Supplemental: Accents and earth tones and speech fees oh my!

SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2015

It happens every fourth spring:
On Monday, we’ll start our “spring training” preview of the coverage of the 2016 campaign.

We’ll focus on the likely coverage of Hillary Clinton. We’ll consider the challenge this likely coverage will likely present to Democrats, progressives and liberals.

For today, let’s loosen up the old throwing arm with a pair of news reports. One report concerns Candidate Walker. One concerns Candidate Clinton.

Good lord! Two weeks ago, the analysts thought that our past efforts with Patrick Healy were producing those good results. He discussed Clinton coverage, past and future, in a piece in the New York Times.

We’ll look at that piece next week.

Alas! On the front page of this morning’s Times, Brother Healy has rather plainly fallen off the wagon. He gives us the dope on Candidate Walker. Sadly, incredibly, he starts his piece like this:
HEALY (3/21/15): Out on the presidential campaign trail, Gov. Scott Walker has left “Wiscahnsin” back home in Wisconsin. He now wants to strengthen the economy, not the “ecahnahmy.” And while he once had the “ahnor” of meeting fellow Republicans, he told one group here this week that he simply enjoyed “talkin’ with y’all.”

The classic Upper Midwest accent—nasal and full of flat a’s—is one of several Walker trademarks to have fallen away this month after an intense period of strategizing and coaching designed to help Mr. Walker capitalize on his popularity in early polls and show that he is not some provincial politician out of his depth.

He is tailoring his pitch to his audiences—wearing pullover sweaters in earth-tone colors in one early primary state, New Hampshire, and discussing the power of prayer in another, here in South Carolina. He has reined in his rambling speeches, at least compared with his recorded remarks over the years. He is trying to listen more and opine less, associates say, and he is easygoing with voters—a contrast with his pugilistic reputation from his successful battle against Wisconsin labor unions, which made him a hero to many conservatives.
Good God! In a classic relapse pattern, Healy pretends to analyze changes in the candidate’s accent.

Even more amazingly, the wearing of earth tones is back!

Could someone possibly intervene and get this man to a meeting? As usual, Healy never explains what the wearing of earth tones is meant to convey. We’re simply expected to see it as a fiendish piece of packaging.

Regarding the accent:

On line, Healy provides videotape purporting to show the way the candidate has changed the pronunciation of his own home state. If you can discern the fiendish change, your ears are better than ours.

For the record, Healy’s “N” is exactly 1. He offers exactly one example of this fiendish change!

Patrick Healy is back on the sauce—and with him, so is the Times. In this kind of brain-damaged work, major reporters achieve their two greatest goals in life:

They pretend they’re providing the inside dope about the character flaws of the slippery candidate. More importantly, they avoid discussing matters of substance, their one greatest goal on this earth.

Healy’s face down in a ditch today. Is that Maureen Dowd beside him?

Brother Healy is dishing the dope about the slippery Candidate Walker. In Thursday morning’s Boston Globe, Annie Linskey performed the same service with respect to the fiendish Candidate Clinton.

Linskey’s piece is a poorly-argued editorial in the form of a news report. Through a series of winks and nods, she tells us it was wrong, oh so wrong, for Clinton to give a paid speech Thursday night.

Clinton spoke to a worrisome group: The American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey, a disturbing assembly whose board of directors “includes representatives from charitable groups like The Fresh Air Fund, a YMCA in Westchester, N.Y., and the Fiver Children’s Foundation.”

As she wrote her piece, Linskey didn’t know how much Clinton would be paid for the speech. She didn’t know if the fee was going to Clinton herself or to the Clinton Foundation.

None of this stopped Linskey from writing her “news report,” in which she simply imagined a fee and went on from there. She went on and on about the “barrage of criticism” Clinton has received for making paid speeches.

(In Friday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, the president of the camp group was quoted saying that Clinton’s fee “was ‘nowhere near’ the estimates he had seen in news reports.” Whatever!)

Linskey never even tried to explain what’s wrong with giving paid speeches. She just kept noting how harshly Clinton has been criticized for the practice.

To see how you shouldn't do news reports,
consider this passage, in which Linskey discusses the harshest criticism the candidate has received for this type of conduct:
LINSKEY (3/19/15): The most blistering criticism was directed at her for paid appearances before college audiences, a list that’s included Simmons College in Boston, Colgate University in New York, and the University of Miami in Florida.

Clinton initially asked to be paid $300,000 when she agreed to speak at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Foundation last year. She settled for $225,000, according to according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, which obtained her contract via a public records request. The terms required that the university pay for a transcript of the event and stipulated that Clinton would only pose for 50 photographs. Students there asked Clinton to donate her fee to the university.

When she appeared at the University of Buffalo in October 2013, the fee was $275,000, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit research group that did records request for the document.
Is fifty photos a lot or a little? We’re supposed to think it’s too few!

Meanwhile, Linskey cited the plea from the students at UNLV. But she failed to mention several facts from the past reporting:

According to the past reporting, those college speaking fees went to the Clinton Foundation, not to Clinton herself. Beyond that, the fees in question came from private donors who fund college lecture series.

As such, they didn’t come out of the budgets of these universities. They didn’t effect tuition fees paid by students. The protesting kids probably didn’t know that. Thanks to Linskey, Boston Globe readers still don't!

Linskey went on and on and on and on, signaling it was puzzling and wrong for Clinton to give Thursday’s speech. At least she didn’t discuss the way the hopeful pronounced different words or the tones on display in her wardrobe.

Healy needs to attend a meeting; Linskey should be assigned to a less serious beat. That said, it happens every fourth spring! And this is one of those years!

Starting Monday, we'll discuss how liberals and Democrats should deal with the upcoming mess. For now, a quick bit of perspective:

Sixteen years ago, the Boston Globe did snarky reporting of this type about Candidate Gore. This was especially true during the primaries, although one dead-ender performed a serious coup in September 2000 concerning the cost of those doggy pills.

Al Gore lied about the doggy arthritis pills! In September 2000, this absurd claim, joined to one other, turned the national polling around. (Al Gore lied about the union lullaby!)

They seemed to like Candidate Bradley much more at the Boston Globe. In the process, great damage was done, and Bush ended up in the White House.

For Bradley admirers, of whom there were many but not enough, could that have been a good result? We liberals could easily do it again.

If you doubt that, just watch!

71 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Warning to formal readers of this blog: These comments are unmoderated. Sometimes they are slow in coming. They are infested by one or more trolls who routinely attack the blog author in a variety of ways, many times using the bloggers own words. Such attacks are not an indicator of the level of interest of other readers who are not interested enough to comment.

      Comments withdrawn by unknown persons do not reflect the esteem with which the unknown person holds him or herself.

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  2. The best advice for Healy: when you have nothing to say, say nothing.
    He is dead wrong about Walker's interactions with the voters. Walker has always been easygoing with voters. It was the press and opposition he was combative with. For the record, here in WI, his feisty dealings with the press in particular was viewed favorably by many people.
    I am not a fan of Hillary, but even I am surprised by the way her statements have been taken out of context and deliberately distorted. There seems to be a political hit on her from her own side of the political spectrum.
    You keep referencing the press' treatment of Gore as being the reason for his loss to Bush. Gore's biggest problem was Gore. The issues he had with the press just highlighted problems within his own campaign staff.

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    1. That meme, that the candidates invite mistreatment because they are poor campaigners, has been part of the attack against both Gore and Clinton, and to an extent Kerry.

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    2. It's always campaign gold for a right-winger to be feisty with the press, regardless of whether there was a reason for it or not. Palin is still cashing in on Katie Couric's unfair gotcha question about the newspapers and magazines Palin reads. It's all right-wing politics 101 and the rubes fall for it every time.

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    3. Its not that Gore, Hillary or Kerry invited mistreatment, its that they appeared not to deal well with it. Their campaign staffs, especially Hillary's, went to attack mode. Kerry seemed to be completely lacking any sense of humor about it. That plays badly to the public. Go back and look at how Bill Clinton dealt with the media, and he in no way viewed them favorably. But, he did know how to handle them.

      It isn't just right-wingers who score points by getting combative with the media. The public does not have a very good opinion of media in general. The common view is that the media are elitists and deserve to get taken down a peg or two. There is also a deep seated belief that we are being lied to constantly by the very people we should be counting on to tell us the truth about what is happening in the world. Traditional news outlets are fading away.
      Even Fox News, with all its crowing about its ratings, is serving a decreasing market share. Yeah, they do well when compared to competitors - but look at their number of viewers as compared to the number of adults in the possible audience. Not quite so much to bang the drums for, is it? To paraphrase my dad, "being king of the pissants makes you no less a pissant."

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  3. OTOH here's a serious criticism of Hillary, from Reuters:

    Despite Hillary Clinton promise, charity did not disclose donors
    In 2008, Hillary Clinton promised Barack Obama, the president-elect, there would be no mystery about who was giving money to her family's globe-circling charities. She made a pledge to publish all the donors on an annual basis to ease concerns that as secretary of state she could be vulnerable to accusations of foreign influence.

    At the outset, the Clinton Foundation did indeed publish what they said was a complete list of the names of more than 200,000 donors and has continued to update it. But in a breach of the pledge, the charity's flagship health program, which spends more than all of the other foundation initiatives put together, stopped making the annual disclosure in 2010, Reuters has found.

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    1. I'm sure there's a nice conservative website someplace where readers will care about this triviality.

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    2. The hypocrisy is astounding. Republicans never saw a campaign finance law they liked. They fight tooth and nail to limit disclosures required by their billionaire sugar daddies and amounts that can be contributed. They've been fighting McCain Feingold since the day it was passed. They never saw a campaign finance law they liked. In 2012 alone over $300,000,000 worth of "dark money" in Federal elections.

      Let us recall the wisdom of Justice Anthony Kennedy:
      "Independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption." in Citizens United decision.

      Yet, let a Clinton start a worldwide tremendously successful foundation dedicated to making people's lives better and suddenly republicans see quid pro quo potential everywhere.

      How do you manage to get through the day without your head exploding?


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    3. "I'm sure there's a nice conservative website someplace where readers will care about this triviality."

      Yep. Like this one.

      Why do you think Dave posted that nonsense here? Because this site is "liberal"? Har de har har!

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    4. @mm,

      When a politician is rebuked by liberals as well as conservatives how do you manage to pretend Republicans are alone in pointing out the hypocrisy of HRC's foundation sucking in foreign donations. How does HRC reconcile taking $500,000 in 2010 from Algeria, without notifying the State Department, when Algeria has 20-year history of denying basic human rights and arresting and detaining dissidents.

      "Clinton’s donor mess: The Clinton Foundation’s fundraising is a big problem for Hillary"

      "...but the Clinton Foundation has been a force for good in the world by hooking up charitable causes with motivated funders. That said, it’s ridiculous that the Clinton Foundation is accepting donations from foreign governments again. It’s ridiculous because Hillary Clinton’s would-be presidential candidacy leaves no choice but the view the foundation as a political enterprise." Simon Maloy

      http://www.salon.com/2015/02/20/clintons_donor_mess_the_clinton_foundations_fundraising_is_a_big_problem_for_hillary/

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    5. The more you bring up The Clinton Foundation, the more it reinforces my respect and commitment to both Bill and Hillary and tremendous work their Foundation is doing around the world. Sorry, I know it can't compare to painting stupid self portraits of yourself over and over again like a certain other ex-prez.

      Here's your fucking scandal, David. (CHAI) - the Clinton Health Access Initiative is doing fucking great work.

      ******
      CHAI did not report these increases to the State Department because the new money was for "expansions of existing programs," Daley said.

      Daley also provided a number of explanations for why other governments that appeared on a donor list provided to Reuters did not need to be reviewed by the State Department. Swaziland and Papua New Guinea, which gave small grants for AIDS programs, were not submitted for review because the money they gave originated from other sources, including existing donor Australia and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, she said.

      In the case of Sweden, its International Development Cooperation Agency has given CHAI $7.2 million since 2012 to train health workers in Zambia, but nothing in at least the previous three years. This did not need State review because Sweden had given to the foundation prior to 2009, Daley said.

      Rwanda, which CHAI listed as a donor, gave the charity $200,000 in 2012. CHAI considered this a fee for medical work it did in the country, not a grant or donation, and so did not tell the State Department about it, Daley said.

      Money from all of these governments amounted to about 1 percent of CHAI's total budget, she said.

      The White House declined to answer questions about whether the Obama administration was aware of CHAI not disclosing its donors or submitting new donations from foreign governments. White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman noted, however, that the agreement the Clintons entered into "went above and beyond standard ethics requirements."
      **********************************

      Wow!

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    6. So, cicero, I take it you agree with me and President Obama that the words spoken by Justice Kennedy have to rank very close to the stupidest words ever spoken by a Supreme Court Justice?

      "We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy

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    7. If the William and HRC collective character is impeccable why do they engage Carville/Davis/Brock to smear any and all heretics who fail to genuflect at the mention of their foundation? Shouldn't their professional and personal lives speak for itself without the whitewash liberally spread by the above mentioned political operatives?

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    8. What kind of scum maligns the kind of good work being done by the Clinton Foundation? For that matter, what kind of idiot wouldn't want another 8years of peace and prosperity like that Bill Clinton achieved? I'm certain Carville et al have other duties that justify keeping them on payroll.

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    9. What is your proof that President Clinton or Secretary Clinton have engaged Carville or Davis or Brock?

      jackass.

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    10. 1. Ms. Clinton made a promise to the President and the American people. She failed to keep that promise. We can debate how serious a sin that is, but it's bad conduct on some level.

      2. The broken promise involved a type of transparency. The obvious conclusion is that she has something to hide. Otherwise, why renege?

      3. Many Dems hate the Citizens United court decision. They claim that big money automatically corrupts the political process. Why don't they apply the same standards to Ms. Clinton?

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    11. Re: Reuters article on Clinton Foundation Disclosure

      "A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment. Former President Bill Clinton, who also signed on to the agreement with the Obama administration, was traveling and could not be reached for comment, his spokesman said."

      Message: We don't care

      I wonder if this type of response, or non response, evidenced in the case of both Reuters and the Annie Linskey Boston Globe article, will be part of the recommended strategy Bob Somerby provides next week.

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    12. Repubs LOVE Citizens United. They claim big money doesn't lead to any appearance of corruption or quid pro quo. Why don't they apply the same standards to Ms. Clinton, who by the way, is not taking donations personally for her campaign?

      Didn't you get the memo, David in California? Republicans LOVE dark money.

      In Clinton's case we're talking about money from countries like Australia, and Sweden and Papua New Guinea donating to CHAI you asshole. Where's the conflict jackass?

      You obviously didn't even read the article? Sorry, I can't get too worked up over Papua New Guinea contributing grants to Global Aids programs.

      No matter how hard that hack Jonathan Allen tried to insinuate something nefarious had occurred, all of these supposedly secret contributions to CHAI have now been disclosed. Where's the fucking conflict?

      This is precisely the kind of bullshit article written by political hacks that Somerby has been writing about for all these years.

      "CHAI should have published the names during 2010-2013, when Clinton was in office, CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley acknowledged this week. "Not doing so was an oversight which we made up for this year," she told Reuters in an email when asked why it had not published any donor lists until a few weeks ago."

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    13. mm -- Are you saying there was nothing embarrassing about the donations to CHAI, yet Hillary made them into a scandal by keeping them secret after she had promised not to. That would be foolish behavior for a very smart politician, wouldn't it? It might reduce voters' confidence that she'll fulfill her campaign promises.

      Or, is she so smug, and so certain about her media support, that she can simply ignore another little scandal? If so, she's probably right. I don't think reneging on her promise to make the donation public will hurt her.

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    14. Good, David in California. Just ignore all my questions to you and ask me some more loaded mendacious questions.

      "Are you saying there was nothing embarrassing about the donations to CHAI,.." Yes

      "...yet Hillary made them into a scandal by keeping them secret after she had promised not to." ?????

      There is no evidence that Hillary even knew these charitable donations weren't being routinely reported, just as all the others had been.


      Poor David in California. You must wake up every morning and look into the mirror and see President Hillary Clinton staring back at you. It's going to take more than that pygmy little hack Jonathan Allen to stop that train.

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    15. mm -- You seem to be implying that Hillary is an incompetent manager. She was unable to make sure her staff fulfilled her promises. And, she was unaware that her staff were violating her promises. You may be right.

      P.S. Who is Jonathan Allen?

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    16. You seem to be woefully uninformed about HRC. Is that deliberate? Carville is a pro bono HRC cobra who waits coiled up in a basket ready to strike at any factual reporting that dares embarrass, diminish, or derail a Clinton campaign.

      "David Brock on Monday abruptly resigned from the board of the super PAC Priorities USA Action, revealing rifts that threaten the big-money juggernaut being built to support Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential campaign."

      http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/david-brock-resigns-priorities-usa-action-115028.html

      CHRIS WALLACE: Finally, as we said at the beginning, you served in the Clinton White House handing legal matters like campaign finance, like impeachment. Do you ever get tired of cleaning up after the Clintons?

      LANNY DAVIS: No, you say cleaning up because you have a certain perspective. I am proud, given the public career and the public good of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as reflected by the popular goodwill they have across the country. Unlike Chris Wallace, I don’t regard it as –

      CHRIS WALLACE: When you say unlike Chris Wallace, unlike me in what way?

      LANNY DAVIS: Well, you call it cleaning up. You’re entitled to your viewpoint. I am proud to defend a great public servant.

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    17. Cicero, I asked you for proof that the Clinton's engaged the persons you mentioned. You have none.

      I hope you didn't waste too much time googling all that shit you just posted, none of which proves what you asserted.

      Pooff! You sure are one dumb motherfucker.

      It must be shitty being you.

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    18. "You seem to be implying that Hillary is an incompetent manager."

      Says the jackass who supported GWB.

      What will it be next week David? Hillary forgot to dot the "i" on her driver's license?

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    19. @mm,

      You are correct in that Carville/Davis/Brock are not engaged to Bill or Hillary. Other than that the increase in your invectives is a sure sign you have acknowledged your folly in denying the truth.

      Please link to video of Bill or Hillary denying Carville/Davis/Brock speak for them.

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    20. David in Cal and cicero,
      The SCOTUS says, unless you have a signed contract spelling out what Hilary will do for the other party and/ or a signed check made out to Hilary with "For services rendered" under the Memo line, then there is no scandal.
      If you gave a problem with that, take it up with SCOTUS.

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    21. @ 11:39

      Why would you consider Carville/Brock/Davis pro bono cleaning up after HRC "scandalous?"

      Delete
  4. "Starting Monday, we'll discuss how liberals and Democrats should deal with the upcoming mess."

    This would have made an excellent ending chapter to "How He Got There."

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    1. I'm sure long time readers know of many suggestions TDH has made in the past which "we liberals" have ignored.

      Unfortunately, because they hold the blog author in high esteem, they are unlikely to change their level of interest by participating in the combox and giving anyone a look back at past Somerby advice.

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  5. So why is Hillary Clinton still giving speeches for fees?

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    1. And why does Walker not wear suits and talk about prayer and call people "you all" in New Hampshire?

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    2. Why shouldn't Clinton give speeches for fees when there is nothing wrong with it?

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    3. No reason whasoever, 4:34. But why shouldn't we know what those fees are and who is paying them as she gears up for another run at the White House?

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    4. We know that. She is giving the fees to their family foundation. Why pretend something nefarious is going on?

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    5. Let us not fool ourselves into believing that it's all going to the family foundation, then 100 percent of that is dispersed to charity.

      Both Bill and Hillary went from "dead broke and in debt" to quite a net worth rather quickly, while still raising money for their charity.

      You know something else about the Clintons that seemed to have gotten disappeared around here?

      Bob loves to expose TV types who landed high-paying news gigs because of their name and family ties, and other inside connections, and particularly if they are young, female and elitely educated.

      Wonder if a member of the Clinton family ever did that.

      Now please, Bob fans, I am not criticizing Chelsea for taking that NBC job when it was offered. She would have been foolish not to.

      But I was told below how "fair-minded" Bob is by defending politicians from both parties from a new "War on Gore."

      Well, wouldn't it be fair to wonder how ALL young, elitely educated females got their jobs? Or just a hand-selected few?

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    6. "We know that. She is giving the fees to their family foundation."

      We do. Then why didn't the reporter know. Bob says she didn't.

      And why didn't the Clinton spokesperson tell the reporter that?

      "The camp confirmed she would be paid for the appearance, but didn’t disclose the size of the fee. Clinton’s office declined to comment."
      Annie Linskey

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    7. We know because that's what she does with fees from nonprofits. She has established a pattern of behavior. The reporter got nowhere because it is no one's business and she is not a declared candidate. This is just another attempted gotcha so why should she cooperate?

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    8. Pattern of behavior indeed.

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    9. http://www.vox.com/2015/3/16/8220537/al-gore-president-2016

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  6. Apropos of an earlier post:

    WaPo columnist Jonathan Capehart: People call me ‘house negro’ for debunking ‘hands up, don’t shoot’

    Mr. Capehart said..."I get abused on the issue of race. The rage towards anyone who dares to enter that arena and say something that defies the conventional wisdom also lurks perpetually.

    “After my piece, ‘Hands up don’t shoot was built on a lie,’ folks used Twitter and Facebook to dismember my personhood,” he continued. “Fellow African-Americans called me a ‘sellout’ or a ‘house negro.’ Others said I did it because I wanted ‘white people to like me’ or that I ‘did it for the money.’ No, I didn’t. I did it because it was the right thing to do."


    It's perhaps noteworthy that a liberal black pundit corrected the story, while some liberal white pundits didn't.

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    1. It is a perpetual problem with white people regardless of ideology. Not that I notice race.

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    2. A cousin of mine met a prominent Apologist at an atonement breakfast. She blamed people being reticient to admit mistakes, which she said she was very sorry to have to note but couldn't help but offer as a response since she had been asked.

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  7. I was wondering if Somerby would catch that article about Scott Walker. As much as I oppose the Wisconsin errand boy for the rich the article was very similar to the nonsense that passed for journalism perpetrated on Al Gore. Let's beat the guy on his retrograde policy positions, not on his manner of speech or the sweaters he wears. Is Maureen Dowd winning the war of attrition? There's been no comment on her latest anti-Hillary screed.

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    1. Actually, when I read the story, I thought of Joe McGinnis' classic "The Selling of the President 1968" and the way candidates are cleaned up, trimmed up, packaged to specific audiences and sold and resold.

      Of course it would remind Bob and his fans of Al Gore. Everything does.


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    2. Not to mention the fact that it is very similar. You don't have to be a Somerby fan to recognise the obvious.

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    3. I'm sure the Scott Walker and his campaign handlers are quite pleased to have Somerby around to head off any possible "War on Walker."

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    4. Somerby is attempting to head off any possible war against Clinton and similar Democrat candidates. Being fair-minded, he includes Walker because it isn't right when the press does it to him, any more than when they do it to liberal candidates. That should be obvious to anyone who isn't a troll.

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    5. What's obvious is that Somerby "seems to think" his readers are too dumb to figure out what is "obvious" and must do it for them.

      And in your case, he is probably correct.

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    6. So tell me, 1:10. If they do it all the time and to candidates on both sides, then shouldn't candidates for president be prepared for it by now?

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    7. Somerby likely has a preference for Clinton but no values any liberal holds true are served by the disgraceful conduct of the media. The ends justifying the means are not a part of any legitimate liberal or conservative ideology.

      Most representing those groups in the media believe lynch mobs and integrity in elections are fine as loose guidelines, but sometimes innocent white cops need imprisonment and elections need stealing to serve the greater good.

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    8. Good thing Somerby has some experience teaching fifth grade level.

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    9. @ 4:04

      5th grade back in 1970's is the equivalent of a contemporary 12th grader.

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    10. You're a young and inexperienced troll, sissyrow. Today's 5th graders perform at a twelfth grade level according to the Rules of Rough Thumbs. Don't defy results from the Test that Laid the Golden Standard.

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  8. Somerby Witnesses Press Shooting Clinton in the Dark

    "As she wrote her piece, Linskey didn’t know how much Clinton would be paid for the speech. She didn’t know if the fee was going to Clinton herself or to the Clinton Foundation.

    None of this stopped Linskey from writing her “news report,” in which she simply imagined a fee and went on from there."
    Bob Somerby

    Commenter Department Report Debunks Somerby for Missing Critical Evidence, Calls Him Not Credible as a Witness

    The Commenter Department. after reviewing the above comment by Bob Somerby, written after he witnessed an article by Annie Linskey of the Boston Globe, said the 68 year old white male blogger left out a critical portion of the article when saying Linskey "imagined a fee."

    "The camp confirmed she would be paid for the appearance, but didn’t disclose the size of the fee. Clinton’s office declined to comment."
    Annie Linskey

    The CD noted that Somerby "implied" Ms. Linskey did not know Clinton was being paid when the reporter had, in fact, confirmed it, and "suggested" she did not try and find out more details. Mr. Somerby conveniently left out the fact that Clinton had been given the opportunity to make these details explicitly clear by Ms. Linskey but declined to do so when asked.

    The CD noted that Somerby had a long history of witnessing accounts in the press, and when finding no factual errors, making accusations of what they left out while at the same time leaving out pertinent details himself. Sometimes, they further noted, he would invent things never said, like Ms. Linskeys use of ther imagination. This would make it difficult for a jury of his journalistic peers, much less many readers, to take this latest charge seriously, they stated.

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    1. You seem to be having a hard time with reading comprehension. Somerby doesn't deny that there was a fee. He is simply saying that the writer, Linskey, had no idea what the size of the fee was. Yet that didn't prevent her from "imagining" what it might have been.

      "It’s a not-for-profit organization that may be spending up to 10 percent of its $2 million budget to land Clinton for the Thursday speech in Atlantic City,...." Linskey

      She uses the 10% figure multiple times throughout her report, without any factual basis. It's her guess. The camp didn't confirm that 10% figure.

      As Somerby specifically wrote:

      "None of this stopped Linskey from writing her “news report,” in which she simply imagined a fee and went on from there. She went on and on about the “barrage of criticism” Clinton has received for making paid speeches.

      (In Friday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, the president of the camp group was quoted saying that Clinton’s fee “was ‘nowhere near’ the estimates he had seen in news reports.” Whatever!)"

      You haven't shown Somerby to be wrong about anything he wrote.

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    2. You seem to have a hard time with Somerby being given the "Somerby Treatment." As a result you adopt the Somerby "journalistic standards" in your comment.

      "Somerby doesn't deny that there was a fee" you wrote. No he doesn't.

      And the Deparment of Comment, which was imagined by our very own imaginary analysts, who took the initiative in creating it for this comment, didn't say, suggest, or even imply he denied it.

      "You haven't shown Somerby to be wrong about anything he wrote." I made no effort to do so. Neither did Somerby show there was anything factually wrong with what Linskey wrote, Which is why he put in order two things she did not know (who got the money and how much it was" before saying she "imagined a fee." It allows the reader to imply what they want. And we all know what Bob's opinion of the general public's intelligence is. He states it often enough.

      Now, do you want me to "show" Somerby said something wrong?

      Linskey did not "imagine" anything about a fee. Not any more than Al Gore "invented" anything about the internet. She did state what Clinton's standard fee was and what some other fees had been. She compared the standard fee to the budget of the organization to which she spoke. Both the organization and Clinton had the opportunity to make sure she had the facts. She asked, but Bob left that part out. They wouldn't give a straight answer or any answer. Bob left that out too. Then he wonders why
      the press keeps picking on this poor wannabe President,

      Your boy Bob is what he criticizes others for being. A novelizer playing wannabe journalist. Kind of like someone who was a wannabe cop. He patrols the media looking for people harming "progressive interests." He sometimes "invents" things which are not there. For his scripts. On his sprawling campus. With his imaginary analysts.

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    3. Nobody reads this blog for the criticisms of Somerby.

      Delete
    4. What, in your opinion, do they read it for?

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    5. Then the criticisms of Somerby shouldn't bother you at all, 10:08.

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    6. Watching mean people attempt to bully another person is ugly. Trolls are truly displaying their dark triad of personality traits this weekend, with the edge going to sociopathy over narcissism. It should bother any decent person to watch people attempt to be cruel to others. I say "attempt" because Somerby doesn't read his comments -- it's obvious why he skips them.

      Delete
    7. Yes, it is awful to read whenever someone calls each other names, such as "clown" "back on the sauce" and "brain-damaged" while demanding that they be fired.

      Good thing Somerby never sinks to that level.

      Delete
    8. Comics with blogs should never deal in insulting flourishes, no matter how funny or appropriate. No one should. Starbucks should help us start a national conversation about it.

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    9. "I say "attempt" because Somerby doesn't read his comments -- it's obvious why he skips them."

      Somerby doesn't read his comments? Sounds like one of the analysts can take dictation.

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    10. We know Somerby does not read his comments. It was May 19, 2004 that Jonny Scrum-half sent in a comment with news that D'Leisha Dent had been accepted to college in April before Somerby began writing about her. It took Somerby over two weeks to write a post telling readers the good news.

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    11. Make that 2014, not 2004.

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  9. So one September article in the Boston Globe about doggy arthritis pills helped turn the national polls around against Gore, but a whole primary season's worth of snark attacks on Gore didn't help Bradley in neighboring New Hampshire?

    This is the kind of expert analysis readers have come to expect from a guy whose involvement in and coverage of electoral politics was exactly ZERO when he switched from being Stand Up Somerby to Bob the Blogger.

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    Replies
    1. I'm trying to remember when Al Gore's citizenship or religion was called into question. Or when he was held accountable for things his pastor said.

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    2. I'm trying to remember when polls voted.

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    3. http://www.vox.com/2015/3/16/8220537/al-gore-president-2016

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    ReplyDelete