WRONG!

Joe Pyne led to O'Reilly, Rush and the rest.

BITE, the Joe Pyne Show.

The BEEF BOX.

And James Randi exposed and duplicated the efforts of Philippine psychic surgeons on his show complete with chicken gizzards.

When did O'Reilly ever have someone pull a chicken gizzard out of someone's gut?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pyne

Before Joe Pyne, TV was civil.

Take a walk, jerk!

NBC's Gregory to Sanford's Office: "Meet The Press Allows You To Frame The Conversation As You Really Want" [from TPM]

Have the ring of both emotion and poltical leaning. They encourage a position rather than giving facts that may lead individuals to make a decision.

You claimed in your first post that Walter Cronkite was better than what came after, but in this statement you are indicating that you like what came after much better. After all, your above statement could have been, and indeed was, explicated in toto by Alicia Shepard, not too long ago, on the subject of torture.

Thank you, Mr. Greenwald - once again you've nailed it.

Thanks, Glenn, yet again. You do on the web something very like what Cronkite did on tv. Christopher and meglev are idiots and apologists. You can always tell, because they like to slice their logic very fine and make false equivalencies. Somehow, in reporting the evidence, you are supposed to give the facts without having an opinion about those who blatantly deny the facts. Preposterous. I don't care whether you call a man a liar or not. The important thing is where he stands on the facts.

And to you, PeakDavid: I agree wholeheartedly. One of the most striking aspects of the Greenwald/Todd dialogue (hardly a debate, since only one of the participants was debating), especially for someone who respects words, was the cogency and directness of GG's language, and the evasive fog of Todd's. The dissemblers try to hide in smoke and mirrors. They produce something that only superficially resembles actual speech, thinking to hide their speciousness in the murk.

The Editors have turned into CIA gatekeepers, where are the journalists????

FTFY!

OT--Current top of fold HuffingtonPost now showing WaPo sourced article regarding American troops in Iraq not being happy about being told by sovereign Iraqis what they can do and where they can do it.

Americans evidently confused over which country they are in or who actually is running Iraq. The murky parts of the current SOFA now coming to the fore.

The article reports American commanders are going to continue as they have been doing no matter what the Iraqis say or do.

American colonialism appearing to have taken deep root in Iraq.

Six months worth of this kind of American colonialsim and militarism ought to make the Iraqis happy.Think so? Think not.

The SOFA seemed always to be some nice window dressing on the real deal Americans were intent on. The truth emerges.

Glenn, you said: "It's impossible even to imagine the likes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokow and friends interrupting their pompously baritone, melodramatic, self-glorifying exploitation of Cronkite's death to spend a second pondering what he meant by that."

Can you not with reasonable certainty predict that these same media figures will one day say the same thing about themselves?

Long Live Glenn Greenwald!

Those shoes are mighty big, but Glenn does have feet, unlike the other "journalists".

I had completely forgotten about Joe Pyne, I'm not sure I like being reminded about him though. As a youngster it was fun to watch someone try to debate him, I don't recall anyone so equipped with so many hostile rejoinders before. One such mixup though remains clearly in my mind. One Saturday night, he had Frank Zappa on as a guest and typically Pyne would say something nasty to put his guest on an uneven footing. The exchange went like this:

Joe Pyne: "So I guess your long hair makes you a woman."

Frank Zappa: "So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table."

Pyne couldn't recover that night it was one of the few times someone bested him.

I can easily see how a handful of right wing radio and television foamers adopted his sthick as their own.

I find this one of your best essays ever, particularly the Lapham update. I particularly like this:

"Long ago in the days before journalists became celebrities, their enterprise was reviled and poorly paid, and it was understood by working newspapermen that the presence of more than two people at their funeral could be taken as a sign that they had disgraced the profession."

Chuck Todd seems to think that Cronkite's 'ground level' was, in reality, looking at it from "30,000 feet". Cronkite was "idealistic".

FWIW, I agree, but reverse the polarity-- I think it may be more accurate to say that Todd gets it backwards: he mistakes the "30,000 feet" for "ground level".

It's the same self-deceit that allows, say, the senescent maven Baba Wawa to believe that her Vaseline-coated Up Close and Personal Special Interviews are... well, up-close and personal special interviews.

My guess is that everyone who successfully leaps aboard (or is sucked up by) the Corporate Media A-List Hovercraft is hypnotized into believing that the view outside the porthole is the Real Thing-- in most cases, even before the rectal probing is complete. After all, the reward of Access to the Hovercraft is Access itself; thus, the Infotainwhores, or Mediots, believe themselves to be standing upon terra firma while Glenn and his sycophantic band of commenters (n.b., not bernbart) are indeed floating like escaped helium balloons in the stratosphere.

That is, the Todds and Brokaws and Williamses take themselves Very Seriously, and extend this vacuum of conceit into their work; thus, they believe that persons in their elite positions are best positioned to know what's really going on, and to have a Pretty Good Handle on the implications, or meaning, of what's Really Going On.

The Infotainwhores have settled the vexing question touched upon here regarding whether "reporters" have a duty or obligation to share salient insights. The status quo bypasses the question by breeding a species that resemble Reporters on the outside, but lacks the necessary independent intellect and character to generate profound and accurate insights.

They compensate by getting all of their insights through Access to guests or "sources"; thus, they don't experience any occupational angst, doubts, or dilemmas-- Received Wisdom, lightly "personalized" to seem to originate from the Infotainwhore, is all they've got.

_____________________

Glenn Greenwald (if he had any influence beyond this very small venue) would be another Cronkite if he had his way, wishing victory to our enemies and denying the obvious.

I'll go you one worse, Chagos; what you really meant to write is that Greenwald is as bad as that Jane Fonda giving a lap dance to a gook gun emplacement! That's what really burns your butt, isn't it?

Ya know, I truly believe that someday you and Sylvester Stallone are going back there to finish it right! My advice is to bring along Willem Dafoe; now there's one scary-looking mofo!

Good luck with that.