Category Archives: media

CNN blew it. MSNBC got it right.

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POLITICO: And when the dust from Boston Marathon bombing clears, viewers will remember two things about the cable news coverage of this historic event: that John King blew it, and that Pete Williams got it right.

On Wednesday, while CNN was self-destructing after falsely reporting that a suspect has been taken into custody, Williams rightly reported otherwise. Through Thursday, he reported what was known, while resisting the temptation to speculate on what he did not. Then, in the early hours of Friday morning, Williams was among the first to report on the ongoing developments of the search for the suspects — including that one of the suspects was dead and that both suspects were legal residents with foreign military training. [...]

“MSNBC isn’t a news network — they don’t do news,” is something I’ve often heard folks at CNN say.

This week’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated that that is a false argument. MSNBC doesn’t need to “do news,” because they have the resources of NBC — they have Williams, Michael Isikoff, Richard Espositio and Jonathan Dienst, just to name a few. CNN may have more boots on the ground, but in the chaotic 21st century media environment, viewers want quality not quantity.

CPAC2013: Keep F*cking That Chicken

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On Bill Maher’s New Rules segment this week, he talked about a “relatively small group of very shrill people [who are] devoted to — and succeeding at — convincing us that this is a much more conservative and religious nation than it is.”

Maher goes on to explain that CPAC is merely an extension of such devotion:

…

Maher discusses his term Shit Kicker Inflation ”the phenomenon of all things conservative being portrayed as way bigger than they really are” with the following examples:

  • ONE MILLION MOMS: the number of followers that One Million Moms has on Twitter: 2,258. 
  • THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE: just as there aren’t a million moms in One Million Moms, there is no “league” in The Catholic League. It’s one guy with a fax machine.
  • OBAMACARE: as an idea, it’s unpopular. But ask voters about the elements in it, they’re all very popular. It’s like saying “I hate pizza! I love tomato sauce and melted cheese on dough, but pizza? I hate that shit.”
  • GUNS: gun ownership is actually DOWN in this country… way down. And yet the NRA, with just 4 million members, has a stranglehold on the gun policies in a nation of 300 million.
  • CPAC2013: Among the featured speakers at CPAC this year include Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum, Wayne LaPierre, Donald Trump, and Sarah Palin… a virtual who’s who of what the fuck.

Here are some highlights from a few of CPAC’s featured who’s who of WTF:

Sarah Palin: ”We’re not here to rebrand a party [but to] put on a fresh coat of rhetorical paint.” Then she said: “More background checks? Dandy idea, Mr. President. Should’ve started with yours.” Fresh birther paint!

Next, she dazzled the audience with a boob joke followed by heroically (according to crowd reaction?) drinking from a Big Gulp. Wolverines!

“Outside the ballroom afterward, CPAC attendees raved about the stunt. “Hilarious.” “I thought that was awesome.” “I loved that.” One woman I spoke to said the moment “just really symbolized American freedom.” A man named Tomas told me that Palin holding up the Big Gulp “gave a new look to the Statue of Liberty.” Whether or not anyone, including Palin, realized that Mayor Bloomberg’s soda restrictions wouldn’t even have affected Big Gulps is not clear.” – Dan Amira




Freedumb!

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Donald Trump: “Behold, the scene at Donald Trump’s CPAC speech this morning in the main ballroom. Empty seats were everywhere, although it’s not entirely Trump’s fault. He was given an 8:45 a.m. speaking slot, the very first of the day. Many CPAC attendees aren’t even out of bed yet. Still, Trump was invited not because of his conservative bona fides (he’s donated more money over the years to Democrats than to Republicans), but because he’s supposedly a crowd-pleasing draw.”

Pre-speech:

Post-speech:

These empty seats are Totally False.

Photos via ‘flunky’ Dan Amira

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Mitt Romney: “‘It’s up to us to make sure that we learn from our mistakes — and my mistakes,’ Romney told the crowd Friday. [...] Romney’s re-emergence at CPAC comes after months spent almost entirely out of public view. People close to him say he consumes large volumes of news every day on his iPad and on Fox News. He stews as he reads the coverage of the various budget showdowns in Congress, frustrated that the president has pursued what he sees as an aggressively liberal agenda that won’t solve the country’s economic problems.”

So to Mitt Romney, “learning from his mistakes” includes continuing to bravely watch Fox and continuing to bravely label the President’s insistence on a balanced approach to deficit reduction (spending cuts alongside closing loopholes and subsidies for the wealthy) an “aggressively liberal agenda.” Sure. Apparently the only mistakes Mitt made with his CPAC speech were omitting some birther jokes and not drinking from a Big Gulp.

Let’s be honest: the theme “America’s Future: The Next Generation of Conservatives” really doesn’t describe CPAC. This annual gathering of wingnuts could be more efficiently labeled “Keep F*cking That Chicken.”

Related: Keep F*cking That Chicken

God Save Us from the next generation of conservatives.

Our “liberal lamestream” media: the President is golfing!

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I’m constantly amazed by how much our “liberal lamestream” media has reported on President Obama being on another vacation over the weekend, how he’s golfing, he’s on a separate vacation from Michelle and the girls, he’s not working, etc. etc. etc.

Has there been any reporting about how the Republican-led House voted itself ANOTHER week-long break? Or that because they voted themselves another vacation, when they finally return to “work” on Feb. 25 they’ll have exactly FOUR DAYS to work on the Sequester before it goes into effect on March 1? Has there been any kind of reporting by network media on the fact that NOT ONE Democratic member voted for this break? Or that Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats were angry because they wanted to stay and work on a bill to replace the Sequester?

Your tax dollars at work, Teabaggers.

Deconstructing the 5 most ridiculous myths about Barack Obama – The Week

A village in Alaska *finally* regained its Idiot

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Sarah Palin and Fox “news” have agreed to part ways. Did she quit (again?) or was she fired? RealClearPolitics reported that a source close to Palin said she was offered a contract but declined it and a Fox spokesman said, “We wish her the best in her future endeavors.” In other words, Fox wasn’t going to pay her a million a year anymore — or, more likely, any money at all.

So how will this quitty, no job-y thing work out for Sarah? According to her: Great! Opportunities aplenty! For example, she’ll have so much more time to work on her Facebook posts whilst “not retreating” from her “message.”

Political Wire: Although Sarah Palin just lost her platform at Fox News, she tells Breitbart News that she’s been able to “free up opportunities” to “share more broadly” her message. Said Palin: “I was raised to never retreat and to pick battles wisely, and all in due season. When it comes to defending our republic, we haven’t begun to fight! But we delight in those who underestimate us.”

Think Progress briefly reviews the history of Sarah’s “message” which seems to coincide with the Palin family’s aspirations of wealth and fame:

The Palin family as a whole seems to hope for careers in show business, but this is only the latest in a string of failures for them. The TLC show Sarah Palin’s Alaska saw declining ratings and wasn’t renewed for a second season. Bristol Palin’s Lifetime show was yanked from the network for lower viewership, but not before landing $354,348 in tax subsidies from the state of Alaska. Todd Palin was reduced to appearing as one of many celebrities on NBC’s military reality show Stars Earned Stripes.

Maybe now that Fox News has cut ties with Palin, the rest of the television industry will follow suit. Sarah Palin long ago proved she had no real aptitude for governance when she quit her job as governor as Alaska. Her time on Fox proved she didn’t have much spark as a source of news or opinion. And the rest of her family’s efforts suggest that as entertainment, the Palins have nothing to offer us but diminishing returns.

If this isn’t one of longest, most painful ’15 minutes’ that has ever been foisted on the American people, I don’t know what is. Remember to thank John McCain. There is one thing we can know with certainty: morons everywhere will be devastated.

Jon Stewart: we have our first Fox boner alert of 2013

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images: drunkonstevphen

Another day, another bunch of Fox hypocrisy:

Current TV, a fledgling cable network, was bought by the Arab news network Al Jazeera last week. Various Fox News personalities have blasted Al Gore for selling his channel to an allegedly “anti-American” network that was owned by Qatar.

To see what all the fuss was about, Stewart played a clip of a Saudi cleric saying that Jews made matzos with human blood, among other absurdities.

“You know, if that were true you’d think matzos would be more flavorful, but its not,” he joked. “That’s just awful. To air that on Al Jazeera — oh, I’m sorry, that didn’t air on Al Jazeera, that aired on a network called Rotana. That’s my fault, that’s another television station in the Arab world. That one is owned not by Qatar, but by a Saudi prince named Al-Waleed bin Talal and also 20 percent of that is owned by a guy named Rupert Murdoch.”

Stewart noted Rotana had also aired a movie that portrayed American soldiers as “the bad guys,” who massacred Iraqi civilians and sold their organs to Jews.

“I don’t even know what to say. Rupert Murdoch profiting from the airing of that type of anti-American propaganda? Words fail me. Can anyone else jump in?”

The late-night comedian then played a series of clips where Fox News personalities criticized Al Jazeera, but the word “Al Jazeera” was appropriately replaced by “Rotana.”

— Raw Story

[Watch clip on Comedy Central]

The Republican Party: scamming for profit

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“…There are a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on keeping lots of conservatives terrified and ill-informed. The groups that exist to raise funds raise more funds when they endorse the crazier candidate. So even if you don’t particularly care that regular conservative Americans are constantly being scammed by their media apparatus, you should still worry about the influence of the scammers. The fact that there is a lot of money to be made in acting like Michele Bachmann is part of why the House seems poised to blow up the U.S. economy. The fact that conservatives have that much contempt for their own true believers neatly explains how they govern when they actually have power.”

— The conservative movement is still an elaborate moneymaking venture – Alex Pareene – Salon (via)

1947 FBI Memo Re: “It’s A Wonderful Life”

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Yesterday vs. today:

1947 FBI Memo Re: “It’s A Wonderful Life”

With regard to the picture “It’s a Wonderful Life”, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”

Related: 

Feefees hurt in Michigan: Tea Party advocates protest union supporters, get yelled at

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Joe.My.God: “Early this morning Tea Party advocates traded screams with union supporters on the steps of the Michigan Capitol Building.  Breitbart has posted the below video.”


…

WHERE do these plutocracy-supporting, low-wage-jobs-loving, Koch and Walton ass-kissing, shoot-themselves-in-the-foot people come from?

Study: Fox ‘News’ viewers have an IQ that’s 20 points lower than the U.S. National average

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Welp!

Birmingham, Alabama (PRWEB) December 04, 2012 – The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence. Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

The example used to explain similarities between less intelligent animals and less intelligent humans is pretty hilarious:

Lead researcher, P. Nichols, explains, “Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand, may frighten or anger them.” He continues, “Fox News’ content is presented at an elementary school level and plays directly into the fears of the less educated and less intelligent.”

This is exactly how I picture Fox viewers: barking at vacuums. Unfortunately for the rest of us, “The study did not conclude if Fox News contributed to lowering IQ or if it attracts less intelligent humans.”

This is where most of us part ways with the Republican Party

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gifs: sandandglass | [video - keep watching through part 2]

The ‘all for me, none for thee’ philosophy of the GOP — selfish and hypocritical.

The bloom is off the Turdblossom: Fox benches Karl Rove (for now)

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Daily Intel: “According to multiple Fox sources, [Fox News chief Roger Ailes] has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris. Both pundits made several appearances in the days after the election, but their visibility on the network has dropped markedly. Inside Fox News, Morris’s Romney boosterism and reality-denying predictions became a punch line… Multiple sources say that Ailes was angry at Rove’s election-night tantrum when he disputed the network’s call for Obama.”

Jon Stewart on Fox’s “War on Christmas”

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“Since you asked the question, “Am I nuts to think there’s a war on Christmas?” it’s only polite for me to offer you a resounding, “Yes, you’re f*cking nuts.” Because, for whatever annoying local ticky-tac Christmas-abolishing story you and your merry band of persecution-seeking researchers can scour the wires to turn up, the rest of us can’t swing a dead elf without knocking over an inflatable snow globe or a giant blinking candy cane. For god’s sakes! Fox News itself is located in Midtown Manhattan, the epicenter of all that is godless, secular, gay, Jewy, and hellbound. And yet, even here, all around your studio, it looks like Santa’s balls exploded. In the olden days, before the “war on Christmas” the celebration of the birth of Jesus lasted a day, like birthdays do. … There’s a war on Christmas? Has anyone told Thanksgiving? ‘Cause this year, Black Friday, AKA Christmas’ opening bell, got pushed back a day to “Black Thursday.” Or as we used to call it: Thanksgiving. Christmas is so big now it’s eating other holidays.” — Jon Stewart, 12/3/2012


via reallyfoxnews

Don’t blame both sides: the GOP has offered exactly NOTHING to avoid the fiscal cliff

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We’re so used to the Republican Congress doing nothing that now the media and pundits consider that to be something they’re actively “doing.”

Greg Sargent reminds everyone that both sides are not equally to blame in this fiscal cliff / deficit debacle:

There is an actual set of facts here. They are central to understanding the current situation, and belong in every account of what is going wrong:

1) Democrats have offered a comprehensive proposal that meaningfully details the tax hikes they would like to see and contains substantial deficit reduction, but Republican leaders have not offered a comprehensive proposal that meaningfully details the spending cuts they would like to see. And what Republicans have proposed — such as it is — doesn’t contain nearly as much in deficit reduction as the Dem plan does.

2) Many experts believe that substantial deficit reduction simply requires Republicans to drop their opposition to raising tax rates on the rich.

…

Look, this is just a sucker’s game. What Republicans really mean when they demand that Obama “lead” is that they want him to propose bigger concessions up front so Republicans can denounce them as insufficient — which they would do no matter what he proposed — pulling the debate further and further in their direction.

Meanwhile, even as the White House has willingly proposed Medicare cuts, Republicans still refuse to give ground on raising tax rates for the wealthy. (This basic imbalance is not changed, even if you think the White House’s proposed Medicare cuts are insufficient.) So here’s a simple question for any pundit who is tempted to blame both sides equally for the impasse: Can you show us how substantial deficit reduction can be achieved without higher tax rates on the rich? If not, then both sides are not equally to blame.

Sargent adds the following for consideration:

* Why Obama is drawing hard line over tax hikes: It isn’t complicated. Here’s the answer, buried in this morning’s big New York Times analysis of Obama’s “unyielding” stance: In his first four years in office, Mr. Obama has repeatedly offered what he considered compromises on stimulus spending, health care and deficit reduction to Republicans, who either rejected them as inadequate or pocketed them and insisted on more. Republicans argued that Mr. Obama never made serious efforts at compromise and instead lectured them about what they ought to want rather than listening to what they did want.

* Why Republicans refuse to detail the spending cuts they want: Paul Krugman gets to the heart of it: It’s very hard to come up with spending cuts that would seriously reduce the deficit without cutting deeply into very popular programs, which is why Republicans want Dems to go first. The problem, as always, is that cutting spending is popular in the abstract but not when the talk turns to specifics. And this time around, things are different: Because Democrats are the ones with the leverage, they don’t have to acquiesce to the GOP demand that they propose spending cuts first.

* Dems should not get hoodwinked into proposing cuts first: E.J. Dionne makes that argument in his column this morning, and this captures the Republican strategy perfectly:

They seem to hope a deal will be born by way of immaculate conception, with Obama taking ownership of all the hard stuff while they innocently look on.