"But it's his only line" Edition.
I knew things were bad, but they must be worse than I thought. So bad that on "Meet the Press" journalist Helene Cooper stared forlornly into her 401k and wished someone other than Helene Cooper would get out there and do some journalism already (emphasis sprinkled in here and there to suit my baroque tastes):
HELENE COOPER: For instance, there's still no link between Syrian refugees and the attack in Paris, okay? Nobody is-- these guys are Belgian and French nationals, they're not Syrian refugees, we don't have a link to that yet. And yet, all of this rhetoric, I would love to see the press and I'd like to see the media really--
Journalist Tom Brokaw saw journalist Helene Cooper's pair of crocodile tears and raised her a big 'ol sad because won't some journalist somewhere who is not Tom Brokaw please for God's sake do some journalism?
TOM BROKAW: Well, no, I just was thinking to myself that Governor Kasich is about to become the most popular subject on the right wing social media circuit after that appearance here this morning. (LAUGH)CHUCK TODD: Why is that?TOM BROKAW: He'll be taken on for challenging the idea that we have to have some kind of a security list for all Muslims who come into this country and not have a relationship with them around the world. When you talk about a war on Islam, you're talking about a war on Indonesia, for example.
Most of the subcontinent of Asia. So when he then challenges that premise on the part of both Donald Trump and Doctor Carson, who are doing extremely well on the polls, he's going to find himself a target on social media. You cannot underestimate the impact of social media in studying a lot of not just the outrageous positions, but flat out lies.And Donald Trump says that he saw in Jersey City thousands of people cheering when the Twin Trade Towers came down, it's completely wrong. It did not happen. He did not see it. But who's there to challenge him on that?
After which, journalist Helene Cooper implored the gone-away gods of Journalism even more plaintively than before to Send Us A Deliverer! Someone -- anyone...as long as it's not journalist Helene Cooper -- to take down these motherfuckers with some motherfucking god damn journalism:
HELENE COOPER: There's no consequence for them to say anything that they want to. They can make things up, they can go out and say flat out untruths and nobody's challenging them. It's very similar to what Tom said--
Helpfully, over on Tom Brokaw's Social Media at almost that exact moment, Matthew Dowd (former chief strategist for the George W. Bush 2004 re-election campaign who is now a full-on, born-again "It's not my fault because I'm an independent" paid ABC News employee) was demonstrating exactly how the Beltway tone-police will kneecap any hapless truth-speakers who dare to call the Republican Party out by its true name.
Mr. Dowd performed this accidental service in a little game we like to call, "A Quisling says what?":
comparing people to Hitler or fascists on either side doesn't help our discourse or country. act the way you want others to act.
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) November 22, 2015
@ATuozzolo calling Dems communists or fascists is just as wrong. let's raise the communication to a better level.
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) November 22, 2015
Meanwhile, back on "Meet the Press", Ron Fournier gallantly indicted everyone for being equally to blame for everything because at this point it is literally his only line:
RON FOURNIER: I'd like to double back really quick on what we were talking about earlier. You know, I took a shot at our leadership earlier and I really believe in that strongly, but we as a people have to realize that we are changing in a way that we have to be more responsible. We are more scared than we were since 9/11 and we trust our institutions less than we did since 9/11.
We trust each other less than we did. And now with social media, we have to ability to ghettoize ourselves, to only listen to the views that we already agree with and demonize and attack everybody else. And when you combine that with this vacuum we have with leadership, that's why I really worry about what happens the next time we get hit. Are we as a people able to hold together?
And gliding over all, this supreme irony.
Those the knives-out truth ninja saviors for whom journalist Tom Brokaw and journalist Helene Cooper desperately pine?
Surprise! They've been here the whole time.
They're those Dirty Hippies which are casually slandered on every Sunday show as part of the Beltway's Both Siderist ritual.
The ones the Village kerbooted into the Media Phantom Zone long ago for telling the kinds of knives-out truths about Republicans which journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper Absolutely Refused To Hear way back when it could have made a difference.
The Liberals, whose every vituperative, foul-mouthed utterance reliably drove journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper to their fainting couches.
Fainting couches under which journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper now cower and beg for deliverance from Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and their mighty horde of wingnut bigots and imbeciles.
A mighty horde of wingnut bigots and imbeciles about which those Dirty Hippies have been trying to warn journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper for 30 fucking years.
Meanwhile, over on Fox News, the Chief Propaganda Officer for the 1,000 Year Wingnut Reich garroted the timorous Beltway Both Siderists with the very pearls they were clutching and laughed and laughed and laughed all the way to the bank (from Media Matters):
On Fox News Sunday, Rush Limbaugh Fawns Over Donald Trump And Ted Cruz
Limbaugh: "Donald Trump Is, I Think, Doing A Great Service," And Ted Cruz Is "Brilliant, Just Absolutely Brilliant"
6 comments:
The sort of interesting thing is after the Nazi project failed, it turned out (I mean after they got rid of their uniforms and stuff) that nobody had been a Nazi!
Will our courageous media will be as fast on their feet? Inquiring minds await with baited breath.
@bowtiejack
Do you remember the classic Mitchell Trio tune "I Was Not a Nazi Polka"?
at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.
There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment when it happened. ... On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Sanders had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.
Well, Ron, I actually do listen to people who do not agree with me, and it makes me sick every time.
Man, Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier keeps schtupping that chicken, doesn't he? At some point his head will just explode as he delivers one of those heaps of putrid "both sides" bullshit, right? I mean, he can't keep being ignorant of (deliberately or not) the actual reasons why we have Trump stomping over the charred remnants of the unspoken rules of our polity, can he? Who am I kidding, of course he can.
And of course, as anyone who has tried to engage with him in an actual reasoned back-and-forth on the Twitters can attest, his is perhaps the most "ghettoized" mind of all. Anyone who suggests to him that the insufferable, mendacious sanctimony wrapped in "objective" centrism he shovels out is ever wrong or mistaken is immediately labeled an irredeemable partisan moron for which he has no time. Phony centrism is his professed religion, but only to the extent that it pleases his actual masters, the moneyed GOP elite.
He is just the worst fucking guy.
I don't watch or listen (to re-broadcasts) of the Sunday shows but yesterday I was stuck on a road trip with either listening to a tiresome repeat of Garrison Keilor or CSPAN's rebroadcast of the Toddler.Show. Having never listened to the show before, I thought Helene actually asked a pertinent question, which you cited and the Toddler never got close to asking (he sees himself as a softball tosser, clearly). Anyway, I had never heard Ron Fournier before and I started laughing out loud as he went on his "leadership" shit. It was hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
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