Letters to the Editor
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Just in case it's important
Glenn... "This post from HTML Mencken should put an end to the brewing notion that any substantial part of the right-wing movement, let alone its leadership, has shunned Ann Coulter in light of her remarks this week."
I agree with Glenn and HTML Mencken that "the movement" will not back down on this. As we all know, they are more afraid of "looking weak" than anything else. But there are individuals who consider themselves to be conservatives who do not approve. They may get roughed up by Coulter's bodyguard's. Who knows who staged what?
I cannot attest to the veracity of this, but here it is:
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/03/03/p14875
"Ann Coulter's Bodyguards Harrass Conservative
Lydia Cornell
Urgent CPAC report:
The MSM, Media Matters, Wonkette and Olbermann -- and whoever else you know -- needs to know about this: Just a few hours ago, my friend Dan Borchers (conservative Christian who is writing a book about Ann Coulter's "extermination speak") was bodily wrestled out of CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) by 4 of Ann Coulter's bodyguards, (two claimed they were CPAC security.) They staged the whole thing, followed him with a camera, cut his hand, tried to pry his name tag and credentials off from his neck, physically WRESTLED him out of the hotel, and shoved him.
His crime: asking a question of another author (Mark Smith) about Ann Coulter, and about the Paula Jones case. Borchers had spent money, bought tickets, took time off work and traveled from Maryland as he does every year, to be at CPAC. He is a lifelong Republican, a conservative military veteran, whose only crime is being morally offended by the way conservatism has been ruined by people like Coulter who indulge in hate speak. He believes it is his moral obligation to bring attention to this, and that “evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”
Borchers is the most mild-mannered, humble Christian. His crime? He is guilty of being critical of the way Ann Coulter has “mainstreamed extremism” and has written articles about her. He accused her of plagiarizing her early books, and at the CPAC conference two years ago, he tried to distribute press kits calling for Coulter to stop her hate speak."
Borcher's bio
http://www.principledconservative.org/bio.html
He does have a site called CoulterWatch.
I found this girl's blog blogrolled at IMAO or some other virulent wingnut site.
http://dizzy-girl.net/?p=1245
Individuals are fed up with Coulter, they know it's going to cost them at the polls, but the movement will never back down.
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NY Times versus Washington Post
Lead editorials, today, Wednesday, March 7, 2007.
The Washington Post :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030602020.html
The Libby Verdict
The serious consequences of a pointless Washington scandal
Wednesday, March 7, 2007; Page A16...The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert...
...The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.
The New York Times :
http://nytimes.com/2007/03/07/opinion/07weds1.html
A Libby Verdict
Published: March 7, 2007...the trial testimony showed, Mr. Cheney orchestrated an assault on Mr. Wilson’s credibility with the help of Mr. Libby and others...
...and it is some of the clearest evidence yet that this administration did not get duped by faulty intelligence; at the very least, it cherry-picked and hyped intelligence to justify the war...
The Washington Post, like the Wall Street Journal, has editorial writers who simply ignore the newspaper's own reporting.
Somebody should start a reality-based, centrist or left-of-center, daily newspaper in Washington, D.C.
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David, will you please go tell the other crowd...
Tell the other's doing P.T. that snacks are ready. They may be so Tucker-out that they want to eat a horse from sweating too much. The fool always tryst to outdo her/him self if they have a body-image problem and think they need to lose weight because they thin 'um self fat?
Ti's' always a folly not to stay fat, or trim (?) and jolly, right?
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I enjoyed Stossel's report on Pro Wrestling in 1984
Stossel told wrestler David "Dr. D" Schultz that he thought wrestling was fake and the guy slapped him around like a rag doll. Then Stossel sued and bitched about frivolous lawsuits.
But he does have his moments... Like this from Reason:
Confessions of a Welfare Queen
How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars
John Stossel | March 2004 Print Edition
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29067.html
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Speaking Of Bin Laden
Have you seen the reports of new resources and effort toward finding him? As Kerry said, we had him trapped at Tora Bora and even that job was outsourced, to the Northern Alliance. The few Americans on the ground requesting more special forces were either ignored or denied.
Now here we are about 5 years later. What one thing can be done to salvage the King George/republican poll numbers and image? Hey, I know, let's try to get the guy who did 9-11.
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GotReality:
I seriously believe the current well-documented and systematic failures of the media as a whole are representative of what amounts to a grand market failure.
Simply put, the idea that the watchdog function of government as traditionally provided by the media should be a wholly private enterprise and left to pure market forces is clearly failing miserably to deliver on that goal. Where the interests of profit and government accountability collide, profit wins at the direct expense of the other far too often for me to dismiss it.
The Media as a business doesn't make enough money criticizing the government and so they don't.
The underlying assumption to this system was the traditional economist's view of the citizen/consumer as a "rational" actor. A rational actor would be more interested in media outlets that revealed government malfeasance reliably and fairly, the rational actor would ignore the propagandistic outlets like Fox for the better and more objective coverage. Thus, in a market of rational actors, the interests of profit are best served by the media outlets competing in skeptical investigative coverage of the government as Glenn so often bemoans they rarely do anymore.
The idea of the average person as a rational actor is clearly a false assumption from an evidentary perspective in economics. People do not always do the rational economic thing. They buy cars and boats beyond their means, they take on ludicrously high interest loans and credit cards, they stay in underpaying jobs or pass up educational opportunities or investments that would pay off handsomely. Thus, any economic theory that relies on largely rational actors for success is going to fail.
So, we can dodge and blame the body public, and while there is evidence the public doesn't pay enough attention to the right things if left to their own devices, that should not be cause to throw up our hands and turn to the 24-hour Anna Nicole channel with a bowl of popcorn. I can't accept "Oh well, the public gets what it deserves" as anything but a cop-out. Further, their "demand" for such news cannot be simply accepted as being wholly natural and self-supported. The Economist John Kenneth Galbreith analyzed how much effort goes into creating demand for otherwise pointless products in capitalism. We can debate how good or bad that is, but the point is, not everything people want, comes from some inherent or natural desire.
So what is the answer? Well, I think broad acknowledgment of the failure, and the causes of it is a huge first step. The media as a purely market driven private entity is not working in the interests of democracy very much. While capitalism has generally served our society very well, we should never be so dogmatic as to make the leap that market forces=good, and therefore whatever is profitable is unquestionable. Democracy's interests must come first. Fuck the shareholders if we must.
After that, even if we are debating solutions I think we'll be making enormous progress. Being Canadian and loving the CBC as I do, I can't help but think strongly public-funded but arms-length media outlets in the US would be a start. I would never want all media to be government funded, but up here I find the CBC often leads the way in investigative journalism and the private entities often follow along. The government of the day has next to 0 operational control over the CBC's daily function, news choices etc etc.
The PBS Frontline documentary "News War" I highly recommend for a strong analysis of what is going wrong:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/view/