Who ever heard of Bob Woodward: On Fox last night, the blind man was king. Sean Hannity started his ludicrous show with a long interview with Bob Woodward:
HANNITY (2/28/13): And welcome to Hannity!The interview went on for two segments. Woodward finally disavowed the idea that he felt “threatened” by Gene Sperling. On CNN the previous night, he had let that representation stand.
Now in just a moment, I'll be joined by Bob Woodward for an exclusive interview about whether or not he feels he's being threatened by the Obama White House. But first, here is the back story...
But Woodward continued to shape-shift and cherry-pick his ludicrous story, and this made him a hero on Fox. At 10, Greta van Susteren opened her program with a segment on Woodward, including footage of his interview with Sean. And at 8 o’clock, Mr. O had opened his program with the same thrilling topic:
O’REILLY (2/28/13): The O’Reilly Factor from LA is on! Tonight:On Fox, the appalling Woodward was king. What occurred on The One Liberal Channel?
WOODWARD (videotape): It was said very clearly: "You will regret doing this."
ANNOUNCER: Did the Obama administration threaten the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward over a story on the budget chaos? And now others are coming forward saying they were threatened too.
LANNY DAVIS (videotape): That exact thing happened to me and I haven't spoken of this before.
ANNOUNCER: We will get to the bottom of a growing controversy.
Good God! It was just as we warned you! Rachel Maddow took the predictable dive; she never mentioned Woodward at all! Neither did the fiery liberal Chris Hayes, who was guest-hosting for Lawrence.
Chris Matthews seems to have been completely repurposed, but he didn’t mention Woodward either. From 5 through 11, only one program on MSNBC so much as mentioned this topic.
Alone among hosts, Big Ed took Woodward on. In his opening segment, he was helped by Barney Frank. In his second segment, David Corn and Mike Tomasky commented on Woodward’s craziness. That said, Corn was rather soft on Woodward. He was much harder on Politico for running with the non-story.
Easy to be hard!
On Fox, Woodward was thoroughly pimped to the world. But on The One True Liberal Channel, Maddow and friends took a dive.
For the record, Maddow’s program last night was awful in every respect. She devoted one full segment to self-promotion, two full segments to surpassingly dumb political analysis. She closed with an utterly pointless segment about the problem of having two Popes.
But through all that, she never quite managed to mention the name “Bob Woodward.” Maddow is skillful at conning us rubes. But as we've told you many times, she will never name big names like that.
Dearest darlings, it just isn't done! Careers hang in the balance!
What a joke that program is! Maddow loves to invent various things “the Beltway media” are said to have said, at which point she shoots those invented statements down. From such bullshit, we get the impression that she's fighting quite hard on our side.
She isn’t. Rachel Maddow, a giant fraud, proved that again last night.
On Fox, they proved it all night long, pimping Woodward's tale to the world. In response, Rachel ran off in the woods.
Once she arrived there, she hid. How many times do we have to explain the way this scam-song works?
The issue is not Bob Woodward but all the reporters who have been bullied and are being bullied by the Obama White House folks. This is the most repressive administration I have ever been aware of in terms of the press, and there is a fine, fine reason why Julian Assange is so afraid of being brought to America by the Obama folks.
ReplyDeleteAnd those reporters would be????
DeleteCome on. "Obama White House folks" are allegedly stomping all over the First Amendment. Surely since the story of Bob Woodward got exposed for the fraud that it is, you've got more names of journalists cowering in fear than Julian Assange.
Reporters who wish to do serious critical reporting have to be afraid of the Obama folks. Brave Assange is the perfect example.
DeleteRight. The "Obama folks" got the government of Sweden to trump up phony sex charges against the guy, and that is why he is hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
DeleteBut I'll play along. OK, for the sake of argument, Assange is the perfect example.
Got any others? Does Steve Doocy need to hire body guards? How about O'Reilly, Hannity, and all the Fox crowd? Surely the "Obama folks" can find ways to shut them up.
How about Charles Krauthammer? Jonah Goldberg? George Will? Haven't they all taken on the "Obama folks" at one time or another?
Anon 1:41:
DeletePerfect example of the zombie narrative. Although factually bankrupt, it prowls the land,gaining strength and takes on a life of its own.
Cue the Daily Show, which last night actually figured out how to read the original email and reply on the air. Sad that it takes a comedy show to handle this impressive feat.
ReplyDeleteExactly how much time is the appropriate amount of time to spend on this non-starter, "inside-the-Beltway" story?
ReplyDeleteI only wish that Rachel Maddow failing to thoroughly cover Bob Woodward and whether or not he actually, truly felt threatened when he said how mean Sperling was to him was the biggest problem the nation faces.
Out here in flyover country, we're still digging out of two massive snowstorms that hit within five days and actually caused death and destruction.
At the same time, these storms are being credited with saving the winter wheat crop (which, if you eat, you might find newsworthy), and perhaps ended a very severe and long drought if it is followed by normal spring rains.
So Bob? Instead of complaining how "disconnected" Rachel Maddow is, why not pull your head out of the Beltway and look around at the rest of the country.
Fox News, clearly watched only by people in the Beltway. (Reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, sorely lacking in online commenters.)
ReplyDeleteRight. Let's let Fox News set the agenda for ALL news. If they are covering it, then everybody else has to cover it too. And if they are not covering the stories Fox covers, then they are obviously taking a "dive."
DeleteWhile I cannot or would not pretend to comment on the critical thinking skills of all "online commenters," yours seem to be sorely lacking.
"(Reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, sorely lacking in online commenters.)"
DeleteLook who's talking.
There once was a time when Bob Somerby used to point out how much time the media wasted on chasing silly stories like "Was or wasn't this Beltway, celebrity journalist threatened?"
ReplyDeleteNow he's reached the point where he actually says this ridiculous story isn't being covered enough.
One could get the impression that Bob cares about this, or really any, story only to the extent it can be used to advance his favorite narrative against his handful of favorite targets.
Can't wait for another several weeks of posts about how Maureen Dowd is also in the tank because she hasn't picked up on the critical Bob Woodward story. And of course, Gail Collins. Are Kit Seelye and Ceci Connelly still around? Throw them into the tank as well. And don't forget E.J. Dionne and Charles Blow.
Bob Woodward alleges that he was bullied by the White House. (Poor him.) He said that one Obama aide "yelled at me for about a half hour" and in an email delivered a veiled threat....
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of "man" would let another man yell at him for thirty minutes?
If some ahole's going to yell at me for a half-hour, he'd better be holding a gun on me.
Whoever replaces Rachel isn't going to name names, either. It's the code, and they all follow it. TDH needs to grow up. If he had a gig on MSNBC, he would do the same thing, because if he didn't he wouldn't keep the gig for long.
ReplyDeleteHis claim that Maddow "invents" things said by the Beltway Media needs more than his assertion. As far as I've ever seen, anytime she has tried to shoot down something she says was said in the Beltway Media, someone actually said those things. They have been reported in the news or, more likely, the left-leaning blogging world or online news vehicles. Before TDH was merely complaining that she wouldn't name names, using "the Beltway Media" as a cover for her ambition. Now we see it escalated to "invention" with not a single example to back it up. That's a pretty serious charge. Whenever it's made, the examples should be stated right then and there, not in a follow up post the next day.
I would still prefer to see right wing narratives attacked even if the culprit is "the Beltway media" and not "Bob Woodward" or "Maureen Dowd." Better still if it's by someone with the highest ratings on the channel, and someone who gets invited onto Letterman even if it means she further nices up her critique for that non-political medium. What matters is whether new messages not normally heard are finally getting into circulation. Whether the messenger is someone I can look up to and consider someone to follow is beside the point. We aren't in high school anymore. Rumsfeld was right about that (even if it legitimately applies to us more than it did to him): you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.
I agree, although I will point out again that even Somerby notes that "Big Ed" covered the Woodward kerfuffle in his opening segment. So his complaint isn't that MSNBC didn't cover it at all. It's that it didn't cover it enough to suit him.
DeleteAs for preferring to see right wing narratives attacked, I couldn't agree more. Which leads us to remember where Somerby was in 2010 when all sorts of vile things were spoken and written at Obama, with its birther nonsense, the "African lion/lyin' African" and even some doofus packing a gun to the site of a presidential address while holding a sign about the "blood of tyrants."
What did Somerby do? He was busy attacking anyone who dared suggest that at least some of this hatred was motivated by racism. After all, the right wing said mean things about Clinton, Gore and Kerry, too. So what ever they said about Obama couldn't possibly be racist.
While I tend to trust Bob's account of how bad Maddow's show was, the posters here make the valid point that it's a dumb story in the first place. It's all based, pretty clearly, on Woodward's desperate attempt to move his latest book. Why should Rachel give up valuable time promoting herself and give it to Woodward's self advertisement? Bob Woodward has been a joke for a long time, and while much of the liberal press and The Daily Show have pointed out what a fraud he is, MSNBC looks away. Too many friends at the Post? Still in awe of "All The President's Men?" At any rate, the time to make Woodward regret was his shielding of Scooter Libby, and then it was The Howler who held it's fire.
ReplyDeleteWhile I tend to trust Bob's account of how bad Maddow's show was, the posters here make the valid point that it's a dumb story in the first place. It's all based, pretty clearly, on Woodward's desperate attempt to move his latest book. Why should Rachel give up valuable time promoting herself and give it to Woodward's self advertisement? Bob Woodward has been a joke for a long time, and while much of the liberal press and The Daily Show have pointed out what a fraud he is, MSNBC looks away. Too many friends at the Post? Still in awe of "All The President's Men?" At any rate, the time to make Woodward regret was his shielding of Scooter Libby, and then it was The Howler who held it's fire.
ReplyDeleteOh, lordy yes, Greg. The job Somerby attempted to do on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson in defense of Bush's "16 words" was, at least for me, TDH's "jump the shark" moment.
DeleteCurious though. Since Bob once thought that since Bush never said "Nigeria" that proves he wasn't lying, then why doesn't he buy Sargent's defense of Woodward? After all, Woodward never used the word "threat" or any derivative.
Maddow is doing an "ask me anything" segment on Reddit in about a week. Maybe we can ask her why she never names names or why she edits so much footage.
ReplyDeleteIt could be as simple as the script-reading talking heads are afraid of a powerful reporter.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, challenging Bob Woodward would require , research and fact-checking, which take work.
It's much easier to be handed a bunch of quips whipped up by what are essentially joke-writers, and read them to a camera.
How much "fact-checking" does it take to read the e-mails that the White House released as soon as Woodward's pitiful fable hit Politico? Go check out the takedown Axelrod did on Woodward on "Morning Joe," which is also an MSNBC program.
DeleteYou know we can speculate until the cows come home on the reasons every MSNBC host didn't shout this story from the rooftops, but I certainly think that fear of work and Woodward were among them.
oops, should read: "I certainly think that fear of work and Woodward were NOT among them."
DeleteBob Woodward is a serial liar, just ask Mrs. Casey. Now, he's lies about telling a lie.
ReplyDeleteThe plain fact that Woodward used to be a Naval Intelligent officer speaks volumes to me that he is fronting for the CIA. Lest my tin foil hat makes me look fat, let me also say that among some people, this is a known fact. I am not the only one who is now doomed to look askance at everything Woodward says. Could he have been on assignment to sow some disinformation or discord on purpose?
ReplyDeleteWell, at least the movie comes a little bit clean: Redford cops to being a Republican.
ReplyDeleteBob once again you prove that your petty resentments of those who've been successful while you continue to write for a blog, has poisoned you. You're like John McCain, bitter that you didn't get the big job so all you can do is rail against those that did.
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