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Worthless Media
WELCOME TO WORTHLESS MEDIA WHERE THE FAILURE OF REAL JOURNALISM IS
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the white-wing media
jan 25, 2021
“The media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them. The representatives of these interests have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy.”
–Chomsky
Media lo-lites
(source: crooks & liars, raw story, alternet, newshounds)
Fox News host whitewashes Capitol Hill siege: Portland liberals 'have an insurrection every night'
After touting Trump as "populist," New York Times paints Biden as elitist
Eric Boehlert - PRESSRUN
1/25/2021
This is why Democrats cannot have nice things.
Reviving a long-running gotcha narrative that portrays wealthy Democrats as hypocrites, the New York Times has been dinging President Joe Biden since Inauguration Day as being out of touch with voters. It's a dishonest pursuit that looks especially absurd following Trump's four years of gaudy, country club excess, which the newspaper ridiculously labeled, “populism.”
At the swearing, the Times reported Biden wore, "a stainless steel Rolex Datejust watch with a blue dial, a model that retails for more than $7,000," and noted the handsome piece "costs the equivalent of dozen or so stimulus checks." The Rolex was "a far cry from the Everyman timepieces that every president not named Trump has worn conspicuously in recent decades," the Times stressed. "Recent presidents have tended to wear Everyman timepieces such as Timex and Shinola."
Note that a Shinola men's watch costs between $400-$1,400, so it's not clear how that brand fits into the "Everyman" mode, unless Times staffers routinely make three and four-figure timepiece purchases. In the same article detailing the price of Biden's Rolex ($7,000), the Times omitted any references to the cost of the gold Rolex Trump wore as president. ($36,000.)
The urgent wristwatch update came three days after the Times delivered a reported piece on Biden's exercise bike of choice, Peloton, noting the high-end workout machine, "does not exactly comport with Mr. Biden’s “regular guy from Scranton” political persona."
Instead of focusing on what's on Biden's wrist or in his exercise room, the better way to determine his "Everyman" agenda is to look at his earliest policy initiatives. To date, they include asking the Education Department to extend the federal student loan payment and interest pause through Sept. 30, pledging to raise corporate income taxes to 28 percent, and firing union-hating officials at the National Labor Relations Board.
The fact that that the Times seems obsessed with Biden's missing "Everyman" bona fides after the paper treated Trump as a man-of-the-people "populist" is unforgivable. Trump’s corrupt brand of pro-corporate, anti-worker politics represented the exact opposite of populism, which stands as a political struggle on behalf of regular people against elite economic forces.
After foolishly labeling the faux billionaire a "populist" for years, the Times focuses on Biden optics, eagerly combing over Inauguration Day photos in hopes of finding expensive items that can be used to raise doubts about Biden's humility. The emphasis is odd, considering the same newspaper over the weekend reported on a behind-the-scenes plot by Trump to fire his attorney general during the waning days of his presidency and appoint a Department of Justice loyalist who would order Georgia election officials to overturn the state's results from November.
Basically, Trump was considering appointing himself king and destroying American democracy, and only stopped when it became clear the entire top leadership of the DOJ would quit if he fired the attorney general, sending the country into an unprecedented Constitutional crisis. Against that backdrop, it's peculiar to be detailing how much Joe Biden's watch and workout bike cost. This coverage seems to come from a gnawing feeling among the D.C. press that Biden isn't who he says he is, that there's a phony lurking in the background.
It's a longtime game the Beltway press has played with Democrats, assuming that wealthy Democrats can't also be champions of the middle class, and that there is built-in hypocrisy if they push an agenda for the working class when left-leaning politicians are no longer part of that economic group themselves. The gotcha formula is strange, because wealthy politicians who advocate for the poor should be celebrated, not questioned. By definition, they're not looking out for themselves, or their one percent tax bracket. Instead, they're using their positions in power to try to advance an agenda of justice and lifting people up.
John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt came from two of the wealthiest families in America at the time of their presidencies, and oversaw stalwart liberal agendas. Still, the press loves pretending wealthy Democrats stand exposed, even Democrats who simply have nice things. The media rule seems to be, rich Republicans are to be admired, rich Democrats are to be doubted.
The Times has been doing this to Biden for years. When he was campaigning as vice president in 2008, the newspaper insisted he was not "the train-riding everyman that the Obama-Biden campaign has deployed to rally middle-class voters." The paper conceded that Biden "can trace his roots to the working-class neighborhoods of Scranton, Pa., and Claymont, Del., where he was raised." But the newspaper stressed, "these days, his kitchen table can be found in a 6,800-square-foot custom-built colonial-style house on four lakefront acres, a property worth close to $3 million."
Biden grew up a working class kid who lived with his parents and grandparents in a modest Scranton home. Then as an adult he became wealthy and successful. That's the whole story, apparently. (When he served in the U.S. Senate, Biden was consistently among the least wealthy members.)
The Times updated its beloved narrative in 2019 [emphasis added]:
Over his long career in politics, Joseph R. Biden Jr. established his everyman bona fides by citing his status as the poorest member of the Senate and referring to himself as “Middle-Class Joe.” But in the first two years after leaving office, Mr. Biden substantially improved his financial fortunes, earning more than $15 million, according to tax returns his campaign released Tuesday.
Biden has become a wealthy man later in life. The Times should stop spinning that into a character flaw.
Reviving a long-running gotcha narrative that portrays wealthy Democrats as hypocrites, the New York Times has been dinging President Joe Biden since Inauguration Day as being out of touch with voters. It's a dishonest pursuit that looks especially absurd following Trump's four years of gaudy, country club excess, which the newspaper ridiculously labeled, “populism.”
At the swearing, the Times reported Biden wore, "a stainless steel Rolex Datejust watch with a blue dial, a model that retails for more than $7,000," and noted the handsome piece "costs the equivalent of dozen or so stimulus checks." The Rolex was "a far cry from the Everyman timepieces that every president not named Trump has worn conspicuously in recent decades," the Times stressed. "Recent presidents have tended to wear Everyman timepieces such as Timex and Shinola."
Note that a Shinola men's watch costs between $400-$1,400, so it's not clear how that brand fits into the "Everyman" mode, unless Times staffers routinely make three and four-figure timepiece purchases. In the same article detailing the price of Biden's Rolex ($7,000), the Times omitted any references to the cost of the gold Rolex Trump wore as president. ($36,000.)
The urgent wristwatch update came three days after the Times delivered a reported piece on Biden's exercise bike of choice, Peloton, noting the high-end workout machine, "does not exactly comport with Mr. Biden’s “regular guy from Scranton” political persona."
Instead of focusing on what's on Biden's wrist or in his exercise room, the better way to determine his "Everyman" agenda is to look at his earliest policy initiatives. To date, they include asking the Education Department to extend the federal student loan payment and interest pause through Sept. 30, pledging to raise corporate income taxes to 28 percent, and firing union-hating officials at the National Labor Relations Board.
The fact that that the Times seems obsessed with Biden's missing "Everyman" bona fides after the paper treated Trump as a man-of-the-people "populist" is unforgivable. Trump’s corrupt brand of pro-corporate, anti-worker politics represented the exact opposite of populism, which stands as a political struggle on behalf of regular people against elite economic forces.
After foolishly labeling the faux billionaire a "populist" for years, the Times focuses on Biden optics, eagerly combing over Inauguration Day photos in hopes of finding expensive items that can be used to raise doubts about Biden's humility. The emphasis is odd, considering the same newspaper over the weekend reported on a behind-the-scenes plot by Trump to fire his attorney general during the waning days of his presidency and appoint a Department of Justice loyalist who would order Georgia election officials to overturn the state's results from November.
Basically, Trump was considering appointing himself king and destroying American democracy, and only stopped when it became clear the entire top leadership of the DOJ would quit if he fired the attorney general, sending the country into an unprecedented Constitutional crisis. Against that backdrop, it's peculiar to be detailing how much Joe Biden's watch and workout bike cost. This coverage seems to come from a gnawing feeling among the D.C. press that Biden isn't who he says he is, that there's a phony lurking in the background.
It's a longtime game the Beltway press has played with Democrats, assuming that wealthy Democrats can't also be champions of the middle class, and that there is built-in hypocrisy if they push an agenda for the working class when left-leaning politicians are no longer part of that economic group themselves. The gotcha formula is strange, because wealthy politicians who advocate for the poor should be celebrated, not questioned. By definition, they're not looking out for themselves, or their one percent tax bracket. Instead, they're using their positions in power to try to advance an agenda of justice and lifting people up.
John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt came from two of the wealthiest families in America at the time of their presidencies, and oversaw stalwart liberal agendas. Still, the press loves pretending wealthy Democrats stand exposed, even Democrats who simply have nice things. The media rule seems to be, rich Republicans are to be admired, rich Democrats are to be doubted.
The Times has been doing this to Biden for years. When he was campaigning as vice president in 2008, the newspaper insisted he was not "the train-riding everyman that the Obama-Biden campaign has deployed to rally middle-class voters." The paper conceded that Biden "can trace his roots to the working-class neighborhoods of Scranton, Pa., and Claymont, Del., where he was raised." But the newspaper stressed, "these days, his kitchen table can be found in a 6,800-square-foot custom-built colonial-style house on four lakefront acres, a property worth close to $3 million."
Biden grew up a working class kid who lived with his parents and grandparents in a modest Scranton home. Then as an adult he became wealthy and successful. That's the whole story, apparently. (When he served in the U.S. Senate, Biden was consistently among the least wealthy members.)
The Times updated its beloved narrative in 2019 [emphasis added]:
Over his long career in politics, Joseph R. Biden Jr. established his everyman bona fides by citing his status as the poorest member of the Senate and referring to himself as “Middle-Class Joe.” But in the first two years after leaving office, Mr. Biden substantially improved his financial fortunes, earning more than $15 million, according to tax returns his campaign released Tuesday.
Biden has become a wealthy man later in life. The Times should stop spinning that into a character flaw.
WaPo Publishes Column Calling on Cable Companies to Shut Down Fox News, Newsmax, OAN: ‘Incited Sedition’
By Rudy TakalaJan - MEDIATE
19th, 2021, 11:10 am
Washington Post columnist Max Boot is calling on cable providers to consider dropping networks including Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News.
“Anyone who cherishes our democracy should be grateful to the management of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for their newfound sense of social responsibility,” Boot wrote. “We should expect at least the same level of responsibility from broadcast media — and in particular from Fox News, which has the largest reach on the right.
Boot took particular aim at Fox personalities including Mark Levin, whose hour-long Life, Liberty & Levin airs each Saturday and Sunday, and Lou Dobbs, who hosts the hour-long Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox Business Network. Both hosts were vocal in urging President Donald Trump and his supporters to try to reverse the results of the 2020 election. He also cited a report that Ashli Babbitt, who was killed during the pro-Trump unrest in the Capitol on Jan. 6, was an “avid viewer” of Fox hosts including Tucker Carlson.
If Fox refuses to direct its hosts to moderate their rhetoric, Boot argued, “large cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum, which carry Fox News and provide much of its revenue in the form of user fees, need to step in and kick Fox News off. And if smaller competitors such as One America News and Newsmax continue to incite viewers, they, too, should be booted off.”
Voices on the left have increasingly called on cable companies to give conservative networks the boot. Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer at Facebook, echoed the sentiment in a Monday interview on CNN. “It’s really hard, because what’s happening is, people are able to seek out the information that makes them feel good,” Stamos said. “People have so much choice now. They can choose what their news sources are. They can choose what influencers they want to follow.”
“We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences,” he added. “There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN.”
Those remarks drew wide rebuke from conservatives. “There are homeless people ranting on subway platforms who have a larger audience than daytime CNN,” Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter in a message responding to the interview. “Cable Network for Censorship,” conservative author Kurt Schlichter wrote in another message, referencing the abbreviation for CNN.
“Anyone who cherishes our democracy should be grateful to the management of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for their newfound sense of social responsibility,” Boot wrote. “We should expect at least the same level of responsibility from broadcast media — and in particular from Fox News, which has the largest reach on the right.
Boot took particular aim at Fox personalities including Mark Levin, whose hour-long Life, Liberty & Levin airs each Saturday and Sunday, and Lou Dobbs, who hosts the hour-long Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox Business Network. Both hosts were vocal in urging President Donald Trump and his supporters to try to reverse the results of the 2020 election. He also cited a report that Ashli Babbitt, who was killed during the pro-Trump unrest in the Capitol on Jan. 6, was an “avid viewer” of Fox hosts including Tucker Carlson.
If Fox refuses to direct its hosts to moderate their rhetoric, Boot argued, “large cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum, which carry Fox News and provide much of its revenue in the form of user fees, need to step in and kick Fox News off. And if smaller competitors such as One America News and Newsmax continue to incite viewers, they, too, should be booted off.”
Voices on the left have increasingly called on cable companies to give conservative networks the boot. Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer at Facebook, echoed the sentiment in a Monday interview on CNN. “It’s really hard, because what’s happening is, people are able to seek out the information that makes them feel good,” Stamos said. “People have so much choice now. They can choose what their news sources are. They can choose what influencers they want to follow.”
“We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences,” he added. “There are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than daytime CNN.”
Those remarks drew wide rebuke from conservatives. “There are homeless people ranting on subway platforms who have a larger audience than daytime CNN,” Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter in a message responding to the interview. “Cable Network for Censorship,” conservative author Kurt Schlichter wrote in another message, referencing the abbreviation for CNN.
Watching Newsmax, the Fox News challenger: Like home shopping TV for dangerous far-right fantasies
On this TV catalog masquerading as a right-wing news outlet, the dull repetitiveness is stupefying—and intentional
By MELANIE MCFARLAND - salon
DECEMBER 13, 2020 8:30PM (UTC)
Home shopping networks exist beyond the critic's purview. They just sort of do what they do with low production value, living or dying on the charms of their hosts. Plus, it's widely understood that despite announcers' assurances that what they're selling is solid and true, the real deal, much of what they're hawking is of questionable quality.
Absorbing hour after hour of Newsmax made me contemplate the great American appeal of home shopping consumerism and its strong attraction to the emotionally vulnerable, people seeking out that unknown item to fill some gap in their life they cannot name. Newsmax mimics that approach, only instead of dealing in sleeved blankets and cut-rate gemstones, it sells concentrated alarmism and far-right extremist fantasy.
What is it about this TV catalog masquerading as a right-wing news outlet that has hundreds of thousands of shoppers feverishly buying the most recent versions of its product? Simple: its unflagging support of Donald Trump's alternate universe. In Newsmax's America, as in Trump's, the pandemic is a hoax, Trump won the election, the Bidens are liars enabling widespread voter fraud and a second term for the 45th president is but one court case away.
Trump has been plugging Newsmax for some time now, giving the channel his heartiest endorsement after Fox News stopped consistently telling him what he wanted to hear whenever he wanted to hear it.
After Fox became the first network to call Arizona for President-elect Joe Biden on Nov. 3, Newsmax was ready to welcome defectors who refused to believe the result with open arms. According to a recent New York Times story on the channel, Newsmax's prime-time ratings averaged 58,000 before election day, but catapulted to 1.1 million for a recent hour hosted by Greg Kelly, one of the channel's popular voices.
Ever since it has been plying its viewers with the insistent lie that Democrats stole the election, that anyone who isn't for Trump is a corrupt radical. Saucing this departure from the truth has been its hosts' passionate insistence that Trump and Republicans still have a path to overturn election results that have been certified and re-certified for Biden several times over in multiple states.
Some version of this fantasy led the headlines of its primetime opinion shows last week, each with a unique take on the channel's excursions into a wonderland awash in baseless assertions and conspiracy theory.
Hosts Greg Kelly and Grant Stinchfield stoked the dying flames of false hope with various versions of pitch that nearly every other headline about the election's outcome is wrong, that other news outlets and the amorphous nemesis known as the radical liberal left don't want you to know "the truth." They want Donald Trump to prevail, and they believe he will. They can't explain how or why; belief is enough.
Trump and his Republican allies have lost 58 lawsuits attempting to change election results at statewide levels, with the most blistering rejection arriving from the Supreme Court on Friday night. The justices tossed out a bid by Texas' attorney general to sue Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all battleground states Biden won. Newsmax's hosts were very enthusiastic about the Texas suit earlier in the week, making their refusal to admit defeat after the highest court's hammer shattered their dreams completely on brand.
"We have the order issued just a few minutes ago," Kelly told his viewers. "I'll read it for you but I want to emphasize before I do, we have the situation in Pennsylvania that has not been settled, we have Georgia that has not been settled, we have Michigan that has not been settled, independent of this lawsuit from Texas." All of this must be news to people living in those states who have a grasp on reality.
Kelly then read the Supreme Court's order verbatim: "Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al. The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot."
"It's not over. It's not over," Kelly repeated to his viewers on Friday.
Many legal experts have been saying it — as in, the 2020 presidential election — is very much over. It has been over for many weeks now. Joe Biden is not only the President-elect but, along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, he's Time magazine's Person of the Year.
People who would point to these inconvenient facts are not Newsmax shoppers. Newsmax shoppers want broken mirrors that reflect distorted, invalid reasons as to why they're not getting what they want and accuse half the nation of stealing their MAGA paradise out from under them. Fortunately for them the channel provides several models that achieve this.
"The Kelly" reflecting device resembles a serious-minded newsman convinced that the Trump crusade to retake the White House has momentum despite escalating evidence to the contrary. Kelly previously served as a co-host on "Good Day New York" and weathered an allegation of sexual assault; he was never arrested or formally charged.
"The Stinchfield" assumes a more militaristic approach; since the host previously worked for NRATV, that tracks. The host refers to his fanbase as the Stinchfield Army and rallies them to a number of causes — the first being Trump, but he has other hobbies too. [...]
Absorbing hour after hour of Newsmax made me contemplate the great American appeal of home shopping consumerism and its strong attraction to the emotionally vulnerable, people seeking out that unknown item to fill some gap in their life they cannot name. Newsmax mimics that approach, only instead of dealing in sleeved blankets and cut-rate gemstones, it sells concentrated alarmism and far-right extremist fantasy.
What is it about this TV catalog masquerading as a right-wing news outlet that has hundreds of thousands of shoppers feverishly buying the most recent versions of its product? Simple: its unflagging support of Donald Trump's alternate universe. In Newsmax's America, as in Trump's, the pandemic is a hoax, Trump won the election, the Bidens are liars enabling widespread voter fraud and a second term for the 45th president is but one court case away.
Trump has been plugging Newsmax for some time now, giving the channel his heartiest endorsement after Fox News stopped consistently telling him what he wanted to hear whenever he wanted to hear it.
After Fox became the first network to call Arizona for President-elect Joe Biden on Nov. 3, Newsmax was ready to welcome defectors who refused to believe the result with open arms. According to a recent New York Times story on the channel, Newsmax's prime-time ratings averaged 58,000 before election day, but catapulted to 1.1 million for a recent hour hosted by Greg Kelly, one of the channel's popular voices.
Ever since it has been plying its viewers with the insistent lie that Democrats stole the election, that anyone who isn't for Trump is a corrupt radical. Saucing this departure from the truth has been its hosts' passionate insistence that Trump and Republicans still have a path to overturn election results that have been certified and re-certified for Biden several times over in multiple states.
Some version of this fantasy led the headlines of its primetime opinion shows last week, each with a unique take on the channel's excursions into a wonderland awash in baseless assertions and conspiracy theory.
Hosts Greg Kelly and Grant Stinchfield stoked the dying flames of false hope with various versions of pitch that nearly every other headline about the election's outcome is wrong, that other news outlets and the amorphous nemesis known as the radical liberal left don't want you to know "the truth." They want Donald Trump to prevail, and they believe he will. They can't explain how or why; belief is enough.
Trump and his Republican allies have lost 58 lawsuits attempting to change election results at statewide levels, with the most blistering rejection arriving from the Supreme Court on Friday night. The justices tossed out a bid by Texas' attorney general to sue Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all battleground states Biden won. Newsmax's hosts were very enthusiastic about the Texas suit earlier in the week, making their refusal to admit defeat after the highest court's hammer shattered their dreams completely on brand.
"We have the order issued just a few minutes ago," Kelly told his viewers. "I'll read it for you but I want to emphasize before I do, we have the situation in Pennsylvania that has not been settled, we have Georgia that has not been settled, we have Michigan that has not been settled, independent of this lawsuit from Texas." All of this must be news to people living in those states who have a grasp on reality.
Kelly then read the Supreme Court's order verbatim: "Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al. The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot."
"It's not over. It's not over," Kelly repeated to his viewers on Friday.
Many legal experts have been saying it — as in, the 2020 presidential election — is very much over. It has been over for many weeks now. Joe Biden is not only the President-elect but, along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, he's Time magazine's Person of the Year.
People who would point to these inconvenient facts are not Newsmax shoppers. Newsmax shoppers want broken mirrors that reflect distorted, invalid reasons as to why they're not getting what they want and accuse half the nation of stealing their MAGA paradise out from under them. Fortunately for them the channel provides several models that achieve this.
"The Kelly" reflecting device resembles a serious-minded newsman convinced that the Trump crusade to retake the White House has momentum despite escalating evidence to the contrary. Kelly previously served as a co-host on "Good Day New York" and weathered an allegation of sexual assault; he was never arrested or formally charged.
"The Stinchfield" assumes a more militaristic approach; since the host previously worked for NRATV, that tracks. The host refers to his fanbase as the Stinchfield Army and rallies them to a number of causes — the first being Trump, but he has other hobbies too. [...]
Centrists lose again — and mainstream media blames the left again
Mainstream Democrats are eager to blame losses on "socialism" and "defund the police" — but where's the evidence?
By JULIE HOLLAR - salon
NOVEMBER 13, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)
Joe Biden hadn't even been declared the victor of the 2020 election before establishment Democrats, in the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, began pointing fingers at the left — with corporate media giving them a major assist.
Democrats had been hoping for big wins on election night, with the possibility of winning not only the presidency but also the Senate, and increasing their majority in the House. But while Biden has come out on top, the party's most optimistic outcome in the Senate would be a 50/50 split (if they win both Georgia runoff seats), giving them a majority with the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. Rather than gaining in the House, Democrats have lost several seats, perhaps 10 or more.
In the wake of these disappointments, the right wing of the party immediately blamed its left wing for the poor showing, airing their grievances in a private conference call among House Democrats that was leaked to reporters.
In a write-up about the call, the Washington Post's Rachael Bade and Erica Werner (11/5/20) quoted and paraphrased 14 sources blaming those who "endorse far-left positions" for Democrats' losses, counterbalanced by only four sources defending the left. All the progressive sources were named; half of the establishment sources were either quoted anonymously or presented as unspecified "moderates" — or, twice, simply as "Democrats," committing the exasperatingly common journalistic sleight-of-hand that erases progressive Democrats as legitimate members of their party.
In addition to quoting a handful of participants on the call, Bade and Werner interviewed numerous "moderates" for the article ("Several moderate Democrats said in interviews…"), but only managed to interview two progressives: Alexandra Rojas, head of the leftist PAC Justice Democrats, along with Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — who took the side of the centrists.
Huffman's contrary position, while perhaps surprising to some readers, and serving to portray the "centrist" view as even more of a consensus position, would have been less surprising to Bade, who had quoted Huffman just a few days earlier (11/1/20) about his opposition to leftists' efforts to exert more influence within the party. In other words, the reporters appeared to seek out only one source who could have been expected to offer a forceful defense of bold leftist ideas, to balance a whole parade of attackers.
In its piece on the dust-up, in which "Democrats traded excuses, blame and prognostications," the New York Times (11/5/20) quoted South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who "cautioned against running on 'Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine,' adding that if Democrats pursued such policies, 'we're not going to win.'" What the article didn't mention was that Clyburn has taken more money from the pharmaceutical industry in the past decade than any other member of the House or Senate (Post and Courier, 12/16/18).
The piece then quoted Rep. Marc Veasey, who "warned his fellow members against anti-fracking talk." Veasey ranked fourth among House Democrats in taking oil and gas industry money in the 2020 election cycle, and got 70% of his total campaign contributions from PACs. (To put that into perspective, the two progressives quoted in the Times piece, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, got 13% and 3% of their campaign contributions from PACs, respectively.) Readers might have found such information useful in analyzing the motivations behind those quotes.
CNN's Chris Cillizza (11/6/20) jumped into the fray as well, praising Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a former CIA official (another piece of relevant context not mentioned by Cillizza) who had some of the harshest words for progressives, for speaking "some hard truth to her party" — like, "We need to not ever use the words 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again," as if the McCarthy era had never ended (FAIR.org, 10/9/20).
After quoting Spanberger extensively and then printing some of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's rebuttal ("You can't just tell the Black, brown and youth organizers riding in to save us every election to be quiet or not have their reps champion them when they need us"), Cillizza wrote:
What's beyond debate is that Republican strategists took comments made by liberals within the Democratic Party and used them to blast everyone from Spanberger on down.
Though all these pieces offered plenty of suggestions that the left wing's vocal support for things like socialism, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and defunding the police cost the party seats in 2020, they failed to provide any actual data that might have helped readers evaluate the veracity of those statements.
It's an important point, because understanding Democrats' lackluster performance should help guide their platform and messaging moving forward. But these articles aren't shedding light on the data — perhaps because it would thoroughly undermine the anti-progressive framing.
---
The Green New Deal is likewise broadly popular: One poll specifically of swing House districts (YouGov/Data for Progress, 9/19) found that respondents supported the idea by a 13-point margin, 49% to 36% — even when informed that it will cost trillions of dollars.
And with some races still not called, it's safe to say that Medicare for All and the Green New Deal didn't sink the Dems. Ocasio-Cortez pointed out (Twitter, 11/7/20) that every Democratic co-sponsor of Medicare for All in a swing district won re-election. And Gizmodo's Brian Kahn (11/9/20) found that of 93 Democratic incumbents who co-sponsored the Green New Deal — including five in swing districts — only one lost their race.
On the question of calls to "defund the police," it's important to clarify — as did the Intercept (11/6/20), but none of these establishment media reports — that such calls grew out of the Black Lives Matter protests, not the platform of progressive congressmembers, and that that movement led to a massive spike in Democratic voter registration. In other words, without the movement that gave us the slogan "defund the police," the Democrats would almost certainly have witnessed even greater losses — including, quite probably, the White House.[...]
Democrats had been hoping for big wins on election night, with the possibility of winning not only the presidency but also the Senate, and increasing their majority in the House. But while Biden has come out on top, the party's most optimistic outcome in the Senate would be a 50/50 split (if they win both Georgia runoff seats), giving them a majority with the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. Rather than gaining in the House, Democrats have lost several seats, perhaps 10 or more.
In the wake of these disappointments, the right wing of the party immediately blamed its left wing for the poor showing, airing their grievances in a private conference call among House Democrats that was leaked to reporters.
In a write-up about the call, the Washington Post's Rachael Bade and Erica Werner (11/5/20) quoted and paraphrased 14 sources blaming those who "endorse far-left positions" for Democrats' losses, counterbalanced by only four sources defending the left. All the progressive sources were named; half of the establishment sources were either quoted anonymously or presented as unspecified "moderates" — or, twice, simply as "Democrats," committing the exasperatingly common journalistic sleight-of-hand that erases progressive Democrats as legitimate members of their party.
In addition to quoting a handful of participants on the call, Bade and Werner interviewed numerous "moderates" for the article ("Several moderate Democrats said in interviews…"), but only managed to interview two progressives: Alexandra Rojas, head of the leftist PAC Justice Democrats, along with Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — who took the side of the centrists.
Huffman's contrary position, while perhaps surprising to some readers, and serving to portray the "centrist" view as even more of a consensus position, would have been less surprising to Bade, who had quoted Huffman just a few days earlier (11/1/20) about his opposition to leftists' efforts to exert more influence within the party. In other words, the reporters appeared to seek out only one source who could have been expected to offer a forceful defense of bold leftist ideas, to balance a whole parade of attackers.
In its piece on the dust-up, in which "Democrats traded excuses, blame and prognostications," the New York Times (11/5/20) quoted South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who "cautioned against running on 'Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine,' adding that if Democrats pursued such policies, 'we're not going to win.'" What the article didn't mention was that Clyburn has taken more money from the pharmaceutical industry in the past decade than any other member of the House or Senate (Post and Courier, 12/16/18).
The piece then quoted Rep. Marc Veasey, who "warned his fellow members against anti-fracking talk." Veasey ranked fourth among House Democrats in taking oil and gas industry money in the 2020 election cycle, and got 70% of his total campaign contributions from PACs. (To put that into perspective, the two progressives quoted in the Times piece, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, got 13% and 3% of their campaign contributions from PACs, respectively.) Readers might have found such information useful in analyzing the motivations behind those quotes.
CNN's Chris Cillizza (11/6/20) jumped into the fray as well, praising Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a former CIA official (another piece of relevant context not mentioned by Cillizza) who had some of the harshest words for progressives, for speaking "some hard truth to her party" — like, "We need to not ever use the words 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again," as if the McCarthy era had never ended (FAIR.org, 10/9/20).
After quoting Spanberger extensively and then printing some of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's rebuttal ("You can't just tell the Black, brown and youth organizers riding in to save us every election to be quiet or not have their reps champion them when they need us"), Cillizza wrote:
What's beyond debate is that Republican strategists took comments made by liberals within the Democratic Party and used them to blast everyone from Spanberger on down.
Though all these pieces offered plenty of suggestions that the left wing's vocal support for things like socialism, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and defunding the police cost the party seats in 2020, they failed to provide any actual data that might have helped readers evaluate the veracity of those statements.
It's an important point, because understanding Democrats' lackluster performance should help guide their platform and messaging moving forward. But these articles aren't shedding light on the data — perhaps because it would thoroughly undermine the anti-progressive framing.
---
The Green New Deal is likewise broadly popular: One poll specifically of swing House districts (YouGov/Data for Progress, 9/19) found that respondents supported the idea by a 13-point margin, 49% to 36% — even when informed that it will cost trillions of dollars.
And with some races still not called, it's safe to say that Medicare for All and the Green New Deal didn't sink the Dems. Ocasio-Cortez pointed out (Twitter, 11/7/20) that every Democratic co-sponsor of Medicare for All in a swing district won re-election. And Gizmodo's Brian Kahn (11/9/20) found that of 93 Democratic incumbents who co-sponsored the Green New Deal — including five in swing districts — only one lost their race.
On the question of calls to "defund the police," it's important to clarify — as did the Intercept (11/6/20), but none of these establishment media reports — that such calls grew out of the Black Lives Matter protests, not the platform of progressive congressmembers, and that that movement led to a massive spike in Democratic voter registration. In other words, without the movement that gave us the slogan "defund the police," the Democrats would almost certainly have witnessed even greater losses — including, quite probably, the White House.[...]
Fox News Pundits Compare BLM Protesters To Serial Killer Ted Bundy
No really. Who knew civil rights protests are equal to Ted Bundy raping and murdering innocent young girls in their dorm rooms?
By John Amato crooks & liars
9/18/2020
During Thursday's segment on Fox News' Outnumbered, two of their right-wing panel agreed that using Ted Bundy as the bellwether for violence in the BLM protests was a great thing.
The Fox News program was discussing a report that 93% of the Black Lives Matter-inspired protests were peaceful
But for Fox News that was fodder to promote Trump's "law and order" message and claim the country is in flames while claiming "Joe Biden's America" means the suburbs will burn down.
Host Melissa Francis commented on the violence and riots that have occurred at BLM protests. "#Oneluckyguy" Juan Williams frustrated her by saying he had no basis to compare anything to that except his own experience of being involved in a peaceful protest.
This enraged the right wingers on the panel.
Kennedy, the "libertarian," went off the rails and used serial killer Ted Bundy, who raped and mass-murdered scores of women, as her barometer against the civil unrest in the country.
Kennedy said, "And the harm that has been done, that's like saying 95% of it was peaceful."
She continued, "That's like saying 95% of the sorority girls that Ted Bundy met he didn't kill."
Melissa Francis was in complete agreement with her and said that was a "great analogy."
So now Fox News is comparing civil unrest, peaceful protesters and the small percentage of them that have gotten out of control, to the most heinous murderer and serial killer of young women in history of our country.
Got it. There is no bar so low they won't go below it.
The Fox News program was discussing a report that 93% of the Black Lives Matter-inspired protests were peaceful
But for Fox News that was fodder to promote Trump's "law and order" message and claim the country is in flames while claiming "Joe Biden's America" means the suburbs will burn down.
Host Melissa Francis commented on the violence and riots that have occurred at BLM protests. "#Oneluckyguy" Juan Williams frustrated her by saying he had no basis to compare anything to that except his own experience of being involved in a peaceful protest.
This enraged the right wingers on the panel.
Kennedy, the "libertarian," went off the rails and used serial killer Ted Bundy, who raped and mass-murdered scores of women, as her barometer against the civil unrest in the country.
Kennedy said, "And the harm that has been done, that's like saying 95% of it was peaceful."
She continued, "That's like saying 95% of the sorority girls that Ted Bundy met he didn't kill."
Melissa Francis was in complete agreement with her and said that was a "great analogy."
So now Fox News is comparing civil unrest, peaceful protesters and the small percentage of them that have gotten out of control, to the most heinous murderer and serial killer of young women in history of our country.
Got it. There is no bar so low they won't go below it.
The Cesspool That Spat Out Trump’s New Conspiracy About Cops
A TREE GROWS IN TRUMPLAND
Here is how Trump got the idea that a 75-year-old protester who was pushed to the ground and bled out of his head may have been antifa. It’s as crazy as you can imagine.
Adam Rawnsley, Will Sommer - daily beast
Updated Jun. 09, 2020 5:04PM ET
Out of all the blogs on the pro-Trump internet, The Conservative Treehouse might be the strangest and most underappreciated in terms of its influence.
Its fans describe the comment section as “branches,” where they hang out to discuss the latest twist in the “Russiagate” saga or speculate feverishly about Donald Trump’s critics. The site’s owner, who has previously been identified as Florida resident Mark Bradman, rose to prominence during the George Zimmerman trial, outing an anonymous witness and declaring that Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager Zimmerman shot, was an “undisciplined punk thug, drug dealing, thief and wannabe gangsta.”
Since then, the site has been Patient Zero for a number of hoaxes that have percolated through right-wing media ecosystem, claiming that Puerto Rican truck drivers were withholding hurricane relief, or that a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “weaponizing” the coronavirus to hurt Trump. Despite those hoaxes being quickly debunked, however, The Conservative Treehouse now ranks at roughly the 4,000th most-visited website in the United States, according to Alexa analytics.
Its zeal for the conspiratorial is so pronounced that even some of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in right-wing media find the site’s devoted commenters and its pseudonymous operator, “Sundance,” bizarre. Talk radio host Mark Levin has called it a “kook site.” Former Breitbart reporter Lee Stranahan dubbed the site’s owner an “egocentric lunatic” with “cult-like followers.”
And yet, despite its reputation (or, perhaps, because of it) The Conservative Treehouse has the president’s ear.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory that originated on the site about Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old New York man who bled from his head after he was shoved down by Buffalo police officers while attending a protest. Trump claimed that Gugino, who remains in the hospital in serious but stable condition, wasn’t the peaceful protester he appeared to be but rather a potential “antifa provocateur” trying to “scan police communications in order to black out the equipment.”
“I watched, he fell harder than was pushed,” Trump tweeted. “Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
The tweet was sparked by a segment on the Trump-fawning cable news network OAN, which was based on a blog post from The Conservative Treehouse. And it represented yet another instance of how the president’s penchant for uncritically amplifying those willing to flatter or absolve his views has vaulted the dregs of the Internet’s conspiracy theorists into national prominence.
The OAN segment was reported by Kristian Rouz, a Russian journalist who pulled double duty working for the Russian state propaganda channel Sputnik as well as OAN. In it, Rouz claimed Gugino was using “common antifa tactics” and that the incident was "a false flag provocation by far-left group antifa." He cited The Conservative Treehouse as evidence that Gugino was using a “police tracker” on his phone during the encounter.
The Conservative Treehouse post had, indeed, falsely claimed that Gugino used a sophisticated communications device to “scan the mic” of one policeman. “Once the frequency is captured (ie cloned) you can track the device, duplicate the signal and/or listen to a transmission,” the post reads.
And a Twitter thread preceding the article, The Conservative Treehouse’s Twitter account, @TheLastRefuge2, warned its nearly 180,000 followers that the same technology is used by “trackers” who use it to “electronically rob you without ever going in your house.”
There are plenty of holes in the theory that Gugino was committing high-tech espionage for antifa. For one thing, Gugino is not a member of antifa, but rather a longtime activist with the Catholic Worker movement and other community-based social justice activist groups. And the supposed “scanning” he is accused of conducting is technological gibberish, unsupported by evidence.
That context, naturally, never made it into The Conservative Treehouse post. And Trump’s amplification of their claims only underscored the payoff that can come with the spreading of disinformation aimed at undermining liberals and firing up the right. The website and Bradman, its purported owner, didn’t return requests for comment.
The Conservative Treehouse gained prominence during the Tea Party movement and the Zimmerman trial, with Zimmerman’s father praising its commenters’ research as “astonishing.” During the racially-charged trial, The Conservative Treehouse owner “Sundance” went by “Sundance Cracker,” an alias he later dropped.
During the Zimmerman trial, The Conservative Treehouse’s unusually intense commenting community, which drives much of the narratives eventually featured on the site, began to emerge. The amateur-sleuth commenters had such an outsized influence that Zimmerman’s defense attorney corresponded with one of the commenters, who referred to themselves as a member of the “the treehouse think tank.”
Since the trial, The Conservative Treehouse has embraced a wide variety of right-wing causes, including Republican investigations in the 2012 attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the Bundy family’s Malheur wildlife refuge takeover in Oregon. In the Trump era, The Conservative Treehouse became a hub for the conspiracy theory that the Russia investigation was cooked up to undermine Trump by nefarious members of the deep-state, with Sundance and his commenters weaving elaborate stories about then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller or, later, the Ukraine impeachment.
The Conservative Treehouse has long been a fan of Trump and the president has returned the favor, dating back to Trump’s days as a Republican presidential hopeful in 2015.
As Trump’s campaign moved from sideshow to frontrunner status, The Conservative Treehouse’s Twitter account trumpeted poll after poll showing the former real estate mogul besting the other candidates in the race for the nomination—earning retweets and shoutouts from the candidate himself. Trump took particular pleasure in citing the author’s attacks on his rivals in Florida: former Governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio.
The Conservative Treehouse’s operator and loyal audience have frequently clashed with other conservative personalities. Stranahan has tweeted that Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart would have hated the site’s pseudonymous operator, “Sundance,” even though the late conservative provocateur’s image tops The Conservative Treehouse’s website banner.
The site has also been slammed by Levin, the conservative talk radio host. After The Conservative Treehouse published stories suggesting the talk radio host was in the tank for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during the 2016 Republican primary, Levin taunted Bradman, a former Publix supermarket employee, calling him a “disgruntled former grocery clerk” in Facebook posts.
“The more we learn about Bradman and his ‘Conservative Treehouse’ site, the more you wonder what this kook is up to,” Levin wrote.
Despite the opposition, though, The Conservative Treehouse has made inroads into more mainstream right-wing media outlets. It’s been praised on-air by Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs, who urged his viewers to check out the site’s blog posts about the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
"I want to give a shout-out to TheConservativeTreehouse.com,” Dobbs said. “They have done an amazing job of chronicling, cataloguing the content — just a terrific job."
Its fans describe the comment section as “branches,” where they hang out to discuss the latest twist in the “Russiagate” saga or speculate feverishly about Donald Trump’s critics. The site’s owner, who has previously been identified as Florida resident Mark Bradman, rose to prominence during the George Zimmerman trial, outing an anonymous witness and declaring that Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager Zimmerman shot, was an “undisciplined punk thug, drug dealing, thief and wannabe gangsta.”
Since then, the site has been Patient Zero for a number of hoaxes that have percolated through right-wing media ecosystem, claiming that Puerto Rican truck drivers were withholding hurricane relief, or that a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “weaponizing” the coronavirus to hurt Trump. Despite those hoaxes being quickly debunked, however, The Conservative Treehouse now ranks at roughly the 4,000th most-visited website in the United States, according to Alexa analytics.
Its zeal for the conspiratorial is so pronounced that even some of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in right-wing media find the site’s devoted commenters and its pseudonymous operator, “Sundance,” bizarre. Talk radio host Mark Levin has called it a “kook site.” Former Breitbart reporter Lee Stranahan dubbed the site’s owner an “egocentric lunatic” with “cult-like followers.”
And yet, despite its reputation (or, perhaps, because of it) The Conservative Treehouse has the president’s ear.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory that originated on the site about Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old New York man who bled from his head after he was shoved down by Buffalo police officers while attending a protest. Trump claimed that Gugino, who remains in the hospital in serious but stable condition, wasn’t the peaceful protester he appeared to be but rather a potential “antifa provocateur” trying to “scan police communications in order to black out the equipment.”
“I watched, he fell harder than was pushed,” Trump tweeted. “Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”
The tweet was sparked by a segment on the Trump-fawning cable news network OAN, which was based on a blog post from The Conservative Treehouse. And it represented yet another instance of how the president’s penchant for uncritically amplifying those willing to flatter or absolve his views has vaulted the dregs of the Internet’s conspiracy theorists into national prominence.
The OAN segment was reported by Kristian Rouz, a Russian journalist who pulled double duty working for the Russian state propaganda channel Sputnik as well as OAN. In it, Rouz claimed Gugino was using “common antifa tactics” and that the incident was "a false flag provocation by far-left group antifa." He cited The Conservative Treehouse as evidence that Gugino was using a “police tracker” on his phone during the encounter.
The Conservative Treehouse post had, indeed, falsely claimed that Gugino used a sophisticated communications device to “scan the mic” of one policeman. “Once the frequency is captured (ie cloned) you can track the device, duplicate the signal and/or listen to a transmission,” the post reads.
And a Twitter thread preceding the article, The Conservative Treehouse’s Twitter account, @TheLastRefuge2, warned its nearly 180,000 followers that the same technology is used by “trackers” who use it to “electronically rob you without ever going in your house.”
There are plenty of holes in the theory that Gugino was committing high-tech espionage for antifa. For one thing, Gugino is not a member of antifa, but rather a longtime activist with the Catholic Worker movement and other community-based social justice activist groups. And the supposed “scanning” he is accused of conducting is technological gibberish, unsupported by evidence.
That context, naturally, never made it into The Conservative Treehouse post. And Trump’s amplification of their claims only underscored the payoff that can come with the spreading of disinformation aimed at undermining liberals and firing up the right. The website and Bradman, its purported owner, didn’t return requests for comment.
The Conservative Treehouse gained prominence during the Tea Party movement and the Zimmerman trial, with Zimmerman’s father praising its commenters’ research as “astonishing.” During the racially-charged trial, The Conservative Treehouse owner “Sundance” went by “Sundance Cracker,” an alias he later dropped.
During the Zimmerman trial, The Conservative Treehouse’s unusually intense commenting community, which drives much of the narratives eventually featured on the site, began to emerge. The amateur-sleuth commenters had such an outsized influence that Zimmerman’s defense attorney corresponded with one of the commenters, who referred to themselves as a member of the “the treehouse think tank.”
Since the trial, The Conservative Treehouse has embraced a wide variety of right-wing causes, including Republican investigations in the 2012 attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the Bundy family’s Malheur wildlife refuge takeover in Oregon. In the Trump era, The Conservative Treehouse became a hub for the conspiracy theory that the Russia investigation was cooked up to undermine Trump by nefarious members of the deep-state, with Sundance and his commenters weaving elaborate stories about then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller or, later, the Ukraine impeachment.
The Conservative Treehouse has long been a fan of Trump and the president has returned the favor, dating back to Trump’s days as a Republican presidential hopeful in 2015.
As Trump’s campaign moved from sideshow to frontrunner status, The Conservative Treehouse’s Twitter account trumpeted poll after poll showing the former real estate mogul besting the other candidates in the race for the nomination—earning retweets and shoutouts from the candidate himself. Trump took particular pleasure in citing the author’s attacks on his rivals in Florida: former Governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio.
The Conservative Treehouse’s operator and loyal audience have frequently clashed with other conservative personalities. Stranahan has tweeted that Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart would have hated the site’s pseudonymous operator, “Sundance,” even though the late conservative provocateur’s image tops The Conservative Treehouse’s website banner.
The site has also been slammed by Levin, the conservative talk radio host. After The Conservative Treehouse published stories suggesting the talk radio host was in the tank for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during the 2016 Republican primary, Levin taunted Bradman, a former Publix supermarket employee, calling him a “disgruntled former grocery clerk” in Facebook posts.
“The more we learn about Bradman and his ‘Conservative Treehouse’ site, the more you wonder what this kook is up to,” Levin wrote.
Despite the opposition, though, The Conservative Treehouse has made inroads into more mainstream right-wing media outlets. It’s been praised on-air by Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs, who urged his viewers to check out the site’s blog posts about the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
"I want to give a shout-out to TheConservativeTreehouse.com,” Dobbs said. “They have done an amazing job of chronicling, cataloguing the content — just a terrific job."
The Empty Piety of the American Press
Chris Hedges - truthdig
3/12/18
The press, giddy with its newfound sense of mission and purpose, is carrying out a moral crusade against Donald Trump. The airwaves and print have shed their traditional claims of “impartiality” and “objectivity.” They fulminate against Trump, charging—falsely—that he was elected because of Russian interference and calling him a liar, ignorant and incompetent. They give airtime to his bitterest critics and bizarre associates, such as Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a onetime star of “The Apprentice” and now a fired White House aide, and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had a sexual relationship with Trump. It is great entertainment. It is great for ratings. It is great for profits. But it is not moral, and it is not journalism.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
worthless media funnies
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