Just saying: Norm Ornstein’s final hurrah!

MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012

With big love from the Washington Post: This will be the last time we report that Norman Ornstein is dead to the Sunday “news” programs. (For our previous reporet on thois topic, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/14/12.)

Yesterday, Ornstein and Mann were ignored again; they’re dead to the Sunday bookers. In their widely-noted new book, they argue that our current political paralysis is almost wholly the fault of the Republican Party. And omigod! They argue that the mainstream “press corps” is mired in false equivalence—in the type of equivalence widely seen on yesterday’s Sunday programs.

(Obama should stop discussing Bain! The GOP should drop Reverend Wright!)

People! According to tenets of Hard Pundit Law, Ornstein’s theses can’t be voiced on Sunday morning "news" shows! Indeed, it’s very hard to imagine the way a Sunday host would respond to such verboten claims.

In the face of this dilemma-of-script, the boys have simply been banned from such venues. But good lord! They are getting extremely Big Love from the Washington Post's Outlook section.

Ornstein and Mann may be dead to TV, but Outlook just keeps promoting their book. Yesterday, Outlook gave them big sprawling coverage for the third time in four weeks! This big sprawling piece by Ornstein and Mann was the featured piece on Outlook’s first page.

But then, the boys had authored this big sprawling piece on Outlook’s front page three weeks earlier, on Sunday, April 29. And sure enough! One week later, on May 6, the Post’s Robert Kaiser had authored this rave review of the Mann-Ornstein book. It also appeared in Outlook.

Ornstein and Mann were insider gods—until they came up with these crazy ideas. Outlook continues to play by old rules. But on the Sunday morning shows, the gods have been disappeared.

Nine words you can’t just say on TV: This was the headline on the boys' April 29 Outlook piece:

“Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

Where do experts get such ideas? Those are nine words you can’t "just say" on TV, much as Carlin said.

5 comments:

  1. I've reserved the book at my library. I'm ninth in line -- probably behind eight other Howler readers!

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  2. Bob, you shouldn't be too surprised. After all, you once wrote how "Fools for Scandal" got thrown down the memory hole because it didn't fit the preferred script.

    Kinda like how "Drift" doesn't fit the "dumb Rhodes scholar" script so it doesn't rate a mention in certain quarters.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Rachel! We love you, don't worry! Drift is teh awesums!!!! Keep banging away.

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    2. I found someone mentioning Drift, even if the Howler's ducking it:

      "When she comes around to Obama, Maddow includes a bit about his escalation of the war on Afghanistan, but understates by half the number of troops he sent, and claims he sent them only until 2014, while any eventual withdrawal is very much in doubt at this time for that future year. On Iraq, Maddow's account is worse: "[E]ven for President Obama, a man who had made a name for himself as an avowed opponent of the Iraq War, getting out was not easy. In year nine of the war, Obama finally got the Iraqi government to provide the fig leaf of insisting upon our departure." Where to start? Obama had a treaty that Bush had put in place. All he had to do was comply with it. He had his own campaign promises to withdraw much more quickly than that, and he'd won the election. All he had to do was order the promised withdrawal. Instead, Obama sought approval from the Iraqi government to keep troops in Iraq beyond Bush's deadline. Obama failed to obtain that approval. Meanwhile Obama increased military spending, but Maddow makes no mention of it."

      http://warisacrime.org/content/catching-rachel-maddows-drift

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