Hey look, it's Tom Friedman!
Hey look, it's Peter King!
Hey look, it's Liz Cheney!
Hey look, it's Paul Fucking Wolfowitz!
Hey look, it's me giving up on American media!
Things about this Sunday's mainstream political television offerings that crossed my mind as I watched Western Civilization slip another few inches beneath the waves:
Peter King of "The Peter King Show with Special Guest, David Gregory" is very loud and lies a lot. About everything. Then again, Peter King voters are barely sentient, so garbage in/garbage out.
In a healthy society, the minute Peter King started lying he would have been frog-marched off the set. Instead, David Gregory and his waxworks panel largely stared at their shoe tops and tried to be polite. It is the same tactic Newt Gingrich has deployed on "Meet the Press" over and over again: sling your bullshit loudly and bulldoze over anyone who gets in the way. It works because A) someone keep booking people like Peter King ang Newt Gingrich on these shows and, B) David Gregory is a simpering weakling who lets wingnuts use him like an Ottoman.
Clearly David Gregory thinks "Conservatives who lie" is a distinct constituency that deserves lots and lots of teevee time.
If all you knew of America was Peter King you would be forgiven for thinking we were a godforsaken bigot-ridden pesthole
It was damn decent of Bibi Netanyahu to let David Gregory talk every now and then.
Bibi Netanyahu breaks out the Fox News "Some people say..." bullshit. David Gregory predictably lets it slide.
Tom Friedman has apparently bequeathed the "Friedman Unit" to Bibi Netanyahu.Every week, the American political debate is being framed by people whose names we often do not know. They decided to put some people and opinions on the public airwaves and exclude others. The decide to allow pathological liars and slander-mongers on the public airwaves without ever mentioning their lying, slander-mongering pedigrees to the public. They choose to let lots of obvious Conservative bullshit slide by unchallenged, but get very angry and defensive when anyone on the Left dares to point out the obvious fact that the blame for our nation's problem is not evenly distributed to both sides of the political spectrum.
I guess I missed the part of "Meet the Press" where David Gregory asked Bibi Netanyahu how many nukes Israel has in its stockpile.
SamSteinSeder filling in for Chris Hayes on "Up" doesn't quite cut it. Each of his "searching for just the right word" stutters that preceded each sentence fragment ran on about twice as long as it should've, and Mr. Seder unfortunately has a smirky affect that appears to be burned on his motherboard. Still, any given two minute stretch of "Up With Chris Hayes" or the "Melissa Harris-Perry Show" -- guest hosted or not -- is better than anything "Meet the Press" has done since forever.*
Each of these decision in an affirmative one, made by some person or group of people who want the dice loaded in a particular way. Each decision is allegedly made in our name, and each of these farces is broadcast over the airwaves that we own.
It is long past time to know the names of the people who keep putting liars on television.
It is long past time for them to be held publicly accountable for their decisions.
* (The fact that Mr. Seder was kind of a dick to me at Netroots Nation in Chicago and at Netroots Nation in Minnesota has nothing to do with my review of his performance on "Up" :-)
13 comments:
"Sam Stein filling in for Chris Hayes on "Up" doesn't quite cut it. "
Agreed, I normally like Sam Seder but he had a tough time. Goes to show you TV ain't the same as radio.
They choose to let lots of obvious Conservative bullshit slide by unchallenged, but get very angry and defensive when anyone on the Left dares to point out the obvious fact that the blame for our nation's problem is not evenly distributed to both sides of the political spectrum.
Why is this? Granted, I don't watch this crap because I have the Internetz but my parents do and their friends do. And then they do get all defensive and pouty when I quickly squash whatever they regurgitate.
But how does this crap continue? I wait patiently every Monday for Drifty's Sunday talkie recap and, honestly, it's getting repetitive... I want to shake David Gregory until that hair piece falls off revealing an empty cranium.
But how does this crap continue? I wait patiently every Monday for Drifty's Sunday talkie recap and, honestly, it's getting repetitive... I want to shake David Gregory until that hair piece falls off revealing an empty cranium.
It is the $$$.
G.E. and J.P. Morgan and Exxon and Lockheed Martin pay good money for ads. The U.S. government pay the same back tenfold with wars and licenses to rape the populace.
That's what makes our crazy world go around and around.
~
We know the names of the editors of newspapers as a matter of course. Why not the at least equally important framers of the talk shows? A good question for someone to ask on a talk show.
Followed up by, "I mean, look at these clowns you have on regularly, week after week. Who the fuck is Liz Cheney, fr god's sake? Who says who gets on, Gregory - you?? Tell me. we want to know their names."
If you've seen Gregory twice, you can see the pattern. Why waste a perfectly good rest day morning watching that drek?
It ain't going to change except get worse. Comcast has a reputation to uphold.
Besides Luke is waiting in the wings to retake his daddy's place when Gregory doesn't kiss con-ass appropriately enough one fine day and he knows it.
For me the highlight was Gregory proclaiming Bibi as Pope of the Jews.
It is long past time to know the names of the people who keep putting liars on television.
It is long past time for them to be held publicly accountable for their decisions.
This times infinity. In the words of a great American poet:
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear someone asking them why
You are coming to resemble the last years of Jean Shepard, sttling personal scores and politicizing personal disappointments. I never miss your weekly podcast but, as a Jew and a progressive, my radar (Jewdar?) instinctively detects the underlay of anti-Semitism which has infected the left (formerly the new left) since the Sixties. While I am as much or even more repulsed by Jewish neocons, ultra-orthodox trogs, and Wall Street sociopaths jthe stink of antiSemitism still lingers under the justifiable anger of Driftglass when you remind us that Frum and company are Jews. I loathe Netanyahu and his ilk but I also know that Anti-Israel is the cover for anti-Semitism. So Stein, Seder, whatever, conveys, to me, the familiar odor of "you know how they are...." I wish you wpould take stock and be more self=aware.
The NSDAP (Nazi) party took over the German government in the 1930s.
The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the single purpose of destroying the parliamentary system from within through its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of action.
Ernst Rudolf Huber (witness) From the Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality Volume I, Chapter VII 1946
http://thegallopingbeaver.blogspot.com/2010/06/bairds-of-this-world-get-away-with.html
Also, check who owns the "news" organizations. The Wall Street Journal run by Rupert Murdoch and criminal associates has credibility?
Friedman, Wolfy, King and Lizard Lady.
This crew isn't worthy to pump the political septic tank of J. Danforth Quayle.
John Puma
I like Sam Seder -- he's a mensch! I followed his shows when he was on The Majority Report on Air America -- we used to listen to him via the computer when we lived in Australia. But he got axed. Seder was OK, if somewhat muzzled, when he was a semi-regular on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show. Then that got canned. (I still think there's a hidden story behind Dyligan walking away.)
I don't watch Sam on that sloppy panel show that replaced it, because that would mean wasting at least a few seconds of my life listening to S.E. Cupp, who would only be interesting if she popped her top and showed us what was in those C-cups. But Seder's still doing a yeoman's job with Mike Papantonio on the "Ring of Fire" Saturday radio show. We listen to podcasts of that up here in Canuckrainia.
Seder is like a yeoman liberal talker. He has a solid command of the facts, asks intelligent and probing questions, and he's got the moral sense that you'd expect from someone who has a young daughter who he'd like to see grow up into a world that's not a political/environmental house of horrors. He might not be at his best on TV -- calmly intelligent people don't come across well in that "hot" medium. I wonder how much MSNBC has told him to muzzle up if he wants to keep getting a paycheque.
As for you, DG, ask yourself how you come across in person. Are you too acerbic and not humourous enough when you meet someone new? You are obviously impassioned and have a commanding array of facts that you can spit out. But an overwhelming intellect is often overweening. Plus, you look scary. Are you, like, two meters tall? Or is BG just real short in that Prof Lef photo?
Also, too, celebrity people in the media appear dickish because EVERYBODY wants a piece of them. Their fans spend literally hours in a one-way listening situation, so when they finally meet the person whose voice they've been focused on, they just want to gush! "Oh, you're so great, you're so great, you're so great!!!!!" I reckon the adulation can bee off-putting, unless they're narcissicists. It would make ME a dick. More than I already am, that is.
Anonymous,
Your deep contempt for the Irish is troubling. Sure the objective evidence is scant, but my Hiberniadar senses it lingering there, just below the surface, plain as day. Sad really.
Bukko Canukko,
I like Sam Seder too, on the radio and in small doses on TV. Also I don't live in a box and shove my posts out of a slot: I live in the Real World and have had lots of different jobs/causes that put me in contact with lots of different kinds of people. Publicly I am polite and solicitous and, yes, I really am very tall which is why I make a special effort not to freak people out face-to-face. Also I get the celebrity-aversion thing and if I were a yappy fanboy with poor hygiene I would understand. OTOH, if you fly cross-country to attend a gathering of the Liberal tribes, well, WTF do you expect?
Dear "self=aware,
I've been waiting all my life to tell one of you sanctimonious Jews that, since you have to keep reminding everyone everyday your religious persuasion, then I think it fair that when I say "Fuck the Jews" you can feel free to take it personally.
Lefty
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