Letters to the Editor
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It is to the point in America that the press must be ignored during the election process.
Thanks to you and the internet I have become more optimistic that others will grow as I have to recognize these right wing tactics the MSM regularly displays. Once you see the emperor wears no clothes you can't pretend he's not naked. Once I became aware of these tactics by the press to avoid serious issue discussions and to frame everything in terms of some petty personality based theme I can no longer pretend this press is still credible. I'm optimistic because more and more people are becoming aware of these tactics and have begun to do what I'm doing which is to just ignore the press. I am only partially aware of what the "bitter" story or the bowling story was even about. Mark Penn and the Columbian trade story...yes. What is almost laughable to me is the effort to give McCain credibility as a candidate for president...the extent the press goes to in covering for this nearly senile Bush clone. It is almost to the point of being a conspiracy to justify McCain's candidacy, when in fact it was merely that he was the least embarrassing candidate the GOP could come up with.
If voters used the criteria the press put forth to vote for their candidates then there is no hope. I'm optimistic because in the background of this public "journalism" most of our country knows that behind it all we've been getting screwed badly for the last 12yrs and we need a big change in government to change direction. What is left out of this discussion is that this administration was never legally "elected" to office to begin with. So should we assume the ridiculous petty personality based discourse put forward by the press was never really successful because it resulted in those candidates losing the real"voted" elections even though the SC decided otherwise?
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Bullies
Bullies always yell like stuck pigs when you hit them back.
Perhaps a shorter version for Glenn: "we didn't start this fight, but we're fully prepared to finish it."
I've never understood why we were supposed to be civil to people who were trashing our country and its Constitution. Have we so soon forgotten that the Villagers called Al Gore "crazy" for "raising his voice" in saying "how dare they drag the good name of the United States through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison"?
Our relative civility just emboldens the radical right to yet more outrageous behavior. Their decadent hypocrisy is entirely "fair game" -- one of Kerry's other big mistakes was not insisting that the hypocrisy of the Cheney family did deserve full public airing, as it was entirely consistent with Cheney's practice of prescribing rules for others that he refuses to observe himself.
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there is -
a fundamental difference between Glen's thesis and the aims of the Obama campaign. I don't want to repost Obamas thoughts about "the left and right" - but he seems to understands that there is no "dogmatic" way to judge or define "the media" it will do what "it" loves to do - "trash" and "burn" - and nobody - not even a "sitting" President is "imune" - as Bill Clinton AND George Bush booth have learned.
So learn to fight like Obama -
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LWM...
I had the same response to MoDo's claim re: San Fran.
First, what kind of elite are we talking about? The cultural elite (Hollywood), the economic elite (New York), or the power elite (Washington, DC) ...
I don't think the pundits know (or care to know) (or can bring themselves to know) what the word "elite" means in real world terms. For the pundits and pontificators, words are deployed in a sort of code or cant with only the most tenuous connection to the real-world referents.
If they were to employ Orwell's principles laid out in "Politics and the English Language" in their writing, they would learn that up is up, down is down, and that what people DO is a truer mark of character than what they say.
Alas, these folks are the modern Sophists and will gladly let Socrates die for their sins than admits that they've sinned in the first place. Hell, they've serve up hemlock in person telling him its Chardonnay.
Then they'd write a column about what an elitist he was for drinking it.
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Ad Hominem?
I believe an ad hominem attack would be to declare that certain characteristics of a targeted person render his or her opinion on a not necessarily related issue invalid.
It's a logical fallacy, and I don't expect there is any of this sort of thing in Mr. Greenwald's book.
Perhaps Mr. Barnett could temper his "fondness" for Latin phrases by looking up their precise meaning, or take a college course in Logic 101 prior to using them in a review.
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GG @ casual vague-osity
Yes, I know--I'm going by memory, and don't have ability right now to run back through that conversation and find the specific comment(s) made by Power. The entire thing is well worth watching at the NYPL link given earlier, when time permits. But I remember when viewing the conversation that it finally clicked into place how Obama insiders were viewing the issue of response.
Again, whether it will work or not is a whole different question. I'm not arguing with your thesis, but rather observing that I don't think Obama shares it--I believe they see a third way. Come to think of it, it might be worth a followup conversation with Power herself, or some other Obama insider, at some point when you have more time than you likely have now.
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@various, inc. GG
-- Amity 09:29 AM Did you see the "American Experience" program on Walt? Uniformly (hierogriphically) excellent IMO.
-- casual_observer 10:01 AM I agree. Obama has managed to do exactly that, and I personally attribute much of hos success to his ability to do so. OTOH
-- Canuckistan Bob 10:02 AM My sentiments, exactly.
And GG, you'd be doing me, perhaps some others, a huge favor if you'd review the last part of the previous thread. It adds nothing to the discourse when a previously admonished Wanker explicitly states that their m.o. is to come in here and "shit on the floor" for the expressed purpose of their sole amusement.