Friday, May 09, 2014

There. Is. No. Tea. Party. -- Stupid Media Edition



The stupidest poll you will read all month comes to you courtesy of (surprise!) the Washington Post:
Just 7 percent of journalists are Republicans. That’s far fewer than even a decade ago.

BY CHRIS CILLIZZA

May 6 at 12:52 pm

A majority of American journalists identify themselves as political independents although among those who choose a side Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one, according to a new study of the media conducted by two Indiana University professors. Write Lars Wilnat and David Weaver, professors of journalism at Indiana, of their findings:
Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8 percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC News/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971. An even larger drop was observed among journalists who said they were Republicans in 2013 (7.1 percent) than in 2002 (18 percent), but the 2013 figure is still notably lower than the percentage of U.S. adults who identified with the Republican Party (24 percent according to the poll mentioned above).
Image courtesy of The American Journalist in the Digital Age

...
Wow. Sounds terribly one-sided doesn't it? And how very lucky that it also just so happens to perfectly reinforce the longstanding Beltway fairy tale that the dang Librul Media bends our national narrative so far to the Left that its only fair to stack the deck in favor of the Party of Louis Gohmert whenever and wherever possible?

Because Fairness.

Also Balance.

And thus things will stand...until anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex pushes even lightly against the assumptions underlying these stats, at which point the most amazing things start to happen.

For example, you discover that, according to paid Republican liar Sean Hannity, Sean Hannity is not a Republican, as you would know if you had listened to this exchange between definitely-not-a-Republican Sean Hannity and Congressman Keith Ellison from 2013:
...
ELLISON: Quite frankly you are the worst excuse for a journalist I have ever seen.
HANNITY:  I can’t hear you.
ELLISON: You heard me.
HANNITY: No, say it again.
ELLISON: I heard you — what you just displayed was not journalism, it was yellow journalism, it wasn’t anything close to try to tell the American people what’s really going on and I mean, it’s just shocking.
HANNITY: Yellow journalism, to play Obama in his own words is yellow journalism.
ELLISON: With the background music and the lead up before you let the president talk. Let me tell you, I was here. Everything the president said is absolutely true.
HANNITY: Yeah.
ELLISON: And for you to try to make the American people make you think it isn’t is deceptive on your part and is a breach of everything, every journalistic ethic I heard of was just violated by you. And the president was truthful. The president was honest. What the president said was dead on accurate and for you to say the president is to blame here is ridiculous. I was there August, 2011 when the Republicans, your party, which you shamelessly …
HANNITY: I am not a Republican
ELLISON: You are nothing but a Republican.
Shrieking wingnut welfare radio hack, Mark Levine?

... Levin said when it's time to govern, Republican establishment politicians "jettison" their positions and promises made on the campaign trail.

He also blasted those in the chattering class who were once liberals, hated and did not support Ronald Reagan, and who mock constitutional conservatives, just like the liberal hippies and poets they are, choosing to work with Republican establishment operatives to trash conservatives.

Levin reminded his audience that in 2006, "George W. Bush and his right-hand political hack Karl Rove lost the House of Representatives and the United States Senate."

He said nothing good was happening within the Republican party until 2010 when the people "rose up through the grassroots" after they had enough of George W. Bush's policies and the direction Obama was taking the nation after the election.

Levin, whose book Liberty and Tyranny sold a million copies without being reviewed by mainstream outlets and who was a precursor of the Tea Party movement, said the Tea Party tidal wave in 2010 was not fueled by lobbyists or establishment consultants. Instead, he called it a "spontaneous movement of patriotic Americans with conservative beliefs"--individuals who were fed up with the overreach of Democrats who controlled Congress.

"Did the Republican Party stop them? No. You stopped them," Levin thunderously declared...
And I am willing to wager that any one of you who still gets blast-emails from Republican friends or colleagues or relatives can attest to the fact that right around the time the serial catastrophes of the Bush Administration reached full bloom and the Kenyan Usurper was elected...

...suddenly...

... all of those Rush-loving, Liberal-hating, lifelong Republicans who had screamed for Clinton's impeachment over smoke and shadows for eight years and then spent the next eight years called you a cheese-eating, terrorist-loving surrender-monkey for not shutting the fuck up and blindly supporting George W. Cheney vanished!

Vanished utterly in a confetti-cloud of hastily shredded "Bush/Cheney '08" bumper stickers!

Vanished in the night in their tens of millions...and (thanks to the Magical Bush-Off Machine) been replaced by legions of "independents" and "independent constitutional conservatives" and "independent fiscal conservatives" who had never even heard of George W. Bush.

Even Paid Republican liar and "Majority Maker" Rush Limbaugh has confirmed what I have been saying since the joint Koch Brothers/GOP weasel-out-of-taking-responsibility-for-all-the-shit-we-wrecked rebranding scheme called the "Tea Party" was launched:
...
I guess they had some people with meters that were being used to register their reaction to what they were hearing, and I noted that the independent and Republican lines tracked identically. When there was a positive reaction to whatever was being said, the independents and Republicans were perfectly aligned. There was not a gap between them. When there was anger or disagreement with whatever was being said, the Republican and independent lines tracked identically, with very little space between them.

I think there's been a fundamental shift in who the independents are. I think the independents of today are, in many cases (and maybe a majority now), former Republicans who are fed up. They're actually conservatives, former Republicans who feel disconnected from the Republican Party as it's defined by the establishment. They have simply given up the party ID. They simply registered as independents.
...

If you're just joining us, I actually apologized to independents today for getting it wrong 'cause I think now what's happened, the vast majority of the independents are Republicans who have left the party in one way or another.
Of course, back in 2009 when I explained the surge of Fake Independents in an open letter to paid Republican liar David Brooks as follows (The "Independent" Granfalloon) I put a different spin on it --
... And based on simple observation, guess who appears to be the largest group of late-blooming independents?

Those fucknozzles who, after giving Dubya the longest tongue bath in modern political history while calling everyone else a traitor, started gagging on the sheer tonnage of bullshit their creepy idolatry of George W. Bush was requiring them to swallow and obediently regurgitate every fucking day, that's who.

Most newly minted “independents” seem to be little more than Republicans who are fleeing the scene of their crime, but at the same time still desperately want believe in the inerrant wisdom of Rush Limbaugh. They are completely incapable of facing the horrifying reality that they have gotten every single major political opinion and decision of their adult lives completely wrong, so instead they double-down on their hatred of women and/or gays and/or brown people and/or Liberals, and blame them for the miserable fuckpit their leaders and their policies have made of their live and futures.

Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin, they have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.

But they fool no one.

Except, apparently, David Fucking Brooks.
-- but the results are same.

Most of this county's newly-minted "independents" Republicans -- Republicans who spent eight years gleefully kicking the shit out of you for not getting on-board with their horrible ideas, and who went into a Beltway-Media-abetted witness-protection program once the Bush Regime went tits-up.

And any journalist who doesn't bother to mention that fact is selling something.  

And that "something" is usually "Both Sides Do It":
The movement toward independent status among reporters is in keeping with a similar move in the broader electorate as they find the two parties increasingly rigid and, therefore, less welcoming.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to defend the "Both Sides" thing, but about the journalists, and as a greater question:

I do wonder how many "Reagan Democrats" and centrist or conservative Democrats became Independents because the incessant "Both! Sides!" pounding made them disgusted with blame for their own party.

Mike.K.

the cheese eater said...

My mother STILL has a letter she received from the White House from when GWB was presnit. It sits proudly in her little office next to the Internet machine. It hangs on the wall. It is framed.

Many Republicans who changed their political affiliation to "Independent" back in 2000, did not do so because they are ashamed of the failed Bush presidency or because they think the Republican Party is too bat shit crazy. Some Republicans who self identify as Independents do so because they think the Republican Party is not bat shit crazy enough! I know some of these people and they believe all would be well in the Republican Party and the world if the leadership would just take orders from Limbaugh and Levine like they are supposed to.

As to this "both sides" person of whom you speak, I hear a lot about him but I don't know who he is. I do know a guy who’s had several influential positions in and out of government named Henry "Hank" Paulson. I've also heard of another powerful and influential man named Timothy "Timeeeh" Geithner.

Funny thing, both guys have identical world views, attended the same university as undergrads and most importantly, held the same job WHERE THEY BOTH PURSUED AND ENACTED IDENTICAL ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL POLICIES, POLICIES THAT HAVE DESTROYED AMERICA AS WE HAVE COME TO KNOW IT.

As it happens, one of these powerful guys has a (D) after his name and was appointed Treasury Secretary by a Democrat. The other powerful guy has an (R) after his name and was appointed by a Republican. So the evidence suggests that when it comes to massive wealth transfers from the working class populations in Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago into the hands of global oligarchs both sides do it rather well. But somehow you argue week in and week out that both sides don’t. Your evidence? Our corporate sponsored media tells us There. Is. No. Tea. Party.

the cheese eater said...

My mother STILL has a letter she received from the White House from when GWB was presnit. It sits proudly in her little office next to the Internet machine. It hangs on the wall. It is framed.

Many Republicans who changed their political affiliation to "Independent" back in 2000, did not do so because they are ashamed of the failed Bush presidency or because they think the Republican Party is too bat shit crazy. Some Republicans who self identify as Independents do so because they think the Republican Party is not bat shit crazy enough! I know some of these people and they believe all would be well in the Republican Party and the world if the leadership would just take orders from Limbaugh and Levine like they are supposed to.

As to this "both sides" person of whom you speak, I hear a lot about him but I don't know who he is. I do know a guy who’s had several influential positions in and out of government named Henry "Hank" Paulson. I've also heard of another powerful and influential man named Timothy "Timeeeh" Geithner.

Funny thing, both guys have identical world views, attended the same university as undergrads and most importantly, held the same job WHERE THEY BOTH PURSUED AND ENACTED IDENTICAL ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL POLICIES, POLICIES THAT HAVE DESTROYED AMERICA AS WE HAVE COME TO KNOW IT.

As it happens, one of these powerful guys has a (D) after his name and was appointed Treasury Secretary by a Democrat. The other powerful guy has an (R) after his name and was appointed by a Republican. So the evidence suggests that when it comes to massive wealth transfers from the working class populations in Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago into the hands of global oligarchs both sides do it rather well. But somehow you argue week in and week out that both sides don’t. Your evidence? Our corporate sponsored media tells us There. Is. No. Tea. Party.

AaroninTW said...

Best post ever. That is all.

steeve said...

Journalists have long wished there was a group of independents between the parties. Turns out such a group actually exists - it's composed exclusively of journalists.

The only reason anyone would want to be between the parties is if their bosses ordered them to do it.

casimir said...

Very true, DG. But I would add, I think more trenchantly, that a journalist's self-ID as liberal bears no relation to the role he/she plays in his/her work. Journalists always will tilt leftwardly because their jobs require them to be exposed to the world and the world, of course, has a left bias. However, establishment journalists who self-ID as liberal do more than anyone to advance the corporatist agenda by treating the Right as an equally legitimate position in the "two sides" frame and championing BSDI. Most simply, how a journalist self-ID's is irrelevant due to all of the external coercions that operate on those who need to please the establishment to survive/advance professionally. Beyond that, I theorize that the tension between knowing leftward views are correct (by virtue of their engagement in the world) and needing to espouse the corporatist line causes liberal journalists to be susceptible to a self-loathing, and hence to psychological projection, which makes them among the best hippie-punchers of all. Finally, note that conventional liberalism (which focuses more on ameliorating redistributionism rather than an analytical critique of the economic/political structures that make redistribution necessary) is not leftism.

Robt said...

Here is a exquisite example that both sides DO NOT DO IT !

Try reading Michael Tomasky's article,
"Beirut Barracks vs. Benghazi".

I believe it was on the Daily Beast.

I can look more recent and see the 8/11 Commission that smelled nothing like the Benghazi corpse beating.
I saw more of corrective action (not enough in my book) with a tad of disclosure as the infamous "PDB "Osama determined to strike in the United States".
There was actual failure. Why did not these same GOP'ers want to get at the truth here?

I did not see any Democratic political campaigning for donations during any of this.
Yet, wwe see the NRC having a web site asking for donations with the lead GOP man of the Select Committee's name right on that RNC's web site asking for campaign donations.

As Elmer Rudd says,
"Shhh-Be vewy quiet, I am hunting wabbit"

the cheese eater said...

Neal Barofsky(D) and Timothy Geithner(D) trade barbs over Geithner's soon to be released book. Apparently Geithner is not a fan of government oversight.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/neil-barofsky-geithner-forthcoming-book-resorts-already-discredited-factual-mischaracterizations-name-calling.html

There appears to be a dispute over the historical record and one of the parties is accused of resorting to name calling.