Back in the days of long ago movie industry, the creators of the Star Wars franchise staked out an entire galaxy full of possibilities to play with. Big, audacious and fun But
down the road decisions made at the George Lucas level-turned that narrative
universe into something cramped, dull and dumb.
Back in the days of Three Network Teevee (and long before I knew or
cared) Meet the Press could be impressive. Now that NBC has irreparably fucked it up it may be hard to believe, but the format was a guest
facing a panel of reporters who asked them questions. Hence the title Meet the
Press.
Now Meet the Press is known for hosting forgettable guests of dubious
honesty who are guaranteed not to be asked anything difficult by a host who
always has one eye on the approval of his employers. This is followed by
a panel of the same, rotating cast of zombie pundits, most of whom should've
been sent to a nice Pundit Farm upstate years ago.
Then panel then jerks itself off until it's time to run an ad for dick pills or
reverse mortgages.
This happened because, long, long ago in a media universe far, far
away Meet the Press stopped caring about, y'know, news and
began focusing almost exclusively on Fan Service.
The lingering questions about Chuck Todd’s future atop the Sunday show have garnered comparisons to the long, drawn-out, messy saga of former 'Meet the Press' host David Gregory, who was ultimately pushed out in 2014 and replaced with Todd. https://t.co/fLmKcuoKAm
And which fans did Meet the Press care about servicing?
Their fellow teevee executives and the constellation of professional pundits, insiders and
influencers who make up what we call the Beltway.
Like Lucas with the Star Wars prequels, NBC executives completely lost sight of
what made the original Meet the Press popular and culturally
important. It was the compelling guests they put in front of the camera
and the story they had to tell while fencing with actual, shoe-leather
reporters.
Instead, the latter-day Meet the Press executives built a temple to honor the Both Siderist fetish of their Beltway friends and fans: a tepid, toxic pudding of forgettable guests, one-dimensional pundits, stupid writing
and Both Siderism tarted up with zooming cameras, the space-age sets and the
seizure-inducing graphics. (Does anyone still say "space-age"?)
It didn't need to be this way, but this is the way it is.
And until the executives who built this temple to Both Siderism are purged and their temple is torn down brick by brick, this is the way it will stay, no matter who they stick in the big chair.
This week some random person spray painted the word "Sup?" on a random
campaign sign of Putin-asset and all around raving hobgoblin, senator Ron
Johnson of Wisconsin.
Awaiting the Andrew Yang Tweet declaring that only the Forward Party can save us from this madness.
Side note: We can now confirm that fragile political snowflake
and all around raving hobgoblin Ron Johnson has never visited
Chicago during campaign season at any point since days of George Wellington
Streeter, Paddy Bauler and Mayor Big Bill Thompson.
Over the past few days I have had one 16-year-old post of mine put behind a "Sensitive
Material" checkpoint by Blogger, and Three Two! Count 'Em! Three Two! posts -- one from
2015 and two from 2016 -- officially "unpublished" by Blogger on the following grounds:
As you may know, our Community Guidelines
[other Blogger link] describe the boundaries for what we
allow-- and don't allow-- on Blogger. Your post titled "Die With The
Lie"
was flagged to us for review.
We have determined that it violates our
guidelines and have unpublished the URL
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/06/die-with-lie.html, making it
unavailable to blog readers.
Why was your blog post unpublished?
Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses
policy.
Please visit our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.
If you are interested in republishing the post, please
update the
content to adhere to Blogger's Community Guidelines. Once the content
is
updated, you may republish it at [other Blogger link],
This will trigger a review of the post.
It's these latter two that made me laugh out loud.
I do appreciate Blogger's diligence in sending their bots burrowing through my archives to
ferret out any links that might send my readers stumbling unawares onto the a perilous road to
Malware-land --
-- and the death of love and trust.
No, the thing that cracked me up is that the only suspect links on either of these posts are from the one or two rare occasions when I linked to the infamous wingnut cesspit World Net Daily.
Which now is apparently being flagged as a malware and virus superspreader site.
Which is more perfectly, chef's-kiss apt than I have words to describe.
I was recently asked my opinion about the career of former Republican congressman from Illinois and former Conservative radio host Joe "Joey Muskets" Walsh.
Ok, here goes.
My opinion is that it doesn't really matter what my opinion is.
Like so many others operating in the politics/media space, Walsh is first and foremost, a
careerist/opportunist. And after +17 years at this, it's perfectly clear
that the moves people like Walsh make are far out of my
reach and immune to my judgement.
Most of American political media now exists in a state of pure branding. Pure
packaging, where interactions and alliances are almost entirely transactional:
if linking up with you, or picking a fight or sucking up advances their
interests, increases their reach/followership, players will do so. Which is
why almost none of them -- including a lot of my Liberal allies -- have
anything to do with blogs or pods at my level. We can't help people like Walsh
sell his brand or advance his career. We can't help them burn a
little brighter -- maybe bright enough to attract the attention of influencers
at the level above them and get them invited up the ladder.
Worse still, hanging out in Liberal blogosphere steerage with the dirty hippies who remember the very inconvenient things that media people are trying hard to forget, and who speak of those verboten things openly and with plenty of salt, may alienate whatever relationships one is otherwise cultivating to get invited further up the ladder.
And that's all Walsh wants, which he's said explicitly on his podcast. That his "calling" is to have an audience. Period. No mention of "why" he should have audience, or what he'd do with one if he had it since all he does is mouth platitudes. He used to be syndicated on hundreds of radio stations, and was a regular Fox News contributor. All that is gone now, and rather than moving on with something else, he wants the spotlight back. He still sees his destiny as a man commanding the attention of the crowd, and he will say/do whatever it takes
and glad-hand whoever it takes to make that happen, which is why he does not
interact with people at my level.
Everyone who goes on his show is "my dear good close personal friend" which he
repeats a dozen cloying times during the interview, regardless of whether it's
Noah Rothman explaining why Dems are just as awful as Trump and that he will never, ever, ever vote for one...or Bill Kristol or some d-bag MAGA "good friend" on the phone (a regular
feature) or Dana Milbank promoting his book.
There's a bit in the movie The Southern Yankee where Red Skelton stitches
together half of a Confederate uniform and half a Union uniform, then sews the
two flags back-to-back, so he can march safely across an active battlefield,
with each side thinking he's on their side.
That's Walsh (and why/how I remember this stuff I do not know.)
Walsh is a self-described unrepentant "small government, Tea Party guy" whose
"brand" is shouting/attacking. And heir to the legacy of goofs like Morton Downey, Jr. and Joe Pyne. And at the moment he is on the outs with
his former party, and so shouting at/attacking them is what he can do now to
build an audience. And there is a definitely a market for recently-former Republicans
who purport to speak for "the people" (which Walsh does constantly) and who yell about how awful the GOP is and lecture Dems that they need to be more Centrist-y.
That market is currently overstocked, and Walsh's "analysis" lack any depth or originality whatsoever. He states the most obvious things, loudly and slowly, but Joe is aggressive and persistent and still has contacts who can get him booked on
CNN. And since much of the audience for political media has no memory of or interest in That Which Went Before, (See, "Dowd, Matthew"), shapeshifters with friends and contacts in the media will almost always find a home somewhere.
Walsh strikes me as a shallow man who, other than a handful of GOP bumper
sticker slogans from 2010, doesn't have any fixed beliefs beyond believing
that he should have his own syndicated radio show and/or regular gig on cable
teevee.
But as I said, my opinion doesn't really matter.
Media/political
careerists make relationships tactically, and since no tiny voice out here in
the cornfield is going to help them advance their careers, my opinions and analysis,
right or wrong, prescient or fatuous, are of no use to them.
Except maybe 10 or 15 years from now when they come back to whatever is left of the Liberal blogosphere to strip mine us of our words, file the serial numbers off, and re-sell them to a mass audience as edgy, brilliant, insightful revelations :-)
Listening to Ronna beg for money to save the party she played a starring
role in destroying is pretty sweet.
https://t.co/PPcMfnTHPb
— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🇺🇲🇺🇦 (@RachelBitecofer)
August 28, 2022
Funny thing is, broke-ass Ronna has an uncle who is not only very wealthy, but
very Republican as well. In fact, he's serving in the U.S. Senate right
now and has been know to raise and spend enormous amounts of
money on doomed Republican campaigns.
So it kinda makes one wonder...
Brrring, brrring.
Mitt Romney: Ahoy-hoy. New blower. To whom am I speaking?
Ronna: It's your niece.
Romney: Is this Madison?
Ronna: No.
Romney: Christina?
Ronna: No.
Romney: Is this Margo Lynn or maybe
Jenn having a bit of sport?
Ronna: No.
Romney: Is this Craig or Matt or Ben or Tagg playing a funny voice
trick?
Ronna: No.
Romney: Then you've stumped me. Is this one of those prank
phone-calls one hears about in the news? Are you about to ask me about
Prince Albert being trapped in a can or if my SubZero PRO Refrigerator/Freezer is running, which are both very funny
jokes, but...
Ronna: No, Uncle Mitt, this is your niece Ronna, and I need to speak to
you about something very important.
Romney: Don't seem to remember a "Ronna" in the bunch?
Ronna: I'm Ronna. Ronna McDaniel. I'm your brother Scott's
daughter. I've been to your house a thousand times. I'm the
Republicans Party's national chair and the party is in deep trouble and needs
your help.
Romney: But you're not Madison? Christina?
Ronna: No.
Romney: Then I am very confused. Why would you, whoever
you are, bring your troubles to my door?
Ronna: Because I'm the Republicans Party's national chair and you're
one of the party's leaders and, frankly, we're out of money and need all the
help you can give us raising funds in a hurry or we're going to get creamed
in the Fall.
Romney: Language, please, whoever you are. We do not say "creamed" in
this house.
Ronna: Sorry.
Romney: And now I'm doubly confused. You call me up,
swearing like a McCain, to ask for money? I thought the party had
plenty of money Pretty much all of the rich people love us.
Corporations love us. Didn't we give them two trillion in tax cuts and
all the PPP "loans" they asked for?
Ronna: Yes we did.
Romney: Then the party should have plenty of money. That's how this
works. Where did it all go?
Ronna: Well, we put Rick Scott in charge of the Senate campaign funds
and...
Romney: Scott? You gave that Medicare cheat the Senate
checkbook?
Ronna: ...and then there's Trump.
Romney: Language, young lady. I already warned you once. We do not say "Trump"
in this house.
Ronna: Sorry.
Romney: Sounds like quite a pickle.
Ronna [beginning to tear up]: It is.
Romney: And what did you say your name was?
Ronna: I'm Ronna. Ronna McDaniel.
Romney: Is that your full name?
Ronna [gulping hard]: No
Romney: What's your full name?
Ronna: Ronna Romney McDaniel.
Romney: Ah. That rings a bell. And who am I?
Ronna: You're the senior senator from Utah.
Romney: Say my name.
Ronna is silent.
Romney: I'm the money. I'm the man you came to to save you from your
folly because you've run out of options.
"Story is a yearning meeting an obstacle." -- Robert Olen Butler, writer
Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com
-- for all those sweet bells and whistles: there are links to donate
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...it's easy to forget that ambulatory venom sac Rich "Little Starbursts"
Lowry is also kind of a dope.
And then
The New York Times
goes and gives him a Very Big megaphone so he can remind us.
Can You Tell Me What Would Happen if the F.B.I. Were Investigating a
Democrat?
By Rich Lowry
Before we get to schoolin' Richy, let's stop to appreciate one of the little
gems along the way.
George W. Bush is now widely considered a relatively benign figure from a
bygone, pre-Trump era.
No, he is not. He was and is a monster. He has, however, been
successfully buried under a Chernobyl-thick layer of strategic forgettery by
both Conservatives goofs like Lowry and a compliant mainstream media who did
not want their complicity in lying us into Bush's Iraqi Clusterfuck chained
forever to the memory of the worst president in American history...until the
same party nominated and elected Trump.
Now where were we?
Oh yeah. What if...?
Well just off the top of my head there was...
...Dan Rostenkowski – the powerful Democratic chair of the House Ways &
Means committee.
...Hillary Clinton. Investigated. Had her campaign sabotaged by
the head of the FBI 10 days before the 2016 election.
...the entire Mike Madigan machine here in Illinois.
...and good old Federal Bureau of Prisons #40892–424 himself, Rod
Blagojevich.
...also less well known is Rod Blagojevich's former chief of staff, John
Harris, who was sentenced to 10 days in prison for helping his old boss
attempt to sell President Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat.
Honestly, Rich, you could save yourself so much agita by just peeping out of
your hermetic bubble of smug once and awhile and just asking someone who
remembers the past to, y'know, remember the past.
... are doomed to think Charlie Sykes is an affable gasbag who, for some
reason, shows up on MSNBC nearly as often as their corporate peacock logo.
But he isn't.
Charlie Sykes is a 30-year Conservative hate radio veteran and Wisconsin
political kingmaker. He, as much as anyone else, built the GOP into the
monster factory that it is today. The monster factory that swept Donald
Trump to power, and ran Sykes out of his Wisconsin radio gig...and straight
onto MSNBC.
In virtually every interview I have every read or heard with Sykes, and on
virtually every episode of his podcast, Sykes forcefully and repeatedly
compresses the timeline for when his Republican party lost its mind to "these
past few year" or "over the past several year" or "in the past five or
six year". Because the decades-long run up to Trump during which
Conservative hate radio stars like Sykes were deeply complicit in grooming the
deranged party base is not something Sykes wants to talk about.
And acknowledging that the Left -- the awful, dirty, huppie, commie Left --
was actually right about the Right all along is definitely not
something Sykes wants to talk about.
However the past cannot stay buried forever, and with the recent raft of books
that explicitly name and shame Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich as the direct
forbears of Trump, Sykes has now decided that maybe, just maybe, the past
actually did happen...just not exactly in the way we the awful, dirty,
huppie, commie Liberals remember it.
Sure, Charlie Sykes was there, but, see, he wasn't really a part of it.
Well, maybe a little bit, but it's certainly not a matter worth dwelling on,
and certainly not a fit subject for his seemingly hourly interludes on
MSNBC. No, he was more of a "volunteer coffee boy” 30-year
Conservative hate radio veteran. Existing at the periphery of the Right,
but never really aware of what was going on.
Like Zelig: somehow present at every significant moment in modern Conservative
history, but just passin' through, and not really aware of what he was
seeing.
Here is the blurb from Tuesday's Bulwark podcast:
Republicans cling to the idea they are members of the party of Reagan, but
Reaganism ended in the 90s when angry right-wing populists like Rush, Pat
Buchanan, and Newt Gingrich seized control of the conservative
movement. . Nicole Hemmer joins Charlie Sykes today.
And we're off
Sykes [welcoming Nicole Hemmer]: ...who specializes in media,
Conservatism and the Far Right. And she has a new book, "Partisans:
The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the
1990s".
Golly that sure sounds a lot like Dana Milbank's new book, which Milbank was
on this same podcast promoting a week ago. And they both sound a lot
like what Liberals have been warning about and getting absolutely slagged for
since the 1990s
There follows the usual greetings and pleasantries.
Sykes: So I'm reading the title of this book.
"Conservative Revolutionaries". But that's an oxymoron isn't it? I
mean, Conservatives are supposed to be the opposite of
revolutionaries.
Hemmer: Yes. It's supposed to be an oxymoron. But
there was actually a movement in the 1970s and 1980s for
Conservatives to take on a more radical approach to politics.
What?!?
As you read along with the transcript (all typos and omissions are mine) keep
in mind that Charlie Sykes
already fucking well knows all of this since he was in the
vanguard of that movement from the 1980s until five minutes ago.
Hemmer: ...and by the 1990s, that kind of radicalism -- the
idea that you need to, uh, remake the government, overthrow the, uh, current
order in the United States -- that became a pretty key part of right wing
politics in the US.
The 1990s? The devil you say!
Sykes: And you've also traced the role of Conservative media,
which, or course, is one of my interests as well, having been part of it and
the theme of this podcast...
No, Charlie. Collecting bottle caps or skeet shooting or playing chess
by mail are "interests". Feeding the racist, paranoid base of the GOP
the slop they wanted to hear is
how you made your entire living -- fed your family, bought your
estate, became a Wisconsin political power broker -- for 30
years.
But please do go on.
Sykes: ...Y'know, every once in a while people will say
"You guys focus too much on the media. Shouldn't you be talking
more about politics." But I would argue that -- and I think you might agree -- that you
cannot understand the current political moment or the derangement of the
Right Wing politics without understanding the central role that Right Wing
has played in the past four decades and continues to play now.
This is where I hadda go lay down and take a little nap, because holy shit
kids, Charlie Sykes has done entered the Before Time. That
Undiscovered Country from whose bourne no suggestion of connectedness to the
present moment has ever been contenanced by Never Trumpers.
Sykes: That's basically... that's basically one of the
arguments you have made in several books now, correct?
Hemmer: That's absolutely right. Even outside of
right wing media, because we are a democracy, our media environment is a
core party of our political environment. The two can't be separated
from one another. Media and politics go hand-in-hand. And I
think sometimes people think of "media" as ephemeral or too cultural and not
really about hard politics.
Don't know who those "people" are, but literally no one I know thinks
this.
Hemmer: But you can't make sense of what policies get
put in place or how voters make their choices without understanding the
media environment they and politicians are sort of soaked in.
Sykes: So...was there a moment at which the entertainment wing
[chuckles] of the Republican party became dominant. When the
Republican party basically became a creature of its entertainment wing
rather than the other way around,
because I still remember when it used to be kind of a talking point on
the Left that, well, Conservative media gets its talking points from the
RNC.
And now [chuckles again] you've gotta roll your eyes and I think it's the
other way around now. What was the tipping point do you think?
Hemmer: I actually think... it's a longer process.
The 1990s really were an important turning point. And I point to one
example from 1992 when George H. W. Bush...
There follows the story of Bush the Elder, so worried about the challenges
from Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot in 1988 that he turned to Rush Limbaugh's
television producer, Roger Ailes for help.
Hemmer: And Rush Limbaugh was such a huge figure in the
1990s...
Ms. Hemmer repeats the bit about Bush the Elder inviting Limbaugh to stay in
the Lincoln bedroom, and carrying his bags for him. A story which was
widely known ad reported on at the time, and has been repeated a million times since.
Pause for a moment to consider just how deeply weird this interview is. Sykes
knows all this. For 30 years, Sykes was known as the "Rush
Limbaugh of Wisconsin". This is like unto Charles Ponzi having a podcast
and interviewing a woman who wrote a book on investment fraud, and asking her
in wide-eyed innocent wonder,
"Tell me about these so-called 'Ponzi schemes' one hears so much about?"
Hemmer: You have advisors to Bush saying "You have to sound more
like Rush Limbaugh". And then you have a leader of Republicans in
congress, Newt Gingrich, ...
Yeah, we know. We know.
We fucking well know.
Hemmer: ...who is really focused on words and rhetoric and
media. He throws open, in 1995, when he becomes Speaker of the
House, the doors of the capitol to radio show hosts all across the country
so they can amplify the message.
Ms. Hemmer, I don't want to frighten you but there's one of those
Limbaugh-imitating, wingnut message amplifiers sitting right...
across...
from...
you.
Hemmer: And I think that's still Gingrich trying to manipulate
different factions, but you can already sense that something is
changing. And by the end of the 1990s not only do you have
magazines like the American Spectator that are setting the conspiracy
framework around the Clinton administration but you have a whole new
profusion of right-wing radio hosts.
Fun Fact: Sykes began his career as a backup host for Mark Belling at
WISN in Milwaukee in 1989. By 1992, he’d landed his own WISN show.
Within a year, he moved on to WTMJ, where he hosted his right-wing radio
show until December 19, 2016.
Hemmer: And that really is a moment -- throw in fox News -- when you
suddenly have an entertainment complex large enough to start dictating to
the Republican party.
Sykes: Another frequently told story...
Notice the passive voice here
Sykes: Another frequently told story, of course, is after
Republicans shocked the world and took control of congress back in 1994, uh,
one of the first things they did when they had their initial caucuses in
early 1995, they brought Rush Limbaugh in speak to the freshman class,
right? So it was... it was this acknowledgement that, in many ways,
they were already a creature of Conservatives talk radio.
Notice it's "they" not "we". It's
"Republicans shocked the world" not
"we shocked the world." It's
"a creature of Conservatives talk radio" not
"a creature of Conservatives talk radio hosts like Rush and me."
Hemmer: Absolutely. They gave Rush Limbaugh a pin and a title,
calling him "The Majority Maker" and they turned to him for advice.
For what they should do in this new congress. And one of the things he
says is, "You do NOT waiver. If Newt Gingrich waivers on his promises
-- if he doesn't stay a hard-line Conservative -- then I'm coming after
him." And that threat was well understood by Gingrich and other
members of the Republican caucus going into the new Congress.
Sykes: Well I'm sorry to say I have a picture here of a much
younger person with much darker hair -- me -- [chuckles] sitting with Newt
Gingrich [chuckles] in 1995 where he was appearing on my Conservative radio
talk show host and that was a long time ago. And I do think that was, uh, one of the turning points.
[Hurriedly] But I do want to take a quick digression.
Of course you do.
And then Sykes o'erleaps a quarter century of Conservative history to land...
Sykes: Let's run the tape forward to where we're at
now.
Translation: Let's just skip over my entire career.
There follows a long story about a nutjob at a school board meeting ranting
the kind of bile ones picks up on Hate Radio every day in Murrica.
This, in turn, is followed by a back-and-forth about how *real* Reaganism
collapsed as soon as Reagan left office. How St. Ronnie was almost pure
awesome, but after he ascended to Republican heaven, Bush the Elder was an
easy target for Buchanan, Limbaugh etc.
Now pay extra special attention to this.
Sykes: So in your introduction to your book you write about
watching Trump accepting the nomination in 2016 in Cleveland and you write
"The party's transformation, sudden though it seemed, had been under
way for a quarter century. In the turn towards nativism and
more overt racism and the criticisms of the Conservative elites, in the
wariness about free trade, democracy, and the sharp-elbowed, fact-lite
punditry. And none of it had happened behind the scenes. None of it was
hidden. It was all out there in plain sight." But as you point out, too many people were too attached to the idea
of the Party of Reagan to notice how fundamentally Conservative politics had
changed.
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
Sykes: And I'm gonna put myself in that category that I did
not fully understand that transformation. How deep it ran. I
mean, look, we all saw Pat Buchanan, and we knew those people were out
there, we never thought -- we, me -- didn't think that it would ever become
dominant, but they saw something that a lot of Republicans did not see,
right?
And I am suddenly transported back to sitting in the kitchen at 2 A.M. with my
dad because he wants to talk and there's no one else to talk to at 2
A.M. He's on his fifth or sixth vodka and tonic, wondering, in his
rambling, circuitous way. what had gone wrong with his life. This was a
regular thing. And the one cause of his troubles that he
absolutely refused to consider was the drink that was in his hand.
The drink that was always in his hand.
Hemmer: That's right. And I think that the nativism is a good
place to look. In 1994...
Sykes: By the 1990s, that line between entertainment and
politics had all but disappeared...
Sykes: So who do you think now are the dominant Conservative
media figures? The ones who really make a difference. Who is
driving the trend right now? When you look at the end-point of the
evolution from the 1990s, who are the most powerful, influential,
entertaining Conservative media voices.
The answer is Tucker Carlson. Period. Alex Jones. A bunch of
podcasts like "Ruthless" which gets off on dancing on RBG's grave. Etc.
Hemmer: That idea of drinking Liberal tears is such a strong
motivation.
Hemmer: [Paranoia and conspiracies] are embedded in the very
raison d'être of Conservative media. This idea that you need to
trust us. You tune into us because we're right and we're Right.
Sykes: Because the other guy's lying to you and hates
you.
Hemmer: Exactly. Exactly. So you have to
trust us. And once you have that kind of loyalty and trust, it's very
easy to manipulate. It is very easy to turn conspiratorial,
particularly when you frame your opposition as the Enemy. Gosh, we see
this, Charlie, in the 1990s in the conspiracies about the Clintons... The conspiracy complex around the Clintons including thing like
the Clinton Body Count, and these tapes like the Clinton Chronicles...that
circulated all through congress, that was funded by Jerry Falwell.
Like that became the bread-and-butter of Conservative media in the
1990s.
Did I already happen to mention that Sykes began his career as a backup host
for Mark Belling at WISN in Milwaukee in 1989? And that by 1992, he’d
landed his own WISN show? And that within a year, he moved on to WTMJ,
where he hosted his right-wing radio show until December 19, 2016?
I did?
Oops.
Sorry for repeating myself.
Sykes: I remember back in the 1990s when all of this was
shifting, the reaction from much of the legacy media, the mainstream media,
was none of this criticism is valid. We're being criticized for being
biased. That must mean we're doing our job. And often did write
or speak with disdain about, y'know, 40% of the population. And I
remember this being part of the Conservative media. That it was as if
they were giving us this massive gift by covering the news the way they did
and not sitting down and going,
"How can we counter this? Still do our jobs. Still be
effective journalists without feeding the narrative that we are
untrustworthy."
One hears a lot of this kind of peevish justification from goofs like
Sykes. That the media during the Bad Old Day was
so liberal, so awful, so horribly biased that Conservatives had no choice but to yadda
yadda.
And yet one never hears actual, concrete, system-wide examples of
this awful bias. Is he talking about how Lyndon Johnson sailed to
victory in his second term because the Liberal media refused to report on
Vietnam and protests?
Or the horrible injustice that was done to Nixon by those nasty WaPo
reporters?
The fuss Liberals made over an innocent misunderstanding like
Iran-Contra?
Was it how Liberals rushed to blame Conservative media paranoia mongering for
the Oklahoma federal building bombing just because the bombers were quoting
chapter and verse from Conservative media paranoia mongering?
Was it how Edward R. Murrow ended every broadcast with "Death to the West!"?
Did the breaking point come when Walter Cronkite changing his name to Walker
Chronic and fired up a doob on the air?
Or are goofs like Sykes actually pissed at people like Norman Lear for putting
the unvarnished face of the Right on teevee and laughing at it?
Sykes: Also I think that Spiro Agnew is underappreciated in terms of his
historical role as sort of the proto-populist, anti-media figure... But
he really was one of the figures who began to create that language, that
voice, that pugelistin approach and the relentless attack on the media. A lot
of what we trace back to Newt Gingrich can be traced back to Spiro Agnew,
can't it?
And we're done.
And, as always, I am left with one question that no one in the know is ever going to answer.
Why does Charlie Sykes have a job at MSNBC? Specifically, an opinion-having job. Even more specifically, a political opinion-having job?
This 30-year Republican power-broker and veteran of Conserative radio just sat there and, with a straight face (and not for the first time), told the world that he never had the slightest fucking clue what was really going on right in front of him, in plain sight, in his own political party. Confessing to abject, decades-long ignorance of the one and only subject for which he was hired for his special, insider insights.
"Never knew what the fuck I was talking about" is a helluva resume top line.
And yet, somehow, he managed to almost immediately transition from the rubble of his radio career to becoming a fixture on "liberal" MSNBC and the op-ed pages of American newspapers where every day he still pretends to be possessed of special insights into not only the minds of Republican base voters, but also the secret desires of "independents" and the hidden motives and agendas of dirty, commie Liberals like me.
And so it goes.
Tomorrow: How MSNBC saved Noah Rothman's bacon after the post-Trump media purge by giving him a perch on MSNBC from which to continue to slander Liberals.
Are you looking for a party which recognizes that Both Sides are to blame for
the country's problems?
Well lend an ear to this exciting news citizen!
"I resent the fact that the leaders of
both national parties wouldn't spit on the people of Alabama and
Georgia in the past. They've taken us for granted and used us for a
doormat for so long. But now we are in control of the situation, and
don't you ever believe we aren't in control. "
And this!
[Following a long story about how the common folk are too smart to fall for
slick counterfeiters]
"When the national Republican party and the national Democratic party
come out with their ambiguous platform to try to pass it off on you and
me in the Fall, let's give them some 6's and 9's in November and
they'll understand that we understand the difference between the real
stuff and the counterfeit stuff."
Are you looking for a party which recognizes that the real problem is
the "system" and not the voters?
"Yes the professional Republicans -- and
I'm not talking about the good Republicans or good Democrats or good
Independents -- but the Republicans who come to your state and said, "Let us beat the
national Democrats." Well if that's all you want to do...you can do
that with anybody!"
Are you looking for a party that wants to rescue our public institutions from
vile politicians on Both Sides and return control of them to the people?
"So if you want to waste your vote in November you can vote Republican
or Democratic
because they don't think like you do. They don't think like I do.
Not a single one of these parties, ... has
told you that they will turn back to you, your domestic institutions which
includes the public school system... We're gonna turn back lock,
stock and barrel ... to the people the right to run your schools as you
see fit."
Well then brother, do I have a Third Party for you!
It's called the American Independent Party, and it was founded in 1967 by
Bill Shearer and his wife, Eileen Knowland Shearer for the purpose
of nominating hardcore racist and segregationist George Wallace as its presidential candidate and
retired U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay as the vice-presidential
candidate.
LeMay was a real "Nuke 'em all, let God sort 'em out" madman, who you may know
best from his caricature, Colonel Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden in
Dr. Strangelove.
And every quote cited here is taken directly from George Wallace's 1968 third party campaign, which just goes to show you that
this spewing Both Siderist bullshit and promising to deliver the common folk
from the Evil System is nothing new.
In fact, it is, of necessity, the bread and butter. of every third party scam.
All Wallace quotes are transcribed by me from this site, where they also note that:
Wallace ran on every state ballot in the election, though he did not
represent the American Independent Party in all fifty states: in
Connecticut, for instance, he was listed on the ballot as the nominee of the
"George Wallace Party." The Wallace/LeMay ticket received 13.5 percent of
the popular vote and 46 electoral votes from the states of Arkansas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. No third-party candidate has
won more than one electoral vote since the 1968 election,
And:
Wallace's campaign was well-funded, but he was also helped by the fact that
he got a lot of free press. "He had this ability to seize upon issues to
capture public attention," Dan Carter says. "And very quickly newspaper
reporters and the broadcast media realized that he was good copy."
Sound familiar?
And finally:
Many professional commentators derided Wallace (Tom Wicker of the New York
Times referred to him as "the Alabama demagogue"), but still he appeared
frequently on major television news shows.
Because in the Third Party game the script never changes.
For those of you whose political memory is like unto the early morning dew,
here are only a few of the highlights of the career of Holy Joe Lieberman, who ran
as a Democrat but whose first loyalty was always to the regime of Bibi
Netanyahu.
In 2000, Lieberman was instrumental in stabbing his running mate, Al Gore, in
the back and helping to deliver the White House to George W. Bush.
For the duration of the Dubya Administration, Bush's Iraqi Clusterfuck had no
more fervent defender than Holy Joe Lieberman. In fact, Joe was such a
dog-loyal war pimp that Dubya awarded him a
big ol' kiss on the mouth
just before his 2005 State of the Union address.
You might also remember this period as a time when Democrat Zell Miller was
given a keynote address at the 2004 Republican National Convention in which to thoroughly slagged his own party -- my party -- as terrorist-lovin',
Murrica-hatin' scum for daring to run against Dubya.
Which, for the uninitiated, is what "bipartisan" usually amounts to: some douchebag "Centrist"
lining up with Republicans to shitting on Democrats. Makes the media's
toes positively curl in Both Siderist ecstasy.
In 2006, Joe Lieberman was defeated in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial
primary election, so he pulled what would later some to be called "a Yang": quickly cooking up a brand new Centrist Third Party --
Connecticut for Lieberman, in this case -- to combat the, y'know, Terrible Extremes on Both
Sides.
Lieberman's primary loss also caused his very good friend and fellow Iraq War pimp,
David Brooks of The New York Time, to lose his mind. In August of
2006, Brooks spent an entire column demanding that a McCain/Lieberman Party
-- a "Party no 3" -- be summoned into existence out of his fury that his very
good friend and fellow Iraq War pimp had lost an election.
And it will surprise no one that David Brooks' tantrum from 16 years ago on the Terrible Awfulness of a two-party system that would allow his
very good friend and fellow Iraq War pimp to lose an election sounds
virtually identical to the boilerplate Both Siderist bullshit that virtually every other
"Centrist" Third Party grift has used to this day.
Yeah, looking at
you Andrew Yang.
The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies
are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior
by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity
for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved
victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and
nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess. But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party
amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have
started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and
their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty
soon they were no longer the same people.
The McCain-Lieberman
Party counters with constant reminders that country comes before party, that
in politics a little passion energizes but unmarshaled passion corrupts, and
that more people want to vote for civility than for venom...
Indulge me please for a moment and meditate on this thought: after witnessing
the GOP's ongoing and exponentially accelerating plunge into out-and-proud
fascism during the 16 years between Brooks' column and today, who but
dilettantes, children, imbeciles and con men could possible still think that
Both Sides Do It is a great idea? A winning business plan?
In that three-way race, third party candidate Lieberman won, beating the
Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, and alleged-degenerate gambler,
Republican Alan Schlesinger. The final percentages for Lieberman were 33%, of Democrats, 54% of independents and 70% of Republicans.
Yay independents!
Yay striking a noble blow against the Corrupt Duopoly!
A couple of years later while campaigning for Republican John McCain, Holy
Joe's unstinting support for right-wing lunatic pastor John Hagee got him
crosswise with McCain. Check out the
roster of supporters.
Lieberman to share stage with Hagee
John McCain might be fleeing from Pastor John Hagee, but one of his
strongest Capitol Hill supporters, former Democratic VP candidate Sen.
Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), seems to have no problem standing beside the
controversial clergyman.
Lieberman will join Hagee on stage at a Christians United for Israel
Washington summit July 21-24, joining a roster of speakers that includes
former Sen. Rick Santorum, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, former
presidential candidate Gary Bauer and nationally syndicated radio host
Dennis Prager.
Speaking before the same conference last year, Lieberman, an orthodox
Jew, spoke reverentially of Hagee: "I would describe Pastor Hagee with
the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an 'Eesh Elo Kim,' a
man of God, because those words fit him; and, like Moses, he has become
the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of
Israel."
He went on: "Pastor Hagee, I pray that God will bless you with all that
you pray for, and I do so with great confidence because I know what the
Lord said to Abraham in Genesis 12:3. If ever there was a man who will
be blessed because he has blessed Israel, Pastor Hagee, it is you."
I believe the title of the speech was,
"Remember a couple of years ago when I was Al Gore's running mate?
Well fuck him! Fuck 'em all!"
Well wouldn't you know it, McCain got pretty well stomped in 2008, and the man Holy Joe had campaigned against, Barack Obama, was elected president. But Holy Joe still caucused with the Democrats, so he had one more service to perform for his Republican friends and his financial supporters in the insurance industry.
Theories explaining the senator's threat to filibuster the health care bill if it includes a public option
By Mara Gay
OCTOBER 28, 2009
The public option was on a roll. Then, on Tuesday, Sen. Joe Lieberman threatened to filibuster the health care bill if it includes a public option, which he says would create "trouble for taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt." Liberals are once again at war with Lieberman, who has been on the outs with Democrats since ditching the party and campaigning for John McCain. Left-wing pundits are laying on the derision, while everyone else asks: what is Lieberman after?...
-- Lieberman transformed the passage of the ACA from a fast and substantial victory for the new Obama Administration during the tiny window when they had a 60-vote majority in the Senate...into an agonizing, two year slog that gave the GOP -- which had sworn a blood oath to obstruct everything Obama proposed no matter the cost -- time to regroup, rebrand itself as the Fake Tea Party and bury the calm, civil no-drama Obama under an avalanche of Fox News/Hate Radio-sponsored racist hysteria.
Then, running on a single-issue campaign to "be the 41st vote" to kill the ACA in the Senate, former semi-nude model Scott Brown won a special election in Massachusetts and, almost before it had begun, the Obama administration's ability to pass any legislation at all was over.
In 2012 Holy Joe opted not to run for re-election and instead devote his time to making lots of money and occasionally weaseling in invitation to appear on political talk shows to remind everyone that before there was a Joe Manchin, there was a Joe Lieberman.
And the mighty Centrism loving', Both Sides hatin' third party he had created?
It vanished like a fart on a Ferris wheel, because it was never more than a vehicle for his personal political ambitions swaddled in Both Siderist doubletalk.
This is one of the ridiculous children's line-drawings the Forward Party posted to visually express what the Forward Party stands for.
It is foursquare against partisans. It it their foundational idea that there is no greater evil in politics than partisanship. Not racism. Not revanchism. Not fascism.
Nothing is worse than partisanship!
Inconveniently, however, "partisan" is an actual English word with an actual definition:
par·ti·san: noun -- a strong supporter of a party, cause, or person.
Now, armed with this knowledge, see if you can help ol' Randell figure out the contradiction here:
In the not too distant future, a stadium will be packed with @Fwd_Party fanatics...
...while millions watch on screens around the World.
Nothing against those worthy publications, but the fact is there is
effectively no Liberal media in this country.
Which means there is (almost) no institutional pushback against the Right's
massive propaganda operation, and its enablers in the craven Both Siderist
Beltway media.
Meanwhile, over on the fascist Right (from the New York Times):
An Unusual $1.6 Billion Donation Bolsters Conservatives
A low-profile Republican financier donated his company to a new group run by the influential operative Leonard A. Leo.
A new conservative nonprofit group scored a $1.6 billion windfall last year via a little-known donor — an extraordinary sum that could give Republicans and their causes a huge financial boost ahead of the midterms, and for years to come.
The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.
This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics. It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights...
Media platforms large and small come into existence either to meet a market need, or to advance the interests of an owner who may or may not care if the enterprise turns a profit. But there is always a patron, whether it's the general public, or it's an individual or organization like George Harrison, who set up HandMade Films to help fund "Monty Python's Life of Brian" because he "wanted to see the movie".
‘We got rolled’: How the conservative grassroots lost the fight with
Biden because it was focused on Trump
The former president’s presence on the political landscape is making it
harder to launch a modern day Tea Party movement.
You needn't bother reading the article. It cites most of the usual,
godawful garbage people like FreedumbWorks
FreedomWorks and The Mad Hatter Manhattan Institute bitching
that they were so busy dying on the "Defending Trump's Manifold Treasons" hill
they didn't have time to create a national propaganda campaign the scare the
shit out people about the threat from Dirty Scranton Commie Joe Biden the same
way they did with Dirty Kenyan Commie Barack Obama.
“Everything was moving so fast, the tax provisions were being debated on
the fly, so there was very little time for groups to do that in-depth
grassroots pushback like we saw during Obamacare,” said Cesar Ybarra, vice
president of policy at conservative grassroots organization FreedomWorks.
“To create buzz in this town and for it to penetrate across America, you
need more time. So yeah, we got rolled.”
That's right kids, they really do look back on their campaign to kill the ACA, deny healthcare to millions of Americans and sabotage the Obama administration at any cost with nostalgia and pride. And the thing about Zombie Republicans is that, as long as someone is paying them
to persist, they keep on comin':
“The timing of the bill happening the same week as the former president’s
residence was raided, and you had the split screen of, well, if they could
do that to him, they could do that to you, and here’s this bill with
87,000 IRS agents being funded,” said Jessica Anderson, the executive
director of the conservative Heritage Action for America.
However the magic meathead go-go juice seems to have lost some of its
fizz:
But others in the party conceded that policy fights are no longer driving
activism, at least to the degree they once did. In a Twitter thread, Brian
Riedl, an economist with the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute,
said the right’s more recent apathy on economic policy “is partially a
focus on culture & troll wars, partly a post-Trump identity
crisis...
Plus someone appears to have snuck in in the middle of the night
and stolen everyone's lunches and fruit cups from the breakroom fridge, and
used the microwave to nuke some week-old trout on the way out.
In the wake of the FBI’s search of Trump’s home, Trump’s Save America PAC
reportedly raked in millions in the following days, according to The
Washington Post. Elsewhere, meanwhile, the main Republicans running in
marquee Senate races have struggled to build small-dollar donor networks,
forcing the National Republican Senatorial Committee to slash ad spending
and campaigns and operatives to panic.
