MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2023
Jon Stewart murders sleep: An earlier war—the so-called Great War—was fought from within the trenches.
Lucky for us, none of us were there. For one poet's recollection, you can just click here.
By way of contrast, the dangerous war we're currently fighting is being fought from within the silos. It's going to be very hard to find a route of escape.
When did we the American people officially enter the silos? Construction had been underway for some time, but the crowning blow may have come when Jon Stewart murdered sleep.
You may recall Stewart's attack. In fairness, it seemed like a good idea at the time—but according to the leading authority on the topic, here's how the well-intentioned comedian destroyed the existing regime:
Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on Crossfire
On October 15, 2004, the American comedian Jon Stewart appeared on CNN's Crossfire, hosted by the media commentators Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. The Daily Show, a satirical talk show hosted by Stewart, had released America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction earlier that year; in theory, Stewart's appearance on Crossfire, a show that featured debate between left- and right-wing personalities, was intended to boost sales of the book.
Instead, Stewart heavily criticized Crossfire on air; as he saw it, the show lacked nuance and was instead an outlet for partisan hackery. Both hosts pushed back on Stewart's criticisms, but Carlson in particular traded more personal blows with him, with the two insulting each other on air while Begala attempted to steer the show back on track. After the segment, Stewart went backstage with Begala to continue the conversation in a calmer manner.
The tape and transcript of the segment broke into wide circulation, impacting all three men involved. Three months after the appearance, Crossfire was cancelled...
To be fair, Tucker Carlson hadn't yet emerged as the full-blown modern-day Carlson. (In June 2005, Rachel Maddow began her cable career as one of his regular sidekicks on his nightly MSNBC show.)
Tucker Carlson wasn't yet the fully deranged modern-day Tucker Carlson! Beyond that, Begala has always struck us as one of the sanest and brightest partisan pundits found on cable news air.
That said, Crossfire actually was a TV program which tended to run on "partisan hackery." Nineteen years after its demise, we'd have to say this:
Crossfire ran on the rocket fuel known as "partisan hackery." Still, that system was vastly superior to the system of "news by silo" which has emerged as the successor to the "partisan shoutfest" model.
(Full disclosure! We ourselves made one appearance on Crossfire, in June 2003. Robert Novak was the conservative host. Begala fought on our side.)
Back in the day, Crossfire was a nightly, high-profile example of the partisan shoutfest model. That model dated all the way back to the invention of modern TV punditry, including the early shoutfests on PBS and the Point Counterpoint segments on 60 Minutes which were later satirized on Saturday Night Live.
TV punditry had always worked from the partisan shoutfest model. On October 15, 2004, Stewart came along and robbed us of this cultural gift.
Today we're engaged in a great civil war, a war which is being fought from within giant partisan silos. The sheer stupidity which has resulted dwarfs the flaws of the unmistakable partisan hackery concerning which Stewart complained.
Was Stewart merely a stalking-horse sent to enable Trump's later campaigns? We know of no reason to think so.
But as it turns out, the hackish system Stewart destroyed was vastly superior to the uber-hackish system with which it has now been replaced.
Today, the downsides of this silo war can be seen all around us. Indeed, the downsides of living life inside one of these silos are routinely vast.
All this week, we'll consider this vastly dangerous state of affairs. And yes, the voices which emerge from our own blue silo can be unhelpfully hackish too.
Stewart destroyed an ancient regime—murdered a type of sleep. Erection of our modern-day partisan silos proceeded directly from there.
This silo war is very big business. Given the way our brains tend to work, can silos be survived?
Tomorrow: It can get this bad
Liz Skurnick's mother, Blanche (age 75), has fronto-temporal dementia. If David in C does not know that, he knows nothing at all about her life.
ReplyDeleteThat's almost correct, @10:44. Mu cousin Blanchehad that disease, but she passed away a few years ago. And, you did get English Lit correct.
DeleteHowever, if you're the person who think's she calls herself "Liz", you could see that's wrong via google. Enter "Liz Skurnick" and you get "Lizzie Skurnick."
If you really do know Lizzie, can you name her siblings and her aunts and uncles?
Here’s Liz’s website:
Deletehttps://www.lizzieskurnick.com/
Hannity and Colmes is another show that once featured a liberal and a conservative. FoxNews replaced it with Hannity alone. Apparently conservatives also do not want to hear both sides.
ReplyDeleteYou could have told that by watching Hannity & Colmes. No one on our side ever considered Colmes to be one of us.
DeleteCNN was not a liberal show at the time Tucker Carlson, Mary Matalin, Liz Cheney, Newt Gingrich appeared on Crossfire. So your word "also" is misplaced.
DeleteFox obviously got tired of receiving irate viewer letters asking why Colmes was being allowed to ruin Hannity's show.
Stewart went on Crossfire in order to lecture the hosts on the tone they set for the country and then called Carlson the d-word.
DeleteClassic.
What’s the D word?
DeleteDandy.
DeleteStewart went on Crossfire in order to lecture the hosts on the tone they set for the country ...
DeleteSez who?
Stewart.
Deletehttps://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/06/12/entertainment/jon-stewart-crossfire/index.html
What’s wrong with dandy?
DeleteDoes it mean he's like Oscar Wilde?
DeleteNo, it means it starts with “d”.
DeleteWilde was a dandy.
DeleteBeau Brummel was a Dandy, so was Doc Holliday. It doesn’t mean gay. It means fashionably dressed. Wilde was also gay and went to jail for it. He was a martyr to small minds like Cecelia’s. The left is trying to prevent returning to the bad old days
DeleteYankee Doodle was a dandy, too. And he wasn’t gay, either. He was handsy with girls.
DeleteAnonymouse 5:03am, I wouldn’t put anyone in jail for their sexuality and I wouldn’t support a statute against intentionally misgendering someone.
DeleteThere are all sorts of laws and institutional dictates that I don’t support, though I would do my best to obey them.
Any Tom, dick, or Harry can be a dandy.
DeleteSomerby returns to Wilfred Owen as if he were the only one to ever write about WWI. Most kids who are assigned books and poems in high school eventually read beyond what they were assigned in class. Not Somerby, apparently.
ReplyDeleteanon 10:48 - tdh introduces a link to a poem by Wilfred Owens with the words "Fro one poet's recollection" and you use this as an excuse to attack him because this evidences that TDH returning to the poet (I'm not aware of him ever citing him before, but maybe he did) is evidence that he thinks Owen "was the only one ever to write about WWI." Have you no shame?
DeleteAt least Somerby is now crediting the folks he quotes. He has quoted Owen regularly for years, to the point that he seems to know no other anti-war poets or writers. WWI was so horrific that there were many authors writing anti-war novels and poems. Somerby is lazy when he hauls out Owen again, which is demeaning to the literary outrage that arose following WWI. American writers in exile served as ambulance drivers (Hemingway, e.e. Cummings) and later wrote important novels (such as The Enormous Room) and All's Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque) was influential in the formation of an anti-war movement. These literary works helped support a veterans movement trying to obtain redress for the injured soldiers returning without health care or pensions (see the US Bonus March).
DeleteSomerby's misuse of this work for his own selfish purposes is not just misplaced but offensive given the context. I have been visiting Europe this week and there is a monument in every small town to the war dead who were lost in WWI. Memories are strong here because they gave the most.
Why does Somerby mention Owen and the WWI dead (who are not forgotten among the families of those who DID fight in those trenches)? It is to forward his stupid, unworkable analogy to living in silos -- see below for a description of the stupidity of that image. Somerby insults us by revealing quite clearly that he doesn't give a damn about WWI war dead or about anyone else who is no longer alive. And that makes him a huge asshole.
It astonishes me that you would try to defend him on this, but maybe you are more ignorant than he is, and thus equally willing to trample on things that others hold sacred.
The coins in the moat at the Tower of London's Traitor's Gate are donated to a veteran's association. Recall that Somerby escaped the draft by teaching in Baltimore's inner city schools. No wonder he doesn't appreciate the sacrifice of WWI soldiers. Wilfred Owen was himself killed in WWI at age 25, right before the armistice.
Somerby is the ass in this situation.
“Somerby insults us by revealing quite clearly that he doesn't give a damn about WWI war dead or about anyone else who is no longer alive. And that makes him a huge asshole.”
DeleteYou have to have a heart of stone not to guffaw at this stuff. (h/t Oscar Wilde)
Teaching is better than killing. Somerby made the right choice.
DeleteOur war against Vietnam (and Laos, and Cambodia) was criminally insane. We’ve now begged Vietnam to accept us as a major partner.
1:26,
DeleteCouldn't help notice you referencing the US Bonus March for your own selfish purposes. Are you so lazy as to think this was the only WWI veterans' march?
Clearly you don't appreciate the sacrifice of WWI soldiers.
Hector, did you notice that today is the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Trade Towers?
DeleteSomerby has no business USING a serious poem about the sacrifices of war (written by a poet who subsequently died in that same war) to advance his own nonsensical threat of Civil War 2.0, a right wing ploy to manipulate those who take war seriously and not as a chance to dress up and play act at destruction. It is offensive to engage in terrorist threats on the day when Muslim extremists decided to kill innocent Americans.
Somerby has no respect.
The First World War stands out in history as horrible and unnecessary.
DeleteComparing WWI (which was horrible and unnecessary) to Civil War 2.0 in the US is a veiled threat by armed right wingers against liberals. The use of political violence by the right wing is well documented and unacceptable in a free nation like ours. That Somerby participates in threatening the left on this of all days (when the Trade Towers were bombed in a horrible and unnecessary way) is beyond the pale, too awful for polite discourse. I cannot believe he thought it was OK to behave this way today.
Delete9/11 is personal to me because I was living in NYC when it happened. I saw the aftermath and the impact on those living, the heroic rescue efforts amidst the unimaginable destruction -- for no good reason. Somerby callously says that no one from WWI is still alive, as if their relatives were not and the memories fresh in Europe and among American veterans. This is not festishizing war -- it is grieving still. My own loss was minor -- I lost my job and was traumatized by the images of the towers falling, over and over and over, people leaping from windows. I shared the grief of my friends and neighbors even though I knew no one who had died personally. I went to donate blood but they would not accept it because THERE WERE NO INJURED SURVIVORS WHO NEEDED IT.
Somerby is less than a human being today. I have no idea what he thinks his excuse may be, but this is not how you treat your readers at a blog. This is how you behave when you are less than worm.
Anonymouse 4:05pm, read the person writing as Somerby's Double-speaking SockpuppetSeptember 11, 2023 at 11:43 AM.
DeleteSDS… criticizes Somerby’s use of the term siloed” because she finds it inaccurate as to our country’s political climate which she says is not comparable to the business culture dynamics of departmental hoarding of information that occurs despite the overall company recognition and agreement as to a common goal.
On the contrary, SDS discerns no common bond between Americans of differing political stripes. She sees any notion as to that as a stealth push toward ideological capitulation to conservative enemies via Bothsiderism.
SDS is voicing the things that anonymices daily state here as to their political contrarians who are described as enemies of democracy.
It’s not disrespect for Somerby to bemoan that outlook on ANY
day. ESPECIALLY today. It is the opposite of disrespect. It’s concern expressed by a man who loves his country and who doesn’t see half the population as the enemy
And for that heresy, you’re here writing utter crap day by day.
4:05,
DeleteFiendish. That's the only word that describes Somerby.
"You have to have a heart of stone not to guffaw at this stuff. (h/t Oscar Wilde)"
DeleteIf Cecelia is not Somerby's sockpuppet, she is clearly his soul mate. Personally, I think she is also writing as Hector. There is a thread of missing empathy connecting all of their writing.
That lack of empathy is what repels many liberals, why we cannot bridge the gulf (or silo, as Somerby insists it must be called). I could never vote for anyone who would not support school lunches or covid measures or any of the many efforts to help our citizens live better lives. Cecelia makes me sick because behind her assumed name is a troll with the dark triad of personality disorders (sociopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism), yes, just like Trump. I cannot and will not ally myself with mentally ill people who enjoy hurting others. That is the biggest dealbreaker for me with Republicans. And no, I cannot then consider them "good people" or deserving of respect, or worthy of holding power.
Somerby is just as bad. If he were not trying to fool people into thinking someone like him is liberal, I would be out of here, but he wants to bothsiderist this so-called divide by portraying the left as just as bad as the right. And that is a huge lie. How do I know? I know a hell of a lot of real liberals -- what they are like, what they say and do, how they vote.
Cecelia suggests that Oscar Wilde might stand beside her ugly remark. Here is some info about Wilde:
Delete"But although Wilde is most often remembered as an aristocratic dandy (a “snob to the marrow of his being,” according to Shaw), the politics that he espoused were indeed a form of socialism — namely, libertarian socialism."
That makes him one of us, a man who would no doubt object strongly to the way Cecelia is characterizing his words. And look how the little dear is now using Somerby's bad habit of stealing other people's expressions and misrepresenting them to serve her own interests.
Anonymouse 4:45pm, you’re not a real liberal. You’re a religious fanatic.
Deleteanon 4:54, TDH is a "liberal" for what it's worth. Cecelia seems to be smart and has a sense of humor. You seem to have the insight of clam, no offense intended.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:58pm, nothing I said suggests that Oscar Wilde would give any of this the time of day. Your pose that a rose by any other name would stink, would be the picture of self-serving if it wasn’t so abjectly stupid.
DeleteAC/MA, you seem to be sentient.
DeleteNo offense intended? Now you're the one joking.
DeleteCecelia, Oscar Wilde is ling dead. Leave him alone and stop putting words in his mouth that he would surely object to, given his real life politics.
DeleteAnonymouse4:59, genius, I put Wilde’s well-known rhetorical device in my mouth. That’s why I did the h/t.
DeleteWhat part of leave him alone do you not understand?
DeleteRe: Cecelia's sense of humor.
DeleteRemember when the Right responded to BLM with "All Lives Matter" to own the libs, and refugees flocked to our Southern border because they thought the Right was serious?
Now THAT was funny!
Anonymouse 6:41am, you leave Wilde alone. I’ll reference him whenever I see it as being relevant. Just as Somerby (on HIS blog) frequently references a poet/poem that is particularly meaningful to him.
DeleteI have no issue with you disagreeing with the context of such references, despite your interpretations being attenuated and your arguments ironically self-serving.
Have at it.
The part I don’t understand about you’re telling me to leave Wilde alone, is your expectation that anyone here would take you or your commands seriously.
John Stewart had nothing to do with Carlson leaving or Crossfire being cancelled. The show had a long history with various hosts cycling in and out of the show before Carlson arrived, and it had low ratings and a tenuous existence under a variety of political figures (including Lynne Cheney). The demise is probably due to the formation of Fox News and MSNBC, which attracted its main talent.
ReplyDeleteSomerby's fatuous construct that Stewart killed off the show by calling them a bunch of hacks, is just Somerby's fantasy. Note that Stewart also went off on Rachel Maddow for saying she wanted to do comedy, and Stewart's admonition to stay in her own lane, didn't slow her down one bit.
No one took John Stewart that seriously then, and no one does now, which is why his own career is struggling. And this is not any kind of media criticism, given that Somerby did no background research before connecting Stewart to an event he in no wa;y caused or even affected.
Tucker Carlson says he voluntarily left to join MSNBC, but I suspect he has always been a nutcase and difficult to control and have little doubt he was fired. But they had Pat Buchanan on during the shows early years, so many they just have no qualms about giving right wing nuts a platform to stoke controversy.
It is that controversy that Somerby should be decrying. When the media puts nuts on air to increase ratings, they set us all up for this current situation, including Trump. Stewart is not a nut, wasn't on the show, and has done his best to defuse and unwind right-wing craziness. So Stewart didn't give us Trump or help set up Fox News.
Somerby has yet to focus on how Fox has turned the right into a grotesque caricature of conservatism and ruined two-party politics by poisoning people's minds on the right. Hint: John Stewart was not involved.
anon 11:12, he focuses on that plenty. (By the way, did you notice he called Carlson "deranged?") The problem you and others here find anything he says that goes off script as some type of heresy.
DeleteAC/MA, you really need to stop using pejorative terms like "heresy" and "off script" to describe the comments on this blog. For the most part I see intelligent and informed arguments made with supporting evidence explaining why they think what Bob wrote is wrong.
DeleteThat's funny. For the most part, I see batshit arguments, made without any relevant evidence at all, explaining why what Bob wrote is wrong.
DeleteIf you think the comments at this blog are batshit, you may be reading the wrong blog.
DeleteTo some, “batshit” is high praise.
DeleteOther bats?
DeleteYeah Dogface, not grown up, rational counter arguments….. like say…… “Trump Trump Trump Jail Trump!”
DeleteSomerby would like to name-drop Stewart as a fellow-comedian buddy, but he is afraid because Stewart would disavow the connection without a moment's hesitation, faster than you can say Lizzie Skurnick.
ReplyDeleteSomerby loves his new silo image, but what is a silo?
ReplyDeleteIt is a defense system, militarily speaking. We have a chain of silos that house the Minuteman missiles that are our deterrent to nuclear war with the Soviet Union (now Russia). That makes them a good thing, that keeps us safe from a virulent unhinged enemy.
It is also a place where grain or other crops are stored after harvesting, for future use to feed cattle. This is a good thing too. It keeps animals and people alive during winter or prevents waste.
Now there is a new definition being used, the one Somerby is clearly promoting (without actually defining it at any point). This refers to a business situation in which employees of the same company refuse to share information or knowledge, while perhaps working on the same project without knowing it, wasting effort via redundancy of effort. But there are problems with this analogy too.
First, there is no perception that the right and the left are working toward a common, shared or even redundant goal in their efforts. They are almost entirely at cross-purposes. Given the way the red and blue states are separated, there is little perception of being part of the same America either. That preceded being "siloed" as Somerby uses the term.
Second, it is considered a bad thing to be so isolated, not something that makes us safer or better as a nation. Yet, as Somerby points out, the right and left do consider their distinct approaches (not particularly redundant) to be better, a good approach, the right way to behave or act for the betterment of our country. Both sides also feel that opposing the other is best for our country's needs. Both sides recognize the other side is an enemy, not an ally. I consider this to be an accurate perception. Somerby disagrees. That is part of his role as bothsiderist.
Not every business agrees that assigning two teams to pursue the same goal is a bad idea. In technology companies, setting two teams going often results in better ideas and solutions to technical problems. The key is that the goal is a problem that has not been previously solved, and thus the work is not truly wasted effort but a way to solve a problem faster, using talent more effectively than committing to a single approach without knowing which approach is right. I dislike this analogy to the right wing, because I don't see there being much talent over there, too much repetition of past failed approaches, and too many limitations on what can and cannot be done on the right, combined with active sabotage of the other team -- which is not part of business siloing at all. Further, at some point all workers know the designs will be merged and knowledge shared. That is not any part of today's separation. There is no good will whatsoever and an eliminationist attitude on the right toward the left (but not vice versa). The left has accepted and worked with never-Trump defectors, for example.
So, Somerby's recent use of the term silo (never clearly explained) doesn't work and obscures the situation via misdirection. It leaves Somerby sounding like he is making up his own concepts and definitions again (a symptom of mental illness). The right wing does this a lot, often to co-opt and mislead, so Somerby is behaving more like a right winger than a liberal as he does this.
I see this as a way to white-wash and give the right some sort of restart that they do not deserve and will not make good use of. Adopting political doublespeak is very 1984, but it too is not a good thing and will not help any of us struggling in this political climate. It does increase my suspicion that Somerby is not operating above-board, especially given that the right is the beneficiary and he is slagging the left as usual when he brings up this meme.
Your comment is easy to understand because you arranged it in clear paragraphs.
DeleteIt isn't the paragraphs that make something clear.
DeleteAnybody with normal reading comprehension skills knows what Somerby means by the mundane term "silos" - conservatives listen only to conservatives, liberals listen only to liberals.
DeleteAnd I listen only to silos. Batshit silos.
DeleteDogface, that is not what silo means to anyone. Try using google and you will nowhere find the definition you quote Somerby as giving. Yes, Somerby does feel this way about the right and left, but that is NOT what a silo is or what the word means, according to any available definition. That's why Somerby is making up his own meanings to words, because silo doesn't mean that. Nor is it true.
DeleteConservatives listen only to conservatives and fruitcakes (like Q and Alex Jones). Liberals do not listen to conservatives, but unlike conservatives, liberals listen to a wide variety of sources, including experts of various types, each other, foreign sources, historians economists and social scientists, an occasional politician, activists and scietists, and so on -- none of whom are listened to by conservatives. That's why Somerby's talk about silos is complete nonsense.
There is no requirement to accept Somerby's misdefinition any more than any of us are required to accept his disinformation, today misreporting why Crossfire was canceled and Tucker left CNN.
The silo analogy makes perfect sense to me. .
DeleteMe too.
DeleteGood, then you two can talk to each other (or yourself, if there is only one of you plus a puppet).
DeleteSiloing implies that both sides are isolating from each other, but the left is not as isolated from the right as the right is from the left and all other media except their own. The lack of reciprocal isolation makes Somerby’s image wrong and a libel against the much better informed left.
DeleteDogface,
DeleteCan you imagine someone finding a word to nitpick to criticize everything someone said or wrote?
Asking for those who see Bob Somerby do it on a daily basis.
We on the left are not hiding or withholding info from the right, as would occur in siloing. We want the right to know all of our facts but they refuse. How then are we to blame for what they have themselves?
DeleteI don’t think Somerby has thought this through.
John Stewart would not approve of Somerby's new incarnation since 2015. Stewart left The Daily Show because he did not want to cover the election in 2016. Instead we got Trevor Noah, who (being new to US politics) thought his job was to mock Hillary Clinton. Stewart didn't want to attack Fox 24/7 so he quit. We got Trump, Fox got worse, and now our nation is in jeopardy.
ReplyDeleteAnd we have that first class idiot Somerby saying that John Stewart killed Crossfire, which occurred because Fox and MSNBC were both hugely more successful than CNN. What kind of media critic knows so little about the media? A fraud posing as a liberal while attacking the left and promoting Trump and right wing memes.
Perhaps John Stewart can forgive himself, but I cannot. He is one person who might have helped Hillary overcome the right's disinformation, hacking, FBI corruption and Russia meddling. On the other hand, he too was making jokes to undermine her candidacy, so many there were just not enough bros able to overcome their misogyny even to save our nation.
Stewart said he didn't want to mine turds any more. Somerby not only mines turds but he sucks them.
ReplyDeleteAn example of the "intelligent and informed arguments made with supporting evidence" referenced above.
DeleteIt is a quote from John Stewart who did say that he quit the Daily Show because he was tired of mining turds over at Fox News. The point being made is that Somerby's turds are worse and he puts them in orifices where they do not belong. Whereas Stewart disliked the taste of those turds, Somerby revels in them and licks his turd-plate clean, then says "please sir, may I have some more?"
Delete"I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don't get turd lung disease.”20 Apr 2015 -- John Stewart
DeleteIt should be clear from today's Somerby essay quoting Wilfred Owen (without mentioning 9/11) in order to malign the left and promote his stupid silo meme, that Somerby loves those turds that so sickened John Stewart that he quit an extremely lucrative job with high visibility right before an election.
And you, Dogface, pretend that nothing substantive was said. That is because you are ignorant but think it is everyone else's job to make sense to you, and not your own job to figure out what things mean in this world. On the left, we would say "check your privilege" which means "why is it our job to educate you and not your job to educate yourself?"
What exactly is so reprehensible about a blogger linking to Wilfred Owen on 9-11? I know to you it's obvious, but humor me.
DeleteI explained what is reprehensible. Go back and read what I said.
DeleteI have. I still fail to see the connection.
DeleteTwo events, separated by an ocean and a century, one involving dozens of countries and years-long entrenched warfare for obscure geopolitical reasons, the other an asymmetrical attack taking place ove the course of a day for religious/ideological purposes.
Not much commonality there.
Somerby giggles over the image of erecting a silo, just like a 12 year old boy.
ReplyDeleteMinuteman silos are holes dug in the ground, lined with concrete. Not particularly phallic. But I do wonder whether Somerby pictures the blue tribe silo as blue-veined and pulsing, throbbing with manhood like his own erected structure. That's what sends farmers out to count their sheep.
DeletePeople have never lived inside silos, not even the business kind. You don't share a home with a nuclear warhead (leaking radiation). You don't shelter with grain or other crops than are fermenting and turning into silage (the smell!). Somerby has obviously never visited a farm.
ReplyDeleteThere were round stone towers where the Irish hid from the Vikings. They call them castles, not silos.
Where is the Somerby who used to encourage the shout-fests by telling reporters to ask more confrontational questions when interviewing Trump? Where is the Somerby who continually complained that female reporters were not asking tough questions of their guests on MSNBC? Just last week Somerby was complaining that the left has let Fox become a monster by not holding them accountable for their lies.
ReplyDeleteToday we are told that we did wrong by confronting the right because shout-fests accomplish nothing but division, as if the right had any desire to be united with anyone further left than MTG.
John Stewart seemingly thought he could achieve balance by mocking Hillary, since no one liked her and she was doing something girls weren't supposed to do (knocking at the door of the boys-only clubhouse). Making jokes at her expense would bring conservative and liberal male viewers (their main audience) together. If he believed, like the other Bernie bros that Hillary had a corrupt lock on the nomination and election, then he may have felt further justified in taking cheap shots at her expense. If she was a sure thing, then it didn't matter whether he stayed to defend democracy or not.
ReplyDeleteBoy did he get that one wrong! So did Somerby, who thought he could similarly denigrate Hillary without hurting Bernie's chances. That didn't work out either because he misjudged Bernie's appeal and his honesty (Bernie was working for Trump and Russia once HIllary was nominated). I wouldn't feel sorry for these guys who sold out our country, except that the American people suffered when Trump gained office, to the tune of so many needless covid deaths. Hillary would have fought the pandemic effectively, as did all of the female top executives in the world's female-run countries during covid. It is tempting to stay that mostly the stupid died, except that there were a bunch of elderly and sick people who went with them.
Somerby should be proud of himself, but he accepts no responsibility for anything, every. John Stewart may be trying to atone, but it is too soon to tell.
What the hell are you talking about?
DeleteYou had to have watched The Daily Show shortly before Stewart quit and seen the way he treated Hillary Clinton, who looked like the nominee against Trump. If you never did that, then you won't understand what was going on on the Democratic side when Trump was persuaded by Russia to run for President.
DeleteIf you have a more specific question, try asking it. Otherwise, please Google whatever you didn't understand. Don't assume others don't know what they are saying, just because you may be ignorant.
No googling is necessary. I'm simply pointing out that what you've written isn't coherent.
DeleteBob's exhausted, ready to retire. I wish David in CA would take over this blog.
ReplyDeleteThe "Others" would never allow it, because David is a Jew.
DeleteDavid tells as many lies as Fox News (his main source of info). No one would come here because the place would be full of disinformation and a waste of everyone's time.
DeleteBad guess, @4:14, I never watch Fox News.
DeleteWhere do you get your lies then? You surely do find them somewhere because you DO repeat them.
Delete1:55,
DeleteDavid listens to what the bigots are saying, and repeats them. It's the same reason he can't quit Trump, even though he knows Trump is a grifting, failed real estate investor from Queens.
All that matters to Republican voters is bigotry and white supremacy. EVERYTHING else is negotiable.
When Muammar Gaddafi was murdered, Hillary Clinton thought that was funny.
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7voBEfcHfJg
This is a political clip smearing Hillary Clinton created by Incontext.media, an organization that manufactures memes to be spread on Twitter.
DeleteIt is agreed that Hillary did not kill Gaddafi, who was killed by one of the factions in the civil war, not by the USA. This video wrongly creates that impression. When the USA occupied part of Libya, it became possible for those opposing Gaddafi to attack him, which they did.
Although the very short video talks about context, there is none to this clip. I find Hillary's laughter disconcerting too, but it might be less so if we had heard what she was asked and what she said immediately before and after this ugly short clip.
This is how propaganda works. And it isn't surprising that these hit-and-run trolls come by here spreading this out-of-context stuff. Hillary is not running for any office and this is a gratuitous and off-topic attack on her. Jon Stewart might have stayed on the Daily Show and defended her and other Dems against this kind of garbage.
Hillary was Secretary of State. Whatever aims she was furthering in that job were those of the United States of America, which she actively served. We were not friends of allies of Gaddafi, for those of you who were not alive during that time period.
We came, we saw, he died, ha ha ha!
DeleteHillary and Obama destroyed Libya and left it an incredible mess. Obama said it was his biggest mistake.
Delete"We were not friends of allies of Gaddafi, for those of you who were not alive during that time period."
DeleteJust in case all the 7-year-olds reading were not aware? ;)
There was a civil war going on in Libya. If people act like they are 7, they should be treated that way. There were hearings. You don't get to go back and make up stuff after the hearings showed that neither Hillary nor Obama did anything wrong.
Delete@ imp, does that pass for context where you come from?
DeleteObama's biggest mistake was not using an Executive Order to make ingesting Drano illegal.
DeleteBob, if you have the episode of your appearance on Crossfire, please link it.
ReplyDeleteLet's enjoy an old song.
ReplyDelete"When You Wish Upon A Star" -- words by Ned Washington, music by Leigh Harline, sung by Julie Andrews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PVI2NVGbDM
Reports are coming out that Biden is a pedophile. Or pedophile adjacent.
ReplyDeleteHe told me the same thing about you.
DeleteI’d try Pedophile Adjacent. You don’t get hit with those city taxes.
DeleteDefinitions of silo:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=silo+
So Bob must mean we are isolated from each other in terms of news. Where we used to at least have performative debates, now we don't even attempt to address the same set of issues or the same sets of facts to each individual audience.
DeleteTherefore, fools be thinking the Twitter files are a nothing burger and fools be thinking that there is conclusive at evidence Joe Biden is corrupt or a pedophile.
Silo does not mean simply being isolated and it is used in a business context, in a way that doesn’t apply to the way individual people respond to political media. Somerby is forcing the metaphor in a way that is unhelpful to this discussion, but some of you will follow him anywhere.
DeleteThe political divide would be obvious to a martian visiting our planet for the first time. It doesn’t need to be called siloing, which implies processes NOT demonstrably at work, and not likely to be happening, as has been patiently explained to the morons among us.
DeleteHow would Somerby solve the moral and ethical divide between parties, for example. Silo doesn’t speak to that and neither does that great moral coward Somerby. When Fox started up, how did it decide who belongs in which silo. Go ahead, explain what Somerby would say about that.
A 3 panel judge affirmed the findings of the Twitter Files:
ReplyDelete"The Plaintiffs allege that federal officials ran afoul of the First Amendment by coercing and significantly encouraging “social-media platforms to censor disfavored [speech],” including by “threats of adverse government action” like antitrust enforcement and legal reforms. We agree. "
Not that there was any question to anyone who wasn't fooled by liberal propaganda and actually read the Twitter Files.
“Liberal propaganda”…what precise mechanism is it that delivers this so called liberal propaganda?
DeleteBlogs, papers, twitter, twitter bots mostly.
DeleteSomeone sent out a memo that it was a "nothingburger" - and you could see on twitter at the time the term was used over and over and over as if it was bots disseminating it.
DeleteIt's very sad because it is so incredibly interesting. People who are fanatical about Democrats and open themselves up to the propaganda are missing out on a hell of a story.
But it does make Democrats look really really bad as the three judges made clear in their ruling. And the FBI too. So I can see where they would go about trying to bury the story using the same tools that are described in the lawsuit!
But Republicans are going to use it when they have the power to. It's an issue that affects all people. It's not partisan at all. Unfortunately, MSNBC type of Democrats won't do anything about it until they are victims of it. Then, they are going to be so f****** pissed off.
Continuing:
Delete"We do not take our decision today lightly. But, the Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life. Therefore, the district court was correct in its assessment—“unrelenting pressure” from certain government officials likely “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.” We see no error or abuse of discretion in that finding."
This is what these lying propagandists are trying to tell you is a nothingburger:
a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life
That's how little they think of you and how gullible they believe you to be.
The careful, detailed opinion sets the case up well for a Supreme Court appeal if the Biden Administration has the nerve. It may prefer to quit while it’s behind. In either case the ruling is a landmark that protects free speech from the government’s current method of laundering its censorship through private platforms.
DeleteLeave it to the Right to believe a bunch of goat-fucking judges about free-speech being absolute.
DeleteYou don't need the judges to see what happened. It was already presented in the Twitter Files. There's no debate about what happened. They were caught red handed.
DeleteGod bless Matt Taibbi for being blackmailed by Russian oligarchs, or we would never have such an unbelievable story as the Twitter Files to hang our hats.
Delete“Uber partisan?” “News by silo”?
ReplyDeleteThe only ostensibly partisan “liberal” media with any national prominence is … what? MSNBC? And they’re not extremely liberal.
Meanwhile, there are a ton of truly partisan right wing media outlets, and the so-called “mainstream” media (New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, etc) is not liberal, as … Bob Somerby once used to say.
So how can MSNBC by itself be responsible for the purported “siloing” of the liberal “tribe”? (Assuming of course that the relatively modest viewership of MSNBC somehow translates into us liberals being unable to see outside our “silo.”)
And he surely can’t be arguing that partisanship is bad…it’s what political parties are for. It’s the way it’s always been.
Isn't so confusing to read what has been written here?
DeleteIMO most of the mainstream media tilt left. A full justification of my opinion would require a huge study, which I am not going to do. But, here are some items:
Delete1. Compare the mainstream media coverage of two stories: Trump's alleged collusion with Russia and Hunter Biden's incriminating laptop. The former was false and the latter was true. Yet, the mainstream media gave huge attention to the former and hardly any coverage to the latter.
2 The NY Times once published an article by Senator Cotton. The Times was looking for a conservative POV. Cotton argued that the riots following the George Floyd should be quelled. even if quelling the riots required military action. The editor who accepted this article was fired or forced out, even though Cotton's POV was not extreme. In fact, it might well have the support of a majority.
3. The NY Times and PBS Newshour have some regular pundits who are specifically chosen to represent the conservative POV. But, they're all anti-Trump. Can you imagine FoxNews show that claimed to be balanced because it include some anti Biden liberals?
The editor admitted to not reading Cotton's editorial before publishing it.
DeleteCotton’s a U.S. senator. It’s important to know what he’s thinking.
DeleteInteresting you should chose those two stories, isn’t it David? Instead of, say, they way the Press treated the Marc Rich Pardon and Trump’s utter debasement over the pardon power? Or Whiterwater vs Trump University? Flake off, king bullshit.
DeletePartisanship is different now than it once was. Issues were less voted on down straight party lines, regional grudges came into play in different ways. The Gingrich era, the party line Impeachment of Bill Clinton (and politics as entertainment in the corporate press) did lead us to a new place.
Cotton’s a U.S. senator. It’s important to know what he’s thinking.
DeleteLet him get up on a soapbox. Print media has to make editorial decisions.
David,
DeleteIt's much easier to see why the corporate-owned mainstream media tilt Left.
It's because the Right has no idea how economics or mathematics work.
Don't overthink it.
As usual, DIC recites Fox (and William Barr's) talking points in suggesting that Trump was exonerated from colluding with the Russians. That would come from the Special Counsel report of Robert Mueller. Mueller specifically stated that he did not address the issue of collusion because it was not a legal term, but instead preferred the terms criminal and conspiracy in reference to interactions between the Trump campaign and Russians, which were mentioned in roughly 200 of the 470+ pages of his report. And on that count he found insufficient evidence to prosecute Trump. Lack of evidence was in part ascribed to members of the Trump team taking the 5th amendment when under oath. Mueller very specifically stated that his findings did not exonerate Trump from such criminal activities. This is very well spelled out for anyone who does not get spoon fed Republican talking points on right wing media.Such persons do not, and likely never will, include DIC.
DeleteWar on Gore.
ReplyDelete