Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Hercules Said I Should Read This

So I did.  

Here's a little taste:
CLARK WHELTON
Death by Media

President Obama’s current woes and his cozy relationship with the press

21 May 2013

Revelations concerning Benghazi, the IRS, and government probing of the Associated Press make it increasingly clear that Barack Obama was led astray by his friends in the media. They intended no harm to the president, needless to say. But by withholding the criticism that prods public officials into doing a better job, by choosing not to print negative stories and commentaries about the Obama administration, the press corps tempted the president and his staff with visions of invincibility. The pro-Obama news crew—with a boost from the Nobel Peace Prize committee—confirmed the president’s exalted view of himself. They are in part responsible for encouraging Obama to think that he could tamper with the truth about Benghazi and get away with it....
And Hercules was right -- it is a "great article"!  Mr. Wheldon's article has everything:  paranoia, peevishness, free-floating rage against sinister, unnamed "mainstream editors, editorial writers, and journalists" and all done without ever troubling his busy readers with things like "evidence" in the form of, say, a link to a single example of who specifically "they" might be or what "they" specifically did and when and where they did it.

Instead, Mr. Whelton shares his butthurtedness at "late-night talk-show hosts" for making fun of Conservatives for being whiny, peevish, paranoid dolts, which admittedly is unfair on a "nuking legless bunnies in a teacup" level of pure lack of sportsmanship, but seriously, Mr. Whelton, if you want people to stop mocking you as failed, mentally underclocking losers who obsessively hang on every lie that comes out of Limbaugh’s and Beck’s mouths then stop being failed, mentally underclocking losers who obsessively hang on every lie that comes out of Limbaugh’s and Beck’s mouths.

By way of example of what I am talking about, let me cite a couple of examples by Mr. Clark Whelton which he has thoughtfully located in the very same "great article" Hercules told me I should read:
Last September, when Mitt Romney raised questions about Benghazi, the mainstream media accused the Republican presidential challenger of “politicizing” the issue. Taking their leads from Democratic press releases, they kept the spotlight on Romney’s supposed missteps, giving the Obama administration time to camouflage a murderous terror attack as a spontaneous riot.
Yes, some people did think it unseemly for Willard Romney to swoop into the middle of a foreign policy crisis before the ashes had cooled to accuse the Obama Administrations of the worst things imaginable.  But Mr. Romney's real problem was not that he "raise questions" so much as he "stepped on his own dick on national teevee in front of 100 million witnesses and got called on it".  Which happened precisely because instead of heeding professionals who knew enough to stay away from Sean Hannity talking points while the cameras are rolling, the Romney campaign instead decided to take advice from failed, mentally underclocking losers who obsessively hang on every lie that comes out of Limbaugh’s and Beck’s mouths.

Mr. Whelton also find overwhelming evidence of the Librul Media's perfidy in that:
They hounded and harassed Sarah Palin—author Joe McGinnis even moved next door to her home—determined to destroy someone they perceived as a threat to Obama’s power.
At which point I just put away my earnest charts and cool graphs and 1,000 posts demonstrating how fatally encrusted with genuinely, dangerously batshit crazy Conservatives the halls of congress and the columns and cameras of the mainstream media have become.  I put it all down and shrug because people like Mr. Whelton and his pal Hercules have sailed right on past the ideological event horizon beyond which they can be reached.  

Because the ticking of that terrible bomb in their heads drowns out everything else (from me, a year ago):
To be an American Conservative means that every day terrifying reality impinges a little more; every day history conspires a little harder to flick sparks at the detonation cord which will obliterate you.  And since all compromise is surrender, and surrender sets off the bomb, rather than sue Reality for peace, they have left themselves no choice but to scrape together anything that might ignite the fuse --  all of their bigotries, all of their paranoid delusions, all of their crackpot notions of good and God and government -- into one, big pile, and defend it all collectively as a Holy Cause.
And never look back.
Being bigoted, atavistic assholes is the hill they have decided to die on.
And nothing is ever going to turn them around.
Because, like Roger Ailes circa 1970ish, they are absolutely convinced that because the media does not uncritically regurgitate their paranoid conspiracies theories back to them it must therefor follow that the media has been captured and occupied by the Dirty Hippie Commie Horde:
The Idea Behind Fox News Channel Originated in the Nixon White House

A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News" (read it here) is an unsigned, undated memo calling for a partisan, pro-GOP news operation to be potentially paid for and run out of the White House. Aimed at sidelining the "censorship" of the liberal mainstream media and delivering prepackaged pro-Nixon news to local television stations, it reads today like a detailed precis for a Fox News prototype. From context provided by other memos, it's apparent that the plan was hatched during the summer of 1970. And though it's not clear who wrote it, the copy provided by the Nixon Library literally has Ailes' handwriting all over it—it appears he was routed the memo by Haldeman and wrote back his enthusiastic endorsement, refinements, and a request to run the project in the margins.
...
Because this is not their world.
And they are very disappointed.

4 comments:

BruceJ said...

Oh please, Romney didn't 'step on his dick'.

He carefully pulled it out to measure it with a laser-guided caliper, called in surveyors, laid out a grid, put in chalk outlines and hired NASA rocket scientists to calibrate the correct trajectory of his foot for maximum dick-stepping-on-ness.

"Please proceed, Governor."

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

he's no Steve Reeves.

Anonymous said...

Hell, he's not even a GEORGE Reeves!

RonInMichigan said...

F**king hilarious clip to top off a Herculean takedown DG. You continue to inspire daily.