Attack of the killer transformers

Steve M. sez:

[M]ainstream coverage of campaigns is hopeless: the reporters seem incapable of maintaining critical distance, so they inevitably regurgitate spin -- and that just gives the spin a patina of objectivity.

For our political press, campaigns are good for one thing only:  Road trip!

If there's a movie on the press bus, so much the better:

Veterans of past presidential campaigns know very well that neither team has yet to fully engage the billion-dollar campaign machines that will clash in spectacular fashion in the fall.

Plus, all the better if the big media stenographer can pretend that financial resources for this campaign will be anything close to equal in the aftermath of Citizens United v. FEC.

Who's the Autobot? Who's the Decepticon? Big media won't help you figure that out. That wouldn't be "objective."

Why liberals think the GOP harbors bigots

Because they do.

We asked voters on this poll whether they think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal- 46% of Mississippi Republicans said it should be illegal to just 40% who think it should be legal.

The social norm in Mississippi is that it's still o.k. to think integration in the bedroom should be, not even merely frowned upon by white bigots, but against the law.

Of course, they can turn Fox up LOUD and see the stupidest men in television act even dumber by pretending that everyone is as pasty white as they are (except for Michelle Malkin, and they know she'd rather be white).

You know what Fox is doing, right?  They now continue, after the so-called liberal media's memories of Martin Luther King, with their thinly veiled racism ("but we never said n*****!") already in progress.

Forty-two years

Since Richard Nixon took office in 1969, Democrats and liberals have failed to call lies and bullshit what they are.  This is why our public conversation is so filled with bullshit and lies:

[T]his aggressive stupidity politically props up the arguments of the anti-government right. With so many Americans evidently not knowing they receive benefits from the government, it's easy for opportunistic politicians to seize on our "me-first, screw everybody else" culture and misleadingly deride the government as some distant entity that exclusively benefits the "other." And if you don't know that, in fact, you are "the other," then you are more likely to conclude that that opportunistic politician is correct, and more likely to cheer on that opportunistic politician as he/she slashes the programs you directly rely on.

(h/t Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog)

Not a news organization

Fox is not interested in anything but propaganda. Anyone who claims otherwise loves the taste of bullshit.

Mosqued bawl

Newt Gingrich (R-will to power) joins the amen chorus (amen to Jay-zus!) of teabaggers and wingnuts - that is, the majority of Republicans - in opposing the Cordoba House, a proposed Islamic mosque in Lower Manhattan. Once again, they prove that they have no idea of the meaning of freedom of religion. They narcissistically think that the Founders' great achievement was to codify the wingnuts' own special brand of Christianity as protected from who knows who - the great atheist-Islamist conspiracy, I guess. Just as many of them have missed the entire import of the gospels (Jesus was a liberal who ministered of love to the poor), they've missed the entire import of the First Amendment. And everything in between.

Gingrich can't help gilding the lily along with every other right-wing pundit. The mosque is "at Ground Zero." Or, as Newtie says, "overlooks Ground Zero." Most of the so-called straight news reporters give away their sycophant roles in pushing propaganda by adopting the wingy phrasing.

The truth is that the mosque is near Ground Zero - two city blocks away. (Click Google screen capture images for full-resolution aerial views.)


It just works so much better as propaganda to let your eager bullshit swallowers imagine that a mosque is going to rise in replacement of the twin towers. This is the sort of manipulation in plain sight that the Republicans know so well.

In any case, what distance toward the back of the bus would Republican opponents of religious freedom think appropriate? Maybe if the mosque were closer instead, they could think of its members as a human shield. The wingnuts' heads might explode from cognitive dissonance.

Wait til they find out how many other mosques there are in the area of Lower Manhattan!

Aaaieee! We're doomed. They're taking over! There's even an existing mosque four blocks from Ground Zero (though they appear to be having trouble keeping their lease).

Just leave out the context of how many churches there are in the same area:


I bet abortion clinics are feeling mighty nervous now! (Note: That's the wingnut logic of group accountability for the acts of a few other people who are superficially similar in some way.)

(Did I just commit journalism?)

Update (8/6): There's already a mosque inside the Pentagon! (h/t Jed Lewison on DailyKos)

Update (8/22): Updated in new item, When is a mosque not a mosque?

Update (8/22): I'm no New York Times, but I had the story of other nearby mosques almost three weeks before they did. In Manhattan, their own back yard. (h/t Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog)

Buh-bye

Honesty means more than simply not lying, but Richard Blumenthal (D-buh-bye) failed even the easy test of not lying:

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. [emphasis added]

During Vietnam would have parsed as true, but even that phrasing would have left room for deceit. During the Vietnam era would have been still better, with the word era flagging the statement for a bit more interpretive analysis.

Blumenthal could claim - and he has - that he simply misspoke. But there are too many instances of self-interested silence in the face of falsehood to credit this as the slip of his tongue.

The root problem, which should be fatal to his candidacy for Senate, is that Blumenthal has shown a life-long pattern of failure to correct the record clearly and forthrightly. He continues his deceit with this bullshit:

“I don’t know if we tried to do so or not,” he said. He added that he “can’t possibly know what is reported in all” the articles that are written about him.

Bullshit. Politicians care deeply and obsessively how they're covered in the press. They may not see every single article, but they or their staff see all the big stories, especially those in major publications. Nowadays, they all have Google alerts to keep them on top of media all the way down to the smallest blog.

The emotional impact of his reserve service and of seeing the postwar treatment of veterans from in-country could still be true. He could still tell it honestly from the perspective of a reservist. Instead, his claimed experience sounds more like echoing of urban legends than first-hand witnessing to the travails of returning vets.

Here's the principle: If you have to choose your words very carefully to permit listeners to take away a wrong impression, an impression that you want them to retain, you're lying. Never mind that advertisers do this all the time. They're lying too. It's just that your lie while seeking a Senate seat is more corrosive and damaging.

This is especially true of living a lie about being at risk of dying in the service of your country. That's just something that no one should ever fake - or acquiesce in faking.

Even Duhbya didn't try to get away with morphing his defense of Texas and Alabama against the world-wide threat of the Viet Cong Air Force into service in country in Vietnam. Like Blumenthal, he did try to get away with claiming he received no special treatment, also false but on a much smaller scale.

It was John Kerry who put aside offers of special treatment and actually served in Vietnam. That didn't win the Presidency for him, but he at least still has his honesty intact about that very important touchstone of recent American history, no matter how hard Karl Rove and the Swift Boat Liars tried to steal it from him by their own campaign of lies.

Blumenthal should go. But he's obviously too vain to give in to that inconvenient truth.

(h/t to this great post on No More Mister Nice Blog)

Update (5/19): More feet of clay on the Republican side. Lindsay Graham (R-wingy but not wingy enough for teabaggers) repeatedly and persistently claimed to be a veteran of Iraq I, despite never serving in country. (h/t Atrios)