the daily howler

We humans like to invent fake facts!

2012-03-17T11:32:00.004-04:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 2012

Although we have other names for it: We’ll recommend this news report in this morning’s Washington Post.

It concerns a big pile of fake facts.

Uh-oh! An NPR show is “retracting” a 39-minute report. Paul Farhi explains why:

FARHI (3/17/12): An acclaimed radio documentary about brutal work conditions in the Chinese factories that make Apple’s products contained “numerous fabrications” and included invented characters and incidents, the producers of the program acknowledged Friday.

“This American Life,” a popular public-radio program, said it was “retracting” its January broadcast of a 39-minute piece by Mike Daisey that detailed life inside the Chinese plants that make iPhones and iPads.

Daisey has defended his work; it’s OK because he’s an artist! Unfortunately, Farhi mentions the following:

FARHI: But Daisey was more defiant on his blog. “I stand by my work,” he wrote. “My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.” He added, “What I do is not journalism.”

However, since the debut of his theatrical monologue, Daisey has given numerous interviews in which he presented his work as a firsthand factual account, Schmitz said. “He allows journalists to treat him like a journalist,” he said via phone from Shanghai. “He clearly states [in interviews] that these are things that he saw and experienced.”

It’s OK when Daisey says thing which aren’t true. For one thing, he’s a sensitive artist. Plus, he has God on his side!

Similarly with Gail Collins, though her readers pimp the excuse that she’s just being humorous. That has always been Rush Limbaugh’s excuse, of course.

It’s OK to say these things! A greater truth is being expressed! That’s what the chimps all told themselves when they lied for two year about Gore.

We believed those stupid tales too! After all, we saw some of our favorites repeat them! We human beings are very credulous, even in our brilliant tribe.

WALTER AND DAVID AND RUSH AND GAIL: Debating the question of relevance!

2012-03-17T11:12:00.000-04:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 2012

Part 6—Gail Collins won’t talk about Bain: When Gail Collins jumped the pooch last week, bright-eyed readers perked up their ears and let her know they had noticed.

Last Thursday, Collins devoted her entire column to a murky tale from 1983 concerning Mitt Romney’s pet dog. In response, she received 691 reader comments.

One week later, she wrote this transcendently pointless column about recent congressional action. Do neutrinos move almost as fast than light? This column slowed the passage of time. Having failed to mention the dog, she got 204 comments.

Quickly, let’s return to the dog, as Collins persistently does.

Judging from their comments, very few of Collins readers ever entertained the thought that they might not really know what happened to Mitt Romney’s dog. Even fewer seemed to have imagined that they might be getting bogus or selective information from Collins herself.

Not one reader mentioned the fact that Collins deliberately passed on a “rumor” in last Thursday's column! We the people are very clueless—very credulous—when it comes to such things.

This puts us at the mercy of people like Rush and Sean and Gail.

Was Collins feeding her readers fake facts? Judging from comments, this thought had crossed few people’s minds—and most of her readers cheered her on, praising her for her brilliance and her astonishing talent.

That said, a small but hardy band of dissenters complained about Collins’ obsession. One said Collins was simply “lazy;” another said she was “bankrupt of ideas” and was hiding this fact with her doggy obsession. But others made a different claim:

The hoary old tale of the dog on the roof was trivial, pointless. Irrelevant!

Very few readers wondered if they were getting fake info from Collins. A larger number complained that her Groundhog Day conduct was pointless—irrelevant. On Monday, we posted a long and bitter denunciation from a reader who wanted Collins to focus on the nation’s actual issues and problems (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/12/12). A small but hardy band of dissenters offered similar complaints:

COMMENTER: I am no fan of Mitt Romney and most certainly will vote for Obama. That said, I find it odd that the Times wastes it valuable and limited op-ed space on topics as unserious as Romney's dog. It diminishes the newspaper's authority and prestige and adds nothing to the political discourse. Time spent reading a column like this is wasted time, like the time spent watching a low-grade reality show.

COMMENTER: I voted for Obama last time and almost certainly will this time, but gosh I'm getting tired of having folks on both sides of the aisle beaten up over things that are misinterpreted, misunderstood and irrelevant. And I love your column but it is time for you to move on.

COMMENTER: It's precisely this sort of moronic fixation on an event that surely Seamus long ago forgot about, that makes our election process so venal and vapid.

COMMENTER: Can you put this to rest now? Your constant harping on Seamus feels like being pestered by some 9 year old who thinks they are being clever by repeating the same thing over and over. It feels like water torture...What Mitt Romney did as governor of Massachusetts is far more relevant to what he did with his dog 30 years ago.

COMMENTER: With her habit of beating a dead horse (er, dog), is Gail Collins morphing into Maureen Dowd? Well, at least she hasn't started comparing Obama to Mr. Spock, or Dick Cheney (or was it GWBush?) to Darth Vader. But she has developed the habit of taking one statement or incident in a politician's life and believing that that allows her to gain a window into that person's soul or psyche, or to accurately predict how the person will behave as president.

That last reader made the unkindest cut, comparing Collins to Dowd. But all these readers wrote to say that this hoary old tale is pointless—irrelevant. Intriguingly, a number of readers in foreign ports wrote to offer the same view. Writing from distant ports of call, they puzzled over Collins’ conduct:

COMMENTER FROM NEW ZEALAND: By all means vote against Romney—though, in the primaries, who, in the world, would one possibly vote FOR? But vote against him on real grounds. Getting up-in-arms for such a vacuous reason is like voting against W solely because he couldn't pronounce “nuclear.” Are there not enough REAL issues?

COMMENTER FROM CANADA: I am not sure what to think of Mitt, but he is a serious person seeking to be his party's candidate for the highest office in the United States, and that while it is fair play for a a journalist to make a few references to this incident, to do it over and over again, to use it as a metaphor for everything the man has ever done or will ever do, is getting pretty tired, and is of no further value to the debate.

SARCASTIC COMMENTER FROM AUSTRALIA: I can’t believe there is no evidence of the Romneys having a family dog at the moment. What are all those reporters doing for a living? Was this simply a case of sloppy journalism or is there a sinister conspiracy here? I will not be able to sleep at all unless someone gets to the bottom of this.

COMMENTER FROM CHINA: As someone who has lived outside the U.S. for the past six years, I've got to say: You've got a really silly country going on there.

We’ll admit it—we assumed that last commenter was mocking Collins. Soon, though, Helen from Chicago replied to this reader’s comment. She assumed that his sarcasm had been aimed at the other tribe:

REPLY TO COMMENTER FROM CHINA: Me too, I am living outside the USA for a while and cringe when asked to explain the goings on of the Republicans. A common remark is "they are worse than we are." This is not a compliment.

Or maybe Romney was not concerned about the dog because he was thinking about all his wife's horses.

What did the fellow in China mean? This reader offered a witty putdown of Mitt straight from her tribe’s favorite chants.

A small but hardy band of readers complained that this tale is irrelevant. That said, a much larger number of readers expressed the opposite view. They wrote to say how sure they were that Collins’ story does allow her “to gain a window into [Romney’s] soul or psyche.” To these readers, the story of the dog on the roof is extremely relevant:

COMMENTER: Excellent! Sometimes, all it takes is one true story about a candidate to tell you all you need to know. This is one of them.

COMMENTER: As so many readers of your columns have written before I am writing this, Seamus' story is the best explanation of Romney characteristics (which have been on display far too long now), as well as the most telling commentary on his character that we could have asked for…Kudos for making us laugh while we are being educated about a presidential (?) candidate.

COMMENTER: At first, Gail, I thought to myself, "Here she goes again with another Seamus story.” This time around, however, you've provided more detail (at least more than I, personally, have read in past columns), and it makes one thing perfectly clear: Romney's inexcusable treatment of the family pet is a metaphor for how he'd govern.

COMMENTER: I'm just glad that someone has replaced John Kerry as the most awkward and out of touch presidential candidate in recent history. And this is a lot more fun than "Swiftboating" because it's actually true!

Citizenship is very easy when we perform it this way! “Sometimes, all it takes is one true story about a candidate to tell you all you need to know,” that first commenter said. The second commenter thanked her leader for “educating” us.

According to that fourth commenter, this story is better-than-Swiftboating because it’s actually true.

Had these readers considered the possibility that Collins’ story isn’t true—that the columnist who has been tickling their tribals might be playing them for fools, in much the way Rush Limbaugh does? There was no sign that they had. Other readers, more credulous still, explained what we can learn from this story in a bit more detail:

COMMENTER: I'm sorry Ms. Collins' continuing use of Seamus bores, upsets, or frustrates [some readers] but it's a METAPHOR FOR MITT! Get it? It's the little behavioral things that we all do that reveal our true character, not what we say and do when the cameras are rolling (although Mittens is not so great in that context either). Nevertheless, most career politicians have handlers and flack catchers whose job it is to hide their true character, but sometimes the public gets lucky (see, e.g., the Nixon tapes). What is trivial to you is quite revealing to many of us.

COMMENTER: Personally, I am not up for Ann's role of mute admirer any more than Seamus' penthouse views or the bulging bladders of the back seat. If a president Mitt decides, in his truly emotion-free style without a lick of common sense, to nuke the disobedient Middle East, what's the chance that Ann, so called heavy weight of the campaign, would suggest he consider the innocent civilians? About as good a chance that Seamus gets inside accommodations in the future.

COMMENTER: Setting the whole dog thing aside for a moment, the bizarre laugh that Romney comes out with every time he is caught out by a question (which is all too often) is one of the reasons that almost nobody likes the guy. It highlights that he possesses not a shred of actual humor, and while being likeable probably should not be the number one reason to vote for someone, it is not entirely irrelevant, either. Imagine some world leader making an unexpected comment to a potential future President Romney and imagine Romney sitting there with that odd wooden smile on his face giving out with that weird little laugh. That mental picture makes me cringe.

The first commenter compared the relevance of the dog on the roof to that of the Nixon tapes. The second commenter drew a more nuanced lesson from the hoary old tale; based on her conduct regarding Seamus, Ann Romney wouldn’t intervene if her husband was starting a war!

The third commenter even managed to spot the relevance in the way Romney laughs. These are the gentle souls Gail Collins keeps playing as she keeps telling her favorite tale, misstating her facts as she goes.

Is this story relevant in some manner or fashion? That is a matter of judgment. That said, no such story can be relevant if it’s built on bogus facts—and almost no one stopped to ask if Collins has engaged in such conduct. Out of 691 comments, no one mentioned the astonishing way Collins simply repeated a “rumor” last week. But then, very few callers challenge or question Sean or Rush on their radio shows.

Bottom line: We the people just aren’t very sharp. Most likely, we never have been. This helps explain the old code of conduct which people like Collins and Limbaugh (and Hannity and Dowd) have been taking to pieces over the past twenty years.

In the days of Cronkite and Brinkley, the story of the dog on the roof would not have been broadcast or published. For better or worse, we wouldn't have been given the chance to judge this campaign this way. Why would this story have gone to the dump? Consider our favorite comment to Collins’ fact-challenged piece:

COMMENTER: How Mitt Romney treated his dog is very relevant when you consider how he treated the employees of the companies he helped destroy as CEO of Bain Capital.

Then, Romney did say he likes to fire people; especially all the middle- and working-class people who serve him.

Do you like people? Or do you hate them? This well-intentioned but comical comment puts us all to the test.

What is this reader saying? He says this story “is very relevant” when you consider the way Romney treated people during his tenure at Bain.

This well-intentioned person seems to be saying this—the story of the dog on the roof helps us understand the way Mitt Romney treats people. It didn’t occur to this simple soul that Collins has barely written a word about that actual topic, about Romney’s conduct at Bain!

If we want to know how Romney treats people, why not write about it? Why write about the way he treats dogs, then base our conclusion on that? Collins has offered “water torture” concerning the dog on the roof of the car. But quite literally, what follows is her only reference in the past year to Romney’s conduct at Bain. Note how quickly she loses interest, then runs right back to the dog:

COLLINS (11/19/11): This is an unusually delusional presidential field. Mitt Romney's greatest political asset is that he doesn't seem to actually believe it when he says he's been consistent on matters like health care reform or abortion. Thank God there's at least one guy on the stage who knows he's fibbing.

Romney is the richest person running for president, worth somewhere between $190 million and $250 million. Most of that came from his work at Bain Capital, a firm that bought up troubled companies and gave them makeovers. Although many people lost their jobs when Bain Capital reeled in their employers, Romney's work did create a lot of new value. Which, on occasion, Bain Capital walked away with, leaving the remnants of the company flopping helplessly on the beach.

In 2010, Mitt earned somewhere between $9.6 million and $43.2 million, according to The National Journal's calculation of his financial reports. I believe I speak for us all when I say that there seems to be a lot of room in the middle of that estimate, but you get the idea. Much of that came from investments, but Romney also gets quite a bit of cash for making speeches. He once made $68,000 for one appearance before the International Franchise Association in Las Vegas.

People, if you were raking in more than $9.6 million a year, would you waste your time talking to the International Franchise Association? Perhaps you would if international franchises were especially close to your heart. But, in that case, why charge them $68,000? There are a lot of mysteries in the Mitt saga. For instance, if you were a very wealthy father of five energetic young boys, would you choose to spend your vacation driving the whole family to Canada with the dog strapped to the roof of the car? Wouldn't it be more fun to take a plane to Disneyland?

That is Collins’ sole attempt to discuss Romney’s conduct at Bain. Instantly, she wandered off-topic. She self-medicated with humorous trivia, then ran back to the dog.

Collins keeps writing about the dog. She doesn’t seem to care about the people who were left for dead during Romney's tenure at Bain.

On Monday, we’ll try to finish our exploration of this rich treasure trove of comments. They give us a look at the soul of the public. And at the mental life of one modern post-journalist, a person who’s not unlike Limbaugh.

Coming: Why do we the people seek these simple stories?

Former Rhodes Scholar at her best!

2012-03-16T11:45:00.001-04:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Draining a pair of three-pointers: Rachel Maddow, Our Own Rhodes Scholar, is at her best when she’s all by herself.

When get can just sit there and clown, treating her viewers like fools in the process. That’s what she did at the start of last evening’s show, pleasuring us about Romney:

MADDOW (3/15/12): Mitt Romney has won the wealthiest sliver of the electorate in 14 of the 16 states for which we know that kind of information about the voters. The only states where he has not won the wealthiest sliver are Alabama and Mississippi.

But remember, he got creamed in Alabama and Mississippi! He lost everybody there. He didn’t even come in second place in Alabama and Mississippi. He came in third in both of those states.

Really? Romney “got creamed” in Alabama and Mississippi? It felt real good, but was it true? These were the results in Mississippi:

Mississippi Republican primary:
Santorum: 33 percent
Gingrich: 31 percent
Romney: 30 percent

When Romney loses a state by three, he got creamed. But how about when he wins by three?

In that case, three points is very close. Here was Rachel, posting the results from Michigan and Ohio just last week:

MADDOW (3/7/12): In both those big important bellwether-y states, Rick Santorum gave Mitt Romney a run for his money.

But Ohio and Michigan also show really clearly I think the two most important dynamics, the two biggest stories in the Republican Party’s efforts to pick their presidential nominee this year.

Look at the two races. Look at—looook! How close!

This was the result in Ohio, and this was the result in Michigan. Sooooo close, right? And in a race that close, you start thinking about all the little things that could have made a difference. If you picked up a point along this group, or if turnout had been two points higher among this group. When it is this! close! any marginal change in any one group of any reasonable size can make all the difference.

Rachel went on and on about how close the two states were. And yes, she said the word “bellwether-y;” this helped us see how clever she is. She also drew out her words in some of the ways we have shown, helping us appreciate how close those races were.

The whole time she was telling us this, the Michigan results were on the screen, showing that Romney had won the state by three points.

Go ahead—watch the tape. At the start, you can enjoy Rachel as she talks and talks about herself, helping us learn to enjoy her more. The passage we have quoted starts around 2:45.

At any rate, here’s the new math: If Romney loses a state by three, that means he got creamed. But if he wins a state by three, that means it was soooo close.

For many years, when we watched Hannity, we wondered what his viewers thought when they kept getting handed this type of ridiculous shit. Now, we often ask the same question when we watch our own cable channel.

For further viewing enjoyment, watch Rachel on last evening’s show when she was no longer all by herself. When she got keister handed to her by the world’s biggest climate denier.

Former Rhodes Scholar gets crushed by James Inhofe!

2012-03-16T10:51:00.001-04:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Is Maddow the world’s greatest hoax: Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) has published a new science book.

“The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.” That’s the name of the book.

Last night, Inhofe appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show. He was interviewed for two complete segments, totaling 21 minutes.

Next week, we’ll discuss this program in more detail. But you owe it to yourself to watch last evening’s debacle.

In the first segment, Maddow was crushed, then left for dead, concerning the science of climate change. A high school senior might have been better prepared. Putting her haplessness to good use, Inhofe steamrolled the world’s most smartest liberal.

(Early on, Rachel said this: “Wait. Hold on. I don’t have an opinion on it.” That wasn’t exactly what she meant, but things went straight downhill from there. You owe it to yourself to watch. To do so, just click here.)

The second segment may have been worse. Rachel completely switched the subject, building a long complaint around the claim that her own work is misrepresented at one point in Inhofe’s book. (The self-importance was simply astounding.) In the process, Maddow quit on the topic of climate change, switching to the topic of the Ugandan “kill the gays” bill.

This might have produced a worthwhile exchange. But Maddow was poorly prepared for this topic too. This snark-driven cable clown simply can’t do it. To watch this segment, click here.

Have we ever seen a more hapless performance? Our thoughts drift back to the pitiful work of Ted Koppel and Lawrence O’Donnell in the fall of 2004 when they failed to prepare themselves for interviews with Swift Boat captain John O’Neill.

Koppel and O’Donnell were truly awful. But Maddow was utterly hapless last night. The interview should be sung to the tune of “Helplessly Hoping.” You really should click and watch.

(To watch the six-minute segment which set the stage for this painful performance, go ahead: Just click here.)

Inhofe is one of the world’s biggest kooks. Last night, he ate Our Own Rhodes Scholar for lunch. This was corporate cable “news” at its least varnished. Was the Times' Brian Stelter watching at home? If so, was he “intellectually stimulated?”

More on this miserable effort next week. But you should click and watch the way Maddow was crushed, then left for dead, by our top climate denier.

Keep a few words in your mind as you watch: Incompetent. Sad. Unprepared.

Snark-driven. Worthless. Can't do it.

WALTER AND DAVID AND RUSH AND GAIL: The story of Mitt and the car wash!

2012-03-16T10:01:00.002-04:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Part 5—Has Gail Collins been dishonest: Does Seamus’ ride on the roof of the car give us a look into Mitt Romney’s character?

Stating our question a different way: Is Seamus’ story relevant? Is it relevant in any way at all?

Here at THE HOWLER, we simply don’t know, although we’re strongly inclined, for several obvious reasons, to stay away from such tales. But if you’re going to build your judgments around a 1983 car ride, you presumably need to have accurate facts about that mystery ride.

This brings us back to the gruesome conduct of a very bad pseudo-journalist—the public clown known as Gail Collins. She clowns for the New York Times.

Collins has been clowning us rubes for years concerning this hoary old story. Before we’re done with this topic, we’ll speculate about the reasons for her extremely bad conduct. But in her column last Thursday, Collins did, or seemed to do, the following things:

She withheld some basic facts about this hoary old story.
She seemed to invent an unflattering fact about Mitt Romney’s bad conduct.
She pretended that she was puzzled about something Romney has said.

Most remarkably, she repeated a “rumor.” Then, she seemed to endorse it.

Traditionally, journalists aren’t supposed to go around repeating rumors. If you don’t know why, consider the case of Bob Neer.

A bit of background:

In January, the Boston Globe’s Neil Swidey described the way he broke this story in 2007. Early on, he reviewed the basic facts of the tale. After that, he named Gail Collins as the person in the media who has done most to distort this tale.

Swidey journeyed onward from there. Debunking one of Collins’ claims, he told a comical tale:

SWIDEY (1/8/12): Most media reports have accurately relayed those basics. However, exaggerations and faulty assumptions have been advanced, most notably by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who has trotted out the ghost of poor Seamus in more than 30 of her pieces since 2007.

The exaggerations tend to be patently absurd, like the implication that Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car with nothing more than rope, rather than in a carrier with a specially fashioned windshield. The assumptions, however, are more subtle, and therefore more believable, but just as untrue. For the record, neither Tagg nor any other Romney was my original source for the anecdote. Collins and others have pushed this silly line to suggest how tone-deaf the Romney brood must be. In fact, I went to the then 37-year-old Tagg only after having heard the Seamus story at the very end of a long interview with a close friend of the Romney family. Seeking to penetrate the stock image of the air-brushed family, I had asked that friend what stories the Romneys reminisced about in the privacy of their own home. As soon as the Seamus road trip anecdote passed his lips, I knew it was a gem. But I was determined to avoid a situation where Romney’s handlers could call into question the anecdote—or the entire article—because I had gotten some small detail wrong. So I insisted that Tagg poll his mother and brothers and persisted until I had confirmed every last fact. Far from being tone-deaf, Tagg realized as I dug deeper that the story could cause his father grief. Yet Tagg’s participation actually helped his dad. After all, the first version of the story I’d heard from the family friend—who hadn’t been an eyewitness—improbably had Mitt driving the station wagon right through a carwash. Imagine the howls from PETA if Seamus had been introduced to the world with the image of high-pressure wraparound brushes pummeling a defenseless, diarrheal dog.

A family friend “who hadn’t been an eyewitness” had told an “improbable” tale. Romney simply drove through a car wash! With Seamus strapped to the roof of his car! In a defenseless posture!

Presumably, it didn’t occur to Swidey that he needed to state his apparent belief—this comical tale was a big pile of poo. But we the people have a small problem—when it comes to matters like this, we’re mentally/intellectually ill.

Below, you see what was done with this part of Swidey’s report at Blue Mass Group, a major Bay State web site. This post appeared the next day:

NEER (1/9/12): After almost five years, hero journalist Neil Swidey has ended his silence and offered incredible new details about the story he broke: The Long Ride of Seamus Romney, the heartbreaking story of a little guy robbed of his pride by Mitt Romney and pushed beyond the bounds of endurance by callous, potentially criminal, indifference, who responded with a gesture of such humble defiance that he forced even the millionaire’s devoted sons to side against their father, and made history.

First, although it might seem unremarkable to those who know that Romney has hired political dirty tricks practitioner Eric “Crazy Khazei” Fehrnstom to help run his campaign, the Seamus story may actually have been more brutal than reported:

“[T]he first version of the story I’d heard from the family friend—who hadn’t been an eyewitness—improbably had Mitt driving the station wagon right through a carwash. Imagine the howls from PETA if Seamus had been introduced to the world with the image of high-pressure wraparound brushes pummeling a defenseless, diarrheal dog.”

Imagine the howls from Seamus! In any event, this part of the story has apparently been hard to verify.

You’re right—it sounds like this post may have been tongue-in-cheek, a parody of all the excitement surrounding the dog on the roof of the car. Reading the author’s various posts on this topic, we’ll have to say that we have reached the opposite judgment.

With no disrespect intended for fish, this post was offered by a Blue Mass Grouper named Bob Neer. Note the way he reacted to the part of Swidey’s report which he quoted. To Neer, Swidey’s story about the car wash didn’t mean that unknowing people sometimes tell comical, bogus tales.

To Neer, this party of Swidey’s report indicated “that the Seamus story may actually have been more brutal than” we knew! Instead, he seemed to think that Swidey had "offered incredible new details about the story he broke."

Did Romney simply drive through a car wash to clean the poop off his dog and his car? According to Neer, “this part of the story has apparently been hard to verify!”

Presumably, the bullshit moved on from there. One recent related example:

Yesterday morning, the Seamus story hit the front page of the Washington Post. Ruth Marcus responded with a column saying this is a stupid way to judge Romney’s character.

Her column appears in this morning’s hard-copy Post. Yesterday afternoon, the column was posted on-line—and comments began to appear.

In a standard act of professional courtesy, Marcus failed to name Collins’ name or explain her role in this ongoing process. But in the earliest comments to Marcus’ column, one Post reader offered this, passing on the pleasing tale of Romney in the car wash:

COMMENTER (3/15/12): The author of the original Boston Globe story based on his interview with Tagg, said he learned later that Mitt did not hose down the car but took it through the car wash.

Well actually, no—that isn’t what the author of the original story said. But so what! Thanks to this excitable reader, others will read the car wash tale. Some will pass this shit on.

Alas! We the people are enormously dumb; presumably, we always have been. We’re also extremely ardent where the tribe is concerned. We love to believe the worst about Them and the very best about Us. At times like these, it pretty much doesn’t enter our heads that our basic facts may be wrong. Instead, we rush to spread the facts—the facts as we think we know them.

We rush to spread our bogus facts—the facts as we think we know them! That’s what two of Collins’ commenters did in response to last week's column. Two months after Swidey’s essay, they were still spreading the bullshit around concerning his original source:

COMMENTER (3/8/12): And wasn't it one of the sons who originally told this story to Swidey? The Oedipal subplot is staggering...

COMMENTER (3/8/12): My favorite part of this story is that Mitt's staff VOLUNTEERED it to a Boston Globe reporter as evidence of the boss's executive decision-making skills. You think the staff might have been sending some kind of a message here? Just saying.

In January, Swidey directly addressed this topic; he said Collins has misled her readers about it. Two months later, each of these commenters had the facts wrong. But so what? The first, a woman from upstate New York, shared a psychiatric assessment based on her bogus account of the facts. The second, a person from St. Louis, passed on a second inaccurate fact. After all, it was his or her “favorite part of this story!”

"Just saying," this person wrote. Next time, maybe he shouldn't!

We liberals used to laugh about the way “those people” would do this. Ditto-heads said the darnedest things! And they would say these stupid things right on the air, as they blathered with Rush! We liberals would roll our eyes and note how stupid the other tribe was.

Those were very good times!

Unfortunately, liberal reaction to Collins’ clowning has produced the same sorts of reactions. It’s hard to be a whole lot dumber than a lot of Collins’ commenters were. And there’s another important trait they seem to share with Limbaugh’s followers:

It doesn’t seem to enter their heads that they are possibly being deceived by the person they trust—in this case, by Gail Collins. It doesn’t seem to enter their heads that they may be getting a pile of bogus facts from a person who is dishonest—or perhaps even disturbed.

Has Lady Collins been dishonest in the course of this long, deeply stupid affair? Did she deliberately withhold some facts when she typed her column last week? Does she have some basis for the claim that Romney kept his family trapped in the car while he handled Seamus’ poop? (This claim produced a great deal of fury among her credulous readers.)

Is she really confused about Mitt Romney’s “air-tight” remark? Or was she simply pretending?

Has Gail Collins been dishonest? We have no way of knowing. But there’s one thing that everyone knows: Journalists aren’t supposed to pass on “rumors.” The obvious reason for this stricture is on display in the car wash tale. We the people are very stupid—and we the people are highly suggestible. Beyond that, we the people are filled with hate:

We love repeating all sorts of claims, as long as those claims reflect very poorly on those in the other tribe.

Why did Collins include a “rumor” in last week’s column? We’ll give you two choices: Dishonest, disturbed.

Tomorrow! Who the heck is Bob Neer? And we'll ponder one last question:

Can our culture survive the changes we have made since the anti-democratic days of Walter and David?

When information appears in the Times!

2012-03-15T12:04:00.000-04:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012

We’re just asking: On the front page of our hard-copy paper, the New York Times is reporting the news:

Yesterday, Rick Santorum didn’t wear a sweater vest. In San Juan!

On the rare occasion, columnists may discuss real news in the Times. Yesterday, Eduardo Porter discussed a very significant topic in his Economic Scene column.

We’ll discuss his column more next week. For today, consider these highlighted claims, which appear early on:

PORTER (3/14/12): At first glance the budget does seem heavily tilted to take from the rich and redistribute to the rest. Taxpayers in the top fifth of the population shoulder three-quarters of the federal tax burden and receive only about 10 percent of entitlement spending, according to calculations by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution’s Tax Policy Center, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Families in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution pay less than 1 percent of taxes and receive about 60 percent of entitlements.

Take a look at those highlighted claims. Three questions:

Do those claims seem accurate to you? Do you know which “taxes” Porter includes?

Do know where to go to fact-check those claims?

Information is rarely allowed in the Times. When information does appear, we’ll admit it—we’re sometimes confused.

Katharine “Kit” Seelye is back on the beat!

2012-03-15T11:33:00.000-04:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012

The concept of front-page news: Our public culture is very dumb—deeply unintelligent.

Consider a front-page “news report” from this morning’s New York Times.

Katharine “Kit” Seelye is back on the beat, this time reporting on Santorum. Her report appears above the fold on the front-page of our hard-copy paper.

This is the way it begins. Note the points of focus:

SEELYE (3/15/12): Fortunes Turn, as Does Style, for Santorum

SAN JUAN, P.R.—The pickup truck that carried him through Iowa is long gone, replaced by a small motorcade of S.U.V.’s. There was a police escort, and a phalanx of Secret Service agents.

The sweater vest was gone, at least for the day, and Rick Santorum, the winner of the last two presidential primaries, was smartly turned out, in a dark suit and power tie, when he held a half-hour private meeting with Gov. Luis G. Fortuño of Puerto Rico.

The two men did not take questions from reporters, but allowed photographers to capture the moment. With the cameras whirring, and sitting side by side in formal chairs, the two could have been in the Oval Office.

That is the start of an above-the-fold, front-page news report. According to Seelye, we are supposed to be surprised or struck by these three observations:

Yesterday’s points of surprise:
Santorum didn’t wear a sweater—in San Juan, Puerto Rico!
When he met with the governor, he wore a suit and tie.
He didn’t take a pick-up truck to the governor’s residence.

In this country of old and dying elites, those points represent the New York Times’ idea of political news. They highlight Seelye’s report about Santorum’s alleged change in “style”—a report which appears on the Times front page, above the fold.

Seelye played the fool—and the assasin—all through Campaign 2000. In a more serious nation, she would be famous for her misconduct.

This morning, she is back on the beat, displaying the fatuous soul of our most famous newspaper. But then, go ahead! Just check it out:

The Times is crammed with non-news today about the Republican candidates.

Concerning that missing sweater vest: Yesterday’s mid-day high in San Juan: 86 degrees!

Sampling a mentor: This morning, Ashley Parker reports the non-news about Candidate Romney. Here’s the way she starts:

PARKER (3/15/12): A day after losing Mississippi and Alabama to Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney took his campaign to a state where he had no public schedule, no time carved out to mingle with voters, and no rallies or town halls.

Wow! Now that was stylistically clever! But then again, so was this famous catty opening, written by Maureen Dowd when she was still a reporter:

DOWD (6/9/94):President Clinton returned today for a sentimental journey to the university where he didn't inhale, didn't get drafted and didn't get a degree.

Wonderful snark! That appeared atop the Times front page as the paper snarked against Clinton. They kept it up for the next six years. George Bush went to the White House.

For five years, Parker was Lady Dowd’s “research assistant,” whatever that could mean.

WALTER AND DAVID AND RUSH AND GAIL: Collins' readers take the bait!

2012-03-15T10:53:00.000-04:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012

Part 4—Our very own ditto-heads: First question:

In the summer of 83, did Mitt Romney’s dog lose control of his bowels because he was uncomfortable—perhaps extremely uncomfortable—up on the roof of Mitt Romney’s car?

It’s certainly possible! Neil Swidey’s writing helps show this.

Back in 2007, Swidey played the story that way when he “broke” the tale of the dog on the roof of the car. Swidey presented the tale as a very short prelude to a very long biographical profile in the Boston Globe—a profile which focused on Romney’s reverence for his wife, Ann Romney.

Having some fun, Swidey suggested that Seamus pooped because of the winds he'd endured:

SWIDEY (6/27/07): Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

The ride was largely what you'd expect with five brothers, ages 13 and under, packed into a wagon they called the "white whale.”

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. "Dad!" he yelled. "Gross!" A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

According to Swidey’s novelization, the poop was “payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding...in the wind for hours.” Seamus had turned the waterworks loose as payback against his cruel master!

Three paragraphs earlier, Swidey had said there was some sort of windshield in place. By now, he’d forgotten all that.

So it goes when major journalists set about handing us novels.

Second question: is it possible that Mitt Romney’s dog enjoyed his ride on the roof of the car? Is it possible that he would have gotten sick if he’d been inside the car?

It’s certainly possible! Neil Swidey’s writing helps us see this too.

In January of this year, Swidey wrote an essay in the Globe in which he looked back at this now-famous story. On this occasion, Swidey seemed to imagine a different novelized tale:

SWIDEY (1/8/12): Some commentators have complained that I failed to show sufficient animal-rights indignation when I ushered in the Seamus story. Although I wrote that the diarrhea was “payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours,” I had deliberately tried to play the anecdote straight so readers could draw their own conclusions...

To me, Romney’s critics have focused on the wrong part of the anecdote. It’s not that Romney put his dog on the roof...I’ll take the Romneys at their word that Seamus loved his alfresco rides. Hell, my dog loves doing all kinds of things I don’t, chief among them luxuriating in the stink of other dogs’ duffs. What is beyond debate, though, is that this far into this particular trip, Seamus had ceased enjoying his ride. Faced with such irrefutable evidence, most people, I suspect, would have relented and let the ailing dog cram into the back of the wagon, even if logic dictated that cleaning up a repeat episode of his gastric distress would be a whole lot messier than if he were returned to the roof.

In this rendition, Swidey says he’ll “take the Romneys at their word that Seamus loved his alfresco rides.” Most amusingly, he tells us he was “playing it straight” back in 2007, when he said that Seamus’ gastric distress was “payback” for his ride “in the wind.”

Was Seamus uncomfortable up in his kennel? In the famous words of Lyndon Johnson, Swidey can teach it flat or he can teach it round. So can you, if you want to be human.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that Seamus loved his rides on the roof, as Mitt and Ann Romney have both said. It’s also possible that Seamus was locked in a canine hellhole.

Sane people will grasp a basic fact—there’s no real way to judge this matter. In response to this conundrum, Swidey has judged it both ways!

But sanity rarely rules in our partisan public debates. Partisan passions make fools of us all; we quickly forget what little we knew about the limits of our own knowledge. We rush to believe the worst about Them. In part, that’s because we’re convinced of the wit and the brilliance of Us.

This is especially true if folk like Gail Collins are slithering all around.

Collins has cited this unknowable matter in roughly forty columns at the New York Times. Last Thursday, she devoted her entire column to the poop on the back of the car. And to make this unknowable tale tilt her way, she treated her readers like fools—like the fools they were eager to be.

She told them a rumor; they took it as fact. She feigned confusion about a remark; reams of readers left dim-witted comments in which they voiced real confusion.

She withheld several basic facts. She even seemed to invent a claim about Romney’s rude conduct toward his wife—a claim which seems to be contradicted by everything Swidey wrote in his original, ground-breaking report. And sure enough! Showing the ugly instincts which lurk in the hearts of us partisan fools, many readers screeched and yelled, explaining what this story means about Romney—and about Romney’s vile wife.

Like the ditto-heads who praise Rush Limbaugh, Collins’ readers didn’t seem to suspect that they were being played by their leader. That they were being toyed with—misled. Treated like low-grade fools.

A certain number of readers complained about the absurdity of Collins’ conduct; we’ll look at some of their comments tomorrow. But most of her commenters cheered Collins on, as they accepted the disinformation she had spread.

For years, we liberals have rolled our eyes at the gullibility of Limbaugh’s “ditto-heads.” Now, at long last, thabnks to comment threads, we liberals get to examine the work of our own highly gullible mates.

How dumb are Lady Collins’ readers? Let us count the ways! As she neared the end of her column, Collins passed on “a rumor.” Just like that, it was taken as fact. This was just her third commenter:

COMMENTER: Dogs and cats often run away from families where they feel unloved or neglected, or where there is an excessive amount of tensions. It is not surprising to me that Mitt's dog sought this option when it could.

Just like that, rumor had turned into fact! But then, as everyone knows, this is why journalists aren’t supposed to pimp rumors around in the first place.

Collins and her editors know about that. But they no longer care.

How gullible are Collins’ readers? Even in her full-length column, Collins forgot to mention the “windshield” Romney built “for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.” Instead, she pretended to be confused by Romney’s subsequent remark that the container was “airtight.”

“Wait a minute...how did Seamus breathe?” Collins brilliantly wondered. Readers quickly took the bait, asking endless questions about this deeply puzzling topic. Deprived of reference to that windshield, others described the very high winds poor Seamus was forced to endure. Two examples, of many:

COMMENTER: I actually was willing to consider that the dog might have been OK with it—after all, some thrill-seeking humans jump off of cliffs in wingsuits—until I read the part about being hosed down. Now we've got a soaking wet dog in a 55-mile an hour wind (let's just assume the car stuck to the speed limit).

COMMENTER: There is a huge difference between being in a car with the option of sticking your face out of the window, and being on top of the car with your entire body exposed to 65 mph wind with no break, hour after hour.

Unbearably, one commenter after another noted a gap in Romney’s remark which had escaped even Collins: If the doggy container was “airtight,” how did the doggy poop drip down the car? Some sleuths took the reasoning further. With unfailing logic, they noted the fact that a dog would suffocate in such a hold:

COMMENTER: If, as Romney told Chris Wallace, "This is a completely air-tight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself” was indeed factual, then how did Romney find out the condition of the dog's distress? It could not have been airtight if Romney had to hose the car down. And a good thing, otherwise the dog would have suffocated from the lack of oxygen and the noxious fumes of his own poop. And it appears that his statement to Wallace had another fallacy; could Seamus really climb up onto the top of the station wagon and, "regularly" at that, open the "air tight" kennel and enjoy himself?

Just for the record, Romney didn’t tell Wallace that Seamus could open the airtight kennel. But when we get whipped into partisan fury, our imaginations may allow us to open many new doors.

Just for the record: Was Seamus bothered by wind at all in the course of his ride? It’s possible, as Swidey’s first novel showed. But there’s really no way to know such a thing, unless you’re eager to get played by a rumor-monger like Collins.

In her most intriguing piece of novelization, Collins seemed to invent the idea that Romney wouldn’t let his wife and kids out of the car while he hosed Seamus. It’s always possible that this is true—but it strikes us as highly unlikely, based on Swidey’s original work, which made no mention of any such conduct and plainly implied just the opposite. But readers hungrily fell on this claim, seeing the darkness of Mitt Romney’s soul.

As often happens in these instances, the psychiatrists were IN. Two examples, of many:

COMMENTER: I am sincerely appreciative that I now know that in a twelve hour car drive, he pre-planned restroom breaks for five children. This particular fact is more revealing than the dog fact. He made those five kids and the wife stay in the car when he made an unscheduled stop to hose off the dog poop?! Can anyone spell obsessive compulsive? Or narcissist? Or, maybe, entitled male? This sounds like a guy capable of saying "I am not concerned about the very poor.”

COMMENTER: The description of the incident with Mittens' planning of the stops and then forcing his family to remain in the car while he rinses Seamus' loose excretion down over them, underscores for me the guy's internal concrete makeup. He has no ability to observe himself, much less empathize with others...I wonder to what extent this comes from his religious background where no one is allowed to question the men of authority even when their reasoning is weak or non-sensible.

The forcing of his family (which almost surely didn't occur) allowed this doctor to reach his or her diagnosis.

Other readers were troubled by the fact that Romney had, in Collins’ words, “designated all the acceptable rest stops before beginning the trip.” Collins forgot to tell readers what Swidey reported—that Romney would quickly pull off the highway if his wife wanted to widdle. Denied that knowledge, readers unloaded on Romney’s behavior. Some of them added their own bogus facts, thereby improving the tale:

COMMENTER: As Mr. Romney points out, this was not a one-time thing; Seamus rode on top, and bathroom stops were made on a strict schedule. When this story originally appeared in the Boston Globe, there were statements by the sons regarding the bathroom stops, indicating that there were no unscheduled stops, even for their mother, who was pregnant at the time. Mr. Romney makes my skin crawl.

COMMENTER: I completely agree that the way we treat our animals says a great deal about the essence of a person. Animals put up with a lot from us and give us unconditional love. How would Mitt like to travel across the Canadian border in an airtight crate? And poor Ann couldn't even pee. I had to pee every 5 minutes when I was pregnant. The man's heart is 4 sizes too small (if I remember the Dr. Seuss book correctly).

COMMENTER: What astonishes me about the Romney journey is the fixed schedule of bathroom breaks with 5 boys ages 2 to 13. Fine (maybe) to tell the 12 and 13 year olds they had to "hold it”—but to tell his wife he wouldn't stop for her to change their toddler's diaper? I can't believe that when Romney stopped to hose off Seamus and the car and kennel (and throw away anything absorbent he'd put in that kennel), Ann and the boys didn't just get out of the car and use the gas station's bathrooms or at least stretch their legs. As the owner of long-haired dogs, I can assure you it took more than a couple of minutes to get everything cleaned up.

For the record, Ann Romney wasn’t pregnant at the time of this mystery ride. Meanwhile, had Romney “told his wife he wouldn't stop for her to change their toddler's diaper?” This was very bad behavior—and it sprang full-blown from this reader’s head.

Regarding Ann Romney herself, hate-spewing readers could quickly see right through her saintly conduct:

COMMENTER: And where was Ann while Emperor Mittster was packing the family pet on the luggage rack, and her boys were about to blow a bladder in the very crowded backseat? Sitting mutely, gazing adoringly, going along, because good wives never question their husbands’ decisions...Personally, I am not up for Ann's role of mute admirer any more than Seamus' penthouse views or the bulging bladders of the back seat.

COMMENTER: It must have been traumatic to have been one of Mitt's human passengers in the car, knowing the poor dog was up on the roof. Mitt was lacking compassion for Seamus, to be sure. But that episode would have really troubled me as a young boy. Amazing that Mrs. Romney allowed it with a car full of her own kids.

COMMENTER: And Ann Romney is innocent in all this, why? She could have spoken up.

REPLY TO COMMENT: I would guess that Ann Romney could not have spoken up because she was the kind of woman who would marry such a martinet as Mitt, and such wimpy types never speak up.

REPLY TO COMMENT: Ann Romney kept her mouth shut. That's how she got the pair of Cadillacs.

The haters and the psychiatrists are found all through these comments, along with the inventers of facts. The busy-bodies were out in force too. They imagined all the different ways the trip could have been performed.

No one is quite as good at raising kids as Lady Collins’ readers:

COMMENTER: It is amazing to me that Romney would make five kids take a 12-hour car trip. They could easily have broken the trip up and stayed overnight once (surely they could afford it). When our kids were young we took some pretty long car trips, but never subjected them to 12 hours in the car. We sometimes stopped en route in parks or natural areas so they could run around for a while. We usually stopped for the night in the late afternoon; they thought it was great fun to swim in the motel pool, play with the ice machine, shop in local stores and see local sights in the small towns where we usually stayed. We did not have anywhere near the money that Romney has, but we did know how to have fun.

[...]

I have to wonder about the logistics of hosing off the poor dog and his crate—just with water, no soap? Was the water flying around everywhere, as it usually does with a hose (carrying many germs along with it)? Did he put the dog back into a wet crate, with the dog himself wet as well? No wonder Seamus ran away.

COMMENTER: If Mitt's been rich his whole life, and we all know he has, why did he drive seven folks and one dog in a station wagon? He had the money to drive anything, and I would think one of those big vans that seats like ten would have been a much better transporter of his whole family. He didn't care about his dog and he seems like he was too cheap to make the right choice in what to drive in terms of what would fit his family best.

REPLY TO COMMENT: This is I wonder about, too. For that matter, they could have flown!

One busy-body took the cake. She wanted Collins to stick her long nose right into Mitt Romney’s last supper!

Inquiring minds demands knowledge:

COMMENT: By the way— Although it's off-topic, I'm wondering about Mitt's home-cooked Chicken Marsala dinner last night. Mormons don't drink alcohol. Can it be that wine, particularly Marsala wine, is allowed? No, the alcohol doesn't cook out completely. Are you on the case, Gail?

We’re assuming that comment wasn’t tongue in cheek, although some of Collins’ frustrated (and angry) readers seemed to adopt that pose.

Readers posted 691 comments to Collins’ column. Routinely, these comments displayed a familiar old instinct for tribal hatred, aimed at Candidate Romney and his she-bitch wife. A wide range of psychiatric maladies were diagnosed—and readers could spot the obvious failure of Romney’s general family life:

COMMENTER: Also telling, I think, is the fact that no one in the car, including 12 and 13 year old sons and wife Ann, protested about plans for the dog's accommodations, or, if they did, they were overruled by dad. Somehow I can't see that happening in my or most families with a less autocratic patriarch.

COMMENTER: What I want to know is why all the rest of the family was ineffective is stopping Mitt from doing this in the first place. Was it that Mitt is not to be questioned with punishment stiff enough to remove him from question? Is is that Mitt's family knows where its bread is buttered and each decide on their own to go along to get along? For instance is it visions of trust funds floating in their heads that got them to get in the car? Or did they just agree with Mitt, just as uncomprehending of what they were doing? Is it that life with Mitt replicates an equally severe lack of judgment and empathic ability?

COMMENT: While the Seamus role is the one that gets the attention, how weird and joyless is it to set out on a trip with your beloved family with all the bathroom breaks planned in advance? Not much space for exploration or spontaneity in the Romney family life.

At our best, we humans are dumb. These humans come from our tribe, though they're not unlike Rush's ditto-heads.

More than anything, these comments display the gullibility of Collins’ readers. But their comments also reflect the bad character of Collins herself, who played them for fools as he picked-and-chose the facts they could hear about this incident.

What should we say about Collins’ character? She threw the rubes a rumor, knowing they would repeat it. She didn’t mention the windshield Romney fashioned—and she pretended to be confused by Romney’s “airtight” comment. She seemed to invent an unflattering fact: Romney wouldn’t let his family out of the car while he attended to Seamus!

We rubes reacted as planned, just as we have always done down through the annals of time. In Ryan’s Daughter, the haters came round. So too after Collins’ column.

As we learned a few years later, Walter Cronkite was a liberal. David Brinkley seemed to be a bit of a conservative. But neither man was a fool or a nut. They almost surely would have agreed on the way to handle this topic.

Back in the day, before Imus and Limbaugh, you wouldn’t have heard a single word about this 29-year-old car trip. No one would have urged you to puzzle it out. You would have been forced to hear about Romney’s proposals, about his verifiable public conduct.

If you wanted to assess his character, you would have been forced to work from that—not from highly novelized tales about a ride in a car.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at Collins’ explanations for her obsession with this topic. We’ll also tell you why Walter and David wouldn’t have played you this way.

Tomorrow: It’s something Collins enjoys

The Washington Post explodes a perception!

2012-03-14T11:05:00.003-04:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012

Buddy, can you spare a dime: We’ll admit that we were surprised by yesterday’s Washington Post.

On the front page, Dan Eggen reported about the state of campaign fund-raising. Perhaps we’ve been watching too much cable. But this took us by surprise:

EGGEN (3/13/12): 2012 GOP contest shaping up to be cheapest race in years

Lost amid all the talk about millionaires influencing the 2012 election is a striking fact: The Republican primaries are shaping up as the cheapest and most financially depressed presidential nominating contests in years.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the other Republicans...have raised and spent about half as much money as the GOP field did four years ago, campaign disclosure data show. The trend doesn’t stop there: Republicans in 2000 and Democrats in 2004 posted stronger financial numbers than this year’s crop of GOP challengers have.

Even adding this year’s spending by super PACs...the Republican contenders spent more cash in 2008 all on their own.

Say what? As Eggen suggests, the buzz has been all about the obscene amounts of cash in this post-Citizens United era. But according to Eggen: “While many voters may feel overrun with negative ads, every primary season since the 1990s has featured more spending than the current contest, records show.”

We’re not real sure how that’s being computed. But friend, how bad is this year’s fund-raising? Before long, Eggen uses some numbers.

The fund-raising seems to be bad:

EGGEN: In 2008, the combined Republican field...had raised nearly $310 million and spent $278 million of that through the early January contests, according to data from Malbin’s research. The figures include $42 million in money that Romney poured into the race from his personal bank account.

Those numbers have been halved in 2012, with $146 million raised and $133 million spent by GOP presidential candidates through Jan. 31, the data show. Romney has not contributed his own money this time around.

This year’s crop of hopefuls does have a new financial weapon in the form of super PACs, which are technically separate from the campaigns but can raise unlimited amounts of money on their behalf...

Nonetheless, even the monied super PACs haven’t closed the gap in spending compared with 2008. The top six GOP super PACs spent about $37 million on behalf of their favored presidential candidates through January, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Let’s attempt to do the math, adding the super PACs into the stew:

2008 GOP spending through early January: $278 million
2012 GOP spending through the end of January: $170 million

By our calculations, $170 million is less than the previous figure!

On the Republican side, Eggen cites standard explanations: Extremely lousy candidates, plus the bad economy. But uh-oh! “Even Obama, who does not have to fight a primary opponent, has begun to lag behind the pace he set in 2008, when he became the most successful fundraiser in U.S. political history.”

Eggen says the dough will explode once we get a Republican nominee. But who says we’ll ever get one of them? And on cable, we constantly hear about all the obscene wads of dough.

Have we perhaps been listening wrong? Inquiring minds want to know.

The new and improved Maureen Dowd!

2012-03-14T10:19:00.000-04:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012

And then too, the same old model: It’s always amazing when Maureen Dowd rises to fight the scourge of misogyny, as she does in this morning’s column.

It’s even more amazing when she affirms the heroic Hillary Clinton. In the past twenty years, has any “journalist” done more than Dowd to advance the cause of misogyny in the mainstream discourse?

Dowd has built an entire career around gender-based insults of male politicians, matched with catty takedowns of Democratic politicians’ wives. For our money, her insulting treatment of Howard Dean’s wife, Dr. Judith Sternberg Dean, set a new low in American letters. But her "critiques" of Barry Obambi’s big brassy wife weren’t a whole lot better.

Then there’s the question of Hillary Clinton. In June 2008, someone with a major platform finally told the truth about Dowd, something that simply isn’t done in our “liberal journals.” (Darlings! Careers could be lost!) That person was Clark Hoyt, the New York Times’ public editor.

In our view, Hoyt became a hero that day. Here’s what he said as he started:

HOYT (6/22/08): Pantsuits and the Presidency

Some supporters of Hillary Clinton believe that sexism colored news coverage of her presidential campaign. The Times reported in a front-page article on June 13 that many are proposing boycotts of cable news networks and that a ''Media Hall of Shame'' has been created by the National Organization for Women.

The Times itself, however, was barely mentioned, even though two of its Op-Ed columnists, Maureen Dowd and William Kristol, were named in the Hall of Shame.

Peggy Aulisio of South Dartmouth, Mass., said, ''A real review of your own stories and columns is warranted.'' I think so too. And I think a fair reading suggests that The Times did a reasonably good job in its news articles. But Dowd's columns about Clinton's campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, Kristol, who made the Hall of Shame for a comment on Fox News, not for his Times work.

''I've been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years,'' Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns. She often refers to Barack Obama as ''Obambi'' and has said he has a ''feminine'' management style. But the relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on Clinton—in 28 of 44 columns since Jan. 1—left many readers with the strong feeling that an impermissible line had been crossed, even though, as Dowd noted, she is a columnist who is paid not to be objective.

"Her gender-laden assault on Clinton." Someone had told the truth!

Hoyt simply pounded Dowd this day. Your “liberal journals” have always shirked this duty. Darlings! Such things simply aren’t done! We wait until Limbaugh says something! Then, our values emerge!

(Dowd “said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns.” When it comes to major career liberal writers, her statement was basically accurate.)

This morning, Dowd has flipped. She’s fighting misogyny now–and she simply adores Ms. Clinton. And she’s upset about Rush Limbaugh too! Just the same way you are!

To this day, our liberal journals have never commissioned reports on the work of Dowd and Matthews. The chimps at Salon have never been to willing to go there. And if someone notes some such obvious fact, other chimps will rise in protest, pretending that all is well.

The chimps at Salon have never gone there. Does your lizard brain let you know why that is?

Tomorrow: More on Dowd’s new column. It some ways, it’s the same old model.

WALTER AND DAVID AND RUSH AND GAIL: Should you care about Mitt Romney’s dog?

2012-03-14T09:40:00.000-04:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012

Part 3—Where does stupidity come from: With apologies for the blinding stupidity which follows:

When Mitt Romney pulled off the road in 1983 to clean up after his pet dog, did he refuse to let his wife and kids get out of the car?

On such points does “journalism” now turn! Last Thursday, Gail Collins devoted her entire New York Times column to this blindingly stupid, now-famous story about the candidate and his dog. In the course of her column, she stated that Romney made everyone else stay inside the car while he cleaned up after Seamus!

This was roughly the fortieth column in which Collins has stepped in this mess.

As we will see tomorrow, commenters responded with fury to this piece of misconduct by Romney—conduct which gave us an unerring look into the gentleman’s soul. Some commenters explained what this incident tells us about Mitt Romney’s wife. Others speculated about the effect on the kids, darkly wondering if Mitt and Ann were guilty of child abuse.

We liberals used to roll our eyes when conservatives displayed their blinding stupidity on talk radio programs. Now, we liberals have developed forums where we can show that we’re blindingly gullible too! But with so many potential voters finding so much meaning in this incident, one question surely does arise:

Did this incident actually happen? Did Romney make his wife stay in the car while he cleaned up Seamus’ mess? Or is Gail Collins simply making this up, perhaps in response to the inner voices other people don’t hear?

Like you, we don’t know if Romney made the family sit in the car while he cleaned up after Seamus. But as we noted yesterday, Neil Swidey said no such thing when he “broke this story” in the Boston Globe in June 2007. Swidey’s text rather plainly implied that the Romney kids did get out the car (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/13/12). He then proceeded to quote Tagg Romney describing the role his mother played in Mitt Romney’s world back in the 1980s.

This is Swidey’s account of what occurred when Romney “coolly” stopped the car to clean up after Seamus. This incident served as an introduction to Swidey’s lengthy profile of the Romneys’ courtship and marriage:

SWIDEY (6/27/07): As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

And it offered his sons a rare unplanned stop.

“Think about it,” Tagg says, “a 12-hour drive and the only time we stop is to get gas. When we stop, you can buy your food and go to the bathroom, but that's the only time we're stopping, so you'd better get it all done at once.” Yet there was one exception to Mitt's nonstop policy. "As soon as my mom says, ‘I think I need to go to the bathroom,’ he pulls over instantly, and doesn't complain. ‘Anything for you, Ann.’ ”

Tagg didn't get it back then, but now at age 37 he finally understands why his father has been willing to suspend his regimented ways when it comes to his wife. “When they were dating,” Tagg says, “he felt like she was way better than him, and he was really lucky to have this catch. He really genuinely still feels that way, thinks, ‘I'm so lucky I've got her.’ So he puts her on a pedestal.”

He had always treated Ann that way, especially since he’d nearly lost her.

Does it sound like Romney made his wife stay in the car while he hosed down his dog? It doesn’t sound that way to us. But go ahead—punish yourselves! Read through Collins’ 691 comments, as outraged readers respond to her un-sourced claim that Romney committed this horrible act. And just for the record, the “journalist” Collins has told this troubling story before. Two months ago, she forced herself upon Diane Rehm, seeming to cite Swidey’s report as the source of her troubling tale:

COLLINS (1/23/12): Mitt Romney, when he was raising his family, at one point was taking the whole family, and it included four children—five children—to Canada for the summer and had this Irish Setter. And put the Irish setter in a crate on the top of the station wagon and took him off with them to Canada, driving down the highways with this poor dog on top of the car.

There have been controversies as to whether the dog liked it or not. Mitt Romney claims the dog really enjoyed this. But he got diarrhea while he was traveling so he couldn't have been that happy. And one of the kids confirmed this story to the Boston Globe, that once this was obviously happening, the kids are looking out the back window going, “Whew, whew, whew.” He pulls off— Although he only had designated rest stops that he would stop at, he pulled off at a non-designated rest stop, but kept everybody in the car. Jumped out, got a hose, hosed down the dog and the car, jumped back in the car and took back off down the highway, lest anyone get out and use an undesignated rest stop.

I can't believe—if the dog was comfortable before, he was not comfortable, I'm sure, after he'd been hosed down. But anyway, I just love this story, the story of Seamus, the Irish setter, on the roof of the car and Mitt Romney. And I try to bring it up whenever possible.

Here too, Collins had the family trapped in the car, “lest anyone get out and use an undesignated rest stop.” Discretion alone has kept her from advancing a claim of false imprisonment.

Has Collins simply imagined this “fact?” We have no way of knowing, although she also recited a “rumor” in last Thursday’s column, a truly astonishing bit of conduct on the part of a journalist. Completely predictably, her third commenter had already accepted this rumor as fact.

That’s why journalists, by tradition, didn’t parade around repeating “rumors.” Walter and David didn’t spout “rumors.”

The columnist Collins does.

Collins seems to be making up facts as she pimps the story she says she “just loves.” Unashamedly, she’s passing on rumor. But over the course of the past twenty years, this ridiculous post-journalistic conduct has come to define wide swaths of our public discourse. For example: Collins and her disgraceful colleagues invented many such tales about Candidate Gore, in a long, disgraceful, twenty-month process which sent George Bush to the White House.

This practice didn’t start there. The “press corps” had been making up stories about White House candidates dating back at least to Candidate Muskie, who was famously said to have wept, although he apparently didn’t. But people like Collins played this game hard all through the two years of Campaign 2000.

She has continued the practice today. Gullible commenters screech and rail, disturbed by the stories she tells them.

Why is a person like this allowed to publish in the Times? Please! The New York Times has been Bullshit Central for most of the past twenty years. But the practice of inventing these tales is hardly confined to the Times.

Let’s consider Swidey’s role in this unintelligent process.

You can’t blame Swidey for what Collins has done. To his substantial credit, he singled her out in a recent essay in the Globe, saying she has done the most to misinform the public about this now-famous tale.

Journalists never name-call colleagues that way, especially those who are higher-ranking. That said, it was Swidey who put this silly old tale into play! Let’s consider the apparent reasons why he did.

In his recent piece in the Globe, Swidey stated his own view of this affair. First point: He doesn’t think there was anything cruel about making poor Seamus ride on the roof! He doesn’t doubt the Romneys’ claim that Seamus enjoyed his rides up there.

He doesn’t think Mitt Romney was cruel to make poor Seamus go up on the roof. But in this passage, Swidey explains what we can learn from this incident:

SWIDEY (1/8/12): To me, Romney’s critics have focused on the wrong part of the anecdote. It’s not that Romney put his dog on the roof. Remember how different standards were in 1983. Back then, I was a kid sloshing around in the cargo section of my family’s station wagon, competing with my equally unbuckled younger sister to see how many passing truck drivers we could get to pull their horns. I’ll take the Romneys at their word that Seamus loved his alfresco rides. Hell, my dog loves doing all kinds of things I don’t, chief among them luxuriating in the stink of other dogs’ duffs. What is beyond debate, though, is that this far into this particular trip, Seamus had ceased enjoying his ride. Faced with such irrefutable evidence, most people, I suspect, would have relented and let the ailing dog cram into the back of the wagon, even if logic dictated that cleaning up a repeat episode of his gastric distress would be a whole lot messier than if he were returned to the roof.

Swidey doesn’t find it hard to believe that Seamus enjoyed his rides on the roof—but then, Swidey knows Seamus was in a doggy container protecting him from the wind:

According to Swidey, the real lesson we can take from this tale concerns Romney’s behavior after Seamus pooped. At that point, most people would have let Seamus ride in the car—or so Swidey says he “suspects.” Since most people would have done this, we are told we can reach some kind of conclusion from the fact that Romney did different.

That logic strikes us as very weak—blindingly so, in fact. But so was Swidey’s original logic in 2007, when he presented this incident as an example of Romney’s “emotion-free crisis management.” Romney “coolly” pulled off the highway, we were told in Swidey’s original piece—as if a more emotional man would have careened across six lanes of traffic in order to clean up Seamus’ mess and free him from his discomfort.

Even then, Swidey was crafting the type of novelized tale in which modern “journalists” take delight—silly, novelized “slices of life” which are presented in an attempt to make us see a certain candidate in a particular way. In his recent piece in the Globe, Swidey described this process—although, as our journalists constantly do, he fudges the source of this practice:

SWIDEY (1/8/12): In his 2009 book, And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, Bill Wasik uses Seamus as a case study of what he terms “the nanostory,” something that generates intense media interest but then fades away. Partisans use political nanostories, he says, “to construct narratives that paint a dire picture of life under rule by the other side.” The Seamus story, he now admits, hung on longer than he expected, though lately the context has been more media than politics. Wasik, an editor at Wired magazine, predicts the Seamus citations will become more political and more plentiful if Romney becomes the GOP nominee, as President Obama partisans use it to paint Romney as a cruel character who, as Wasik puts it, will “sort of tie us all to the roof of the car.”

“Partisans” use these stories to shape our view of a candidate’s character. That’s true, of course—but in this initial instance, it was Swidey himself who was making us think that we could gain insight into Romney’s character and temperament from this tale. From the fact that Romney “coolly” pulled off the highway, giving us a helpful glimpse of his “emotion-free crisis management.”

Today, Collins has quadrupled down on this blindingly silly piddle. To all appearances, she has simply invented a tale in which Ann Romney was forced to sit in the car, lest she escape her husband’s chains in order to take her own leisurely piss. But without any question, Collins has deliberately passed on a “rumor.” And she pretends that she is utterly bollixed concerning that “airtight container.”

Do you believe that? We don’t.

Collins’ readers are outraged by her novelized claims, as we will see in tomorrow’s post. But then, years ago, her readers may have been outraged by the ridiculous shit she pimped about Candidate Gore—the shit which sent Bush to the White House.

Collins has done this for many years. People are dead all over the world because of such deeply strange conduct. Today, though, liberals cheer her on. Her stories are pleasing to us.

At one time, people like Collins weren’t allowed to play this way. Then along came Imus and Howard Stern. After them, we accepted Rush Limbaugh.

After Rush, the deluge.

Tomorrow: We are now ditto-heads too!

Tribal enjoyment: Chimps love grits!

2012-03-13T11:19:00.000-04:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012

Voters maybe don’t: Last night, at the start of his show, Lawrence O’Donnell was nice enough to show us the chimps at play.

He compiled a set of video clips. The chimps were attacking Mitt Romney:

O’DONNELL (3/12/12): We’ve got presidential campaign news with the Republican nomination turning into a complicated math problem. Willard M. Romney seems to think the solution is cheesy grits.

ROMNEY: Mornin’, y’all. Good to be with you.

[...]

BASHIR: Willard has somehow managed to turn on the Southern charm.

JANSING: Eating grits, I think cheesy grits he called them.

ROMNEY: I’ve got to start this morning with a biscuit and some cheesy grits, I’ll tell you.

TODD: Cheesy grits. That seems a weird thing to say.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It’s not cheesy grits, it’s cheese grits.

FINNEY: The pander fest that’s been coming out of his mouth has been pretty stunning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you’re going to pander, at least get it right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s not flip-flopping. It’s pandering and there is a difference.

GIBBS: That kind of stuff doesn’t really go over well in the Deep South.

CAPEHART: It’s almost like as if we’re watching Romney on safari in his own country.

FINNEY: What he is, is not what the voters want.

The chimps have been leaping about in their cages, pleasuring you by making fun of a joking remark about grits.

As they did, two new polls showed Romney essentially tied with Obama. The Washington Post has Romney ahead. But who gives a shit about that? Did you know his real name is Willard?

Last week, we told you the chimps were making you fools with all their silly stupid-shit clowning. But this is truly all they know.

They don’t know how to create a serious politics. This is truly all they have. Nothing is being held back.

Get ready for (perhaps) a rough ride, although we aren't making predictions. Meanwhile, to watch last evening’s poo-fling, go ahead: you can Just click here.

Warning! Even though we love Chuck Todd, you are watching chimps at play. More and more, this is the scope of our corporate “liberal” channel.

Splendid behavior watch: We were thrilled by Bruni’s column!

2012-03-13T10:54:00.000-04:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012

Until we read it again: Yesterday afternoon, we were very impressed with this post by Ed Kilgore, headlined “The New Misogyny.”

He went on at considerable length. He even named some liberal miscreants! We’d never seen a liberal man write about this topic that way.

And then, we came to the end of the piece. Doh! It was written by Kathleen Geier, filling in for Kilgore on Sunday!

It isn’t Kilgore’s fault, of course, that Geier composed that excellent post. But we had a somewhat similar reaction when we read Frank Bruni this morning.

At first, we were flat-out thrilled by Bruni’s column. We still recommend it quite highly. For some reason, it made us think of this column by Laura Ingalls Wilder, written in 1921 for the Missouri Ruralist.

(“Think of the number of children in the world, each the joy of some mother’s heart, each a link connecting one generation with another, each a hope for the future.” Half of those children are girls.)

Bruni goes on and on and on about the special loathing of women, a loathing which has been displayed in various cultures since the dawn of time. We’ve never seen a man write that column. We think the column is long overdue—and we’ll offer much praise to Bruni.

Having said that, let’s also say this: We noticed something very familiar when we re-read the column. From the following passage, can you guess what it is?

BRUNI (3/13/12): You could argue that Limbaugh chose the slurs he did for Fluke simply because the context, a debate over contraception, was in part sexual.

But there are examples aplenty of women being derided as sluts and prostitutes—two of his descriptions of Fluke—when sex is nowhere in the preamble, nowhere in the picture.

[...]

Last year the TV and radio host Ed Schultz hurled “slut” as an all-purpose insult at the right-wing commentator Laura Ingraham. He got a week’s suspension.

Another radio host, John “Sly” Sylvester, used his Wisconsin talk show to savage the state’s lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, as someone given to oral and group sex. This was just random invective, his special way of saying “I hate you.” He went unpunished.

The impulse toward gross sexual caricatures of women is a sick tic without end.

When Bruni finally named some names, he chose to name two minor players. We love Bill Maher around here. But Bill has used worse terms than “slut,” and he didn’t get mentioned. Ed Schultz got called out here; Matthews and Olbermann didn’t.

Bruni named Ed Schultz by name. And he named a guy in Wisconsin we’ve never heard of before.

Do you understand those choices? We’re inclined to think we do.

WALTER AND DAVID AND RUSH AND GAIL: A diarrhea of errors!

2012-03-13T10:18:00.001-04:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012

Part 2—Treating Times readers like dogs: There was a time when you wouldn’t have heard about Mitt Romney’s dog.

For better or worse, Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley wouldn’t have dealt with this subject. And in those days, for better or worse, people unlike Walter and David simply weren’t allowed on TV.

Or in the New York Times.

But then, one day, it happened! Someone gave Imus a radio show; then they said, “Why not Howard Stern?” Before long, even Rush Limbaugh was allowed on the air.

This slow, steady decline opened the door for Gail Collins.

As standards have fallen, people like Collins have extended the “creeping Dowdism” at the degraded Times. In the process, you get to read about Mitt Romney’s dog. With endless errors thrown in, just to heighten the fun!

Is there any point to the tale of the dog on the roof? We’ll examine the question of relevance starting tomorrow. But if we believe the tale of the dog is a relevant tale, then we ought to insist that a New York Times columnist give her readers accurate information about it.

This brings us back to what Neil Swidey wrote in the Boston Globe just a few months ago (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/12/12). For better or worse, Swidey broke the tale of the dog on the roof back in June 2007. In his opinion, Collins has been spreading misinformation about this now-famous tale.

Once again, this is Swidey’s recent recap of the now-famous tale, with a bit more detail from his indictment of Collins’ ongoing conduct:

SWIDEY (1/8/12): To recap: Sometime during a 12-hour drive from Boston to Canada in 1983, Mitt’s oldest son, Tagg, noticed a brown liquid running down the rear window of the family station wagon. Realizing the liquid was being discharged by their dog, Mitt pulled off the highway and into a gas station, borrowed a hose to wash down Seamus and the car, and then returned the dog to his rooftop carrier for the duration of the trip. Most media reports have accurately relayed those basics. However, exaggerations and faulty assumptions have been advanced, most notably by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who has trotted out the ghost of poor Seamus in more than 30 of her pieces since 2007.

The exaggerations tend to be patently absurd, like the implication that Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car with nothing more than rope, rather than in a carrier with a specially fashioned windshield. The assumptions, however, are more subtle, and therefore more believable, but just as untrue. For the record, neither Tagg nor any other Romney was my original source for the anecdote. Collins and others have pushed this silly line to suggest how tone-deaf the Romney brood must be...

That’s as far as Swidey went in calling the roll of Collins’ distortions. As he continued, he pondered the reasons why this tale has garnered so much attention.

No one is forced to agree with Swidey’s view of Collins’ performance, of course. But it’s very rare for a major journalist to name another in such a rude fashion. Just for starters, let’s consider the two distortions he cited in this passage.

Let’s start with the “exaggeration” he describes as “patently absurd.”

Is it true that people have come to believe that Romney “strapped his dog to the roof of his car with nothing more than rope, rather than in a carrier with a specially fashioned windshield?” That he drove to Canada in that fashion, with his dog strapped to the roof of the car—full stop? Presumably, Swidey knows much more about what people think regarding this incident than we do. That said:

About a month ago, this thought did enter our head. Collins constantly writes that Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car—full stop, no mention of any container. For some reason, we finally wondered: Is it possible that her outraged readers actually think that Seamus himself was strapped to the roof of the car? That there was no doggy container?

The way they tied our lord to the cross? Given Collins' persistent construction, could that be what readers think happened?

We don’t recall why that thought finally entered our head, but we did make a few inquiries. And yes, we’ll have to admit: From the handful of people to whom we spoke, we got the impression that some people have been picturing the incident that way, in part because of the way Collins keeps describing the incident.

Swidey featured that exaggeration. We’ll assume that he has encountered this view from more than a couple of readers. We wish he had offered more information, especially since Collins has continued to thunder apace.

Second: Has Collins “pushed the silly line” that Tagg was Swidey’s original source? Has she “pushed this silly line to suggest how tone-deaf the Romney brood must be?” We don’t know, but that inaccuracy strikes us as benign compared to some of the bullshit that Collins is pushing.

Let’s consider three items of bullshit Collins pimped in last Thursday’s column. Remember: If you, like many of Collins’ readers, think this incident is important, then it should be reported with care.

Collins refuses to do that. A tale of three errors, not even counting omissions:

They weren’t allowed to get out of the car! The apparent distortions started quickly in Collins’ pitiful column. Early on, she too recapped the hoary old tale. As she did, she included a claim which had many commenters fuming:

COLLINS (3/8/12): The story took place in 1983, when the Romney family made a 12-hour pilgrimage from Boston to a vacation home in Canada. Romney, his wife, Ann, and five sons were in the station wagon. Seamus was in a crate, or kennel, on the roof.

At some point—possibly in response to the excitement about being passed by tractor-trailers while floating like a furry maraschino cherry on top of the car, Seamus developed diarrhea. And Romney, who had designated all the acceptable rest stops before beginning the trip, was forced to make an unscheduled trip to a gas station. Where he kept the family in the car while he hosed down the station wagon and the dog, then returned to the highway.

“It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management,” Swidey wrote.

People, does any of this sound appealing? Elect Mitt Romney and he will take the nation on the road to the future. Some of us will be stuck on the roof. The rest of us will be inside singing camp songs and waiting for the day when the master plan lets us stop to visit the bathroom. Plus, anybody who screws up on the way to the future gets the hose.

On this occasion, Collins finally managed to mention the fact that Seamus was in a crate, or kennel—although she still forgot to mention that “specially fashioned windshield.” But note the claim she included, then stressed. When Romney pulled off to attend to Seamus, “he kept the family in the car while he hosed down the station wagon and the dog!”

People! They weren’t even allowed to get out of the car! They had to wait for the day when the master would let them visit the bathroom!

Many of Collins’ gullible commenters bellowed about this gruesome misconduct. Sadly, there is no sign in Swidey’s original report that any such conduct occurred. Indeed, Swidey’s report seems to say the opposite.

We aren’t linking to Swidey’s report because we can no longer find it on-line (except through Nexis). But this is what the gentleman wrote back in 2007:

SWIDEY (6/27/07): As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

And it offered his sons a rare unplanned stop.

Swidey never said the family was forced to stay in the car. In the highlighted sentence, he rather plainly seemed to imply the opposite. Indeed: Elsewhere in his short account of this now-famous doggy disaster, he quoted Tagg Romney noting that Mitt would quickly pull off the highway anytime his wife, Ann Romney, wanted a bathroom break.

Within the fevered mind of Collins, a very different picture emerged. Her gullible readers were suitably furious, as we’ll note on Thursday.

Remember: If this story is actually relevant, it ought to be told in an accurate fashion. But Collins didn’t bother with that. Soon, she was playing it dumb about the case of the airtight container.

The case of the airtight container! In last Thursday’s column, Collins was talking to herself, something she may do fairly often. Her questions to self were printed in bold, a practice we will follow.

Before too long, she was asking herself about the airtight container:

COLLINS: “This is a completely air-tight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself,'' Romney told Chris Wallace in a Fox interview that began with Wallace, a dog owner, demanding: ''What were you thinking?”

Wait a minute, if the kennel was air-tight, how did Seamus breathe?

Excellent question. Also hard to envision the animal continually trying to leap on top of the station wagon in order to enjoy its delights.

Classic Collins! She asks herself the world’s stupidest question, then tells her readers it’s excellent. But what did Romney actually mean when he said the container was air-tight? Presumably, he meant one of two fairly obvious things: He meant the container had solid walls except for the grill-type door, which presumably would have been facing backward. Or he meant that the windshield he “specially fashioned” had somehow been affixed to the kennel, keeping air from flowing through any air vents.

As we’ll see on Thursday, Collins encouraged her readers to see a gap in Romney’s logic. He said there was an airtight container! But that doesn’t make any sense! And sure enough—behaving like perfect ditto-heads, her readers hurried to swallow the bait. Many, many, many readers bellowed about this troubling point, offering inane “analyses” of this gap in Romney’s logic.

Would Walter and David have fired Gail for this piece of bullshit alone? We’d like to think they would have. By the way, you might also note this: Collins finds it “hard to envision” Seamus scrambling to get to his rooftop perch—and so she assumes it couldn’t have happened!

We once would have found it “hard to envision” New York Times readers being this foolish. But when we read Collins’ comments last week, sure enough! Woop! There it was!

While we’re at it, let’s pass on a rumor! Already, Collins should have been fired; the text of her fantastical column should have been on the cutting-room floor. So what the heck! Why not go all the way! As she neared the end of her stations, she decided to pass on a rumor!

If this story actually matters, what follows is astonishing conduct. Once again, Collins was talking to herself, in bold. But is the New York Times still a newspaper? If so, what was this published?

COLLINS: I heard a rumor that when the family got to Canada, Seamus ran away.

Seeking sanctuary? Mitt's sister, Jane, told Swidey that the dog developed a tendency to wander, and that she took Seamus to her home in California where there was more space. She also gave The Globe an extremely cute picture of Seamus cuddling with some kittens.

In this passage, Collins repeats a rumor. She then seems to endorse the rumor with her “seeking sanctuary” remark. For the record, there is no journalistic evidence—zero; none; zilch—that this rumor is actually true. But when we reviewed Collins’ comments last week, we’ll saw a predictable reaction:

Collins’ third commenter was already repeating this rumor as if it were an established fact! On Thursday, we'll review this predictable reaction. But it only took that long.

Over and over and over again, Collins’ commenters make it clear—they think this story is very important. For better or worse, they regard this hoary old tale of a dog on a roof as a window into a candidate’s soul. Collins, of course, has encouraged this view—although even in last Thursday’s column, she was too dishonest (too passive-aggressive?) to state her own view of this matter in a simple, clear, direct manner.

Why does Collins keep pimping this tale? She still wouldn’t quite explain. But if this incident is important, it’s important that Collins report it in an accurate way. And she refuses to do this.

For ourselves, we increasingly tend to think that Collins has problems. But what about the New York Times editors, the ones who keep putting this shit into print? And what about the ghosts of Walter and David?

What do they think of this non-journalistic pile? Is it real hard to envision?

Equivalence watch: Have our guys been like their guy?

2012-03-12T11:47:00.000-04:00

MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

By law, it's crazy to think that: In our view, Melinda Henneberger was right on target—strongly so—in Saturday’s Washington Post.

With considerable accuracy, she described the way the tribe gets mad—but only at those in the other tribe. Below, you see her initial description of this ancient syndrome.

We think this is very right:

HENNEBERGER (3/10/12): It’s hard to keep score in the still-escalating war on women, especially when the two sides in the fight have different standards of what’s insulting depending on who’s insulted.

The problem is that somehow, a sexist rant is only a sexist rant when it’s an attack on a woman in our own party. Otherwise, we call any comparison a “false equivalence”—and dream up creative ways in which conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut is not at all like liberal TV host Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a slut.

No two acts are ever just alike. Ed Schultz's admittedly stupid act wasn't the same as Rush Limbaugh's tirade. But we’ve been amazed, in the past few weeks, by the endless ways liberals have used the concept of “false equivalence” to reject all criticism of those who play on our side.

We’ve marveled at comments in comment threads. But like Henneberger, we were also very poorly impressed by what Bill Burton said:

HENNEBERGER: Watch and learn, aspiring parsers, as Bill Burton, a former aide to President Obama and the founder of Priorities USA, the pro-Obama super PAC to which HBO’s Bill Maher has donated $1 million, insists that Maher calling Sarah Palin what many women consider the most objectionable slur to women is nothing like Limbaugh’s slurs against womankind.

As Burton told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, “The notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said over the course of his career and what the de facto leader of the Republican Party said—to sexually degrade a woman who led in a political debate of our time—is crazy.”

It’s “crazy” to see a connection there! Oh sorry—to draw “an equivalence.”

For ourselves, we love Bill Maher. And no, he isn’t Rush Limbaugh—but Burton’s presentation struck us as extremely dishonest and massively crass. And Burton isn’t some guy on a comment thread. He speaks from the top of the pile.

Following the rule of three, Henneberger made her point again at the end. For ourselves, we wouldn’t throw Clinton into this stew. But her highlighted statement is apt:

HENNEBERGER: This determination to find our political adversaries guiltier of misogyny than anyone on the home team goes back at least as far as Bill Clinton, whose long history of treating women with the respect you’d show a Kleenex was and still is a topic off-limits in polite Democratic company.

I often wonder if there’s any wrong action that wouldn’t be defended by political teammates with cries of, “At least he didn’t x, y, or z, like the other guys did.” But if there is a line partisans wouldn’t cross to defend their own, I haven’t located it.

For ourselves, we wouldn’t throw Clinton into this stew; that involves comparing personal conduct (where the facts aren’t real clear) to public statements. But that highlighted statement is very apt. In the past week, many liberals have shown a great deal of skill at finding that requisite “x, y or z”—the x, z or z which proves to the world that our guy isn’t like theirs.

Which proves that it's "crazy" to think so.

Our guys have been like their guy. Within the tribe, you’d rather die than admit it.

Tumulty was on target too: We thought Karen Tumulty’s on-line post was also on-target. The comment thread is loaded with liberals who play the equivalence card.

By law, our guys can't be like their guy. By law, it's "crazy" to think that.

Fact-checking Santorum: The Post gets it right!

2012-03-12T11:11:00.000-04:00

MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

But then they give Romney a pass: In Sunday morning’s Washington Post, Fred Hiatt did some good fact-checking.

His work involved Rick Santorum’s recent statements concerning No Child Left Behind. Uh-oh! Santorum has discussed his vote in favor of this program in a way which seems to be bogus:

HIATT (3/11/12): Rick Santorum says he voted for No Child Left Behind even though it was “against the principles I believed in.” He explained during the Feb. 22 Republican presidential debate: “When you’re part of the team, sometimes you take one for the team, for the leader.”

But Santorum didn’t just vote for No Child Left Behind. He touted its principles and boasted of his support for at least half a decade after it became law.

Hiatt then gave a bunch of examples. The gentleman did some good fact-checking. To read his full piece, just click here, then click once again.

That piece appeared on the Washington Post’s op-ed page. But uh-oh! On the facing editorial page, Hiatt did some fact-checking about Mitt Romney—and he seemed to give Romney a pass. In this editorial, the editors discussed a 2009 op-ed column in which Romney seemed to recommend a federal individual health care mandate, of the type which had been included in his own Massachusetts health plan.

Romney’s 2009 op-ed piece appeared in USA Today. As many have noted in the past week, that column seems to contradict Romney’s repeated claim that he never recommended any such federal mandate. But in this case, the editors completely ignored the apparent contradiction. Instead, they praised Romney for the good sound judgment he expressed in 2009. (Headline in the hard-copy Post: "Guilty of being reasonable.")

One out of two ain’t really half-bad, especially at this level. But that’s because our society’s fact-checking skills are very weak indeed.

In its editorial, the Post took a shot at BuzzFeed, which has been widely praised for unearthing that old column by Romney. The editors called in the snark:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (3/11/12): The [op-ed column] was brought back to public attention this month by the Web site BuzzFeed, which at first reported that the op-ed was not to be found on USA Today’s site. That gave birth to dark, conspiratorial thoughts in Rick Santorum’s mind, as he confided to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. “You know, it’s really interesting, Laura, that the USA Today op-ed was somehow removed from the archives,” Mr. Santorum said. “Now, I don’t know how that happens.”

Sadly for this line of reasoning, BuzzFeed later acknowledged that the Romney op-ed was, in fact, still archived on the newspaper site.

Once again, this cut badly for Santorum! But in the process, the editors poked fun at BuzzFeed too.

Did BuzzFeed really bungle this point? You be the judge! Just click here! For ourselves, we’ve been struck by the reams of low-IQ bullshit which litter the site—and by liberal reaction to the way BuzzFeed found Romney’s column.

Liberals have been working hard to establish Romney as a liar. In truth, this isn’t a challenging task. But in light of all this investment, it’s amazing that Romney's op-ed piece from 2009 only came to light this month.

The fact that no one else ever spotted Romney’s column speaks poorly for our skills. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed posted video from three old TV spots by Romney (click here); these appearances were also taken to be incriminating. On the liberal web, many folk said that these TV spots showed that Romney has been lying about his past statements concerning his health care plan.

For ourselves, we just can’t see it. Romney has persistently claimed that he never recommended a federal individual mandate. We’ve stopped, looked and listened. We can’t see a contradictory statement in those TV spots.

For years, we liberals slept in the woods. After Iraq, we slowly emerged. By the time we emerged, our skills were weak—even in a world where one out of two can’t be considered half bad.

WALTER AND DAVID AND RUSH AND GAIL: Are we smart enough to survive?

2012-03-12T10:09:00.000-04:00

MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

Part 1—What Neil Swidey said about Collins: On January 8 of this year, Neal Swidey returned to the scene of the crime.

Swidey, a Boston Globe reporter, recalled the piece of work he says has made him “an asterisk.” That work, which he published five years ago, involved Mitt Romney’s former pet dog.

The piece appeared in 2007. By the start of this year, it was time to look back. Here’s how Swidey started:

SWIDEY (1/8/12): In the annals of presidential campaign coverage, I am an asterisk, and a tiny one at that—the journalist who unearthed the story of how Mitt Romney once drove to Canada with his dog Seamus in a carrier strapped to the roof of the family station wagon. In the nearly five years that have passed since I dug up that golden nugget, there's been so much chatter about the anecdote that “Romney” and “dog” have become inseparable dance partners in Google searches entered from around the world...Still, I have refrained from writing more about the Romneys’ Irish setter and his bout of highway-borne gastric distress. The reason? I dread the thought that Seamus might somehow make it into the lead paragraph of my eventual obituary.

Back in 2007, Swidey wrote the tale of the dog on the roof as a very small part of a very long biographical series in the Globe. That series treated the life of Candidate Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who was running for president.

The tale of the dog on the roof of the car started Part 4 of this very long series. It was a very small part of a lengthy installment which ran 4600 words.

In truth, Swidey’s report about Romney’s dog was a bit novelized; a bit of canine mind-reading was added to help shape the narrative. But at least it was brief! (The incident in question occurred in 1983.) But alas! Given the choices we make as a people, that anecdote is the only thing anyone remembers from the Globe’s long biographical series. As Swidey notes, the tale has achieved a life of its own, a peculiar and important process he discussed in his January piece.

Swidey’s discussion was quite worthwhile; we'll review his piece as the week unfolds. (Headline: “What our fascination with Mitt Romney’s dog says about our culture.”) But let’s return to the piece of reporting which started this now-famous, world-renowned mess.

As he continued his recent piece, Swidey recapped the now-famous tale he told in 2007. In the process, he named a major American “journalist” who, in Swidey’s judgment, has persistently distorted this story:

SWIDEY: To recap: Sometime during a 12-hour drive from Boston to Canada in 1983, Mitt's oldest son, Tagg, noticed a brown liquid running down the rear window of the family station wagon. Realizing the liquid was being discharged by their dog, Mitt pulled off the highway and into a gas station, borrowed a hose to wash down Seamus and the car, and then returned the dog to his rooftop carrier for the duration of the trip. Most media reports have accurately relayed those basics. However, exaggerations and faulty assumptions have been advanced, most notably by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who has trotted out the ghost of poor Seamus in more than 30 of her pieces since 2007.

Oof. Citing Gail Collins as worst in show, Swidey complained about the “exaggerations” and “faulty assumptions” some in the media have advanced about this now-famous story. “The exaggerations tend to be patently absurd,” he wrote, offering one gruesome example. “The assumptions, however, are more subtle, and therefore more believable, but just as untrue.”

To Swidey, Collins is the media’s worst offender; she is the one journalist he chose to call by name. He didn’t go into great detail about the exaggerations and assumptions which he says have dogged this story. He didn’t detail Collins’ errors, although he did specify one.

But if it’s distortion, misstatement and nonsense you like, you don’t have to pick Neil Swidey’s brain in search of Gail Collins’ errors. She kept churning apparent misstatements and false assumptions in her ridiculous column last Thursday—a column she devoted, in full, to the tale of Mitt Romney’s 29-year-old pet dog.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the apparent errors with which Collins littered this latest column. For today, let’s salute the occasional readers who have scolded this extremely strange person for the way she keeps pimping this tale.

In comments, Collins’ readers endlessly thank her for wagging the tale of the dog on the roof of the car. The story adds to their enjoyment of life, they explain—and it provides a deathless insight into the soul of Mitt Romney. Occasionally, though, readers fight back, sometimes sarcastically, as was the case last Thursday with this kill-joy from New Jersey:

COMMENTER FROM NEW JERSEY (3/9/12): Thank you Gail for answering all of these questions about Seamus. Here I was spending so much of my time educating myself about the multiples wars, declared and undeclared, our country is fighting; the unprecedented use of drone attacks killing innocent people; Attorney General Holder's almost unbelievable defense this week of the president's authority to kill Americans in lieu of Constitutionally required due process; our apparent march to war in Iran for no apparent reason and with the likely outcome of further eroding our standing in the world and causing the deaths of countless more innocents; policy positions by Republicans that are absurd on their face, such as Romney's own economic plan which would add trillions in debt thanks to tax giveaways to the wealthy; a terrible unemployment problem; our healthcare system which is massively more expensive than that of other first world countries, and all with the same or worse health outcomes; an outdated war on drugs policy that puts millions of non-violent offenders in prison to the detriment of their families and our society while enriching our growing privatized prison system; and the list goes on and on.

It is very refreshing to come to this Op-Ed space and instead read about a silly event from 30 years ago which has no bearing on anything.

Once in a while, a kill-joy complains. But such complaints are not the rule. Indeed: Relentlessly awful as Collins has been, her readers may be even worse.

In fairness to those readers, most of them don’t know that Collins keeps distorting their favorite old tale. As if to toy with the rubes who read her, Collins cited Swidey’s recent piece in her column last Thursday. In a rather typical act of defiance, she just didn’t tell her readers what Swidey had said about her!

She forgot to report that Swidey said that she has been distorting this tale. That she has been promoting exaggerations and false assumptions, thus treating her readers like fools. That she has been worst of them all.

On-line, she provided no link to Swidey’s piece. And she forgot to report what he said!

In fairness, it isn’t likely that Collins’ readers have heard about Swidey’s judgments—which could of course always be wrong. But good lord! As bad as Collins’ judgment has been, the judgment of many of her readers may be even worse.

Last Thursday’s column—it was all about Seamus—generated 691 comments. Can we talk? The sheer stupidity of those comments raises an existential question:

As a people, are we smart enough to survive?

As a people, can we survive? Walter and David aren’t gatekeepers now. Every damn fool in the whole damn world can go on-line and spout. Beyond that, patently crazy bags of wind are now in charge of three-hour radio programs.

To some extent, you can’t get a spot in talk radio or cable “news” unless you play this game.

Walter and David were once in charge. Today, crazy, store-bought, dishonest people run vast swathes of the discourse. Beyond that, people like Collins write twice-weekly columns in our best-known newspapers.

No one is there to protect us now—to protect us from our own flawed judgment. The rules have changed in the past forty years. So here’s the question we’ll ponder all week:

Given the way the rules have changed, are we smart enough to survive?

Tomorrow: Exaggerations, false assumptions, apparent misstatements

Coming: The question of relevance, with more about David and Walter—and Rush and Howard and Gail

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: Laws of the tribe!

2012-03-10T12:28:00.003-05:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012

Epilogue—The silence of Romney, ourselves: At long last, Gail Collins is upset with something else about Candidate Romney.

Today, she’s upset because he didn’t criticize Rush Limbaugh strongly enough.

We’ll admit it. Reading Collins’ most recent columns has almost made us ill. That’s because we’re blessed with the vision fearless Cassandra once had:

COLLINS (3/10/12): If Romney couldn’t take a clear stand on Rush Limbaugh’s Slutgate, why would he say anything that forthright unless it was a total error? This is why we can’t get the dog-on-the-car-roof story straightened out. The reporters have their hands full just figuring out Mitt’s position on the biggest controversy of the last month.

It isn’t just the dog on the roof of the car! Romney wouldn’t even take a clear stand on Slutgate. (Good God.) He wasn’t even forthright about that!

This complaint about Romney’s conduct has been widespread this week on MSNBC, The One True Liberal Channel. Before we offer a reaction, we want to review Scott Lemieux’s reaction to something we wrote on Wednesday—in particular, concerning some things he says we said or implied.

On Thursday, Scott commented on Michael Kinsley’s column about the Limbaugh matter. He added these points about the conduct of the wider liberal world:

LEMIEUX (3/8/12): Relatedly, I would also recommend Irin Carmon, who notes that feminists have in fact frequently criticized the more progressive misogynists now being cited as tu quoques. And while Bob Somerby is right about MSNBC’s sexism issues, he’s wrong to nobody else in the “liberal world” is willing to discuss this in public. If you’re going to imply, for example, that Rebecca Traister is a hypocrite and sellout only willing to criticize MSNBC hosts on listervs, you might want to spend a minute or two looking into whether she’s, say, written an (excellent) book that extensively discusses the sexist treatment Hillary Clinton received at the hands of Olberman et al.

For the record, there’s a typo in Scott’s piece. Did we say that nobody else in the “liberal world” is willing to discuss this in public? Did we merely imply that claim? The verb is missing from Scott’s sentence.

On to a direct statement:

Did we imply that Rebecca Traister is a hypocrite and sellout only willing to criticize MSNBC hosts on listervs? We’re fairly sure we didn’t say that, though you can judge these points for yourselves. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/9/12. (Be careful when people report what someone implied without presenting what they said. We tend to present long clunky block-quotes to obviate this problem.)

That said, we were struck by Scott’s remarks on the wider behavior of the liberal world regarding “MSNBC’s sexism,” about which he says we are right.

If we’re right, MSNBC has a lot of explaining to do! We wrote this week that MSNBC has been Misogyny Central in cable news over the past dozen years. But then, we’ve been writing about this channel’s bad conduct in this area since 1999.

Regarding Traister, we haven’t read her book, which may be superb, although its first few pages turned us off with all the indecision and crying on the part of the feminist protagonist. But in the part of our post to which Scott is reacting, we were discussing liberal reaction to one particular episode in which Olbermann’s conduct was especially egregious—his sliming of Carrie Prejean in 2009.

As we noted, some liberals and progressives apparently viewed this conduct the same way we did. Speaking in private on Journolist, they discussed this episode in terms of Olbermann’s “misogyny” and “contempt for women.” But as we noted, these people only stated these views in private. We have never been able to find any evidence that any of these people voiced such views about this conduct in public.

For what it’s worth, Traister didn’t publish any such views at Salon. (Who knows? Maybe she tried to do so, and her editors nixed it.) As best we can tell, no one criticized Olbermann for this episode at Salon—although there was a great deal of uproar at Open Salon concerning the laughable young woman who came from the other tribe, the worthless girl Olbermann slimed. The professional staff at Salon can’t exactly be blamed for the ratty outlook of Salon readers. But here are some of the headlines one quickly encounters if one searches “Carrie Prejean” at Salon:

Headlines from Open Salon, not from Salon itself:
Carrie Prejean Goes Down. Literally!
Tim Tebow, the male Carrie Prejean
Trump to Carrie Prejean: Try Porn
Carrie Prejean Owes Pageant $5200 for Her Melons
Carrie Prejean: Self-Bangin’ Porn Queen
BREAKING: Porn Slut Carrie Prejean Has 8 Sex Videos

Oops. There’s that S-word again! And just for the record, Prejean’s “melons” turn out to be her breasts! In fairness, Michael Musto did tell KO, on liberal air, that he wouldn’t call Prejean a cunt. So it’s not like our tribe had no standards!

Our lizard brains will quickly explain why all that crap was perfectly justified—and again, these headlines come from Open Salon, not from Salon itself. That said, our point remains: For whatever reason, a group of progressives expressed their strong distaste for what Olbermann was doing with Michael Musto in the early days of the Prejean pseudo-scandal. But as far as we have been able to tell, they only said these things in private.

Out in the public square, no one challenged the tribe.

Did Traister criticize Olbermann in her subsequent book, which appeared in 2011? We’ll take Scott’s word for that. But according to Scott, she criticized Olbermann for his ratty conduct toward Hillary Clinton. As everyone surely understands, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

Do we still refuse to see the way the tribe has always functioned? In his conduct toward Hillary Clinton, Olbermann was trashing one of our own. In his conduct toward Carrie Prejean, he was trashing one of theirs. And down through the annals of time, reaching back to prehistory, the tribe has always permitted attacks on the others, the smuttier the better.

It has always been the way of the tribe: You can slime the others as much as you like, in any manner you please. You can smut them up real good; you can unloose your Inner Misogynist. You just can’t do that to the tribe’s own—although the liberal world Lemieux defends endlessly permitted even that conduct over the past twenty years.

In his post, Scott suggests that the liberal world has been doing a pretty good job policing the misconduct of its own. This is a gob-smacking fantasy—but this is the way the tribe always reasons. To the tribe, the tribe is always right, and the corollary is clear:

To the tribe, the tribe always has been right. In the current instance, a gullible person might get that impression about our own tribe from reading what Scott wrote.

Such a person would be badly wrong.

Scott cites a recent piece by Irin Carmon, in which she notes actions some feminists have taken in recent years in response to Bill Maher and Michael Moore. We think Carmon has been a strong addition to the staff at Salon, although we think the piece in question is far from her finest work. Carmon was pounding Kirsten Powers for writing a piece at the Daily Beast—a piece which claims that liberals have often failed to police their own in the areas of sexism and misogyny. At one point, Carmon cites a piece by Traister herself, showing how wrong Powers is:

CARMON (3/7/12): Back to the male offenders on the left. Powers claims in one breath that they’re allowed to go on insulting women but then says that Erica Jong got rudely mocked by Matt Taibbi for ... calling him out for sexism. She fails to mention how Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore were targeted by a feminist campaign demanding an apology for their dismissal of the women who accused Julian Assange of rape. Or how much fire Chris Matthews took from feminists—including in this space—for how he talked about Hillary Clinton.

For now, let’s forget about KO. Did Matthews really “take fire from feminists for how he talked about Hillary Clinton?” As evidence, Carmon links to this lengthy piece by Traister—a piece which appeared in Salon in January 2008.

We don’t mean this as a criticism of Carmon. And there was nothing gigantically wrong with that piece by Traister—except for the fact that it arrived on the scene about ten years too late! Through some unexplained miracle, the liberal world finally noticed, in early 2008, that Matthews was a disgraceful, unrestrained Hillary-hater. At the time, of course, he had behaved this way for a decade, with barely a peep of protest from within the liberal world.

We’ll assume that Carmon may not understand this history. If so, she has a good excuse—she may have been reading Salon all those years! As we have noted again and again, Salon never commissioned a report about the disgraceful behavior of Matthews, disgraceful behavior that extended back to at least 1999.

Matthews slimed Hillary Clinton for years. He also slimed Naomi Wolf in the most repellent manner. No one worked harder, in 1999 and 2000, to send George W. Bush to the White House—and no one was more gender-obsessed in this crackpot conduct, except perhaps for his friend, Maureen Dowd. But during that pivotal time and in the years which followed, Salon never offered a profile of this vile man’s endless misconduct. And as it kept its big trap shut, Salon worked to forge a business tie with this truly horrible person.

That tie exists to this very day, as Joan Walsh goes on MSNBC and kisses Matthews' runny keister, helping him reinvent himself as a noble friend of the left. We hope Salon’s money is spending real good, because the ignorance Salon has helped create is very widespread at this point.

In this area, Salon’s own history is a disgrace. But Salon was hardly alone; virtually no one ever spoke up about Matthews' relentless misconduct toward Clinton, Clinton and Gore. We’ll take this chance to remind Lemieux that the so-called liberal world has been disgracefully wrong in these areas—silent, dishonest, self-dealing, corrupt. Empty to the bone.

Scott stands to defend the tribe today, misleading us in the process. But then, how powerfully will the tribe work to keep you clueless about the tribe? Consider the caterwauling which prevailed on MSNBC this week.

As with Collins, so with the chimps! All week long, programmed members of the tribe have criticized Romney for not speaking strongly enough about the things Limbaugh said.

Meanwhile, all the chimps kept their own traps shut, in real time and this week, about what their own colleagues did through the years. Just to save a bit of time, let’s single out Rachel Maddow.

On Monday night, Connie Schultz joined Maddow to talk about Limbaugh’s behavior. Maddow was quite upset with Romney’s cowardice, just as Collins is.

But then again, Maddow was worried about her own judgments! Was she perhaps being unfair?

MADDOW (3/5/12): Joining us now is Connie Schultz. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. Connie Schultz, it’s great to see you. Thanks for joining us tonight.

SCHULTZ: It’s wonderful to be here, Rachel.

MADDOW: Am I being too harsh on Mr. Romney, along with those conservative and independent pundits, that you saw there? These weren’t his comments in the first place. They were Rush Limbaugh’s comments. But did Mr. Romney have to be more forceful here than saying that Rush Limbaugh used words he wouldn’t have used?

As usual, Rachel was pretending to be deeply honest—perhaps a bit more honest than you are. She worried that she was being unfair to Candidate Romney. After all, it wasn’t Romney who trashed Sandra Fluke; it was the idiot Limbaugh who did that. Was she possibly being too harsh as she battered Romney around for failing to denounce Limbaugh more forcefully?

Connie Schultz spoke up for the tribe. As you know, within the tribe, the tribe can never be wrong:

SCHULTZ (continuing directly): Let me rescue you from this worry you’re being too harsh. I am— You know, when I watched Ms. Fluke’s testimony live. And we have—our oldest daughter is exactly her age, just almost exactly, and she is in law school. And we have three other young women, two daughters and a daughter-in-law, mother of our only grandchild, all of reproductive age.

Rush Limbaugh does not understand what he unleashed when he said those words because you know what? He went after my girls. He went after the girls of mothers all across this country regardless of their politics. And that is what he has completely underestimated—as have these candidates.

What is the downside to saying you don’t ask women, young women to post video, he asked for video, Rachel, of this young woman. He called her a slut because she wanted to be responsible about birth control. They have no idea yet it seems to me, what’s been unleashed but they are about to find out. There is no going back on this one.

There was much more; to watch it, click here. But since Schultz instantly raised the question of age, we’ll note that Sandra Fluke is thirty years old; Prejean was 21 in 2009.

That said, Prejean wasn’t part of the tribe! She wasn’t one of our daughters or daughters-in-law. She wasn’t one of "the girls of mothers all across this country regardless of their politics."

In fairness to Schultz, she may not have known about Olbermann’s sliming of Prejean. She may not have known about the conduct those progressives denounced so strongly, though only in private. And who knows? Maybe President Obama didn’t know either! Maybe that’s why he phoned Fluke this week but didn’t phone Prejean back then.

After all, Prejean had voiced Obama’s own view regarding same-sex marriage! Why wouldn’t he want to defend her? Especially since, as Schultz quickly said, politics has nothing to do with this! All our daughters deserve respect! Even if they have the wrong politics!

Maybe Schultz and Obama didn’t know about Olbermann’s conduct. But Maddow knew all about it! It wasn’t her fault, of course; she didn’t say the repellent things Olbermnan said, any more than Romney said those things about Sandra Fluke. But Maddow had to sit there and watch it each night as KO and Musto tugged on their dicks and staged their misogynist wildings.

Why did Maddow have to watch? In a final bit of contempt for women, KO would save these treats for the very end of his program. He would then throw directly to Maddow. She had to sit there and take it.

Sit there are take it she did!

We’re not even saying she shouldn’t have done that, although she authored no profile in courage—at least, not in public. But everyone knows why Maddow didn’t complain about Olbermann’s conduct. Maddow had millions of dollars at stake. Like Romney, she might have paid a very large price for talking back to the tribe.

Maddow kept her trap shut tight. Now, she has spent a week criticizing Romney for not saying more about Limbaugh's behavior—even though Romney said more about Rush than Maddow said about KO!

As we've often noted, Rachel loves to challenge hypocrisy—but only that in their tribe.

Might we make the world’s most obvious point? It’s easy to tell the other guy that he should challenge his own tribal member. On MSNBC, the chimps have been doing this all week while refusing to talk about the gross misconduct of their own. As we noted, MSNBC has been Misogyny Central over the course of the past dozen years. But no one made you ponder such facts as you got tribal pleasure this week. On The last word, O'Donnell and Harris-Perry even pretended that they can't even think of the names of liberals who have misbehaved.

Our advice to Lemieux, whose work we've admired over the years: Turn your back on the tribe! Light out for the territories! The liberal world has failed grotesquely in the past twenty years.

People deserve to be told.

By the way: What did Gail Collins ever say about Matthews or KO? If we're so right about MSNBC, when did Collins challenge this misogyny?

Rubes! We're embarrassed for you! Please!

Do you have to ask?

Again with the rise of Candidate Brown!

2012-03-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2012

How does Blunt look to Bay Staters: On Wednesday, we noted the fact that Elizabeth Warren has fallen behind in a series of Massachusetts polls.

That doesn’t mean that she won’t beat Scott Brown. We have no idea what will happen.

But in yesterday’s Salon, Patrick Tracey discussed Brown’s recent ascent. At one point, he even discussed the way Brown’s vote for the Blunt amendment looks to Bay State voters.

We don’t know if Tracey is right. But he’s the author of Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia.

When such people speak, we sit up listen! Here’s what Tracey says:

TRACEY (3/8/12): Brown has sided with Big Oil consistently and supported an effort by fellow Republicans to ban the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases linked to global warming. Most egregiously, he stood squarely with the Senate GOP on contraception, co-sponsoring the narrowly defeated Blunt Amendment that would have permitted employers and insurers to restrict access to birth control.

Yet this proved to be a safe gamble in Massachusetts with its large number of Roman Catholics who use birth control faithfully. Even if most parishioners who make it to the pews each Sunday believe insurers should offer contraception in their employee healthcare benefits package, they don’t mind if their senator takes the same stand that’s preached from the pulpit. That issue, stalking Romney through the primaries, has not hurt Brown much, even after Brown was roundly condemned by the Kennedy clan for misrepresenting his predecessor’s position on contraception.

Is Tracey right? We have no idea. But some liberals simply assumed that the Blunt amendment would be a millstone around Brown’s neck. After all, it seemed absurd to us.

Alas! For better or worse, Massachusetts voters may not be the way we imagine.

We grew up in Massachusetts, some time ago. We’ll guess Tracey could be right.

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: What did Georgetown (possibly) do?

2012-03-09T11:05:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2012

Part 4—Sadly, reporting is hard: So it frequently happens.

Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke produced storms of outrage in the past week. As frequently happens, this distracted attention from the matters Fluke testified about.

(On February 23, Fluke testified before a group of congressional Democrats. For the text of her testimony, click this. To watch her on C-Span, click here.)

For our money, this distraction was unfortunate, because the original case raised fascinating questions about a major ongoing policy matter. As usual, the reporting has been very weak, to the extent that reporting has happened at all.

But then, what else is new?

We’d love to see this story fleshed out. These are a few of our questions:

Fluke hit the news on February 16, when congressional Democrats tried to have her testify before a full House committee. According to the Washington Post, Chairman Darrell Issa “said that, after a staff review, he had not found Fluke ‘appropriate and qualified’ to testify before his committee.”

That evening, Fluke appeared on the Ed Show, where she described the situation she has confronted at Georgetown:

SCHULTZ (2/16/12): Great to have you with us tonight, Sandra.

Now I understand that you already planned your testimony. You were going to cite examples of people who could have benefited from President Obama’s mandate for birth control coverage. Share with us what you would have told that committee today.

FLUKE: That is what I was there to speak to the committee about. That’s why I was so stunned when Chairman Issa made the decision to not allow me to speak on behalf of those women and to say that I was not an appropriate witness, that those women’s stories were not appropriate for this committee. I cannot think of who would be more appropriate for the committee to hear from than the women affected by this policies whose lives were affected.

One of the women I wanted to talk about today is a close friend of mine. She has polycystic ovarian syndrome. And what that means is that she needs to take contraception for medical reason, to prevent cysts from growing on her ovaries and not to prevent pregnancy.

Now that technically means it should be covered on Georgetown student health insurance, which does not cover contraception for prevention of pregnancy. But unfortunately when university administrators and employers and insurance companies get involved in deciding whose health needs are legitimate and whose aren’t, what happens is that women’s health needs take a back seat to that type of ideology. And that’s what happened in her case and we found that that happens in 65 percent of the female students’ cases.

So for her, she was unable—they repeatedly refused her contraception coverage claims and she had verification from her doctor. It didn’t matter. So she had to pay out of pocket about $100 a month for her, month after month after month. And eventually she just couldn’t afford it like many students just cannot afford that kind of a cost.

And she had to stop taking it. I have to tell you, it’s—so what happened is that after a few months of her not taking the prescription, a massive cyst grew on her ovary. And she woke up one night in the middle of the night in excruciating pain and told me it felt like she had been shot.

And I just can’t—I can’t imagine what that felt like for her. What ultimately happened is that she had that ovary surgically removed, she had to have it surgically removed. And as a result of that, she would have problems conceiving a child. But even more, it just hasn’t stopped for her.

Since the surgery she’s experienced symptoms of early menopause, and her doctors are very concerned that at the age of 32, she is entering early menopause, which means that there will be nothing any doctor can do to help her to conceive a child. And it will also put her at risk for increased risk for cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis.

And that’s where she was this morning when I was attempting to tell her story to the public and to members of Congress, she was at the doctor’s office trying to cope with the symptoms she’s experiencing.

SCHULTZ: Sandra, you know, I know our audience appreciates the story you just told. That was tremendous testimony. And it’s very powerful.

They say bad cases make bad law. Is that true of congressional testimony? Fluke describes a profoundly troubling set of events. That said, we’re not sure why congressional Dems would have sought this particular testimony.

Did a Georgetown student suffer terrible medical consequences when the university (or perhaps an insurance company) violated its own procedures? Fluke seems to describe serious misconduct on someone’s part. But alas! The Washington Post didn’t examine this claim when it did its basic news report about Fluke.

Jenna Johnson’s news report appeared on Sunday, March 4. By then, we were all discussing Rush Limbaugh, not the young woman whose medical disaster Fluke had described. The outrage was general—about Rush! Other folk melted away.

Fluke seemed to describe a serious bit of misconduct—but bad cases do make bad law. Let’s suppose Georgetown (or its insurance company, if it has one) did misbehave in this case. Why would that be the type of testimony congressional Democrats sought?

For ourselves, we aren’t sure—but once Limbaugh calls someone a slut, the excitement overwhelms everything else! Meanwhile, the hometown Post may even engage in reporting as silly as this:

JOHNSON (3/4/12): As a co-president of the Georgetown chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, Fluke and other law students have met through the years with several top Georgetown officials to discuss the student health-care plan.

"They made very clear to us that they weren't going to do this until the law made them do it," said Lizzy Watson, 23, a second-year law student who is also a member of the group.

Some student groups pass out free condoms on Georgetown's main campus, but purchasing contraceptives of any sort requires venturing off campus, often to a pharmacy about half a mile away.

Even that! Students may have to “venture off campus!” As far as half a mile!

Other factual disputes have flared, including a dispute about how much contraception actually costs. But go ahead! Try to find reporting about such topics in the Times or the Post. (For Planned Parenthood’s answer, click this.)

Elsewhere, it’s all about the outrage! It’s all about Limbaugh’s remarks.

More questions: How exactly does this case relate to the decision which set off the current dispute? Under terms of Obama’s “accommodation,” will Georgetown have to provide contraception as part of its insurance for students? More broadly, does anyone know, to this very day, how Obama’s accommodation is actually supposed to work? Does anyone know how it would work for Catholic institutions which are self-insured?

We don’t know how to answer those questions. Within our journalistic culture, basic reporting of such matters tends to be inept from the start. But once Rush launches a culture war, everything else is ignored.

We’ve wondered about another aspect of Fluke’s interactions with Georgetown. When she spoke with Schultz, she described a long, frustrating effort to get contraception coverage:

SCHULTZ: I want to know what’s it like—you’re a third-year law student at Georgetown. Are people on campus—are they talking about this story, or has this really hit the attention of women that you interact with professionally in the school setting?

FLUKE: Oh, my goodness! Unless you studied at one of these schools, I can’t even explain to you what it is like on campus. We have been following these regulations ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed. And it’s a fight we’ve been having for years, literally decades, students have been struggling for this.

According to Fluke, students have been struggling to get this coverage for decades. But according to the student Johnson quoted, Georgetown said it wasn’t going to comply “until the law made them do it.”

We were struck by the sheer futility of this portrait. Have students really been fighting for decades, trying to get a Catholic university to abandon its view of Catholic doctrine?

There’s nothing wrong with such a fight, of course. Students have every right to wage it.

But we’ll have to admit we wondered a bit about these students. Georgetown is a high-ranking law school. Presumably, its students are very bright—and they plan to be lawyers. (Last night on Fox, Megan Kelly said the starting salary for a Georgetown law grad is $160,000 per year.) In all those decades, did anyone ever try to create a work-around—a solution in which students would get contraception while Georgetown got to maintain its doctrine? How expensive could it be to provide this coverage for the women at Georgetown Law? Did anyone try to create a foundation which would provide this coverage from the outside, with Georgetown maintaining its view of Catholic doctrine?

We’d love to see reporting on that. Instead, the Post reports that law students have to “venture” as far as half a mile in order to buy contraception! This type of reporting tends to obtain once a culture war breaks out. Reporters start plucking the violin strings, helping us bond with the victims.

According to Fluke’s testimony, at least one young woman has been badly injured because of someone’s misconduct. Is that true? And who was at fault? We’ve seen no one who showed any interest in examining this serious claim. But then too, we’ve seen little attempt by major newspapers to explain this issue at all. How would Obama’s “accommodation” work? How would it work if a Catholic institution is self-insured?

Your big newspapers don’t seem to care. And such questions don’t make it to cable, where outrage and fury float boats.

Down through the decades, could enterprising Georgetown law students have found a solution to the problem? Has Obama come up with a workable plan? Are there any win-wins here? Or is this about “breaking the union?”

On this, a quick personal note:

We grew up Catholic ourselves. We emerged with a rather negative view of the Catholic Church. For that reason, we would not have been inclined to enroll at a Catholic university. But if we had enrolled at such a place, we don’t think we would have reacted with shock if we found our Catholic university pursuing Catholic doctrine, however absurd it may seem.

Fluke speaks to such issues in her testimony. Limbaugh made Fluke a victim with his typically stupid conduct. But we’ll suggest a political test for progressives:

Imagine Rush hadn’t interceded. Can you imagine how testimony like this would strike many voters? For ourselves, we’ll guess that many voters would think this might be a bit semi-foolish. We can’t really say they'd be wrong:

FLUKE (2/23/12): In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking, What did we expect when we enrolled in a Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.

We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of “cura personalis”–to care for the whole person–by meeting all of our medical needs. We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

We expected that when 94 percent of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for–completely unsubsidized by the university. We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.

And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

Fluke resents the fact that someone disagrees with her view! After all, it’s the 21st century! And she refuses to go somewhere else. Why can't Georgetown just do what she wants?

These are subjective judgments, of course. But on balance, that strikes us as semi-foolish. For ourselves, we’re not real high on the Catholic Church. But to our ear, Fluke’s full testimony is full of infantilizing imagery concerning the (presumably) very capable students who chose to attend Georgetown Law. To our ear, the testimony offers a semi-childish view of the way a Catholic institution should respond to those who attend it.

This doesn’t mean that Fluke’s a bad person. It doesn’t even mean that she’s wrong! It does means that her friend might have been spared if someone had solved this problem during those futile decades. If someone found a good-faith solution to a problem everyone has known about for many years.

Is there some way to build “win-win solutions”—to create outcomes where Catholic institutions get to follow their doctrine while their employees and students get contraception? Was there a way to do that at Georgetown in the past? Has Obama’s “accommodation” now accomplished this goal on a larger scale?

Especially after Rush stirs outrage, big newspapers don’t cover such questions.

People! Reporting is hard!

Tomorrow: Scott Lemieux’s objection

The empress' new obsession!

2012-03-08T10:34:00.001-05:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012

Collins jumps the pooch: We’ll plan to discuss this topic next week, along with related issues.

That said, Gail Collins’ latest column raises the most obvious question: Is our society sane?

As a general matter, it’s a bad idea to introduce questions of mental illness when we talk about politics. (As a general matter, it’s a very bad idea.) But we have never seen a major writer comment about Collins' ongoing series of columns. And today, she has jumped the pooch.

In our view, this raises a basic question: Are we sane as a people? As a people, were we ever sane? Or were we protected from ourselves by past societal practices?

(During the era of Walter and David, shit like this couldn’t get into print. Crazy folk weren’t allowed through the door in those less democratic days. If you wanted to hear someone talking like this, you had to go down to the bar.)

Our professional writers won’t write about this. But this column is a rolling insult to our failing democracy. And Collins has acted this way before, during the sliming of Gore.

The dog on the roof of the car is earth tones. Many people can’t see that now—and of course, they couldn’t see it then.

Kevin and E.J. won’t write about this. Darlings! Professional courtesy!

Extra credit assignment: Don’t miss what Collins says about "rumors!" How does this get into print?

Aw what the heck! This is what Collins writes in that part of her dream. The Q-and-A format is hers:

COLLINS: I heard a rumor that when the family got to Canada, Seamus ran away.

Seeking sanctuary? Mitt’s sister, Jane, told Swidey that the dog developed a tendency to wander, and that she took Seamus to her home in California where there was more space. She also gave The Globe an extremely cute picture of Seamus cuddling with some kittens.

Truly, that’s incredible. Let us translate for you:

Collins is trying to get us to start repeating a rumor! How does this get into print?

So you’ll know, this particular part of today’s mental breakdown dates back to this post in a pet blog at the Albany Times-Union. Collins first cited this post in a column in early February.

You can click on through if you're so inclined, seeing where the rumor got started. But understand: In today’s column, Collins explicitly passes on a rumor! She’s hoping we fools will repeat it.

This makes perfect sense at the Times. The Times jumped the pooch long ago.

School days: Bill Turque buries the lede!

2012-03-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012

Another way cheating on test scores can screw you: Our old pal Bill Turque wrote a fascinating front-page report in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Once he got started, that is! We’ve never ever seen someone bury the lede quite the way Turque did!

Turque wrote about a fifth-grade teacher in DC who got fired because of her students’ test scores. This teacher got excellent ratings from superiors who observed her work in the classroom.

But when their end-of-year test scores came back, her students hadn’t done as well as they did the previous year. On that basis, the teacher was fired.

So far, there isn’t a lot to this story. For all anyone can know, this could have been a lousy teacher who simply got good subjective evaluations.

But in paragraph 19, deep in his piece, Turque finally got to the point. What the heck took him so long? In this passage, the rubber at last met the road:

TURQUE (3/7/12): Wysocki [the teacher] said there is another possible explanation: Many students arrived at her class in August 2010 after receiving inflated test scores in fourth grade.

Fourteen of her 25 students had attended Barnard Elementary. The school is one of 41 in which publishers of the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests found unusually high numbers of answer sheet erasures in spring 2010, with wrong answers changed to right. Twenty-nine percent of Barnard’s 2010 fourth-graders scored at the advanced level in reading, about five times the District average.

D.C. and federal investigators are examining whether there was cheating, but school officials stand by the city’s test scores.

Kamras [a DC school official] acknowledged that the Barnard data are “suggestive” of a problem but said that without clear evidence, nothing could be done. Overall, he said that Wysocki was treated fairly and that her case does not reflect a deeper issue with IMPACT.

“I stand behind my evaluation of her,” he said. “It does not, in my view, call into question anything.”

There’s no way to know what happened here. But here’s what might have happened:

When these children were fourth-graders, someone tampered with their tests, producing bogus achievement levels—“inflated test scores.”

As fifth-graders, they couldn’t maintain this artificial success. Result? Their teacher got fired!

There’s no question: Under the “value-added” testing system, a fifth-grade teacher is royally screwed if her students’ fourth-grade teacher (or their principal) cheated on their test scores.

In theory, “value-added” makes perfect sense, although there are serious technical limitations. But when it comes to testing programs, cheating blows everything up.

Teachers and principals cheated all over DC. Is that why this teacher got fired?

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: Welcome to the Balkans!

2012-03-08T09:33:00.000-05:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012

Interlude—Lawrence O'Donnell's galloping Hannityism: If you watched the Hannity program last night, you were treated to a mountain of disinformation and nonsense concerning Obama’s troubling days at the Harvard Law School.

Hannity has treated voters this way for a very long time. But one hour later, if you watched The Last Word, you pretty much got the same treatment.

MSNBC has been aping Fox News with ever-increasing fidelity. Last night, in his opening segment, Lawrence O’Donnell helped us see how the culture of Fox is being reworked for us liberals.

Lawrence spoke with two guests about Rush Limbaugh’s recent problems. Limbaugh “insult[ed] 52 percent of the population,” Howard Dean said. “This is an attack on 82 percent of women in the United States of America who Rush Limbaugh essentially called sluts,” Dean opined.

Where’s the outrage, William Bennett once asked. Last night, the outrage was strong on this “liberal” news channel. Eventually, though, O’Donnell played tape of Sarah Palin commenting on the Limbaugh episode.

At this point, we got to see the way our own liberal channel is aping the culture of Fox.

Almost anyone who watched Hannity’s program could have explained Palin’s remarks. In the course of Hannity’s show, Palin’s general point of view was fleshed out in some detail. But if you were watching MSNBC, Lawrence and one of his guests pretty much lied in your faces about these remarks. They treated their viewers precisely the way Sean Hannity has always done.

In our view, this exchange should count as a milestone. To watch the full segment, click this. Here’s the way it began:

O’DONNELL (3/7/12): Let’s listen to Sarah Palin’s version of a defense of Rush Limbaugh.

PALIN (videotape): I think the definition of hypocrisy is for Rush Limbaugh to have been called out, forced to apologize and retract what it is that he said in exercising his First Amendment rights. And never is that, the same applied to the leftist radicals who say such horrible things about the handicapped, about women, about the defenseless. So I think that’s the definition of hypocrisy.

Were Palin’s remarks “a defense of Rush Limbaugh?” Not exactly, if we’re still speaking English. In the clip O'Donnell played, Palin doesn’t defend what Limbaugh did and said. She claims that liberals (“leftist radicals”) do similar things without generating similar outrage.

Palin’s statement is basically accurate, although our lizard brains may resist. Indeed: As they continued, O’Donnell and Melissa Harris-Perry pretty much proved Palin’s point—not that we, the rube liberal viewers, were encouraged to understand that:

O’DONNELL (continuing directly): Melissa Harris-Perry, as a leftist radical, I assume she’s including me in this group. I can’t remember saying any of those things she’s talking about. That’s the classic, you know, kind of deflection defense that has no meaning. That’s the best she could do, I guess.

HARRIS-PERRY: Well, it is and it isn’t. I mean, I want to pause for just a second here and point out that the right does not in fact have a monopoly on saying really horrible things about women with whom they disagree. Sexism and misogyny and the way that it ends up in our political discourse actually does end up on all sides.

For me, what is most dangerous and horrifying here isn’t the language of “slut” per se, as disgusting as that was and as much as it was directed at an individual person. I just want to keep our eyes on the fact that what the right has a monopoly on right now are a set of policy positions that actively remove the ability of women to make choices for themselves around their own health care and around their own family planning decisions.

So I worry both around race questions and gender questions when we get so fundamentally up in arms around the language? Because, you know, I hear you, that maybe we can’t find, you know, radical leftists who say mean things. But look, I have been called extremely nasty names from both the left and the right that are deeply gendered. What I care about here are the policies around the availability health care for women. And what the right does have a monopoly on is their willingness to silence women and exclude them from their own health care decisions.

O’DONNELL: Howard Dean and Melissa Harris-Perry, thank you both very much for joining me tonight.

Poor Lawrence! He didn’t seem to have any idea what Palin was talking about! In response, Harris-Perry did say that misogyny “actually does end up on all sides.” She did say that “the right does not in fact have a monopoly on saying really horrible things about women with whom they disagree.”

But Harris-Perry named no names. And as she closed, she seemed to suggest that, like Lawrence himself, she pretty much couldn’t come up with such names. What follows is such a remarkable statement that we’ll run it again:

“Because, you know, I hear you, that maybe we can’t find, you know, radical leftists who say mean things.”

Really? We can’t find liberals (“radical leftists”) “who say mean things”—who engage in this type of misogyny? Unless we’re hiding behind the one silly phrase in Palin's remarks, that's basically a lie.

Harris-Perry knew who Palin was talking about. So did O’Donnell. Unfortunately, both work for a corporate “news” channel which has employed such “liberals” in prominent posts and isn’t willing to tell you about it. So they kept you from knowing some things that all viewers know at Fox.

Welcome to the Balkans! As in the Balkans of the 90s, so too on the cables during this era. The two different tribes speak different languages—are allowed to hear different facts.

On Fox, you’re allowed to know what Palin meant; obvious examples are cited. On MSNBC, you sit there and watch your tribal chieftains as they pretend to be bollixed.

In that striking exchange, O’Donnell and Harris-Perry played it dumb, just as Hannity always has done. They kept you barefoot and clueless—and tribally happy. This is the formula which has been followed at Fox.

It has made Fox anchors rich and famous. It has left Fox viewers clueless.

Last night, Hannity’s viewers heard about the unfortunate names Bill Maher has called Sarah Palin. (This includes the C-word and the Tw-word.) But over on the “liberal” channel, O’Donnell and Harris-Perry couldn’t even think of Bill’s name as they racked their brains concerning Palin’s remarks.

And of course, the repulsive conduct of Keith Olbermann will never be discussed on this channel. Watcvhing this channel, you will never have to darken your skies with thoughts of what our hero did!

Everyone at MSNBC knows about the misogyny Olbermann spewed at this channel. (He kept it up for years.) They know that he called individual persons “sluts.” They know about all the other offenses—the offenses that led those progressives to discuss his “misogyny” and his “contempt for women,” as long as they thought there were speaking in private. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/6/12.)

They know what Matthews did all those years. They know about all the names he directed at the "she-devil" Clinton. Who knows? They may even recall the sickening way he slimed Naomi Wolf!

O’Donnell and Harris-Perry know these things. They just don’t want you thinking about them! These people are your tribal friends. They want your outrage aimed at Rush—at Rush, and at Rush alone.

Lawrence and Melissa distributed soma last night, knowing it would make you happy. As we speak, your lizard brain is telling you that what they did was highly moral.

Your lizard brain is lying again. Just as the lizard brains do in the wild tribal lands where the folk are condemned to watch Fox.

Tomorrow—part 4: Rachel, not unlike Mitt

What did Andrew Breitbart know and when did Andrew Breitbart know it?

2012-03-07T10:54:00.002-05:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012

Cillizza: That’s entertainment! On the day Andrew Breitbart died, Chris Cillizza swung into action.

In our view, he revealed a deeply unfortunate truth—a truth about Cillizza himself.

Like many pundits who wrote about Breitbart, Cillizza cited three of his greatest hits.

He copped to the fact that Breitbart’s tape of Shirley Sherrod had been “heavily edited.” That’s a long-standing euphemism for what actually happened in this instance—although Cillizza seemed to acknowledge, in a roundabout way, that Breitbart’s “heavy editing” turned the truth on its head.

Concerning Breitbart’s first greatest hit, Cillizza was even less forthcoming. This is the way he described the earlier ACORN affair:

CILLIZZA (3/1/12): His first big break came in 2009 when he posted an undercover video of a man—the now famous/infamous James O’Keefe—posing as a pimp and seeking legal advice for his “business” from ACORN, a community organization that has long been the scourge of conservatives.

The incident caused considerable embarrassment to ACORN and propelled Breitbart and O’Keefe into the national spotlight. Democrats decried the video as unfairly edited to paint ACORN in a negative light. Republicans seized on it as evidence of the corruption within the organization.

Democrats said it was unfairly edited! In this case, Cillizza wasn’t even willing to state the truth is a circuitous fashion. Cillizza cited the famous pimp costume, refused to report it was fake. (Did he keep his text "technically accurate?" Go ahead! You be the judge!)

In discussing Breitbart’s death, many pundits refused to tell the truth about this case of deceptive editing.

Chris Cillizza couldn’t quite admit that both these greatest hits involved deceptive editing. (Deceptive editing. That’s different from “heavy” editing.) But Cillizza’s most remarkable point was expressed when he described Breitbart’s legacy.

What did Breitbart understand? The highlighted passage is sad:

CILLIZZA: The legacy that Breitbart leaves on the political world is a mixed one. He was, without question a pioneering force in the rapidly-growing field aggregation of political news—both during his time at Drudge and HuffPo.

(One former Huffington Post employee related a story about a 2007 conference call Breitbart did—at Huffington's behest—with the staff to school them on the best methods for aggregation. “He really talked our ears off on the call and wouldn’t stop talking about this ‘monkey boy’ that he had made popular after finding a small article on it in the Indian papers and putting it on Drudge,” said the employee.)

And, Breitbart also understood before many others that the world of politics—and the way in which it was covered—was rapidly transforming itself into a form of entertainment for the public. The fusion of celebrity and politician—best epitomized by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin—was something that Breitbart (and Drudge) grasped longed before much of the mainstream media.

At the same time, Breitbart’s methods walked a fine line between envelope pushing and downright scurrilous at times. The Sherrod incident raised questions about whether Breitbart was a journalist with a conservative bent or simply someone willing to do whatever it took to bring down Democrats.

In this passage, Cillizza did manage to use the word “scurrilous,” after hiding the extent to which the word obtained. But in our view, that highlighted passage is deeply revealing.

According to Cillizza, “the world of politics—and the way in which it is covered” has been “rapidly transforming itself into a form of entertainment for the public.” We agree with that, of course. But we have spent the last dozen years complaining about that fact.

Cillizza shows no sign of having a negative view about this transformation. Indeed, he congratulates Breitbart for understanding this fact before almost anyone else did.

Breitbart understood this even before the media did! Cillizza seems impressed by this fact.

This comes right after Cillizza tells the tale about Breitbart’s “monkey boy.”

Breitbart was either very incompetent or he was very dishonest. Cillizza largely fudges this fact. But the sheer stupidity Breitbart promoted has been a very deep curse on the culture.

Cillizza doesn’t seem to understand this. We’ve written about this willful blindness for the past dozen years.

Re-election watch: Happiness is a warm pundit corps!

2012-03-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012

Will Obama be re-elected: Will Obama be re-elected?

We have no idea. But if you’re watching MSNBC, this has started to sound like a snap. Here was Chris Matthews on Monday night, reciting some numbers with which liberal viewers have been pleasured all week:

MATTHEWS (3/5/12): There’s more bad news for Mitt Romney from that latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll just out today. After months of negative campaigning in the primaries, Romney’s favorability is at—you might call it the collateral damage of all those ads of the campaign he’s run.

Take a look at how he stacks up to previous nominees. Right now, Romney is about—well, he is at 28 percent favorable right now, 28 percent! That’s a lower score than almost all the recent party nominees at the same time of March of the election year. And that includes John McCain, John Kerry, George W. Bush and Bob Dole.

So what’s behind this low favorability? Senator Rob Portman of Ohio is a backer of Romney’s. He’s campaigned with him today in the state.

That’s a pretty low favorability rating for a candidate, Senator, who has spent millions, maybe tens of millions of dollars either directly or through his super PAC.

PORTMAN: Well, it’s about the primary, Chris, as you know. And once we’re through this primary, and he’s the presumptive nominee, which—pretty soon, things will be different, because then he will be talking more about Barack Obama and there will be fewer negative ads about him...

MATTHEWS: Well, let me show you some numbers here that must be dispiriting to a guy like yourself who knows politics. Look at this number. Look at how your candidate, Romney, is doing among women voters nationwide. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows President Obama leads Romney among women by 18 points. That’s a heck of a gender gap for a guy in a country in which most of the voters are women.

Does Matthews know what a “gender gap” is? It isn’t clear that he does. But liberal viewers have been pleasured all week by the highlighted numbers from this new NBC poll.

We’ve been struck by another part of this new poll. Overall, it has Obama ahead of Romney by only six points, 50-44. That’s the same margin this same poll measured in late January. (Click here, scroll to page 16.)

Will Obama win re-election? We have no idea. But given Romney’s low favorability, that strikes us as an amazingly low margin. And who knows? To some degree, Portman could be right. If Obama is only ahead by six after all the negativity of the GOP race, isn’t it possible the race might tighten once this nonsense stops? (If it stops before the convention.)

Last night, we watched John King run through all the states on CNN’s big glowing electoral map. On a state-by-state, electoral college basis, re-election doesn’t seem assured in any way. But here’s the good news:

On MSNBC, you won’t be asked to think about that. Your friends are sitting there on the set. They’re eager to give you pure pleasure.

The road not taken: Mathhews forgot to say which recent nominee had the same favorables/unfavorables as Romney.

Bill Clinton, 1992.

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: Why are we outraged by Rush Limbaugh now?

2012-03-07T09:43:00.000-05:00

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012

Part 3—At long last, we take our stand: In our view, the liberal world has given Rush Limbaugh a pass for decades now.

Limbaugh has always had a pernicious effect on the public discourse. He and his ilk have always coarsened that discourse—although major liberals have sometimes behaved in the same way, with few complaints from our side.

Beyond that, perhaps more significantly, he and his ilk have relentlessly disinformed the public about every major policy issue. Voters have heard a steady stream of bogus claims about the most significant matters in American life.

Absent serious attempts at pushback, voters have come to believe these claims, in extremely large numbers. This has terrible consequences. Here are a few examples:

Three of El Rushbo’s greatest hits:
If we lower the tax rate, we get higher revenues!
The Social Security trust fund is just a bunch of worthless IOUs!
European-style health care has failed everywhere it’s been tried!

Rush and Sean keep saying these things; the liberal world peacefully sleeps in the woods. People come to believe these claims, with disastrous effects.

Then too, there are the endless bogus claims about major Democratic figures. Here too, voters have been disinformed over the course of the past twenty years. We will cite just one example, an example we have working on each afternoon in recent weeks. Here was El Rushbo with Wolf Blitzer in March 1999—thirteen long bad years ago:

BLITZER (3/16/99): How much of an effective campaigner do you think Al Gore will be if he faces any Republican?

LIMBAUGH: Look, I don't know, I could only guess. We have some experience, though. We have the 1988 presidential campaign where he sought the nomination, and let's not forget, Wolf, it was that man who we just saw on videotape—"Vice Perpetrator" Al Gore—who brought us Willie Horton. It was he and Mario Cuomo who produced Willie Horton, and it was Al Gore who used Willie Horton in a Democratic primary. So we know that he'll go low. We'll know that he, we know that he'll do what it takes. He'll go dirty if he has to.

BLITZER: Didn't help him much in '88, though.

In fact, Candidate Gore did not “bring us Willie Horton” during the 1988 campaign. For better or worse, he didn’t prove that he would “go dirty is he has to, will go low.” But so what? In this exchange, Blitzer blandly enabled Limbaugh’s characterization. And by the fall of 1999, the discourse was crawling with major pundits repeating this RNC line.

The liberal world just sat there and took it. With respect to this loathsome figure, that’s the way the “liberal” world has behaved for the past twenty years. The liberal world—and the mainstream press corps—have endlessly given El Rushbo a pass for his repellent behavior.

Here at THE HOWLER, we have persistently said that major news orgs should address Limbaugh’s deceptions. But asking liberals to push for such action is like asking the chimp to jump over the moon. Indeed, the New York Times editorial board is still afraid to challenge El Rushbo, as became clear in yesterday’s paper. And let’s be frank:

We liberals have been too lazy, too feckless, too ditto-headed to insist that big news orgs challenge Limbaugh. As it gazes away from Limbaugh, the New York Times drops B- and R-bombs on minor figures’ heads. We liberals seem more than happy to take our pleasure that way.

For the past twenty years, we have been an inept and feckless non-movement, permitting El Rushbo prosper. Suddenly, though, the outrage is general, in response to Limbaugh’s ridiculous comments about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Question: Why is this the place where we’ve taken our stand? Why all the outrage now?

Those strike us as very good questions. Limbaugh’s comments about Fluke were inane and coarse—although they certainly weren’t any more coarse than the repulsive conduct of Keith Olbermann which our deeply unprincipled tribe embraced for a good many years. In the present instance, Fox viewers are being told about the giant hypocrisy involved in our current outrage—and Fox still has twice as many viewers as MSNBC, although the gap seems to be narrowing.

Many voters are being told about our gigantic hypocrisy. (Here’s the good news—you'll never have to hear such things as long as you keep watching Rachel and Chris!) Beyond that, Fox viewers are hearing things about the larger issue surrounding Fluke which also seem to make sense.

In the past decade, it has been the rare occasion when Fox News viewers heard commentary which may have been more sensible than the commentary offered elsewhere. As MSNBC learns to ape Fox, we may have reached the point, in this particular case, where the accuracy of their tribe’s presentations has eclipsed our own.

This isn’t a criticism of Fluke, although there are several things about her general position we simply don’t understand. This doesn’t mean that she is “wrong” in her desire to see Georgetown students receiving contraception as part of their health insurance.

As a general matter, that seems like a perfectly reasonable idea.

But Limbaugh has been a scourge for decades. Why are we so outraged now—and was this the place to take our stand?

We will return to the liberal world’s grotesque hypocrisy in Friday’s post. A few weeks ago, it was congressional Democrats who thrust Fluke into the spotlight. For decades, these Democrats have failed to mount an effective response to Limbaugh’s endless depredations.

Tomorrow, let’s review the Democratic thinking which cast Fluke into the spotlight. On Friday, let’s return to MSNBC, letting columnist Connie Schultz explain why she’s outraged about Limbaugh’s conduct—why this upper-class player is finally outraged, outraged after all these years.

“Looks like we’ve made it,” Barry Manilow sang. It has always been hard to make less sense than Fox.

After all these feckless years, have we liberals finally made it?

Tomorrow: Welcome to the Balkans! (Things folk are hearing on Fox.)

Mouthing the wisdom of Rush: Actually, no. Candidate Gore didn’t “bring us Willie Horton.” He didn't prove that “he'll do what it takes, he'll go dirty if he has to.”

1988, Gore never mentioned Horton, and he never referred to his crimes. He mentioned the Massachusetts furlough program in one lonely question at one sole debate, a question he posed to Candidate Dukakis.

Gore's question took about thirty seconds. This represented Gore's complete discussion of the furlough issue. There was nothing “dirty” or “low” about it—and Horton wasn’t mentioned. In reality, the Democratic Party would have been much better served if Gore, or one of the other candidates, had challenged Dukakis about this program at more length during the primaries. (For the record, we’re big fans of Dukakis.)

There was nothing “dirty” or “low” about it—and Horton wasn’t mentioned. But so what? As early as 1991, the Republican Party was working hard to create the talking-point Limbaugh voiced to Blitzer eight years later. Initially, this effort was designed to help President Bush in his re-election campaign. It was designed to absolve him from blame for the use of Willie Horton in 1988.

By 1999, this talking-point had been repurposed; it was now being used as a direct attack against Candidate Gore. In March, Limbaugh mouthed it to the compliant Blitzer. By the fall of that year, it had gone viral within the mainstream “press corps.” Here were two of the high-ranking chimps, mouthing the wisdom of El Rushbo on ABC’s This Week:

DONALDSON (11/28/99): Al Gore does use fear. Remember 1988, it was Al Gore when he was running in the primaries for president who found Willie Horton, and he used Willie Horton against Dukakis.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's right.

By this time, the RNC was working hard to create a theme which would prove very useful: Al Gore is a brutal and ruthless campaigner! Sam and George helped out this day—just as another panelist had done on this same program five weeks before:

KRISTOL (10/24/99): Gore's a mean, tough political fighter. Gore is the one who introduced Willie Horton to American politics in the 1988 primary against Mike Dukakis.

Actually, no—that wasn’t true. But in the fall of 1999, a wide range of pundits recited this point. Voters heard it again and again—and they heard it linked to other claims about Gore’s ruthless conduct. (It showed that Gore was like Bill Clinton, “Kit” Seelye scriptedly wrote.) Seamlessly, this talking-point passed from El Rushbo’s lips to those of the mainstream press. When Bill Bradley baldly lied about this in January 2000, the “press corps” agreed not to tattle.

The Democratic Party said squat. Dittos for our fiery “career liberals,” the ones who are outraged this week.

E. J. Dionne is currently outraged. On Monday night, he explained his vast anger. Back then, he kept his trap tightly shut.

This is the way the press corps' frauds earn their standing and their incomes. Your lizard brain will now seek ways to convince you that this can’t be right.

(If we might quote your lizard brain: “But E.J. Dionne is on my side! He cares about the same things I do!”)

Maddow watch: She may not know what she doesn’t know!

2012-03-06T13:25:00.002-05:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

Has Scott Brown survived his stand: Who will win the Massachusetts senate race?

We have no idea. But in this morning’s Washington Post, Rachel Weiner reports that Scott Brown has now registered an eight to ten-point lead in the last three statewide polls. Beyond that, Weiner notes that Brown’s lead seems to have survived his stand in support of the Blunt amendment:

WEINER (3/6/12): Two polls out this past weekend show Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) pulling ahead of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren in his reelection battle.

A Western New England Polling Institute survey taken Feb. 23 to March 1 has Brown beating Warren by 49 percent to 41 percent if the election were held today.

It was the third survey in a row showing Brown in the lead. A poll last week by the consulting firm Opinion Dynamics showed Brown winning by 52 percent to 42 percent; a Suffolk University poll in mid-February gave him a nine-point lead.

The most recent poll was taken after Brown backed an amendment allowing moral exemptions from prescription coverage—in what became a failed attempt to limit mandatory free birth-control coverage—suggesting that in the short term, that position has not hurt him.

Sometimes polls are wrong. It may turn out that Brown was hurt by his position on Blunt.

Still, our thoughts drifted back to Rachel Maddow’s air of certainty concerning Brown’s stand on Blunt. She marveled at the solon’s decision on the February 16 Maddow Show:

MADDOW (2/16/12): One of the Republicans who signed on to support the Blunt amendment is a Republican freshman senator named Scott Brown from Massachusetts. He’s being challenged in his re-election effort by our next guest, Elizabeth Warren, this November.

Senator Brown has tried to cultivate a sense, at least in Massachusetts, that he is a moderate, which is why a lot of people were surprised by this move against contraception. Those surprised included both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, which usually loves everything he does.

It also led to this rather devastating exchange between Senator Brown and reporter from the hometown news outlet New England Cable News.

Maddow played tape of the exchange which she considered “devastating.” After that, she showed how incredibly daring she is, contemptuously talking back to the videotape version of Brown, whom she bravely referred to as “Dude.”

You really could see that she's on our side! Two weeks later, out came a new poll with Brown in an 8-point lead.

Brown may not be in the lead. He may end up being hurt by his stance on Blunt. Then again, Maddow may not understand the way this issue appears to Bay State voters.

Maddow is always amazingly sure of herself. She tends to think that if an issue strikes her a certain way, it will seem that way to the voters.

Within the tribe, this air of certainty is a significant part of her entertainment value. But when it comes to grasping the outlook of everyday voters, she’s also quite frequently wrong.

As always, she seemed very sure of her take. As usual, was she wrong?

Regarding the Boston Herald: You always have to fact-check Maddow. “The Boston Herald” doesn’t seem to have challenged Brown’s stance on Blunt. On February 16, his position was criticized by columnist Margery Eagan, one of the Herald’s liberal-leaning voices. Just click here.

You always have to fact-check Maddow. Unless you just like thrills up your leg, you shouldn’t believe what she says.

(It's pretty much as we've always said: We could have a terrific election here—if it weren't for the voters!)

The cowardly Rosenthal does it again!

2012-03-06T10:55:00.000-05:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

Exactly as we told you: There are a couple of questions we typically get.

“Are you always right?” people will ask. “If so, how does that feel?”

Normally, we change the subject. This morning, though, we’ve been proven right about Andrew Rosenthal, editor of the New York Times editorial page.

Rosenthal loves to drop his R- and B-bombs—as long as his targets aren’t powerful. But he’s very, very reluctant to challenge big players like Limbaugh and Trump.

This morning, the editorial board has finally spoken about Rush Limbaugh’s recent conduct. Incredibly, this is what the board has courageously said:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (3/6/12): Apologizing for atrocious behavior is better than not trying to apologize. Rush Limbaugh’s nonapology to Sandra Fluke for calling her a prostitute was a good example.

Incredibly, that’s the entire comment on Limbaugh! And no, it doesn’t even make sense. Is Limbaugh being complimented or chastised? Like you, we can’t quite tell.

The board goes on to complain about an obscure federal official in Idaho who sent a racially insulting e-mail about President Obama. Limbaugh's three-day tirade was dismissed in two murky sentences.

The obscure federal judge in Idaho got an R-bomb dropped on his head. Limbaugh got a semi-compliment.

Last year, you thought we were wrong when we started telling you this about the cowardly Rosenthal. Rosenthal loves to call people racists—as long as his targets are obscure.

He’s afraid to challenge people like Limbaugh. Who knows? This may be a business decision concerning the potential loss of readership at the Times.

For the past decade, we have begged our major news orgs to call out Limbaugh and Hannity by name—to explain the way they work, to explain the disinformation they spread all through the land.

Our big news orgs refuse to do so. Has the conduct of these consummate cowards even been any more clear?

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: Parade of the frauds!

2012-03-06T10:32:00.001-05:00

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

Part 2—We’re all the Fox News Channel now: “Where’s the outrage?” William Bennett once asked. He wanted to know why regular folk weren’t more upset about Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct.

Last night, he wouldn’t have needed to ask. Last night, the outrage was all over MSNBC as a stream of hypocrites, frauds and pseudo-progressives paraded across our TV machine, complaining about Rush Limbaugh’s latest transgression.

For our money, Karen Finney was the worst offender, followed closely by Connie Schultz. But the biggest fraud of them all, Chris Matthews, was posing as Woman’s Best Friend once again. And the rest of the scripted were there to support him, including Walsh, Corn and Wolff.

How gross was this parade of the frauds? Over the first dozen years of its life, MSNBC was, without any question, Misogyny Central in the world of cable “news.” The various frauds who paraded last evening managed to spend that decade averting their gaze from this fact.

Last night, though, they were very upset because the offender was Limbaugh! Last week, it was Limbaugh who behaved in the way they accepted in those earlier years. And so, they staged their parade—letting us see that MSNBC has finally caught up to Fox.

Fox has been a clown show for years, following formats which were largely invented by Limbaugh himself. Last night, it was hard to deny it:

We’re all the Fox News Channel now!

What was so grotesque about last evening’s parade? For starters, let’s turn to this post by Digby, who seconded our emotion from yesterday’s HOWLER. “Listening to Chris Matthews criticize Limbaugh for his sexist commentary is rich. Really rich,” Digby wrote. She linked to this report by David Brock from January 2008.

Remember early 2008? At that time, by some unexplained miracle, the “liberal” world finally managed to notice Matthews’ raging misogyny, a trait he had put on vivid display over the previous decade. Go ahead! Read Brock’s full report! As he started, he focused on the ways Matthews typically spoke about Hillary Clinton.

“Take a look at this sampling,” Brock wrote in 2008. His lengthy sampling included these examples of ChrisMatthewsSpeak:

Remarks by Matthews concerning Hillary Clinton:
"I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for."
"She Devil"
"Nurse Ratched"
"Madame Defarge"
"Witchy"
"Look at those eyes. Look at the cold eyes that she's giving him. Look at that cold look."
"[She’s] like a strip-teaser saying she's flattered by the all the attention"
"Is she a convincing mom?"
On Sen. Clinton’s endorsers: "Castratos in the eunuch chorus"
On Sen. Clinton’s laugh: "What do you make of the cackle?"
"She was giving a campaign barn-burner speech, which is harder to give for a woman. It can grate on some men when they listen to it. Fingernails on a blackboard, perhaps."
"Is she hemmed in by the fact that she's a woman and can't admit a mistake, or else the Republicans will say, ‘Oh, that's a woman's prerogative to change her mind,’ or ‘another fickle woman’? Is her gender a problem in her ability to change her mind?"
"She may have gotten The Des Moines Register's endorsement the other day, thanks to her husband's lobbying with its female editors and publisher."

Brock went on from there, listing some of Matthews’ remarks about other women. But no one could capture the sweep of Matthews’ decade of misogyny in just one report.

For us, this topic dates to Matthews’ rude treatment of Elizabeth Holtzman in early 1999. But he had many other targets in the bad old days of his wars against the Clintons and Gore. Example: To review the savage trashing Matthews dished to Naomi Wolf during the press corps’ war against Gore, please read Chapter 5 at our companion site, How He Got There.

The “progressive” world kept its traps shut as Wolf absorbed a long gender-trashing from the pundit world. We know of two major pundits who complained about this gender-trashing: William Kristol and William Safire.

The “liberal” world simply accepted all this. To cite one prominent example, Joan Walsh kept licking Matthews’ keister as his decade of misogyny unfolded. Last night, Joan was on The One True Channel, helping us see the sweep of her outrage now that it was Limbaugh who was behaving this way.

Then too, there was Keith Olbermann. In some ways, this part of the story is worse. Let’s quote a second post by Digby:

DIGBY (3/5/12): A lot of men hate women in a serious, fundamental way. (And they aren't all old guys.) Rush Limbaugh is clearly one of them. He's demonstrated it over and over again for more than two decades, and has been feted as a hugely powerful media and political celebrity that entire time. I think the problem is that this is still such an accepted part of male culture that even decent enlightened men (and women) often don't recognize the milder version when they see it for what it actually is.

We agree with those highlighted statements—but Olbermann “is clearly one of them” too. But how strange! When Olbermann acted out this hatred, last night’s parade of outraged “liberals” averted their gaze!

Here at THE HOWLER, we were puzzled for several years. Was it possible that we were the only ones offended by Olbermann’s conduct? Was it possible that no other liberals and progressives owned a TV set? Olbermann reached the zenith of his misogyny with his endless, profane attacks on Carrie Prejean, the 21-year-old woman who dared to voice the same view about marriage equality that President Obama held. (And Hillary Clinton. And Bill Clinton. And Al Gore and John Kerry!)

Prejean had to be slimed for this—and Olbermann slimed her, night after night, in the most repulsive ways. Often, he threw directly to Maddow, who acted like she hadn’t noticed. (Maddow was one of the grand marshals in last night’s parade.)

Below, you get a taste of the fare this slime-ball served to us liberals during those years. Like most men of his very low type, Olbermann loved discussing Prejean’s breasts. As usual, his guest on this particular evening was the repulsive misogynist, Michael Musto.

Prejean was a boob, a Barbie doll, dumb, a ding-dong—and of course, she was "a girl." But note the greatness of Musto’s statement at the end of this chunk:

OLBERMANN (4/30/09): There it is here, Miss California is opposed to same-sex marriage, which is at least marriage between two human beings, but she has fully endorsed now marriage between a man and a woman who is partially made out of plastic.

MUSTO: Well, she’s dumb and twisted. She’s sort of like a human Klaus Barbie Doll. I mean, you tell Perez Hilton you’re against gay marriage? That’s like telling Simon Cowell you’re against screeching a show tune. This is the kind of girl who sits on the TV and watches the sofa. You know, she thinks innuendo is an Italian suppository.

Can I keep going? On the pageants now, they really should have easier questions, like what’s your middle name or what show was Seinfeld on. I mean, this girl’s a ding-dong. I didn’t even like her earrings.

OLBERMANN: The cruelest cut of all. The outcomes here, too. Perez Hilton looks like an intellectual titan and some sort of civil rights leader. And the new poster girl against same-sex marriage is not just a boob, but a fake boob. This is a real win for this cause, is it not?

MUSTO: Well, Perez is the new me, let’s leave him alone. And using the C word is something I wouldn’t do. But yes, Carrie Prejean, however you say it, she’s getting something off her chest. But what she really needs to get off is the price tag there.

Did we mention the fact that Prejean’s position on same-sex marriage was the same as President Obama’s? Did we mention the fact that Prejean didn’t raise the issue? That she only discussed same-sex marriage when she was forced to do so as part of the Miss USA competition? That said:

Musto said he wouldn’t call Prejean a cunt! This was now the reigning standard of American liberalism on matters of gender!

Olbermann behaved this way for years. As far as we know, all the frauds who paraded last night pretended they didn’t see this. Finally, we learned that many “progressives” actually had. Here's how:

We learned this when the Daily Caller did its otherwise foolish report about the Journolist group. In that instance, it was the Daily Caller's turn to to gin up the phony outrage. But as part of the Daily Caller’s report, Jonathan Strong reported the following statements by major progressives after one of Olbermann’s rants about Prejean. As far as we know, no one has ever said that these comments were misquoted or taken out of context:

STRONG (7/23/10): Following the segment, the subject on Journolist was “I hate Keith Olbermann again,” and the members of the list let it rip.

The Nation’s Katha Pollitt began the group’s rant. “He and Michael Musto did this whole long riff about beauty contestant Carrie ‘opposite marriage’ Prejean’s breast implants, stupidity, breast implants, tacky clothes, earrings, breast implants. They went on and on about how she was ‘part plastic’ and pathetic. You’d think they were celibate vegans who spent their lives zen meditating. It was just a whole TV humiliation of her, and it made me feel sorry for her, which wasn’t easy,” Pollitt said.

Michael O’Hare, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the segment was “about as funny as a rubber crutch. Odd when a reasonable person’s internal alarm doesn’t go off in a situation like that...‘I’m going to ridicule a girl who’s obviously at her personal limits just trying to look conventionally pretty on national TV? What does that make me’?”

O’Hare even suggested friends stage an intervention for Olbermann. “If anyone on the list is a friend of Olbermann, friendship demands that you give him a head-up about this lapse,” he said.

Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor and CNN contributor, said Olbermann’s root problem is his misogyny. “I can’t take him anytime. I think to write off his misogyny as limited to Musto is just not accurate. That very much defined much of how he talked about Clinton as well as others.”

Zelizer was referring to a series of instances during the primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when critics from both sides of the aisle criticized Olbermann for allegedly sexist treatment towards Hillary. Olbermann was forced to apologize.

[...]

Salon’s Rebecca Traister agreed Olbermann regularly displayed his contempt for women. “Olbermann has a terrible record of going out of his way to talk about young, attractive women he believes to be stupid in grotesquely dismissive and oversexualized terms.”

Traister had written the same thing in her columns for Salon, for instance calling Olbermann out when he “felt free to call [Paris] Hilton a slut on air and speculate about whether anyone had ever ejaculated in her face.”

Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein said maybe the time was now to take down Olbermann. “When we liberals were fighting for political survival after 9/11, it was important to be disciplined and to pick our internal battles very carefully. Now that the Democrats are in charge and progressivism is ascendant, we can afford to demand more from our leaders.

“We can certainly afford to smack down Keith Olbermann when he spouts misogynist garbage,” she said.

Finally, we had our answer! These ranking “progressives” were quite aware of Olbermann’s misogyny. Indeed, they were happy to identify it as such—as long as they believed they were speaking in private!

Beyerstein suggested the time had come to challenge Olbermann in public. As far as we know, that never happened. And don’t be fooled by what Strong wrote. Though Traister had fleetingly mentioned the fact that Olbermann “felt free to call Paris Hilton a slut on air and speculate about whether anyone had ever ejaculated in her face,” she had hardly “called him out” for this conduct. For our fuller report, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/28/11.

Last night, a collection of phonies, fakes and frauds staged a five-hour “liberal” parade, expressing their outrage at Limbaugh’s conduct. These same people had averted their gaze from a decade of similar conduct by Matthews and Olbermann, with very small bouts of supporting misconduct by David Shuster and Ed Schultz.

People like Walsh lick Matthews’ hind-quarters, giving him cover on these issues. (So did Maddow in 2008 when liberals began to complain.) Walsh was editor of Salon during some of these very bad years. She never assigned a writer to report on Matthews’ decade of gruesome misconduct.

For our money, Karen Finney was the worst of the frauds last night. Disgracefully, she posed herself on the bridge to Selma as she feigned outrage about Limbaugh’s misogyny. But where was she all those previous years? And is there nothing these people respect as they stage their parades of hypocrisy?

For our money, Connie Schultz was close behind Finney, for reasons we will explore as our report continues. But all the fakes and phonies and frauds were marching in last night’s parade.

In our view, there’s a great deal more to say about this most recent Limbaugh episode. Tomorrow, we’ll move on to other aspects of last week’s events. But the rancid hypocrisy of last night’s marchers truly set a new “liberal” standard.

Fox has always treated its viewers with this degree of contempt; they built on a culture which had been pioneered by Limbaugh itself. After last night, is there any reason to say that our tribe is different or better?

Really? Is there any way to make that claim at this point?

Read about KO and Musto: Olbermann kept bringing the slimy Musto back to entertain us “progressives” with his rank misogyny.

To read our reports from 2009, click here, then enter “Musto.” To see Keith tease Musto's appearance all through the hour, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/12/09.

Musto was going to massacre Prejean again! Olbermann promised us this entertainment all through that evening’s program. All the fakes who paraded last night thought this conduct was fine.

Truly, we’re all the Fox News Channel now. Go ahead! Just explain how we’re different!

New York Times confession: “It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus!”

2012-03-05T11:29:00.001-05:00

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

At long last, the Times comes clean: Sometimes, you just have to chuckle when you read the New York Times.

This morning, we get a trend story on the front page. Julie Bosman has a hot scoop: We the people can no longer focus!

BOSMAN (3/5/12): Can you concentrate on Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy while Twitter beckons?

People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.

E-mail lurks tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away.

That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled e-books on apps from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble have come away with a conclusion: It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus on reading.

It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus! As readers of the New York Times, we’ll have to admit that we’ve noticed!

Bosman offers little real evidence in support of her thesis. Because we read the Times every day, we can’t help wondering if this front-page report isn’t really a confession—a confession by this sorry newspaper’s extremely flighty staff.

At the New York Times, reporters can’t focus! They also can’t seem to construct a graphic, a basic point we noticed again last week.

Uh-oh! Last Monday, Jackie Calmes authored a long front-page report about Obama’s treatment of debt and deficits. Inside the paper, her report was accompanied by a large graphic. The graphic purported to show the relative size of four well-known deficit-reduction plans.

If you look at the headlined numbers on the graphic, you get the clear impression that the Bowles-Simpson plan proposed slightly less deficit reduction than President Obama’s plan. Accordingto the headlined numbers, Bowles-Simpson proposed $4 trillion in deficit reduction; Obama's plan proposed $4.3 trillion.

Key point, although you’ll just have to trust us: The visual effect of those headlined numbers was much more striking in the hard-copy Times than in the on-line version of the graphic.

If you go by the headlined numbers, it looks like Obama proposed slightly more deficit reduction than Bowles-Simpson. But good lord! This is what you’re told if you read the tiny small print down below:

NEW YORK TIMES SMALL TINY PRINT (2/27/12): The savings claimed for each plan are not directly comparable since they do not all use the same budget baseline, but make different assumptions about the future of some current policies. Using the same baseline, Bowles-Simpson would save $6.5 trillion to Mr. Obama’s $4.3 trillion.

Good lord. Sometimes you just have to throw up your hands at this newspaper’s sweeping incompetence.

Julie Bosman has finally confessed. These people can no longer focus!

Let’s restate that key point: The headlined numbers were very dominant in the graphic which appeared in the hard-copy Times. They clearly suggested that Obama’s plan proposed more deficit reduction than Bowles-Simpson.

If you bothered to read the small tiny print, you saw that was massively wrong.

Why would anyone construct a graphic that way? Until we read Bosman’s courageous confession, we had no real idea.

Exactly three years later, a health care discussion breaks out!

2012-03-05T10:52:00.000-05:00

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

That isn’t Ezra Klein’s fault: On the one hand, Ezra Klein wrote a very informative piece in Sunday’s Washington Post.

To read Klein’s important report, just click here. In recent months, the Post has been a much more serious newspaper than the New York Times.

Klein was reporting on a very important question: Why does health care cost so much in this country? Why does it cost so much more than in other developed nations? On the one hand, Klein’s report is very informative.

On the other hand, it arrives three years too late!

All through the year 2009, our major news orgs pretended to conduct a discussion of health care. In fact, they struggled and clawed to avoid a key question: Why does health care cost so much more in this country? As opposed to everywhere else in the developed world?

They avoided that question like the plague. Yesterday, Klein addressed it. His report was built around a new study. But early on, we noted Klein saying this:

KLEIN (3/4/12): There are many possible explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that we’re sicker. Or that we go to the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories. As Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt, Peter Hussey and Varduhi Petrosyan put it in the title of their influential 2003 study on international health-care costs, “it’s the prices, stupid.”

Say what? An influential study had appeared in 2003? An influential study which explained why we get looted on health care? We fired up Nexis and took a look, knowing what we would find.

Sure enough! According to Nexis, that influential study was never mentioned in any newspaper in 2009! (We searched on its title.) According to Nexis, it was mentioned once in a news magazine—in the August 1, 2009 issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Needless to say, it wasn’t mentioned on cable. In our nation's year-long Potemkin discussion, this "influential study" got sent down the memory hole.

All year long in 2009, we noted the way the major news orgs were refusing to examine that basic topic. Klein’s report is very instructive, although we think he underplays a basic question: Where does all that extra money go?
Who's getting rich on our health care?

Klein’s report is very instructive. It’s also three years late, although that isn't his fault.

One final word to the wise: Don't expect to see the Times report on this topic at all. The Times has sillier things to discuss. Silly is plainly their beat.

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: The Washington Post is outraged by Rush!

2012-03-05T10:15:00.000-05:00

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

Part 1—At the Washington Post, a new morning: Rush Limbaugh has been in a world of hurt—except at the New York Times, a newspaper which is very brave when dealing with less potent figures.

Right through this morning’s edition, the Times hasn’t written an editorial about Limbaugh’s latest breakdown. Have we mentioned the fact that the Times is quite brave about name-calling obscure state legislators in Alabama, but tends to hide beneath its desk when it comes to the conduct of major figures like Limbaugh and Donald Trump?

As of this posting on Monday morning, Andrew Rosenthal hasn’t even discussed Limbaugh’s recent conduct at his own blog, though he did offer this courageous post about “The Bigoted Birther”—Joe Arpaio. With his customary vigor, Rosenthal dropped B-, X- and R-bombs on Sheriff Joe’s head. But when Trump spent weeks purveying this garbage, the hometown Times averted its gaze (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/10/11.) And as of our posting on Monday morning, Rosenthal still hasn’t voiced the very name “Rush” on his own personal blog. (This may change, of course—with us taking the credit!)

The Times hasn’t chosen to speak about Rush. By way of contrast, the Washington Post offered this editorial about Limbaugh’s latest breakdown in Saturday morning’s paper. The editorial was headlined “Bum Rush.” The Post called attention to the piece with a large photo of Limbaugh.

Major newspapers have given Limbaugh extremely wide berth over the past twenty years. In that sense, this editorial was a welcome change in a long-standing practice.

And yet...

The Times still seems afraid of Rush; the Post was correct to speak up. And yet, we found ourselves puzzled—even annoyed—by some of the editors’ constructions.

This is the way their piece began. Why did the editors say that?

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (3/3/12): In a democracy, standards of civil discourse are as important as they are indefinable. Yet wherever one draws the line, Rush Limbaugh’s vile rants against Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke crossed it. Mr. Limbaugh is angry at President Obama’s efforts to require the provision of contraception under employer-paid health insurance and the White House’s attempts to make some political hay out of the policy. His way of showing this anger was to smear Ms. Fluke, who approached Congress to support the plan, as a “slut” seeking a government subsidy for her promiscuity.

Like other “shock jocks,” Mr. Limbaugh has committed verbal excesses in the past. But in its wanton vulgarity and cruelty, this episode stands out. Mr. Limbaugh’s audience, and those in politics who seek his favor as a means of reaching that audience, need to take special note.

The editorial continues from there; we strongly recommend it. The Post should have been doing this long ago.

And yet...

Question: Does last week’s episode really “stand out” in the sweep of Limbaugh’s career? His conduct last week was stupid, of course. But was this episode more egregious than his work in the past? One example: We’re so old that we can remember the day, eighteen years ago, when we heard Rush excitedly tell the world that Hillary Clinton, then the nation’s “first lady,” may have been involved in the murder of Vince Foster.

We were driving to Huntington, West Virginia. Limbaugh’s comments broke open a whole new chapter in the wanton, vulgar, debased public discourse concerning Clinton and Clinton, the well-known serial killers. His evidence that day was non-existent. His influence was vast.

Were Limbaugh’s “verbal excesses” last week really more egregious than that? Did last week’s episode really “stand out” in the context of Limbaugh’s career?

As the editors continued, they further explained what Limbaugh had done in this most recent case. We agree with every highlighted word. And yet...

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL: What we are saying is that Mr. Limbaugh has abused his unique position within the conservative media to smear and vilify a citizen engaged in the exercise of her First Amendment rights, and in the process he debased a national political discourse that needs no further debasing. This is not the way a decent citizen behaves, much less a citizen who wields significant de facto power in a major political party. While Republican leaders owe no apology for Mr. Limbaugh’s comments, they do have a responsibility to repudiate them—and him.

We agree. But Limbaugh has been “debasing the national political discourse” for a very long time, in a great many ways. We have said, again and again, that major news orgs and major pundits need to identify Limbaugh (and others) by name when they discuss the failure of our broken, inane public discourse.

The editors were right to criticize Limbaugh in the spirited way they did. But why are the editors doing it now? What made them feel that this episode stands out?

Why has this event stood out? Why has there been so much outrage about this event, when Limbaugh has misbehaved so many times in the past? It may be that a new day is dawning—that the society is finally pushing back against decades of gross misconduct.

That said, do you mind if we offer a few more reactions about this past week’s outrage?

First reaction:

In our view, we’ve really gone down a rabbit hole when we see Chris Matthews fuming on Hardball about Limbaugh’s outrageous conduct. For roughly a decade, Hardball served as Misogyny Central on the cable news channel dial. Much of this conduct was aimed at Hillary Clinton. But liberal women were frequent targets of Matthews' insults and ire.

When the liberal world finally noticed this problem in the spring of 2008, Rachel Maddow ran to the Associated Press to speak up for Matthews’ greatness. And what a coincidence! The very next week, she signed her first MSNBC contract!

Second reaction:

When it comes to rabbit holes, it’s hard to top the experience of seeing Maureen Dowd express her outrage at Limbaugh’s behavior. (Headline: “Have You No Shame, Rush?”) We’ll match the start of Sunday’s column with one of her most famous hits:

DOWD (3/4/12): As a woman who has been viciously slashed by Rush Limbaugh, I can tell you, it’s no fun.

At first you think, if he objects to the substance of what you’re saying, why can’t he just object to the substance of what you’re saying? Why go after you in the most personal and humiliating way?

DOWD (6/16/99): Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating.

Might we make an obvious point? When Dowd hiss-spat that famous jibe, she wasn’t just “going after” Candidate Gore “in the most personal and humiliating way.” (On the day of his formal campaign announcement.) She was also expressing her own long-standing hatred of women. She was suggesting there’s something very comical about the kinds of people who might end up lactating!

Ick! Imagine that!

Finally, in 2008, Times public editor Clark Hoyt devoted a column to the way this throwback gender nut had savaged Democratic women down through the many long years. Darlings! Dr. Judith Dean had such dowdy clothes! Do you remember the way this horrible person first expressed this critique?

DOWD (1/15/04): In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side—the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.

Classic Dowd! She could imagine Limbaugh beating on Dr. Dean—even as she did so herself! These people have toyed with you in these ways down through the many long years.

The “liberal” world has accepted Dowd’s misogyny down through the years—and it continues to do so now. So why all the outrage at Limbaugh’s behavior? And why all the outrage now?

One more observation—although for today, we’ll skip the Olbermann question:

If anything, the Washington Post went easy on Rush in its editorial, understating the sweep of last week’s “verbal excesses.” The editors mentioned the fact that he called Sandra Fluke a “slut.” They omitted other parts of his presentation, including his use of the verbally excessive term, “prostitute.”

If readers learned about this episode from the Post editorial, they encountered a bowdlerized version of Rush’s misconduct.

At any rate, many people have been very upset by Rush’s unpleasant conduct. At the same time, entertainment and culture pages are full of reviews of the new ABC series, GCB. Just so you’ll know:

The B stands for “bitch”—and the C stands for “Christian! IOKWTTAUBUAT! It’s OK when these terms are used by us against them!

It’s true. Last week, Rush Limbaugh really did “debase a national political discourse that needs no further debasing.” The Post’s second judgment is also true: “This is not the way a decent citizen behaves.” Having said that, we’ll also say this: We saw a shitload of highly selective outrage expressed last week.

“Where’s the outrage?” William Bennett once asked. Suddenly, the outrage is here! But Rush has been like this for a very long time.

Why did this episode churn so much rage? We think that question could be instructive. We’ll ponder that topic all week.

Press corps fly-weights shift the blame!

2012-03-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

Parker plays an old song: Mainstream scribes possess one great skill.

They’re highly skilled at blame-shifting. In this morning’s New York Times, Ashley Parker—she’s just 29—shows her mastery of the old practice:

PARKER (3/3/12): Mitt Romney is best known as a private equity specialist, but he is trying to transform himself into a primary care physician for an ailing nation.

“If I were a doctor and I saw somebody who was obviously suffering from some condition, I would want to do something to help,” Mr. Romney said, at a town hall-style meeting in Bexley, Ohio, this week. “Well, my experience is not in medicine. My experience is in business.”

His goal, he told the crowd, is “to use what I’ve learned to try and help.”

Convincing voters that he means it, however, may be Mr. Romney’s greatest challenge. He has been struggling with how to handle his immense wealth ever since he announced his candidacy in June. Even his most casual remarks—about the Cadillacs his wife owns, or how his six-figure speaking fees did not add up to much—are pounced on by Democrats and Republicans alike, and used to portray him as a millionaire titan who is out of touch with the concerns of average Americans.

Wonderful clownistry! Even Romney’s most casual remarks “are pounced on by Democrats and Republicans alike?” That’s true, of course. But before that pouncing occurs, Romney’s remarks are pounced upon by fly-weights like Parker herself!

A bit later on, Parker even cites Romney’s aides as they make this obvious observation:

PARKER: Mr. Romney’s aides reject the notion that his inadvertent comments underscoring his wealth are gaffes, and instead argue that the news media takes a few words and blows them out of proportion. But Mr. Romney acknowledged in a news conference on Tuesday that his tone-deaf remarks have stalled his campaign.

Really? “The news media” has been doing these things? What makes these aides think that?

It has ever been thus. During Campaign 2000, mainstream scribes would routinely attribute their own behavior to “late-night comedians.” Late-night jesters were constantly blamed for the press corps’ behavior toward Candidate Gore, although the blame was often shifted to “Gore’s Republican opponents.”

The fact that the press corps was staging a war against Gore never seemed to get mentioned!

“Even his most casual remarks are pounced on by Democrats and Republicans alike!” Parker trained under Maureen Dowd. This is how such life-forms act.

Policy postscript: What about Romney’s most ridiculous policy proposals? Darlings, please! At the New York Times, reporters don’t bother with that!

Mormon joke watch: Are we perhaps a small tiny bit like the folk we revile?

2012-03-03T11:22:00.000-05:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

Selecting a sauce for the imperfect gander: Here at THE HOWLER, we don’t know Charles Blow or Joan Walsh.

We're sure they're both perfectly decent people. Most people are.

Is either one of these people a bigot? We would be hugely surprised if that were the case—and we think all meaning has been drained from that term by its promiscuous use. But even as the New York Times was throwing its B-bombs around this past week, Blow and Walsh were apologizing for their own imperfect statements.

Everyone says something dumb at some point. Even folk in our own tribe!

Uh-oh! As Blow live-tweeted the last GOP debate, he threw down a fiery remark about one of the candidates’ “magic underwear.” It was a semi-nasty Mormon jibe! A jibe aimed at Romney’s religion!

Two days later, Blow apologized, congratulating himself for his forthrightness. For a review of the facts from New York magazine, click here. For a conservative reaction—and for a few more of Blow’s fiery tweets—check this Newsbusters post.

Walsh’s subsequent Mormon joke came on primary night. For her apology, click here; you can note the several ways she couched her own apology. It’s always great when you can hide behind Elie Wiesel and the late Daniel Pearl!

(Question: In 2004, did we like it when the other side tried to make Candidate Kerry answer for his own church’s behavior and views? If memory serves, we did not—although your lizard brain will be able to churn a long list of major distinctions.)

Romney is a horrible candidate with truly gruesome proposals. But that doesn't seem to be enough. Even worse, he’s a Mormon! With funny clothes and beliefs! Completely unlike us Catholics! Maureen Dowd has now played this card in at least three columns (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/17/12)—but Dowd is the unchallenged worst in show. Now, in fairly rapid succession, two leading liberals have gone there too.

No, it isn’t the end of the world. But we do think it’s kind of amazing—and perhaps a bit instructive.

Walsh likes to recall the terrible ways we Catholics were treated by those people back in the 1850s. Given these heartfelt sentiments, we don’t know why she’d be inclined to play the Mormon card against Romney. Unless our side might even have some of the same unfortunate impulses/instincts we’re eager to savage in others! Unless we’re human too!

Good news! Your lizard brain will be able to explain away events like these with ease. Your lizard brain will help you see that we are not a bit like them, not in the slightest way. But remember: Last week, the New York Times unleashed its B-bombs again, complaining that “right-wingers” in the New Hampshire legislature have a bigoted view on marriage equality. The Times forgot to mention the fact that the bigots’ view is the same as President Obama’s. (Although his view is evolving!)

In the case of Blow’s live Tweet, the newspaper gave its own guy a pass. We don’t necessarily disagree with that response, although his tweets were unattractive. (Why must they tweet?) But why are those other people so vile while their guy is so meritorious?

Lizard brains function like that! As a general matter, we aren’t real high on Blow or Walsh, which is part of the reason we note these remarks. But no, these imperfect people aren’t “bigots”—and everyone on every side is imperfect in various ways.

Among other shortcomings, we think Blow and Walsh tend to be unhelpfully tribal. No, their jibes aren’t the end of the world. But this may help you see what we mean.

PITIFUL HELPESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: Who gives a fig about Fidler!

2012-03-03T09:56:00.001-05:00

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

Epilogue—Why we’re so pitifully clueless: At the start of the last GOP debate, Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona asked a perfectly sensible question.

The honor was granted by CNN’s John King, who plays a journalist on TV. Here’s what occurred at the start of that final debate, which King pretended to moderate:

KING (2/22/12): Gentlemen, it's good to see you again. Let's get right started on the important issues with a question from our audience. Sir, please tell us who you are and state your question.

FIDLER: My name is Gilbert Fidler from Gilbert, Arizona. And I'd like to ask this question to all the candidates if I could:

Since the first time in 65 years our national debt exceeds our gross national product, what are you going to do to bring down the debt?

That was a perfectly sensible question. The good sense ended right there.

According to several major studies, the three major candidates have all proposed budget plans which would massively swell our annual deficits and with them our national debt. Despite these proposals, they carp and complain about that rising debt.

But how strange! In the four prior GOP debates, no questions were asked about this remarkable state of affairs! No questions, as in none!

Now, Gilbert Fidler asked a good question—and John King hid under the bed.

In the lengthy segment which ensued, the candidates pretended to stage a discussion of Fidler’s perfectly sensible question. In fact, they did nothing of the kind—and King didn’t make the slightest attempt to bring them back to that question.

Did Fidler understand the way he and his question were toyed with that evening? We have no idea. But this is completely standard behavior as the press corps pretends to conduct a national discourse.

More reprehensible is the reaction from some of our “liberal” preserves.

We’ll take a guess: Fidler isn’t a budget expert. (We aren’t budget experts either.) He isn’t an economics professor. Neither are we over here.

Fidler isn’t a budget expert. On the other hand, he has heard a lot of talk about our ballooning national debt. We’ll guess that he is sincerely concerned, as well he might be.

Another guess: He probably doesn’t know that people like King and Santorum and Romney are not sincere or concerned.

Just a guess: He may not know that his sensible question was used to stage a Potemkin discussion. More reprehensible was the reaction from some of our “liberal” preserves.

We’ll guess that Fidler is a perfectly decent person with a sincere concern—a sincere concern he may have formed from following pseudo-conservative sources. But you may not know that such people exist if you read our “liberal” blogs. Four days after Fidler posed his question, a self-assured liberal rube at a leading blog presented this view of the world:

ATKINS (2/26/12): Most of time I think of conservative leaders as evil geniuses more than abject fools. Their voting base are generally oppressed rubes, delusional ideologues, racists or vicious sociopaths, but the leadership is generally very smart and cagey.

We know, we know! He used the word “generally!” And in a moment of excessive kindness, young Atkins might be willing to classify Fidler as one of the “oppressed rubes.”

Adding to the general hilarity, Atkins’ patron offered this post on the very same day—a post in which she helped us learn to admire those of us in our own tribe.

“Educated liberals are different [from educated conservatives] and tend to be open to new information and more flexible of mind,” she wrote, basing her statement on the planet’s most limited data. “The simple rule is this,” she self-admiringly continued. “If you want to persuade liberals of something, bring out the charts and spreadsheets. If you want to persuade conservatives of something, make them identify emotionally with what you want them to believe.”

In fairness, we’ll agree with that one key word: “simple.”

For decades, a certain process has defined our pseudo-national discourse. Pseudo-conservative corporate shills have flooded the nation with disinformation. To the extent that we liberals have managed to notice, we have mainly tended to name-call the folk who believe this unrefuted garbage.

We haven’t done a very good job refuting these mountains of disinformation; for the most part, we haven’t tried. It never even enters our heads to establish forums in which we attempt to speak to people like Fidler.

Darlings! Speak with those people? It just isn’t done!

John King played the corporate fool in last Wednesday’s final debate. And sure enough! Out in the wider world, an irate and bumptious young fellow name-called people like Fidler!

Question: Have you seen a single liberal comment on King’s performance at that final debate? Have you seen a single liberal comment on a remarkable fact—the fact that no one asked these damn-fool candidates a single question about their budget proposals in the previous four debates?

In fact, your career liberal leaders will never name-call the millionaire "journalist" King. Darlings! In the world of journalistic careers, it simply isn’t done! And uh-oh! The rest of us liberals tend to play ditto-head to our “leaders” just the way Rush’s crowd does!

The people than whom we’re much smarter!

Fidler seemed to be the one sane person at that final GOP debate. David Atkins quickly rose to put such folk in their place. Meanwhile, Digby helped us see how much smarter we liberals are. Go ahead! Laugh out loud!

The process has worked this way for decades. Are you happy with how things turned out?

Instant classic Rosenthal!

2012-03-02T16:52:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

This is your New York Times: Good grief.

Andrew Rosenthal is the editorial page editor of the New York Times. This is his attempt to analyze “Santorum’s Woman Problem:”

ROSENTHAL (3/2/12): Santorum’s Woman Problem

Rick Santorum, the improbable presidential aspirant, opposes abortion, thinks birth control promotes immorality, objects to women serving in combat positions, and has criticized “radical feminists” for encouraging women to join the workforce. He doesn’t have much respect for modern women, and modern women don’t have much respect for him—a feeling they’re expressing by voting for his rival. Polling in Arizona showed that Mitt Romney carried female voters by 17 percentage points. It was closer in the Michigan primary, 5 percentage points, but everything was closer in Michigan.

There’s more, but that highlighted chunk captures the essence of the modern Times.

“Polling in Arizona showed that Mitt Romney carried female voters by 17 percentage points?” That’s true, but Rosenthal omits the corresponding fact: Romney carried men in Arizona by a much larger 26 points!

There was a gender gap in the state. But Santorum did substantially better among these "modern women" than among these modern men.

We're not saying Arizona Republicans should have voted that way. But Rosenthal's dogma to the side, that's the way they did vote. (To review the New York Times exit poll data, click here.)

On a journalistic basis, it’s hard to get more pathetic than that. But this really is the modern Times. The newspaper functions like that.

Cable guests say the darnedest things on a regular basis!

2012-03-02T11:41:00.001-05:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

What the heck has Obama proposed: Yesterday, the far-reaching Blunt amendment went down to a narrow defeat. It would have let every employer pick and choose what to include in his health insurance plan.

Question: Does anyone know what President Obama has actually proposed in this area? Does anybody know at this point? How about Democratic senators?

On last evening’s Hardball, Chris spoke with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand about this ongoing battle. He played a Republican radio ad from Missouri, then asked the senator to respond. To watch the full segment, click here.

We were puzzled by Gillibrand’s account of Obama’s proposal:

MATTHEWS (3/1/12): What would you say? What would you say in response to that [ad] in Missouri?

GILLIBRAND: Listen, the ad is outrageous and it’s a bald-faced lie. So you’re saying that we’re telling the Catholic Church what to do? No, we are not. In fact, President Obama made such a reasonable and very respectful compromise. He excluded churches and synagogues and institutions that are primarily for religious purposes, where the people who work there are the same religion.

What is not excluded are large employers, universities, hospitals, who can’t pick and choose what laws they’re actually going to follow. You can’t choose which labor law you think is worthwhile and which one isn’t. We've decided that long, long ago. And in fact, the Supreme Court Justices, the most conservative of them, Justice Scalia, made that point, said you are not allowed to pick and choose what laws you want to follow based on some religious objection.

And so this is long-settled law. And in at least 28 states, Chris, this has been the law of the land for about a decade, where states have made the determination that these larger institutions that serve the public at large in commercial ventures actually have to play by the same rules as everybody else.

MATTHEWS: Right.

GILLIBRAND: And so the ad is a lie.

Say what? Gillibrand took those “28 states” and raised them a few, referring to “at least 28 states.” But her account of Obama’s position didn’t seem to encompass the actual compromise he has made to his original proposal. “What is not excluded are large employers, universities, hospitals, who can’t pick and choose what laws they’re actually going to follow?” In fact, universities and hospitals were among the specific targets of the ballyhooed compromise he announced on February 10.

Will Catholic hospitals and universities “actually have to play by the same rules as everybody else?” We were puzzled by Gillibrand’s account. But Chris immediately said she was right. Soon, he doubled down:

MATTHEWS: And not only did they—I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think you missed a point important to me. And that is, not only did he compromise by excepting churches and synagogues, he went further later on and made it clear that the insurance companies would have to pay for this coverage and not require the churches or synagogues to sign onto something they can’t within their own religious beliefs do so. I think he really went the extra yard here.

You’re great to come on the show tonight. I didn’t know you’d be coming on in the face of Rush Limbaugh, but I think you did a good job on that character, the new spiritual grand poobah of the Republican Party. Anyway, thank you so much, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of the Empire State, New York.

Like Gillibrand, Chris made it sound like Obama’s compromise, which “went the extra yard,” affects churches and synagogues only.

Chris never knows what he’s talking about, but we were puzzled by Gillibrand's statements. That said, cable guests say the darnedest things on a quite regular basis! Last night, on the O’Reilly Factor, Mr. O was complaining about the fact that Obama wants to raise his income tax rate.

Mr. O’s statement was factually accurate. We've never seen him misstate this point. But look what Democratic fund-raiser Robert Zimmerman instantly said in reply:

O’REILLY (3/1/12): Now for the top story tonight, reaction with us: Tamara Draut, vice president at Demos, a progressive organization, and Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic fundraiser.

All right. How can President Obama ask me to pay more taxes when every single day I am reporting things like this? Fannie Mae wants another $5 billion. Abound Solar going out of business after, you know, an enormous investment by the federal government.

How can he ask me for more money? He's mismanaging what I have already given him? Robert.

ZIMMERMAN: Well first of all, he's asking all of us for more money.

O'REILLY: He's asking—I'm personalizing.

ZIMMERMAN: OK.

O'REILLY: He's asking me for more money. He's mismanaging what I have already given him.

ZIMMERMAN: I've got to tell you. I don't agree with you on that premise.

“He's asking all of us for more money?” Presumably, Zimmerman meant that he is asking all of us high earners for more money. (Zim has a whole lot of swag.) But just like that, he seemed to voice a treasured bit of disinformation—Obama wants to raise everyone’s taxes!

The GOP works hard to make people think such things. Zimmerman quickly helped them out. And no, his misleading statement never got straightened out.

Cable guests say the darnedest things! Question: With guests like these on the left, why book guests from the right?

Why is Gail Collins still employed!

2012-03-02T10:41:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

Queen of the fragrant begonias: The sheer stupidity of the upper-end press corps is often a thing to behold.

Why are we the people so hopelessly uninformed about major budget topics? Consider the latest grinding nonsense from the pen of Gail Collins.

Yesterday was one of those days when Collins pretends to explore an actual policy topic. Yes, she offered endless references to Williams Henry Harrison’s cold; she burned up roughly half her column with this time-killing bullshit. But as she did, she managed to marble in a few thoughts about the Social Security program—more specifically, about the best way to address its projected revenue shortfall.

She clowned, cavorted and carried on. Eventually, though, she offered us this. This may be the dumbest political assessment currently found on the planet:

COLLINS (3/1/12): The basic answer to fixing the long-term Social Security imbalance is just to eliminate the payroll tax cap, which currently exempts all income over $110,100 a year. Do that, and you have solved the problem. Politically speaking, you would probably have to agree to mix a limited tax increase with one of the fixes desired by fiscal conservatives, like reducing benefits for the wealthy, or changing the cost-of-living adjustment or, yeah, raising the retirement age a little. But the main answer is that cap, and anybody who refuses to even discuss the payroll tax cap is not serious about fixing Social Security.

Romney has already ruled out the payroll tax cap. Also, he once drove to Canada with his dog tied to the roof of the car. End of story.

Are you kidding? Does Collins really believe that, as a political matter, “you” could eliminate the payroll tax cap if you added a couple of sops to the right, “like reducing benefits for the wealthy?”

Does she think that a president—Barack Obama, let's say—could sanely propose such a deal?

Obviously, that is sheer lunacy. It may be the dumbest political assessment currently found on the planet. But so what! In the very next paragraph, we readers got pleasured by the good solid fun of a dog on the roof of a car!

Incredibly, Collins sits at the very top of your “press corps.” (You might say she’s strapped to its roof.) But why is this person even employed? Why is she part of the press corps at all? And why do we “liberals” tolerate this, even for a suburban minute?

Why are we the people so dumb? Some of us read Gail Collins.

PITIFUL HELPLESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: Why is John King still employed!

2012-03-02T10:14:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

Part 4—King of the potted plants: In this morning’s New York Times, Floyd Norris devotes his Business Day column to Rick Santorum’s budget proposals.

What Norris finds isn’t pretty. According to Norris, Santorum has offered “the most amazing [budget] proposal” of all the Republican candidates:

NORRIS (3/2/12): The most amazing proposal came from Rick Santorum...

He would reduce almost everyone’s taxes. He would slash tax rates for all, his campaign Web site promises, while preserving “deductions for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, health care, retirement savings and children.”

He would cut capital gains and dividend tax rates to 12 percent, from 15 percent, and triple the personal deduction for each child. He would repeal the alternative minimum tax. He would cut the corporate tax rate in half, increase the research and development tax credit and set the rate at zero for manufacturers. He would eliminate the estate tax, or the “death tax” in his lexicon. He would eliminate “marriage tax penalties throughout the federal tax code.”

The Tax Policy Center in Washington estimated that in one year, 2015, that set of proposals would reduce federal tax revenue by 40 percent, or $1.3 trillion, from what it would be under current law, which assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

There is nothing new about this; it just doesn't get discussed much. On January 30, the Washington Post used that study by the Tax Policy Center as the basis for a slashing editorial about the budget plans of the GOP candidates (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/29/12). They too stressed the lunacy of Santorum’s budget proposals. The editors stressed the fact that Santorum’s plan—like the plans of Romney and Gingrich—“would add trillions more” to the national debt. According to the Tax Policy Center, Santorum’s proposals would add $900 billion to the deficit in 2015 alone, even after you allow for extending all the Bush tax cuts! So the editors wrote, in amazement.

It was against this backdrop that Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona rose to ask the opening question at last week’s Republican debate.

CNN’s John King could have asked the opening question, since he seemed to be serving as moderator for the debate. But due to King's vast love for the average Joe, he deferred to Citizen Fidler, who is concerned about the national debt.

“What are you going to do to bring down the debt?” Fidler asked the various candidates. King asked Santorum to answer first. This was the start of his statement:

SANTORUM (2/22/12): Thank you, Gilbert.

I put together a specific plan that cuts $5 trillion over five years, that spends less money each year for the next four years that I'll be president of the United States. So it's not inflation-adjusted, it's not baseline-budgeting. We're actually going to shrink the actual size of the federal budget, and we're going to do so by dealing with the real problem.

Santorum went on and on from there, spooning a porridge of fine-sounding claims which no one on earth understood. But as he started, Santorum seemed to say that he was going to cut $5 trillion from the debt over the next five years—or perhaps from national spending, or perhaps from projected deficits.

Whatever!

As Santorum spoke to Fidler, it had been more than three weeks since that Washington Post editorial—an editorial based upon a major study of Santorum’s plan. Fidler was worried about the debt—and the study said that Santorum's proposals would massively add to the debt! This was, therefore, the perfect place for King to perform a journalistic act—to question Santorum’s fine-sounding claims, letting people like Fidler know that there may be a small problem here.

Santorum’s full answer to Fidler had burned some 400 words. But right there as he began, he seemed to say that we would massively reduce federal debt (or federal spending; or something). Because he isn’t the world’s dumbest person, John King knows that this claim is pure shit. So what did Khe say when Santorum was through?

This is what John King said:

KING: Governor Romney, I'm wondering if that answer satisfied you. Just in recent days you said this, quote, "If you want a fiscal conservative, you can't vote for Rick Santorum because he's not." Did he answer your questions there?

King threw to Romney. He proceeded to emit a long string of malarkey himself.

At this point, we offer a question: Why is John King still employed? In this moment, he made it clear that he had no intention of serving as an actual moderator at this final debate. All around the country, people like Fidler may have believed that they were seeing an actual journalist trying to illuminate the campaign's basic issues. If anything, many conservatives probably assumed that King was ideologically opposed to these candidates—that he would do whatever he could to embarrass these hopefuls.

Voters who thought that were wrong. Beyond that, King wasn’t trying to illuminate squat, squash or squadoodle this evening. A long discussion of deficits and debt followed Fidler’s opening question. During the course of this wandering pseudo-discussion, John King, king of the potted plants, restricted himself to the following “questions.” Not a word was ever said about the study by the Tax Policy Center—the study which took us right to the heart of Citizen Fidler's concern:

John King's "questions" during the debt discussion:
KING: Governor Romney, I'm wondering if that answer satisfied you? Just in recent days you said this, quote, “If you want a fiscal conservative, you can't vote for Rick Santorum because he's not.” Did he answer your questions there?

KING: Senator, the governor singled you out. Take a few seconds.

KING: Governor, please quickly I want to bring the congressman and the speaker into the conversation, but respond.

KING: Mr. Speaker, join the conversation. Address Gilbert's question and if you so choose, address some criticism you've received on this issue from this state's senior senator [John McCain] campaigning for Governor Romney. He questioned your credentials on fiscal conservatism. He said when you were the speaker, earmarking became an art.

KING: Congressman Paul, you've questioned the conservative—fiscal conservative credentials of all these gentlemen but particularly this week Senator Santorum. You have a new television ad that labels him a fake. Why?

KING: Senator Santorum, respond quickly.

KING: Congressman, quickly.

KING: As you can see, this is a—it's an important issue to the people in the audience. I think it's one of the reasons this race has been so volatile. Voters are looking and they say which of these candidates can I trust? And each of you are trying to make your case to them. As you try to do so, Governor Romney, you said recently that as governor you're a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts. What did you mean by that?

KING: Mr. Speaker, as you know, often when deficit reduction—when deficit reduction and economic growth are priorities at the same time, some people see a collision. Some people see a conflict. You've outlined your views on taxes. Governor Romney today outlined a tax plan that would cut the, put the top rate at 28 percent, eliminate capital gain taxes for incomes below $200,000, cut the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. Is that the right approach? And is it consistent—and it's a tough one sometimes—with spurring economic growth at a time this state and other states are looking for jobs? But as you have Gilbert's question, also looking to make sure the next president works on the deficit?

KING: The Speaker raises an important point about looking forward, and I hope we spend most of the night doing that. But as you know, there's a lot of anger in the base of the party about some of the things that have happened in the past, and the Tea Party, especially. Now, earmarks, the pork barrel spending, it's a tiny slice of the budget. I think we all know that. But if you talk to a Tea Party activist, they think it’s an example, a gateway to corruption. Senator, you have said there are good earmarks and bad earmarks. And you have talked about your earmarks in the past. Any that you specifically regret? And why have you criticized—why do you think the money that went to Governor Romney for security at the Olympics, why was that a bad earmark?

KING: Governor?

KING: Quickly.

KING: Mr. Speaker, you were referenced by the governor, you first, then Congressman Paul. Don't worry. We'll get to you, Congressman. I promise.

KING: Congressman Paul, answer Senator Santorum, please, sir.

Basically, King played traffic cop, letting the candidates stage a worthless kabuki discussion. To the extent that he offered any guidance, he turned the discussion toward the trivial question of earmarks—even as he noted that they constitute “a tiny slice of the budget.”

At one point, King did an amazing thing—he actually cited the new tax cuts Romney had proposed that day! But as he did, he hemmed and hawed, barely daring to suggest the possibility that it is hard to offer so many tax cuts while professing to worry about deficits and debt.

At two points, King referred back to Fidler’s question. But everything King did in this segment demonstrated his abject contempt for Gilbert Fidler—and for the many citizens, all over the country, who watched this debate because they’re worried about their nation’s problems. King pretended to run a discussion, but he was careful to keep things safe. Presumably, CNN doesn’t want to offend its conservative viewers.

Or to bore us with hard stuff!

For decades, information surveys have shown that we the people are pitifully clueless about major budget issues. We believe all sorts of crazy things; during those decades, people like King have refused to stand up and tell us when we’re being deceived. Meanwhile, we in the liberal world are too goddamned stupid—on the leadership level, too store-bought—to bring a serious, sustained complaint against King and the others like him.

Gail Collins prances, minces and plays. But no one is willing to tell the public about what people like King keep doing. Darlings, it just isn’t done! Careers hang in the balance! And party invitations!

Meanwhile, we in the liberal world love to take out our hate on the Fidlers. All too often, we high-minded liberals are empty, stupid, venal, mean. We very much tend to be ditto-heads, not unlike Rush Limbaugh’s followers. We kiss the asses of our “intellectual leaders” even as they lie in our faces.

We kiss the asses of our “leaders” because they tell us the stories we like. What a shame! That the nation’s average Joes—and Gilberts—are stuck with “liberals” like us.

Tomorrow—epilogue: The New York Times’ latest chart

Bailout watch: Robert Reich spreads the wet blanket!

2012-03-01T11:21:00.000-05:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

Where the cheering ends: If you’ve watched MSNBC the past two nights, you’ve seen a lot of cheerleading about President Obama’s triumphant speech to the UAW on Tuesday. Last night, Chris and Joan were gushing pretty hard:

WALSH (2/29/12): I would say the winner yesterday was whoever scheduled that speech for President Obama on the day of the Michigan primary.

MATTHEWS: It was a good speech.

WALSH: And it was a beautiful speech. It was a wonderful speech. His heart was in it.

MATTHEWS: Well, let’s—

WALSH: He talked about caring about people.

We were sobbing before they were done! But on MSNBC these days, the cheerleading is general. Obama’s speech was lustily praised, despite itsoccasional misstatements. The auto bailout has also been praised over the past week or so.

Regarding the auto bailout, we think a point deserves to be remembered. This is Robert Reich, spreading the wet blanket on last week’s Last Word. He discussed the possibility of bringing manufacturing jobs back to this country:

REICH (2/20/12): There has been a little bit of a boomlet in manufacturing back in the United States. But we’re still way down. I mean, we’re five million jobs short, manufacturing jobs short of where we were in—ten years ago, in the year 2000.

And the nostalgia, I think, Lawrence, comes from the fact that these—manufacturing used to be the place where we had really good, high-wage jobs for Americans who did not have a four-year college degree. And that’s still the case, to the extent that there are manufacturing jobs out there. The problem is that there’s a misconception. And the reason that those good manufacturing jobs existed was not because of manufacturing per se, it was because we had strong unions in manufacturing and in the manufacturing sector.

And those strong unions were able to negotiate from a position of power and get very good wages for workers in manufacturing. Those days, unfortunately, have waned. I mean, look at GM. And GM has huge profits, but the UAW, the United Auto Workers, you know, managed to negotiate a new agreement that provides new workers with only $14 an hour, starting salary. That’s half of what all new workers were getting.

O’DONNELL: Robert Reich, thank you very much for joining me tonight. Everybody should read your piece, "Manufacturing Illusions." Thank you very much.

GM is doing great! Those new workers, not so much.

On MSNBC, the cheerleading is general, pretty much as it is on Fox. On MSNBC, that includes a lot of cheerleading for the auto bailout.

We liberals are cheering because Romney was so wrong in his prediction about the effects of the bailout. For our money, that highlighted statement by Reich is also worth recalling, big picture-wise.

Romney keeps saying the unions made out like bandits. Unfortunately, it seems he's wrong there too.

Candidate Kennedy wouldn’t yell bigot!

2012-03-01T10:29:00.000-05:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

And look where he ended up: Yesterday, we discussed Andrew Rosenthal’s use of the pleasing term “bigot.” See THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/29/12.

Later, we were reading the Q-and-A from Candidate Kennedy’s famous speech about church and state in September 1960. Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. The gathering included a number of ministers who didn’t seem especially friendly to the idea that a Catholic president would avoid serving the Pope.

Some of the questioning didn’t seem real friendly; to read the transcript or watch the tape, just click here. We were struck by this statement by Kennedy as the session was ending:

KENNEDY (9/12/60): Let me just—I guess our time is coming to an end, but I believe in it. Let me say, finally, that I am delighted to come here today. I don't want anyone to think because they interrogate me on this very important question, that I regard that as unfair questions or unreasonable or somebody who is concerned about the matter is prejudiced or bigoted. I think this fight for religious freedom is basic in the establishment of the American system, and therefore any candidate for the office, I think, should submit himself to the questions of any reasonable man.

My only objection would be—my only limit to that would be that if somebody said regardless of Senator Kennedy's position, regardless of how much evidence he's given that what he says he means, I still wouldn't vote for him because he is a member of that church, I would consider that unreasonable. What I consider to be reasonable, and an exercise of free will and free choice, is to ask the candidate to state his views as broadly as possible, investigate his record to see what whether he states he believes and then to make an independent rational judgment, as to whether he could be entrusted with this highly important position. So I want you to know that I'm grateful to you for inviting me tonight. I'm sure that I have made no converts to my church. But I do hope—I do hope that at least my view, which I believe to be the view of my fellow Catholics, who hold office, I hope that it may be of some value in at least assisting you to make a careful judgment. Thank you.

Were some of these ministers “bigots?” It’s always possible. But that is a very important term in modern American history. (You might even call it a “sacred” term.) Candidate Kennedy made it a point—he wouldn’t throw B-bombs around.

Many state legislators in New Hampshire oppose marriage equality. Does that make them bigots? Yesterday, Rosenthal sprayed the term around in the promiscuous way he favors. He forgot to say that President Obama opposes equality too.

We’re old enough to recall the time when that term referred to the kinds for people who chased children through the streets with dogs, then went off and murdered their parents. Today, it’s a casual throw-away term, directed at those we dislike.

PITIFUL HELPLESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: What did Candidate Romney propose!

2012-03-01T10:05:00.001-05:00

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

Part 3—The Times doesn’t care: Why are we pitiful helpless know-nothings when it comes to budget issues?

Good question! Tomorrow, we’ll review what John King did—and didn’t do—when Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona asked the various Republican candidates to discuss the topic of debt reduction at the last GOP debate. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/29/12.)

For today, let’s discuss the way the New York Times reacted to Romney’s proposals.

Last Wednesday, Candidate Romney released the outlines of his new tax cut proposals. Two days later, he gave a “major economic address” in Detroit, in which he fleshed out these proposals.

The Washington Post reacted to these events as an actual newspaper might. Last Thursday, the paper discussed Romney’s new proposals in its featured, front-page news report. This report also discussed President Obama’s “long-awaited plan to overhaul the nation’s corporate tax base,” a plan which was also released on Wednesday.

Last Thursday, the competing proposals by Obama and Romney led the Post’s front page. But that wasn’t all! On page A2, the Post presented a sprawling analysis of Romney’s proposal, written by Ezra Klein. On the op-ed page, Greg Sargent offered an additional reaction to the Romney proposal. (Click here, then click once again.)

On Friday, the Post presented this news report by Lori Montgomery. It described a new study concerning the ways the proposals of the Republican candidates would cause we federal deficits to balloon. (The new study on which Montgomery reported predated Romney’s new proposals.)

On Sunday, the Post presented an editorial about Obama’s new proposals. On Monday, the paper’s featured editorial dealt with Romney’s new proposals. The editors helped Post readers consider the effects of Romney’s new plan:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (2/27/12): At a time of record debts and deficits, the two leading Republican presidential candidates are proposing a path on taxes and spending likely to add trillions more. That's the sobering conclusion of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), whose board includes six Republican former lawmakers with expertise in budget issues, three Republican former heads of the Congressional Budget Office, and two former Office of Management and Budget directors under Republican presidents.

Last month, we examined former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's reckless tax plan, which, according to calculations by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, would drain another $180 billion from the treasury in 2015 alone. The CRFB estimated the 10-year cost of the original Romney tax plan at $1.3 trillion. By the end of the 10-year window, the debt would be a dangerous 86 percent of the gross domestic product.

But last week Mr. Romney upped the tax-cutting ante, promising, in addition to the previous grab bag of tax goodies, a 20 percent across-the-board cut in marginal rates and repeal of the alternative minimum tax. The Tax Policy Center estimated that the 20 percent rate cut would cost about $150 billion in 2015 alone. The Romney campaign said that the rate change wouldn't add to the deficit because it would generate unspecified economic growth and be accompanied by spending cuts and elimination or cutbacks of deductions. Okay, which ones? On that question, the campaign was decidedly unspecific - understandably so, because its math doesn't add up. Until he is more specific about what sacred cows he would tackle - employer-sponsored health care? - Mr. Romney's plan cannot be taken as a fiscally responsible proposal.

Then again, he looks reasonable by comparison with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum...

In our view, the Post should have taken one additional step (see below). But the paper reacted to Romney’s new proposals as an actual newspaper might.

Why are we pitiful helpless know-nothings when it comes to budget issues? For one part of the answer, consider the way the New York Times reacted to Romney’s proposals.

Last Thursday, the Washington Post reviewed Romney’s proposals in its featured, top-of-the-front-page report. By way of contrast, the New York Times relegated the topic to page 6 of its Business Day section—and the news report, by John Harwood, didn’t even appear at the top of that godforsaken page! (For a version of that report, click this.)

Harwood’s report on Romney’s proposals appeared midway down page B6! Meanwhile, for people who think they get major election coverage in the Times’ sprawling first section, the following passage, from Thursday’s paper, represents the only discussion of Romney’s proposals these people have seen to date. This passage is taken from Jeff Zeleny’s report on Wednesday evening’s GOP debate. We hope you read all the way to the end! This passage started in paragraph 17 of this report:

ZELENY (2/23/12): Mr. Romney, hoping to increase his appeal to conservatives who have been reluctant to rally around his candidacy, introduced the outlines of a new economic policy before the debate on Wednesday. He proposed cutting the top income tax for individuals to 28 percent while holding out the prospect of limiting tax deductions.

Mr. Romney’s earlier economic plan called only for preserving the current top tax rate of 35 percent, while holding out the promise of lower rates later in an overhaul of the tax code. But facing a major challenge from Mr. Santorum, he chose to announce his revised plan, which he will highlight in a major economic speech on Friday in Detroit.

“I'm going to lower rates across the board for all Americans,” Mr. Romney told supporters at a rally in Chandler, Ariz.

On Thursday morning, that was it! Unless you fumbled ahead to page B6 in the newspaper’s Business Day section.

For the record: That passage comes from Zeleny’s report in our own hard-copy Times, upon which we're gazing as we type. But this material doesn’t appear in the on-line version of Zeleny’s report, nor does it appear in Thursday’s Times as memorialized in the Nexis archives. Question: Did this meager account of Romney’s proposals appear in the Washington Edition of the Times, the one which lands on our own doorstep, but not in the paper’s National Edition? We have no idea. The Times publishes at least three different “editions” each day; on its own web site and on Nexis, the paper provides a bewildering array of accounts of what it has actually published. According to the Times web site and according to the Nexis archives, there was no discussion of Romney’s proposals in Thursday’s front section. The only discussion appeared in Business Day, midway down page B6!

Just a guess: It wouldn’t occur to most New York Times subscribers that they have to go to page B6 to learn about major budget proposals by the Republican front-runner. Another guess: Most Times subscribers assume that they're getting the major election news in the paper’s sprawling first section, where all manner of campaign reporting appears each and every day. Sorry! In this instance, a reader of the paper’s front section learned very little, perhaps nothing at all, about Romney’s important proposals.

And then, on Saturday, things got worse! In the front section of the Times, a silly clown reported on the “major policy speech” where Romney fleshed out his new proposals. This newspaper’s “atrophied Dowdism” was on full display as a silly boy explained why readers would be getting no real information:

BARBARO (2/25/12): Mitt Romney set out on Friday to deliver a sweeping and sober vision for how to revive the American economy in a major policy speech here. In the end, he delivered something else as well: an unintended lesson about how poor visuals and errant words can derail a candidate's message in this modern political news culture.

In an unusual choice, Mr. Romney gave his speech inside Ford Field, a cavernous indoor football stadium with 65,000 seats.

To the television audience, it appeared perfectly normal. Mr. Romney could be seen standing at a lectern in front of a backdrop that had the logo of the Detroit Economic Club, the event's host. And when the stadium audience of about 1,200 people clapped, they filled the screen as cameras panned across them.

But in the age of Twitter and the Internet, that is not all that matters.

Before Mr. Romney had uttered a word, reporters began posting pictures online showing the stadium from every available angle—almost empty, except for the chairs set up on the field itself, near the 20-yard line.

Row after row of barren blue seats across the giant stadium made the crowd seem minuscule. Through the rapid-fire, reality-reshaping powers of the Web, a storyline for the day began to take hold that undercut and detracted from Mr. Romney's words: big speech, tiny crowd.

Ordinarily, such imagery might be overwhelmed by the news of the day: a highly anticipated, substantive address packed with previously unknown details. Mr. Romney called for a 20 percent cut in income taxes; handing control of federal welfare programs to the states; and creating private sector competition for Medicare services.

But the Romney campaign had leaked most of the speech's contents several days ago, leaving members of the news media with little to focus on—except, of course, the scene itself.

The distractions did not end there...

There! You finally had your account of Candidate Romney's proposals! Careful—it went by very fast! Were you even able to spot it?

As this silly child went on to explain, “reporters” like him had been “distracted” from Romney's address in various ways. But go ahead—enjoy a good laugh! “Ordinarily,” this reporter explained, the actual news from a “major policy speech” might overcome such pointless distractions! But in this case, “the Romney campaign had leaked most of the speech's contents several days ago, leaving members of the news media with little to focus on!”

The campaign had leaked most of the contents on Wednesday! That was true, of course—but the Times had made little attempt to report those contents to its readers. But so what? On Saturday, this silly child used this excuse to explain his vapid “reporting.”

The Washington Post made a serious attempt to report and analyze Romney’s proposals. It did so through a front-page news report, a sprawling analysis piece, and a featured editorial. We would offer one criticism; the Post should have done a follow-up news report about the effects of Romney’s proposals, as best they can be explained at this time. A reader shouldn’t be forced to turn to an editorial to get the kind of analysis the editors offered on Monday.

That said, the Washington Post made a serious attempt to discuss Romney’s proposals. But in its political reporting, the New York Times is a gang of clowns, a receptacle for the scribbling of those who have been hired to further its atrophied Dowdism. To this day, the paper has made little attempt to explain or analyze Romney’s proposals. Instead, it traffics in the endless “distractions” it sells as political news.

Go ahead! Just review all the bullshit today!

The New York Times has played the fool in the wake of Candidate Romney’s proposals. This brings us back to the millionaire King, pretending to question the GOP hopefuls at their final debate Wednesday night.

Tomorrow—part 4: King of the pitiful know-nothings

Ashley Parker watch: Silliest piffle ever!

2012-02-29T10:52:00.001-05:00

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Imitation of news: No one does it like Ashley Parker, the New York Times’ queen of all piffle.

The New York Times specializes in giving you piffle in the place of political news. Has anyone ever mastered the format quite the way Parker did in Monday morning’s piece?

Frankly, we’re not sure.

Parker’s piece makes empty calories look like a big bowl of oat bran. Be sure to note the utterly pointless photo, along with its hiss-spitting caption.

Parker is only 29. It’s hard to know how anyone gets to be so fatuous at such a young age. In this case, Parker got help from Michael Barbaro, whose screaming fatuity we will explore in more depth tomorrow.

We strongly recommend this brain-dead non-report report. When Katherine Boo discussed “creeping Dowdism,” we’ll guess this is what she meant.

Please come to Baltimore!

2012-02-29T10:34:00.000-05:00

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012

A musical invitation: In this morning’s New York Times, it’s bombs away—again.

In New Hampshire, the state legislature may repeal the 2009 law which lets gays and lesbians marry. This has inspired Andrew Rosenthal to toss his B-bombs around. In the hard-copy Times, these are the headlines which appear above today’s editorial:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (2/29/12): The Challenge to Marriage Equality

Driven by bigotry, New Hampshire is poised to take a giant leap backward

In one way, these headlines represent an advance. The New York Times typically restricts its use of R- and B-bombs to actions taken by southern whites. In this case, the board is accusing a northern legislature of being “driven by bigotry” too!

Is everyone opposed to marriage equality in New Hampshire “driven by bigotry?” That’s a perfectly decent question—but in the editorial itself, the Times doesn’t bother itself with such trifles. At the Times, B-bombs are thrown so routinely that the editors don’t feel the need to explain their use of this term. Though the editorial does say that the opponents of the New Hampshire law are “right-wingers.”

Are they all "right-wingers?"

Is that an appropriate use of the B-bomb? In our view, our tribe has used its B- and R-bombs so promiscuously for so long that the terms no longer have much meaning. But since Andrew Rosenthal has a different view, we’re extending an invitation:

Please come to Baltimore! No really! Come on down!

As the Times editorial notes, marriage equality is about to become law here in Maryland. But uh-oh! Here in Maryland, opposition to the bill has often come from the state’s black clergy. This front-page report in last Friday’s Washington Post was the latest report about this situation, which you won't likely see discussed on the Maddow Show.

For ourselves, we wish the ministers felt differently. But are we prepared to call them bigots? Are you, after reading that report?

Plainly, Andrew Rosenthal is! Hence, our invitation:

Andrew Rosenthal, please come to Baltimore! We’ll take you to our local supermarket. You can set up a little stand on the sidewalk and drop your B-bombs on black Baltimoreans as they enter the store! We’re sure that Rosenthal, in his great fury, is eager to spread his judgments around. He wouldn’t want to drop his bombs on New Hampshire “right-wingers” while ignoring the Democrats who feel the same way down here!

In this recent post, Kevin Drum said this about our view on the use of the B-bomb: “Bob thinks it's counterproductive to throw around charges of bigotry too casually, and I suppose I agree.” We do think this can be counterproductive. But that isn’t necessarily our main objection to the casual use of this term.

The promiscuous use of B- and R-bombs often strikes us as being rather shaky on the merits. It strikes us as being disrespectful of the history in which real bigotry has been involved—including real bigotry aimed at gays and lesbians. Most unattractively, loudmouths like Rosenthal tend to drop their bombs on tribal foes, while ignoring similar conduct from those within their own tribe.

This is stupid, ugly conduct, but it’s found all over our tribe. It’s amazing how often we liberals will castigate southern whites in the most aggressive ways for holding views which may be widely held within parts of our own coalitions.

We love to drop bombs on southern whites (and on northern “right-wingers.”) We often seem to be too dumb to know that many people within our own tribe may hold the same darn views.

Hence our invitation! Please come to Baltimore, and bring the whole board. We know a supermarket where you rubes can drop your bombs all around.

If we might express ourselves musically: To the tune of “Please Come to Boston:”

Please come to Baltimore for the spring time.
There’s a Motel 6 on the Beltway,
They've got lots of rooms.
You can sell your judgments on the sidewalk
By a cut-rate supermarket where we’ll be shoppin’ soon...

Rosenthal loves to drop his bombs. But only on the other tribe! And only when they’re not present!

PITIFUL HELPLESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: A new report appears!

2012-02-29T09:23:00.000-05:00

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Part 2—Just like the other reports: At CNN, they like to make us viewers feel that we’re important too!

For that reason, John King didn’t ask the opening question at last Wednesday’s Republican debate. He gave that honor to Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona.

How wonderfully democratic! A highly-paid professional journalist deferred to one of us rubes! Following King’s instructions, Fidler told us who he was. He then proceeded to pop the first question of this last GOP debate:

KING (2/22/12): Gentlemen, it's good to see you again. Let's get right started on the important issues with a question from our audience. Sir, please tell us who you are and state your question.

FIDLER: My name is Gilbert Fidler from Gilbert, Arizona, and I'd like to ask this question to all the candidates if I could.

Since the first time in 65 years our national debt exceeds our gross national product, what are you going to do to bring down the debt?

KING: Thank you, sir. Senator Santorum, let's begin with you.

Fidler advanced a somewhat murky question. King asked Santorum to answer.

What made Fidler’s question seem a bit murky? He wanted to know what the hopefuls would do to bring down the national debt. To do this, we will have to start running an annual surplus. Since we’re currently running annual deficits of well over $1 trillion, this will be extremely hard to do.

How hard would it be to “bring down the debt?” One example may offer some context: The proposal which emerged from the Bowles-Simpson commission wasn’t designed to “bring down the debt.” It would have reduced the amount of additional debt accrued in the next ten years. But even under its ballyhooed provisions, the national debt would have continued to grow.

Whatever! When journalists defer to us the people, confusion may ensue. Santorum proceeded to give a long, detailed, rambling apparent response, in which he seemed to say that he would cut $5 trillion in federal spending over the next five years. Or did he mean that he would cut $5 trillion from projected annual deficits?

We don’t have the slightest idea. And John King didn’t ask.

Yesterday, we showed you Santorum’s rambling statement—a statement he offered in response to a somewhat murky question (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/28/12). We said we’d show you how King reacted to Santorum’s rambling “answer.”

In our view, King should have stepped in to help at this point. For decades, national surveys have made it clear—we the people are deeply confused about federal budget issues. We believe all kinds of crazy shit, often with a lot of help from trained professional dissemblers. We rarely have any real idea what we are talking about.

To amend some famous language from Nixon, we tend to be pitiful helpless know-nothings concerning the federal budget!

In a rational world, we’d get a lot of intellectual guidance from our trained professional journalists. But we don’t live in that sort of world, and King provided very little guidance at this debate. Before we look at what he said in response to Santorum’s rambling claims, let’s get clear on how strange it was to hear Santorum say that he has “put together a specific plan that cuts $5 trillion over five years, that spends less money each year for the next four years.”

Santorum’s answer may have sounded good to Fidler. To our ear, this answer was a bit unclear—and it sounded highly implausible. Consider a news report which appeared in Friday’s Washington Post, a news report which amplified the newspaper’s prior reporting.

Lori Montgomery wrote the report; it appeared on page A6. If Fidler is concerned about deficits and debt, its headline and its opening paragraphs may not seem reassuring:

MONTGOMERY (2/24/12): Report: Debt will swell under top GOP hopefuls’ tax plans

The national debt would balloon under tax policies championed by three of the four major Republican candidates for president, according to an independent analysis of tax and spending proposals so far offered by the campaigns.

[...]

According to the report released Thursday by U.S. Budget Watch, a project of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House speaker Newt Gingrich would do the most damage to the nation's finances, offering tax and spending policies likely to require trillions of dollars in fresh borrowing.

Both men have proposed to sharply cut taxes but have not identified spending cuts sufficient to make up for the lost cash, the report said. By 2021, the debt would rise by about $4.5 trillion under Santorum's policies and by about $7 trillion under Gingrich's plan, pushing the portion of the debt held by outside investors to well over 100 percent of the overall economy, the study said.

Say what? Fidler asked the candidates what they were “going to do to bring down the [national] debt.” But uh-oh! According to this new report, the national debt would grow by about $4.5 trillion under Santorum’s policies! That certainly wasn’t the way it sounded as Santorum gave his rambling reply.

Let’s be fair! Montgomery’s report appeared two days after this final debate. As John King threw to Gilbert Fidler, the study on which Montgomery reported hadn’t yet been released. But people! Similar analyses had already appeared in the national press, and John King surely knew this. Example: On January 30, the Washington Post editorial board discussed this same situation (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/2/12):

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (1/30/12): The Republican presidential candidates claim to abhor debt, yet propose tax cuts that would add trillions more.

Yes, trillions.

The case for continuing the George W. Bush tax cuts, at a cost of $3.7 trillion over 10 years (including interest), is shaky enough. The cuts for the wealthy alone, which President Obama would end, would cost with interest about $1 trillion over the next decade. But the GOP candidates want to continue all those cuts—and add many more, the vast bulk of which would again go to the wealthiest taxpayers.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney proposes additional cuts that would drain $180 billion from the treasury in 2015 alone, according to calculations by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. The nonpartisan center has not calculated the 10-year cost of the plan. But merely multiplying by 10 illustrates that Romney is talking trillions.

And Mr. Romney's is the most modest of the GOP proposals. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich's plan would cost an astonishing $850 billion in 2015 on top of the Bush tax cuts. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum's would cost $900 billion in 2015 alone.

Please note: According to this earlier study, Santorum’s proposals would add $900 billion to the deficit in 2015 alone, even after you allow for extending all the Bush tax cuts!

This is the journalistic framework which existed at the time of last Wednesday’s debate. King threw to Fidler for the first question—and Fidler asked about “bringing down the debt.” In a rational world, John King would have swung into action after Santorum’s rambling reply. He would have imposed some clarity on the unfolding pseudo-discussion. He would have asked Santorum to explain the analyses which were already on the public record.

You can’t expect the average rube to understand such matters. In our society, we have trained professional journalists to provide such clarification! And in the realm of cable news, such professionals get paid in seven figures! Surely, these giants work long and hard to justify such pay!

How did King respond to Santorum? Don’t worry, we’ll show you—in time. But let us leave you with this for today:

When it comes to the federal budget, we the people are pitiful helpless know-nothings. It has been that way for a very long time—and our paid professional “journalists” rarely provide any help.

Tomorrow—part 3: The vastness of Barbaro’s clowning

PITIFUL HELPLESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: Pitiful helpless know-nothings are us!

2012-02-28T11:15:00.001-05:00

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012

Part 1—King in charge: Is your country a pitiful helpless giant, the way Dick Nixon once said?

Well yes, it pretty much is! One example: As surveys are constantly showing, we the people don’t have a clue about the way the federal budget works.

We believe all kinds of crazy things. We’ve done so for many years.

Why are we the people so pitifully helplessly clueless? Consider what John King did at last Wednesday's GOP debate!

King was moderator for the debate. After a bunch of silly piddle, he kicked things off in the manner which follows. To watch these proceedings, click here:

KING (2/22/12): Gentlemen, it's good to see you again. Let's get right started on the important issues with a question from our audience.

Sir, please tell us who you are and state your question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Gilbert Fidler from Gilbert, Arizona, and I'd like to ask this question to all the candidates if I could.

Since the first time in 65 years our national debt exceeds our gross national product, what are you going to do to bring down the debt?

KING: Thank you, sir. Senator Santorum, let's begin with you.

Did Gilbert from Gilbert’s question make sense? In order to bring down the national debt, we will have to start running an annual surplus. That would take enormous changes. Is that what he meant?

At any rate, King quickly threw to Santorum. He blathered at great length from there:

SANTORUM (continuing directly): Thank you, Gilbert. I put together a specific plan that cuts $5 trillion over five years, that spends less money each year for the next four years that I'll be president of the United States. So it's not inflation-adjusted, it's not baseline-budgeting. We're actually going to shrink the actual size of the federal budget, and we're going to do so by dealing with the real problem.

And here's where I differentiate myself with everybody else, including, obviously, the president. I actually have experience on tackling the toughest problems that we have in this country, and that's the growth of entitlement spending.

Obviously, the first thing we need to do is repeal Obamacare. That's the one entitlement that we can get rid of.

(APPLAUSE)

And that's a couple trillion dollars in spending over the next 10 years. But there's bigger issues.

When I was born, less than 10 percent of the federal budget was entitlement spending. It's now 60 percent of the budget.

Some people have suggested defense spending is the problem. When I was born, defense spending was 60 percent of the budget. It's now 17 percent. If you think defense spending is the problem, then you need a remedial math class to go back to.

Defense spending will not be cut under my administration, but we will go after all of the means-tested entitlement programs—Medicaid, food stamps, all of those programs—and do what we did with welfare.

We cut the welfare—we cut spending on welfare, froze it and then we block-granted it to the states and gave them the flexibility to run that program the way they saw fit with two provisos. Number one, there would be a time limit on welfare and a work requirement. We were going to say that poverty is not a disability, that these programs need to be transitional in nature. We need to do the same thing with Medicaid. We need to do the same thing with, with food stamps. All of the other means tests of entitlement programs.

And unlike the Paul Ryan plan—I see I'm out of time, but unlike the Paul Ryan plan, we also will deal with Medicare and Social Security, not ten years from now. But we need to start dealing with it now because our country is facing fiscal bankruptcy.

Santorum went on and on, describing his plan to “cut $5 trillion over five years.” For ourselves, we’ll come right out and admit it—we don’t understand that part of his answer!

Santorum said that he would cut $5 trillion over five years. Did he mean that spending in each of his first five budgets would be (roughly) $1 trillion lower than is currently projected?

Given the size of the annual budget, that would be an enormous change. Is that what Santorum meant?

From that starting point, Santorum went on and on, rattling off all kinds of points. Trust us! No one in the room, including Fidler, had any idea what the solon was talking about. But did he mean what he seemed to say? Did he mean that would cut projected spending in next year’s budget by (roughly) $1 trillion?

That would be an enormous change. Is that what Santorum meant?

Santorum gave a long, detailed reply to a somewhat murky question. Luckily, we had a professional journalist on hand! He was right up there with the candidates!

John King was in charge of this debate. Why do we live in a country where no one know squat about the budget? What makes us such pitiful helpless know-nothings?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at what King said. When we do, you’ll start getting your answer.

Tomorrow—part 2: What King said

FACT AND LEGEND: The New York Times is opposed to the crafting of legends!

2012-02-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012

Epilogue—Except when its own writers craft them: Just for the record, the New York Times is strongly opposed to the crafting of legends!

Readers learned this in two different places in Sunday’s New York Times. In each case, a Times writer was discussing “The Lifespan of a Fact,” an intriguing new book about the dumb ideas of John D’Agata, a professor and essayist/fabulist.

Years ago, D’Agata submitted an essay to Harper’s. At least in part, his essay was rejected due to its endless misstatements of fact. In 2003 or 2005, the essay was submitted to the literary magazine, The Believer. This new book chronicles that magazine’s attempt to fact-check D’Agata’s essay.

The fact-checking was a long, hard slog, for an odd reason: D’Agata doesn’t believe that an artist such as himself should be forced to restrict himself to accurate facts. In the course of the fact-checking by The Believer, he kept insisting on his right to change names, dates and numbers around to make his tale work better.

The New York Times disapproves of such thinking! In Sunday’s New York Times magazine, Gideon Lewis-Kraus batted D’Agata around, making perfectly sensible points about the need to be accurate in factual representations. At one point, he quoted the fact-checker, who was using an appropriate term:

“I mean, what exactly gives you the authority to introduce half-baked legend as fact and sidestep questions of facticity?”

What gives D’Agata the right to dream up a “legend” and present it as fact? That’s a very good question!

Does an essayist have right to manufacture fake facts? We think Lewis-Strauss was perfectly right to batter Professor D’Agata around. Meanwhile, in Sunday’s Book Review section, Jennifer McDonald seconded this emotion! In a high-profile book review!

McDonald’s review of this new book ate up the Book Review’s front page. Quite sensibly, she too rejected the idea that a writer can just make shit up:

MCDONALD (2/26/12): D'Agata uses ''facts'' that aren't facts to make a statement about a ''reality'' that is real for no one but himself, and relies on ''coincidences'' that aren't coincidences to reveal something ''profound'' about Las Vegas, or the cosmos, that is not profound but rather an accidental accumulation of detail and event. He argues that in manipulating Levi's story, he's ''making a better work of art—and thus a better and truer experience for the reader.'' But would it have made the experience any less True to call those vans pink? To let Tweety Nails be Tweety Nails? To give that poor school its comma?

''I try to take control of something before it is lost entirely to chaos,'' D'Agata writes, but what he creates is a mirage. He takes randomness and superimposes themes, gins up drama where it doesn't exist, tries to convince us his embellishments are more vivid and revealing about a city, about human nature, about Truth, than reality could ever be.

In short, he plays God...But one could contend he's merely making excuses to conceal his own laziness.

We agree with McDonald’s judgments. But as we read her description of D’Agata’s technique, we couldn’t avoid an obvious fact: She was also describing the way many people at the Times write about politics! They too rearrange or invent facts, ginning up drama where none exists. They too try to convince us that their embellishments are more revealing about a candidate than the unvarnished truth.

Duh! Major writers at the Times have worked this way for decades. On Sunday, Times readers were told that it’s very bad when Professor D’Agata exhibits such conduct! But no one noted the fact that his technique is widespread at the Times itself!

Did Al Gore say he invented the Internet? Well actually, no—he did not.

Did John Kerry clownishly say, “Who among us doesn’t love Nascar?” Well actually, no—he didn’t.

Did Muskie weep? Apparently not! Did Naomi Wolf tell Al Gore to wear earth tones? Incredibly, the Times presented this formal correction in July 2007!

NEW YORK TIMES CORRECTION (7/29/07): An article last Sunday about politicians' choice of clothing while campaigning referred incorrectly to the role of Naomi Wolf in Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. She was a consultant on women's issues and outreach to young voters; she was not Mr. Gore's image consultant and was not involved in his decision to wear earth-toned clothing.

How strange! Whatever made Times reporter Guy Trebay think that Wolf had been Gore’s “image consultant?” What made him think that Wolf was involved in Gore’s (alleged) decision to wear earth-toned clothing? We’ll take a wild guess: Among other things, Trebay kept reading that stupid shit in the New York Times all through Campaign 2000! Among others, Maureen Dowd had been ginning up drama where it didn't exist, trying to convince us that her embellishments were more revealing about Candidate Gore than serious work would have been.

Eight years later, Trebay still believed the stupid shit he had read in the New York Times! To read his bungled report from July 2007, go ahead—just click here.

People are dead all over the world because Dowd and her colleagues did that. Gail Collins played those stupid games too in the twenty months of Campaign 2000. Today, she keeps typing shit like this about Mitt Romney’s dog, a topic she can’t know about:

COLLINS (2/23/12): The prime seats at the center of the table went to Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, one of whom is going to be the nominee for president of the United States.

Take your pick, Republicans. On one hand, the guy who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. On the other, the guy who won his first Congressional race by criticizing his opponent for moving his family to Washington. And then later moved his own family to Washington, but said it didn't count because the Senate was different from the House.

Collins has typed that stupid shit more than thirty times now. She doesn’t have the slightest idea what actually happened on that trip. But as McDonald noted this Sunday, some writers are too fucking lazy to stick to the things they know.

Gail Collins is bad for your mental health. People are dead all over the world because of her past behavior. But she will never stop playing this game, any more than Dowd will. Reporters once “amused themselves” with bogus reports from Wounded Knee. Collins keeps amusing herself with tales about Mitt Romney’s dog.

Romney is an historically terrible candidate. He has made historically awful policy proposals. But Collins will never help readers learn about that. Borrowing from McDonald’s prose, one could contend her own massive laziness may be involved in these choices.

On Sunday, the New York Times made a very big deal about its devotion to facts—about its rejection of legend-invention. Lewis-Straus and McDonald went on and on about how bad it is to gin up drama, to invent legends.

They forgot to mention one key fact. This is precisely the way the Times plays this stupid sad game.

Watching a lady embellish: Lady Collins loves to embellish. It gins up drama where none exists, concealing her cosmic sloth:

COLLINS: The Arizona crowd was totally on Romney's side. This was no easy task, since it required a lot of booing and cheering at those obscure earmark arguments. But Mitt needed all the help he could get. He's facing a must-win primary next week in Michigan, which is, of course, his home state. Along with Massachusetts and New Hampshire and California, where he has, um, homes. Michigan appears to be the only Romney home state where Romney does not have an actual residence.

Question: Has anyone ever tried to claim that California is one of Romney’s “home states?” Presumably no, since it plainly isn’t. But Collins managed to gin up some drama—or perhaps a bit of amusement—with this D’Agata-like “fact.”

It helped her get to the end of a column in which she had nothing to say. As usual.

Funny that! In 1999, the press corps ginned a great deal of drama concerning Candidate Gore’s home state! At great length, they feigned confusion about the idea that Tennessee could be his home state. This phony confusion played a key role as they invented their GORE LIAR narrative.

People are dead all over the world because they ginned up that narrative. For the record, “journalists” have toyed with “home state” themes with several other major candidates, allowing themselves to create the illusion of commentary. But then, these people lie the way other folk breathe—and in truth, they just aren’t very smart.

Times writers are constantly “printing the legend!” On Sunday, Lewis-Strauss and McDonald weren’t ready to tell you that fact.

Distraction watch: Big speech, tiny minds!

2012-02-27T07:18:00.002-05:00

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2012

The guild explains the guild: Back in November, Michael Barbaro hit the front page of the New York Times with a detailed, thoughtful report about Mitt Romney’s hair style.

On Saturday, he reported on Romney’s “major policy speech” about the economy. Or rather, he reported about all the empty seats he was able to see in Detriot's Ford Field, where Romney gave this address. Like many of his colleagues, the empty young fellow had been badly distracted by all those unused seats.

In his non-report news report on the speech, Barbaro ignored what Romney said and explained why this widespread distraction occurred.

First, the background. At the start of his report, Barbaro rattled the basic events of the day. Romney was giving a major address. But here’s how reporters reacted:

BARBARO (2/25/12): Mitt Romney set out on Friday to deliver a sweeping and sober vision for how to revive the American economy in a major policy speech here. In the end, he delivered something else as well: an unintended lesson about how poor visuals and errant words can derail a candidate's message in this modern political news culture.

In an unusual choice, Mr. Romney gave his speech inside Ford Field, a cavernous indoor football stadium with 65,000 seats.

To the television audience, it appeared perfectly normal. Mr. Romney could be seen standing at a lectern in front of a backdrop that had the logo of the Detroit Economic Club, the event's host. And when the stadium audience of about 1,200 people clapped, they filled the screen as cameras panned across them.

But in the age of Twitter and the Internet, that is not all that matters.

Before Mr. Romney had uttered a word, reporters began posting pictures online showing the stadium from every available angle—almost empty, except for the chairs set up on the field itself, near the 20-yard line.

The age of Twitter made them do it! Somehow, the age of Twitter explained the way the reporters stampeded, posting pictures online which showed the stadium from every available angle. “Row after row of barren blue seats across the giant stadium made the crowd seem minuscule,” Barbaro wrote as he continued. “Through the rapid-fire, reality-reshaping powers of the Web, a storyline for the day began to take hold that undercut and detracted from Mr. Romney's words: big speech, tiny crowd.”

Big speech, tiny crowd? Folk like this are easily mocked. At any rate, the reality-reshaping powers of the Web created a storyline for the day! This is the way these pitiful children explain their own disorders.

What really explains the way the children began posting all those photos? As he continued, silly boy Barbaro let the cat out of the bag. A mordant laugh escaped our lips as we pondered his scribbles:

BARBARO: Ordinarily, such imagery might be overwhelmed by the news of the day: a highly anticipated, substantive address packed with previously unknown details. Mr. Romney called for a 20 percent cut in income taxes; handing control of federal welfare programs to the states; and creating private sector competition for Medicare services.

But the Romney campaign had leaked most of the speech's contents several days ago, leaving members of the news media with little to focus on—except, of course, the scene itself.

"Of course!" It was the fault of the Romney campaign! They had leaked most of the content the day before! There was nothing left for the children to do but to gaze all about the venue!

In this passage, Barbaro tells you a secret: The empty minds of the modern-day “press corps” can’t focus on even the biggest issues for more than one day. Presumably, Romney’s proposals for the economy represent the most important part of his campaign. But in a nation where very few people understand anything about any of this, these silly children can’t think of a way to wrote two reports on this topic.

Only naturally, their attention wandered.

People, Twitter made them do it! That and the reality-shaping powers of the Web! Plus it was the Romney camp’s fault! Of course, the children have always been good at this skill—the skill known as making excuses.

The dog on the roof of the car ate their homework! Barbaro typed a brilliant text, a text which explains your world.

Please read all the way to the end: Barbaro went on and on with endless streams of irrelevant drivel. By the time you were done, you knew that Candidate Obama gave a speech in Boise to 14,000 people.

You still didn't know what Romney had said in his major address.

FACTS AND LEGENDS: Hooray for Hollywood!

2012-02-27T06:44:00.001-05:00

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2012

Part 4—Sequel to earth tones: If the historians can be believed, American “journalists” have always behaved this way.

They have always enjoyed making up stupid shit—inventing, then printing, their legends. In her 2010 book, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, Heather Cox Richardson described the way some “reporters” functioned in the run-up to that disaster:

RICHARDSON (page 222): Sent to report on a story that wasn’t there, reporters invented one. Writing on the long planks of the counter of the agency store after the business closed for the night, they constructed copy out of rumor, or even out of whole cloth...They joined forces with the photographers eager for exciting pictures to sell, staging pictures of hand-to-hand combat with compliant Indians posing as hostile warriors. To while away the time, the reporters wrote stories to amuse themselves, interviewed each other and sent sensational copy back East.

The columns the reporter filed were electrifying, describing Indian murders and atrocities and predicting an imminent battle.

Much like their present-day brothers and sisters, these reporters did these things “to amuse themselves,” Richardson writes.

Steven Spielberg portrayed these same events in his 2005 TV mini-series, Into the West. These events ended quite badly. But that has often been the case when reporters self-entertain in this fashion.

Other figures discussed this “journalistic” tendency long before Spielberg and Richardson did. Briefly, let’s tip our hat to Oscar with a famous screen quotation:

"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” So says a newspaper reporter in a famous (fictional) moment from John Ford’s 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. On its own, the famous quote is a bit opaque. In context, the (fictional) reporter is saying this: He has come to know that a famous tale isn’t true. But he plans to keep printing it anyway.

John Ford’s film was a fictional work; Richardson’s book is history. But over the course of the past forty years, the modern-day “press corps” has amused itself in this time-honored manner, inventing legends as they pretend to cover our White House campaigns.

Candidate Muskie wept! Al Gore said he invented the Internet! Al Gore hired a woman to teach him to be a man! These are some of the most consequential legends these horrible people have pimped. But surprise! The very dumbest of these slackers are pimping a legend in this year’s campaign! Mitt Romney drove to Canada with his pet Irish setter “strapped to the roof of his car!”

The fatuous tale of the dog on the roof is this year’s version of earth tones. Because Gail Collins has returned to this tale in her two most recent New York Times columns, might we note a few facts about this new legend, which pseudo-journalists like Collins write “to amuse themselves?”

Can we talk? Lady Collins has no real idea about this now-legendary pseudo-event. She doesn’t know if Seamus was uncomfortable during his ride on the roof of the car. She doesn’t know if he was wet, or perhaps even “very wet,” during the ride. She doesn’t know if it was windy inside his carrier—the type of carrier in which dogs frequently travel.

Romney said, in 2008, that Seamus enjoyed riding in his carrier up on the roof of the family car, that he would scramble up into his suite unbidden. Collins has no way of knowing that this isn’t true. She doesn’t have the slightest idea what she is talking about.

On balance, she's making this up, then feigning surprise at the way folks "glom on to" her tale (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/23/12).

Collins has no real idea what did or didn’t happen. But like the people who invented those tales from Wounded Knee; like the people who spent twenty months dreaming up tales about Candidate Gore; like the famous dean of pundits, who told us that Muskie wept, then took it back fifteen years later; like those earlier horrible people, Collins is determined to put a novelized tale into play.

Week after week, she just keeps printing the legend!

Hooray for Hollywood! “Seamus was strapped to the roof of the car” is the latest sequel to earth tones! Earth tones was aimed at a highly capable candidate; the dog on the roof of the car is aimed at a horrible candidate—a man who’s a bit of a nut. But the biggest nut in this fruit jar is Collins. Here’s how she started her most recent column. She herself put the questions in bold:

COLLINS (2/25/12): I know you’re extremely excited about the latest developments in the Republican presidential primaries. As a public service, I am ready to answer all your questions.

Is it true that a giant cat in Wisconsin saved the life of its owner by giving her the Heimlich maneuver?

You see, this is the way rumors get started. I believe you are talking about Amy Jung of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., who is not a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. However, the story about Pudding, her 21-pound cat, has gone viral since it was first reported by Samantha Hernandez in The Door County Advocate.

Jung adopted Pudding from the local Humane Society. Just a few hours after the cat joined the family, his new mistress suffered a seizure while sleeping. According to Jung, Pudding sat on her chest in an attempt to wake her, hit her face with his paw, bit her nose until she was aroused and then ran to her son’s room to summon help.

Wow, where can I find a similar 21-pound cat to monitor my health in the late-night hours?

I would suggest that we reserve judgment on this story until we see if Pudding jumps on top of sleeping people and bites their noses even when they are not in imminent danger.

Your nation is in a very bad way. We badly need clarity, clear understanding. And that is the way a leading “journalist” burned up the first 215 words of her most recent column. She ended with Romney’s dog “tied” to the roof of the car, a remarkable switch from “strapped,” the misleading term she has used in more than thirty columns.

People died because of those Wounded Knee “legends.” People are dead all over the world because of the way Collins and her colleagues clowned with earth tones and many other legends during their war against Gore. Your lizard brain is telling you that this year's sequel can’t be wrong. Your lizard brain is saying that Lady Collins should be creating this legend.

As always, your lizard brain is wrong. But hooray for Hollywood! Tomorrow, we’ll tell you why, shouting, “That’s a wrap!”

Tomorrow: Why are we all so clueless?

This is what Collins thinks about!

2012-02-25T07:23:00.000-05:00

We'll finish our series on Monday: Currently, we're away from our desk, on a mission of national importance.

Next to our bed last night, we found the current Atlantic. On the cover, they tease one article with this question: "Do brain parasites shape your behavior?"

Do brain parasites shape human behavior? Frankly, we weren't sure. Then we read Gail Collins' new column.

This is what Collins thinks about! With apologies, we expect to be able to finish our current series on Monday.

FACTS AND LEGENDS: Little crowd on the prairie!

2012-02-25T07:08:00.003-05:00

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2012

Interlude—Chris Matthews visits Ford Field: Have we mentioned the fact that cable “news” hosts treat us rubes like baboons?

Consider what happened when a very bad person hosted last evening’s Hardball. As he started, he tickled a key he would tickle all through the program:

MATTHEWS (2/24/12): Mitt was in Detroit today to push his new economic plan, but the optics didn`t help. Check out the scene—1,200 people there at Ford Field where the Lions play football, which means Romney addressed 65,000 empty seats. Who’s the guy’s advance man on this one?

Romney had given a major address about his ridiculous budget proposals. But people like Matthews don’t tire themselves with matters of substance. All through the program, he focused on all the empty seats a person could see as Romney gave his address. Over and over, again and again, he played tape of the empty seats and ridiculed Romney for the “optics:”

MATTHEWS: Well, anyway, at his big economic speech today at Ford Field in Detroit, Mitt Romney spoke to an audience—well, we've got a—of 1,200 people in a football stadium that holds 65,000 people, not the ideal message of a thunderous, overflowing crowd you'd want to see heading into a critical primary, would you.

MATTHEWS: Coming up: Mitt Romney spoke to a crowd of 1,200 today in a football stadium that held, well, 65,000 potentially.

MATTHEWS: Well, here's a totally unfair comparison of dueling stadium speeches and the crowds attending. Take a look. On the left, you see the packed crowd at Invesco Field at Mile High back in 2008, when Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president. It was a full house that night in Denver.

And there on the right, well, that's Romney’s little crowd today at Ford Field in Detroit, all 1,200 of them, and a lot of empty seats in that huge stadium.

Throughout the program, Matthews kept playing that tape, mocking Romney for the optics created when a “little crowd” sits in a large stadium. He even played that tape side-by-side with the tape from Obama’s convention address in 2008. As he played that bit of tape, he even told us baboons, right to our faces, that this was “a totally unfair comparison!”

Over and over, Matthews mocked Romney for the small crowd in the large park. Imagine our surprise an hour later when correspondent Peter Alexander, on NBC Nightly News, offered this explanation:

ALEXANDER (2/24/12): And tonight the Romney campaign insists that it had nothing to do with the decision to hold today’s speech on the field, Brian. The Detroit Economic Club, the host of the event, said they originally planned to hold it in the stadium’s atrium. But the Secret Service, they say, was concerned that the size of the crowd would make that area unsafe so it was decided to move it to the field. But as you know, Brian, in these events stagecraft is often as important as what the candidate himself says.

Really? The event was moved from the atrium to the field because of the Secret Service? We don't know if that is accurate. But matthews made no attemptto explain the pointless matter he flogged throughout the hour.

Later, Rachel Maddow devoted one of her endless, pseudo-professorial segments to this pointless piffle. Note the skillful way she explained away the possible role of the Secret Service, which she said she had to mention:

MADDOW (2/24/12): Booking a 65,000-seat stadium for 1,200 person event. That is not an accident. They knew this was going to happen. There were pictures that ran in the local press before the event took place showing how bad the event was going to look.

Did the Mitt Romney campaign bail on the event? No, they did not. And then to add further injury to injury, they did not even fill the seats that they put there on the field in the first place. Even after jamming everyone in this teeny tiny little sliver of a stadium to try to make it look there was crowd, there were still all sorts of empty-folding chairs.

It should be noted that the Romney’s campaign swears today that this was not their fault. They say because of security concerns with the original location, the Secret Service asked them to relocate, and the surface of the field was the only option at that point. But again, everybody knew way in advance this is what it was going to look like before the event started and they decided to go ahead and stick their candidate in the middle of that anyway.

They should have bailed on the address! The lord god professor has spoken! (Good god, but Maddow is awful…)

By the way: Does it matter if a major economic address is held in a very large stadium? Actually, no—it doesn’t. In even a slightly rational world, people would realize that the content of a major economic address is more important than “the optics.” And the content of Romney’s economic proposals is foolish bordering on insane. But the children who pretend to be a press corps will find any way to avoid such boring discussions. In the morning’s New York Times, the hottest new silly-boy, Michael Barbaro, goes on and on—and on and on—about the troubling optics.

These people don’t like discussing matters of substance. Note again the wonderful way Alexander ended last night’s report, speaking to Brian Williams:

ALEXANDER: But as you know, Brian, in these events stagecraft is often as important as what the candidate himself says.

Really? In these events, stagecraft is often as important as what the candidate himself says? Why in the world would that be the case?
Alexander seemed to think we’d all understand. Brian simply thanked him.

In her pseudo-professorial way, Maddow mentioned a few events of this type involving Candidate McCain in 2008. The chimps are always ready to play, especially if the troubled optics involve a targeted pol. One more flashback: In July 1999, the Secret Service involved itself in a Gore campaign event, an environmental event involving a canoe ride on a river. This too produced some bad optics. The chimps jumped and screeched and flung their poo for a good solid week. At that time, Gore was targeted.

These are very empty souls—and they’re making millions of dollars.
By the way, what did Romney say in that major address? Matthews didn’t go there.

The children are very upset: The children are also very upset by Romney’s remarks about Michigan's trees. Given the chance to speak to a journalist about the economic address, this was Maddow's first question:

MADDOW: Joining us now is Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for the Washington Post. She`s been traveling with the Mitt Romney in Arizona and Ohio and Michigan. Karen, thank you for being here. It's nice to see you.

TUMULTY: Thanks for having me.

MADDOW: Do you have any insight into why he keeps bringing up the height of the trees in Michigan? I thought it was a non-sequitur the first time, but he keeps doing it. Does it mean something?

That was this child's first question.

The children are very stupid. The greatest album we’ve ever heard is the debut album by the McGarrigles. In her glorious coming-of-age song, Talk to Me of Mendocino, the late Kate McGarrigle spoke about trees in the state where she came of age in much the way Romney does:

I bid farewell to the state of ol' New York
My home away from home
In the state of New York I came of age
When first I started roaming
And the trees grow high in New York state
They shine like gold in autumn
Never had the blues from whence I came
But in New York state I caught 'em.

People who hate look for ways to hate. They aren't happy until they find one.

FACTS AND LEGENDS: A mission of national import!

2012-02-24T08:10:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012

Creating a one-day postponement: We’re off on a mission of national import. Tomorrow morning, we expect to continue our series about facts and legends.

To prepare, and to punish yourselves, go ahead: Just click here.

What Romney said and meant!

2012-02-24T08:06:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012

What did he say and mean: Paul Krugman’s new column includes some very bad news for all Americans. This very bad news appears more than halfway through the piece:

KRUGMAN (2/24/12): Given his advisers, then, it seems safe to assume that what Mr. Romney blurted out Tuesday reflected his real economic beliefs—as opposed to the nonsense he pretends to believe, because it’s what the Republican base wants to hear.

And therein lies the reason Mr. Romney acts the way he does, why he is running a campaign of almost pathological dishonesty.

For he is. Every one of the Romney campaign’s major themes, from the attacks on President Obama for going around the world apologizing for America (he didn’t), to the insistence that Romneycare and Obamacare are very different (they’re virtually identical), to the claim that Mr. Obama has lost millions of jobs (which is only true if you count the first few months of his administration, before any of his policies had taken effect), is either an outright falsehood or deeply deceptive. Why the nonstop mendacity?

Is Romney “running a campaign of almost pathological dishonesty?” Is he engaged in “nonstop mendacity?” In a forum as important as this one, we’d stay away from psychiatric-sounding language. But Krugman’s statements are in the ballpark.

Therein lies the bad news.

Romney could still end up in the White House. For that reason, Krugman’s basically accurate statements are bad news for all Americans. We don’t know if anyone has ever run such a weirdly disingenuous White House campaign. It’s hard to imagine where this leads if Romney gets to the White House.

That said, we were struck by the way Krugman started his column, not by its gloomy conclusions, which made a great deal of sense. As a reader, we were struck by the way he presented the highlighted quotation from Romney—the quotation which forms the basis of today’s rumination:

KRUGMAN: According to Michael Kinsley, a gaffe is when a politician accidently tells the truth. That’s certainly what happened to Mitt Romney on Tuesday, when in a rare moment of candor—and, in his case, such moments are really, really rare—he gave away the game.

Speaking in Michigan, Mr. Romney was asked about deficit reduction, and he absent-mindedly said something completely reasonable: “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.” A-ha. So he believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal.

The right’s ideology police were, predictably, aghast; the Club for Growth quickly denounced the statement as showing that Mr. Romney is “not a limited-government conservative.” On the contrary, insisted the club, “If we balanced the budget tomorrow on spending cuts alone, it would be fantastic for the economy.” And a Romney spokesman tried to walk back the remark, claiming, “The governor’s point was that simply slashing the budget, with no affirmative pro-growth policies, is insufficient to get the economy turned around.”

But that’s not what the candidate said, and it’s very unlikely that it’s what he meant. Almost surely, he is, in fact, a closet Keynesian.

Is Romney a closet Keynesian? We have no idea. In our view, he has seemed to dissemble about so many things that we don’t know if he believes anything at all at this point. But we were struck by that highlighted quotation—and by the way Krugman judged what Romney likely meant.

On their face, Romney’s 22 words seem to be a heresy for those on the pseudo-right. According to Krugman, the Club for Growth quickly snapped off a reply, insisting that we should balance the budget with spending cuts only. (The group is often confused with the Hair Club for Men. In fact, there is no connection.) Meanwhile, Romney’s spokesperson explained what he supposedly meant. Romney meant that we should have pro-growth policies and spending cuts, the campaign officially said.

According to Krugman, “it’s very unlikely” that this is what Romney meant. In his opening paragraph, he seems to assert a stronger degree of certainty.

Krugman offers a chain of reasoning in support of this view. But he offers no context.

Krugman tells us what Romney meant. As a reader, we are wondering what he said. Did he utter those 22 words and not a word more? If he only uttered those 22 words, are they sufficient to form a judgment? Are they even worth discussing?

As a reader, we were surprised that Krugman offered no context for Romney’s remark—and no explanation for the lack of context.

As we devoured Krugman’s column this morning, we hadn’t yet researched Romney’s remark, although we’d seen it flogged on cable. Even now, as we type, we still haven’t researched the 22 words; we expect to do so this weekend, after a bit of a train ride. But as a reader, we were struck by the lack of context in Krugman’s piece. What were Romney’s fuller remarks? What exactly had he been asked? What else, if anything, did he say? Surely, a serious person wouldn’t judge what Romney meant without considering the fuller context, if there is one.

We make this point for a reason. On cable “news” channels, the silly, tightly-clipped pseudo-quotation has become a reliable staple. MSNBC is now a master of this practice. A tiny portion is pulled from a longer remark; gangs of chimps then sit around misrepresenting what was actually said. This is now one of the principal ways the chimps entertain us baboons.

The “press corps” has mastered variants of this technique over the course of the past twenty years. Even back in the 1990s, this was one of the principal ways our “journalists” would go after targeted pols. The technique is now a reliable standard on our “liberal” cable “news” channel. And by the way:

When we let journalists function this way, we give them enormous power. This year, they may decide to use this power against a GOP front-runner. But in the past, they have played this game against a string of major Dems—and they may flip back the next time.

As a general matter, this is the way we rubes get made dumb. This is the way we give control of our minds to gangs of chimps.

Like most people who will read Krugman’s column, we haven’t done the background research (yet). But as we read the column, two questions popped into our mind:

What did Romney actually say? Shouldn’t we have been told?

Seeing the electoral glass one-fifth empty!

2012-02-23T10:57:00.001-05:00

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Ruth Marcus finagles her framework: Is the Democratic Party lousy at winning elections?

Who knows? There may be better approaches the party could take. But good grief! Look at the way the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus started yesterday’s column. We’re using the headline which appeared in the hard-copy Post:

MARCUS (2/22/12): Why the Democrats don’t win

Far more Americans favor Democrats over Republicans. For decades, the number of Americans identifying as Democrats or calling themselves independent but leaning Democratic has far exceeded the share of Republicans and Republican leaners. That gap has persisted, even in landslide Republican years like 1984 and 1994.

So why don’t Democrats perform better in national elections? Why have Democrats won only four of 10 presidential races since 1972?

In her column, Marcus explains “why the Democrat don’t win” presidential elections. She also explains the steps they should take to put an end to their slide.

Who knows? Democrats might get more votes if they take her advice. But what did Marcus forget to note?

Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the last five White House elections! In three of those elections, they won by fairly large margins. In 1992, 1996 and 2008, they won by six to eight points.

In fairness, Marcus was discussing a new report by Third Way, a “moderate Democratic group.” It was Third Way which constructed the framework in which Democrats have “won only four of 10 presidential races since 1972.” Even there, Third Way counted Campaign 2000 as a loss, even though the Democratic candidate won the popular vote.

That said, no one forced Marcus to adopt the group’s gloomy framework. No one stopped her from noting an obvious fact: Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the past five White House elections!

Who knows? Maybe Democrats would get even more votes if they took Marcus’ advice—if they became more “centrist/moderate.” But for a taste of her analytical skill, consider this example:

MARCUS: First, the Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely to switch loyalties and vote Republican than are their pure Democratic counterparts. This may seem obvious, but consider: Republican leaners were far less likely to defect than were Democratic leaners.

For example, in the 2002 House election, 46 percent of those who had identified themselves as Democratic-leaning independents two years earlier voted for Republicans; just 26 percent of Republican-leaning independents switched to vote Democratic.

2002 was a bad year for Democrats in those House elections. Many independents did go with the Republicans. But does Marcus remember the context there?

President Bush was ginning up a war. He was pushing a whole lot of buttons.

Marcus thinks the Democrats should move back toward the “middle” in the hope of attracting more votes. As she continued, this was another piece of her analysis:

MARCUS (continuing directly): Second, the Democratic-leaning independents have different views than those who call themselves Democrats. As Eberly reports, they are “less supportive of government intervention in the economy, more likely to believe that the government has gotten too involved in things people should do for themselves, and express higher levels of support for cutting Social Security spending.”

Eberly’s conclusion: “There may be more money and passion among activists on the left, but there aren’t enough voters there to secure consistent electoral victory for Democrats. The true wealth of voters in the Democratic coalition resides in the vital political center and that’s where the Democratic Party will find the path to sustained electoral dominance.”

Democratic-leaning independents “express higher levels of support for cutting Social Security spending” (as compared to Democratic activists). To Marcus, this means Democrats should support cutting this program too.

Possibly! But might that fact mean something else? Might it mean that Democrats should find a way to explain to the public that they have been disinformed about Social Security for at least the past thirty years? By the way: A party can’t learn how to do such things by coasting along on stupid stories about the other party’s pet dogs. Democrats may defeat Romney that way. But they'll be left without a real politics.

What will they do if the next GOP nominee never owned a pet dog?

In our view, Marcus offers lousy advice. That said, her pitch is cued by a comical failure—a failure to note an obvious fact:

Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the past five elections! Did this fact cross Marcus’ mind? How about the mind of her editor?

FACTS AND LEGENDS: Just making stuff up!

2012-02-23T10:15:00.001-05:00

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Part 3—Gail Collins should look in the mirror: The analysts chuckled when they perused Sunday’s Washington Post.

The Style section featured a sprawling, two-page report about “Watergate,” Thomas Mallon’s new novel. In large, bold letters, the layout featured this pull-quote from an interview with Mallon:

“There's a story about Nixon that as a child he got a briefcase for Christmas and was happy about it. There was always that striver aspect of Nixon, and it never went away....If he's going to be of any interest to a novelist...it's not going to be as a pasteboard villain who twirls his mustache and ties his victim to the railroad tracks.”

“There’s a story about Nixon,” Mallon had told the Post reporter.

Mallon’s story fits a traditional picture of Nixon. But is the story true? There was no sign that Mallon knows, or that the Post reporter cares. People! The story is amusing! And it fits a traditional picture.

Within our fact-averse journalistic culture, that’s frequently all it takes.

Facts are very pliable things within our political discourse. At the start of this month, the White House made a misleading factual claim which rapidly took the world by storm. Everyone repeated (and revised) the claim, although it wasn’t real accurate.

The New York Time still hasn’t tried to report the relevant facts. But then, what else is new? See THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/22/12.

Monday evening, on the Last Word, one of our most vapid “journalists” mused about the history of this fact-averse culture. For unknown reasons, Gail Collins has written a book about William Henry Harrison, who served exactly 32 days as the ninth American president. In keeping with her preternaturally lazy approach, Collins’ “book” runs all of 125 pages. Its opening pages feature the weird connections which are frequently found inside her squirrel-inhabited head.

In the following exchange, Collins told Lawrence O’Donnell what Harrison had to teach us on this year’s Presidents Day. Lawrence said he was only raising the point to sell a couple of books. Everything these life-forms do is about stuffing bucks in their pockets. To watch this garbage, click here:

O’DONNELL (2/20/12): Gail, quickly, before we go, let’s get in a book-selling word about "William Henry Harrison."

COLLINS: Presidents Day, yes!

O’DONNELL: Does he have anything to teach us on Presidents Day about this the presidential campaign?

COLLINS: I think so. You know, he, like Mitt Romney, was the son of a very—he was the son of a founding father, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a very wealthy family in Virginia on a plantation. But he ran as president in an age when you could just make stuff up and go with it.

O’DONNELL: Those were the days!

COLLINS: As a very poor soldier living in a log cabin. And that was the center of his campaign. People danced the log cabin two-step. If only Mitt Romney could do that now, he’d be so happy if he could recreate himself as, you know, this guy from Brooklyn.

For our money, Collins would be one of the truly loathsome figures on the national stage, if it weren’t increasingly plain that squirrels are banging around in her head. As usual, she seemed to be treating the public like fools in this moronic exchange. Harrison “ran as president in an age when you could just make stuff up,” she marveled, transitioning to a jibe aimed at Romney.

O’Donnell pretended to marvel too. Of course, he, like Collins, knows something you don’t: Like Harrison, Romney is running “in an age when you can just make stuff up.” There’s one major difference between these two candidates: It’s more often the press corps which makes the stuff up in the present age.

The “press corps” makes up the stuff now! They spread their silly tales around, just as Harrison may have done. They just make stuff up and go with it! They’ve done this for three or four decades.

Candidate Muskie wept! David Broder said it was so. Fifteen years later, he said it probably wasn’t.

Who gets to just make up silly shit now? Increasingly, people like Collins! Earlier, O’Donnell asked her about the stuff she has (pretty much) been making up in the current campaign. As always, Collins’ response was hugely disingenuous. Here you see her describing her role in some Harrisonian conduct:

O’DONNELL: Now, Gail, I want to talk about what’s happened in the polls and basically we see a Romney collapse. Rachel, in the previous hour, tracked it to, literally to the day Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney. Numbers have gone down for him since then.

OK. So there’s Trump. But there’s also the Romney dog. How much of this collapse can we assign to Mitt Romney as the worst dog manager in history?

COLLINS: Well, as we all know, Mitt Romney did, years ago, drive his family to Canada with the family dog strapped in a crate on the top of the car, and it was actually wet for most of the trip, because he got diarrhea at the beginning and was hosed down. So you’ve got a very wet Irish setter on the top of the car, on the highway, going down the highway. I can’t imagine he would have been real happy about it.

But it’s amazing to me that people glom on to this as meaning something about Mitt Romney. And it seems to. It really does. I mean, it’s really caught hold in a very strange and interesting way.

And you know, he’s going to be forever kind of the guy with the dog on the top of the car.

Is anyone more disingenuous than this horrible person? “It’s amazing to me that people glom on to this as meaning something about Mitt Romney,” the vacuous upper-end crackpot said—failing to note that she herself has been working extremely hard to encourage people to do just that. As she and O’Donnell continued their chat, so did the high lady’s scam:

O’DONNELL (continuing directly): Well, candidacies find different attachments to the people, and I think one of the things about Mitt Romney is, he’s not found any personal attachment. No connective spot, except here, with dog owners, and it’s an extremely negative connective spot with dog owners.

COLLINS: Well, he keeps trying. As we all know, he talked this week about how he likes the size of the trees in Michigan, and he loves cars. He really loves cars, so on and so forth.

But every time he tries for that really personal attachment, something goes terribly wrong and he winds up saying that he really enjoys firing people or that he got pink slips or something else horrible happens. And it never goes well for him when he tries to make a personal connection. It’s very strange.

In this exchange, Collins continued to flog a pair of meaningless statements by Romney, as many of her coleagues have done. Then, she said “it’s very strange” that moments like these “never go well” for this candidate.

Presumably, Collins understands why these moments don’t “go well” for Romney. In this exchange, she was really describing the way people “just make stuff up and go with it” in our modern presidential campaigns.

She failed to note that it’s now people like her who get to “just make stuff up.”

In this instance, she and her colleagues have been pretty much making stuff up about Candidate Romney. It’s easier, and much more fun, than discussing his gruesome, absurd proposals.

Unfortunately, they played this same destructive game with Candidates Kerry and Gore.

Speaking with O'Donnell, Collins made the rare accurate statement; she said that Romney “is going to be forever kind of the guy with the dog on the top of the car.” That may be true, of course. But she forgot to add an additional fact—this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this movie. Thanks to Collins and her colleagues, Candidate Gore was “forever kind of the guy with the earth tones Naomi Wolf told him to wear.” He was also “forever kind of the guy who said he invented the Internet.” Collins could have risen to challenge her peers when they just made up this stuff. Instead, she cavorted, clowned around and pimped this stupid shit too.

Are you happy with how that turned out? No, really—try to think!

It wasn’t just Candidate Gore. Four years later, Candidate Kerry was forever sort of the guy who said he was for it before he was against it. As Jacob Weisberg reminded us this month, he is still sort of the guy who put the wrong cheese on his cheesesteak. He was forever sort of the guy who went wind-surfing when he should have gone jogging. And as with Romney, so with these Dems: It never went well for them when they tried to make a personal connection! As with Romney, so with Kerry and Gore: Whores like Collins would scan every gesture and word, looking for ways to make them seem strange. Then, they pretended it was “weird” that they couldn’t make a personal connection—forgetting to note that they themselves had been working to keep that from occurring.

(Candidate Kerry was forever sort of the guy who said, “Who amongst us doesn’t like NASCAR?” Collins’ colleagues laughed and laughed, forgetting to tell us that they themselves had made the statement up.)

Lady Collins and her colleagues just sort of made that stuff up. In the case of Candidate Gore, people are dead all over the world because of what they did.

Because of what Collins did. People are dead all over the world because of what Gail Collins did.

Today, this horrible person clowns around concerning a dog on the roof of a car in 1983. She says she's amazed at the way “people glom on to this as meaning something about Mitt Romney.”

We’re amazed to see people glom on to that too. But then, we haven’t been begging people to do so. By the way: How well does Collins understand her basic facts?

Collins never seems to say the same thing twice about the meaning of this story—the story she cites in this morning’s New York Times column for more than the thirtieth time. In an hour-long session with Diane Rehm which was weird even by Collins’ standards, she told Rehm that she sees the story as a sign of how uber-orderly Romney is. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/1/12.)

Reading her columns, few people would ever guess that this is the point of this uber-flogged story. (Speaking with Rehm, Collins misstated the facts which appeared in the Boston Globe, the original source of this groaner.) And sure enough! Monday, on Presidents Day, Collins seemed to say that the actual point of the story involves the discomfort of Romney’s poor dog.

Seamus “was actually wet for most of the trip, because he got diarrhea at the beginning and was hosed down,” Collins stupidly told the nation. Seamus was “very wet,” she quickly said, thereby improving the tale. As squirrels wrestled in her brain, she then began imagining things. “I can’t imagine he would have been real happy about it,” she worriedly said.

Was Seamus wet, even verywet, during most of the trip? Like Collins, we have no idea. Collins is old enough to know a bit of social history: As of 1983, most wealthy families owned towels.

Romney wasn’t super-rich yet. Based upon our own recollections, we’ll guess that he owned at least one.

How wet was Seamus during that trip? Collins lacks the first fucking idea. But she keeps displaying a familiar form of mental/intellectual illness, an illness which is quite widespread within her loathsome cohort.

When it comes to just making stuff up, she has been playing the Harrison role for a good many years.

Coming: Printing the legends

Virginia is for copy-cats!

2012-02-22T10:48:00.002-05:00

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012

We were surprised by this fact: At the end of last week, we were talking to a very big name about the proposed Virginia law involving the ultrasound exams.

We haven’t seen a lot of press coverage, we said, expressing a bit of puzzlement.

Yesterday, the New York Times did a news report on the situation. We were surprised by the highlighted fact:

TAVERNISE (2/21/12): Requiring ultrasounds before abortions has become one of the principal tactics of the anti-abortion movement, with similar rules now in effect in seven states and being held up by legal challenges in two more—Oklahoma and North Carolina.

If Virginia is the tenth state to enact such a provision, that might explain why there hadn’t been a whole lot of coverage. Here’s why we were surprised:

Especially watching the Maddow Show, we have gotten the impression that this proposed Virginia law was a major new departure. We haven’t gone back to read all the transcripts in detail. But we’ve watched quite a few segments about this law. We were surprised to read that Virginia would be the tenth state in line.

Looking at Monday night’s transcript, we see that Dahlia Lithwick mentioned the fact that Texas has a similar law. But scanning transcripts back through last week, we see no discussion of the sweep of such laws—of those nine other states.

We were surprised by that fact in the Times, a fact which seems a bit depressing. Having said that, we have an excuse—we watch lots of cable TV!

Just to be clear: We can't speak to the accuracy or the thoroughness of that highlighted fact. It does seem to us that it's a basic, if unfortunate, part of the overall story.

Mind-reading Governor McDonnell is fun. Who are the other nine governors?

Imagine all the people!

2012-02-22T10:17:00.000-05:00

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Maddow and Lithwick can’t: How are we liberals now being trained?

We were struck a colloquy on Monday evening’s Rachel Maddow Show.

Maddow was speaking with Dahlia Lithwick about the spread of state laws which limit abortion rights. Virginia was on the verge of passing a law which would require invasive ultrasound examinations.

In just her second question, Maddow wanted to know if this proposal made any internal sense. Were laws like these compatible, in any way, with conservative “small government” frameworks? Is there any way to avoid the conclusion that The Other Tribe is just a big gang of slobbering hypocrites?

Unlike us, that is! This was Maddow's proffer. To watch the full segment, click here:

MADDOW (2/20/12): Dahlia, you I think more than anybody have done more to help non-lawyers understand the legal means by which some of these issues have been approached by the right—the way that abortion rights have been sort of chipped away at from the edges by the anti-abortion movement and conservative movement more broadly. When you look at the approaches to the legislation like this, trying to change state laws like this, the approaches they’ve taken in terms of federal legislation— Is there any connection that I just can’t see, because I’m a liberal, between the way they have approached this issue as a policy matter and the rhetoric about supporting small government?

Maddow said she just can’t see it. Lithwick explained why that is:

LITHWICK (continuing directly): You know, there is none. This is—it makes no sense for a party that purports to want to shrink government down to the size that you could drown it in a bathtub, to then sort of insert it into your uterus. It makes no cognitive sense.

Maddow can't see the connection here because there is no connection! It makes no "cognitive sense." (We'll admit we don't know what that phrase means. But we think we get the idea)

As she continued, Lithwick discussed Anthony Kennedy’s vote in the 2006 Gonzales case. For ourselves, we were struck by her declaration about the other side’s complete lack of “cognitive sense.”

As readers may know, the Maddow show is the place to go to hear that the others are hypocrites. Presumably, this is true about many of the other tribe’s office-holders. But is it true that it “makes no sense” to favor small government while supporting various anti-choice measures, including this highly intrusive measure?

Does this really “make no sense”—“none?” Here at THE HOWLER, we favor abortion rights as conventionally defined. But on a logical basis, could it make sense to favor “small government” while opposing abortion rights? Are those two stances incompatible?

For our money, those two stances are compatible, although we don’t support either one. It’s amazing to see that Maddow and Lithwick can’t even imagine the thinking involved here.

“Small government” isn’t no government. It isn’t strange to favor small government while supporting laws against murder or assault, for example. And pro-life people say they consider abortion to be the taking of a human life. We don’t see it that way ourselves. But it’s amazing to see that Maddow and Lithwick can’t navigate this well-lit pathway—to see that they can’t even imagine the possible reasoning here.

The Virginia law under discussion is very intrusive. But if you can’t even imagine a way this procedure could be supported within a “small government” framework, we’d have to say you aren’t very good at imagining things that extend beyond your own highly limited self.

But then, please remember the world’s oldest stricture, a stricture which extends from pre-history:

The tribe must never imagine the mental life of the other tribe. Such flights of fancy can’t be allowed. The other tribe isn’t human!

We'd oppose that Virginia law ourselves. But can we imagine where it comes from?

Well actually, yes. We can!

FACTS AND LEGENDS: Where do facts come from?

2012-02-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Part 2—What Jay Carney said: If it wasn’t for facts which are bungled, misleading or false, would we have any facts at all?

Sometimes, it seems we wouldn’t. Bogus facts have come to play a leading role in our pitiful discourse, especially as the discourse has become more tribal.

Tribal groups like to generate “facts” which seem to support preferred policy goals. They’re too lazy to argue the genuine merits of their proposals. So they gin up a few helpful “facts.”

It seems that something like this occurred on February 2, when former journalist Jay Carney dispensed the following highlighted “facts.” Carney, now the Obama press sec, was discussing the administration’s original proposal concerning contraception coverage:

CARNEY (2/2/12): In some of the commentary about it, there's been some misstatements about what it actually does. No individual will be required to use or prescribe contraception. This rule does not force anyone with a religious objection, such as a Catholic doctor, to prescribe or provide contraception. It merely requires that insurance companies provide coverage for contraceptives to patients who want them, which is the recommendation of the non-partisan Institute of Medicine.

And it's important to note that doctors prescribe contraception for medical and health reasons, including helping to reduce the risk of some cancers.

It's also important to know, because I think this has not been clear in some of the commentary, that the policy maintains the religious-employer exemption. Churches are not required, they're exempt. Other houses of worship are not required, they're exempt, to cover contraception.

So it's also important to note that as we developed this policy and found what we believe is the appropriate balance, that 28 states, more than half—28 states in the country have laws with contraception-coverage mandates. Over half of Americans already live in those 28 states. Several of those states, like North Carolina, New York and California, have identical religious-employer exemptions. Some states, like Colorado, Georgia and Wisconsin have no exemption at all—no exemption for churches or other houses of worship.

At one time, Carney was a journalist. This may explain why he was comfortable offering those highlighted statements. At any rate, the highlighted part of Carney’s statement launched a thousand factual claims. It seems that many of these claims have turned out to be false or misleading.

If it weren’t for misleading facts, would we have facts at all?

Let’s be clear: The highlighted part of Carney’s statement can be defended as technically accurate. According to all the reporting we’ve seen, 28 states actually do “have laws with contraception-coverage mandates.” Over half of us rubes do live in those states. Some of those states do have religious-employer exemptions which are, at least on the surface, identical to the exemptions found in the original Obama proposal—the proposal Carney was discussing that day. According to the Washington Post, some states do have “no exemption at all—no exemption for churches or other houses of worship.”

At least on the surface.

As far as we know, every part of Carney’s statement can be defended as technically accurate. Unfortunately, the statement also seems to have been misleading in various ways. The Washington Post discussed some of these factual problems in a recent news report (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/21/12); a few days earlier, the New York Times had called attention to one apparent problem (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/17/12). But supporters of the Obama proposal quickly began repeating Carney’s factual claims, in a wide variety of ways. We rubes were told, again and again, the 28 states already make the kinds of demands encompassed within the Obama proposal. This alleged fact allegedly showed that the bishops’ objections to Obama’s proposal were hypocritical or bogus, we rubes were frequently told.

None of this has a thing to do with the actual merits of Obama’s proposal, whether in its original form or in the amended version. But you know how our discourse works! Supporters of various proposals are often too lazy, or too tribalized, to argue the actual merits. Instead, they look for shortcuts. They may be especially drawn to shortcuts which help us see that The Other Tribe is really a big gang of hypocrites! Unlike us! We’re OK!

In this case, supporters of Obama’s proposal were quick to help the proposal along with some bungled or misleading facts. The widespread claims about those 28 states track to Carney’s statement.

Within our discourse, where do facts come from? In this instance, Carney’s misleading factual statements launched a thousand ships. But a second statement, released the next day, was quite widely ignored. That statement came from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a group which tormented our earliest years, making Sunday the most horrible day of the week; their statement seems to have identified some of the flaws with Carney’s claims. In this part of their rebuttal, the bishops frisked one part of Carney’s statement:

U. S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS (2/3/12):
Claim: "Over half of Americans already live in the 28 States that require insurance companies cover contraception: Several of these states, like North Carolina, New York, and California have identical religious employer exemptions. Some States like Colorado, Georgia and Wisconsin have no exemption at all."

Response: This misleads by ignoring important facts, and some of it is simply false. All the state mandates, even those without religious exemptions, may be avoided by self-insuring prescription drug coverage, by dropping that particular coverage altogether, or by taking refuge in a federal law that pre-empts any state mandates (ERISA).None of these havens is available under the federal mandate. It is also false to claim that North Carolina has an identical exemption...

However a person may judge the merits of Obama’s original or amended proposal, that highlighted statement seems to be accurate (and relevant). But this rebuttal launched very few ships. Everyone heard about 28 states. Few people heard about self-insurance, or about the ways the proposed federal mandate would exceed the reach of the laws found in most (perhaps all) of those states.

Over and over, people were told about 28 states. It was only this week that the Washington Post did a first news report about the laws in those states. The New York Times still hasn’t bothered.

But then, what else is new? When it comes to the coverage of domestic politics, the Times is a long-running joke.

In the end, none of this speaks to the actual merits of the Obama proposal, however one may judge those merits. It does speak to the dishonest ways we generate “facts” in our culture. Indeed, bogus facts have played the key role in our debates down through the years:

In similar ways, we the people got conned into thinking that “no one was talking about Medicare cuts” back in the mid-1990s. In that case, the misleading facts were aggressively pimped by Newt Gingrich and his minions. These misleading “facts” were then widely advanced by the lost souls of our mainstream “press corps.”

(Bill Clinton got branded a LIAR in the process, although he was telling the truth. You see, conservative power was gaining force in DC—and our “journalists” wanted to serve.)

In similar ways, Fox News viewers are currently being told that “gas prices have doubled under Obama.” As with Carney’s claim about the 28 states, that claim is technically accurate—and it’s grossly misleading.

Where do facts come from in our world? Often, they come right out of partisan asses! Cable hustlers then shout them along, justifying swollen salaries. We the rubes begin to believe that we’ve heard the actual facts. We don’t understand that we’re being misled by folk who may not be real honest.

In this way, the dumbness spreads. So does the tribal division. At one time, this was an artifact of the right.

Our side has been catching up fast.

Tomorrow: Facts are dead—long live legends!

Back to Krugman’s extremely important column!

2012-02-21T11:25:00.000-05:00

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012

How should this story be told: In the past week, we have continued to read and reread Paul Krugman’s very important column from February 13.

We hate it here when Krugman snarks. In this case, we thought the snark he marbled all through his piece undermined its effectiveness (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/13/12).

That said, the column dealt with the most important fact in modern American politics. “Something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism,” Krugman wrote at one point in his piece. In the following passage, he asks a very important question, setting aside the snark:

KRUGMAN (2/13/12): How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

We think Krugman’s premise is right. In various ways, contemporary American conservatism really is “detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality.”

In our view, the corporate world is now creating institutions which are designed to take us liberals in similar directions. But in many ways, the conservative world has been devoted to disinformation and nonsense for three or four decades now. We liberals are working hard to catch up. But the other side has a large head start, and the process has created the state of affairs Krugman described.

It’s very important to explain these facts to the wider electorate. In our view, snark tends to undermine that process. Beyond that, we would offer three complaints about Krugman’s column, which had to be shortened because he burned so much time being snide:

Who’s to blame for this state of affairs: Krugman blames this state of affairs on Republican politicians. That’s part, but only part, of this story. How do you write a column like this without naming Limbaugh and Hannity?

When did this situation start: Krugman implies that this lunacy is a fairly recent manifestation. In the passage we have quoted, he implies that thing weren’t this way in the early 1990s, when the Heritage folk laid out that good solid health care blueprint. Please! Spin-tanks like Heritage had been active for many years at that point, convincing us rubes that (to cite one example) we were more likely to see a UFO than to ever get Social Security. Why understate this point?

What crazy beliefs are at issue: If you’re going to say that tens of millions of voters believe a bunch of crazy things, you ought to be careful when you list those beliefs. You also have to ask yourself who you’re trying to persuade. For our money, Krugman did a fairly lazy job listing the crazy beliefs in question. Question: How do you list crazy claims from the current GOP campaign without even mentioning Newt Gingrich? Gingrich’s lunacy got a pass. But Krugman did include this:

KRUGMAN: Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’s caucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (and conspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and his declarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes. Clearly, a large segment of his party’s base is comfortable with views one might have thought were on the extreme fringe.

Can we talk? In reality, Ron Paul didn’t get popular among conservatives pimping those racist newsletters twenty years ago. This type of presentation may make us liberals feel good. But who are we trying to influence?

That was a very important column. It tells a very important story. We liberals should try to learn how to tell it.

Who are we trying to persuade? Assuming we aren't just pleasing ourselves, how should this story be told?

Gack: A depressing look at us the people!

2012-02-21T10:38:00.001-05:00

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012

The Los Angeles Times hurts our heads: The miracle lies in the fact that our nation ever made it this far.

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times performed a dual service. First, it showed us how hopelessly dumb we the people are.

Second, it showed us the hopeless intellectual standards of the modern upper-end press corps.

The Times accomplished these depressing tasks by printing a pair of op-ed columns. Kevin Drum is to blame for the fact that we saw these head-hurting efforts at all.

What hath the L. A. Times wrought? On Sunday, it printed a matched set of columns: Charlotte Allen's "Why conservatives can't talk to liberals" and Diana Wagman's "Why liberals can't talk to conservatives."

What we can’t figure is why anyone would want to talk to either writer at all.

Allen is cookie-cutter conservative flyweight—has been for a good many years. She offered the standard flyweight complaints about how horrible (all) liberals are.

Wagman is a novelist. She may even be a good one. But she has been writing silly columns in the Los Angeles Times for years. On Sunday, she seemed determined to prove that liberals really are as hopeless as Allen said.

Here’s how her column started:

WAGMAN (2/19/12): I recently played poker with a bunch of Republicans. My husband and I, both bleeding-heart liberals, are part owners of a cabin in the Sierra outside Fresno, a very conservative area. The Camp Sierra Assn. president has an annual poker game, and this year we, the newcomers, were invited.

No one mentioned politics. We talked instead about our kids and Las Vegas and the odd warm weather. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of very good Scotch. I had fun even though I lost $4.

When the game was over, we walked home with our across-the-road neighbors and invited them in for a final nightcap.

They are the best neighbors in the world. Always ready with a tool, an ingredient or a jump-start for the car. Whatever you need, if they have it, they will give it. They are a lovely family: husband, wife and four smart, funny, polite children. I was sure they were Democrats.

How did our nation ever make it this far? Consider what Wagman said:

According to Wagman, her new neighbors are friendly and helpful. Their children are smart and polite.

Apparently for these reasons, Wagman “was sure they were Democrats.”

Go ahead! Break your hearts and hurt your heads by reading those two columns. But ask yourself this: How does anyone get dumb enough to write an opening passage like Wagman’s? And how did we ever reach the point where a major newspaper would even consider printing it?

Allen played the fool on the conservative side, as she frequently does. Wagman broke our hearts even more. That said, the actual question is this:

In what sort of world do columns like these ever get near a major newspaper? Those columns let you gaze on the intellectual standards of the guild we describe as our “press corps.”

How did we ever get this way? Is there a way to attone?

Dueling banjos: No banjos can be heard in these columns. But the columns appear beneath these dueling synopses:

Synopsis on Allen's column: Debating a liberal is maddening: They think conservatives are evil, while we think they're silly.

Synopsis on Wagman's column: We are not the same. I equate Republicans' political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. They're neither kind nor empathetic.

Gack! Noted in passing:

Wagman’s column tends to support Allen’s claim. Wagman does think conservatives are evil.

Allen’s column tends to refute Wagman’s claim. To a depressing degree, these writers are "the same."