tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post6911194361113827600..comments2024-03-28T19:31:35.418-04:00Comments on the daily howler: THE SHORTHAND AND THE POWER: Shorthand kills!<b>bob somerby</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02963464534685954436noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-50482771322866107382012-01-25T01:57:17.160-05:002012-01-25T01:57:17.160-05:00You obviously missed the debate. He wanted a skirm...You obviously missed the debate. He wanted a skirmish, but as for painting the Republicans "in the worst light," that was not even a question. The mainstream media love the Republican establishment candidate, Romney. They've been touting him for months now. They called the primary season over and his victory inevitable after his shaky non-win in Iowa. He is everything they admire, from being rich with a Harvard degree (two!) to being somewhat "moderate" conservative at times to having a blonde wife and five sons and lots of homes and really nice hair. He is their ideal...except that he's a Mormon, which sort of icks them out. Brian Williams is like the rest of his media gang. Were Romney and his wife to start dining with them all a bit more on the Washington social circuit, he'd be all over the floor for him. As is, they'd probably like Gingrich more if he'd learn to watch his tongue. He's so brilliant and the "smartest man in the room" and the "ideas" guy, you know.Corbelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-83267328491715684992012-01-25T00:34:01.901-05:002012-01-25T00:34:01.901-05:00There was a quantum leap in policy-absurdity bald-...There was a quantum leap in policy-absurdity bald-facedness by a Presidential candidate in that election -- making the "sighs" (and radicalization of an observer to the travesty) thoroughly appropriate. The Howler seems to forget that this was the first time Karl Rove was running the show. The compulsion to engage in equal opportunity demonizing plays tricks with the memory.urban legendnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-70851249785696892952012-01-24T19:01:09.301-05:002012-01-24T19:01:09.301-05:00Brian Williams no doubt wanted to portray the Repu...Brian Williams no doubt wanted to portray the Republicans in the worst possible light. He is, after all half of the team (the late Saint Tim Russert was the other half) who presided over the shameful 10/30/07 debate. After an hour of relentless "gotcha" questions, trying to "get" Mrs. Clinton, they finally achieved their goal when she muffed a question about driver's licenses for illegals. That was the moment when Hillary started to fall, and Obama rise. In a moment of candor, Chris Matthews noted approvingly that Russer saw his chance and went for it.<br /> I doubt that Williams has gotten less willing to use his position to push an agenda, or achieve a political result.John Powellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02637351629319676659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-63843915432138348172012-01-24T12:31:06.461-05:002012-01-24T12:31:06.461-05:00I totally agree with BillNRoc. Williams did not se...I totally agree with BillNRoc. Williams did not seem to want to discuss the candidates' policy proposals, but kept trying to goad them into a personal scuffle. Meanwhile, there were, yet again as at earlier GOP debates, some outlandish proposals. Gingrich suggested a second Bay of Pigs to assassinate Fidel Castro (who no longer leads Cuba, having ceded his spot to his brother, but hey, who cares about facts?); Mitt Romney pushed "self-deportation," an unworkable approach to addressing undocumented immigration issues; Ron Paul again seemed to suggest doing away with major government programs, though he did sound quite reasonable on clamping down on the military industrial complex; and Rick Santorum, who is supposed to be a "small government" conservative, defended his behavior in the Terry Schiavo episode and pushed for government intervention in people's personal affairs when they conflicted with (his) conservative obsessions.<br /><br />These are only a few of the very disturbing proposals--like war with Iran, which Romney supports--that these candidates have advanced. But at these debates the "journalists" playing "moderators" have done a very poor job of challenging the candidates, asking them to explain these policies and what the practical effects would be, and asking them for factual evidence that they're basing their policies on. Instead they have let them suggest that cutting the Federal Tax rate to zero would be feasible, that Turkey is ruled by "Islamic terrorists," that the economic collapse began after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and on and on. What's even worse is that when you read reports of the debates, the "mainstream" media resort to scripts, they don't address the really dangerous statements and proposals, and they focus as always on "personalities" or "who won." David Corn's Twitter feed is so notorious for this that I may have to stop following him; all he ever seems to do is snark and announce that Mitt "won." Don't any of these journalists realize the effects these politicians' policies--and I include President Obama in this--have on regular people, in the US and across the globe? Do they care?John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-32092009317149598462012-01-24T12:26:24.768-05:002012-01-24T12:26:24.768-05:00As an academic in a quantitative field located som...As an academic in a quantitative field located somewhere between science and social science, the lies" which will interest and animate Krugman are NOT those concerning Love Story, Love Canal, the internet, earth tones, the candidate's character etc.<br /><br />Krugman is talking, or was talking about, provably wrong public policy claims and false accounts of then recent history. He's not talking about, and isn't terribly interested in, what Al Gore said or didn't say on any given day about his contribution to this or that piece of legislation.<br /><br />It doesn't seem quite fair to confute the two as somehow equal in importance, or reproach the man for ignoring press malfeasance in areas of little interest to him and which were already commonplace.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-65318912684547448272012-01-24T11:09:15.597-05:002012-01-24T11:09:15.597-05:00If you need another illustration of the vapidness ...If you need another illustration of the vapidness of our "press corps," Jonathan Bernstein provides it today in his blog post about the latest GOP debate:<br /><br />"During the first half hour, all of us on the twitter machine were bashing Brian Williams for asking only political and gotcha questions, which he did to the extent of twice interrupting a Newt/Mitt policy discussion to urge them to return to personal attacks (yes, really). Then they went to a break, and came back focused almost exclusively on policy questions until the end.... <br /><br />"About 15 minutes or so into the policy portion, the reporters and others I follow on twitter started complaining how boring it all was. <br /><br />"My feeling? I'm for the policy questions. Sure, they're dull for those of us who have watched over a dozen debates, plus stump speeches and TV hits and the rest of it. But part of the point of having debates, presumably, is for regular citizens, and while most of them probably changed the channel after the fireworks, a good number of them presumably stuck around and heard all that stuff for the first time from this field."BillNRocnoreply@blogger.com