WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2024
Better (way) late than never: This morning, we sat and watched Morning Joe all the way through to 7:30 a.m.
We did so because the group was having a lengthy discussion about the role of misogyny—alleged, apparent or fully performed—in modern-day politics, with a focus on the recent pitiful nonsense directed at Taylor Swift.
Eventually, Scarborough even played videotape of Colin Cowherd's discussion of this topic from yesterday's FS1 show (Fox Sports 1).
It's very rare for Cowherd to deal with topics which aren't directly sports-based. Yesterday, he did so. To watch the surprising four-minute monologue, you can just click here.
Yesterday, we saw Cowherd's discussion in real time, as it occurred. This morning, Scarborough played the tape at substantial length. This was all part of a very lengthy discussion this morning of a very important topic.
This morning's discussion was largely aimed at red tribe "MAGA" figures. For the record, smutty, misogyny-adjacent "just joking" ugliness is all over every Fox News "cable news" program which features the silly frat boy Jesse Watters or the angry and glowering Greg Gutfeld.
Below, we'll link you to Amanda Marcotte's treatment of Gutfeld's work. Before we do, we'll add this:
This has been going on forever. Starting in the 1990s, this weird gender-based pseudo-politics was all over the mainstream press corps, principally aimed at Hillary Clinton—with a weird offshoot aimed at male Democratic pols, Candidate Gore in particular.
Back then, it wasn't a couple of hacks like Watters and Gutfeld who kept playing those cards. For starters, it was Chris Matthews, very powerful then as the host of a daily cable news show when there weren't that many such programs around.
Going on Hardball built careers. Presumably for that reason, Matthews received little pushback. A very young Norah O'Donnell pushed back several times, and Chris would simply hammer her for it. Eventually Norah gave up, but we still admire her for the fact that she tried.
Chris' denigrations of Hillary Clinton were often batslurp crazy. So too with his lunatic denunciations of Candidate Gore, who he slimed as "today's man woman" because he was wearing three-buttons suits, allegedly as some sort of sexual signal to female voters.
It's hard to describe the degree of the crazy emerging from Chris at that time. It's all over the archives to this site, but all the blue tribe careerists knew that they mustn't notice his lunatic conduct and that they mustn't speak up.
Some of those people are still on our tribe's favorite shows. (Gene Robinson didn't say boo, but neither did anyone else.) Amazingly, Chris was maybe ten years into his jihad before any actual women's groups actually stood up and complained. At that time, Mathews threw David Schuster under the bus, then kissed and made up with Hillary Clinton, motoring forward from there.
(Stating the obvious, all that pounding, over all those years, helped send Trump to the White House.)
Maureen Dowd's gender politics were routinely very strange during that era. In Dowd's formulations, very Democratic male was a girly man, while every Democratic woman was a secret man.
The people our gullible tribe respects all sat around saying nothing. We posted and posted and posted and posted but, as the famous song says:
I woke from my dream,
My idol was clay...
Our advice to you would be this—do not trust the people you see on your "cable news" channels. Do not trust the people who write for our biggest newspapers.
At most, you should "trust but verify," because they and their predecessors have failed you again and again and again. Among other things, people are dead all over the world because of the way they and their predecessors have frequently chosen to play.
As for the pitiful Gutfeld and Watters, three cheers for Amanda Marcotte! Yesterday, we stumbled upon the essay she recently wrote for Salon about an episode of the rancid show Gutfeld!
We ourselves alluded to that episode, though only briefly, within the past week or so.
On that occasion, AOC was the termagant's target—and simply put, he needs to become a better person. As of today, he specializes in a sudden glowering anger which is routinely directed at women.
As a general matter, he quickly moves to hide anger through a well-designed getaway in which he presents himself as just a very naughty boy and also a hopeless scamp.
When we cited the Gutfeld! show in question, we mentioned the way Gutfeld had played on the idea that it must be hard for AOC because her balls are so much bigger than those which belong to her boyfriend. Gutfeld and Watters play variants of that naughty-boy routine over and over and over again, as a much wiser person named Dana Perino just sits there and enables it.
As in the 1990s, so too today—these people are willing to do whatever they're told to rake in the big TV bucks. As with the other tribe, our own tribe has been played by the people we're taught to trust again and again and again.
Last week, Marcotte did a lengthy essay which dealt in part with that same Gutfeld! show. Headline included, we offer this excerpt. We'll suggest that you read the whole thing
Greg Gutfeld's sexual obsession with AOC accidentally reveals the insecurities of the MAGA man
[...]
Earlier this week, Gutfeld tried to argue that Ocasio-Cortez is just projecting "her own insecurities about her boyfriend’s masculinity." And then he engaged in a gross, racist sexual fantasy about her: "This is why she is so pro-illegal immigration: she is projecting her secret desires for young, virile men who are coming here in droves."
Certainly, someone thinks a lot about the "virility" of immigrant men, but it's not the congresswoman from New York. Perhaps it is unfair to characterize Gutfeld as completely talentless: He certainly has a knack for provoking the sexual insecurities of his audience. Likely it's because he shares their entirely correct fear that others can see through their chest-thumping to, in Gutfeld's words, the "soft and buttery" condition of a typical Ford F-Series pick-up truck driver. The next day, Gutfeld doubled down on his unhinged attacks on Ocasio-Cortez, reassuring viewers that it's "OK" to use the word "retarded" to describe her.
This was a two-fer of cheap political incorrectness, punching down at people with mental disabilities, while also being a sexist slight against a woman's intelligence. Does anyone, even in the credulous Fox News audience, actually buy Gutfeld's attempt to insinuate that someone as pretty, charming and talented as Ocasio-Cortez is hard up for male attention? No, but obviously there is value for his viewers in the fantasy of it. The toxic masculinity that is the beating heart of the MAGA movement is fundamentally a psychological defense mechanism of men who, often for very good reason, secretly believe themselves to fall short of masculine ideals like courage and vitality.
For ourselves, we'll only remind you that non-MAGA men (and women) have played these same cards. Today, blue tribe TV stars may tend to perform in the opposite direction, in part because that's what they're bosses are telling them to do.
For ourselves, we'd prefer to stay away from the sweeping diagnoses offered by Marcotte and even by Cowherd. That said, Watters are Gutfeld are a daily clown show. They behave this way night after night and no one says a word.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Our corporate-paid tribal leaders aren't always what you imagine.
Also, the campaign is on, and Candidate Biden is behind in seven of seven swing states. It's time to get extremely serious. It's time to stop playing around, to drop the dumb entertainment.
San Mateo's own Greg Gutfeld needs to get much better. The lords and ladies at our finest newspapers need to stop ducking away from Fox.
Capitalism needs stereotyping to function. They want you to forget the idea you should care about someone other than yourself. Women have to be exploited constantly to refill the ranks of the working class and to keep the colonial economes under the direction of a few central imperial cities. Men are told to go to war then make a lot of money and we wonder why there's so much sexism.
ReplyDeleteWhat other systems are there besides capitalism, and do they also require “stereotypes?” Just curious. Do you stand with the “down with capitalism” party, and blame the Democrats for not eradicating capitalism?
DeleteStart with educating the public on campaign finance reform and the necessity for affordable education and medicine. You can call that whatever you want but the liberal and conservative culture war aint gonna help you one bit with that.
DeleteCampaign finance reform. You can educate the public all you want. There’s a little thing called the Supreme Court that has some say-so in the matter.
DeleteRight wingers, even those who stood to benefit from Obamacare, attacked it as communism and many refused to join it. Because Obama. Education about healthcare is important, and maybe Democrats don’t do enough of it, but they do it. It’s Democrats proposing changes and republicans and their media lying about it and propagandizing against it. THAT isn’t the fault of Democrats or liberals. You’d think that everyone who complains about the cost of health care would be sentient enough to care about making it more affordable.
Delete6:18 PM
DeleteYou can organize at the state level, not everything is about the president. This isn't Stalinism.
6:25 PM
DeleteThe original slur that any healthcare reform is communism goes back to Truman trying to reform it.
Then when the USSR was starting to collapse, the Republican party got an influx of ex-Marxists like James Burnham who put together a new agenda around things like private schools, and they laundered left-wing ideas like "exploited masses of labor" into "exploited job creators."
The failure to change this overarching narrative in liberal capitalism is why fascism isn't going away. Obama's half-measure on healthcare reform left a Trump-sized opening in the the American political mind for resentment against the system.
People support Trump for the racism, not health care concerns.
DeleteTrump did what many politicians did, he lied to us:
DeleteMay 2017: Trump told Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian prime minister, that “you have better health care than we do.” (Australia has a single-payer system.)
January 2017: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,”
September 2015: "Everybody's got to be covered … I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not."
2000: “I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on health … We must take care of our own. We must have universal healthcare.”
https://www.axios.com/2018/02/05/trump-universal-health-care-single-payer-united-kingdom
Trump promised health care reform, and never even attempted to deliver. He had his chance, and failed. There is no reason in 2024 for anyone to trust him or the republicans to do anything about to it.
DeleteObama's half-measure on healthcare reform left a Trump-sized opening in...
DeleteObama was naive enough to believe the ratfucking party would negotiate with him in good faith on the ACA. Hillary never would have made that mistake.
The health care reform we need is more doctors. In my area, the wait for an appointment with certain specialists such as dermatologists or urologists is routinely several months.
DeleteBut, getting more doctors is really hard, so our politicians are not going to solve this problem. Whether medical care is paid by the government, by insurance companies, or by patients, doctors are the people who actually deliver the care.
Your plan may not hire enough but that doesn’ mean there aren’t enough being trained.
DeleteThe doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies don't want to share their jobs with anyone because we're in a capitalist society and they are allowed to do that
Delete? This makes no sense. Hoarding jobs?
Delete
Delete"The U.S. residency system turns away thousands of perfectly qualified students every year. These include many foreign doctors, who are barred from practicing here unless they complete a residency within the country. While the number of residencies has increased about 26% over the last decade, Baker (and the Association of American Medical Colleges) argues it's a bottleneck preventing an adequate supply of doctors."
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/12/702500408/are-doctors-overpaid
I remember explaining this before. The US. has its own ways of practicing that are taught during residency. Residency is supervised, which requires doctors to do the supervision. How do you expand that without decreasing supervision?
Delete@2:36 AM
DeleteNot only that, but also foreign doctor's shiny new medical diploma could've been purchased by him yesterday for 20 bucks on an Albanian flee market.
So, NPR wants them to start practicing immediately. Good to know. But somehow I suspect that heart-bleeding NPR people would find better doctors for themselves.
We could train doctors from other countries to meet U.S. standards. Then doctors from poorer countries can compete with doctors here for jobs.
DeleteWhy let factory workers have all the fun competing for lower paying jobs, when we could allow doctors to do it too? Besides, the competition should lower doctor salaries, which will reduce our national healthcare costs.
For doctors to compete the way factory workers compete, American patients would need to go to poor countries for treatment.
DeleteMedical tourism, it's called. Not common enough to matter. At least not in the US.
We could bring the doctors to the USA.
Deletehttps://cepr.net/reducing-the-health-care-tax/
DeleteYou want to kidnap foreigners with third world's medical diplomas? I believe it was addressed earlier, except the kidnapping part.
DeleteNo kidnapping. Offer them jobs. You can pay their governments to train additional physicians to meet our standards.
DeleteWin-win.
It seems undoable, because you've been led to believe labor competition is only for the poor.
Factory workers competing for jobs globally is by design. We could just as easily design our economy where professionals (doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc) also compete for jobs globally.
DeletePaying third world government to train, reliably, fist-world doctors is an odd idea. In the US, the future doctors pay themselves for their training. If you want the gov. pay for doctors' training, it would make more sense to do it in the US, directly, rather than via a third-world gov.
DeleteAnd then, once you bring those hypothetical doctors into the US, still American doctors will not be competing with the third world, like factory workers do. They will be competing with American doctors, who are immigrants. American doctors who are immigrants expect the same American lifestyle, so they'll expect the same wages. Or, are you planning to discriminate them?
And if the issue is that there isn't enough doctors in the US, why not just train more in the US? It seems simpler and more logical.
@ 10:42 AM
DeleteNo, not just as easily.
And it's not just professionals. You can't design an economy where, for example, the guy who fixes your boiler (or your roof, or driveway, or wiring in your house) competes globally.
ReplyDeletePoor Democrats. Even their men are victims of misogyny, albeit a weird offshoot of it.
But at least they're spared of being accused of "toxic masculinity".
Ben Shapiro is releasing rap music because he's so secure about his masculinity
DeleteHillary Clinton called prison slavery a long-standing practice that keeps down costs. She literally had Black men waiting on her white woman ass hand and foot. And yet people disrespected the Queen.
ReplyDeleteShow me a black woman pulling anything close to that.
You have a rich, if sadly sick, fantasy life.
DeleteYes, Hillary invented the Southern prison system.
Delete"One unusual aspect of living in the Arkansas governor's mansion was getting to know prison inmates who were assigned to work in the house and the yard. When we moved in, I was told that using prison labor at the governor's mansion was a longstanding tradition, which kept down costs. and I was assured that the inmates were carefully screened."
Delete- It Takes A Village, 2012, Hillary "Superpredator" Clinton, wife of Bill "rapist" Clinton
4:34 PM
DeleteYou can go along with wickedness when you benefit from it, or you can call yourself a leader, but you can't do both.
It’s is not promoting misogyny to label a woman as unintelligent solely due to her gender.
DeleteIn my opinion, Gutfeld's statement was dumb as dirt, cruel, pathetic, and unfunny, but it does not necessarily indicate a hatred towards women.
Interestingly, Marcotte responded to Gutfeld's joke by insulting him in a similar manner, implying that Greg is preoccupied with young, virile men.
Someone please dump a bucket of ice water on Cecelia before she demands more war to balance out her dull, unfulfilling life as a comment section nerd.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Deletenonymouse 7:11pm, I haven’t demanded any war. Not even the one you’re rah-rahing in Ukraine.
DeleteStill, Ive never used the language Joy Reid did about Biden getting us “into another f’n war”.
Ive demanded wariness of strange bedfellows. You’re just here to spend your life shooting at a guy in your own tent.
Why do some conservative women put up with being called stupid just to feel sexually excited by war?
DeleteCeceelia is pretending she hasn't been using the words "virile men" in every comment on this blog while thinking about bombing Iran
DeleteAnonymouse 7:32pm, there’s only one way to definitively answer such a broad question.
DeleteAre you either the guy or the girl?
I'm a block of text on a screen. I could be a computer program for all you know.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:42pm, you’ve got to view that proportionately.
DeleteVirile men can come to mind while thinking about cleaning the oven.
Anonymouse 7:46pm, so you’re the guy of the woman in question.
DeleteNuff said.
I'm starting a GoFundMe to help Ceceelia get an army boyfriend who has been through at least 2 tours of duty so she can live the American Dream in the face of the sexist Taliban men who think women are stupid
DeleteAnonymouse 7:50pm, that wouldn’t be the first time you and friends have paid for such “information”.
DeleteCecelia, look up the word misogyny. You don’t know what it means.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:54pm, you’ve been offering up a lesson in that definition via four posts.
DeleteVirile men
DeleteVirile men
want to bomb asians again
Virile men
Virile men
making ceceelia pitch a tent
I dont know who 7:54 PM is but they're right you can't decide if you are one of the big tough guys who talk sex and war, or a powerless victim who can't be criticized
DeleteAnonhmouse 8:05pm, don’t look now, but you’ve pitched a dishrag.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAnonymouse 8:07pm, sure. Ive never thought I was anything but blessed in my life. Never said otherwise.
DeleteCeceelia is deleting all her comments asking people if they're gay or straight
DeleteAnonymouse 8:18pm, you can find them in the archive under the nym of “a”.
DeleteAnonymouse 8:32pm, but everyone saw “a” and knows.
Delete2:44
DeleteNot Secure - dailyhowler.blogspot.com
bob somerby on Tuesday, June 07, 2022
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22 comments:
a June 7, 2022 at 10:00 AM
Somerby is phoning it in today - busy with his medical appts. We wish him well, but there is no sense in responding to this rehashed tripe.
Meanwhile, he continues to complain because MSNBC does not produce transcripts for him on demand. Why would any network hire a staff member to produce transcripts so that its Baltimore crank can quote his slurs of its cable stars more accurately? Any of us could produce our own transcript of relevant passages, but not Somerby for some reason. Same old, same old Bob.
Reply
a June 7, 2022 at 10:03 AM
"The later Wittgenstein seemed to be saying that the bulk of western philosophy was a collection of incoherent statements built upon a foundation of conceptual confusion. "
Has it escaped Somerby's notice that no one agreed with Wittgenstein about this?
Reply
a June 7, 2022 at 10:12 AM
Einstein, Godel, Wittgenstein are not "fundamentals of discourse". Somerby has gone around the bend.
Why would these be his favorite books when he, by his own admission, cannot understand them when he reads
+hom) hood ho diado nom tha misol ho tritod hono
You are not “a” and no one using that nym asked anyone whether they were gay or straight. It sounds like you are scapegoating “a” who is not here to defend himself. That’s dishonest but that’s what right-wingers do, pretend the left does what they themselves actually do. Like Trump is a rapist so they call Biden a pedo.
DeleteNothing about gays in any of those. So why are you picking on someone who isn’t here?
DeleteAnonymouse 9:01pm, that’s a lot less jubilant than the statement “Not there any more…”
DeleteAnonymouse 9:03pm, where are the posts where I asked people if they are gay or straight?
DeleteYou were gleeful that “a” ( Corby) had deleted her posts.
Ceceelia is really thirsty to see Sleepy Joe standing at attention for duty and can't stop thinking about virile men.
DeleteGo back to the Church and ask Jesus for help getting laid, not the internet
DeleteAnonymouse 9:39pm, you can’t stop thinking of me. (And Joe).
DeleteWhat a piece of crap you are.
DeleteTilt.
DeleteThere are Americans who are horny idiots who love war and the rest of us are trying to keep y'all on a leash so you dont get everyone killed
DeleteCeceelia you need to get a life and stop asking if people are too gay to murder foreigners
DeleteCeceelia deleted more comments calling people gay than there have been pride marches
DeleteWhite women love being bold and brassy until someone calls them on their horndog shit and then it's "look at the sexism against me"
DeleteAnonymouse 11:59pm, if you had a nickel for every fantasy you’ve had about Biden and me, you could pay off all student debt and your drug dealers.
DeleteKaren behavior
DeleteAnonymouse 3:16am, you best keep hoping Ghislaine never writes a book.
DeleteYou don't read books
DeleteAnonymouse 3:34am, with your luck there’d be a movie.
DeleteWhen you're done being sexually obsessed and projecting it onto everyone then come back to reality
DeleteAnonymouse 3:48am, then what life would you have?
DeleteI think you're actually just lonely and I feel sorry for you
DeleteAnonymouse 3:57am, oh, we can tell …
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
DeleteThat’s not merely a link, it’s your personal illustration of the subject matter
DeleteJames Comey lies again:
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/biden-financial-advisor-says-biden-never-did-anything-wrong/
James Comer, not Comey
DeleteJames Comer, not Comey.
DeleteJames Comer, not James Comey.
DeleteFather Elon Musk says people aren't having enough babies and now the white liberals are crying that the conservatives are too horny. Which do you want, capitalism or egalitarianism?
ReplyDelete"...and now the white liberals are crying that the conservatives are too horny"
DeleteUm, wut?
If capitalists deserve all the power, then surely egalitarianism, critical race theory and so on should be replaced by a South African diamond merchant telling us when the white people breeding season should be.
DeleteMusk urged Italians and the people of other industrialised countries to have more children "or the culture of Italy, Japan and France will disappear."
Deletehttps://www.euronews.com/next/2023/12/16/elon-musk-talks-x-advertising-and-birth-rates-in-rome
Culture wouldn’t disappear.
DeleteThe only actual women’s group at that time was the National Organization for Women, and they did speak up against sexism but they could not target Matthews against Hillary without making a de facto endorsement, which was not the purpose of the group. It was apolitical. Individual women and feminists did speak up. Somerby’s claim that women did not defend Hillary was debunked back when Somerby was saying it, as an attack against feminists.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Hillary took the high road, rightly believing that attacking men for being sexist would not gain her any votes, and that accepting victim status would make her look weak in a role requiring strong leadership. This is most likely why Al Gore never complained and why he never acknowleded or seemed to appreciate Somerby’s complaints on his behalf.
She had slaves
DeleteConvicts are not slaves.
DeleteHillary was all talk about ideals and values but never achieved anything concrete.
DeleteWe had this discussion last week and listed many things she accomplished. But she is not running for anything, so why are you maligning her?
DeleteThe 13th amendment says there cannot be any slavery "except" prison labor.
Deletehttps://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment
Arent you all the ones throwing it in the South's faces that they lost the civil war, only to demand slavery stay in place in the prison system giving a shiny nickel to anyone who wants to go to the governor mansion?
DeleteJust that Hillary never had any meaningful political accomplishments .. so why was she even running in the first place?
DeleteThe South lost the civil war over slavery!
DeleteBut the governor can have "convict labor"
Okay, fine, convict labor is slavery in the 13th amendment
But we didn't invent slavery, someone else did we just continued the tradition
But the South lost the war over slavery!
Hillary did not invent convict labor. She was not on the supreme court either, so she didn’t end it.
DeleteI listed some of Hillary’s accomplishments last week. Because of them she was elected Senator of NY and then nominated for President, winning the popular vote by a huge margin, so people obviously disagree with you. Now she is not running so there is no reason to malign her.
DeleteYou didn't list one meaningful political accomplishment. It just reinforced what I'm saying. She wasn't that good of a candidate because she never had one single meaningful political accomplishment and she married into it. She was only a nominee because she was married to Bill Clinton. People voted for her but what other choice did they have?
DeleteThe point is let's get a candidate that is accomplished and inspirational and not part of the swamp. Not more of these mediocre products of insider nepotism and compromised DC swamp culture. Does that make sense?
DeleteHillary Clinton never made a single phone call advocating for people exploited by the prison labor system, she bragged about it in her book practically. Master Hillary.
DeleteAnd exactly why is this so important to you?
DeleteTIRED OF LOSING.
DeleteAmerican prisons divert money and time to old fashioned rehabilitation strategies that break people's minds with torture, they return people to society broken and ready to go to prison again. They're a drain on the moral and democratic character of the country and used to break labor unions when possible.
DeleteAll the more reason to avoid committing crimes.
DeleteI'm sure your sadism is enjoyable but in the real world it's simply not what any real world evidence points to as a working solution.
Delete1. It's more expensive to keep people locked up over and over and over than to build a future for everyone to be safe.
2. Prisons get their body counts added unfairly to districts to inflate their political influence over other districts
3. Crime goes down with a strong social safety net and by ignoring this you're actually killing more people than you're even arresting
The red and blue tribes both have misogynist members but are not equally misogynist in what they stand for as tribes, as Somerby tries to claim. Republicans have sexist behavior and misogyny built into their their party goals, behavior, and accomplishments. Democrats have women’s equality as a plank in their platform and have been working toward that for decades. It is wrong to characterize them as similar, the way Somerby does.
ReplyDelete"The red and blue tribes both have misogynist members"
DeleteAnd they all use Twitter, and then blame young people for cursing too much during serious white people campaign season. Fucking idiots.
More importantly red tribes' government works a lot better for people living there than blue tribes government. Visit some Democratic cities yourself and you'll be convinced.
DeleteDon’t be silly David. Life is worse for people in red states on dozens of measures, from public health to education to jobs to crime, to parks, climate, and overall quality of life. That suggests blue govts are doing a better job. Red states get folks to vote for them by telling lies, scaring people, and manipulating their bigotries. And they are still losing ground.
DeleteMove to a red state, David. Put your money where your mouth is.
DeleteDavid should move to the reddest state of them all, the State of Israel.
DeleteEven to this day it is fair to bring up Matthews sad service to Jack Welch.
ReplyDeleteThis Taylor Swift stuff is amusing, though the Times claim, unsupported as it is, seems dubious at best. Doesn’t anyone who cares about who Taylor Swift is voting for already know who that will be? As a symbol of female empowerment, She has already damaged the sickos who want to live in Trumpworld plenty.
Our Host needs to understand that not everyone in the country watches cable TV news. Not everyone reads Maureen Dowd. He relentlessly divides the media landscape into red and blue tribes--and the nation's citizens right along with it.
ReplyDeleteThe world just isn't the way he fears.
ReplyDeleteI am a symbol of female empowerment. I play bridge.
Somerby is an ass.
I am Corby.
Fake.
DeleteFor the longest time Mr Somerby has ignored the decline of the cable news audience: it's cringe, to see him draw almost all of his "Daily Howler"s, not from the New York Times or the other legacy media, but from a smaller and smaller part of the press, broadly understood.
ReplyDeletePeople are informed from YouTube, or Substack, or other online content. Few people watch TV, and of the few who do, even fewer watch cable news.
Eventually, Mr Somerby will be talking about something no one has seen and no one cares in the least about.
There are only six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet. How many degrees do you think exist between Americans who "just saw on the news" and the people they talk to?
DeleteThere will not be enough such people to affect an election.
DeletePoliticians that nobody know about spend millions of dollars on TV marketing that nobody sees, to influence an existence that is just the memory of Buddha imagining himself as a butterfly, do I have that about correct?
DeleteNo
DeleteIf you are really interested in how elections work, there are lots of good sources to read. This blog isn’t one of them.
DeleteMarcotte should not have said that Ocasio-Cortez is pretty.
ReplyDeleteI am a misogynist, but I like Cecelia.
ReplyDeleteI sew well too.
DeletePick me pick me pick me
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S42R9l8Gqyc
ReplyDeleteA liberal can't be misogynistic. It's physically impossible. Wikipedia says so. I am Yorby.
ReplyDeleteNot fake. A genuine Yorby comment.
DeleteAbout the increased use of social media (as opposed to TV and print). In a nice piece of theatrics yesterday Republican lawmakers got to yell at Zuckerberg et al. on the floor of the Senate about social media and teenage suicide (over 50% which occurs via gunshot, incidentally). While I think that Zuck deserves everything dished out to him, Lindsey Graham telling him he has blood on his hands was rich, coming from a member of the party that endorses 18 year olds buying AK-47s.
ReplyDeleteZuckerberg vs. Republican Congressmen?
DeleteMake Dueling Great Again.
@6:23 AM
DeleteA lot of people feel that all Americans have blood on their hands. On account of the US foreign policy, maintained by both parties.
So, if you're American, then your righteous outrage and fury at Lindsey Graham is just as hypocritical as Graham's at Zuckerberg. Matthew 7:1-3.
6:33 I assume that goes for you as well. This may come as a complete surprise to you but I have one vote and am not in line with every domestic and foreign policy of my government. So no, when Bush 2, as an example, engaged in the Iraq war that was not on me as I opposed it and did not vote him or his republican congress into office. As is the case with current foreign policy. But nice try. A swing and a miss.
Delete6:33 If you don't know the difference between a private citizen and a policy making legislator, maybe bone up on a grade school civics class.
DeletePlease. As if people you did vote for are different. As if you live in a cave high in the mountains, apart from it all.
DeleteOh I see. You are telling me that John Kerry would have led us into the Iraq war. Nice try. Wow you are profoundly ignorant of how the world works. Byut just for the record why don't you enlighten us into how you acquired our insight leading to the conclusion that John Kerry would have opened up that can of worms.
DeleteYour insight
ReplyDeleteAnd Hillary Clinton=Donald Trump and Barack Obama =John McCain and Al Gore=George W. Bush. Etcetera. They're all interchangeable in your precious world.
ReplyDeleteYes. It was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (plus Susan Rice and Samantha Power), who destroyed Libya, the most prosperous country in Africa, in 2011. Facilitated a gruesome murder of the most famous anti-colonial leader in Africa, and giggled about it afterwards. Barack Obama and his toadies ruined Syria.
DeleteAre you not familiar with the subject? Or, are you an exceptionally talented doublethinker? Or a bot?
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DeleteThanks for the brief history lesson. I was unaware that Obama and Clinton started the Arab Spring and led a home grown insurrection in Libya. Funny you didn't mention your Ghandi like anti-colonial hero by name. Gaddafi. Great guy. Funded terrorism as I recall. Do you have another anti colonial hero for us to admire? How about Pol Pot? You can argue that the UN air strikes assisting the rebels, that included US, French and British planes was a bad idea, and Obama has publicly stated his regrets, but to pretend that the insurrection that deposed and killed Gaddafi was masterminded by US leadership is nonsense. But if your idea of a populist hero at the time is Muammar Gaddafi, there is no helping you.
DeleteSo, you want to talk about Gaddafi now. I see.
DeleteAbout Gaddafi, about Pol Pot, about me; about anything but your being self-righteous imperialist war-pig.
Never did answer my earlier question: since my presidential choices are no different than their opponents, favor us with how you have arrived at the conclusion that John Kerry would have started the Iraq war. That should be entertaining. And yeah, it's about you, because you own the sophomoric garbage you are spewing.
DeleteYou sound confused: what does it have to do with John Kerry? Kerry ran when the war was on already. Do you mean Al Gore? I have no idea what kind of atrocities Kerry and Gore would've committed.
DeleteAnyhow, the Iraq sanctions under the Clinton admin (associated with Albright, not Clinton for some reason) apparently killed hundreds of thousands of children (according to the Lancet). Albright said, in an interview, that it was all good, it was worth it.
So, because you prefer murdering people this way, you're a good decent person. And those who prefer murdering people that way are horrible. Is that it?
Point well taken. You have no idea what Gore or Kerry would have done in foreign policy, as you state. And I believe you. But whatever it would have been, would have been equivalent to Bush.That is all we have to know about the way your mind works. Well played. Why you've hoisted your own petard there. Here's an idea: go find another despot to worship , as their hands are so clean. There might be a spot available in Kim Jung-un's fan club. Go for it, dumbass.
DeleteWhat? You're worshiping a bunch of clowns, and now I need to find someone to worship too? Thanks, but no thanks. Any other retarded advices, buddy?
DeleteIt's surprising, frankly, that out of all the clowns available, your favorite deity is Kerry. Are you admiring his gigolo career? Just curious.