What Cancel Culture Actually Looks Like

If you ever want to know what actual cancel culture looks like and not the whiny, candyass, fictional wingnut version of it you see all over the internet like track marks on RFK Jr -- 

-- someday buy an OG Liberal blogger a beer and ask them what it was like to publicly question the wisdom of George W. Bush' Iraq Clusterfuck back when that was not a popular opinion.  

Welcome to Pariah Town!

But the willingness of media gatekeepers to snap their fingers and banish Liberals to the cornfield if they step out of line has a long and storied history in the country.  Like, for example (From Looper, December 2023)...

The Smothers Brothers Show Wasn't 'Canceled,' They Were Fired - That's Important

The death of Tom Smothers, 86, on December 26 has put the Smothers Brothers back in the spotlight. The comedy duo that consisted of him and his brother, Dick, starred on CBS' "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" from 1967 to 1969. The trendy show soon became known for skits and content that actively made fun of the powers that be, including criticizing the Vietnam War. "We were moderate. We were never out there," Dick Smothers told the Associated Press. "But we were the first people through that door. It just sort of crept in as the '60s crept in. We were part of that generation." 

This approach earned the show a pair of Primetime Emmys, but it also painted a target on its back ... and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the controversial show came to a sudden end in 1969. However, the Smothers Brothers made it known that their show never actually got canceled — instead, they insisted that they were fired. They were pretty clear about this in a 1982 interview on "Late Night with David Letterman" when Letterman brought up the subject. "We were fired. We left under duress," Tom told the host in no uncertain terms. This wasn't a throw-off line, either — he used the same term onstage when he received an honorary award at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards.

The determined distinction between being canceled and getting fired is understandable considering the way the show ended. Instead of officially canceling the show, CBS alleged that its censors hadn't received an episode of the show on time and used this to unexpectedly pull the plug on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." The Smothers Brothers weren't happy — and the law eventually sided with them, as they won $775,000 in the ensuing court case...

This is the skit that finally got them sacked.  CBS cut this skit from an episode of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that was to be broadcast in April 1969.  Then, CBS decided to fire Tommy and Dick Smothers and censored the entire episode, even after this skit was deleted.  Which, in turn, led to the 1970 lawsuit mentioned in the Looper article.

And, just for fun, this is from a 1970 NBC-TV special, "The Return of the Smothers Brothers", in which David Steinberg and the Smothers Brothers crack wise about TV Censorship. The video is wreck, but the audio is still good.

 

As I have mentioned many times on this here tiny blog 'o mine, the problem with the media is absolutely not and never has been the "cancelling" of toxic conservative opinions and lies. As you may have noticed, we are practically drowning in toxic conservative opinions and lies.   Elmo Mush spent 44 billion dollars just to make sure that the madness and treason of MAGA degenerates and traitors would have yet another route to roar unimpeded through the American media.

No, the real problem with the legacy media is and always has been "Shelter Culture".

Shelter Culture (tm) is my trademarked antonym for "Cancel Culture" -- to describe organizational cultures which actively protect smarmy always-wrong hacks who definitely would have been sacked for incompetence long ago in any other enterprise.  Personally, I prefer “Cultured Pearl Clutching Culture” (tm) but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, or “Cloister Culture” (tm) but too many people have no idea what “cloister" means.

So Shelter Culture (tm) it is shall be...

 

Update:  Reader Anon reminds us that the biggest example of cancel culture in modern American history are Conservative Christopaths cancelling the peace-loving Jesus who preached welcoming the stranger, generosity to the poor, feeding the hungry, comforting to the widow, decency to the imprisoned and who gave away health care for free...

...and in His place substituted their angry, paranoid, gun-toting, minority-hating, prosperity-gospel Fake Jebus.   

I Am The Liberal Media

Having Read The Considered Opinion of This New York Times' Political Reporter...

...I am moved to wonder (and not for the first time) whether the Sulzberger family requires that a tiny, explosive device be installed in every Times' political reporter's skull that will go BOOM if ever they dare to write, in plan, clear language, that the Republican Party is the problem...

Increasingly, our politics are defined by two hostile identity groups who see the other not only as political opponents but as threatening and immoral. In Washington, bipartisan compromise feels nearly unimaginable. And beyond the Capitol, the two parties aren’t even having the same conversation, never mind speaking to each other. One survey in March found that Republicans had heard more about the “cancelling” of Dr. Seuss than the $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Hatred between Republicans and Democrats, according to an analysis by some prominent political scientists, now “exceeds long standing antipathies around race and religion.”

...or whether they get 'em fresh off the journalism farm where, like the creche-raise gammas in Brave New World,  they've been so deeply conditioned to accept Beltway norms as gospel that, unless they are momentarily bent out of true by being simultaneously punched in the smug by a pandemic and an economic collapse and an armed Republican insurrection and a police murder trial and an openly deranged Republican president cackling with delight as his party tries to annihilate democracy in America it is literally impossible for them to think any other way.

I will believe things have changes once prominent Beltway journalists start using their privileged positions to call out the malefactors in their midst.  Until then, for those of us who have been around for more than a minute, this is not out first rodeo.  Or our second.  Or our third.  We know perfectly well that the history of modern American political journalism has been the history of its truly spectacular failure to learn a damn thing from all of its spectacular failures. 

Burn The Lifeboats

Journalism: Then and Now

20 years ago, one of Chicago's most-respected news anchors and hard-political junkies, Carol Marin, resigned her job at Chicago's most-watched nightly news program because the station hired Jerry Springer to fizz up their ratings.  From the Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1997:

Chicago News Anchor Quits After Station Hires Jerry Springer

The decision by a Chicago television station to hire Jerry Springer, the host of a syndicated talk show, to provide commentaries on its nightly newscasts has led to the resignation of one of that city's most popular and respected television news anchors.

A second anchor is almost certain to follow her this summer, staff members at the station, WMAQ-TV, said on Friday. If so, the hiring of Mr. Springer, whose talk show usually deals with vulgar subject matter and who occasionally engages in the ''ambush'' interviews that have prompted widespread criticism of the talk genre, could shake up news-viewing habits in Chicago.

On Thursday, Carol Marin, one of the two anchors of the 10 P.M. news on WMAQ, the NBC-owned station in Chicago, announced her decision to quit after a protracted dispute with the management over the direction of its newscasts. Ms. Marin, who had been the anchor for 12 years, has won numerous awards for reporting, including 15 Emmy Awards and 1 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award for broadcast journalism.

The other anchor, Ron Magers, had previously said he might also quit. On Friday, he issued a statement saying that he disagreed with the hiring of Mr. Springer but that he would fulfill his contract.

Staff members close to Mr. Magers said he had tried to renegotiate his contract to allow him to leave in the summer and was likely to do so. His contract would have continued for three more years.

The departures of two leading anchors would be highly unusual for any television station, but especially so in the case of WMAQ because it leads the Chicago market among the viewers most sought by advertisers.

Ms. Marin said in a telephone interview that she ''could not understand at all'' why the management had chosen to ''take the news in a whole new direction.''

That direction, she and other staff members suggested, is toward a more tabloid-style newscast. The management of WMAQ did not respond to calls on Friday. But the president of NBC's stations division, John Rohrbeck, said WMAQ would not adopt a tabloid style.

He suggested that Ms. Marin's departure was a result of longstanding unhappiness with the management.

The decision to hire Mr. Springer was ''a symptom of where news is heading,'' Ms. Marin said. She did not dispute the station's right to choose its staff. ''But for me, it crossed a line I would not cross.''
...

20 years later, and what was once the only even-remotely "Liberal" national teevee news outlet in American now looks more and more like the bottom of Sean Hannity's birdcage:

20 years ago, Jerry Springer was ''a symptom of where news is heading,''.

20 years later, and "news" -- which barely exists any more at all -- has sunk so far past that point that it is no longer detectable by the most powerful ground-penetrating radar.

The Document That Ate American Journalism

Let's say you're an MSNBC employee who happens into the wrong room at the wrong time and discovers that Joe Scarborough and Phil Griffin are both Red Lectroids from the 8th dimension who landed at Grover's Mill, New Jersey in 1938 on a mission to destroy America.

Evil, pure and simple.

So what are your options?

Well you could shut up, close the door, keep your silence, pretend it never happened and be rewarded by the Lectroids for your service.

Or you could resign on principle, make it known why you resigned, never work in that industry again in any capacity and go back to providing for your family as your ancestors did: by gather berries and hunting for squirrels with a rock.

Or you could let the Lectroids buy your silence, sign a non-disclosure agreement, quietly resign and go across the street to, say, ABC, doing more-or-less what you used to do.  Where -- surprise! -- one day, you wander into the wrong room at the wrong time and discover that George Stephanopoulos and Bill Kristol  are also Red Lectroids from the 8th dimension who landed at Grover's Mill in 1938 on a mission to destroy America.

Evil, pure and simple.

So what are your options?

Well...

This why the reasons behind, say, ABC's Jonathan Greenberger hiring "brilliant and original thinker" Bill Kristol long after Kristol's credibility had been publicly shredded will never be known.

Because snitches get stitches.

And Quislings get riches.

See You At The Party, Richter!

You know that moment in "Total Recall" (the sub-par 1990 film very, very loosely based on Philip K. Dick's excellent short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale") when the audience finds out that Quaid isn't Quaid?

That Quaid is actually Hauser and Hauser is pallsy-wallsy with the Bad Guys?

After watching this clip of Michael Moore laughing it up with Megyn Kelly over what an asshole Donald Trump is (h/t alert reader "Richard") I am reminded yet again that not only are we living in a science fiction universe, but in a science fiction universe where plot and character development have been jobbed out to Phillip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut (h/t Crooks & Liars ):

Peak Fournier -- UPDATE

At this point, I assume that every sentient being outside of the Washington Beltway knows that Ron Fournier -- America's Sad Clown of Centrism -- is a joke.  Some kind of shabbily-constructed, off-brand talking robot penis sent from a fucked-up Conservative Future to ruin everything here by mindlessly bending every Conservative tragedy or a travesty into a surreal, treacly homily on how awful it is that "Both Sides" are to blame for everything.

But up until now, America's most famous off-brand talking robot penis from the future at least made an effort to pass among us by disguising himself as a "journalist".  However, today Mr. Fournier crossed what used to be a very important line.  Today, in order to fulfill his Prime Directive, Mr. Fournier fabricated a story.

He lied, in "print"(of sorts) in order to score political points.

Exhibit A:  Mr. Fournier's tweet (I took a screen shot just in case Mr, Fournier tries to scrub his timeline):

Which of these guys flew over a long-neglected city slammed by gov't incompetence? A: Both #FlintWaterCrisis pic.twitter.com/bxqHv902QQ

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) January 21, 2016

Exhibit B:  The original photograph of President Obama which Mr. Fournier mashed up with a shot of George W. Bush to make his obscene little point

Exhibit C:   As it turns out, the original photograph was taken Air Force One during a flight from Canberra to Darwin, Australia, Nov. 17, 2011. It was also used by the "All Africa" website which featured stories and photos from President Obama historic trip to Africa in 2013:

In other words, Mr. Fournier fabricated the story he desperately wanted to to be true by mashing up the actual photo of George W. Bush looking down at ruins of New Orleans with a photo of President Obama looking down at Australia from 2011 but implying that it was Obama looking down at Flint, MI today in order to "prove" that Both Sides are equally terrible.

Time was, this sort of thing would get a journalist fired.

But I guess we don't do that anymore.  In fact, based on all available evidence, there is clearly a lot of money to be made and career security to be had behaving this way.


UPDATE:  Peak Fournier Continues

Stupid Shit The New Republic Says

In an article outlining the tactical wisdom of the GOP just refusing to govern for the next two years, this remarkably derp paragraph:

If Republicans set high expectations for themselves, they are bound to fail. After all, Democrats can block legislation at will by using the filibuster. As we’ve seen from the past few years, the media will not report that Democrats blocked legislation that had support of more than 50 senators. They’ll report that Congress failed—and the blame will fall squarely on the GOP. Democrats learned this the hard way over the past few years.

Witness once again, a national media outlet which completely fails to understand the very basics of our national media.

So repeat after me:  Until they are made to pay a terrible price for ever doing it again, when it comes to reporting, our national media template is always IOKIYAR.

It's OK If You're A Republican.  Always.  Forever.  Also too it's lesser known cousin IACIYAD – It’s A Crime If You’re A Democrat.

For the slower children in the room, let me explain how this works in real life vis-à-vis Congressional obstruction.

When the GOP filibusters everything in sight, the story is "Congress is broken."

When the GOP filibusters everything in sight, the the that "you need 67 votes to pass anything" is shrugged off as a factual aside -- as if it's written into the Constitution that way.

If Democrats filibuster, the story will be that Democrats are obstructing the clear governing mandate which the people of Murrica gave to the GOP in order to continue to fuck up the country and the planet

If Democrats filibuster, the story will be how Democrats are unprincipled douchbags who used to bitch about the very tactic they are now using.

And if, somehow, some Democrat somewhere has the presence of mind to ask the reporter about where all this concern about comity and cooperation was back when the GOP was lobbing cinder-block into traffic, the answer will be, "We're not here to re-litigate the past.  Clearly the Murrican people have spoken and yadda yadda yadda..."

This has been another episode of How The Fuck Do Professional Journalists Not Understand How Their Own Profession Works?

Next up:  Stupid Shit Charles Blow Says

Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"What Is Dead May Never Die" Edition.

For sheer yardage gained in the direction opposite of reality on a single play, I've got to give it to Howard Kurtz of Fox News this week.

As you may know, Mistah Kurtz's career as a third rate purveyor of media insider gossip was in ashes, until Roger Ailes came to his rescue and added Kiurtz to his vast stable of street-corner dung-hustlers.

Usually Mistah Kurtz's soap whittlings are too trivial to mention, but this Sunday he really elevated the ambient level of completely fucking surreal at Fox by conducting a puppet show with a couple of other Fox News nobodies about what a God Damn Crying Shame it was that "the media" had lost so much credibility with Real Murricans since the Age of Cronkite.

According to Mr. Ailes' script as it was recited by these persons, the main reasons Real Murricans don't trust the media are, in no particular order...

Chelsea Clinton!

No one in "the media" is ever held accountable for anything!

Twitter!

Did I mention no one in the media who lies or fucks up is ever held to account for it?

And, of course -- Liberal.  Media.  Bias.

Also too, "Frank Luntz asked a focus group..." and, when all else fails, Both Sides.

As the scattered members of the Lost Tribe of Gilliard will recall, for most of this career Mistah Kurtz was just one more Republican shill embedded in the Mainstream Media, using his position to flak for horrible people with bad ideas and cover their escape route with a thick schmear of "fairness" concern trolling.

...

Which is why Hunter Thompson was a hero. He was honest to a fault and mean to a fault. In a world where journalism has become about asking questions politely and fiction about settling grudges with parents and schoolmates, he was about something far more important.

Blogs follow in the tradition of outlaw journalism, but without the flourishes he liked. It's not about just being outrageous, most of the bloggers are little different than their peers in newspapers, clean living young men and women. They don't get drunk and naked for fun, they pay their bills, stay faithful and maybe have a beer too many. However, it is the spirit of what Thompson meant, to be outside the laws of journalism, not the rules, but the laws. The laws of not offending advertisers and friendly pols. The laws of family friendly copy. Those laws. Not the rules about honesty and decency.

When Howard Kurtz whines about "fairness", someone needs to tell him the truth. "Mistah Kurtz, we are not fair. We are honest." Bush uses fairness like a Samurai uses a katana, to slice and dice and win. Fairness will no more stop Bush than a bazooka could stop a Tiger tank (couldn't come close). It is honesty which will stop him. People have to tell the truth. Kurtz and his fellows are people to be derided and mocked, not argued with. To accord him respect and seriousness, in the job most journalists disdain like cops hate internal affairs, is to give him power that his peers would never. The next time he whines about fairness, laugh in his face, wave a shrunken head in front of him, show him a picture of King Leopold. Do anything you want to show him the contempt you hold him in. But his words are meaningless to the people who matter, our readers.

...

Which goes a long way towards explaining why the Daily Beast thought paying him a still-undisclosed-but-definitely-not-$600K!-sized pile of money to print his gooey mash notes was a good idea.

And why no one was terribly bothered by his second wife's very active, lucrative career as a Republican flak.

Yes, Howard Kurtz' current (second) wife is Sheri Annis, a professional Republican operative now working at (running?) an outfit called Fourth Estate Strategies. She's written for National Review, was a spokesperson for the Arnold Schwarzenegger, and helped run anti-affirmative action, anti-bilingual education, and anti-immigration campaigns.

And in the end, his tour of duty as a Respected Mainstream Journalist about whom no one bitched (except some grumpy Liberal bloggers) accomplished what it was intended to accomplish: it permitted Mistah Kurtz to cash in at Fox News mouthing the Ailes Party Line, immune to criticism that he's just another Fox News street-corner dung-hustler (except from some grumpy Liberal bloggers) , because after all, look at all my shiny Respected Mainstream Journalist street cred.

At that point I ran away from the teevee for awhile, returning later long enough hear a Fox!News!Alert!

So was it a missing blonde girl, Benghazi, or a Special Fox News panel speculating about which sort of depraved criminal Michael Brown would probably have grown up into anyway?

Turns out it was the middle one.

It seems a bunch of yahoos with guns calling themselves "Dawn of Libya" took some abandoned buildings away another bunch of yahoos with guns.  These buildings had been evacuated by American diplomatic personnel two months ago.  American diplomatic staff had left nothing of value or interest behind -- no files, no computer hard drives, no communicators.

But this rated a Fox!News!Alert! because it may "disturbingly echo" Benghazi...because remember! something something...four Americans killed!

Later, during the concluding ceremonies of the longest running funeral in Sunday Morning Gasbag history, NBC finally got enough of the David Gregory-smell out of the carpet and drapes 

to conduct a cheery "Meet The Moderator" segment in which we, the viewing public, were re-re-re-re-reintroduced to Shuck Todd.

Mr. Todd made it clear that he believes his primary function as the new captain of the S.S. Conventional Wisdom is to serve the public interest.

But of course as we exotic language experts know, when translated from Beltway Weaselspeak into English, "To Serve the Public Interest" does not mean what you think it means...

Vox Is Not a Journey

Because every journey ends.

But they go on.

At least that's sorta what I go out of this long blipvert for Ezra Klein's new media venture, where no holds are barred, except looking directly into the camera.

Also the future of online journalism is apparently going to be really good writing astride some kinda monster Harley of technological .  Roaring into the future.

So if you know any really good writers who are gaunt with hunger for work, let them know that the world turns.

And Vox turns with it.

Or something.

How Has Your Fourth Estate Failed You Today?

In all the usual ways.

* From Charles P. Pierce:

If I thought there was an ounce of shame left in the little fiefdom carved out by Fred Hiatt at The Washington Post, the once-great newspaper now d/b/a, a subsidiary of the educational-testing industry, I would suggest that he unload Jennifer Rubin, who is unaccountably still an employee after being wrong about everything that happened in the year 2012. Having gotten over the shock she undoubtedly received on Monday when Willard Romney was not sworn in as president, Rubin has gone back to work at her usual corner. Today's Lunch Special — anonymous innuendo about Chuck Hagel, the president's nominee for Secretary of Defense, who has gotten himself crosswise with Rubin because she is a Likud propagandist in neocon drag, and because she is wrong about everything, and because Fred Hiatt is a hack who doesn't realize the damage she's done to his brand over the past year.

In this deeply sucky economy  there sure are a lot of people still gainfully employed in very lucrative and influential positions who have been laughably and publicly wrong about everything for a long time.

And there sure are a lot of people who devote a lot of effort to make sure no one who would ever be so rude as to ask why this is so ever gets with shouting distance of a hot mic.  

It's almost as if there is some sort of exclusive, secret, twatwaffle mutual aid society hard at work behind the scenes every day working to fuck everything up.

Some sort of confederacy of the shrill, the loutish and the incompetent being kept safe from the consequence from their marauding nincompoopery behind a massive shield of money and influence.

Some sort of

...club.

And you are not in it.

*UPDATE:  Link fixed and thanks to Mr. Stephens for the catch.

Never More True

Than today.

In today's Washington Post you will find this "reportage" on Bill Clinton's speech from Alexandra Petri:

It was too big to fail. It was almost too big to check. It would be like fact checking a century. At dawn tomorrow, I am going to see the factcheckers off on their long voyage into miles and miles of wild, verdant speech. I expect them to write me every month to offer an update on their progress. Perhaps they will return by 2016 with a report. Then again I only dimly recollect the Clinton era. To me, it was a time of Pokemon and prosperity during which your fifth-grade teacher had to awkwardly explain specific sex acts. But everyone who was there in '88 assures me that his speech then was easily as long, if not longer...

Then, with a flick of your wrist, you can turn the page and find Jennifer Rubin bitterly complaining in column after column that Barack Obama hasn't been impeached yet for insufficient fealty to the whims of Benjamin Netanyahu being a power-mad, left-wing, baby-killing, media-coddled,Chicago-style-thug, Socialist...yadda-yadda.  You know the drill.  Basically all-the-usual-stuff that your Crazy Uncle Liberty emails you six times a day, minus the 88-point Railroad font, giant flags and American bald eagles-clutching M-16s:

The Democratic convention goes far left; media unaware
By Jennifer Rubin 

There is no mystery as to why media are smitten by the Democratic National Convention. Not only do they see nothing wrong with hours of abortion speeches and moldy class warfare rhetoric, but they agree with it and think that this is “mainstream” politics. I don’t think that more than a few recognize how far left they and their favored speakers are in the current political environment. They naturally also see actual centrist ideas as conservative and mainstream conservative ideas as extreme...

You know, once they get rid of all the toddlers like Ms. Petri who were weaned on "David Brooks' Big Whiz-Bang Book of Funny Humor Jokes"...and then chase out that scabrous nest of neocons who still dream their little "nuke 'em all" dreamy-dreams in hammocks spun from John Bolton's mustache hair and felted with Paul Wolfowitz's spit-comb...and sack the editorial staff who keep letting George Will and Bill Kristol butt-scoot their crazy all over it's pages...and change the name of the place...and raze the building to its foundations...and salt the Earth where it stood...and take a "Men in Black" memory-erasing thingie to everyone who has every had brain cells snuffed out in the service of reading their tripe...

...then the Washington Post might have a real shot at being whatchacall a "newspaper" once again.

Professional Left Podcast #66

"Play La Marseillaise. Play it!"

— Victor Laszlo, "Casablanca"

Which the band does, but only after Rick gives them the nod.

And that tiny sign of committing to one side (however weak and imperfect it is) over the other (however powerful and well-financed they may be) is the moral pivot on which the entire story turns.

Related Links:

1. Lewis Black signs on as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

2. Paul Wolfowitz.

3. Yeats' "The Second Coming".

4. Tom Friedman, "The Mustache of Understanding" .

5. Ginni Thomas hired by Bib-and-Tucker Carlson.

6. Steve Forbes gets eated.

7. Constantine's Sword.

Outside of a dog, a Professional Left button is man's best friend.


Inside of a dog it's too dark to read (sorry, Groucho .)

You know you want it, so why not toddle on down to Blue Gal's Cafepress Store (and keep listening later in the year for an opportunity to win one). Also too, the Podcast Donate Button Button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast. Thanks for your listenership and support!

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

When You're a Hack

You're a Hack all the way
From your first Richard Cohen
To your last Matthew Bai...

"Salon" has it's list of America's Top 30 Hacks up here.

It is a fine Honor Roll of the Damned which fails on only two, piddling points:

1. It misses being comprehensive by several miles by massively under-representing Fox. This is perhaps due to the fact that the product Fox extrudes can no longer be even nominally defined as a form of "journalism" at which they are spectacularly failing [Hackery] but instead must judged on its own terms: as a purely Republican Pravda-like propaganda delivery and fund-raising machine. A job at which Fox succeeds brilliantly.

2. Seeing David Fucking Brooks bringing up the rear at #30, I can only conclude that someone at Salon has been monkeying the the Excel "sort" function. Less hackish than S.E. Cupp and Pat Caddell? Really? David Brooks is the chief architect and purveyor of the Biggest Conservative Lie Of All: That no matter how fucking depraved the Right becomes, Invisible Liberals are always somehow equally to blame for everything. It is the Big Lie that makes all the hundreds of little Conservative lies possible. He plies his relentlessly dishonest craft from the commanding heights of the most valuable and influential editorial real estate in journalism. This combination easily makes Brooks the most dangerous and duty-derelict hack in America.

But other than a few quibbles, good first effort Salon.

And how sad -- how very, very ,very sad -- that there are absolutely no more good writers or talkers to be found anymore anywhere who could spark just a little light inside the dim, suffocating hack-yurt tree fort of our political discourse.

Steve Gilliard vs Journolist

Footage from a Journolist Meetup

In aid of maximum clarity, let me repeat this one more time: the notion that anyone would be shocked by reporters sitting around in a semi-private setting bitching about their beats in salty language that would never make it past an editor's blue pencil

is objectively hilarious.

On the other hand, idea that journalists fresh from the smelly Bush-era trenches would build a club-house-and-mutual-aid-society complete with velvet ropes and secret handshakes? A digitally tyled lodge,

...guarded so that non-Masons may not enter or overhear the proceedings. The Tyler or outer guard, as his name implies, is situated outside the door of the lodge "being armed with a drawn sword to keep off all intruders and cowans to Masonry.

protected from the thousands of grubby prole bloggers with whom they still wanted to glean a street cred contact high, but didn't want to let in to use the bathrooms? A place so clean, well-lighted and safe that Joe Klein had a table by the window and Tucker Fucking Carlson applied for admittance?

That aspect of the story makes me wonder what my blogfather -- the late-Steve Gilliard --

would have to say on the subject.

A careful reader might detect a hint or two in this 2005 post ("Outlaw Journalism and the Blogs") Gilly did on the occasion of Hunter Thompson's death :

...
Thompson had been a newspaperman, had worked for Time and hated it. He didn't fit into the neat box that people wanted to place journalists in. Was it really any wonder that David Halberstam didn't wind up running the Times or that Sy Hersh still has to deal with people who call him a traitor. Journalism wasn't embracing the outcasts, not then, and not now. Thgompson didn't wind up in Rolling Stone because he was in high demand as a political commentator. Just like people aren't falling over themselves to read Bill Grieder finance stories today. He was a refugee from American journalism, just like many bloggers are today. Remember, the people we scorn today were the people who fit the idea of the ideal journalist. Judy Miller is what every editor, secretly dreams about, the sexy, tempestous man-crazy reporter. The fact that she's a tool for those in power doesn't discomfort them.

Bloggers are not some new creation, but the newest set of the barbarians at the gates. They are the people who don't trust the system and it's artifacts. It is to writing, what rap is to music, the coming of democracy to a trade. What Thompson and his peers did in the 60's and 70's, we do today. But free of the constraints of editors and publishers and the need to hustle up work.

Why?

Because of two different trends in writing.

One is the coopting of journalists. The insiders beat back the challenges from the Sheehans, Halberstams and Arnetts. Those who played the game won, those who didn't became heroes and authors, and exiled from the newsroom. Arnett hung on longer than most, but most were gone from the daily papers by 1975. Or they became enamored of celebrity, like Bob Woodward. Some like Sydney Schamberg and Ray Bonner, following in their tradition, were booted from newsrooms the minute their bosses felt uncomfortable. Or exiled to "alternative" papers. The newsroom became the home of the tame dissident and the complient office holder. Carl Hiaasen saves his most brutal critques of Florida life for his crime fiction. Bob Greene wrote drivel for years, finally canned, not for a lack of talent, but an excess of hunting teenaged trim. The best writing in the Washington Post is Tom Boswell's sports columns.

If people are disheartened by this, they shouldn't be. Ernie Pyle died 60 years ago this week, because he loved soldiers and the stories of their lives. Edward R. Murrow was forced out of CBS. Thompson was lucky in that since he was never inside the tent, they could never kick him out. But most of the great heroes of journalism were and will be forced from the newsroom, because that is not a place for uncomfortable truths. There has never been a national columnist like Jack Newfield or Mike Royko or Jimmy Breslin, and never will be. Because they will never play the game, or even recognize it.
...

Were he alive today, I like to think Gilly would be busy ventilating the stale air of the blogosphere with columns that would read a lot like this:


Which is why I miss him.

Every day.

UPDATE the 1st: Welcome Sun-Times readers.

UPDATE the 2nd: Welcome "Vanity Fair" readers.

The Original Journolist

Five Sun-Times Pulitzer winners at Riccardo’s, 1970s: (Bill) Mauldin, (Roger) Ebert, (John) Fischetti, (Tom) Fitzpatrick, (Ron) Powers. (h/t Ebert Chicago)

The idea that journalists getting together in semi-private to bitch about the subject they cover in less than punk-ass "objective" and safe-for-work terms would be considered some kind of scandal is hilarious.

The idea that the tens of thousands of journalistic paupers and red-headed stepchildren who were never told about and were not invited into Ezra Klein's "No Homers Club" care about it

is doubly hilarious.