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Now this is one great development! I keep my eyes open for alternative media, because one of our greatest threats to our democracy is the lack of good information for our voting population. Any step toward overcoming the corporate domination of media is a step toward overcoming the corporate stranglehold on our media and our country.
I was so excited reading this post by Jay Rosen, I wanted to get up and dance around the room. I have been puzzling and mulling and aching for some semblance, beyond the wonderful progressive/liberal blogs that I read, of real thoughtful courageous reporting. At least now someone is talking about it.
Once again The Fates have come our way to provide a story, and once again, we have a contender for the "Ironic Story Of The Year".
It's got everything you need for serious irony: an irascible comedian who mocked religion at every opportunity, a city that loved him, and the rich coincidence of his having been born at the crossroads of New York City's communities of religious education.
And that's why, today, we'll be talking about the effort to name the street right next to Manhattan's Seminary Row...Carlin Street.
(And before we go further, a language warning: we'll be quoting George Carlin liberally, and that means there may be present today certain of the seven words with which he created one of his best known routines. You are now officially warned.)
Firedoglake has a speculative piece that also has more than one shocking assertion. Most notable, the Fox "Brain Room."
http://firedoglake.com/2011/07...
But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie."
That's a former employee, who was canned, so apply the necessary salt. Note this, though, presented as a routine matter.
Before the piece was published, on November 17, 1997, Cooper claims that his talent agent, Richard Leibner, told him he had received a call from Ailes, who identified Cooper as a source, and insisted that Leibner drop him as a client-or any client reels Leibner sent Fox would pile up in a corner and gather dust.
I know, we're long past being shocked by Fox. But that's a problem, because they are more shocking all the time. Here's a network head telling an outsider -- threatening an outsider's business, in fact -- if it occurred, it is hearsay here.
I'm not thrilled by the prospect of an investigation. It raises problematic First Amendment questions. But I hope there's a tell-all Fox book about these black ops, and if laws were broken ... well, that resolves the problematic question.
The scandal-hit British tabloid News of the World will shut down after Sunday's issue, its owner, News International, told CNN Thursday.
Journalists at News of the World, a tabloid that is the world's top-selling English-language newspaper, have been accused of hacking into the mobile phone account of missing British teenager Milly Dowler, intercepting messages in search of news.
Don't mess with people's phones, I guess. Unless you're the government.
So I thought I was going to have another Jay Inslee story for y'all today, but it turns out that I'm going to have to do more research before we can "come to press" with that one.
But that's OK, because the world's been busy doing a lot of other things - and while many of them get media coverage, some don't get a lot of notice at all.
And of course, there are also those stories that look one way at first glance...but look a lot different when you dig a bit deeper.
We'll hit a few of those today, have a bit of fun doing it, and get ready for what promises to be another busy week of strategically not doing things in Washington.
To make things even better, some of the stories will be real, and some won't.
Anyone who has been a Hamster for any length of time has read and probably participated in some discussion of the shortcomings of our media, here in NH and nationally. We know that there is a serious information shortage going on, and we suspect it has a lot to do with the corporate control of the media.
But the question always comes back to how do we create a new media, an alternate media, that actually might get read by enough low-information citizens to make a difference.
I'm sure everyone has seen this item or something like it, about the Herald's ban from the president's fundraiser.
I thought this would be a bigger topic on Blue Mass Group today. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete outrage.
Someone needs to be fired over this. Or, if the president personally ordered it, the presidential shrink (There must be one, right?) needs to remind him he is not Emperor. This is a completely disgusting misuse of power. It sends an extremely strong "prior restraint" signal to the rest of the press corps.
I would like to see this denounced, widely, within the Democratic Party. But just as important, it needs to be widely denounced in the blog world. I don't like the Herald either, but banning it is an indefensible, Bush-like thing to do.
Furthermore, it's terrible strategy. It makes the president look awful. It will cost him votes.
If your view of politics is filtered by a lens marked "Progressive" or "Liberal", there's a pretty good chance that you've been gnashing your teeth and pulling your hair in frustration over the "give away the store, then negotiate" approach professional Democrats have used when facing the challenges from the Tea Party last year, and all that's come after.
Over and over and over people like me have written stories wondering why Democrats, starting with this President, don't get out in a very public way and slam Republican policies, over and over and over-especially when most Americans hate the things Republicans seem to love to support.
Turning over Government to the highest bidder?
Not so popular.
Going back to a heathcare system run by, for, and of the insurance industry?
Again, not so much.
Jacking up taxes and healthcare costs for you and me in order to provide another trillion in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires?
So unpopular pollsters hardly believe it.
But there is another way, and today's story is in two parts: we're going to talk about how hard it is to get Democrats, as a group, to get loud and get aggressive-and then we're going to talk about Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who is out there showing any reluctant Democrat just exactly how you can "grow the brand".
So, the thing is, I'm not the one who tends to follow the herd.
If everyone's backed up on the freeway, I'm the one who will look for the longer but less crowded country road. When everyone's talking about whoever out-sang or out-danced or out-cake-bossed someone else, I'm the one with the blank face-and if there's a room full of people line dancing, I'll be the one over in the corner having a smoke and wondering what went wrong with y'all.
And that's why, while everyone else is all excited about Glenn Beck's imminent "disappearance" from the television firmament...I'm not so sure.
In fact, I can easily see a scenario that leads to a lot more Beck, and that's what we'll be talking about today.
I think we tend to take the courage of celebrity television reporters for granted. Though we might understand that a newspaper reporter traveling outside the glare of the camera is running risks, TV reporters - with their crews, equipment and live feeds - can seem pretty much invulnerable. That is clearly not the case.
OK, technically Wikileaks is a website, and websites can't pull triggers.
Unless it's Sarah Palin's website.
And so the Republic is tested again.
This is the only story in politics right now. The House could declare war on Canada, and I would hardly notice, as long as the Senate hadn't voted yet.
I want Gabrielle Giffords to get well and hold a press conference. I want her to crack a joke, and to announce that her next "Congress on the Corner" event will take place as soon as she is healthy enough to do it. I know that I may not get this, any of it, but that's what I want. And all of that is to say, I'm not making fun of her, the victims, or the situation.
But I find it odd that, last month, so many people were defending Wikileaks, which was dealing with matters of life and death and war. This month, some of the same people are saying, "Words matter. Words have consequences."
Um ... yes. That's why we use them.
I've read the threads at Blue Mass Group and Blue Hampshire with great interest. Three comments spoke the loudest to me: this one by elwood, this one by Tim C., and this one by Mr. Lynne. Everything said, in all three of those comments, is absolutely true. The Michael Moore quote in the last link is killer. The Tom Tomorrow quote right under it is even better.
But none of this matters. We could debate, for the next 10 years, about the rhetoric of the left and right, and (in my opinion) the left would win, every day. But we would win nothing, because that is the wrong battle to fight.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
-- (probably never said by) Voltaire
Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle are not at fault here. If Palin opened a chain of gun shops, and offered guns personally signed by her and had a store in Arizona, she would not be at fault here. Sharron Angle is a Senate candidate who lost, a powerless goofball somewhere in Nevada. The man she lost to has real power, and he used it last year to (among other things) vote for an Afghan war funding bill proposed by his president, the most articulate, reasonable, and well-spoken politician in the country. Use of words is a big part of why Obama is president, and part of why Sharron Angle has no power. Words matter. Words have consequences.
But those tanks in Afghanistan have even greater consequences. It's hard to reply to bullets.
Why do we accuse others of causing actual harm through inappropriate speech? Do we not recall that such accusations have been made about us, and will be again?
Political speech is dangerous. Politics is dangerous.
It is dangerous because it matters. It is not good that it is dangerous, but it is good that it matters. This is the price of freedom. With great freedom comes great irresponsibility. God bless America.
As people who care about political speech and engage in it, we have to grant others the same freedom we grant ourselves. That means, in part, that we give them the broadest possible benefit of the doubt. We should assume that they mean well and want the best for our country. We should not hurl accusations over what we consider their irresponsible behavior.
Of course "Second Amendment remedies" is over the proverbial line. But who gets to draw the line? Any satirist will tell you that you don't know where the line is until you step over it.
It might help that I'm in my 40s, which means I've had 30 years or so of Baby Boomer media telling me that I'm screwed up. A grieving Dad decided to sue Judas Priest over his son's suicide, and some goofy judge dragged the entire band into the courtroom for months. I didn't even like Judas Priest, but anyone could see that there but for a bit of luck went a lot of bands I do like. Tipper Gore became nationally famous for crusading against rock lyrics, and then came to regret it, even asking the PMRC to disband before Al ran for president (they refused). The Clash's Combat Rock tour was called their "North American Campaign," and I'm pretty sure the T-shirts had something on them that looked like targets, over the cities. So clearly ...
Until a couple of years ago, we still used Blockbuster Video in our town, which is named after "blockbuster" movies, which are named after blockbuster bombs. Speaking of war, strafing is a good strategy if you play DOOM, which you should if you never have. I'm pretty sure that game made me less violent, not more so.
When I write about politics, I tend to avoid profanity because I know its power. I want to be read, and I don't want to give someone an excuse to ignore me. But that's my choice, and it's meaningless if profanity isn't allowed. I use a music analogy: I sing (poorly) in one key, but I want all keys available.
I cite no less an authority than John Candy.
I was taught that the word fuck is something sacred, something that could always get a laugh when needed.
Fuckin' A right, John. RIP.
I don't like Sarah Palin or Sharron Angle, and I really don't like Mike Huckabee (who I predict will be heard from next, after Pawlenty). But I want to defeat these people at the ballot box, because we won a battle of ideas, not because they said something stupid and irresponsible. I wouldn't wish that on our candidates, and I don't wish it on their candidates.
On to 2012. Here's to a speedy recovery for Rep. Giffords. If she decides to run in 2016, I'm with her. I've learned a lot about her in the last few days, and she seems to be the kind of leader we need.
What I learned today is that moving into 2011 it is even easier for shady operatives to send phony stories up the stovepipe of stenography media than it was two years ago, or even a year ago. Linkbait is increasingly trumping basic journalistic standards such as fact checking. Drudge still rules their world.
I also learned that a strong pushback works.
But this is not a remedy. Getting corrections after the fact doesn't mitigate the damage that was already done to the truth.
What does work is the marginalization that comes with the absence of credibility. It's a big internet, and the beauty of it is that anyone can set up shop and write whatever; it's only when others give it credence that it matters.
For example, after today, media outlets here and nationally who take anything NHJournal says seriously deserve to be laughed at.
My title alludes to the sitcom starring William Shatner, based on this Twitter feed, though who knows, that feed is probably a knockoff of the original. Anyway, David Biancolli said on NPR that "Bleep My Dad Says" is the accepted pronunciation of that show (which he panned as one of the worst on TV, incidentally).
First a disclaimer. I don't like Tom Friedman any more than you do. I think he's royally pompous, and he tends to speaks in column-ready axioms (quoting Larry Summers, he said, "In the entire history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car."). Yeah thanks. "Get off Facebook and get in their face." Or something.
The other day, I caught about 20 minutes of this broadcast. Friedman was being his obnoxious, I've traveled the world and I know more than you, I've talked to so-and-so in such-and-such, and we need to get "beyond politics" (he consistently fails to acknowledge that most of the changes he advocates are Democratic positions), he drops the name No Labels (though I'm not positive he used it formally), and he rolls along without regard for whether he's completely made his point, and ...
He said some really compelling stuff.
If you have time this week, I recommend listening to it. I know it's tempting to dismiss the stuff he brings up, because he is so pompous, and because he's such an elitist ... but the stuff about globalization and what it will mean for the American labor market -- well, we aint seen nothing yet, in his view, and he's not alone on that.
If nothing else, you can enjoy the irony of a man talking about American productivity, and how will we enjoy our huge salaries by global standards, etc., and never even hint at the fact that he works for a print newspaper, a rapidly dying industry.
The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle's form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system's conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.
-- Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
(Text gratefully copied from here.)
The future belongs to crowds.
-- Don DeLillo in his novel Mao II
What am I on about? This.
I enjoy FB. But some people take it WAY too seriously.
Steve Benen comes back again and again, and quotes others coming back again and again to what the media WILL NOT DISCUSS. He quotes Andrew Sullivan:
What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own party did much to precipitate, and facing a fiscal crisis the GOP alone made far worse with their spending in the Bush-Cheney years. There is not a scintilla of responsibility for their past; not a sliver of good will for a duly elected president. Worse, figures like Cantor and McCain actively seek to back foreign governments against the duly elected president of their own country, and seek to repeal the signature policy achievement of Obama's first two years, universal healthcare.
My husband was a Republican, pretty much, until George Bush converted him. He still carries some baggage from those years, and tends to accuse me of "hating Republicans" for no reason other than that I am a Democrat. (I get this from other people, too, the idea that I am a Democrat because of some cause other than the fact that I dislike and fear what Republicans do these days, rather than being a Democrat BECAUSE I think the Republican Party is destroying what I learned was the American promise to us all.)
However, there are some advantages to living with someone who thinks this way.
Short diary, but I am baffled by this, and I don't want to put it in the happy birthday thread.
I get news alert e-mails from the Washington Post. This is from the politics edition (can't link to it).
Chamber: We'll leave Obama alone
"It's not in our interest to get into presidential politics," Chamber President Tom Donohue said. "And it is not our intention to participate in any activity to weaken the president for his reelection."
Now here is the actual story.
The leader of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday scolded the Obama administration for the "regulatory tsunami" its policies have created, which he called "the biggest single threat to job creation" in the country.
(snip)
Its bet on the midterm elections seemed to pay off, and Donohue's speech Wednesday was part victory speech, part rallying cry. He appeared confident that the business community would receive a warmer welcome on Capitol Hill as Republicans take control of the House in January and the Democratic majority in the Senate weakens. "The elections are over, and our message was heard," Donohue said. "Along with others, we spoke about the dangers of a bigger and more intrusive government. ... The American people responded in an historic way."
A historic, Mr. D, but I digress.
The quote in the newsletter does appear in the story, but pretty far down. Well below the lead, which I quoted.
Does anyone know why the Post is deliberately misrepresenting its own story? This is not a first, in their news announcements. If it's strategic, I don't like it.
It's one (dishonest) thing for the Chamber to try to have it both ways. But newspapers aren't in that business ... are they?
In a number of states the electorate chose the kind of people they said they didn't want running their government. Really makes you wonder, doesn't it?
If you listen to what a lot of voters say they want this year, especially in conservative states like Indiana where a huge chunk of the population identifies as Tea Partiers, it's candidates who are ready to break with the past, question long-held assumptions, relate to the concerns of regular people, and can bring a fresh perspective to the entrenched insiders in Congress.
And with that in mind, Hoosiers, by a 15-point margin, elected an old, wealthy Washington insider, who left Indiana more than a decade ago, and who's spent several years as a corporate lobbyist. Indeed, Coats intends to go to the Senate and vote on issues he handled as a lobbyist, and has no intention of recusing himself when his former clients will be affected by his votes.
