Oh the things you see when you're not looking for them.
Like this bit of Oh Be Joyful buried halfway down the column over at PundiFact, where I go on Friday or Saturday because they often have an aggregates a list of all the guests and panelists for the entire upcoming Sunday Mouse Circus, and I can start getting my ennui on early.
This is subject of the column --
Donna Brazile, Jackie Kucinich and Kathleen Parker discussed the state of television news punditry and the fate of NBC's Brian Williams at an event hosted Tuesday by PunditFact at the National Press Club.-- so "meh" right?
But, halfway down, this:
...What you see at the Gasbag Cavalcade is not an accident. It's a play, carefully cast for the purposes of achieving the appearance of "balance". The "truth" never enters into it, and when that truth of a story is so raw and unequivocal that it cannot be hammered into fitting the network's fetish for false equivalence, that story never gets told.
Speaking to a crowd of about 50, and a larger audience online, the pundits were aware of the roles they play when they are put on air. ... They know the political slot they fill and the need to play to those expectations. While they won’t say something they don’t believe, nor are they fully themselves on air.
"I’m always on the left," Brazile said. "It’s like being an actress. I’ve learned to be an actress being on TV."
"On television, you need to fit into these neatly packaged view," Brazile added later in the conversation.
This was abundantly clear to Parker as well.
"I am called on to be the center-right voice at the table," Parker said. "I’m not going to suddenly start talking out of school. I’m there to make that argument because they (the producers) are looking for a balance."
The group also said they know what sells: Being loud and forceful.
...
So what about the fact that over time, if anyone bothers to look, they will notice that the Right lies a lot, and tends to be proven by that unfair, unbalanced, liberally-biased Reality to be overwhelmingly and horribly wrong over and over and over again?
Not a problem, citizen! That's been factored in:
That is what television producers said, but Parker said she personally doubted that money was the main reason. "What I really think is what they are assuming, based on ample evidence, is that the American people will forget in about two more seconds," Parker said. "If they just keep quiet about it, the news cycle will change and attentions will shift.And so, yet again, we peek behind the curtain to find what we already know.
That (to steal from my betters)
The Gasbag talking head is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard, well, every fucking Sunday until the end of time.
It is a tale told by a very, very, very well-paid idiot.
Full of Both Sides Do It
Signifying nothing.
8 comments:
Holy Crap. "I'm not going to suddenly start talking out of school."
Yeah, well, I think you just kinda did.
@Dave:
File this under the admissions, "It's not my job to fact check" and "Well, if I asked hard questions, my guests wouldn't return."
Kathleen Parker. The first time that bloated gasbag came to my attention was about 1992, when she found herself in Northampton, Massachusetts, and had the nertz to write about the experience in whatever birdcage line kept her at the time in kibbles'n'bits. The name means nothing to most people, but it's a modest metropolitan center on the historic Connecticut River with tons of colleges in the area - including such luminaries as Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and the University of Massachusetts. It has a heady intellectual atmosphere, documented by Tracy Kidder in "Home Town," which in my experience beats out a lot of your more celebrity places.
Young Ms. Parker was frightened of the lesbians and the freaks with tattoos.
So now she is trying to pass herself off as that nice lady on the tee vee. Center right my ass: people like her have destroyed my beloved country.
It's a play, carefully cast for the purposes of achieving the appearance of "balance". The "truth" never enters into it, and when that truth of a story is so raw and unequivocal that it cannot be hammered into fitting the network's fetish for false equivalence, that story never gets told.
Kabuki Theater on the Potomac. Yet another reason never to watch, or trust, Network or Cable news.
Under Putin's Russia, the news is controlled, manipulated and suppressed to suit his agenda.
In America, "mainstream media" news is controlled, manipulated and suppressed to suit the agenda of an inherently conservative corporate oligarchy. It's simply not worth watching.
Remember that episode of "The Boondocks" where Ann Coulter and Jesse Jackson? were yukking it up in some greenroom making plans for getting drinks later?
I have never seen Donna Brazil back down from any winger...but I have seen her pull a few punches.
"Yeah, I'm just going to straight-up tell you rubes that this entire 'News' scam is nothing more than pure Emo Kabuki to keep you divided & clueless, because my pimps already know from numerous prior such - heh - indiscretions that you're too stressed or wasted or strenuously invested in rooting for either Punch or Judy to ever clue in. Like, FOREVER & ever. Wanna see if I get away with it? Tune in next week, kids!"
... & the band played on ...
@blackdaug
Yes! I remember that episode. I felt
Aaron was representing the truth and to be honest it took seeing that to help me pierce that veil. Seeing Ann C portrayed that way took away her power.I needed that because I am too easily afraid of those people. That has got to go.
Is it just me, or have the masks been slipping an awful lot around the Beltway lately? First Chucklenuts Todd admits he doesn't ask hard questions because he knows the Very Srs Peoples won't come back if he does, now this. Is it leading up to a confrontation between the folks on camera and the asshoels in the boardrooms, or are we about to se our media suddely "revamped" for the changing times (and, conveniently, getting rid of all those terrible little people who've let the truth slip once too often)?
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