Saturday, February 13, 2016

Today In Both Sides Do It: Charles Craphammer And The Very, Very Last Remake Of Beau Geste



In case you hadn't noticed, Major American Media Corporations are still propping up discredited wrecks like the mortal remains of Charles Krauthammer behind a keyboard every week for the same reason they propped up the bodies of dead legionnaires in the windows and parapets of dear old Fort Zinderneuf: to give the illusion that some active and vital force is still defending a useless old ruin.

I am given to understand that Major American Media Corporations do this because they believe they bound by an arcane dogma of their faith called "balance".  

Here is what "balance" looked like yesterday as it was syndicated in dozens of Major American Nerspapers.  Charles Craphammer in the New York Daily News:
After Obama, magic sells: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are riding high, for now, on fantastical promises

The New Hampshire results have solidified the reigning cliche that the 2016 campaign is an anti-establishment revolt of both the left and the right. Largely overlooked, however, is the role played in setting the national mood by the seven-year legacy of the Obama presidency.

Yes, you hear constant denunciations of institutions, parties, leaders, donors, lobbyists, influence peddlers. But the starting point of the bipartisan critique is the social, economic and geopolitical wreckage all around us. Bernie Sanders is careful never to blame Obama directly, but his description of the America Obama leaves behind is devastating — a wasteland of stagnant wages, rising inequality, a sinking middle class, young people crushed by debt, the American Dream dying.

Take away the Brooklyn accent and the Larry David mannerisms and you would have thought you were listening to a Republican candidate. After all, who’s been in charge for the last seven years?
...
It is an article of faith among the Pig People that history began on January 20, 2009 and that it is an intolerable violation of the laws of God and Man and the Prime Directive to mention the seven years of continuous and calculated Republican fraud, racism, sedition and sabotage in any conversation about why the Obama Administration did not clean up George W. Bush's disasters more quickly.

It is also happens to be an article of faith among Major American Media Corporations that not letting stale frauds like Charles Krauthammer peddle their perfidy in Major American Media Corporations would ruin "balance" and destroy the First Amendment or something.  

For the benefit of future historians, the incestuous relationship between the dangerous and deluded Right and the Major American Media Corporations whose business model includes giving those dangerous delusions the widest and most uncritical platform possible in the name of "balance" is what wrecked this country.  

12 comments:

The Kraken said...

On behalf of future historians, I thank you for your insight.

Neo Tuxedo said...

If Public Opinion and the Herald-Mail follow their regular schedules, they'll be running a Kraphammer column tomorrow, probably this one. Would you be terribly offended if I submitted the highlights of this post, giving you full credit obviously, as a letter to the editors of both papers?

D. said...

Has anyone stated, in small words, that there was more actual balance before the tossing of the Fairness Doctrine, or is that a figment of my imagination?

driftglass said...

This comment was rejected by me in error.
Sorry.
Having a weird day

"Pulitzer material, my friend.

Pure Pulitzer.

If not Nobel Peace. "

driftglass said...

Neo Tuxedo,

knock yourself out.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Oh, yes, D, the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine was a disaster. It opened the floodgates for McDuck-financed Wingnut Media, and allowed the "mainstream" corporate media to shed social responsibility in favor of the pure pursuit of profit.

Unknown said...

the America Obama leaves behind is devastating — a wasteland of stagnant wages, rising inequality, a sinking middle class, young people crushed by debt, the American Dream dying.

The hypocrisy here is simply breathtaking. I can't remember the last time the Republicans even claimed to give a good-goddamn about any of these societal and economic problems, much less tried to do anything about them. All efforts that Obama pursued to address these were opposed root and branch by the Republicans. Remember the Stimulus?

Krauthamer is either so brain dead now that he can't remember what his own party stands for (hint, the 1%) or he's such a whore for the Repubs that no twisting of the facts is too shameless. I suspect the latter, though it's close call.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

OTOH, even in the glory days of the Mainstream Media, many of its minions were covert employees of a Certain Interesting Agency, despite the Fairness Doctrine.

Operation Mockingbird

The readers can decide for themselves whether or not it ever truly ended.

Neo Tuxedo said...

@dg, thanks. I'll let you know whether they run this specific column, or just something so close that your post would be equally applicable.

@Redhand, as long as he's got enough Arab blood for his morning smoothie, Kraphammer doesn't give a wet shart about consistency with anything other than Cleek's Law.

@IBW, the Mighty Wurlitzer has only slightly changed its tune with the end of the Cold War and of the enemy it was intended to oppose. Reading my local papers, and probably yours, will demonstrate how many people are still kept away from common-sense solutions, and moving toward policies whose harmfulness to ordinary people has been demonstrated for decades, by fear of Reds Under The Bed.

ELSKY said...

Where do these people come from? Who raised them and how? On the lighter side now that Scalia is gone what does Kennedy need to change sides? Or make up his alleged mind? And Thomas needs a new master. How about Ginsburg? He can say nothing just well voting the other way. We'll let him keep his lunatic wife and attend Klan rallies as long as he votes Ginsburg. Just saying…

Hallbowski23 said...

The America Obama leaves behind is devastating, and even though NONE of those things started with him or were perpetuated by him it's still all his fault for being PWB.-Honest Chuck Kraut, who we shall never hear from

Neo Tuxedo said...

They both ran it, but I'll only be using the paragraph that begins "It is an article of faith among the Pig People that history began on January 20, 2009..." because Kraphammer does go on to acknowledge some other history, namely the history of socialism, by which he means "a history of the worship of dirt and rats by people who are themselves dirt and rats, calculated to share the shit out of meatsticks who are still frightened of Reds Under The Bed, but prone to strike everyone else as a distraction", and the history of failed states in South America, with no mention of the United States' role in the failures of those states. ("I don't see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible. [...] The future of Chile is far too important to be left to the Chilean people." -- Henry Kissinger)