Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Today In Both Sides Do It: Creaky Like a Rose



Long ago, long before cable, I used to watch Charlie Rose semi-regularly.  He had on Alice Walker and Quentin Tarantino, which was fine.  He fawned over Tom Friedman and David Brooks, which made my gorge buoyant.  And once the Age of Bush began in earnest, his Beltway Establishmentarian After Dark schtick went dead stale fast and he has been slowly doddering towards moldering, Halperinesque irrelevance since.

Here is an excellent example of why (from, god help me, the Daily Caller):
Charlie Rose Takes Hillary Clinton To Task For ‘Attacking’ Republicans

CBS’s Charlie Rose took Hillary Clinton to task for “attacking” Republicans when she blamed them for the gridlock in Washington.

Tuesday on “CBS This Morning,” Rose said, “A lot of people think the biggest problem for America is Washington. That’s the problem. That’s partly reflected in some of the politics that we see.”

Clinton insisted, “Well, yes that’s true but look at the way our founders set it up. They set up this separation of powers and they made it really difficult to get things done. And some years it’s really hard. And we’re in one of these periods where we have a minority within the other party that doesn’t believe in compromise, doesn’t believe in reaching consensus, they truly…”

Rose interrupted the Democratic presidential candidate, “But there you go attacking them. That’s not the way to do it.”
...
Once it became bad form to speak the simple, observable truth about the GOP and once it was considered beyond the pale for a Democratic candidate for president to find fault with the GOP by pointing out this simple, observable truth during an election year, the profession of journalism was well and truly dead.

7 comments:

Kate W said...

Ugh, Charlie, an ass by any other name...

It would be fantastic if all the members of Team Both Sides would shut the hell up for once and at least let the truth be spoken if they don't have the guts to say it themselves.

At least one reporter is getting it done. Someone finally said that not only is the emperor butt naked, but it's horrendous to see. Bonus points for chastising others for letting Trump slide. Good on Michael Cohen of The Boston Globe. http://bit.ly/1QcYogK

ICYMI, Ben Carson was on Face The Nation this Sunday. When he was asked if the Right needs to tone down the anti-abortion rhetoric Carson literally said, well... you know what he said. When I'm not being thoroughly disgusted by it, I'm amused that 'both sides' has a very fitting commonality with another word that's often abbreviated. They're actually synonymous.

Thanks for a good read, and calling out bs in all its iterations.

Unknown said...

@Kate W

What a powerful column! Thanks for sharing. Do you think it will start a new trend in "journalism"? (Ha ha ha).

Grung_e_Gene said...

Charlie Rose, interviewed Karl Rove recently so we do get both sides; the vicious, evil lying ratfvcking conservative side and the vicious, say-anything for the Plutocracy Republican side...

Unknown said...

2 incidents ended me ever watching Charlie Rose again. He had Michael Moore on and Rose was disrespectful and practically sneering at Moore because Moore actually cared about human life. The second and final straw was during the terrifying death spiral of the economy in late 2008. Rose had the sleazy head of AIG Hank Greenberg on making the ridiculous case that the US government should simply give AIG BILLIONS of $$$ with no over-site and no strings attached! At that point of Rose's fawning over that evil piece of sh%# I stopped watching Charlie Rose forever.

Unknown said...

2 incidents ended me ever watching Charlie Rose again. He had Michael Moore on and Rose was disrespectful and practically sneering at Moore because Moore actually cared about human life. The second and final straw was during the terrifying death spiral of the economy in late 2008. Rose had the sleazy head of AIG Hank Greenberg on making the ridiculous case that the US government should simply give AIG BILLIONS of $$$ with no over-site and no strings attached! At that point of Rose's fawning over that evil piece of sh%# I stopped watching Charlie Rose forever.

Chris Bronson said...

He's always been an idiot who looks and sounds like a Serious Smart Person. My Fargo DVD has an extra where Rosie interview the Cohens shortly after Fargo came out. It was clear from the interview that he had not seen the movie, wasn't quite sure who the Cohens were and had no idea what questions to ask.

"Is this an example of how far the Cohens will go?"

I think the only thing he knew about the movie was someone got fed into a woodchipper.

Strider said...

What I wouldn't give for Mrs. Clinton to reply: "Tell us, Charlie, with all your years of congressional experience, what is the way to do it?