"When a donkey flies, you don't blame him for not staying up that long."
-- Murray Slaughter, The Mary Tyler Moore Show final episode
You may know Mr. Chuck Todd as the guy Comcast hired to sit in a big chair on the set of Meet the Press and say "But What About The Democrats?" and "Both Sides Do It!" every time another Republican commits another unspeakable atrocity.
They hired him after they fired a guy named David Gregory, whose job for six years had been to sit in a big chair on the set of Meet the Press and say "But What About The Democrats?" and "Both Sides Do It!" every time another Republican committed another unspeakable atrocity.
Pretty sweet gig. Soul-destroying, but steady work and it comes with full dental.
Anyhoo, you may also remember that just a few weeks ago, after the Republican Hate Machine (which Mr. Todd had been ignoring or shooing away with Both Siderist platitudes for decades) --
A nearly 50-year campaign of vilification, inspired by Fox News's Roger Ailes, has left many Americans distrustful of media outlets. Now, journalists need to speak up for their work.
...But there’s a new kind of campaign underway, one that most of my colleagues and I have never publicly reported on, never fully analyzed, and never fully acknowledged: the campaign to destroy the legitimacy of the American news media.-- made it perfectly clear that they were coming after Mr. Todd and his friends personally --
Much of the current hand-wringing about this rise in press bashing and delegitimization has been focused on the president, who—as every reporter in America sadly knows—has declared the press the “enemy of the people.” But, like much else in the Trump era, Donald Trump didn’t start this fire; he’s only spread it to a potentially more dangerous place...
-- Mr. Todd suddenly rediscovered his deep love of "journalism" and the First Amendment and all that kinda good stuff.
Instead, Ailes created an organization that focuses on attacking the “liberal media” whose “liberal bias” was ruining America. Almost any big story that was potentially devastating to a conservative was “balanced” with some form of whataboutism. The Ailes construction has been so effective that these days, I often get mail from viewers who say: Now that you’ve focused on all of President Trump’s misdeeds, you are biased if you don’t dedicate the same amount of time to Hillary Clinton’s misdeeds. It seems completely lost on this segment of the population that one person is the leader of the free world, and the other is a retiree living in the suburbs of New York City....
He played up cultural fears, creating the mythology of a biased press.In fact, he got right up on his hind legs and said "No more! Sort of!"
I’ve seen a nearly 50-year campaign to delegitimize the press, and I’m saying so. For years, I didn’t say a word about this publicly, and at times I even caught myself drawing false equivalencies because I was afraid of being labeled as biased. I know that stating the obvious will draw attacks, but I’ve also learned that the louder critics bark, the more they care about what’s being reported.And after this bold declaration, that donkey stayed aloft for about a month.
And then...
And then, the day after that...Let’s be blunt, our political parties are waging a “cold” civil war... And as @amyewalter argues so well, each side rationalizes their bad behavior by pointing to the bad behavior of their “opponent”. The incentive structure punishes moderation https://t.co/1falKJY3NK— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) October 5, 2018
The bad news for Mr. Todd is that, when it comes to this journalistic integrity stuff, he clearly has no fucking idea whether to shit or go blind.Wish there was a way to filter #whataboutism off of Twitter. Too many folks on twitter can’t make a pro active case for something so they resort to a lazy “what about” trope.— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) October 6, 2018
The good news for Mr. Todd is that, by a happy coincidence, he happens to work at a job where understanding the difference between shitting and going blind is not a requirement.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
4 comments:
"Both sides are waging a cold civil war"
A convicted death row prisoner who is only still alive because of appeals. Gets a DNA test that exonerates him from committing the crime.
Republican politicians and their base demand accountability in law and order. That these death row appeals go one too long.
Small government GOP in the name of pro life law and order should have executed this man long ago. Get rid of the long costly appeals of these criminals.
Hey, If he was executed long ago. The appeals would never have kept him alive long enough to get a DNA test to exonerate him done.
Thing is, if executed long ago (swiftly) we would not have had to pay taxes to keep him incarcerated and the DNA test would never have been done and as far as we know. Justice was served.
Abbra-Abracadabra-justice.
Why do bleeding heart leftists care about this? Republicans don't.
So your see, both sides are in a Civil War.
The product Todd has put out extracts the sanity of facts from it's consuming viewers. When he takes specific issue. Goes back in time When senator Hatfield did something wrong to Senator McCoy. Knowing neither McCoy or Hatfield (nor their relatives) are currently senators.
Even, when Dems were hard on the facts over health care so GOP had no choice but to match that with their obstructive fact free opposition.
See, both sides.
Problem is Chuck, as Driftglass said in 2016, what President Stupid said about the Press on the campaign trail was essentially correct.
Instead of exposing the 50 year campaign, Roger Ailes, FoxNews, et al....the non-conservative operative parts of the corner office and editors went "Shit, look at their ratings! We need a slice of that!" The rest were just hoping to get a job over there.
For the last 18 years alone, the Press turned up slander on Gore and turned down issues with Mr. Wanna Have A Beer With; let the conservative Supreme Court call the election; buried the administration failures around 9/11; sold the Iraq War; personally buried Howard Dean's presidential campaign; and turned up slander on Kerry and ignored Rove/Cheney clumsy ratfucking so Bush won re-election.
The Press's reporting reached such a level of conservative bias by 2004, it gave rise to the liberal blog-a-sphere and made two Comedy Central shows into a major new programs. The shift was so large, MSNBC went "liberal" for a few years to try and get back the audience that had ran to Huffington Post and the Daily Show.
After 2008, once the banks got their bail out, they filled the airwaves with Austerity advocates, Goldbugs, and deficit hawks for the next 8 years; they ran cover for and promoted the Tea Party; they looked the other way while giving airtime to Birthers; and I could go on.
In short Chuck, as you or you colleagues once again interview a 15 year Republican Party County Chairwomen with a signed photo of her and Der Leader as a "Representative of Centrist America" during a "Are Democrats so Radical They're Alienating Potential Voters?" segment, you only have your job because the guy who had it before got exposed as the mercenary partisan hack he was by a comedian.
Chuck Todd not knowing whether to shit or go blind, has a plan close one eye and fart.
You are a most excellent wordsmith!!! You've condensed everything I've felt about Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd in just a few amazing paragraphs!
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