HCdl & Spree at Wake up America put some tag-team hurt on His Righteousness. The Virginian also has thoughts. Also Sister Toldjah. Callimachus extracts the most interesting part of the narrative-shaping saga in this post, whereas the lefty blogosphere is all over this bit of trutherism at Think Progress.
 So, we get to track this incredibly asinine meme as it spreads, in real time.
Speaking of fark, Howard Kurtz argues that the extremely poor quality of MSM news may be the fault of we consumers.
Speaking of fark, Michelle highlights respected liberal Ezra Klein’s latest, which I’d seen but not seen fit to comment on, at the time. It’s more interesting now a) because respected liberal blogger Ezra Klein has challenged Michelle Malkin to debate SCHIP, and b) because Chuck Adkins, who had published Michelle’s personal information at his blog then taken it down, claims in Klein’s comments that the reason he removed it was that he was asked to do so by a female reporter from the Baltimore Sun, perhaps the one cited at the end of the article as helping with research, in order not to create any undue sympathy for Michelle. Anyway, an excerpt:
The shrieking, atavistic ritual of personal destruction the right roars into every few weeks is something different than politics. It is beyond politics. It was done to Scott Beauchamp, a soldier serving in Iraq. It was done to college students from the University of California, at Santa Cruz. Currently, it is being done to a child and his family. And think of those targets: College students, soldiers, children. It can be done to absolutely anyone.
This is not politics. This is, in symbolism and emotion, a violent group ritual. It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy. It is the group reminding itself that the Other is always disingenuous, always evil, always lying, always pitiful and pathetic and grotesque. It is a bonding experience  the collaborative nature of these hateful orgies proves that much  in which the enemy is exposed as base and vile and then ripped apart by the community. In that way, it sustains itself, each attack preemptively justifying the next vicious assault, justifying the whole hateful edifice on which their politics rest.
Graeme Frost as Christ-figure. Or “The Lottery.” Or maybe, “They stab it with their steely knives but they just. can’t. kill. the. beast.” What Klein is doing, clearly, is demonizing the opposition. But he doesn’t see that, because obviously this self-perpetuating mob mentality (reminiscent of the “Cinna the Poet” scene in Julius Caesar) “justif[ies] the whole hateful edifice.” Whatever the fark that means. It is this kind of considered and measured language that makes him a respected liberal blogger, of course, and this kind of pseudopsychological musing, as well.
Oh, and:
In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the class-room, Mr Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the “apocalyptic vision†presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change.
“It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film,†he said in his ruling. “It is built around the charismatic presence of the ex-Vice-President, Al Gore [ed. Bwahahahaha!], whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming.
“It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film.â€Â
Why? Because I hate the environment, man. And because we shouldn’t let this SCHIP debate distract us from the imminent flooding of our coastal cities and the mess that is Iraq.
Hillaryous headline du jour: Clinton vows to check executive power
From Redstate: Who’s asking who’s been riding Silky Pony?
More measured, coherent thought expressed in crystalline prose, from TRex:
P.S. Righty apostate John Cole at Balloon Juice has dredged up a blast from your past called, “When the Left Invades Our Privacy†that’s downright hi-larious given your stance on the privacy of the Frost family. Tell me, you little genocidal pinhead, does the cognitive dissonance give you headaches? Make your ears ring? Or are you comfortable with the fact that you are blessed with the moral consistency of a border collie on crystal meth?
Wait . . . I . . . was Malkin the one who asked to see their tax filings? Should we stop verifying people’s representation of their finances for aid purposes? Is reporting the same as stalking? Do you suppose nobody’s done research on Malkin? Does one give up some of their privacy when they make a national political address? Does this fit any legal definition of stalking? As usual, you’re talking out of your ass.
More troothiness:  The Swift-Boating of Graeme Frost by Karen Tumulty at Time
Politics has never been a gentle game. As far back as 1895, satirist Finley Peter Dunne’s fictional saloonkeeper Martin Dooley observed that women, children and prohibitionists would do well to stay out of it, because “politics ain’t beanbag.” But surely, even Mr. Dooley could never have imagined a day would come when a mere seventh grader could be swift-boated.
Of course, the issue of the truth of what the Swiftboaters said, or of Kerry’s congressional testimony or later statements about his service are not material to this term, which constitutes a smear in itself. But then, Ms. Tumulty isn’t really interested in the truth. The family are refusing to answer to the media, except those who will transmit information one way. Says Halsey Frost:
“My son Graeme has helped put on a human face, that of a young boy, representing the needs of children and families across this nation. We are a hard working family that has stepped forward to support SCHIP. Mudslinging from the fringe has now been directed at the messenger. To be smeared all over the Internet and receive nasty e-mail  my family does not deserve this retribution. It is both shameful and pathetic.
“Driven by a most dubious agenda, shortsighted cut-and-paste bloggers, lacking all the facts, have made a feeble attempt at being crack reporters. This is an aberrant attempt to distract the American people from what the real issues are. Hard working American families need affordable health insurance.
“I find it morally reprehensible, and the act of a true coward, to publicly (world wide) smear a man and his family and not sign one’s own real name to what they have written. I sign my name to what I write.”
I can agree about the anonymous emails, and I don’t think that the press has any right to insist that the family hand over their financial filings, but it is telling that Ms. Tumulty doesn’t ask them for that. She’s not interested in the facts. She is interested in spinning a particular version of the reportage. Clearly, we’re not going to be getting all the facts. And Mr. Frost? You could get a full-time job writing press releases for Senator Byrd.
The working poor then.
The intermittently working poor now.
Kurtz is of course correct. He overstates his case a bit, but that’s how you make a point nowadays — which illustrates his point almost as effectively as the text of his essay does.
Back when I used to commute in an urban freeway environment, I noticed something: accidents cause traffic tie-ups, yes, but you get almost as bad a slowdown — and sometimes secondary wrecks — from accidents in the traffic going the other way. Those lanes are completely isolated by a barrier and should have no effect. What happens? — people slow down to look. A thousand brief taps on the brake and pause to scan the carnage, and it clots the flow for a mile back. Traffic engineers call the effect “friction”, and anything at all that’s out of the ordinary can cause it, as people pause, however briefly, to gawk.
The effect is magnified by the fact that “news” is supported by advertising. An ad is the quintessence of “get ’em to look” — it doesn’t matter why they look, only that they do so. This puts a premium on novelty and titillation. The objective is eyeballs. That’s why newspapers have pictures, preferably color, on the front page, and it’s why the New York Times waited four months to feature Abu Ghraib. Blocks of gray text don’t catch the eye, and the point is to catch the eye — content is irrelevant. That’s why the TV people mourn the prudishness of the American public. If they could get away with it, CBS wouldn’t use Katie Couric. They’d use a 25-year-old bimbo with big bazooms, who would read the news while stripping to a thong.
Unfortunately for them there’s the effect called habituation. People notoriously adjust and get on with their lives despite the most appalling surroundings — you occasionally see stories full of wide-eyed wonder at people doing ordinary business in war zones, and you can go to northeast DC or the close-in Maryland suburbs and see it for yourself. Things that are exciting and titillating simply become part of the background when repeated often enough, and this is where the “news” business is now. They’ve concentrated so long on what’s exciting and attractive to the unthinking eyeball that they now have to keep up a steady stream of blood&guts just to keep the audience they have. If they went to the kind of news that, e.g., Huntley and Brinkley or Uncle Walter presented in the Sixties, their paying audience would go to zero. Borrrrringgggggggggggg.
Unfortunately for them, there is now an alternate source. Bloggers and other semi-serious Internetizens like to pretend that people come to the Web for news they can’t get from the MSM — but if you look at the actual audience figures, what they come for in droves is naked pictures of Britney Spears and cognates. A celebrity soft-porn site will have ten to a thousand times the readership of an Instapundit, let alone something like this place. The MSM can’t compete, not because they can’t collect the stuff but because they’ve only got a certain bit of space. A reader interested in Britney Spears will tune in stories about somebody else if that’s all that’s available, but given the choice of focusing on his own obsession he will do that, and the important thing about the MSM is that it’s mass. One of forty million Web sites can concentrate only on a teenyweeny subset of voyeurs and be successful. A mass medium has to satisfy all the voyeurs, and they can’t do that economically. Couple that with Craigslist, which takes away the only revenue stream they had that came from the actual readership, and they have no money collected from anybody who constitutes a market for their services. Therefore they are failing, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.
There does exist a niche market for what I call reportage, descriptions of things that are going on elsewhere. The MSM sacrificed that market years ago, because it is a niche — my own estimate is that well fewer than 20% of the potential news audience actually gives a damn. But if I were trying to advise news moguls I would tell them that that’s all they’ve got, and the only reason they’ve got that is the leftover stable of reporters from the pre-Internet days. Unfortunately the vast majority of the reporters are thoroughly imbued with the if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality, the notion that it ain’t “news” if it ain’t exciting, and even if they tried to go to that system they would fail because they don’t know how to produce the product.
The market is taking care of the problem. You just have to be patient. Markets are guaranteed to fix such things, but there’s nothing in the system or the theory that says they will do so quickly.
Regards,
Ric
“This is not politics. This is, in symbolism and emotion, a violent group ritual. It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy. It is the group reminding itself that the Other is always disingenuous, always evil, always lying, always pitiful and pathetic and grotesque. It is a bonding experience  the collaborative nature of these hateful orgies proves that much  in which the enemy is exposed as base and vile and then ripped apart by the community. In that way, it sustains itself, each attack preemptively justifying the next vicious assault, justifying the whole hateful edifice on which their politics rest.”
This is the worst case of projection by the left yet. I fully expect it to be topped within a week the way they have been going.
It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy. It is the group reminding itself that the Other is always disingenuous, always evil, always lying, always pitiful and pathetic and grotesque. It is a bonding experience  the collaborative nature of these hateful orgies proves that much  in which the enemy is exposed as base and vile and then ripped apart by the community. In that way, it sustains itself, each attack preemptively justifying the next vicious assault, justifying the whole hateful edifice on which their politics rest.
Great description of the whole Leftoid Shtick there.
This is from Ezra ?
Why should his service in Iraq protect Beauchamp from being caught and called out for selling pernicious lies as awful-truth-that-should-shape-public-policy ? Isn’t he to blame for his own “savaging” by making himself important with tall tales?
And where does this “attack upon a child” come from? The issue is the parents and their ability to afford prudential measures to cover catastrophic medical costs…and was never anything else, no one belittled, mocked or tried to attack the child. At the very most, it’s an attack upon a program that benefits the child and his family, but isn’t that fair? If you believe the program should not be available to families with the ability to provide for disaster themselves, and provides a disincentive for similarly situated families to provide for their own futures without assistance from the government, why is it a shocking attack to accurately characterize their own situation, when it is has put forth as a key example of the family that needs help?
I see geoffb made the same observation.
Michelle Malkin is too smart and too gifted to waste energy on angry people like Ezra Klein.
All Ezra is really after is attention.
(the Doctor Is Out)
On the issue of projection, two words for Mr. Klein: Sidney Blumenthal.
Notice the “winger speech = violence” meme. Classic leftard.
And think of those targets: Political activists, political activists, political activists.
Fixed that for you, Ezra.
Kurtz and Ric are right. Pretty much. Ric, especially. But.
All of us are old enough to remember when the news wasn’t quite so stupid. When it was smarter, it was more economically successful. That may be a coincidence.
I’ve heard that Fox News started out pretty well, like a less celebrity-interested CNN Headline News with evenings of less right-unfriendly versions of Crossfire and the old Brinkley show. Perhaps not true. I only know that now it’s Geraldo, missing blondes, panelists’ thighs, women crying, shit’s on fire, big stupid logo (on fire), OJ walking into and out of buildings — the usual, with the usual line, it’s what they want. But no one says I want that. They say Remember when this didn’t suck ass?
It famously happened to MTV, which has only former viewers, it seems.
There was a time when ESPN showed a lot of sports. Now it shows a lot of people talking about the people who do sports — doing things other than sports, mostly. It’s worse, and it’s not more successful — with viewers. But they say it has to be like that, that that’s what the eyeballs crave. But they don’t, they say. They say they want what they had — bunch of sports, couple hours of sports news, tiny splash of PTI. It was taken away.
(There’s an obvious analogy there, to the political media’s change from the appearance of and occasional actuality of reportage to transparent rephrasing of their friends’ press releases, wanna-be (and mostly do-be) self-fulfilling horserace-calling, and the collusive suppression information hurtful to themselves and their allies. Obvious and boring.)
No one who says You asked for it means it. They’re lying about themselves, to themselves, for themselves. There’s something they wanted to do to you, and they did it, and they know they’re shitty for doing it. And maybe those who say Remember when this didn’t suck ass? are lying about themselves, too. Someone’s watching. Supposedly.
There’s no evidence, only self-serving pronouncements, that viewers are the market for media. Like Ric said, “they have no money collected from anybody who constitutes a market for their services.” True, if we’re the market. If so, the media’s failures are inexplicable, except ideologically (on both sides of the explanation, what it explains and how it explains it). A more modest explanation, though it doesn’t sound like it: There’s something it’s their job to do to us, and they’re doing it.
A channel devoted to brutal investigative reporting and celebrity sex tapes would own the airwaves. It’s what we all want. But there’s no one whose job it is to give it to us. So, finally, we’re making it ourselves. Sort of.
You know what I miss? Acapulco cliff diving. That, and lumberjack competitions. And the caber hurling.
Gore’s movie was as much a documentary as Michael Moore’s various hit pieces. At least Moore admits his movies are opinion as opposed to documentary. No chance of that from Gore.
Dan, curling was also riveting and fishing with Curt Gowdy, although sometimes on a separate and earlier show.
The downfall of TV sports began with those staged he-man contests after Bruce Jenner won the decathalon in 1976.
Peter Frampton won Artist of the Year. Carter was President.
daleyrocks – Like Battle of the Network Stars?
psychologizer – How can you bash MTV when they have Tila Tequila starring in a bi-sexual reality dating show?
Austalian Rules Football was the king of all televised sports.
You better not be lumping in “Battle of the Network Stars” in that category. Trashing a sport that featured various network vixens bouncing up and down in spandex, or even better, sitting in the cold dunking tank (cold air – tight spandex bathing suits – you do the science) – them’s fightin’ words, pardner.
Gabe Kaplan vs. Robert Conrad in Simon Sez was the Woodstock of my generation.
(I compliment JD for reading my mind.)
(cold air – tight spandex bathing suits – you do the science) – Add Water.
Sounds almost like a wet T-Shirt contest on TV.
How can you go wrong with that? Who’s the nimrod who compared that to trash sports?
I’ll be in my bunk.
Is the lingerie bowl trash sports morons?
So much of the business model right now treats cable as an aggregate, and programmers have a cushion against the consequences of their own decisions. It really makes no difference to many many people which cable channel you watch. Just pay your bill, keep bitching, and stay away from the broadcast channels, dumbasses, and also remember we are having a free preview of HBO the first weekend of next month.
Do not dare criticize the Lingerie Bowl !!!!!!!
SarahW asked where the “attack on a child” thing came from.
The people who stage-managed the press event had that one in the chamber before they even got moving. It was the “planned response,” the meme all ready to go when needed.
It doesn’t matter if no one had even said a word (fat chance), that would have been out of the gate next and we’d be stuck responding to another in a long line of false accusations, as we always do.
I liked Politico’s “But at the same time, they did nothing to distance themselves from the byproduct of that work.”
Remember that the next time a lefty tells us they can’t be smeared with the words and actions of the nmoonbats…
Howard Cosell was the host of the original 1976 episode of Battle of the Network Stars. With Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Adrienne Barbeau among the competitors it was interesting TV. Howard was smitten by Farah’s work with a putter.
Tiny little point of curiousity here about the new picture of the working poor folks.
Is that or is it not a security system company sticker on the door of their house? Possibly Honeywell guessing from the colors and shape.
Seems someone is able to practice forethought and prudence regarding the homestead.
I might be wrong, but I cant think of any reason for a sticker like that on an exterior door for any other purpose.
And no one can rationalize that it was there when they bought the place. Just stuck there since 96? Nah.
Are we going to get a government program to provide home electronic security systems for those who are struggling?
Because questioning someone’s story is exactly like dismembering them with a garden hoe. Exactly.
See also: Hate Crime
“Gabe Kaplan vs. Robert Conrad in Simon Sez was the Woodstock of my generation.”
Oh, God I remember that. Today’s my birthday too. I am so old. I will be in the corner crying. Then I will be on the phone with IBM asking for the cash equivalent in exchange for my insurance. Pony up bitches!!
Uh . . . happy birthday, buzz.
Hey, buzzz, happy birthday, although I must say that you are looking a little antiquey today. Geez Louise use a wrinkle cream or something. Hair Club! :-)
I met Gabe Kaplan. He was a dick. Freddie Prinz was a good guy. That said:
If I ever meet that little Frost fuck in a dark alley, I’ll kick his brain-damaged ass.
There…the intertubes’ first authentic attack on Graeme Frost.
Well thanks, guys. You have no idea how accurate that hair comment is these days. Thinking about that battle of the network stars reminds me just how long I have been around. Apologies to those who may be older, but it does seem like a long time.
WE NEED AN EDITOR IN HERE! STAT!
Jeffersonian you’re my hero.
You know, I’d excoriate the Jeffersonian for that comment, except that it followed the accusation instead of preceding it.
Man, it’s a topsy-turvy world.
I’m trying to live up to expectations.
Senor Frost, as penance, should be required to chew on aluminum foil, sauteed in a reduction of scotch bonnet peppers and the feces of Rep. Pelosi, after consuming Metamucil.
– The “New” Left narrative handbook:
“[Swi`ft boa`ted] : The state reached after you’ve been forced to tell the truth.”
– Anytime a Sec-Progg uses the word “Swiftboat” it is recomended that you immediately say “Form 180”.
QandO quotes atrios: “nobody went after nine-year-old Noah McCullough when Bush made him a poster boy for privatizing Social Security.”
…and follows up with a nice round up progressive blogs going after Noah rather gleefully.
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=7047
– Hillery does a ground zero shot in face mask for her latest “gee I’m so centrist ad, forgetting how she skewered Bush for the same thing a few years ago, proposes an “investment” form of SS for everyone, just a year after leading the charge to kill Bushes effort to do the same.
– Yep. We must be getting closer to Pres. election time.
Did I read that Hillary proposed eliminated the guaranteed student loan program?
-I just had a really evil idea pop up.
– I bet theres nothing in this worrld Hillery wants more than to be Pres., for all kinds of reasons, not the least is the chance to do the biggest in your face to her philandering hubby.
– I’m wondering if she’s got a plan to wait until a critical moment and then stick it to the Left and go Conservative on a large scale. What a double cross of all time that would be, and if she can get enough Conservatine/crossover votes she doesn’t need them. May be the one possible way she stands a chance.
Conservative? Certainly not Hillary (“I have a million ideas. The country can’t afford them all”) Clinton. Actually the country can’t afford any of them.
There is something to your theory, Big Bang. The critical moment is as soon as she’s wrapped up the Dem nomination. She’s going to have to tack to the right.
Despite all their howling about how she voted for the war, etc. she will get the support of the far left. You think they’re going to not vote for her. Besides, they’ll know it’s all just part of getting elected and she’ll be who she always was after she takes office.
But she’s going to have to attract a lot of the center to win because she will energize the Republican base like no one else. Thus, she will try to repudiate some of her past. There is evidence of this already in her refusal to guarantee getting out of Iraq as soon as she’s in.
– Its true the Left doesn’t really want her so maybe KrazyKos and commune might try doing a repeat of the Lamont victory. Then theres Nader, but he’s only good for siphoning off the smallish group of Greenies and Libratarians. Gonna be interesting to watch how things spin out, especially if they have to go against Rudy.
Like her husband, every word Hillary utters is a calculated lie including “and”, “the” and especially “is” which has been shown by Bill to have no meaning at all.
I continue to wonder how there can be any discussion of her views, positions or thoughts. All is smoke and mirrors. There is no there there.
Trusting her would be the definition for “willing suspension of disbelief.”
Reagan said famously, “Trust, but verify.”
I say, “Verify, then trust.”
The only way Hillary could get my vote would be if Ron Paul was nominated by the Republicans. She may be evil, but I’ll take evil over crazy.
I realized today that I’ve been on the ‘net for 18 years. In a discussion with co-workers, I listed all we had back then — email, ftp, Usenet, telnet — and the youngest asked “what did you do for pages?”
*sigh*
I remember when the alt.sex Usenet group was something like an advice column.
And when email addresses had ‘!’ characters in them.
Q.: If the Republicans nominated Ron Paul and the Democrats nominated Dennis Kucinich, who would win?
If the Republicans nominated Ron Paul and the Democrats nominated Dennis Kucinich, who would win?
Iran
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