Since Greenwald swiped my original video today, I've replaced it with something guaranteed to get your hands clapping.

Enjoy.

Link at sig

The "barf" was for the article, not the hat.

My apologies, but this really smacked me upside the head when I saw it:

POLL: Obama's Backwards Cap: Love It Or Lose It?

After what may have been his sixth trip to the gym since arriving in Hawaii one week earlier, the president-elect shook things up on Saturday by wearing his beloved White Sox cap backwards. See the photo and vote in our poll below....

Barf.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/29/obamas-backwards-hat-love_n_154013.html

We, the public, need to demand more from those who pretend to bring us the news.

www.dangerouscreation.com

-- DavidGrayling

While I was researching for a previous post, I took the time to look to see how NBC described MTP. They do not call it a news program, but rather Public Affairs broadcasting. Yes, it's produced by the NBC News Division, but even they don't call it a news program.

Having said that, I would think that NBC (or any of the others) would understand that it's their mission to present as many opinions having to do with Public Affairs, as is possible to support with the revenue they attract through those programs.

The problem is that they don't. They are presenting programs purporting to be Public Affairs programs and then proceeding to present their own editorial opinions of what the Public should hear about those Affairs through their choice of guests and the questions asked.

That's the problem.

Anchors, hosts, whatever they want to call them, are obligated by the quest for ad revenue to present what they believe will attract the most viewers. Crossfire, the now defunct CNN program, was a decent program with regard to presenting different views. Alas, the program degenerated into a series of shouting matches and became almost a parade of Dunces, each of which attempted to fillibuster the other until a commercial break left the viewer with "the last word spoken" in his mind.

If shows like MTP would have guests on with divergent views and allowed both to air those views while sitting side-by-side (whenever possible), the host wouldn't have to do anything except introduce the guests, announce the topic of discussion, and then referee the pissing contests fairly. Let the guests each respond to the Host's questions and even the softball question will generate hardball answers.

Now, before anyone goes off on me for mentioning the word hardball, I am using it in the baseball sense, and am not refering to Tweety's Gossip, Bullshit and Worship Hour.

When Fareed Zakaria interviewed Pakistani former ISI chief and jihadist Hamid Gul, he pretty much let Hamid Gul say what he wanted to. His justification was in his commentary afterwards, that you all need to know what this guy says.

Transcript is here:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/07/fzgps.01.html

or click on signature.

"

ZAKARIA: We've now heard a great deal about the elusive ISI - the infamous Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency. There are some reports that there may be a connection between elements in the ISI and the Mumbai terrorists.

Today, I've had a rare chance to get an inside glimpse, an exclusive interview with General Hamid Gul, the former head of the ISI.

I should warn you. Some of his views are shocking. On 9/11 in particular, he says some things that I, for one, think are absolutely wrong and thoroughly discredited. But I thought it was important that you hear them, given the position he has held."

.......

.......

"ZAKARIA: Let me reiterate what I said at the outset. Some of General Gul's views are simply false. There is a mountain of evidence about 9/11 that refutes his assertions.

But I did feel it was important to listen to his voice - a rare public opportunity to listen to somebody from the highest levels of the Pakistani military. He doesn't represent all of it, but it is, as I say, a rare chance to listen to some senior voice from within the ISI."

----

What would all the critics of Gregory here like to see instead - that is feasible?

-- wychwood

There's the rub. When you live in fantasy land one doesn't have to consider the limitations of reality. Feasible is a dirty word, and self-absorption rules.

-- shooter242

I call bullshit on this crap. I'm only on page 8 and someone else may have commented but I felt an urge to call shooter on his misinformation and crap.

In case you don't know shooter the history of the press is that the powers-that-be typically feared and hated the press and tried all the tricks in the book to get over on them, as well as the American public in general.

What would happen if they, the press, were hard on the poor dears, those would be the politicians, was the question that you ignorantly blew off.

It is real easy. The show invites someone to come on and debate the various issues of the day. They ignore them since the press is so mean and everything. And here's the good part. The show then announces to the public that so-n-so declined to come on and debate, feeling that they were too hard on the sensitive politician.

Let them do that just "once" and watch what happens after the show in question declares for all and sundry that the guest in question was basically a pussy and afraid to come on the air.

Then, for sure, you'd see how things would change between the press and the political class. Right now things are the opposite of what they should be. The press is afraid of the political class and doesn't want to upset the applecart.

It should be the other way around shooter.

But I'm sure you know that fact. But since Glenn says *white* you need to say *black*, just to satisfy your obsessive need to pronounce Glenn wrong about anything and everything.

Asshole ...

My, what a wonderful world it would be, if only the media were interested in asking really relevant and important questions with impact on all of our lives, so sayeth the troll.

Say, like Bill Clinton and Monica. Why, the shameful silence of the media, pushing that whole thing under the rug for ten years, now it can finally receive the attention it deserves.

And for valuable insight, what could beat getting to the bottom of that Tawana Brawley story, at long last? Viewers would flock to MTP to hear about that!

And perhaps the one of these genius suggestions which might have current relevance, that of the financial collapse, can now be turned into a homophobic wank-fest for righty peeping Toms, by turning it into something to do with Barney Frank's sex life.

The only possible way political coverage could be any stupider and less valuable to democracy than it already is would be to try it Ehiilesum's way.