being a vomitous surfeit of Obamolatry in the press:
You can’t blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology. But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we’re even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?
If I wanted to see highly manicured image management I’d just take some No-Doz and read Gavin Newsom’s tweets. But the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we’re the girl. (In California, there’s no other option.)
I thought that the Maxfield Parrish, heroic days of the Kennedy Administration PR, where the press and the president were pretty much all in on the same screenplay and the same jokes, couldn’t happen in our modern era, what with paparazzi and tabloids and talk shows, citizen sound-bite scavengers and voracious 24/7 news cycles. But now that the stumbling Bushes and smirking Clintons are out of the White House, time has compressed back on itself like the machine in the Denzel Washington movie, “Deja Vu.” It’s the early 1960s and Camelot all over again . . . .
(h/t Twitter @thebcast)
Conservatives more likely to read material expressing opinions different from their own.
Hmmmmm . . .
During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on Sept. 11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004, the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005, it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006, the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007, it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years, the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.* These were amazing accomplishments considering the unexpected challenges. You certainly didn’t read much about this in the press.
Don’t worry: it’s FuNeMpLoYmEnT!
*Yeah, there should be an asterisk, but still . . . where’s that multiplier effect?
Ugh. Bawney recasts legislative history in interview:
I was just asking one of your staffers what was on the agenda for you this week—
A very big week. We will be voting on a bill to reform the granting of subprime mortgages, where there’s been a major Democrat and Republican fight. Um, it’s really the single biggest cause of the financial crisis: mortgages going to people who shouldn’t have them. We’ve been trying to stop that.Stop it or undo it?
Undoing it and stopping it are two separate things. The easier thing to do conceptually is to stop it from going forward and having it happen again. As to trying to diminish the number of foreclosures, there are programs to do that, but that’s tougher, because once people have made contracts, you can’t just change it. We are trying to get the bankruptcy law changed.* That would be the biggest single thing. But the Senate has not yet gone along with that. Ironically, the Republicans, some of them, have said, “Oh, you Democrats, you made us give them to poor people, and that’s what caused the trouble.†The answer is no, we have been trying to put some rules in place to stop this, and we tried when we were the minority. Didn’t work. When we got into the majority in 2007, we passed a bill to stop it, but it got bogged in the Senate. It was a partisan thing. So now we’re trying again this year. And with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate, we think we can get it done.
*Ask Dodd about that, Bawney.
[emphases mine]
Unrequited blandishment is…PATHETIC!
But so too is the SRM sucking up to Obama like freshmen to the BMOC…
Obama should be currying their favor, not they his…
But you know, the higher you fly, the farther you have to fall…
It will be ugly when he comes crashing down off that pedestal…
I wonder if Chris Tingle will cut off the offending leg…
If Gavin Newsom becomes Governor of CA, they only have themselves to blame.
Obama saves all the MSM jobs every day. Let’s see, about 6000 reporters, 100 days. That’s about 600K jobs saved in the next 100 days. Not bad Obama. Not bad at all.
I waded through the first few comments – “but, but…BOOOOSH!” seemed to be the primary response to the article.
I am sure many were mortally offended that a San Fran publication would dare post such.
Man, I miss journalism.
The press isn’t being played. They are playing.
You know, I thought Michelle looked lovely as possible in her date-night fringe. I don’t understand why the press is so uncertain of what a picture means that I must be PERSUADED.
Boooooosh
I saw that article earlier and waded thru 2 pages of comments. Bringing up the hated name of Bush was pretty much the only response the critics of the article could come up with. I am surprised they didn’t bring up Cheney too but as I said I only made it thru two pages.
Yes. Much less a schoolgirl, they’re the prototypical Cougar – purposely interpreting even the mildest cordialities as expressions of interest. They’re the pursuers, constrained by the formalities of the profession to wait for an (less and less convincing) excuse to jump Brackabama’s bones while maintaining the mantle of an objective press.
Regarding Bush:
Jesus was crucified.
Hitler killed himself in a bunker after all his ideas turned to crap.
Just an FYI.
The Barney Frank article is not recommended right after breakfast…gag, gag….
The article states that Freank has been plugging along for a quarter century. Here all this time I figured him more for the plugee.
The only thing he didn’t state in new -speaking the mortgage crisis was that the Congressional Black Caucus was really white.
Did I mean to say Frank or Freak? Whatever.
Our new “god” relents … 10 big banks get OK to repay $68B in bailout money
Expect this to be called “progress”
Comment #76 brought him up and managed to throw in a “goldfarb or goldstein fans slobbering ” too. The antisemitism has a deep canyon carved into the Left.
Mr. Frank is a shameless old whore, isn’t she?
Barney sounds like a clone of OJ, out searching everywhere for the “real” killer.
From the banks ok to repay TARP funds story,
I read the first sentence as meaning they are allowing this because what they were doing was making things worse and the unraveling was beginning to show through their cover of words. Now if things continue to go south they can blame those who forced them to allow repayment.
That is the reason for the second sentence which is meant to imply that the repayments hurt the banks. What really happens is that the strong banks that repay become stronger still while the ones remaining under Obama’s control are weakened. The widening gap is due to Obama’s control of certain banks not the repayments.
Wow. Barney is a bald-faced liar.
It must take years of little-theatre training for Bawney Fwank to be able to lie so easily…
He’s not as glib as the O!ne, but he remembers his lines without a teleprompter nor does he reflexively go into a “Wizard of Uhhhz” routine without one…
Hey Barney, eat this.
Bwahahahaha!![11-y]!!
So let me get this straight, you think the media pimps Obama tales and therefore in response you serve up the high googley Bushian econ hero narrative, a.k.a. the ever-imaginative rewrite of the dirty rotten lowdown.
Consider me not fairified enough to suck rarified unicorn gas.
Well, I’m not a “conservative”, but as a libertarian who prefers Kirk and Chesterton to Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell (and Hayek to Rothbard), I pretty much can’t help but read opinions I don’t agree with.
All the time.
The press isn’t being played. They are playing.
Yes. The premise of this WSJ nonsense Drudge linkered is daft.
Who’s William McGurn and why does this lobotomized dimbulb have a sweet News Corp gig?
The other day Katie Couric said in some commencement speech that she’d been called a cougar and it made me think of her sexually for a little little second as I tried to process that and man that’s messed up.
Gawker is less polite in describing Ms. Couric.
You do realize that Bushians Bernanke’s and Paulson’s words live on in the public record, do you not? You might read them someday so as to brutally tame your genuine delusions.
The other day Katie Couric said in some commencement speech that she’d been called a cougar
Might be time for Katie to invest in TV Ears. I’m sure it was something more along the lines of “Goober”, “Loser”, “Coozer” or “Kookie Boozer”. Not cougar.
thor, now with extra added “The”. “The” addition makes the authority so much more to be respected.
Toe-May-Toe Toe-Ma-Toe, Poe-Tay-Toe Poe-Ta-Toe.
Let’s call the thor thing off.
“Conservatives more likely to read material expressing opinions different from their own.”
Like they have a choice? Almost all reading material expresses differing opinions from conservatism.
Levin goes outlaw on Gingrich.
Levin scares me worse than Tipper when she has broken into the sherry.
I am liking Levin more all the time.
The other day Katie Couric said in some commencement speech that she’d been called a cougar
I bet it was “Puma” and she just didn’t get it.
Gingrich isn’t the same as respectable.
“thor, now with extra added “Theâ€. “The†addition makes the authority so much more to be respected.”
Nah; it’s just tired of the “‘Thor?’ After that reaming you got, I’m thurprithed you can thit down!” jokes.
Gingrich is Obama’s really-white-parallel-universe-guy. He says whatever he thinks will get him where he needs to be. He was trying to take credit for the Tea Parties for Obama’s sake!
Newt, you are aptly named.
…and he shared a couch with Pelosi. Grrr-oss!
Levin’s does a good job of taking Gingrich to the woodshed.
Now excuse me as I try to blot out the image of Gingrich and Pelosi reclining together on a couch!
“thor, now with extra added “Theâ€. “The†addition makes the authority so much more to be respected.â€
I thought he was just stuttering.
“Let’s call the thor thing off”
Puullll! BLAM!
To be fair to leftists, its not like we have any choice. We’re bombarded with their opinions and conservative opinions and ideas are pretty much walled out of the main media sources.
And of course, it doesn’t matter what Bushians did, or didn’t do. Obama won, so there was NOTHING to stop him from overruling anything and everything Booooosh ever did. The One has all authority, and thus, as the night follows the day, all responsibility too.
Er, that was me, not Michelle Obama up there. Darn sock puppets.
Ohnoes, it’s the wittle loooooney winger! Are you gonna threatening to kill me again today? Maybe take out a few Socialist children too! Haha.
Oooops, looooney winger, I meant to say threaten to kill me.
C’mon, go full Frischian!
But the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we’re the girl.
“Are you gonna threatening to kill me again today?”
I dunno there Yakov Smirnoff. Are you gonna threatening to be of stupid all of day?
“In communist Russia, grammar uses YOU! Ha ha.”
Good thing your daddy gives you money.
Jesus.
It’s typical of the thor’s of the world that he thinks I’m interested in killing “Socialist children”, as a group. Nope. You individually committed the wrongs for which you, individually, will answer. Now, that usually leads your ilk to surround themselves with human shields. Won’t work. I’m perfectly capable of waiting until only you are in the crosshairs. The first rule of shooting is to make sure of your target, and that no one else is behind it.
Ought to warn you that thor gets off on getting punched in the face and having guns pulled on him SDN, weird fetish of his.
Nope. Not an old-fashioned dance of seduction. More like an abusive relationship where the Ms. can’t stop thinking that “she did something to set him off”, or “he only does it because he loves me.” As a matter of fact, 0bama does indeed have a tendency to get physical when he finds himself out of his comfort zone/mental league – recall how he placed his hand[s] on Alan Keyes back in IL because he felt (in his own words) at a loss as to how to refute his arguments. Ditto the reporter he placed his hands on after he won the election, because his questions were “too hard”. So much for the slick, sophisticated “good negro image”. I think it’s just a matter of time before he does something that he really regrets, and that the press can’t simply paper over…
“I’m perfectly capable of waiting until only you are in the crosshairs [thor]. The first rule of shooting is to make sure of your target, and that no one else is behind it.”
WTF!?
Dear SDN,
Stop. Fucking. Helping.
In fact, fuck off mate. No joke. Beat feet.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY goes for that kind of bullshit around here. “We” don’t put people in “crosshairs,” and we SURE AS FUCK don’t talk about shooting people. Go grow up somewhere else.
Granted, thor is a bargain bin douchebag, an assclown, a disgraceful charlatan and shitheel of the first order, but, until booted by management, he gets a say like everybody else. While we may find him disgusting (mostly stupid nowadays), nobody actually wants him, or any other silly troll physically harmed in any way.
Good grief.
We also had the Lieberman-Obama “talk” on the Senate floor. Up against the wall style.
Hey Lamontyouetc. @ 5:40 — right on. Good on you for standing up for the civility, humor and insight that makes PW and comments a daily stop for me.
SDN, maybe if you tell Lamont you’re sorry he’ll forgive you, and he’s right that that sort of comment is NOT PW-old-school style. And think, now O’Reilly will call this a hate site for that “posting.” You overreacted to a trollish provocation perhaps? Oh crap, I’m not good at this. It will take the diplomacy of a happyfeets to balance the force.
I typically just skip thor’s thorry comments. Better for the blood pressure. Just a tip.
“We also had the Lieberman-Obama “talk†on the Senate floor. Up against the wall style.”
Obama: “Hey! Old Jew-Senator-Guy…what’s with all these new “Obama Huts” in the West Bank?
Lieberman: “How the hell should I know?”
Obama: “Well…you’re a Jew.”
Lieberman: “Well, there are a few of us now Mr. President. See, years ago, the US Military and, later, better Presidents than you saw to it that there are 50 million of us today instead of, ya know, zero.”
Obama: “But the Obama Hut shit they’re doin…my brother in Kenya lives in a hut. The Jews making fun of that?”
Lieberman: “Oh, no sir. Hut is just a silly euphemism. The West Bank settlers build actual modern homes. Your brother actually does live in a hut, sleeps on a dirt floor and shits next to the family goat just outside the front door…er, uh, flap.”
Obama: “Just for that, I’m gonna nationalize Goldman Sachs & Katz Deli.”
Yeah, over the top there, SDN.
Thor certainly deserves a knuckle sandwich or two, but not what you said.
A knuckle sandwich, yes. But nothing more.
Just be sure to wash your hand afterward; if it’s not bloody, you didn’t hit him hard enough. Teefs must hit the pavements.
“Teefs must hit the pavements.”
thor gets verbally curb stomped around here daily.
Hahaha, knuckle sandwiches! More like I’d collect your noses and you’d have to ask real nice to get ’em back.
Irrelevancy is best worn with white pearls and a black party dress, as long as you’re already wearing Sarah Palin’s tummy top control pantyhose that is.
The more the r-wingered shit stew is stirred the more I know I was right. O! was the timely pick.
dO!
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