“I don’t think we [shape perceptions of the Iraq war] . . . but we try.”
–Rupert Murdoch, Australian
The Media is owned by five guys. I know this because I had it explained to me when I was on mushrooms, and I had clarity.
Rupert Murdoch is the boss of those guys. He owns everything. I’m kidding . . . a little. He only controls all the news and information in most of the world. Stuff like the Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, Twentieth Century Fox, Direct TV, Sky TV, Fox News, the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Village Voice (how did that happen?), the Boston Herald, London’s Sunday Times, and most TV in Europe, Asia, and Australia . . . OK, you get the point, right? Because if not, I could list TV Guide, the Sun, five more British national newspapers, most of England’s satellite TV, and oh yeah, he also bought MySpace.
And then he bought the Dow Jones.
Did you read that last part? He bought the Dow Jones. Which (I have to be honest here) I didn’t know you could fucking do! Seriously, you can buy the STOCK MARKET??!! How much money does that guy have?!
I would love to be a fly on the wall in his office. I imagine him sitting in his whale-skin chair, stroking a Persian cat with a diamond collar . . .
Murdoch: I think I want to buy a business.
Lackey: All right sir, which business would you like to purchase?
Murdoch: Hmm . . . ALL of THEM.
Lackey: Wow, ballsy move sir. Well played. Anything else you would like to acquire while I’m at it?
Murdoch: Yes . . . THE ALPHABET!
Lackey: Well, that one is going to cost you.
Murdoch: Well skip “Q,” I don’t need “Q”; it will be quicker that way . . . Wait! I do need “Q”!!
Then, I imagine he presses a button that burns a barrel of oil just for kicks.
You may be asking, “But Jimmy, how does this affect me? What do I care who owns a satellite company, or a newspaper which I don’t read?”
If you get all your information from the Media, and the Media is owned by a handful of dudes who want to go to war, what do you think they’d do?
First thing, scare the shit out of everyone! Do I even need to point this out? Watch any television newscast, and I dare you not to shit your pants, metaphorically and literally. Double dare! Sissy.
If you listen to the Media, Al Qaeda members are ten feet tall and made out of titanium. They’re also a special kind of crazy. A crazy we’ve never seen before! Look out! These Al Qaeda are crazier than Charlie Manson!!
In reality, Al Qaeda is just a bunch of cavemen that had one good day . . . and they had to buy a plane ticket to do it. Seriously, they don’t even own a plane, for fuck’s sake.
“I’m going to blow you up in the name of ALLAH! . . . But I got bumped, and I’m on standby . . . this is so embarrassing.” Makes you almost feel sorry for the little terrorist without Orbitz.
No matter what, though, the Media needs us to feel afraid of the TERROR! They have kept us scared. How scared? Well, think about this: We were so scared in America after 9/11 that you couldn’t make fun of the president anymore. At least I couldn’t, and I used to make fun of Ronald Reagan! And people loved Ronald Reagan! Fuckin’ loved him! Because people love the guy that looks like what a president is supposed to look like, even if he is raping them . . . right in the asshole . . . that they shit out of. People loved him so much they buried him three times (and at none of his funerals did anybody remember to drive a stake through his heart).
So after 9/11, we found ourselves here, in the United States of America, where we treasure our right to lampoon our elected officials. We hold it as sacrosanct as a congressman’s third marriage. We had the biggest moron in the White House since people started saying “moron.” People were so scared they would yell at you for making a joke about the president.
Case in point: Shortly after 9/11, I was doing some George W. Bush jokes at a club in Houston (because I’m brilliant!), and I got the strangest heckle I ever gotten in my career. Out of the darkness, I heard, “Hey, he’s protecting your freedom of speech! Now shut the fuck up!”
Wow, it was weird. For the first time in my life, I was caught in a riddle.
Just a few weeks later, I was in Ft. Lauderdale (again, I am brilliant!). Right in the middle of the same Bush jokes, a guy flips me off with both hands (which I guess he did so I would not mistake this for a casual or pleasant flip-off), and yells, “Fuck you! Go back to your Jew state!”
“Um, dude,” I said, “We’re in Florida. You might want to icksnay on the ew-Jay. They’re all around us.”
The point is, we are sufficiently scared. Now we can be manipulated. Let’s say your government wants to start an illegal war. Maybe invade a country that isn’t a threat, but has shit-loads of oil (and I’m talking metric shit-loads here). However, they can’t just say that is what they are going to do. So, they concoct a story, but they need someone to sell it to you. Bingo! How about the guy who owns most of the media in Australia, Britain, and the U.S.? And those are the three main countries going along with Bush’s brilliant war! And the guy with all the media really wants this war, too! It’s almost like God wanted it this way!
I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence.
So, there you are: scared, with no home, no healthcare, and $5 per gallon gas, and your government has no funds to help you, because it’s all sitting in a hole called Iraq.
That’s how it affects you. Suck it.
BRIAN WILLIAMS, CITIZEN
“I try to play it down the middle, like you do every night. I do it in news; you do it in comedy. We try not to take a side.”
–NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, speaking with Jimmy Fallon
I would suggest that Brian Williams is bold-faced lying in his assertion that he plays it right down the middle. Am I suggesting he has a liberal or conservative bias? No, I’m saying he doesn’t play it down the middle, because he doesn’t play it at all.
Being a stenographer for anybody who can issue a press release or stage a press event is not playing. And by playing, I mean being an actual journalist. Why does the number one newsman in America give credence to the theory that there are two sides to the news? I didn’t know that there were two sides to the truth. Good thing he is not trying to do this “down the middle” corporate tool reporting in England. How do you play it down the middle in a country with three major political parties?
“Play it right down the middle”? I don’t even know what the hell sport he’s referring to where a third party throws a ball between two other competing parties. That analogy is shitty. Would it have been so hard for him to say, “Look, I just show up and read out loud whatever is put in front of me and look good doing it. I honestly don’t know or think hardly anything except that I sure like being famous and stuff.” The reporter for the PennySaver asks more questions than NBC Nightly News does.
“At the end of the day when I clock out, I’m a citizen. I vote—I don’t discuss how I vote—I pay taxes, I have opinions, and I don’t like this brinkmanship about the debt limit of the United States. Real Americans are going to get real hurt if they don’t raise this.”
–Brian Williams on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Oh, so after a long day, Brian takes off his journalist coat, and he’s just an everyday guy who pays taxes and votes—and that’s when he has his private opinions. Does that make sense to anyone else? “Hey, I go to a job where I am given huge amounts of information, but I do not form any critical position regarding that information. But, you know, at the end of the day, I go home, and have all my opinions, but without the information I got at work.”
What the fuck?
Notice how our hero pretends that it is both parties being reckless and unreasonable and then leaves out the pertinent information about a small group of extreme right-wing ideologues being reckless enough to ruin our economy.
Sooooooo, according to Brian Williams, reporting who is responsible for the debt ceiling debate is partisan journalism. But! Not reporting who is responsible for the ongoing debt ceiling debacle is “playing it down the middle.”
Then Brian says, as a private citizen with opinions, he doesn’t like this “brinkmanship,” which is taking the debt ceiling debate right to the last minute. Wait, as a private citizen with opinions, Brian, who do you blame for this? Or am I speaking to Newsman Brian? OK, Newsman Brian, what are the predominate political forces that have caused this crisis, which has not happened since 1917? Oh, turns out neither Brian Williams is useful.
“. . . [if the debt limit isn’t raised] federal employees could stop getting paid, a lot of construction projects would halt, our credit rating would receive real damage, people’s interest rates would go up . . . alternate side of the street parking will be suspended (laughter).”
But, at the last minute, one of the Brian Williams personas (you can’t tell which: “Is it my sister or my daughter? My sister or my daughter? It’s Chinatown, Brian!”) actually delivers some interesting information: the objectively understood consequences of a national default—and then, just before he says something really great, he ends it with a softball joke about parking in New York City. It was creepy. Like he lost control of his passions and actually started to give us an informed perspective, but then realized he had gone too far and covered it with a joke so Jimmy Fallon will continue to like him.
Mr. Williams, I know it makes you cringe to actually report facts that will upset your corporate masters or half the dimwits in your audience . . . but that’s your job, Brian. It is your job TO SIFT THROUGH THE BULLSHIT and tell the people what it MEANS.
Now, I full on expect that one day I’ll be watching the NBC Nightly News, and Brian Williams will give us an actual thorough piece of news with an objective critical analysis, and then will suddenly say, “Oh no, I’ve said too much.” Then a shot will ring out, and just as Brian is sinking below the desk, the broadcast will switch to an emergency lost episode of Will & Grace that NBC keeps on standby, just in case.
I used to think Brian Williams was the problem—now I realize Brian Williams was the only guy from central casting they could get who wouldn’t stop mid-broadcast and say, “Are you fucking kidding me! There’s some serious shit going on out there, and this is what we’re talking about?!”
HERE TODAY, JUAN TOMORROW
“Has it ever occurred to you that conservatives are the media?”
–Juan Williams, house liberal, Fox News
That was Juan Williams schooling Amy Holmes after she denied that Republicans have a more reliable media base to disseminate their message than the Democrats.
Not that she’ll drop the old “the media is liberal” canard, because that’s what it said in her morning spam email of conservative talking points.
The whole thing started when Howard Kurtz quoted Bill Clinton:
Kurtz: “Bill Clinton told CNN that Republicans have a much more reliable media base than Democrats, is that true?”
Holmes: “Conservatives are piled on continuously by the media; we see that the media loves nothing more than when Republicans are turning on one another.”
Williams: “Has it ever occurred to you that conservatives are the media? Don’t you work for The Blaze?”
Holmes: “I do work for The Blaze.”
Williams: “Don’t you know about the Drudge Report, and Red State and Fox News?”
Holmes: “Are you saying we have the same amount of power as the New York Times and the Washington Post?”
Williams: “The Wall Street Journal is the number one newspaper and the most conservative editorial page in the nation.”
Holmes: “But not conservative on the reporting side.”
Williams: “Thank God.”
What . . . what the hell is this? Who . . .?
So, there’s Howard Kurtz, Fox News’ media critic, which is a joke almost on an existential level, even funnier than a guy getting fired from a show named Reliable Sources for filing too many stories that were unreliable.
He’s got this panel in front of him . . . which . . . is everything a fucking panel now? I get that it stirs up conversation, but it also seems extraordinarily lazy at times; like it’s a way for everyone, the moderator in particular, to avoid responsibility for what’s being said. Also, how often do I want to watch my news in the same format as my terrible family Thanksgivings? I seriously wouldn’t be surprised at all if, for example, Rahm Emanuel was on Meet the Press and drunkenly stood up and declared he could “say the n-word in his own goddamn house if he wanted to!” This also might be better journalism than its current format.
“You work for The Blaze, don’t you?”
“I do work for The Blaze.”
Then what the fuck are you doing on the panel? Or anywhere else for that matter? For those who don’t know, The Blaze is a sort of TV station/website started by Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck was released from Fox News because . . . he was too conservative and insane for Fox News! It’s a basketful of conspiracy theories and insane libertarian talking points. Saying you work for The Blaze is like saying you work for a militia newsletter.
“The Wall Street Journal is the number one newspaper, and the most conservative editorial page in the nation.”
“But . . . not on the reporting side.”
There it is! Lady, that’s called journalism. You know, a series of facts reported in context so as to create an accurate picture of an event or other phenomena? By its definition it is not partisan. Except that it is, because accurate reporting runs counter to the conservative narrative in which Reagan never raised taxes and teenagers won’t get pregnant if you never tell them about sex.
And this really is the heart of the matter. The Right has been claiming, since forever, that the media is overwhelmingly liberal. This is what they mean: They mean actual information is inherently liberal.
One of two things is going on here: This lady either genuinely believes what she’s saying, or she really doesn’t. If she does, then wow, she’s super stupid—or maybe grew up in some kind of Koch brothers re-education camp. If she doesn’t believe what she’s saying, well then, she’s playing an old and ugly game, like Parcheesi with your dick out.
Claiming the media is liberal serves the Right in two ways:
• First, it paints the Right as victims. Which . . . yuck. The sight of white, rich men preserving the dominant paradigm claiming they are victims is really gross.
• Second, it casts doubt on pretty much all reporting that goes against the conservative agenda. So, if the Washington Post publishes a series of articles that expose, let’s say, a presidential conspiracy to commit felonies, well, it can be dismissed by the party faithful as a typical liberal hatchet job.
Oh, and by the way, this lady isn’t even responding to what Kurtz is suggesting. Kurtz isn’t talking about the news. He’s talking about the “Republican Media Base,” meaning its messaging system—which is much more reliable than the Democrats’. How do I know this? Well, the Democrats somehow failed to communicate a case for single-payer healthcare, and the Republicans managed to get everyone to believe there would be death panels.
So, yes, the Republican media base is more reliable. The mainstream media, and even truly liberal media, are independent actors, whereas the right-wing media outlets seem to act in lock-step with one another. Seriously, next time there is some major partisan issue in the news, take a look around. What you will find is Fox News, The Daily Caller, and the Drudge Report all reporting the same talking points, pretty much word for word. It’s both comforting in its consistency and terrifying in its malevolence—like German fairy tales or Project Runway.
“Congressman Ryan overreached a few times and got caught in those overreaches, so that’s a problem for the Republicans in overreaching . . . when they overreach, it goes to their credibility . . . the American people are out there saying ‘we don’t know who to believe.’”
–Tom Brokaw, corporate news obfuscator
Yeah, Paul Ryan “overreached” . . . to help you understand the word, some other famous “overreachers” are Bernie Madoff, Lance Armstrong, Dick Cheney, and O.J. Simpson.
That was Tom Brokaw’s assessment of vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s speech that was so jaw-droppingly dishonest and full of lies that even Fox News debunked him and called him a liar.
“Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”
So why wouldn’t Tom Brokaw call out Ryan’s lies? Mostly out of habit, but also because Brokaw is afraid if he says, “Paul Ryan is lying,” he’ll be considered liberally biased—and that is like kryptonite to a mainstream newsperson. So instead of running the risk of a conservative hack accusing him of liberal bias, Tom Brokaw shows that he’d much rather be full of shit.
Network journalists can’t call politicians “liars” because that’s crossing the line into a no-man’s land where you’re telling the truth, exposing corruption, and changing things for the better.
Why would a reporter call a lying politician a liar? All that would do is accurately describe the situation and give your viewers a clearer picture of what is actually happening. I appreciate a newsman who relies on his viewers’ ability to read between the lines.
Better to soft-pedal and sugarcoat the truth, because that’s what the American people are constantly asking for: “Please Mr. TV Newsman, don’t give it to us straight, please try to make it harder to understand what is really going on.”
Overreach? It would be an overreach to call Tom Brokaw a journalist.
MESSAGE ON JIMMY’S VOICEMAIL:
BILL O’REILLY, 12:23 PM
Jimmy Dore, this is Bill O’Reilly.
You liberal arugula munchers should be happy with my latest social campaign. As you know, the Factor helps minority children at risk all across the country. They make up most of my audience.
So, I’m going after the biggest problem facing the black community: Sexy music videos.
Yes, you heard me. Music videos are causing the devastation of unwanted pregnancies and fractured families in black neighborhoods.
Did you see the latest video by Beyoncé? I didn’t like it.
All these teenage black girls who watch VH-1 are being corrupted by the likes of Beyoncé and Alicia Keys. It’s got to stop Jimmy, simple as that.
That Rahm Emmanuel has the right idea. He’s shut down 47 neighborhood public schools in Chicago. The only way to help poor families is to force their little brats into private schools. Education problem solved. Finally there’s a Democrat with some common sense.
You should take a page out his book, Jimbo. Speaking of book, I hear that you have a book coming out. If I find out there’s anything about me in it, my next book will be “Killing Jimmy Dore”.
Do you know who the real victim of racism is? The Racists. That’s right. These are people who are persecuted for their beliefs.
Think about the discrimination they have to face, day-in day-out. They’re becoming the real minority in this country. I don’t see you liberal pinheads fighting against the bigotry shown to them in our culture.
Talking point memo: Obamacare is a colossal failure. The cheaper premiums are killing Americans. I want my pre-existing conditions back.
One hour ‘til I do my show. I have to go paint my bald spot.
“I’m so glad we had [Hurricane Sandy] last week . . . the storm brought in possibilities for good politics.”
–Chris Matthews, fluorescent-haired douchebag
That’s a great point, and I’m glad Chris Matthews had the guts to make it. Let’s face it, a catastrophic disaster that destroyed people’s lives is a small price to pay for Obama getting a boost in his favorability rating, am I right?
Besides, way too many people in New Jersey were living comfortably in their homes with all their possessions intact anyway. To be fair, Chris Matthews did try to backtrack and say that when he “thanked God” for Hurricane Sandy that he meant it politically, not in terms of hurting people.
I hear you Chris, I think politically too, and I was thinking about those 100 people who died in Hurricane Sandy, and I thought, “Thank God it didn’t affect the popular vote!” And then I thought, “I bet Chris Matthews would be proud of me right now.”
Now that he’s offended a few million flood victims in New York and New Jersey, tune in tomorrow night for his ham-fisted apology.
But let’s remember—Chris Matthews still hasn’t apologized for all the great things he said about President Bush right after 9/11.
CONVERSATION WITH THE WORLD’S LUCKIEST INTERN
JIMMY DORE: Luke, you caused a bit of a stir when you asked Nancy Pelosi if she might be too old for her job.
LUKE RUSSERT: What’s the big deal, Jimmy? All I did was raise a legitimate issue.
JIMMY DORE: Which is?
LUKE RUSSERT: That old people suck. Come on Jimmy, it’s true. Have you ever been in a car on the freeway stuck behind an intelligent woman who’s worked for decades to become a highly qualified professional? It friggin’ blows, man!
JIMMY DORE: Luke, some are saying that you’re the last person who should be questioning someone on their qualifications for a job.
LUKE RUSSERT: Whoa, Jimmy, are you actually bringing up the tragic death of my father, Tim Russert?
JIMMY DORE: Yes, I am.
LUKE RUSSERT: Well, I wish you wouldn’t, because I don’t feel comfortable talking about the biggest break of my career. When something that awesome happens, it’s best to keep it to yourself.
JIMMY DORE: But everybody already knows that you only got your job because of nepotism.
LUKE RUSSERT: That is so unfair, dude! I am totally qualified for my job.
JIMMY DORE: How so?
LUKE RUSSERT: Well, Tim Russert was my father, and I was his son. Therefore I was more than qualified for a nepotistic gig when it became available.
JIMMY DORE: But then don’t you understand that people take umbrage when you say that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership should step aside for others just because those others are younger?
LUKE RUSSERT: Okay, but by the same token, people who get jobs totally based on merit are standing in the way of someone who wants that job solely based on the biological accident of their birth. It works both ways, Jimmy. Both sides do it! Both sides do it!
JIMMY DORE: You’re not making any sense.
LUKE RUSSERT: Jimmy, did you ever read my dad’s book about my granddad, Big Russ And Me? I told my father he should call that book, Why Don’t You Just Die, You Old Fuck. I mean, Dad used to always make me visit Big Russ’s house, it smelled like peanut brittle covered in poop. Big Russ would kiss me on my cheek, and I’d have a gummy, slurping oldnguy hickey on my face for weeks. I’m a reporter, Jimmy. I’m supposed to report the truth. And the truth is that elderly old coots are grody to the max.
JIMMY DORE: Well, Luke Russert, thanks for joining us today.
LUKE RUSSERT: Jimmy, I just want to remind you of one thing.
LUKE RUSSERT: I’ll have made more money by the time I’m thirty than you will make in your entire pathetic life.
JIMMY DORE: That’s probably true. Thanks for sharing.
PRESS THE MEAT
“In too many parts of the world, America is no longer seen as a reliable ally or an enemy to be feared, nor do our adversaries any longer fear us.”
–David Gregory quoting Liz Cheney on Meet the Press, 2012
Oh thank God, someone from the Bush administration—the masters of foreign policy in the Middle East—is here to tell all of us which way the wind is blowing. And that’s weird too, because that very same week, the Bush twins told a reporter from Tiger Beat that Iran is stupid.
How does a woman, whose only claim to fame is being the daughter of a war criminal, continue to get booked on national news shows and get quoted on them when she isn’t? Because the news media sucks and will bring on anyone who repeats corporate talking points.
So, this is part of a concerted effort to undermine the president’s perceived strength in foreign policy—and instead of debunking it and calling it out, David Gregory repeats it. (And just letting you know, under a Liz Cheney administration, Egyptian and Libyan rioters would be terrified of us, and we would be on the brink of war with Iran pretty much every second.)
Darth Cheney: Yes, Liz?
Liz Cheney: Why don’t people fear and respect the United States anymore?
Darth Cheney: Well, we elected a black guy.
Liz Cheney: But besides that.
Darth Cheney: Well, it might have something to do with the fact that your Uncle George and I spent two or three trillion dollars waging war in the Middle East, thereby making it almost impossible for the U.S. to find the political and actual capital necessary to really threaten Iran. Oh, and we took out the regime of Saddam Hussein, which was one of the few direct checks Iran had in the region.
Liz Cheney: Should I say that in my op-ed to the Wall Street Journal?
Darth Cheney: I’d rather you didn’t.
Of all the pretend financial reporters that missed the housing bubble and failed to predict the collapse of the economy brought on by Wall Street, Jim Cramer is certainly the loudest. He proves you don’t even have to know what you’re talking about, as long as you’re constantly shouting. Cramer also has the uncanny ability to predict major recessions years after they’ve hit. I’ve watched Mad Money many times, and I wouldn’t ask Jim Cramer’s advice on how to get to the freeway.
“Health insurance is an expense that could save your life . . . medical expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcy, so don’t get wiped out . . . save room in your budget for health insurance!!”
–Jim Cramer, CNBC ass-clown
Cramer also advises that people get jobs to keep from going broke and to eat food to keep from starving to death.
Next, Cramer shows us how you can be an idiot and still make millions of dollars by hosting a show on CNBC.
JIMMY: Tom, I’ve noticed the odd way you’re reporting about the Tea Party. You make no mention of the fact that the Tea Party is funded by corporate interests who are duping low information voters.
TOM: Look Jimmy, the Tea Party is what I like to call a grassroots organization.
JIMMY: But most of their money comes from the Koch brothers.
TOM: And the Koch brothers get most of their money from coal and oil, don’t they?
JIMMY: So how is that grassroots?
TOM: Coal makes electricity and oil makes gas, and who uses more electricity and gas than Americans? So the money is really coming from average Americans.
JIMMY: That is about the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard.
TOM: Well Jimmy, it may turn out to be bullshit or it may not, but I’ve found that if you say something with a pensive look on your face, it makes people think you’re smart.
JIMMY: But you are smart . . . aren’t you, Tom?
TOM: Well, Jimmy . . .
JIMMY: Come on Tom, you may live in your completely out-of-touch bubble surrounded by millionaires and sycophants, but you’re not dumb.
TOM: Dumb enough to go into broadcasting with a speech impediment. But smart enough to deliver the news in a way that avoids stepping on rich and powerful toes, while climbing the corporate ladder like a spider monkey.
JIMMY: So you are actually not smart.
TOM: Did you see the movie Broadcast News? Do you remember William Hurt’s character? How he came across as informed, concerned, and dignified, while he was really a vacant, shallow corporate climber who looked at the news not as an important safeguard of democracy, but as an acting exercise?
JIMMY: You’re not telling me it is actually that bad.
TOM: No, I’m telling you it’s worse. I make Broadcast News look like Edward R. Murrow. I got an award from the military; that’s how I know I’m doing my job right.
JIMMY: That’s disappointing.
TOM: You know what is really disappointing, the eggs on my muffin. I like them runny, and they’re overdone. Listen Jim, I gotta go, working on new book.
JIMMY: What’s it about?
TOM: Well, I like to stay one step ahead of my colleagues, and I know that the white population continues to shrink here in America. Instead of pandering to old whitey, I’m writing a book that preemptively sucks up to the new brown majority, The Greatest Immigration. All about how immigrants make our lives better by nannying our kids and cleaning our cars.
NEWS FLASHED—PROFILES IN COURAGE
In the summer of 2013, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. Bezos acquired the newspaper for 250 million dollars in cash, 10 million of which he’d been keeping in the front seat of his car to pay tolls. Insiders say Bezos could’ve gotten the paper for a few million less, but he really wanted the two-day shipping.
Over the past couple of years, the Post has lost 75 million dollars . . . but Bezos believes that with a meticulous business plan going forward, he could easily blow twice that. Selling the paper was a painful decision for the Graham family, or as painful as any decision that gets you 250 million dollars in cash.
Bezos is excited about the challenge of making the legendary paper available to a whole new generation that won’t read it. The Amazon tycoon says he’s proud of helping to keep a great newspaper in business, though his work won’t really be complete until every store in America has closed.
Amazon currently employs 100,000 warehouse workers throughout the world, 73 of whom are happy. The pay is low, and the conditions are oppressive. But on the bright side, eventually you get fired for not working fast enough. It’s been said Amazon workers have even been let go for bursting into tears on the job . . . which explains why, when those Washington Post employees heard who bought their newspaper, they kept on smiling.
Their new boss reassured them that nothing would change, except their fate was now in the hands of a self-made billionaire who does whatever he wants.
“Americans are suffering from Apocalypse fatigue. They have been told for the last forty years that they’re going to die from ‘nuclear winter,’ ‘global cooling,’ global warming, and they hear now that [the debt ceiling] is Armageddon. I don’t think they believe it.”
–George F. Will, columnist with hair combed like a toupee
I have always assumed that sometime in the 1960s, a hippie stole George Will’s girlfriend. He then vowed to become a columnist and pundit and really stick it to those hippie liberal communists with their smoldering good looks and sexually exciting political views. Well, true to his vow, George never misses an opportunity to belittle those No Nukes flower children and those crunchy homosexual environmentalists—even when he’s being asked about a completely unrelated subject . . . like say, the debt ceiling.
Apocalypse fatigue? Yeah, it sure was crazy when people were concerned that two nations had hundreds of nuclear warheads pointed at one another—it’s exactly the same as the guy standing on the corner screaming, “Get with Jesus, cuz The End is Near.”
And oh man, those scientists with their insane predictions about climate change—that are demonstrably coming true—I mean, every time you talk to a climatologist, it’s like they’re saying the comet is coming and we need to take poison right now.
George Will, the elitist who speaks for the common man, theorizes that average Americans don’t believe the dire predictions about the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling—predictions made by most economists, everyone on Wall Street, and the Treasury department—because they’ve heard too many fake apocalypse stories.
Isn’t it more likely they don’t believe it because they’re dumbasses?
You know, in a republic, it’s not the average citizen’s job to understand the complex issues of global economic policy. We are supposed to elect people who will understand these issues and act upon them with wisdom. It could be a good system, except when we start electing people who are “Just like us” and people who “We’d really like to have a beer with,” because we’d be electing dumbasses like ourselves, and we sure as shit don’t know what the hell is going on.
But of course, if George Will made that point, he wouldn’t be able to put the screw to that long-haired draft dodger with his totally awesome van.
FALSE EQUIVALENCIES: THIS AND THAT
“The problem is the Democrats’ focus was on this, the Republicans’ focus was on that . . . and the focus is not on the common good but on individual party ideology . . .”
–Mike Barnicle, explaining the failure of congressional budget negotiations
He’s right, the Democrats do focus on “this,” but what exactly is “this”? Protecting Medicare and Social Security. Making sure the most vulnerable among us aren’t now asked to carry the financial burden of fixing our economy when the people who have made a killing off this rigged economy get a tax cut.
And the Republicans focus on “that,” meaning: Making sure to place the financial burden of fixing our economy on the backs of the people who can least afford it and who have been hurt the most by this rigged economy, the working poor and middle class.
See, they are both equally morally reprehensible. Right?
It’s like during World War II, Nazis wanted to kill the Jews, while other people didn’t, yet neither side would budge and come to a reasonable compromise—kill a few, save a few. These hardheads couldn’t reach an agreement, and there was a war over it. (Don’t know why I always reach for the Jews and Nazi Germany analogy all the time . . . I must be watching too much History Channel.)
Same thing in the 1860s: Lincoln was focused on emancipating the slaves, and the South wanted to keep them, and they were so dug in to their ideological positions that neither would budge. Like how ‘bout they are slaves for half the day, and the other half, they are allowed to rest or find a second job to pay for stuff they want, like freedom?
This is what is wrong with America. The bastards that we have always fought got smart and bought the media, and they have effectively silenced true debate in our country in favor of agreed-upon corporate talking points.
And Mike Barnicle is a bag of liquid vagina cleaner, did I mention that? (That may sound like a juvenile outburst, but really it is a very sophisticated piece of satire.)
DEFACE THE NATION
They recently extended Face the Nation to a full hour (I know what you’re thinking, but it only felt like an hour). Let’s check to see how Bob Schieffer is using all that extra time.
“Today on Face the Nation . . . with the baseball post-season under way and Washington’s team headed to the playoffs for the first time in 79 years, we’ll talk baseball with the Dodgers’ legendary manager Tommy Lasorda; Tony La Russa, manager of last year’s World Champion St. Louis Cardinals; Jane Leavy, who wrote the book on Mickey Mantle and Peter Gammons of the MLB Network. It’s Batter-Up on Face the Nation!”
Oh great, so Bob is using the extra half hour to do sports. Thank God someone is covering sports!!
My greatest hope is that Bob Schieffer asked his guests, “The Nationals and Baltimore are in the post-season—what does that mean to you?” And one of the guests said, “Nothing. It means absolutely nothing to me. It won’t affect my tax burden or my healthcare or my retirement plans. What are you, stupid? Sports aren’t important—they’re supposed to be a distraction from what is important. Why is a supposed political program talking to Tommy fucking Lasorda?”
By the way, look at his “substantive” guest list:
David Axelrod–White House senior advisor
John Fund–Wall Street Journal
Michael Gerson–Washington Post
Norah O’Donnell–CBS
John Dickerson–CBS
Tommy Lasorda–MLB manager
Tony La Russa–MLB manager
Jane Leavy–sports writer
Peter Gammons–sports writer
Except for Axelrod, no one is actually in the practice of politics, and not one of them is in the middle of crafting real policy—you know, the laws that make a nation in order for us to face it.
None of those guests are rare visitors to television talking head land. Just try keeping any of those attention whores away from a camera; they’ll bite your hand off. Lasorda alone will eat your arm to stay relevant.
I have faced the nation—and found it lacking.
FALSE EQUIVALENCIES: THE GAY-MUSLIM ALLIANCE
“The homosexuals and Islamists work out of the same playbook.”
—Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
Who would have thought that the Tony Perkins who played Norman Bates would be the less psycho one? One of my pet peeves is the media’s constant and insidious penchant for making false equivalencies about the Right and the Left, conservatives and progressives. Watching cable news, you’ll notice the stomach-turning habit that many news hosts have of pretending that bigotry and ignorance is just a difference of opinion.
Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council, an extreme Christian Coalition organization. They are anti-science and pro-ignorance, hiding behind religion in order to push hatred and bigotry.
Not the kind of guy you would call your friend, right? Here is supposed liberal Chris Matthews introducing Tony Perkins on his show:
“Tony, old pal! Thanks for joining us. I hope you don’t get in trouble for me calling you ‘old pal’!”
Instead of validating him, Matthews should be discrediting him . . . at least until the day when that gay suicide bomber fiercely explodes in a fabulous plume of glitter.
HEY ASSHOLE!–GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
“You said you love Kim [Jong-Un] and think he’s awesome; were you aware of his threat to destroy the United States and his record on human rights? Do you think you have a responsibility to ask him about it . . . ”
—George Stephanopoulos, speaking truth to ex-basketball players
That’s George Snuffleupagus pretending to be a hard-hitting journalist with somebody who can’t hurt his social standing in Georgetown. I find it ironic that a Sunday morning news host is criticizing someone else for not asking the hard questions.
Really George, you’re disappointed that Dennis Rodman didn’t ask harder questions? The hardest question I’d expect Dennis Rodman to ask would be, “Is this North or South Korea?” This is why George is still on top . . . he saves his tough questions for ex-basketball players.
George is in rare form and can’t help himself:
Snuffles: “He puts 200,000 people in prison camps.”
Rodman: “Well guess what? We do the same thing here.”
Snuffles: “We have prison camps here in the USA?”
George is talking to a black man in America about prison camps in Korea, and says we don’t have prison camps in America.
America imprisons 2.4 million people. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In fact, it’s five to eight times higher than the rest of the industrialized world. Since 1980, the prison population has quadrupled, even though crime rates have fallen dramatically in the last 25 years.
In 2008, 1 in every 31 adults was behind bars, on probation, or on parole. At year-end in 2007, the United States had less than 5% of the world’s population but accounted for 23.4% of the world’s prison and jail population.
Black males continue to be incarcerated at an extraordinary rate. Black males make up 35.4% of the jail and prison population—even though they make up less than 10% of the overall U.S population. 4% of U.S. black males were in jail or prison last year, compared to 1.7% of Hispanic males and .7% of white males. In other words, black males were locked up at almost six times the rate of their white counterparts.
So no George, we don’t have prison camps in America; we have laws against calling them that. And do you know where I had to dig to find all that information about prisons, George? ABCnews.com.
One more asshole move by Snuffleup:
“Next time you go back (to North Korea), you should bring this report from Human Rights Watch; maybe ask him some questions about that.”
Hey George, I know you like to hang with Donald Rumsfeld and his wife; how about you take the human rights report with you the next time you attend a party at a war criminal’s house?
Next up, George discusses Iran’s nuclear capability with Omarosa and Mike “the Situation.”
“MISCHIEVOUS” MEDIA
“I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.”
–Bill Sammon, Fox News executive
By 1983, the FCC had almost entirely abdicated any regulatory authority over cable television (so you could see boobs). In 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was removed from the FCC’s general mandates. Fewer than ten years later, Fox News was launched on cable, which would not have been possible under the Fairness Doctrine and/or if the FCC had authority over cable TV.
In 1987, the most generous thinking on the matter went like this:
There are now enough media outlets that, in any given market, multiple political views on a given subject will be expressed. The press will now have even greater first amendment freedoms.
But that’s not even close to what happened.
In 1987, news was not viewed as a money-making venture. Implicit in the Fairness Doctrine was the notion that media outlets had an obligation to expose and discuss issues that were important to the community.
By 1996, CNN had raked in untold profits for Turner Broadcasting, and there was more money on the table. Fox, unencumbered by the FCC, could get that money by playing to a specific audience: the audience that doesn’t like to hear about global warming or evolution or gunshot victims. Fox News could get that audience and keep them by telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In 1987, a news show would have been terrified to report something inaccurate. They would have been horrified to present only one side of a political argument. They wouldn’t present an editorial without a disclaimer. They would be in huge trouble if they tailored information to fit a specific agenda. If any of these things happened, they could easily lose their FCC license, and the whole station would go down the tubes. Now? Well, this is from an article in The Raw Story in 2011:
“Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, ‘spread the wealth around,’” Sammon said. “At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.”
During the 2008 campaign, the then-Washington deputy managing editor repeatedly suggested that Obama had socialist tendencies.
On Oct. 14, 2008, Sammon said that Obama’s comment to Joe Wurzelbacher “is red meat when you’re talking to conservatives and you start talking about ‘spread the wealth around.’ That is tantamount to socialism.”
In another e-mail obtained by Media Matters, Sammon told his staff to downplay the importance of climate science that showed the world was getting warmer.
Additional emails showed that Sammon asked his news department to refer to the public option as the “government-run option” because polls showed the phrase “government option” was opposed by the public.
I think what is the most important thing to note here is not only what he said, but also where he said it. He didn’t say these things on MSNBC, or CBS, or in an interview in the New York Times, no. He went on FoxNews and said those things. He went on his own news network and intentionally pushed false facts and ideas in order to misinform. But then let’s take one more step and ask, “Who is he trying to misinform?” Is it the liberals, or the Democrats, or some jerks from the government?
No.
He is purposely and intentionally misinforming his own viewers. He’s is feeding false information to the people who turn to his news organization to get the facts and information. He’s not lying to me, or to Nancy Pelosi, or Ralph Nader; he’s lying to the people who trust him and his news organization to inform them on the important news items of the day.
To me, it is impossible to overstate just how important this is, and it certainly seems to be the point most often overlooked. Cuz for me that is what really distinguishes them from MSNBC. Fox News is parasitic on the worst instincts of its viewers; playing on their fears and insecurities, they create an irrational and endless resistance to anything mildly liberal or having to do with Barack Obama. The pursuit of truth is not their modus operandi, and there is no low to which they won’t stoop to maintain their demographic.
I should note: as of the writing of this book, two years later, Bill Sammon still holds the post of Fox’s Washington managing editor and vice president of the network. And no, Fox News has never been threatened by the FCC over this or any of its other horrifically partisan acts of malfeasance.
So, just to be clear, a television station in America is terrified of accidentally showing Janet Jackson’s tit for two seconds, but they will happily slander and misinform without fear of consequences.
FALSE EQUIVALENCIES: SCARBOROUGH UNFAIR
Joe Scarborough: Every time you bring up Fox, you gotta bring up MSNBC.
Mika Brzezinski: I don’t see MSNBC going after Democratic presidential candidates and trying to hire them . . . Roger Ailes gets behind Republican candidates and puts them on the air; it is a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.
Scarborough: I can’t be quiet here; what do you think
MSNBC is at night? It is exactly the same!
Brzezinski: I don’t think so.
Scarborough: Of course you don’t, because you are a Democrat . . .
Yes, Joe nails this one. MSNBC and Fox News are exactly the same. I mean, if it weren’t for MSNBC’s mildly cerebral intellectualism, you wouldn’t need to balance that out with Fox News’ extreme, ignorant hate-mongering.
The only difference between them is that Bill O’Reilly exploits fear and racism, while Rachel Maddow uses logic and deductive reasoning to scare the shit out of racists who watch Bill O’Reilly.
But his response is surprise (false or sincere; either way he’s a fuck ball). Obviously MSNBC does not speak with the loud and clear editorial voice that Fox does. Obviously MSNBC does not hire major operatives from directly within the Democratic Party. Obviously MSNBC does not act as one long infomercial for a political platform.
How do I know this? They hired Joe Scarborough and put him on camera for 15 hours a week. Every morning they kick off their day of liberal programming with 3 hours of nonstop talking points delivered to you by a panel of “familiar faces” made up of conservatives, Wall Street insiders, and the odd plagiarist.
What is bothersome about Scarborough in this case (as opposed to the myriad of other bothersome things in all other instances) is he constantly asks us to appreciate that he’s able to think outside of any party affiliation. Though he doesn’t demonstrate this ability with much frequency.
Unfortunately, without any party affiliation, he has no one to blame for his half-baked reactionary pronouncements but himself. Sean Hannity can always say, “Hey, don’t blame me for that shitty racist stuff—I just say what they tell me and cash the checks.” Mr. Scarborough must say, “Yes, that’s something I thought of myself, and I am 100% responsible for how stupid it is.”
Here is the heart of the False Equivalence: Fox News, and the Republican machines in general, put out demonstrably false talking points—in fact, they scream them—crafting them so any asshole can repeat them, which lets them think they understand an issue—then say it over and over again.
Hell, as we learned, Fox News executives have admitted to repeatedly pushing outright false information on their own news station.
When journalists actually do their jobs and deconstruct the logic, facts, or assumptions of these talking points, the right wing (and non-partisan people who have simply not given the matter any serious thought, but weigh in anyway) shout that it’s “all the same thing,” and therefore the world is fair, and they are not lying assholes.
Problem being, these are not two opposing positions or philosophies—unless you consider, say, snake oil advertisers and the FCC equal philosophical adversaries. To the idiots of the world, the fact that there is a dialectical conflict suggests that MSNBC and Fox News are like pugilists of the same weight class, when in fact, it is more like reasonable people trying to fight a herd of stampeding wildebeests.
This paradigm alone should tell Americans everything they need to know about the contemporary Republican Party. They think of people who deal in facts as an equal political opposition. The logical conclusion must be that the Republican Party is against the thing which most of us construct from factual information, i.e. reality.
I feel bad for Joe Scarborough . . . he’s a lonely voice of conservatism in a vast wasteland of liberal news owned 49% by General Electric.
I would argue that MSNBC gives us as much “liberal” bias as can be stomached by banks, defense contractors, and media conglomerates.
See, that is who owns MSNBC and NBC—so they do all the hiring and firing over at Liberal TV News Land. And it appears to me that MSNBC’s sole purpose is to make as much money off the Left as they can without doing any real damage to their corporate bottom line.
Whereas Fox News is a totally different kind of organization. As Mark Karlin has pointed out:
“The sole purpose of this emotional, incendiary, and deceptive narrative was to create governments that supported the plutocracy, not the ‘rabble’ of democracy. The tool to accomplish this was the manipulation of the mass media to ignore facts and create a fictional ‘frame’ that pushed populations toward acceptance of an authoritarian state, one that existed for the benefit of the wealthy.”
So yeah, they’re exactly the same.
THE POOR HAVE IT TOO GOOD–SAY MILLIONAIRES
Lou Dobbs: (The poor) have not only a microwave; they have an oven, they have a dishwasher, they have a dryer . . . Xboxes and PlayStations are in the homes of the typical family defined as poor.
Bill O’Reilly: How can you be poor and have all this stuff? The Heritage Foundation came out with a study from six years ago that listed all the stuff poor people own in America—stuff like electrical appliances.
Fox News got a hold of the study, dusted it off, and had Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs interpret it for us. And who better than those two callous millionaires to sit around telling us how good the poor have it. (I love the way Dobbs throws in Xboxes, as if it’s a fact, when he just made it up, as there’s no mention of Xboxes in the six-year-old, ultra-biased survey.)
Poverty ain’t that bad, and the so-called poor are mostly a bunch of whiners. Always remember there’s always reason when people are poor. That reason is that they basically aren’t good people; they are irresponsible, and being poor is really a moral failing, like not working for Rupert Murdoch.
While quoting from the six-year-old survey from the Heritage Foundation, O’Reilly’s voice rises whimsically every time he says “poverty”. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s not good journalism, especially since the economy fell apart three years ago when O’Reilly was saying this.
They mocked what an average worker’s income is, yet these two rugged individualists wouldn’t know how to survive on less than six figures a year, let alone $22K—and definitely not $22K with three dependents. Is there anything that resonates more with your sense of fairness than two out-of-touch millionaires sitting around telling poor people how good they have it?
“What I think this is all about is the underground economy; a lot of people that are reporting low wages are making a ton of money . . . ”
The underground economy—did you hear that? These people who claim to be poor are all drug dealers—of course, that’s not what they’re saying, but if that’s what you heard, who are we to correct you?
I think it’s even worse that these supposedly poor people are all getting in on that cleaning houses pot o’ gold—or some of the bling that comes from waitressing and migrant farm work. Fucking poor, always acting all poor when they’re actually rich.
But wait! Bill O’Reilly makes an important point—people live in poverty because they are not personally responsible enough to go and get a job. But in 2011, when the economy was in the doldrums, there were no jobs—well, who’s responsible for that? I’ll tell you: The poor! If they would just take some responsibility and go get jobs, there would be more jobs in this country.
Free market capitalism doesn’t create these problems, except when it’s allowed to run completely unregulated and is able to purchase government policies—like now.
Dobbs and O’Reilly say that being poor inspires the innovators. Between these two guys, there has got to be at least forty pounds of balls, seeing as the biggest problem that small businesses (and those looking to start small businesses) are having is access to adequate short- and long-term credit from the free market capitalist system.
“If you’re going to be poor, be poor in the United States,” they say, laughing. This is what it’s come to? We’re better than Burundi, so shut up? Their message is: Sure, more than 14% of the population is living in an inconceivable level or poverty—but they got TVs, so fuck ‘em.
They don’t bother to figure out why poor people have access to electronics. Our consumerist society has encouraged a long and enormous consumer frenzy—which has put scads of secondhand appliances on the market.
“Thankfully the poor have cable so they can watch Fox,” they joke. I don’t think that’s really a joke, so much as an inadvertent statement of how things work. The poor and uneducated will always watch TV—so we can continue to spoon-feed them this propaganda. If the poor start reading halfway decent newspapers, then these jokers are in serious trouble—if for no other reason than I’ve never seen a newspaper give a thinly veiled platform for people like the TeaBaggers and the Birthers to spout demonstrable falsehoods
“Bring in every poor person in America, and I can tell you why they’re poor: They drop out of school, they get addicted to alcohol and drugs, they have a mental problem . . . there’s always a reason in this country.”
—Bill O’Reilly
He forgot lazy! Solved that one. What I love about O’Reilly is that he’s not crazy like Glenn Beck, and he’s not a provocateur like Rush Limbaugh, so you know when Bill O’Reilly says something, he really is a selfish, ignorant, narcissistic prick.
If you thought the sharp rise of poverty in America is because the system is rigged and getting an education bankrupts you, you’re wrong. The poor are that way because they have a moral failing, just like Jesus said.
What if the poor didn’t cause their own misery? What if bad things just happen to good people? What if everyone doesn’t get what they deserve? Would it mean that God is cruel—or doesn’t exist at all?
Well, that would mean that maybe Bill O’Reilly is just lucky, and that God doesn’t actually favor hateful, unconscionable assholes. But now that Bill O’Reilly has told me how the world really works, it all just seems so simple, and I feel totally justified in every shitty thing I have ever done.
THE WAGES OF CNN
“Do the poor share responsibility for our economic woes?”
—Question of the day by CNN’s Campbell Brown
Huh? That’s the question of the day???? What questions did CNN reject?
“People with no money and no power, don’t they deserve a kick in the teeth right now?” “Dressed a little too slutty? How much of the fault lies with the Rape victim?” “Are poor people gross?” “Setting homeless people on fire—is it wrong or just fun?”
“The poor actually have it better than the middle class. The poor live in decent houses and have refrigerators and microwave ovens, so what are they complaining about? Those are the people who pay the taxes in America, and the poor don’t pay any! The president is the president of everybody; why focus on the poor?”
—CNN’s Carol Costello
Yeah, why not focus on the rich? Everybody knows that, in a depression, they’re the ones really hurting. Some of them can’t even afford to heat the pools in their second homes anymore.
Carol Costello is asking this question to Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, who were promoting their “Poverty Tour,” a road trip they embarked on to bring awareness to rising poverty in America and to give voice to those left out of the prosperity in our current economic system.
Seriously Carol, these are the guys whose feet you decide to hold to the fire? You let that weapons of mass destruction thing go unchallenged, the vilification of teachers, the repeal of banking regulations—but let’s go hard on the least among us.
I have a few “questions” I’d like to ask Carol Costello. For example, “How many people on Wall Street do you think ought to be in jail over this?” Or how about, “How many people in the news media should lose their jobs for not warning us about the economic meltdown that I saw coming in 2005?”
No, she’s worried about the fat cats at the bottom. Yeah Carol, I hear what you are saying—it’s way easier to shit on poor people than it is to scrutinize the criminals at the top.
SURVIVING SEAN
“I have friends of mine that eat rice and beans all the time—beans, protein; rice, inexpensive. And you can make a big pot of this for a week, for relatively negligible amounts of money. . . . You should have vegetables and fruit in there as well, but . . . if you need to survive, you can survive off it . . . there are ways to live really, really cheaply.”
—Sean Hannity, Fox News
He knows what he’s talking about, because that’s what he feeds his servants. “It’s nothing fancy, but it sure beats a steady diet of my bullshit.”
This shows how arrogant poor people are; they keep expecting to have fruits and vegetables.
Coincidentally, this is the very same diet that provides our Mexican neighbors with the nutrition they need to steal jobs from real Americans. “Yeah, I have plenty of other tips on living cheaply, too, like sleeping in your car and washing up at the Arco station.”
Rice and beans taste even better after you’ve lost all hope. It’s easy to eat when you’re poor. It’s much harder when you’re wealthy and there’s not enough time to eat everything. Maybe then next time you dumb bastards won’t buy a house you can’t afford to make the payments on.
CONFESSIONS OF A TV NEWS ADDICT
For the past dozen years or so, I’ve been paying attention to the news. As a comedian, I talk and write about the news. If there is one overriding theme which has emerged it is this: The news is failing us.
This truth—its dimensions and reasons—constitutes a book in itself. And man, oh man! That book would be funny and/or make me want to kill myself.
What I’m talking about here is the mainstream media: the large, supposedly reliable news outlets like the New York Times, CBS, CNN, etc. . . , Now, I should mention that the Right also has a problem with what Sarah Palin calls the “Lame-stream Media.” However, Mrs. Palin and her cadre of nitwits tend to dislike the media when it is accurate and probing. You know, like when it asks “gotcha questions” like “What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read . . . to stay informed and understand the world?”
I, on the other hand, take issue with the mainstream media (or, as I call it, the “fucking mainstream media”), because they rarely ask any real “gotcha questions,” like “Hey, isn’t that yellow-cake uranium claim total fucking bullshit?” On that note, let’s talk about something that really happened: David Gregory.
Now, David Gregory (or as I call him, “Fucking David Gregory”) is the current host of NBC’s Meet the Press, a position that once held great esteem and respect. Currently though, it is the Arsenio Hall Show of operatives peddling talking points like actors on a press junket. No statement can be too ridiculous, because everyone knows they will go unquestioned by host David Gregory. To be fair, I honestly think Arsenio would do a better job hosting Meet the Press. Here’s one of the many telling quotes from Mr. Gregory, which should give you an idea of what I’m saying:
“I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . if we did not stand up [in the run-up to the war] and say ‘this is bogus, and you’re a liar, and why are you doing this,’ that we didn’t do our job. I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role.”
—NBC News’ David Gregory, thereafter promoted to host Meet the Press
See, if they did that, it’d be “journalism.” And that’s not their role.
Then, what is their role? If the media defended Obamacare like they did the Iraq invasion, it’d have an 85% approval rating. I can see their dilemma: They can’t search for the truth behind the rhetoric, because that’d make them look like Al-Jazeera.
Apparently, their role was to patriotically support the war until it became an unpopular disaster, and then disavow any moral responsibility for unpopular disasters. You see, in a democracy the press is not supposed to judge or criticize administration policy, kind of like the way the Russian media covered Khrushchev.
To be fair, if I were an overpaid network weasel, I would probably feel the same way. And let’s face it, if you called every liar a “liar,” pretty soon you’d be calling crooks “crooks,” hypocrites “hypocrites,” and war criminals “war criminals,” and you’d end up on a cable channel nobody watches, like Dan Rather.
UP CHUCK
On the supposed more liberal MSNBC, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell stated that most opponents of the Affordable Care Act have been fed erroneous information about the law. Chuck Todd said that Republicans “have successfully messaged against it,” disagreeing with those who argue that the media should educate the public on the law.
“They don’t repeat the other stuff because they haven’t even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, ‘Well, it’s you folks’ fault in the media.’ No, it’s the president of the United States’ fault for not selling it.”
Chuck Todd is currently the Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News and NBC News’ political director. Seriously, the guy who said that has those jobs. Just so we’re clear: It’s not the media’s job to let you know when one side is lying. It’s the president’s job. So if the GOP says the president is lying about Obamacare, all the president has to do is tell you he isn’t. And then you know who to believe!
I mean, instead of being obsessed with what side’s “messaging” (also known colloquially as “bullshit”) is better, the media could look at the actual facts and report the actual truth. But if they were to do that and find out that one side is lying, they’d be in a real bind . . . because reporting as much would prove that they’re biased (against liars).
Claims and facts are not equivalent. Facts tend to trump claims pretty well. The guy from the Americans for Prosperity think-tank who says, “there is no global warming” is not exactly the same as the scientist who says there is. By treating all this political hot air equally, the press is failing to present—forget the “fair and balanced” nonsense—an accurate picture of an issue. Without accurate information, the electorate simply cannot make informed decisions.
So, what I’m saying is this: if Chuck Todd is a shitty journalist—which he is—it endangers democracy as we know it. Someday I’ll find a joke for that.
THE LIBERAL MEDIA MYTH
“[Phil Donahue could be a] difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. . . . He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush, and skeptical of the administration’s motives.”
—MSNBC memo on decision to fire Phil Donahue
“We’re all neo-cons now.”
—MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, April 9, 2003
One of those guys was fired by the “liberal network.” Which one would you guess? Was it the guy with the lower ratings? Hmmm, let’s see.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, one of MSNBC’s hosts was committed to giving a full airing to the critics and the criticisms of what soon became a horribly failed, illegal war for oil. The viewers rewarded him by making him the highest-rated show on the MSNBC network. MSNBC executives rewarded him for being the most-watched show on the network by . . . firing him.
Huh?
Yes. MSNBC executives publicly said they were getting rid of the show with the network’s highest ratings because of “low ratings.”
By “low ratings,” they meant “high ratings by a liberal pacifist with integrity.”
Makes sense. I’m sure it wasn’t because MSNBC is owned by one of the most profitable defense contractors on earth? No, that’s just how LIBERAL TV networks operate; when they are having ratings trouble, they get rid of the show with the highest ratings first, because they’re liberals and bad at business, not because they are owned by the war machine that is great at business.
Isn’t that just like the liberal media, to fire a true liberal and keep all the warmongering fake liberals at MSNBC just to throw us off?
I wonder what they told Donahue: “Sorry, Phil, but we’re going in another direction. That way, where all the billion-dollar defense contracts are.”
Phil’s big mistake was doing his show as if there actually were freedom of the press, when everybody knows freedom of the press ended when the second plane hit the World Trade Center.
That really did happen. How do we know it was because Phil was anti-war? Well there was a memo from the MSNBC brass that was leaked that said Donahue would be a: “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. . . . He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush, and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The report went on to argue that Donahue’s show could become “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”
Interesting that NBC didn’t question the flag-waving; they questioned questioning the flag-waving.
Obviously the executives at MSNBC thought it best in wartime to err on the side of becoming Fox News.
That’s who MSNBC is, a corporate money-making machine that only cares about making money and not being liberal. If they can make money being pro-war, then let’s do it; if they have to shut some liberals up to do it, no problem.
Good thing they got rid of him, too; who needs people who are right about an illegal war mucking up a defense contractor’s thirst for war profits?
It all worked out anyway, because even though Phil Donahue was absolutely right and everybody who beat the drum for war was completely wrong, none of them ever admitted it, which is the same as being right all along.
Of course they kept Chris Matthews.
Matthews eventually switched sides and suppressed all the MSNBC footage that showed him cheerleading the invasion, which proves 1984 was a documentary.
“The bottom line is we need you, Phil [Donahue], because we need to be challenged by the voice of dissent.”
–Oprah Winfrey to Phil Donohue after he was fired from MSNBC for his vocal opposition to the Iraq war.
She should have gone on to say, “But as far as network news goes, you’re damaged goods, Phil, so enjoy your retirement, and say hi to Marlo Thomas for me.”
Don’t worry Rachel Maddow, your job is probably safe until President Cruz goes to war with Iran.
THE NEWS MEDIA IS LIBERAL!
( . . . and being brought to you by multinational corporations, defense contractors, and oil giants)
Turn on any Sunday news show, and it is 90% conservatives, corporate mouthpieces, or military people, fulfilling their Sunday morning pledge to give voice to the wealthy and powerful.
The media is corporate, not liberal; they serve the corporate interest first, last, and in the middle. The news is funded by advertisers, corporations like Wal-Mart, the drug companies, CitiGroup, and Boeing. Those are the people for whom the news is really prepared. Yes, the very people the newsman is supposed to be investigating are actually the ones funding his investigation. More accurately stated, they are funding the media’s non-investigation. Banks, defense contractors, and multinational corporations pulling the purse strings of the news? Sounds like a regular liberal conspiratorial plot to me.
Yeah, but they’ve done studies that show most people in the news voted for the Democrat last election!
Oh sure, if you don’t vote for an obvious lunatic, then that proves liberal bias. It never crosses their minds that maybe John McCain and Sarah Palin were horrible candidates? And ditto for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan? and that maybe we take a cue from the voting habits of the most informed people in the country instead of dismiss them because it doesn’t line up with uninformed opinions formed by internalizing corporate talking points constantly repeated and rarely debunked in the “LIBERAL” media?
Here is a typical Sunday news show panel getting ready to express views of the regular American citizen:
“Let’s meet our powerhouse roundtable: George Will, Jonathan Karl, General Wesley Clark, Gwen Ifill, and Liz Cheney.”
—Jake Tapper, host of ABC’s This Week
So, that’s:
• a conservative journalist,
• a conservative reporter,
• a guy from the Pentagon,
• an African-American ardent defender of the status quo (badly playing the role of liberal),
• and LIZ CHENEY!
Well, you could get a better cross-section of America if you didn’t try. Sure, that’s my voice—if my voice is that of a corporate stenographer, millionaire conservative, or a defense contractor. But if you are part of the other 95% of the American electorate, sit back and enjoy the commercials.
LIBERAL MEDIA PBS STYLE–MARK SHIELDS
“. . . The fact is that the American people, who want all the benefits and want the free lunch, and don’t want a single gray hair on the beautiful head of Social Security or Medicare touched, and basically don’t want to pay for it . . .”
—Mark Shields, “Liberal” PBS commentator
Hey jackass, we do pay for it. It’s called the payroll tax—FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act). And that was being said from someone supposedly representing the liberal side of the argument on PBS! I swear to Jesus, the next person who calls benefit programs that people have paid into over years of work a “free lunch,” I’m going to do unspeakable things to that person with a heavy dictionary.
Fittingly, the term “No Free Lunch” comes from the “Great Depression” when bars could no longer provide a free lunch with drinks . . . except in this case, it would just be a “Great Depression” for the elderly.
“. . . the old line is, we elect Republicans because we don’t want to pay for it and we elect Democrats because we want everything that government is going to give us.”
—Mark Shields, dumbass
How’s about you don’t say “we,” OK? Because I, for one, know exactly what it might cost to pay for things. Now, if there are people out there who want all the benefits of government but don’t understand they have to pay for it, well those people are called “fucking morons”—not “we.”
And just as a side note: seems to me it was the Republicans who came up with the brilliant idea of cutting taxes to pay for TWO multitrillion dollar wars.
“. . . I would say there has been lack of leadership as far as sacrifice across the board. The White House, to the Congress, to our national leadership, to us in the press as well, I guess . . .”
—Mark Shields, God shield us from this dope
You guess there’s been a failure of the press?! Dude, you just described Social Security as a “free lunch”—you’re not failing in leadership; you’re failing at factually describing phenomena.
“Failure of leadership” is a fashionable political term lately, which seems odd, since the Republican Congress has made it impossible to lead, even within their own party. Telling people to lead, then viciously resisting that leadership, is something you see on Bridezillas.
1. Does Mark Shields ever talk to a progressive Democrat?
2. Does Mark Shields maybe ever glance at a Paul Krugman column once in a while?
3. Does PBS think “liberal commentary” means “ideas slightly to the right of Joe Scarborough”?
I ask those questions because we are currently giving 60 to 80 billion dollars a month to the banks. It is called “quantitative easing.” That’s when the federal government takes 80 billion taxpayer dollars and, instead of spending it on teachers, cops, and firemen, or building roads, schools, and hospitals, they give it directly to the banks. We get nothing for it—not one person gets to see a doctor, or gets to pay a heating bill for an old person, or not one kid gets a meal when he goes to school. Nada. What we get is a lawsuit from AIG.
FYI: Social Security is solvent at least until 2033, and Medicare is running a surplus for the next 11 years.
That fact should be the starting basis for this discussion, or else it isn’t very informed. And these are supposed to be the informed smart people. Not one mention of creating well-paying jobs here in America so we collect more taxes for these “Free Lunch” programs. Not a word about income disparity and the concentration of wealth at the top. No, Mark Shields says that we must not be afraid to tax the middle class? Holy shit.
Is Mark Shields too busy with PBS groupies that he can’t learn the basic facts of the topic he’s discussing?
AM I HEARING YOU RIGHT?
You would think that, if the free market really worked, half the talk stations would be right wing talk and the other half would be liberal talk, right? I mean, if the conservative theory that free markets meet every need and fix every problem, then that’s how the radio dial should look, right?
But that’s not what happens. Instead, the corporations that want to push a corporate agenda hire people who won’t undermine it.
And who are those people? Right-wing maniacs, that’s who. Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Dennis Miller, Laura Ingraham . . . that’s quite a think tank.
A report on media ownership by the Center for American Progress revealed that, among radio formats, the combined news/talk format leads all others in terms of the total number of stations per format and trails only country music in terms of national audience share. Through more than 1,700 stations across the nation, the combined news/talk format is estimated to reach more than 50 million listeners each week, and conservative talk radio undeniably dominates the format.
The 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station companies reveal that 91% of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9% is progressive.
Soooooo, why is this happening? Because that’s what the market wants!
Really? The Los Angeles radio market wants 90% conservative talk? Hippie dippy, liberal Los Angeles? How can that be a function of what the market wants?
The fact of the matter is that media companies are no longer restricted from owning as many radio stations in any market as they want. There used to be a law against too much media ownership in any market; you couldn’t own a newspaper and a radio station and a TV station in the same market. It was a good rule because it guaranteed diversity of opinion on the airwaves and a better informed and better served listener/viewer.
You know how the fox bought the hen house? Well, that fox owns the government that appoints the FCC board that reversed all those rules. Now our radios emit non-stop right wing talking points into our earholes.
How’s that for your liberal media?
KURTZ–HEART OF DARKNESS
“Let’s be candid, Jon Stewart appeals to you because he comes at his comedy and satire and criticism from a liberal point of view.”
—Howard Kurtz, “media critic,” completely missing the point
I hate to keep kicking a dead horse, but try reading this excerpt of an interview “media critic” Howard Kurtz did with Arianna Huffington, and tell me there is any hope for us. Keep in mind, Howard Kurtz is a media critic who departed CNN for repeatedly filing false stories. It didn’t worry him because all those years of making false equivalencies between the Left and the Right paid off—he was quickly gobbled up and offered a job by that paragon of journalism: Fox News. Seriously, is there anything funnier than a “media critic” who works for Fox News? That’s like making the winner of the Taco Bell burrito-slam contest a restaurant critic.
Here Kurtz keeps pushing the idea that there is no objective truth, that when someone is exposing hypocrisies and inconsistencies, he must be a liberal, and therefore we can dismiss it.
Howard Kurtz: Let’s be candid, Jon Stewart appeals to you because he comes at his comedy and satire and criticism from a liberal point of view.
Arianna Huffington: If you watch his interview with the president, he exposed the Achilles heel of the president; that’s not cheerleading.
Kurtz: . . . well no, he came off as a disappointed liberal. But let’s leave that interview aside; when I see clips of the Daily Show on The Huffington Post, they tend to skewer conservative targets. You like that.
Huffington: . . . he uses satire to speak truth to power, whether it be liberal, conservative, in the media, in politics, that’s where their power comes from, and those people who continue to see it as a “left-leaning show” are completely missing its appeal.
Kurtz: I think I disagree on that.
You see, in Howard Kurtz’s world, there is only left and right; there cannot be honest journalism, or even accurate satire. Jon Stewart certainly doesn’t need me defending him, but what Kurtz says is revealing of the media’s heart of darkness. In Howard Kurtz’s world, when Jon Stewart is skewering Republicans, he is just being a liberal partisan, and when he is skewering a Democrat he is just being a disappointed liberal partisan.
Now, I have issues a-plenty with Jon Stewart, and indeed with Arianna Huffington too, yet I would concede that currently the world would be worse without them around. But if Howard Kurtz disappeared tomorrow, the national discourse would not suffer an iota . . . in fact, it might not even notice.
FALSE EQUIVALENCIES: JOHN HEILEMANN
Let’s get nostalgic and try to remember the presidential campaign we all worked hard at forgetting. Like many of you, the morning after the second presidential debate, I was being asked, “Hey, did you watch the debate last night?” To which I responded, “Of course, but did you watch all the assholes being paid to talk about it afterwards like they know a goddamned thing?”
And thus we come to John Heilemann on MSNBC sitting around a table with some other middle-aged white men, all getting paid to speculate wildly and give us exactly no new information. You know, the news.
You may remember John Heilemann as the journalist who wrote Game Change, the book that describes what an unreasonable idiot Sarah Palin is, but the people who chose her as a VP candidate were all super-smart people.
The way campaigns work in America is that the candidates are supposed to take a more extreme left or right position in the primaries to attract each party’s respective base voter. But then the candidate moderates himself in the general election to appeal to the middle or the moderates in the electorate.
The shift Mitt Romney had to do in the last election from the primary to the general election was unprecedented. Here is John Heilemann saying what I had been saying for a long time, that Mitt Romney was running a campaign based almost completely on lying, and was making a complete mockery of the political process, the news media, and the American people—half of which Romney said he can’t be bothered to think about.
John pushes back against Joe Scarborough’s false equivalence about both candidates running toward the center in the general election:
“Joe, you are totally right, candidates from both parties go to extremes (in the primary) and then gradually drift back to the center . . .”
True, if by both parties he means “one” party, and that would be the Republican Party. During the primaries of ‘08, the best you could say of any Democrat was that they went to the extreme left of the right wing . . . yeah, they were so far left in the ‘08 primary that one time they even mentioned that the environment might be a thing.
“What Governor Romney has done—it’s really audacious what he’s tried to do in this last month: to make the switch this late—”
“Audacious” implies that there was an actual consciousness behind his campaign. On the other hand, if you assume Mitt Romney is just a suit filled with ambition, then all the tiles fall into place much more neatly. In that instance, he’s shifting positions late in the game because he’s a liar and a moron, which would also explain . . . well, everything. It’s like physics, really.
And then catch this little piece of journalistic sleight of hand John Heilemann lays on us, when he blames the president for the fact that Romney’s complete duplicity and lies are going unchallenged in the campaign:
“We rightly criticize President Obama for not nailing him on that and being more aggressive and being more confrontational and holding his feet to the fire in the first debate in Denver; that was a large part of his failing, and so I guess the question for Chuck Todd is . . .”
I guess the question for Chuck Todd is “Can you believe the balls I have to call out Barack Obama for not doing our job!?”
Sure, their only duty, in fact their entire job, is to make sure that people are aware of what is happening in the world, and the biggest thing happening right then was that Mitt Romney was a complete fraud, and don’t you think somebody should’ve been trying to convey that information to the American public? Like maybe a NEWS PERSON or something. Oh, I can’t wait for someone to invent newspapers and magazines and TV news shows so we will have institutions in place whose only purpose is to make sure the American electorate is aware of these things, and not just policy wonks.
Here is the actual question he asked Chuck Todd:
Heilemann:“Do you think it is too late? Is this a strategy that Mitt Romney can actually pull off? We’ve never seen a candidate tack to the center this fast this late in an election; can Pres. Obama impose a price on Mitt Romney for that? . . . Or is it possible that the ‘audacity of etch’ will work?”
Todd: “The president let him do it at the first debate, didn’t call him on it.”
First off, it’s nice to know when Chuck Todd sees that a person who wants to be the next president is completely lying, Chuck crosses his fingers and hopes the opposing candidate calls him on it . . . because he’s a newsman and powerless to do anything about it.
Secondly, what the fuck is Chuck Todd talking about?! Everyone has called him on it. The Democrats called him on it when he ran for Senate; the Republicans called him on it when he ran for president the first time; they called him on it when he ran for president this time. And for some goddamn reason, no one in the fourth estate wanted to stand up and say “This isn’t a partisan thing; this guy is a liar. He’s not a flip-flopper; he’s a liar. His positions don’t evolve; he doesn’t soften them or sharpen them—he flat out changes them to suit his ambitions at that particular moment. He’s pro-life, then he’s pro-choice, now he’s pro-life. He’s for healthcare, now he’s not. The man stands for absolutely nothing. He has no vision for America—he has no plan—he just wants to be president because he’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted in his life, and he feels entitled.
“And at the end of the day, no one seems to care. Republicans are so interested in winning that they’ve fallen in love with the guy they hated six months ago. Some Democrats are so petulant about their disappointment with Obama, that they don’t see the dangers inherent in letting Chauncy Gardener here have his hand on the button. And somehow, there are about a million people left in this country who are engaged enough to say they are voting, but not engaged enough to have formed an opinion on a campaign that has been in the news cycle literally every day for the last year. God is dead. I hate you all.” And . . . scene.
Something like that would have been nice.
CONVERSATION WITH A RUSTED ANCHOR
JIMMY DORE: Joining us now is legendary NBC newsman Tom Brokaw. I’ve got to ask, do you really think the generation you’re always writing about was really the GREATEST generation?
TOM BROKAW: Jimmy, that’s the generation that stormed the beaches at Normandy and made the world safe for democracy. With all due respect, the generations that came after are useless pieces of crap. People your age wouldn’t understand that because your prostates are too small.
JIMMY DORE: But subsequent generations fought for civil rights, feminism, and marriage equality. Don’t you have any praise for them?
TOM BROKAW: Oh, sure I do. All that civil rights and feminism stuff is just adorable. I’m more than willing to call them the “The Cutest Generation.”
JIMMY DORE: Cute? Really?
TOM BROKAW: Yes, I’ll be the first to admit that the troops who fought Hitler, for all their valor and bravery, never came up with any viral cat videos. This generation is tops in that department, no doubt about it.
JIMMY DORE: Mr. Brokaw, you are still very active in the world of broadcast journalism.
TOM BROKAW: That’s right, Jimmy. I admit that I am getting on in years, but that hasn’t diminished my passion for going into TV studios and pontificating thoughts of bland conventional wisdom. That’s a journalistic fire that never leaves the belly.
JIMMY DORE: But if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Brokaw, you are quite timid when it comes to holding politicians accountable for their actions.
TOM BROKAW: Jimmy, I’m not here to give you a lesson in Washington Journalism 101, but the first thing any reporter learns is never say anything about a politician that will make things awkward if you run into him or her at a Georgetown dinner party.
JIMMY DORE: Really? I never heard that . . .
TOM BROKAW: It’s true! Jimmy, when we reporters are covering stories of national import, there is a lot at stake. When you interview or comment on a powerful figure, what you say and the way you say it has the potential to ruin an entire weekend on Martha’s Vineyard.
JIMMY DORE: That doesn’t seem very important to me.
TOM BROKAW: No? Well, let me paint you a little picture, Jimmy—just imagine yourself spending the whole morning riding a moped all over, looking for just the right Chardonnay to go with the gazpacho you’ve prepared for your casual power brunch. You put all this effort into making everything just right, and then Donald Rumsfeld spends the whole party sulking because he didn’t like that someone on your broadcast said there were no weapons of mass destruction. Oh, there’s mass destruction all right—of the delightful soirée you were hoping would be the hit of the social season! I’ve seen it happen, and it’s something about which a responsible journalist should be ever vigilant.
JIMMY DORE: Mr. Brokaw, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think you have your priorities straight.
TOM BROKAW: And that’s why your generation sucks!
