the "asymmetric polarization" that has resulted in Republicans tacking far to the right, and are asked if the mainstream media would acknowledge that Republicans are "engaged in a unique form of politics that undermines the system itself."

Mann: ... If the coverage of this presidential election campaign is any indicator, the mainstream media is nowhere near accepting the reality of asymmetric polarization.

Well, corporate media will always be more interested in generating dramatic story lines, readership/ viewership and, therefore, revenue, than it is in serving the public interest.  This has produced an asymmetry in the media that has greatly favored Republicans, who have their own Fox "News," print outlets, and networks of hate radio stations to constantly peddle their right- wing talking points, plus an enabling, venal "mainstream media" unwilling to counterbalance Republican lies with the objective truth.

Guess Which Republican Ron Fournier Is Working For Now

The National Journal's resident not- so- crypto- Republican Ron "Leadership!" Fournier once famously sent an email to Bush assministration political "whiz" Karl "Turdblossom" Rove, encouraging Rove to "keep up the fight."  Last February, he gave little brother Bush a thoroughgoing tongue-bath following a speech "J.E.B." made at the Detroit Economic Club.

Yesterday, Fournier writes a blistering piece on recent Republican clown car entrant Mike "Huckster" Huckabee, calling him a, well, "huckster," and a lot more.  (He scores added Republican mole points for getting in some shots of the Clintons, of course.)  We won't be surprised if, in between future salvos at the Clintons and more Bush ass-kissing, Fournier gets in some shots at "J.E.B."'s other Republican rivals -- not that we mind if he does.

We realize we gave it away right at the top when we dropped the names Bush and Rove, but could it be any more obvious that this ostensibly neutral, professional political "analyst" has more than a rooting interest in a particular candidate and a particular party?  (To be fair, Fournier also seems to have a stiffie for Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio, too;  poor man doesn't seem to know to whom to give his heart.)

BONUS:  This kinda bolsters (if it were needed) an observation/ acorn found by Politic-ho "media" blind squirrel Dylan Byers:

[T]he national media have never been more primed to take down Hillary Clinton (and, by the same token, elevate a Republican candidate). Even before she announced her presidential bid, The New York Times alone had published more than 40 articles related to her private email account, spurring other stories across the national print, digital and television media. Since announcing her bid, the national media have spent the bulk of their time investigating potential lines of influence between Clinton Foundation donations/speaking fees and Clinton's actions as secretary of state. The Times, The Washington Post and others even struck deals for early access to anti-Clinton research. (our emphasis)

"Liberal media," our asses.

(Photo:  We're thinking "eight ball, side pocket.")

"Ideology And Investment" - The Cost Of Republican Extremism

(click to enlarge)

(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

We promise to not pair a Tom Toles cartoon with a commentary again, at least for a few days. But Toles must have read Paul Krugman's op/ed in the New York Times on "Ideology and Investment." Here are a few worthy excerpts:

America used to be a country that built for the future. Sometimes the government built directly: Public projects, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, provided the backbone for economic growth. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector, like land grants to spur railroad construction. Either way, there was broad support for spending that would make us richer. 

But nowadays we simply won’t invest, even when the need is obvious and the timing couldn’t be better. And don’t tell me that the problem is “political dysfunction” or some other weasel phrase that diffuses the blame. Our inability to invest doesn’t reflect something wrong with “Washington”; it reflects the destructive ideology that has taken over the Republican Party.  [snip]

Yet this didn’t have to happen. The federal government could easily have provided aid to the states to help them spend — in fact, the stimulus bill included such aid, which was one main reason public investment briefly increased. But once the G.O.P. took control of the House, any chance of more money for infrastructure vanished. Once in a while Republicans would talk about wanting to spend more, but they blocked every Obama administration initiative.

And it’s all about ideology, an overwhelming hostility to government spending of any kind. This hostility began as an attack on social programs, especially those that aid the poor, but over time it has broadened into opposition to any kind of spending, no matter how necessary and no matter what the state of the economy.  (our emphasis)

That so many voters appear unaware of the danger, much less the existence of this destructive Republican ideology is, of course, appalling in 21st Century America.  Never mind the cranks, crackpots, racists and know-nothings that comprise the base of the Republican Party;  they'll vote for anyone -- even diaper-wearing fetishists =cough= Vitter =cough= and adulterers =cough= Sanford =cough= -- if there's an "R" next to their name on a ballot.  No, we mean the disengaged, distracted voter who, like the cat in Bill Maher's bit below, responds to the least substantive, most superficial impulses in deciding whether to vote, and for whom.  And so, the vandals and cynics get elected by a minority of motivated knuckle-draggers in combination with the marginally sentient, and the downward spiral continues.

It's a problem in American democracy that's only made worse by a media that caters to the worst instincts of the average voter.

UPDATE:  Case in point for the last observation - this Joni Ernst "tongue-bath" by the increasingly un-readable national news section of the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle.

The Washington Media Narrative - High Broderism At Work

Paul Krugman ponders why President Obama, despite consequential progress in health care reform, and major steps in financial system reform and climate policy, fails to get the love from the public he most likely deserves.  Hmmm... could it be the media narrative?

Part of the answer may be Mr. Obama’s relatively low approval rating. But this mainly reflects political polarization — strong approval from Democrats but universal opposition from Republicans — which is more a sign of the times than a problem with the president. Anyway, you’re supposed to judge presidents by what they do, not by fickle public opinion.

A larger answer, I’d guess, is Simpson-Bowles syndrome — the belief that good things must come in bipartisan packages, and that fiscal probity is the overriding issue of our times. This syndrome persists among many self-proclaimed centrists even though it’s overwhelmingly clear to anyone who has been paying attention that (a) today’s Republicans simply will not compromise with a Democratic president, and (b) the alleged fiscal crisis was vastly overblown. 

The result of the syndrome’s continuing grip is that Mr. Obama’s big achievements don’t register with much of the Washington establishment: he was supposed to save the budget, not the planet, and somehow he was supposed to bring Republicans along.

A perfect example of this syndrome was on display on the editorial page of the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, a once-reviled bastion of the "liberal media" that is now a disagreeable repository of neo-conservative former Bush Assministration speechwriters, rape trivialists, and assorted right-wing nuts, all mixed with "centrists" like Ruth Marcus.  (This syndrome has been dubbed "Broderism", in recognition of the lifelong work of bipartisanship- for- bipartisanship- sake guru, the late Bezos Bugle writer David "Meh" Broder, who never met a position that couldn't be compromised.)  Here's a paragraph from Marcus' op/ed Saturday, referring to a recent Pew report on the increasing polarization of American politics:

To read the report is to be struck by the pragmatic attitude of the majority of Americans and by their simultaneous abdication of responsibility to the extremes — and, with it, power. This sensible center is willing to compromise; half said they’d be willing to split the difference 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats. 

But the centrist majority isn’t inclined to translate this attitude into action. “On measure after measure — whether primary voting . . . volunteering for or donating to a campaign — the most politically polarized are more actively involved in politics, amplifying the voices that are the least willing to see the parties meet each other halfway,” Pew reported.  (our emphasis)

"This sensible center..."?!?!?  Holy myopia, Batman!  There is a sensible center in American politics today, Ms. Marcus, and it's occupied by... the Democratic Party.  You know, the party that passed the Heritage Foundation's idea of health care reform;  the party that represents the mainstream view on climate change, same-sex marriage, gun violence, minimum wage, equal pay, and so many other issues. The Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party has moved so far to the right that splitting "the difference 50/50" would entail essentially enacting a right-wing agenda after two elections in which that agenda was soundly defeated!  (Some of us would say, if only Democrats had been less centrist and more true to progressive values, we might have had public option health care,  a more robust stimulus, and some banksters serving time behind bars.)  The "sensible center" folks that pollsters are finding may not know it, but they support policies of the Democratic Party far more than those of the Republicans.  They might not like splitting the difference 50/50 if someone (gosh, the media?) were to explain to them exactly what that would mean, or if it was even possible.

This is exactly the Washington establishment syndrome that Krugman was pointing to in his op/ed, and why President Obama gets little credit for big achievements and lots of soulless nitpicking from the likes of the Bezos Bugle and Ms. Marcus.

More Media Malpractice - Sunday Shows Edition

More today on the CBS/ 60 Minutes/ Lara Logan clusterf**k on Benghazi!  Benghazi!!  BENGHAZI!!!  We especially like this summation of why CBS, the great Ed Murrow's flagship, has sunk to its newest low:

CBS is running its own little wingnut grift mill to separate the rubes from their money. Unfortunately the company seems to have forgotten that people still turn to its flagship news program for actual news. This is what happens when you put a bunch of Faux News idiots in charge and they get outside the right-wing media bubble into what the rest of us refer to as “reality.”
Read more at http://wonkette.com/534010/return-of-the-revenge-of-the-bride-of-the-son-of-benghazi-the-sequel-part-eleventy#CKIGOY2zkyReVZh8.99

CBS is running its own little wingnut grift mill to separate the rubes from their money. Unfortunately the company seems to have forgotten that people still turn to its flagship news program for actual news. This is what happens when you put a bunch of Faux News idiots in charge and they get outside the right-wing media bubble into what the rest of us refer to as “reality.”
Read more at http://wonkette.com/534010/return-of-the-revenge-of-the-bride-of-the-son-of-benghazi-the-sequel-part-eleventy#CKIGOY2zkyReVZh8.99

...CBS is running its own little wingnut grift mill [Threshold Editions] to separate the rubes from their money.  Unfortunately the company seems to have forgotten that people still turn to its flagship news program [60 Minutes] for actual news.  This is what happens when you put a bunch of Faux News idiots in charge...

Didn't know ex-Faux News people were in charge at CBS?  We forgot, too.  But it helps explain things at bit better, and why the "nopology" from Lara "Lara Croft" Logan last night was what it was (which, btw, hasn't been received too kindly by media critics).

Over at Press the Meat, Dancin' Dave Gregory was having multiple orgasms tongue-bathing interviewing Gov. Chris "Krispycreme" Christie (R-Savior) and crapping on weak-kneed Defeatocrat Secretary of State Kerry.  The pundit panel over at This Week with George Steponaflagpinopoulos was also busy further inflating (hee-hee) the Governor's persona.  Virtually Speaking summarizes the idiocy:

So Chris Christie is a magical reincarnation of TR, because John Kerry did not make a deal with Iran, it proves he is too trusting, Obama use of Seal Teams, drones, bombs in Libya and threats to strike Syria, show he is reluctant to exercise military power, and if, in the next few weeks, Republicans do not suddenly change their minds and love Obamacare and start to work with the President for the first time, it will wreck the President's credibility and his entire second term. And that's the most ridiculous thing that happened this Sunday.

That's your "liberal media" right there, America.  Sic transit gloria, y'all.

Quotes of the Day - "Liberal" Media Edition

Karl "Turdblossom" Rove dancing partner and host of Press the Meat Dancin' David Gregory gives away the game on The Today Show:

"The President does not particularly like the Washington press corps, and I think that feeling is mutual in a lot of respects."

By contrast, here's Horseface's Gregory's reaction to booking "The Tangerine Man"  (pant=pant "exclusively" !!!) on today's Press the Meat:

"Looking forward to it."  Or, as Rising Hegemon put it, "SLUUUUUUUURRRRRPPPPP!"

Bob Woodward -- Your Sequestration Hack of the Month

Step up and claim your award, once-great Washington Post Kaplan Daily associate editor Bob Woodward!  As Anne Laurie's piece demonstrates (with essential links to Dave Weigel, Brian Beutler  and Ezra Klein), Woodward is accusing the President of "moving the goal posts" in the sequestration confrontation, when in fact nothing of the sort has taken place.  It's pure enabling on the part of wealthy, Rethuglican-wired Beltway media elites like Woodward to draw attention to a dead sapling while ignoring the forest where the crazies live.

BONUS:  Don't miss Steve Benen's take on Woodward's bungling.

BONUS II: This excerpt from Esquire's Charles Pierce sums up the problem:

"Having done its Watergate thing, the Post slipped comfortably back into its place in the respectable D.C. power structure. Woodward went with it, producing periodically weighty doorstops filled with establishment stenography. He's no more a liberal than he is a member of Motley Crue. He's a courtier to all the right people, the scribe to powerful. He's a journalistic Sadducee. He tends the Temple grounds."

(Photo:  Bob Woodward, desperately trying to make amends for bringing down Richard Nixon.)