production error at fox?

Again Fox News has been accused of using footage of crowds out of context to make a Republican or Teabag event look good. This time, they made it look like former Alaska Governor/current teabagger wet dream Sarah Palin had huge throngs at her book signing. Except the crowds they showed were from the 2008 presidential campaign.

Fox claimed a "production error".

Of course, that's not true. These are intentional moves to puff Fox's favorites. We all know that, right?

missing the point

Accusing Howard Kurtz of missing the point is like accusing your old grandmother of wallowing in nostalgia for the days when Frank Sinatra was young and hot - pretty obvious.

But pretty obviously, Howie has done this again. Writing about former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's disclosure in a book that some of the 2004 terror alerts were politically motivated, Kurtz's angle isn't about misusing government programs and scaring the public for political gain. No, it was to bemoan people for not keeping their mouths shut when they are out of office.

Is Ridge's careful, veiled disclosure ideal? No. It would have been better if he'd fought it harder. Just once I'd like to see a senior American political official have the balls to resign in protest - I can't think of one who has done so since Cyrus Vance quit as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State. (If Ridge had done so back then, he would have been pilloried as a traitor and a secret agent of the Democratic Party by the Fox-Limbaugh-Bachman wing of the GOP...)

But disclosing this after the fact - not so much news as confirmation of many suspicions - is better than nothing.

kurtz reporting on comedians doing kurtz' job

Jon Stewart jumped all over CNBC star Jim Cramer on The Daily Show the other night, reports Howard Kurtz, for CNBC's failure to reveal the bullshit CEOs were peddling on their show.

Remember, Jon Stewart is a comedian. And Jon Stewart, Kurtz reports, is trashing the news media for failing to do its job. In this case, for taking all of the stuff the Wall Street types were saying at face value.

Do you think when Howard Kurtz writes a story like this, he thinks "gosh, Jon Stewart just did something I could do, since I am a reporter who is supposed to cover the media"?

the best reporting yet on the pathetic state of financial and business reporting

It doesn't pay to "bail out" of an appearance on the Daily Show. Watch this clip, and enjoy it. The first two-plus minutes are Jon Stewart skewering Rick Santelli over his little rant on the floor of the NYSE recently - and for backing out of an appearance.

The rest of the clip is a funny but sobering compilation of things CNBC has gotten wrong over the past couple of years about things like whether AIG would require federal assistance (CNBC said no), about their hardball interview with scam artist "Sir" Allen Stanford (question: is it fun to be a billionaire), about whether Bear Sterns was in trouble (they said no; it collapsed six days later), about whether Lehman Brothers risked the same fate as Bear (CNBC said no; it collapsed three months later), about whether Merril Lynch needed to raise more capital (CNBC said no, they were wrong, and Merril Lynch is no more).

You can hear the audience as the Daily Show intersperses Jim Cramer's boosterish "buy buy buy" advice and softball interviews by lame CNBC personalities with plain graphics pointing out how utterly wrong they were. The audience kinda laughs, but it's a pained groan of a laugh. They get it, that our allegedly top business and financial network was completely in the pockets of the people they purported to be covering. Who were, of course, often the people buying advertising on CNBC and thereby paying the salaries of Maria Bartiromi, Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and the rest.

So is it any surprise they failed so completely? Nope. They couldn't afford to succeed. It's as if the sports pages of the New York Times had to rely exclusively on advertising revenues from the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, and Roger Clemens.

So watch, and groan. Once again, the Daily Show is providing the best reporting on top stories for the day. And it's supposed to be the one doing fake news. The others just fake doing the news.

(That embed thing may not be right. Try this link.)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

rushing to suck up to rush

It's fun watching Republicans like RNC chairman Michael Steele suck up to Rush Limbaugh, and hastening to grovel if they have the temerity to criticize the fat old oxycontin-popping "entertainer". Even if - ESPECIALLY if - they criticism is true.

So what does Rush bring to the GOP? Well, he has his 20 million ditto-head listeners. But hey, it's not like most of those guys (for guys they are, mostly) will leave the conservative precincts to cast a vote for a Democrat just because some Republican says something bad about old Rush.

Instead, they get to see Rush's face back in the headlines, helping remind independent voters that THIS is the Republican Party's de facto leader. Helping remind them of Limbaugh's appeals to latent racism, scare tactics, and the old stand-by, outright lies in the cause of reactionary radical Republicanism.

Helping remind them why they voted Democratic last time, and why they should do so next time.

a strange image

I happened to glance at the back of a magazine today and saw a picture of a guy with a big birthmark on his head, sitting in the back of a car. I looked closer and confirmed my suspicion - it was Mikhail Gorbachev. In an advertisement for Louis Vitton.

So I cast my mind back 20 years, when Gorbachev was still Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the leader of the Communist Bloc. I write this and it feels like I'm referring to the last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or something.

And to think - the leader of the Communist world, now selling Louis Vitton. Verily, the world has changed.

danasnarkacle

Al Gore was before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, talking again about the dangers of climate change and urging caps on emissions. Even the Republicans were respectful; apparently global warming is no longer just for Democrats.

And Dana Milbank snarks his whole way thru the story. The gist? Al Gore aka "The Goracle" (Milbank's name, not mine) was on the Hill and it was all a major bummer dude, and who knew Al Gore had a sense of humor, and all The Goracle can do is scare people.

This is journalism? Milbank gets paid to write crap like this?

How do I get a job like that? If the Danasnarkacle can get paid to write such shallow tripe, I'm sure I could similarly rise to the challenge.

regrets, has she had a few?

Today Maureen Dowd notes how de facto President George W. Bush, de facto King Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest are quite happy with their performance at the highest ranks of the American government. Dowd writes, correctly, that "things keep spiraling while W. keeps fiddling. Just as when he was in the National Guard and didn’t bother to show up, now, as the scabrous consequences of his missteps shake the economy and the world, he doesn’t bother to show up. He’s checked out — spending his time on more than a dozen exit interviews that do nothing to change his image as a president who was over his head and under Cheney’s spell."

Yep.

So Dowd, do you regret your role in the selection of Bush as President? Remember, all you media types, how you ripped Al Gore for (allegedly) saying he invented the Internet, for getting fashion advice from Naomi Wolf, for sighing, for being a stiff bore, for carping on about climate change and the environment?

In short, you and others in the so-called liberal media collectively committed character assassination on Gore to the point that Bush was able to eke out (helped by Poppy's Supreme Court) a dubious victory in the electoral college (but STILL losing the popular vote).

Any regrets there, Maureen?

palin is almost right about something, and the media has done us wrong but that was eight years ago

Talking about presidential campaigns, Alaska Governor and sexy, winking-at-the-camera moose-killer Sarah Palin said in an interview "When did we start accepting as hard news sources bloggers...? It's a sad state of affairs in the world of the media today, mainstream media especially, that they're going to rely on bloggers... for their hard news information."

Hey, whaddaya know? Sarah Palin has hit it right on the head with a really good question. The mainstream media SHOULD know better than accepting Matt Drudge's ravings as real news. Remember Drudge's headlines in late October that McCain was on the verge of electoral victory? That was wishful thinking. More often though, Drudge and Malkin and their ilk are just playing their role as part of the right-wing noise machine, loyal little Republican drones.

Except of course, Palin wasn't talking about Drudge, she was reserving her ire for Andrew Sullivan and others who didn't treat her with kid gloves. She also told Katie Couric that she wasn't the center of the universe. Well, that's actually true - the center of the universe doesn't have an evening news anchor, but a black hole. She was also complaining about anonymous blogs (which I cut from the quote because it doesn't fit Drudge), but the big blogs that people pay attention to aren't anonymous; chalk that up to Palin's stupidity or a willingness to distort the truth, or my choice, BOTH.

This is in an interview to promote a "documentary" by right-wing noise machine member John Ziegler called "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected." Seems poor Ziegler, who of course isn't remotely biased, thinks if the media had just given John McCain and Sarah Palin a fair shake, they would have won.

Ziegler is right. There has been media malpractice in presidential elections. Except that happened in 1999-2000 and its victim was primarily Al Gore (as you can re-learn if you go thru the archives at The Daily Howler).

Gore was the primary victim of the lies and innuendoes, and not just from Fox News but from allegedly liberal members of the media like Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich and the Washington Post, all of which delighted in criticizing Gore for taking fashion tips and for allegedly saying he invented the Internet (he never said that) and for sighing during a presidential debate and for not looking like a guy who would be fun to drink beer with, while giving his opponent a free ride on things like using his Poppye's influence to avoid being drafted to go to Vietnam (Gore went) and then going AWOL, and doing cocaine and other drugs until he was 40 years old, and being the beneficiary of sweetheart business deals that made him rich because of who his daddy was.

The secondary victims? The United States and the rest of the world that had to suffer through eight years of misrule by de facto George Bush and de facto king Dick Cheney.

thanks, fox

Harold Myerson pens a fan letter to Roger Ailes and the boys and cloned blondes at Fox News.

Somehow, I think he may not be sincere...

bill o'reilly DEFENDS barack obama

Former SNL comedian Victoria Jackson thinks Barack Obama is a communist because like Fidel Castro, Obama's photo is on all the magazines and he's on all the TV stations. (Never mind that Fidel actually controls Cuba's media, and Obama as far as I can tell doesn't control ANY US media.)

And Bill O'Reilly has to defend Obama against the communist charge! Hilarious.

Maybe Victoria Jackson wasn't acting when she played those dim-bulbed characters.

i am not a crook!

I'm a pretty law-abiding guy. I pay my taxes. I obey the speed limits (within the 5 mph margin of error we always hope traffic cops will grant us). I don't torture animals, I've never kidnapped an ex-lover, my high school episodes of vandalism were limited to toilet papering houses and throwing an occasional egg, and (although I fully support the right to do so) I don't even smoke pot or take any recreational drugs except for alcohol, chocolate, and caffeine.

I am also supportive in general of intellectual property rights. I understand why the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) went after the guys who ran Napster.

But now the RIAA calls ME a criminal, and to paraphrase the eminently twisted philosopher Dee Snider, I'm not gonna take it. At least, I won't take it quietly.

What have I done to offend the RIAA? I have, gasp, actually taken CDs that I purchased and copied them onto my computer. I have NOT made them available on-line. I do not file share.

I have downloaded about four albums in my entire life -- all ones made available for free legal download by the groups. Hell, when Radiohead released their latest album and said "name your price," I put $10 on the digital barrelhead when I could have downloaded it legally for free. I buy CDs. I buy a lot of them. Dozens in a year.

So I resent being told that making a copy for personal use is criminal activity. Why do I copy them? So I can listen to them while I'm surfing the web, blogging, playing games, whatever on my PC, which is located in a different room from my stereo. Yeah, I could just stick the CD into the drive and play it, but having it on the hard drive frees up the CD-drive for a computer game. Importantly, it also allows us all to make a copy of a song from a CD that we can load on our MP3 players.

How is this different from copying a vinyl album onto a cassette so you could listen to it on your car stereo or on your Sony Walkman? Yes, I understand that if it's on the computer it could be swapped on-line. And I don't really care if RIAA goes after people doing that. But it is absurd to argue against the long-established practice of copying something you purchased legally to listen to on a different format.

I do not cheer when I see news like this - album sales in 2007 declined 9.5%. I LIKE music, I like buying CDs rather than (legally) downloading individual songs because I prefer listening to music in album-sized chunks. And I know that many many artists, producers, etc do not approve of the RIAA's single-minded and counter-productive campaign to make criminals out of their customers in such a way.

But it doesn't win the RIAA support among those of us who understand their concerns when they make such absurd logical and legal overreaches in their flailing, desperate attempts to adapt to a new media.

weekly world news, r.i.p.

Peter Carlson eulogizes the late Weekly World News. You know the WWN. It was the one at the supermarket checkout lane with the REALLY outrageous headlines, like "12 U.S. SENATORS ARE SPACE ALIENS!" or "HEAVEN PHOTOGRAPHED BY HUBBLE TELESCOPE."

The odd/sad thing is, if the Weekly World News had died in 1990, the net credibility of the US news media would have improved a little. But in the land of corporate-owned conservative mouthpieces trumpeting conspiracy theories about Bill Clinton, Mass Murderer, or about how invading and bombing the shit out of Iraq will bring peace and stability and democracy to the Middle East and will make the Iraqis love us like little brothers, I'm not so sure the Weekly World News' headlines were the most ridiculous ones on the newsstand, radio, or TV.

apparently, dead parliamentarians and destroyed bridges are members of the fruit family

You know, I was going to accuse Charles Krauthammer of again ignoring reality when I saw his latest column highlighting the "first fruits" of the surge. But then I read that he acknowledged the recent attacks against Iraq's Parliament - in the Green Zone - and the destruction of a major Baghdad bridge. So rather than accuse him of ignoring reality, I think I'll just settle for calling him a delusional partisan who is just this short of being as crazed as John McCain on Iraq.

Too bad that unlike McCain, Krauthammer's career (not to mention that of the myriad other pundits who cheered this stupd war) isn't on the line over his stupidity on Iraq.

two things about this op ed piece

Some former semi-senior schmuck at the State Department has written a piece published in the Post about the nasty things Syria is doing in Lebanon. Two things to ask yourself about this piece.

1. Why now? What new has happened in Syria? Far as I can tell, it's just a chance to get Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria back in the news, and repeat again Syria's interference in Lebanon.

2. Why this person? Well, the writer isn't merely a former schmuck at State. She's a former schmuck at State called Liz Cheney who got her job at State because her daddy is somebody you may have heard of, de facto vice president Dick Cheney. Now, that fact might be relevant, but the Post merely notes, The writer was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2002 through 2003 and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2005 to 2006.

Not false, but incomplete. That would be like printing a piece by Woody Allen about the joys of adoption and merely identifying him as an actor and director without noting his own uniquely personal experience with the jollies I mean joys of adopting young girls.

The real unspoken subtext of this piece is, "daughter of vice president gets to associate opposition politician with nasty Syrian leader in a paper of record."

no wikipedia, please

Middlebury College has banned using Wikipedia (or any similar website) as a source. This after a Japanese history prof noticed several students all making the same mistake, and discovering the same error on the Wikipedia entry on the same topic.

Good move. Wikipedia is useful. I used it today to find a link showing where Juventus stand in Italy's Serie B soccer league, and spent a few pleasant hours last weekend reading some articles about rock bands from the 1970s. But you gotta be careful using it because there is no requirement that you know what the hell you're writing about, or any reliable check to prevent an author from trying to mislead others with intentionally incorrect entries.