Letters to the Editor
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Paul:
You wrote...
Was it during WWI, when they went along with the total censorship of anti-war views? Or the post-WWI Red Scare, which the media was instrumental in promoting, and which vanished almost overnight when it vanished from the pages of the papers?
Was it during the Great Depression, when the Literary Digest predicted FDR's defeat in the 1936 elections? (They were right, he lost--Maine and Vermont.) Was it during the McCarthy Era, when they printed McCarthy's wild accusations, and never asked to see the "list of names" he waved above his head, which later turned out to have been a blank sheet of paper?
Was it during the Civil Rights Movement, when a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. never made the New York Times front page? Was it any time since second wave feminism first appeared, when feminism has been repeatedly reported dead every four or five years or so? Was it during the 15-year long "global warming debate" when not one peer reviewed article was published on the "skeptics" side of the debate?
When, exacly, was this period of liberal media bias, when the majority of American papers have endorsed the Republican presidential candidate in every election since the Great Depression, except for 1964?
Thank you for this. If you don't mind I'm going to cut and paste that onto my frontal lobe (too many brain references today) and use it regularly.
Because you didn't go for the obvious, you know the pantie sniffing, the blue dress, the dead Foster, the ten year investigation that found nothing, the frenzy into Iraq, ignoring Abramoff, and and and etc. etc. ad infinitum.
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What infuriates me the most...
... is the fact that there is actually a kernel of truth in the traditional wingnut canard that "controversies" such as this bit of bloviating about Speaker Pelosi's visit, a tempest incubated entirely inside the teapot of the Right Wing Noise Machine and stoked by Big Media, really do serve to project an image around the world of a nation that, to put it bluntly, does not have its shit together at all when it comes to effective (or even competent) foreign policy. If they could just find the self control to STFU, instead of flailing wildly and strafing their surroundings whenever they feel threatened, they/we might have gained an ounce of credibility in the eyes of the world.
Of course, this just exposes the lie that the winguts give a peacock's patoot about our image and credibility around the world. Sometimes it seems as if the only opinion that they really care about is that of their enemy (defined as anyone who doesn't agree with them), and the only acceptable position is supine, in supplication, neck pinned under their boot...
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It's official!
citing the... Wall. St Journal Editorial Page (which, as Lauer noted, suggested Pelosi's trip might be a "felony")...
Matt Lauer is a doofus. Does being on TV require a lobotomy? Since when is the WSJ editorial page a credible source on anything other than warmongering and crotch sniffing, tabloid-worthy paranoia? Doesn't their proclivity for publishing the worst kinds of unsubstantiated innuendo render anything they say worse than meaningless?
Oh yeah, Drudge their world...
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St Thomas
"Care to write back to ABC and explain to them that St. Thomas is in the US Virgin Islands!"
LOL! I'm sure they can't be wrong about that. After all, they've won a Peabody you know.
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The real problem with the Clintons' vacation
ABC is just mad at Bill and Hill for not going to Aruba. Now, that would be a story!!! Hillary is even a blonde, if I recall correctly.
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Nice Try, Troll
Hankest:
Paul, thanks for the response. I only questioned the poll after GG’s update, where he used it in reference to the video. I watched the video and it seemed like the discussion was more about the Dems overstepping their bounds - going too far - by enacting their own foreign policy than it was about how the Dems are putting forth a fringe opinion re: Syria.
So the first time he used the poll data, it made perfect sense, i fully agree. The second time not so much.
In the update, Glenn simply quoted himself from the first time he used it. He did not alter the context it was first presented in. In fact, the even larger context--a running discussion for quite some time now--is the disconnect between Versailles' opinion (let's blow them all up real good!) and America's opinion (let's not) across the full range of topics that Glenn has discussed.
The idea that the Dems are enacting their own foreign policy is absurd on its face, given that (1) Pelosi has not articulated a separate policy, and explicitly discouraged this interpretation, and (2) the Democrats could not possibly enact their own foreign policy this way, even if they wanted to, but could only do that through purely consitutional means--by passing laws with foreign policy implications, which could only take effect by over-riding Bush's veto, which in turn would require considerable Republican support as well.
In short, you are straining to impute an interpretation to Glenn's comment that is unwarrented on its face, when, on the other side, one has a palpably absurd premise that cannot possibly be defended under any conceivable interpretation.
The very definition of a concern troll.
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Media Bias.
I don’t think the media has a liberal or a right wing bias. I think many people in the media are sloppy (i love the St Thomas in the BVIs catch! nice), lazy and looking for a cheap hook or a popular myth in order to sell paper without too much work.
Hillary is in trouble because there’s a set story about her already. Good luck with that. I'm guessing, she will be plagued by by nonsense and half truths just like Gore and the whole “he claims he invented the itnernet” idiocy in 2000.
But it works both ways. An example that Bob Somersby has been harping on now for years is the whole Uranium letter and the 16 words stuff.
It was mentioned just the other day, yet again, in the WaPo.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201777.html
“It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?”
One doesn’t have to be Aristotle to see the flaw in that....
If you’re confused, see this:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/
All that said, i agree - lately, the last few years at least, oh yeah, the NeoCons are playing the media like a cheap harmonica.