The feeding frenzy has been out in force. The GOP has been loving this but so has the Beltway media quite clearly. That big Politico piece yesterday was epic in it's vile Very Serious Personess. Greg Sargent says we should learn from it as it tells us what Washington is like; evidently it's astonishingly vapid, superficial, and odious.
These VSPs telling the President that he didn't do his job as he doesn't have his finger over every move the IRS has made in the last 4 years might consider doing their own jobs. I mean it''s all fun and games for them, however, the real losers are the American people. Yes, we've seen this movie before-Bill Clinton in the 90s.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/15/when-the-village-turns-on-a-president/
You know it's funny. Most of us look back on the 90s as an almost idyllic time-the economy was strong and healthy and nobody had any trouble finding work. It was great-unfortunately I didn't try to start my career until 2001 where things changed forever in the job market almost over night.
However, it didn't seem so great then. You couldn't get away from Whitewater, Kenneth Starr, and Lewinskygate. You think of those who argue that GDP is a limited measure of overall social well being. There's been talk of measuring economically a happiness quotient. I was not happy hearing about how Bill Clinton has committed some kind of terrible high crimes and misdemeanours and needed to be impeached for 3 years.
We did well economically during the 90s but I'd say you'd have to subtract more than a few points off in terms of lower quality of life from all the silly scandals that the media pushed then like their pushing now. Hey, we've just pushed 800,000 federal workers out of work. But it's the difference between the words terrorist attack and act of terror that really count. Or the injustice that Tea Party groups had to go through a little scrutiny before receiving tax exempt status: ie, a public subsidy from us, including those very same furloughed federal worker.
Why does the media feel that Obama has "lectured" them? Aren't they the one with the endless pretty sermons about Transcendental Presidential Leadership? So we're in a bad movie; however, at least the 90s were prosperous times. Now while we're still in the throes of a slow recovery the media is totally abdicating its responsibility; again.
One advantage we have now over the 90s, though, is that then, we didn't have the large presence of liberal bloggers we have today. I wasn't blogging-the Internet was in its infancy-I was stuck listening to Rush all day salivate over destroying the Clintons. The only really popular media was talk radio that was mostly Right wing.
So it's up to us to actually interrupt the feeding frenzy with some rather prosaic facts. As long as all these fake stories are dominating the headlines I guess I'll have to continue knocking them down here over at Diary.
Believe me, I'd rather be writing about stuff that matters. However, I can't just pretend that this hasn't bumped everything important to the back pages. So as long as it's true think of Diary as a place of sanctuary from the endless 24/7 Big Lie Machine that is the media filter.
Other great places to go is stuff like Greg Sargent, Jon Bernstein, Lawyers, Guns and Money, and especially Media Matters which is now a must read. Listen I'd much rather be arguing with Sumner as at least that's about real intellectual issues rather than all this Storm and Stress Signifying Nothing. However, the media "village" prefers Nothing to ending the sequester and helping the unemployed or passing immigration reform.
http://mediamatters.org/
We didn't have Media Matters in the 90s either-though the s90 were what inspired its founder, David Brock.We are the Few, the Proud, the Liberal Bloggers-I prefer Liberal Hacks, but I have an overdeveloped sense of irony.
We LBs are at a disadvantage. the only thing we have on our side is the facts. Scandals are those things that the Very Serious People love where facts don't matter. It's like what Senator Al Franken once said of Rush Limbaugh's show: it's where you are punished for knowing things.
Scandals-like McCarthy and Whitewater-aren't about facts. They are about suggestive speculations, guilt by association, specious correlation, etc. The headline claims that the IRS discriminated against the Tea Party. The Tea Party is the President's sworn enemy. He's the President of the United States and according to Bob Woodward and Maureen Dowd's Green Lantern Theory of Presidential Leadership he has total control of the government-after all that's the definition of a democracy-and more or less total control of everything that happens any where in the world. So it stands to reason that he directed the IRS personally to discriminate against the Tea Party.
It's the kind of narrative the beltway media loves and there's really not a single fact in it which makes it impossible to refute. All we LBs have are the facts. Kevin Drum nicely sums the entire scandal-o'rama up.
"Benghazi is still the nothingburger it’s always been, and everyone knows it; the DOJ episode is a policy debate, not a scandal; and it’s vanishingly unlikely that Obama had even the most tenuous connection to the IRS targeting of tea party groups, the only genuine scandal in the bunch."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/15/when-the-village-turns-on-a-president/
Mere facts, but it's all we have, should you choose to accept your mission.
These VSPs telling the President that he didn't do his job as he doesn't have his finger over every move the IRS has made in the last 4 years might consider doing their own jobs. I mean it''s all fun and games for them, however, the real losers are the American people. Yes, we've seen this movie before-Bill Clinton in the 90s.
"A lot of liberal bloggers have harshly criticized Politico’s big, much-discussed piece today reporting that “the town is turning on President Obama — and this is very bad news for this White House.” If Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei claim this to be the case, then it’s self evidently true, though it’s unclear that the consequences of this will be quite as bad as VandeAllen suggest they might."
"It turns out that “the town,” as a term describing Washington’s political and media elite, actually has a history that goes back to elite Washington’s disdain for Bill Clinton. That history is well explained here by Digby, who ultimately coined the phrase “the Village” as a catch-all description of Washington’s insular ways."
"In that context, I’d argue that the Politico piece is actually quite useful, in the sense that it’s very candid about how certain aspects of “the town” actually work. This nugget from the VandeAllen piece is particularly instructive:
Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be.
"We should take this seriously. As Ed Kilgore puts it: “make no mistake: this is a declaration of war by elements of the Beltway Media who are determined to show us all they still have the power to `bring down a president,’ as they arrogantly used to say about Watergate.”
"The claim that the press now has “every incentive” to be “ruthless” is fascinating, and worth unpacking. Why, exactly, is it more in reporters’ interests to be more aggressive in its coverage of Obama right now than it was before? Easy. Now that ”the town” has turned on Obama, being as aggressive as possible in going after him will lead to accolades among media colleagues and ingratiate you with sources, including even Congressional Democrats who will presumably now distance themselves from the White House, in the knowledge that ”the town” has decided the President is in political trouble. It’s hard to interpret this any other way. This is not a particularly flattering description of the proper role of the press, and few reporters would cop to it or accept it. But there’s no reason to doubt VandeAllen’s candid suggestion that this is how parts of the Beltway media genuinely function."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/15/when-the-village-turns-on-a-president/
You know it's funny. Most of us look back on the 90s as an almost idyllic time-the economy was strong and healthy and nobody had any trouble finding work. It was great-unfortunately I didn't try to start my career until 2001 where things changed forever in the job market almost over night.
However, it didn't seem so great then. You couldn't get away from Whitewater, Kenneth Starr, and Lewinskygate. You think of those who argue that GDP is a limited measure of overall social well being. There's been talk of measuring economically a happiness quotient. I was not happy hearing about how Bill Clinton has committed some kind of terrible high crimes and misdemeanours and needed to be impeached for 3 years.
We did well economically during the 90s but I'd say you'd have to subtract more than a few points off in terms of lower quality of life from all the silly scandals that the media pushed then like their pushing now. Hey, we've just pushed 800,000 federal workers out of work. But it's the difference between the words terrorist attack and act of terror that really count. Or the injustice that Tea Party groups had to go through a little scrutiny before receiving tax exempt status: ie, a public subsidy from us, including those very same furloughed federal worker.
Why does the media feel that Obama has "lectured" them? Aren't they the one with the endless pretty sermons about Transcendental Presidential Leadership? So we're in a bad movie; however, at least the 90s were prosperous times. Now while we're still in the throes of a slow recovery the media is totally abdicating its responsibility; again.
One advantage we have now over the 90s, though, is that then, we didn't have the large presence of liberal bloggers we have today. I wasn't blogging-the Internet was in its infancy-I was stuck listening to Rush all day salivate over destroying the Clintons. The only really popular media was talk radio that was mostly Right wing.
So it's up to us to actually interrupt the feeding frenzy with some rather prosaic facts. As long as all these fake stories are dominating the headlines I guess I'll have to continue knocking them down here over at Diary.
Believe me, I'd rather be writing about stuff that matters. However, I can't just pretend that this hasn't bumped everything important to the back pages. So as long as it's true think of Diary as a place of sanctuary from the endless 24/7 Big Lie Machine that is the media filter.
Other great places to go is stuff like Greg Sargent, Jon Bernstein, Lawyers, Guns and Money, and especially Media Matters which is now a must read. Listen I'd much rather be arguing with Sumner as at least that's about real intellectual issues rather than all this Storm and Stress Signifying Nothing. However, the media "village" prefers Nothing to ending the sequester and helping the unemployed or passing immigration reform.
http://mediamatters.org/
We didn't have Media Matters in the 90s either-though the s90 were what inspired its founder, David Brock.We are the Few, the Proud, the Liberal Bloggers-I prefer Liberal Hacks, but I have an overdeveloped sense of irony.
We LBs are at a disadvantage. the only thing we have on our side is the facts. Scandals are those things that the Very Serious People love where facts don't matter. It's like what Senator Al Franken once said of Rush Limbaugh's show: it's where you are punished for knowing things.
Scandals-like McCarthy and Whitewater-aren't about facts. They are about suggestive speculations, guilt by association, specious correlation, etc. The headline claims that the IRS discriminated against the Tea Party. The Tea Party is the President's sworn enemy. He's the President of the United States and according to Bob Woodward and Maureen Dowd's Green Lantern Theory of Presidential Leadership he has total control of the government-after all that's the definition of a democracy-and more or less total control of everything that happens any where in the world. So it stands to reason that he directed the IRS personally to discriminate against the Tea Party.
It's the kind of narrative the beltway media loves and there's really not a single fact in it which makes it impossible to refute. All we LBs have are the facts. Kevin Drum nicely sums the entire scandal-o'rama up.
"Benghazi is still the nothingburger it’s always been, and everyone knows it; the DOJ episode is a policy debate, not a scandal; and it’s vanishingly unlikely that Obama had even the most tenuous connection to the IRS targeting of tea party groups, the only genuine scandal in the bunch."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/15/when-the-village-turns-on-a-president/
Mere facts, but it's all we have, should you choose to accept your mission.
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