Political/Media Intervals I Have Known

I Am The Liberal Media

A Visit to an Increasingly Smaller Planet

Where are they now?

Andrew Sullivan is currently skulking around behind a Substack paywall griping about all the usual, fearmongering about trans people.  Half his blog is now apparently spent posting pictures of the views from the windows of various people.

Matthew Dowd is making the rounds complaining how unfair it was that he was fired.  A) Yep, and B)  Welcome to the American workforce!

MSNBC pundit ousted over Kirk talk says network agreed comments were misconstrued

Matthew Dowd tells Katie Couric ex-employer concurred but ‘it didn’t matter’ and they dismissed him anyway. 

The political analyst fired by MSNBC over his Charlie Kirk commentary says his former employer agreed with him that his remarks were being misconstrued as “insensitive” – but said “it didn’t matter” to the network, and they dismissed him anyway.

“I said: ‘I think you guys are making a huge mistake,’” Matthew Dowd said on Katie Couric’s podcast. “I said: ‘You know and I know that’s not anything what I meant. You know it’s been misconstrued’ – and they agreed with that.

“They agreed it had been misconstrued. But they said it didn’t matter. The decision’s been made.”

Mr. Dowd is also trying to claw his way back into the circus by explaining why the media is Teh Sux0r, which, if you know Mr. Dowd's history, is the stuff absurdist comedies are made of:

Political pundit and consultant Matthew Dowd said the media’s “herd mentality” is promoting the feeling that President Donald Trump’s tactics of distraction and disruption are working to fool the public into putting Trump in a better light than he deserves.

Despite Steve Schmidt's repeated, heroic efforts to burn his career to the ground, the grifter in him just keeps trying to resurrect himself from the ashes.    This week he scored that coveted 32nd paragraph mention in a New York Times column of which no one made it past the 3rd paragraph.  

 Would it surprise you to learn that Schmidt is lashing out at [checks notes] Both Sides?

"The ad comes from a new group, the Save America Movement, whose leaders say they want to fight Trump with what they call “counter-propaganda.” Two of its leaders — Mary Corcoran, a former public relations executive and Steve Schmidt, a former top aide to John McCain who co-founded (and later left) the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project — are not currently impressed with either party.

They view Trump’s Republican Party with utter contempt, and fault Democrats for failing to push back effectively..."

But didn't he and his pals already save us all back in [checks notes] 2020 (File This Under Selling Your Birthright for a Mess of Pottage)?

That was the setup.  

Here's the punch line.

So far, the group has raised $4 million for their venture, though they hope to use location-targeting technology to spend efficiently...

By now the Alert Reader has noticed that every two bit grifter and refugee from their sinful Republican past has pitched up their own individual revival tents hung with their own, individual "movements" and "causes" banners, each one promising to save Murrican Democracy for the low-low introductory membership price of just $9.95 per month.  

But wait!  There's more!  

If you choose to upgrade to our Platinum Membership level ($250/month or a one-time "Hero of Democracy" donation of $10,000) you will receive early access to their podcasts, access to their Discord and an "I Paid A Shit Ton Of Money To Save Democracy And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt" tee-shirt.

If I told you that Mark "Helicopter Boy" Halperin had shaved his head, gotten some Iron Cross and Skull tats and had gone undercover with the Proud Boys, for a second would you wonder if maybe it was true?   Because the oleaginous Halperin, who was once a ubiquitous presence on the Sunday shows and cable news, has vanished from sight.  Where is he now?  Lemme throw a couple of headlines at you, then you can guess.

First:

Mark Halperin Tells Megyn Kelly How Charlie Kirk’s Assassination...

And then:

Journalist calls it ‘incredible’ that ABC pulled Kimmel after years of anti-Trump programming

Panelists Mark Halperin (editor and chief of Two Way?) and Byron York (Fox News contributor) join ‘The Ingraham Angle’ to discuss fallout from Charlie Kirk’s assassination and ABC’s decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

Hilarious that Halps is still demanding to be called a "journalist".  And wuzzit Two Way?  A YouTube thingie which he co-hosts with Sean "Puffy" Spicer and someone from the Shadow Realm called Daniel Calhoon Turrentine  -- a name obviously stolen from the unpublished works of Mark Twain.  

The blurb for morning edition of this drivel... well ... the word "grandiose" hardly covers it (for the full effect, this should be read in your head in the voice of the late Ted Knight doing his Super Friends  voiceover.)

Every weekday morning, the executives who run America’s television news networks chair a key gathering of their anchors, correspondents and producers to look ahead at the day’s forthcoming events. The meeting offers – for those lucky enough to attend – a fascinating, forward-looking snapshot of the news cycle ahead. 

Each weekday morning on 2WAY, the home of conversations like no other, “The Morning Meeting” offers the chance to attend – and participate in – one such meeting...

And since I am a merciful blog host, I shall reprint only the first little bit of the blurb for the evening edition of this drivel:

Join Mark Halperin and some of the leading minds in politics...

But the best headline of all?  From an outfit called "ABD Post":

MARK HALPERIN brilliantly breaks down why Disney canceled Jimmy Kimmel...

The "ABD Post" is a pro-Erdoğan Turkish-American website about which you have never heard, and from which you will never hear again.  

And finally, a two-fer.  In case you were worried that you might have to hold a bake-sale to support Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, you can stop worrying.  They are both are residing comfortably in the reactionary libertarian free-speech terrariums their tech oligarch sugar daddies built for them and their ilk.

From The New Republic:

Tech billionaires and iconoclast journalists suddenly see eye to eye.

...

"Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left", a new book by the journalist Eoin Higgins, is an attempt to understand how a collection of unimaginably wealthy, increasingly angry titans of technology and finance were able to acquire loud allies among journalists who had, until relatively recently, been largely associated with the political left. Higgins previously covered this beat in his work for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and for his own newsletter, The Flashpoint. Some of that work is repurposed here, but the book expands on it, taking a broader look at the sociocultural and political currents that have brought new alignments of writers, audiences, and funders.

His two main subjects are the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, although a number of other new-media all-stars and hangers-on make appearances...

And that is the end of the news.

 

I Am The Liberal Media

Say "Mark Halperin" One More Time.

Alert listener G. brought this to my attention this morning.  

Ever since Mark Halperin was cast into media perdition for being a creepy sex past, it's been painfully clear that the very ippy tippy top of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski's to-do list is has been "Get Mark Halperin back on network teevee".

Whether this is because Halperin keeps showing up on the ScarBinski's doorstep, curled into the fetal position and wailing like a banshee with kidney stones...or whether making sure that no Media Insider Club member is ever left bereft of a place at the table is a duty that must be undertaken, no matter how distasteful it may be, for the good order of the Club, is an open question.

What we can know is that on too many occasions to be a coincidence, ScarBinski has gone out of their way to wedge Halperin onto MSNBC air, either in person, by proxy or -- as happened today -- by repeating his name over and over again, as if summoning Beetlejuice.  

Today, no less than four times.  "Halperin writes", "Halperin's newsletter", etc.

Nothing to report, really, except members of the mainstream media remain immune from consequences.  Everyone knows it.  That's how the Club operates, which is why no one with knowledge of how exactly the Club works has ever spilled the beans about how Club works.

Which may be why it is clearly very important to A.M. cable news' cringiest power couple that no effort should be spared in helping Halperin tunnel out of purgatory.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Since I Already Wrote About The Inevitable Re-Rehabilitation of Mark Halperin Back In 2019...

 ...after I wrote about his attempted rehabilitation in 2017 ... 

... I  see no reason to once again waste perfectly good adjectives re-re-rewriting it now. 

This is why we OG bloggers have archives.  So I'm just going to link to all of that old stuff below and you can visit it, or revisit it, or not as you see fit.

This week's inciting incident began with Halperin humping the leg of one of the worst human beings to ever disgrace this Land of the Free.

For my latest podcast, I talked with journalist Mark Halperin about his outlook for the 2024 election. @MarkHalperin https://t.co/suJmg7VmXB

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 20, 2024

In which Halperin launches his latest "Hey, remember me? I used to be bigtime!" moneygrab:

He also discusses his new platform, 2WAY. 2WAY is a live video platform that allows participants to take part in informative and civil conversations online with people from across the political spectrum.

Which, based on his history as a creepy sexpest, he probably should have called "Live from his NewsMax cubicle stabbin' cabin, it's 3WAY With Mark Halperin".  It is an invitation?  A threat?  

Then, having lubed up his pundit street cred by taking a roll in the podcast hay with an even bigger degenerate than himself, Halperin was ready to slip back into the periphery of the Bright Lights of the Big City with...Morning Joe.  

Squint Scarborough prepped his unsuspecting viewers by telling them that he had personally "looked at a Democratic focus group last night as it was going on" and it was "so fascinating on so many fronts".

A focus group led by...Mark Halperin over at the very important-sounding "The Wide World of News" but which, it turns out, is just Halperin's shitty little blog on Substack. 

Some mornings the internet can be an unbearable hellscape, but bless my soul if the reaction to Joey Joe Joe Junior trying to Halperin-roofie his audience wasn't swift and clear.

Dozens and dozens of Tweets like this.

WTF. Morning Joe sneaks disgraced Mark Halperin onto the show to pull an Ezra Klein, talk with a screenload of white people about Biden stepping down (it's pure fantasy) and attacking Kamala Harris.

— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 21, 2024

Halperin had been a loyal housepet of the Morning Joe freakshow for years, and ever since he got sent to the media sexpest farm upstate, Squint and the Meat Puppet have tried over and over again to find a way to slip him back on the air.  One can only imagine the calls the Scarborough household gets at all hours from an increasingly desperate Halperin reminding them for the umpteenth time of what Great Friends they are, and How Much Value his creepy, robotic, always-tilting-Right presence brought to their show even though he didn't have to do it since he was Mr. Big Time Regular on Meet the Press.  

Also that the Iron Rule of the Beltway Media is that There is a Club, and that if all of us clowns and grifters don't stick together and cover for each other, The Club starts to lose cohesion and then we all go down.  

So, of you'd like to read a lot more about this awful person and the Beltway media crusade to rehabilitate him, here's the link.

And here's a link for those of you who may want to know why 75 powerful Democratic operatives were not interviewed for this post.

I Am The Liberal Media

Who Loves Ya Baby: Mark Halperin Edition

I don't know about you, but I keep a few cards in my wallet for purely sentimental reasons.  For example, I have an ancient Illinois Education Association/ National Education Association membership card proving that I was, indeed, a card-carrying union thug back when I was teaching at Columbia College.  My "active" status on the front.  Member bennies and the small "union bug" on the back.  

Nice memories.  

I am also in possession of a rare prototype "Chicago One-Stop Career Center" membership card from back in the day when evaluating various swipe-card system that would track client service usage across Chicago's huge workforce system was one of my many, many responsibilities at the City of Chicago.

Both cards are long since expired because they came with expiration dates.  Just like virtually every other civilization-navigating piece of plastic in my wallet and, presumably, in your wallet, purse, or fanny-pack too.

There is, however, one exception.  One very rare and extremely valuable bit of kit that grants you access to all kinds of benefits denied to the rest of us peons, and which apparently never expires.  

This card:

If you are a proud member of this exclusive club then no matter how perverse your behavior has been or what a godawful dog's breakfast of Both Siderist hackers and GOP taint lickery your work has been, if you are ever bounced from The Club, with the rarest of exceptions, your cronies and fellow travelers who remain in good standing inside the The Club will never stop moving Heaven and Earth to get your membership restored.

For example, today the once ubiquitous Mark Halperin was back on non-NewsMax cable teevee, baby!

Well, sorta.

After an epic and richly deserved fall from grace which one wag described as a... 

...career plummet from the chopper to the chipper had reached its nadir. Once the runaway leader in workplace sexual predation, Beltway hackery and straight-faced, monotone Conservative talking-point recitation, in less than four years Halperin been reduced in station to an audio animatronic pitchman for NewsMax, "interviewing" the twice-impeached traitor Donald Trump for the titillation of that propaganda outlet's thousands of mouth-breathing idiot viewers.

...today Hamperin was smuggled back into the set of Morning Joe in video form.  Because of all the tiny focus groups in all the towns in all the world, Squint and the Meat Puppet just hadda pick Halperin's to masticate on-air in search of elusive electoral wisdom.

I shall spare you the lived experience, but it went a little something like this:

It was inevitable when matthews started making appearances.
Halperin is still a PoS.. and Joe is the enabler. https://t.co/gqByIT7PPO

— ShantyWorld is on #Mastodon (@ShantyMinister) July 12, 2023

ITs a BIG NO to Mark Halperin & Chris Matthews!! @morningmika @Morning_Joe WHY are you trying to rehab sex predators??!!#MorningJoe

— Bren Holiday (@SunnyBlondie) July 12, 2023

And now, to cleanse your palate, we bring you Mr. Telly Savalas celebrating the glories of [checks notes] Duluth?

Really?  Duluth?  Duluth Duluth? 

Well, OK then.

Roll it Jimmy!

I Am The Liberal Media

Perving Goeth Before a Fall

Sitting in what appears to be his meemaw's spare room, talking to brain dead lunatics about the latest manufactured outrage running around in their mental hamster wheels is definitely not where Mark Halperin though his career would be in 2022.

Halperin built a career out of being one of the most reliably godawful pundits on network teevee.  With his flat affect, bad combover and relentless insistence that everything -- good, bad or catastrophic -- was always somewhichway good news for Republicans, Halperin was never going to lose his gig pouring poison into the ear of a great, god-fearing public.

Only getting busted rubbing lil' hot take on the unwilling was able to knock him out of his prime location aboard the wingnut welfare chuckwagon.  

But the MAGA ecosystem has a place for such fallen creatures: those so desperate to stay in some spotlight somewhere that rather than leave the game and find honest work, they'll trade the tatters of their fame and name-recognition for a chance to dress up in the costume they used to wear and do what they used to do in the service of the worst people in America.  

His arrival at the offices of the No Labels scam  was not exactly greeted with flowers -- 

Disgraced Journalist Mark Halperin’s Hiring by Policy Firm No Labels’ Draws Fire: ‘No Morals’ 

 

...and candy -- 

‘No Labels’ Staffers Angered By Firm’s Hiring Of Accused Sexual Harasser Mark Halperin 

-- and he is currently listed as the organization's notary public. 

No kidding.

After that he headed straight for the bottom:  as a Newsmax political Roomba.  Just plug him in and he robotically does his Halperin thing for whoever is footing the bill...

...while dreaming dreams of better days and helicopter rides with important perverts.

I Am The Liberal Media

Mark Halperin is Inevitable

 As reported on this disreputable weblog less than two months ago, Mark Halperin's career plummet from the chopper to the chipper had reached its nadir.  Once the runaway leader in workplace sexual predation, Beltway hackery and straight-faced, monotone Conservative talking-point recitation, in less than four years Halperin been reduced in station to an audio animatronic pitchman for NewsMax, "interviewing" for twice-impeached traitor Donald Trump for the titillation of that propaganda outlet's thousands of mouth-breathing idiot viewers.

And now that Halperin can be picked up for Dollar Store remaindered book-bin prices, he has been gifted the single most predictable leg back up into Beltway respectability by the single most predictable source imaginable.

He is helping run a small manufacturing company that makes colorful, environmentally-friendly  countertops and hires and trains refugees and the formerly incarcerated.

Oops.  

My mistake.  

I was thinking of Anthony Weiner.

Anthony Weiner’s Comeback Gig

After a stint in prison and some consulting work, the former congressman is running a company that makes countertops out of concrete and crushed Heineken bottles.

Not long ago, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Anthony Weiner, the former seven-term congressman, mayoral hopeful, registered sex offender, and cameo star of “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!,” pointed a temperature gun at a guest, grabbed a bright-green hard hat, and stepped onto the factory floor of IceStone. “So, we make countertops here,” Weiner said, of the company that he’s been running since May. Notable clients: nasa (bathrooms), Whole Foods (salad bar), Ed Norton (residence). “Fairly low-tech. It’s like what you did in elementary school making pottery.”...

...Asked about life on the inside, he said, “I wouldn’t recommend it to others.” One of his prison visitors was Dal LaMagna, the beauty-tools magnate known as Tweezerman, who later pivoted to environmentally friendly countertops. The two had met, years ago, on the political circuit. (LaMagna considered running for mayor and sought Weiner’s counsel. Weiner advised against it.)

“When covid was crushing the company, and crushing everything else, Dal approached me and said, ‘What if I stepped back and just kind of gave you the keys?’ ” Weiner recalled. IceStone, a certified B Corp, has a history of helping the downtrodden, including formerly incarcerated people. “I would be a high-profile example of that category,” Weiner said. “For years, this company has also hired refugees from Tibet.”

Sorry.

Halperin, on the other hand, has made himself into a creature so fragile and specialized that he can only function in one environment: the incestuous Beltway insider cesspool.   Which is why you won't find him working a hard-hat gig helping the disadvantaged, or teaching high school English to underprivileged kids, or opening a bakery, or whatever.  No, all of his efforts -- and all of the efforts of his cronies in the media like Michael Smerconish, Mika Brzezinski, and Joe Scarborough -- have been exclusively focused on getting his ass back into the good graces of the lords and ladies of the Beltway where he could continue his climb back to some perch where he could inflict his horrible opinions on the public.

Which is why...

Mark Halperin hired by bipartisan policy group No Labels

Yep.

Former journalist Mark Halperin has been hired as a consultant for the non-partisan policy organization No Labels, Punchbowl News reported on Tuesday.

“We have spoken with Mark Halperin about a short-term consulting project” said No Labels senior advisor Margaret White in a statement shared with the news outlet.

“Staff members of No Labels, including CEO Nancy Jacobson and Co-Executive Directors Margaret White and Liz Morrison, have spoken with Halperin and believe a second chance is warranted in this case,” White added...

We now turn to Gretchen Carlson for a different perspective:

Trying to understand. @NoLabelsOrg says enough time has passed to hire harrasser Mark Halperin while women who come forward never work again. Corporate America: We @LiftOurVoicesUS challenge you to change. #bringbackwomen @julieroginsky @dianafalzone https://t.co/q9FFk1tSV1

— Gretchen Carlson (@GretchenCarlson) April 20, 2021

In the Beltway pundit ecosystem, there is no value higher than protecting one of their own.  They'll lose interest in impeachments and armed insurrections within weeks, but four years after his career collapsed under a torrent of sexual misconduct allegations, there they are, still hard at work trying to get a slug like Mark Halperin a seat back at the Big Boy table.

And as long as self-interested self-promoting self-protection remains the Beltway's Prime Directive, hobgoblins like Mark Halperin are inevitable.  

No Half Measures

As Mark Halperin Followed The Archersaurus Career Arc Down and Down...

...there came one last stop before hitting bottom.

Co-anchoring.

On Newsmax.

Doing a phone-in "interview" with Sidney Powell as she projectile vomits crazy in every direction.

Don't worry about those pointy rocks that seem to be rushing up at you really, really fast Mark.

Just pretend it's the good old days and you're flyyyyying!

No Half Measures

The Re-Halperining Continues

This was predictable and predicted.

welcoming @MarkHalperin back to @SXMPOTUS @SIRIUSXM with today's political news https://t.co/Sx0bOxTMv0

— Michael Smerconish (@smerconish) August 29, 2019

There is obviously a directive coming from very high up in the Beltway media ecosystem to get Mark Fucking Halperin back in front of a microphone no matter what.

I would like to meet the person who issued this directive.

Find out their reasons for issuing it.

And then cockpunch them hard enough to make their great-grandparents pass out.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

A Custom More Honored in the Breach...

...than the observance.

In the Washington Post today, the last person to hold the title of New York Times public editor has some very sensible Rules for Redemption.

Redemption sounds nice, but disgraced pundit Mark Halperin doesn’t deserve it

By Margaret Sullivan

...
Mark Halperin, an author and media commentator who stepped down from his various lofty perches in 2017, seems to have missed that step along the path to would-be redemption.

He has a high-profile book deal — but what he doesn’t seem to have is a sense of why he shouldn’t have one.

And most of his comeback enablers don’t seem to get it either...

Should there be such a thing — as [Judith Regan, Halpein's publisher] puts it — as forgiveness, second chances and redemption?

Of course. People mess up, sometimes badly. Some do deserve a second chance, and not all situations are of equal weight. There is no one-size-fits-all.
...

But forgiveness, second chances and redemption should be inconceivable without dealing honestly and publicly — and, in some cases, personally — with misconduct.

And even if that happens, it doesn’t mean that the perpetrators should blithely get to return to what they were doing before the fall.

In some cases, a return to previous roles is simply wrong.

If this all sounds a very familiar, it should. For a couple of reasons.

First, because although (as one wag put it) "Mark Halperin has been an unforgivable shart-in-white-Dockers stain on the profession of journalism since forever" who "sucks at everything, except sucking up to Conservatives" I knew it was inevitable that the Beltway Media Self-Protection Syndicate would sooner-or-later find a way to "redeem" another irredeemable lodge brother.

And second because since the start of the Never Trump Elite Republican Rebranding Scam, I have been very deliberately calling the language of faith off the bench and onto the field to make this very point about a much larger gang of grifters and goofs all of whom enjoy a Halperin-or-higher level of completely unearned deference and privilege and the authority to invoke some secret clause of some private compact which causes the Beltway media to rally to their defense whenever they have done something indefensible ("The Madness of Mercy"):

But, there has truly never been a time when events have more completely vindicated the Left than the moment we are living through now, so I simply do not understand why so many Liberals who should damn well know better by now fling themselves like drunk prom dates at the tiniest wisp of validation from the Never Trumpers.

If the Never Trumpers are offering actual, useful intel -- plans to the GOP Death Star -- then great.  Welcome aboard.  If they are coming to us in the spirit of genuine confession, repentance and atonement, terrific.  We're a forgiving bunch.  But if they cannot form the words "The Left was right about the Right all along" and will not lock their loyalty to our cause down with anything more than nods and winks, then we have no reason in the world to lend them our hard-won credibility or give them our trust or show them an ounce of our mercy.

Inside the Beltway media ecosystem, you can't swing a dead meme without hitting an entire menagerie of moochers and monsters -- Bush regime dead-enders, torture apologists, bibbling hacks who have been wrong about everything since Christ was a corporal, newly woke Republicans who swear they only discovered that the GOP was full of Republicans 20 minutes ago -- all reaping the benefits of wholly undeserved privilege and gold-plated job security.

But that's not what killed journalism for me, because I have worked at many places where thoroughly unqualified people enjoyed undeserved privilege and gold-plated job security.  And in every case it came down to that invisible currency of loyalty and reciprocal advantage that we men and women of Chicago know as clout.

Clout is what builds mighty careers out of thin air for the third-rate nephews and sons-in-law of the powerful.  Clout makes it possible for nitwits to garner impressive titles and salaries because they fucked the right people (literally and figuratively) at the right time.  Clout is what permits incompetent dopes to advanced steadily through the ranks based on their skills as after-hours party organizer, on-call procurer, drinking-buddy and doer of various unsavory favors for persons of importance.

This is the way much of the world works.

No, what killed journalism for me is that it's supposed to be the one civic enterprise specifically charted to be the enemy of clout.  To expose the grimy inner working of corrupt institutions that are screwing the public.   From the American Press Institute:

The purpose of journalism is thus to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.

What killed journalism's credibility with me is not that many powerful people are obviously invested in resuscitating or maintaining the careers of so many wildly overrated stool samples like Mark Halperin.

What killed journalism's credibility with me is how deeply committed almost everyone else in the field is to ignoring it.

75 powerful Democratic operatives were not interviewed for this post.

The Specter at the Banquet That Didn't Bark in the Night: Update

Here's a funny thing.

Ms. Ana Marie Cox -- who has worn many media hats over the years -- now has a podcast called "With Friends Like These" which is built on the premise of having “uncomfortable conversations” with people who have a different point of view.

Ms. Cox's podcast is a Big Podcast in large measure because it exists under the umbrella of Crooked Media -- a Liberal podcast collective about which you may have heard.   It is big enough to be her chyron tag on the Morning Joe teevee show --

-- and big enough to be her one-line bio at the Washington Post:

Ana Marie Cox is the host of Crooked Media's "With Friends Like These."

It is clearly very good to have friends like these.

Anyhoo, it just so happens that, in addition to being Stephanie Miller's newest BFF and the co-host of his own teevee show on The MSNBC, Mr. Joe Scarborough is also enough of a Beltway media macher to rate his own Washington Post column.

So, y'know, very, very good to have friends like these.

And today, these two Washington Post columnists got together on Mr. Scarborough's teevee show to parse Ms. Cox's article in the Washington Post, which is entitled:

Al Franken isn’t being denied due process. None of these famous men are.

This is a performance that is mutually beneficial to both parties.

For his part, Mr. Scarborough' primary professional goal these days is to eradicate all memory of the fact that he has been a typically peevish Republican boor and whiny asshole for his entire career, and that before Donald Trump threatened to out Mr. Scarborough's affair with his co-host, Mr. Scarborough was only too happy let his longtime pal, Donald John Trump, use his teevee show as the launching pad for his political ambitions.  So on-air badinage with Ms. Cox helps him burnish his newly-minted Mr. Enlightened Independent Guy persona.

For her part, Ms. Cox has fallen from a high place in the media to about as low a place on the media food chain as possible.  Podcasting.  Which is barely one step above gleaning the fields of Moab for a living.  However, because she has friends like these and a Big podcast, she can swing a column in the Washington Post, which in-turn, translates into face-time on Mr. Scarborough's teevee show.

From the video you can see that Joey Joe Joe Junior very much does not like being interrupted and contradicted by mouthy ladies --

-- but he  and Ms. Cox nonetheless danced grimly and uncomfortably around each other like matter and anti-matter trying to tarantella without actually touching.

Because the Circle of Beltway Life, don'tcha know.

And they talked and they talked about Al Franken and Roy Moore and Al Franken and Roy Moore and Donald Trump and Al Franken and Roy Moore.

But here's a funny thing.

You see this picture?

That guy at the opposite side of the semicircle from Ms. Cox is named Mike Barnicle, about whom I have, in the past, written some unflattering-but-true things, strictly in the spirit of having “uncomfortable conversations” with people who have a different point of view.  

(Brief driftglass aside/ For the record, Mr. Barnicle has never reciprocated my invitation to have an “uncomfortable conversation” about, say, the ubiquity and toxicity of the Both Siderism that is the only thing propping up his career. Nor has Michael Gerson, Peggy Noonan, David Frum, David Brooks, Rick Wilson [a frequent guest of Ms. Cox], Matthew Dowd, Hugh Hewitt, Chris Hayes, Ezra Klein, Bret Stephens, Joe Scarborough  [a new BFF of Stephanie Miller], Michael Steele [another new BFF of Stephanie Miller], Tom Friedman, Harold Ford Junior, Kathleen Parker, Ron Fournier, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, Andrew Sullivan, Rich Lowry, Ross Douthat, Peter Beinart, Jonathan Chait, John Podhoretz, Ben Shapiro, George Will, David French, Erick Erickson, Chris Cillizza and Chuck Todd to name just a few.  In fact, on many, many occasions, my overtures to these media personages to have an “uncomfortable conversation” has gotten me blocked.   So either I'm doing this all wrong, or there is something really, really important about having Friends Like These./ End brief driftglass aside.)

Anyway, back to Mike Barnicle.  And next to him, tangibly present but invisible to the untrained eye, hovers the specter at this particular banquet:  Mr. Mark Halperin.

And here's the funny thing.  The hilarious thing.

Smack in the middle of the article by Ms. Cox which occasioned her invitation onto Mr. Scarborough's show and which the panel was so gingerly mining for any thin vein of ratings gold, we find this delightful paragraph (to which I have added some emphasis to guide your eye):

But those who decry what’s happening with Franken — and the #metoo reckoning writ large — as “moral flattening” are doing some serious steamrolling themselves, yoking together every corporate disavowal, every canceled contract and every defunct résumé line into the same tragic ending, such as Ziegler characterizing Franken’s likely return to civilian life as a “demise.” Or Gingrich equating the same move to dangling off the branch of a tree. (I am reminded of Mike Barnicle bemoaning the fate of his erstwhile MSNBC co-contributor Mark Halperin: “But does he deserve to die?”) Much as rape is not opportunistic groping and exposing oneself is not child molestation, there’s a whole scale of consequences available between death and “no longer having an extraordinarily prestigious and well-paying job.”

Well Jesus Christ and Philo Farnsworth, there sat Mr. Barnicle himself!  And with the spirit of Mr. Halperin hovering palpably nearby!  Separated from Crooked Media's very own, branded "Uncomfortable Conversation" podcaster by naught but ten feet of Lucite table-top and some hard-eyed professional cost/benefit calculations. 

And...

And...

And not a word was spoken on the subject.  Not one word.

And that silence spoke volumes.

Gregory [a Scotland Yard detective]: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?

Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.

Sherlock Holmes: That was the curious incident.

– "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

UPDATE:

The crowd at the Morning Joe Sycophant Circle just keeps getting thinner and thinner. 
From Media-Ite:

Former Rep. and Morning Joe Analyst Harold Ford Jr. Fired From Morgan Stanley For Alleged Misconduct

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Pants Party Is Over

Based on Mark Halperin's evident lack of basic human social skills, I figure this is pretty much what his come-on's sound like. 

From CNN:

Five women accuse journalist and 'Game Change' co-author Mark Halperin of sexual harassment

And of course Action Must Be Taken!  From Variety:

Mark Halperin Suspended as NBC News Contributor Following Sexual Harassment Allegations

But here is the real question:  Is he gone for good?

I would guess not.

Because Mark Halperin has been an unforgivable shart-in-white-Dockers stain on the profession of journalism since forever.  He sucks at everything, except sucking up to Conservatives.  From me, back in 2013:

The Loud Gargling Noise You May Have Heard Earlier...

..was the sound of NBC Legitimate Journalist Mark Halperin giving Glenn Beck one the the noisiest radio blowjobs I have heard in a long time.

Highlights included Mr. Halperin explaining how "honored" he was to be on Glenn Beck's radio show  after which he spent several minutes loudly agreeing with Beck on the "obvious" Liberal bias of the media, and how he has to explain to those few, ign'rant journalists who may dispute Mr. Halperin's infinite wisdom in such matters that whether it is true or not, "over 50%" of Murrica believes the media to be the Commie Stooges of the Kenyan Usurper.  And that is the important thing.

What Mr. Halperin somehow failed to mention is that some considerable fraction of those people who will swear on the bones of their sainted Confederate ancestors and the Second Amendment that the media is in the pocket of the Kenyan Usurper, believe it so fervently because Conservative moles like Mark Halperin regularly scrape together the "legitimate media" cred they get from working at places like NBC, walk it across town, and hand it over to demagogues like Glenn Beck...

And yet, after each of Mr. Halperin's embarrassing, public desecration of his profession, NBC president Phil Griffin has always dusted him off, taken him back and given him a nice raise, or his own show, or some other substantial financial token of esteem.

So if -- if -- NBC president Phil Griffin in willing to come up with enough do-re-mi to silence Mr. Halperin's accusers, then, based on a long established media industry standard known as "The driftglass interlude" with which longtime readers are already very familiar, we can assume that Mr. Halperin's exile from the Very Serious Journalisming Club will last 30 days (from me, back in 2012)

...This time around and right on schedule, it fell to the vapid, unctuous Charlie Rose to let one of the Villager's favorite naughty clowns --

 

-- back out of the penalty box (h/t Harvey Chess)

I guess since David Gregory -- 

 

-- was tapped to retrieve the little lost lamb de jour last time -- expertly fellating disgraced Republican pervert Newt Gingrich back to Beltway Respectability at the tail end of 2010 -- it's only fair that Rose would have to be the one to lay back and do his bit for the Empire.

I also note for the record that Rose performed his duty almost exactly one month to the day after Halperin fell from grace from the Village which (for what I assume are accounting and HR reasons)   is now the standard time-out for bad little Beltway monkeys who get caught flinging the wrong brand of poo and which (were I a better writer) I might describe as "In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over the nasty sty...".

And why is this important?

I'm glad you asked.

And when you have men like that creating the political narrative how can any woman compete on a level field?

— second nature (@second_nature) October 26, 2017

So set your clocks for late November, 2017 and we'll all reconvene here to see whether or not Mr. Halperin will be insinuated back into the inner circle of the Serious Media Club...

...or whether NBC will have to thaw out another, bloodless goon to take his place and perform the vital work of staring dead-eyed into the camera, intoning "It's The Extremes On Both Sides" as the answer to every question.

Meanwhile, this seems like a good time to formally begin my annual birthday fundraiser, seeing as how not a pfennig of the millions of dollars the mainstream media throws around to hire legions of idiots like Halperin is ever gonna land in my tip jar :-)

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Amazing Helicopter Halperin Makes Lee Atwater Completely Disappear

If you're of a certain age, you vividly remember the infamous "Willie Horton" ad. Back in 1988, as George H. W. Bush's presidential campaign was going up in flames, he put the job of winning him the presidency and running the Republican National Committee into the hands of this guy:

And Atwater delivered. He did indeed "strip the bark off the little bastard" (Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis) and made "Willie Horton his running mate". He made George H. W. Bush president, taught his two eager proteges -- Dubya Bush and Karl Rove -- all the tricks of his filthy trade, and poisoned the heart of the Party of Lincoln beyond repair.

This is settled, American political history, in the books and undisputed. But it is an American history which flies in the face the today's "Both Siderist" media fairy tales. An American history which absolutely wrecks the mandatory Beltway narrative that racism and bigotry are not, not, not a long-standing mainstays of modern Conservatism and the indispensable pillars of Republican electoral politics but instead are unfortunate anomalies which just glided down an escalator and into the Republican party, unbidden, one sunny day in June of 2015 -- fully formed and unrelated to anything that had gone before -- in the person of Donald J. Trump.

And so Mark Halperin -- in true, soulless Mark Halperin form -- takes the best speech that candidate Clinton has given to-date and (at the 1:08 mark of this video) uses it it to erase the horribly inconvenient reality of Lee Atwater from American political history.

"You think back to 1988.  George Herbert Walk Bush.  People thought his chances of winning were bad.  He was 17 points behind Michael Dukakis. He gave a convention speech well above a performance level people thought he could achieve and that pretty much did it. "

The greatest trick the Beltway media ever pulled is pretending that Republican racism did not exist before Trump.

And like that...

...Atwater is gone

Helicopter Halperin Racks Up Some More Trump Good Boy Points

If he wants those tasty Trump Tendies, Halperin has to keep racking up those Trump Good Boy points, no matter how racist or nutso Trump gets.

Can he do it?

Of course he can!

From Media Matters:

Halperin: Trump Attack On ‘Mexican’ Judge ‘Not Racial,’ Mexico 'Not A Race'

Bloomberg journalist Mark Halperin said Friday that Donald Trump’s attacks on the Mexican heritage of a federal judge overseeing a case against him were “not racial” because “Mexico isn’t a race.”

The co-host of his show “With All Due Respect,” John Heilemann, insisted that Trump’s frequent invocation of judge Gonzalo Curiel’s ethnicity is beyond the pale.

“He did it over and over again, he kept calling Curiel a Mexican, right?” Heilemann said, in an exchange flagged by Media Matters. “It is not even dog whistle politics. It is just pure racial politics.”

“No, it’s not racial,” Halperin responded.

“It’s racial politics. It is,” Heilemann insisted.

“Mexico isn’t a race,” Halperin said...

I must respectfully disagree with Karoli over at Crooks & Liars.  This is not the "Dumbest Thing Mark Halperin Has Ever Said". Halperin is a soulless, calculating ambition machine who has a long and shameful history of telling ridiculous lies and wallowing with the worst scum in American politics. If Trump were setting fires in public buildings, Halperin would find a way to praise the economic value of arson. He is just that dead inside.

And for his sins, Bloomberg and MSNBC keeps promoting and rewarding him, which is why national political journalism is dead in this country.

At Bazooko's Political Circus

"Bazooko's Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war.   This was the Sixth Reich."

-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

From Huffington Post:

Showtime Getting In On 2016 'Circus' With Weekly Documentary Series

The network will team up with Bloomberg on a series that will air as the campaign unfolds.

Michael Calderone, Senior Media Reporter, The Huffington Post

NEW YORK -- As the political world's attention turns to Iowa in early 2016, Showtime will launch a new weekly series that promises to take viewers behind the scenes of the presidential race in real-time.

Showtime announced Tuesday it's teaming up with Bloomberg Politics for "The Circus: Inside The Greatest Political Show On Earth," a half-hour, Sunday night program that will feature Bloomberg Politics managing editors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and veteran political strategist and media adviser Mark McKinnon...

Mark Fucking Halperin and Mark "Longtime Dubya Bush adviser and John McCain adviser and Sarah Palin adviser turned 'No Labels' pimp" McKinnon?

Wow.

No expense has been spared.

As your attorney, for your own mental health, I advise you gas up, point your land cruiser at the horizon and get as far away from this rat parade as possible.

"I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody was giving booze to these god damn things!  It wont be long now, before they tear us to shreds."

-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

"Helicopter" Halperin Strikes Again

I know a lot of you are going to think I'm kidding, but this might be @realDonaldTrump's best speech of the campaign so far. #TrumpClassic

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) September 15, 2015

It would be unfair to think of "Helicopter" Mark Halperin as one of Trump's media whores.  As history has shown, Halperin treats every available Conservative dick as if it were made of the finest Belgian chocolate.

Strategic Forgettery? You're Soaking In It!

Now that MSNBC has kicked Liberals and our ratings-killing obsession with facts 'n shit to the curb and gone into the Drudge Report content-generation business full-time, you can expect more and more of their extruded news-like teevee slop to be picked up and repeated enthusiastically by right-wing slop-houses like Newsbusters more and more often.

Like, for instance, today:

Halperin: ‘World Would Come to a Halt’ If GOP Said Dems Were Terrorists

On Friday’s Morning Joe, Bloomberg Politics managing editor Mark Halperin strongly condemned Hillary Clinton’s decision to compare Republican politicians to terrorists over the issue of abortion.

Halperin did not mince words when he repudiated the Democratic frontrunner's language and argued that “[i]f a Republican did this the world would come to a halt.”

Co-host Joe Scarborough was just as harsh on Mrs. Clinton and called her comments “disgusting." The Morning Joe host suggested Clinton "wanted us to talk about this. She wanted to throw a bright shiny object out there. So they don't -- so they don't talk about the e-mail scandal.”

After Scarborough listed off the numerous atrocities terrorists like ISIS commit against women on a daily basis he maintained that Hillary’s comments expose the “sick radicalism” of the Democratic Party:

Is this the radicalism, we've been talking about the craziness of the Republican Party. But is this the sick radicalism that is now infecting the Democratic Party that if you're Barack Obama you compare Chuck Schumer to people shouting death to America in Iran? And if you're Hillary Clinton, you compare pro-life Democrats and Republicans to ISIS? What happened here yesterday? This is so over the top. 

The MSNBC host went one step further and stressed that Clinton’s rhetoric was a “disgusting” “planned” strategy as she tries to distract from the FBI’s ongoing investigation into her private e-mail server containing classified information:

This is a strategy of her to be -- to engage in gutter politics to distract from the fact that the FBI is investigating her because she's been called a liar by the American people. So she's just going to try to change the subject. Democrats that are concerned about what's going on should just be more concerned this morning. 

After Mika Brzezinski played Clinton’s full comments once again she admitted that her remarks were clearly “written” and not merely off-the-cuff remarks. Halperin also made sure to point out the media double standard in its coverage of the 2016 campaign and how a Republican would have been swiftly condemned for invoking terrorists while talking about the Democratic Party:

The world would come to a halt. There would be editorials in every newspaper condemning him and demanding he apologize. 

Since over the years I have seen Mark Halperin on teevee yammering out his asinine Conservative talking points in his android monotone many times --

 -- and read about him jamming himself sideways into the stories he is "reporting" many times and heard him administering what may have been the loudest on-air blowjob in modern radio history, it is an objective fact that Mr. Halperin has been alive and at least minimally aware of his surroundings in this country for many years.

Therefor it is also objectively true that Mr. Halperin could not possibly have missed the fact that the entire fucking Conservative Hate Machine -- from its most elite power brokers and elected officials to its lowliest scut-working droolers -- have done nothing but bellow at the tops of their lungs (since before he was even elected) that Barack Obama is a dirty, Murrica-hating terrorist or a terrorist-sympathizer or a Commie Kenyan sleeper cell programmed by his foreign handlers to destroy Murrica by any means necessary.

In fact, other than periodically trying to destroy the country by crippling the economy, shutting the government down and holding daily ritual votes to get rid of health insurance for millions of Americans, pointing at Democrats and screaming "Traitor!  Terrorist!  Commie!" is pretty much all they do anymore.

Pretty much all they have done for the last 20 years.

Therefor it must also be objectively true that Mr. Halperin is a lying liar who lies for a living.

And we all know what happens to naughty lying liars who lie for a living, don't we?

They are praised and feted and paid vast sums of money to go on national teevee over and over again to share their wise counsel with millions of Americans forever and ever.

I Would Have Pegged Him As More Of A Spin Class Kinda Guy

In which our Beltway media continues to define "conflict of interest" so far down that soon it will mean "Not caught on camera actively fluffing a plutocrat's shar pei".

From Media Matters:

Bloomberg's Halperin Scheduled To Conduct "Sunrise Pilates" Session With Ann Romney At GOP Donor Retreat

June 11, 2015 11:03 PM EDT

Bloomberg Politics co-managing editor Mark Halperin is scheduled to conduct a "Sunrise Pilates" session co-hosted by Ann Romney at a retreat for wealthy Republican donors.

His official biography says Halperin "leads Bloomberg's political and policy coverage, including news, analysis, commentary, narrative, data analytics and more across all platforms."

According to Time, Halperin is listed on the official schedule to lead the session with Ann Romney on Saturday, June 13, at the The Chateaux at Silver Lake at Deer Valley Resort in Park City, Utah. Time describes the event, put together by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as "Club Med for the political mega-donors."

Time adds that "the event offers high-profile and high net-worth individuals the opportunity to gather in picturesque Deer Valley, Utah, and the chance to meet with at least six presidential candidates."...