THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2016
Creeping press culture defined: Our political culture has been melting for at least twenty-four years.
Increasingly, facts and logic have ceased to exist. Increasingly, our world has become narrative—narrative all the way down.
The other team got its crazy orgs first. Our team is now catching up—and yes, we get conned and misled by our team's overpaid corporate players, just as folk on the other team have long been conned and misled.
Discernment isn't in great supply. Most likely, this was always the case. We never needed the kind of discernment that would let us identify a Trump—or some of the con men who are now part of our side.
We never needed those powers of discernment. Before Imus, before Howard Stern, before Rush, before even Keith, certain types of hustlers simply weren't allowed on the air.
Similarly, people like Trump weren't allowed to be candidates. For better or worse, elite gatekeepers were in charge of the press corps and the political parties. Certain types of discernment weren't required at that point in time.
You had to go seeking the crazy and false. Today, the crazy and false is 24/7. It's a large corporate enterprise.
Just now, we liberals may be starting to realize that we can be crazy and unwise too. Last week, it was Trump's former butler who wanted Obama and Clinton hung. This week, it's one of our own Sanders supporters who wants the same for that woman in Nevada.
We can be crazy and unwise too! Our tribe has been slow to understand that. That said:
Of all the fake, faux corporate press behavior which now defines our failing culture, the weirdness of the Morning Joe program sits near the top of the list.
Below, we'll link you to yesterday morning's twenty-minute opening segment. We'll suggest that you jump ahead to maybe 7:45 and watch to the end of the segment.
The behavior of this show's co-hosts has seemed puzzlingly fake and faux for a good long while. Yesterday, they adopted as their text the claim that the Democratic nomination was "rigged" right from the start.
Go to minute eight and start watching. You'll see Joe say the word "rigged" again and again and again and again. You'll see Mika repetitively breaking in with her patented three-word bursts of agreement.
As always, it's Mika who makes this program so completely strange. She simply isn't a good enough actor to play the role she's been assigned on this particular TV show. Beyond that, no one has ever been as dumb as the character she's been assigned to play. For these reasons, you'll be looking at one of the most obvious fakes the corporate cable world has devised, at least to date.
Rachel Maddow is also a clown, but we liberals have shown that we simply can't see that. With Joe and Mika—but especially with Mika—you will likely be able to see what we're talking about.
Mika strikes us as the ultimate faux. Her bad performance suggests that there must be a deal, some sort of arrangement, behind the scenes at this bizarre TV show. But then, did you watch Hardball during the years when Chris Matthews was working for Jack Welch, the man who made him sp rich?
Can anybody really believe that that TV show was run in good faith? (Granted, we liberals all know that this topic simply cannot be discussed.)
Whatever the arrangement at Morning Joe may be, Mika doesn't have the skills to play the part she's been assigned. For that reason:
Click here, advance to 7:45. Permit yourself to gaze in the face of our prevailing culture.
I'm glad I *didn't* skip ahead to 7:45.
ReplyDeleteWould've missed the lovely, unrebutted "throwing chairs and making death threats" reference.
Both plural. Both bullshit.
[Due credit to Somerby for not falsely naming that singular, ugly event a "death threat."]
Is the democratic Party primary process "rigged?"
ReplyDeleteIf by "rigged" you mean "set up to give insiders more decision making power than actual voters" then yes, it transparently is rigged.
There also appear to have been some "procedural anomalies," let us say. But leaving those aside, in the main, if by "rigged" you mean "peoples' votes are being tampered with," then no, the system isn't rigged.
When I say it's rigged, I mean the former. It's real fucking rigged.
The claims of the Sanders campaign about the Nevada convention have been vetted by several sources now, including TPM and Politifact. The Sanders people are making incorrect statements about the procedures that occurred at the convention and about their own violence.
ReplyDeleteYou can quibble over whether chairs were overturned or thrown, but claiming nothing happened with chairs because there are no videos won't work because there are a variety of eyewitness accounts from all sides about what happened at the end of the convention.
There is consensus outside the Sanders true-believer camp that the convention was not rigged.
For example, the voice votes were not close, nor were they won by Sanders simply because their delegates yelled louder. There were fewer Sanders delegates voting so they could not have won the voice vote, even with a recount. It is not unusual for someone running a meeting (or a convention) to make a decision and move the agenda along on considerations like that one. But the Sanders people don't seem to have sufficient experience with the process to understand that and the Sanders staffers present didn't explain it to them but instead stoked their outrage. There are numerous instances where Sanders people do not understand what was happening at the convention, especially what the votes were about (ratifying temporary rules to make them permanent as opposed to changing the rules). This is not surprising given the come-lately status of the younger Sanders supporters, an ignorance that Sanders staff seems to have exploited (based on comments of some observers). There seemed to be a split between the Sanders delegates who understood what was happening and those who did not.
The death threats were made via telephone to the woman who chaired the conference, and to her coworkers at the Tavern where she is employed. They are explicit and ugly and there is no doubt that they are threats.
One woman making such a threat to the tavern was put on the phone with a police officer who was drinking there. He told her she was breaking the law by making such a threat and she claimed she was exercising her 1st Amendment rights (free speech doesn't extend to threatening people like that). This illustrates the cluelessness and the tactics of the Sanders supporters. Pretending the "threats" were just about the upended chairs is disingenuous.
Pretending it is OK to refer to the actions of individuals as "the tactics of the Sanders supporters" is why most of us will NOT support Hillary Clinton should she become the nominee. It's gone so far more of us will be casting votes for Trump, not just sitting this one out.
DeleteThe Sanders delegates held a meeting before the convention at which they discussed tactics for taking over the convention. Before the convention they filed a lawsuit to remove the rule permitting removal of disruptive delegates. You can't do that and then insist the resulting turmoil was attributable to a few individuals not the campaign. Plus Sanders staff were seen egging on their delegates, not trying to calm them down. Sanders incited this.
DeleteThe weakest campaign of all resorts to criticizing not positions or subjects of merit but the actions of random supporters. This has been the Clinton fall back while not answering the key intellectual reason for Sanders in the first place.
DeleteThe "key intellectual reason for Sanders" is that he is not Clinton.
DeleteUnfortunately, the decades long slander and smear campaign against the Clintons that TDH has been documenting here has had its desired effect. A lot of people have been brainwashed. \ Any idiot who vows to vote for Trump over Clinton is not talking about any phony "intellectual reason for Sanders in the first place" and doesn't really care about progressive policy. It's ludicrous. It is pure objectively inexplicable vile hatred of all things Clinton. CDS in all it's irrational glory.
Sanders could and would never have gone this far running against another Democratic candidate. That's why the coward chose not to primary Obama last time.
He's had a free ride this entire campaign. The press has not highlighted his dubious associations in the past. And the Clinton campaign has not responded in kind to his repeated personal attacks on her integrity.
"You can quibble over" whether inflammatory claims were true.
DeleteThey weren't.
Go f^(% yourself.
NPR: "Our reporting was misleading."
DeleteVideo evidence: contradicts claims.
Internet poster: "quibbles"
2nd Internet poster: "The guy defending himself from this bullshit is a coward getting a free ride."
US electorate:
Delete"We view ALL these candidates unfavorably. VERY unfavorably.
"Well, except for the socialist who's been criticized constantly by liberals, ignored and dismissed by the press, called a budget fantasist by Paul Krugman, bashed incessantly as running a sexist, race-based campaign by Clinton surrogates who ignore and erase his huge support among women and people of color under forty...
"Him, we actually quite like. He's saying a lot of stuff we agree with about campaign finance, about debt, about the middle class, about military involvements we oppose. We'd really LIKE to vote for him."
Internet poster: "The Clinton camp has gone easy on him. He's damaging Clinton. No one has any valid reason for supporting him."
I always thought that not only was McGovern not leftist enough in '72, but obviously our country has gotten so much more socialist since then.
DeleteActually, by that point in time, there were more Sanders supporters there. That is precisely why they were clamoring for a recount of the delegates in the room. Too bad you think that if an organization puts the word "check" or "fact" in their title whatever they say is true. Too bad, also, that you completely discount the statements of Sanders supporters who were actually there.
DeleteYeah, the idea that Mika and Joe are suddenly supporters of Bernie Sanders, the Socialist, and his socialist revolution, is a bit rich. And you had Joe there complaining about the very notion of superdelegates - well, okay, but was he complaining about them when the party first created them? Somehow I doubt it. When Sanders first started his run, was Mika insistent like she is right now that he be treated seriously? Again, I doubt it. No one treated him seriously at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteAnd the way not just Mika and Joe but all three of their panelists are on board with the "rigged" theme and that Sanders is not being taken seriously and it's a "Clinton coronation" - ridiculous. Obviously instructions are coming down from on high at msnbc.
Like any of the talking heads on that show give a shit about universal healthcare, free college, minimum wage, or anything else on Sanders' platform. To think so is ludicrous. They keep praising his "movement" as if they are a part of it. Girl, please.
Don't you just love it.
DeleteHardcore rightwing republican Joe Scarborough, representing the Florida panhandle where the KKK still lives, is concerned about the fairness of the Democratic Party nomination process. Yeah, right.
I don't know what country you live in Joe, but the country I live in, a twice elected black Democratic President can't even get his Supreme Court nominee put to a vote. Let's here you rant and rave about that.
...Joe Scarborough, representing the Florida panhandle where the KKK still lives...
DeleteGuilt by Association used to be denounced by liberals as McCarthyism.
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DeleteDinC - I don't think mm was trying to imply that Joe and the KKK were associated. I think the point was more to the idea that there are more important issues (like the presence of the KKK) that Joe should be more knowledgeable about than the Democratic Party nomination rules. Where is the outrage?
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ReplyDeleteMorning Joe is a sick mother and her rebellious child act, a son who says the wrong things but mom corrects but loves and protects..sick sick sick..Regis and Cathy. I saw the wheels turning for MSNBC who has gone all narrative now.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what kind of drugs and alcohol Willie Geist takes. A lot for sure. You can see by the bags under the eyes.
ReplyDeleteProbably booze, pot and pills. Maybe coke.
DeleteSounds like what people who write blog comments at 3:02 AM take.
DeleteThe U.S. Constitution provides for an Electoral College and is therefore "rigged" to protect itself from the occasional demagogue fomenting excessive democracy.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite segments of "Morning Joe" are those when foreign policy heavyweight Zbigniew Brzezinski sits across the desk from Mika. He has to be wondering: "Ees theese birtbrain rally my daughter?"
Of course the Democratic nomination is rigged - that's what the superdelegates are for. They were deliberately designed to suppress crazy "popular" candidates like McGovern, and get back some of the decision-making ability that the party functionaries had before primaries became so common.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem that Sanders has had to overcome is simply his lack of name familiarity, not to mention the fact that he wasn't even a Democrat. But since he didn't come really close to winning the primaries the rigging has not really come into play.
Obama was actually not a complete outsider like Sanders - he was always a Democrat and he came up through the Chicago machine.
Obama did not come up through "the Chicago machine." He ran against the black machine candidate, Bobby Rush, and lost badly. Obama was the outsider candidate in Illinois. He wasn't even expected to win the Democratic primary for the Senate seat until his main opponent dropped out because of a scandal. Then his Republican opponent was hit with a sex scandal. Obama squeezed in through the side door.
DeleteFWIW i don't think Sanders would get many votes as an independent. This is going to be a most negative campaign. Republicans will vote for Trump because they're convinced that President Hillary would be the end of the world. Dems will vote for Hillary because they're convinced that President Donald would be the end of the world. Not many voters will for a 3rd party candidate, when the End Of The World is at stake.
ReplyDeleteMore voters think of themselves as Independent all the time. That's the trend.
DeleteParty membership for the GOP and Dems is going in the opposite direction.
This election isn't going to change that trend, friend. Quite the contrary.
IMO, the independent voters are the only ones who get that EITHER Trump or Hillary could clearly doom the world.
Independent voters should be pushing hard, every year, not just election years, to change the voting rules that make it hard for third party candidates to win. Because independent voters do not do that, every four years I have to listen to the complaining about how there are no good candidates and they are going to sit out the election. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.
Delete