Willa Paskin watched Maddow last week!

MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

Three cheers for Ocasio-Cortez:
Willa Paskin is the TV writer at Slate.

She isn't a political writer. She isn't a media reporter or a journalism critic.

Still and all, Paskin watched the Rachel Maddow Show at least two times last week—and she didn't like what she saw.

Paskin didn't like what she saw on the Maddow Show. In the nugget shown below, she breaks a type of rule:
PASKIN (3/29/19): I’ll admit that I haven’t watched Maddow regularly for the past few years. Turning on her show this week was like discovering a Facebook friend is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She looks the same as she did, she even sounds the same, but 15 minutes into a conspiratorial rant with no sense of proportion or, honestly, responsibility, you realize that something has gone wildly wrong...
When Paskin watched Maddow, she got the impression that something has gone badly wrong with the host of the second highest-rated program in "cable news."

Indeed, she said she thought that Maddow seemed to be "on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

As a matter of journalistic theory, Paskin probably shouldn't be making assessments which sound psychiatric. A person might also ask—and several commenters did—if Paskin should be making sweeping judgments about a program she hasn't been watching on a regular basis.

On their face, each of those criticisms of Paskin seem to make perfect sense. That said, we were struck by a different thought as we read Paskin's critique of Maddow:

We have been watching Maddow regularly, ever since she went on the air. It's been increasingly hard to do that of late, with Maddow working so deep in the weeds that you can't see the boondocks from there.

(Or trying to make the rubble bounce around Paul Manafort's jail cell, night after night after night.)

That said, we've forced ourselves to watch. As long-time viewers, we were struck by the extent to which Paskin's instant reactions matched our own views about the Maddow program. Also, about the program's viewers:
PASKIN (continuing directly): It’s easy to understand why this might appeal to the 4 million or so Trump-sick viewers who regularly watch Maddow’s program, but her audience is being served an alt-reality just as surely as Hannity’s is. If her audience of susceptible ostriches and amateur detectives, people who bury themselves in conspiratorial details hoping to unearth the one clue that will beam us out of this reality, is not as malignant as Fox’s audience of the hateful, aggrieved, and ignorant, in this one regard at least, what’s happening between MSNBC and Fox is not a contest: More than one cable news host can disserve their audience at a time.
"More than one cable news host can disserve their audience at a time?"

We've often made that point ourselves, though we wouldn't share Paskin's sweeping denunciation of the millions of people who, under this theory, are getting disserved by Hannity on a nightly basis. Nor would we characterize Maddow's viewres in the way Paskin does.

That said, is it true? Has something gone badly wrong with Maddow? Are her Trump-sick viewers failing to show sufficient discernment about that state of affairs?

On each point, Paskin's reaction matches our basic sense of the matter. Beyond that, we think Paskin did a pretty good job summarizing Maddow's programs from last Monday and Tuesday nights.

Indeed, we compliment Paskin for being able to pay attention to last Tuesday night's opening monologue all the way through to the end. On that evening, Maddow went beyond the weeds to the place where even the weeds won't grow—and she introduced a new SOUND, as you can see in the program's transcript.

In the passage shown below, Paskin mentions "the mystery sound," though only in passing. As long-time viewers of Maddow, we think we can maybe perhaps explain its sudden appearance:
PASKIN: In the days since the Mueller report was sent to Barr, Maddow has held fast to her faith that Mueller is some kind of avenging hero, who will get Trump in the end. “As we await the Mueller report,” she said on Tuesday night, “we are left with this incredibly provocative set of unexplained behaviors.” Then she cued up “the mystery sound,” a not particularly eerie ding she used to introduce a long digression about a still-active “mystery case,” in which a “mystery company owned by mystery country” has resisted all attempts to testify about some mystery topic at the special prosecutor’s request, which she then tied to a number of other still active parts of the Mueller investigation, which she intimated could still result in something damning.
Why did "the mystery sound" appear? This would be our guess:

For whatever reason, mainstream pundits suddenly began piling on Maddow last week. Her program has been horrendous in various ways for years, but by the basic rules of the game, career players of the mainstream and liberal worlds knew that they mustn't notice or say so.

It simply isn't done! It wasn't done when Chris Matthews produced overtly crazy programming for a dozen years. It hasn't been done with Maddow, his successor as the most influential cable pundit in the NBC stable.

Last week, the impossible dream occurred—Maddow began getting criticized. As always, the pundits struck as a group.

For that reason, on Tuesday night, Maddow began presenting herself as "the manic pixie dream broadcaster" she often affects in "her performance of the Rachel figure"—as the hapless girl-woman we liberal viewers have to root for because she's just so helpless and childish herself.

This hapless figure is "our best friend 'Raache'"—and she's an entertainer. She plays entertaining "mystery sounds" to make us like her even more, to distract attention away from the parts of her persona which have come under sudden assault.

This is the pitiful pixie dust child who covers her ears and closes her eyes when she plays telephone sex tapes over and over and over again for no discernible reason.

This is the hapless child who couldn't own a TV set because she knew she'd do nothing but watch, then pretended she bought her first TV set only because she and Susan got hopelessly blackout drunk.

This is the disingenuous child who invited Ana-Marie Cox on the air for two weeks to drop dick jokes on the heads of Tea Party members, even as she pretended, night after night, to be deeply embarrassed, mortified even, by what her guest was doing.

This is a person who should have pulled off the air long ago. But because she's so good at "selling the car"—and because we liberals are, in fact, not unlike the people Over There—her ratings have grown and grown as she's played these reindeer games, and as she's wasted everyone's time making the rubble bounce.

The corporation's ratings have gone through the roof as she's mugged and clowned in these ways. Almost surely, NBC's owners love the games with which she gambols and plays.

We'll guess that's why "the mystery sound" was suddenly part of last Tuesday's entertainment. It helped us liberals enjoy ourselves as she went on and on, and on and on, about the mystery foreign company involved in the mystery court case.

She was broadcasting live and direct from the frozen land beyond the weeds. As Paskin noted, this is basically stupid stuff, but it seems to sell.

We were struck by the fact that Paskin's instant reactions tended to match our own views, which we've acquired through years of painful viewing. We do think Paskin missed one very important point:

Paskin noticed the silly time-killing involved in Maddow's journeys through the weeds and the tundra. She didn't mention the way this childish piddle means that Our Own Peter Pan now discusses virtually nothing else which may be happening anywhere else in the world.

Compare Maddow's investment in the weeds to the conduct of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who appeared in a town hall with Chris Hayes last Friday night.

(This being MSNBC, the transcript still isn't available.)

Ocasio-Cortez is no Maddow! Hayes asked her why, coming from the Bronx, she's chosen to start her congressional career with a topic like the Green New Deal.

She isn't like Our Darling Rachel. As this lengthy answer demonstrates, she's neither a child nor a clown:
HAYES (3/29/19): You come out of the gate, you represent this district here in the Bronx and Queens. People got all sorts of issues, all sorts of issues. And the first big issue you`re doing is the Green New Deal.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: That's right.

HAYES: So why this issue front and center, first thing? What connects you to this?

OCASIO-CORTEZ (3/29/19): So this issue is not just about our climate. First and foremost, we need to save ourselves, period. There will be no future for the Bronx, there will be no livable future for generations coming for any part of this country in a way that is better than the lot that we have today, if we don't address this issue urgently, and on the scale of the problem.

But how I access this issue is that I started looking at all of our problems. We have runaway income inequality. We are at one of our most unequal points, economically speaking, in American history. We are dealing with the crisis of how our economy is even made up. Our economy is increasingly financialized, which means we are making profits off of interest, off of leasing your phone, off of doing all of these things, but we aren't producing and we are an innovating in the way that we need to as an economy.

And I also am looking at our issues of social justice, social and racial justice, of which we are—which we have a nexus here in the Bronx. And what I started thinking about to myself was listen, we're looking at all of these issues, Medicare for all, a living wage, tuition free public colleges and universities, and there's this false idea that we need to put them all in a line and say do this or do that. Do you care about health care or do you care about the economy or jobs?

And then I started to realize that these are not different problems. These are all part of the same problem. And this is—in the past, when we've confronted this type of stagnation and this type of systemic threat as a country—first of all, we've been here before. We've been here before with the Great Depression. We've been here before with World War II, even the Cold War.

[...]

And the answer has been an ambitious and directed mobilization of the American economy to direct and solve our problem, our biggest problem. And historically speaking, we have mobilized our entire economy around war. But I thought to myself, it doesn't have to be that way, especially when our greatest existential threat is climate change.

And so to get us out of this situation, to revamp our economy to create dignified jobs for working Americans, to guarantee health care and elevate our educational opportunities and attainment, we will have to mobilize our entire economy around saving ourselves and taking care of this planet.
Ocasio-Cortez understands the sweep of the current situation. "We have to save ourselves," she told Hayes, two times, citing a wide range of major problems as she did.

By way of contrast:

Maddow, a pixie fairy-dust dream entertainer, just released her first, self-ballyhooed podcast. It dealt with the way Spiro T. Agnew accepted free groceries while serving as Nixon's vice president! It was silly, feel-good partisan piddle designed to please the base.

Wealth and fame have been destroying our nation's public figures for a very long time. Wealth and fame destroyed Judy Garland. Wealth and fame destroyed Elvis.

The rewards are too damn high!

In our view, Maddow seems to have been eaten alive by these destructive forces. The Green New Deal? It still hasn't been discussed on her ridiculous program. Spiro T. Agnew comes first!

Babies being born today are going to drown in the sea. Desperate for some ardent glory, viewers of Maddow's routinely ridiculous program don't seem to see it as a problem when all such topics get shoved to the side.

With that, we cue the mystery sound. It's silly and childish and fun!

48 comments:

  1. Somerby cannot seem to connect the dots. Until Trump is removed as President, we are not going to be able to do anything substantial to address climate change. AOC's Green New Deal will go nowhere because Trump and his appointees will sabotage it. So Trump is the problem and Maddow is right to focus on him and the efforts to bring him down.

    Somerby seems to be promoting AOC, Bernie's protegee, so she gets star treatment today while Maddow is maligned in some truly ugly ways, with the help of a Slate writer whose political background and motives are not examined.

    We are in the midst of a full-court press on behalf of Trump and his administration, now that Mueller has made his report. The right is trying to convince everyone that Trump has been exonerated. An attack on Maddow is just the thing, since she is apparently insisting that there is still dirt to be uncovered. How better to undermine her credibility than to portray her as obsessed and mentally deranged? As Paskin has done and Somerby continues to do. This is part of the cover up.

    The question is why Somerby is part of the cover up. Maddow viewers who continue to believe that Trump is guilty are being compared to Hannity viewers. That might be true if Mueller's report actually exonerated Trump, but that is a huge assumption to make on William Barr's say-so. But without that assumption, both Somerby and Paskin's actions are more nakedly partisan.

    Does anyone still think Somerby is liberal? I hope babies born today will have the sense to move to higher ground as the seas rise, but crying "We can't deal with Trump because global warming is too important" makes no sense at all.

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    1. Or it could be that @10:43A is the April Fools joke.

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    2. Well said. Rachel Maddow definitely deserves some critique, I enjoy it, but Bob Somerby is unhinged by his obsession with her. And sadly, he is no liberal. Maybe once he was, now he might as well be a Fox News propaganda correspondent. Hey Bob, why haven't they called you? Are you THAT ugly? They would love you on that channel, ugliness is no problem.Oh are you too old? No wonder you hate Rachel Maddow in her 40s. This is sad, Bob.

      Also, Mao and David In California suck cocks in Hell. Greedily and happily, they can't get enough Trump/Russian dick in their faces.

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  2. "We have to save ourselves..." It sounds like Ocasio-Cortez has discovered the power of fear to motivate her base. Just like Trump.

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    1. Sure. You're speeding down the road in your car, and AOC is in the back seat with Trump. AOC tells you to worry because the coolant indicator is in the red zone. Trump tells you to be afraid because you just passed a guy on the side of the road who might be Mexican. Just the same.

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  3. "Ocasio-Cortez is no Maddow!"

    Meh. Exactly the same, imo.

    Monomania, delusion of grandeur - same shit.

    "we will have to mobilize our entire economy around saving ourselves and taking care of this planet."

    Ocasio-Cortez appears to be worse, in fact. Higher degree of delusion of grandeur.

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    1. Your persistence in commenting on this obscure and pathetic small blog (a blog, like everyone in the last decade used to do!) makes me laugh and laugh. I really hate you Mao. But I am so glad you waste your life commenting on this site whose readership is 20 people, tops. Yet you never have anything interesting to say, ever. Not one thing.

      "Libtards and Dembots! (which is not a thing), that's all you have to say, Mao. You seem just mean and stupid. I can't imagine what a sad life you must have.

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    2. Thank you reading and taking the time to reply so thoughtfully, dear Belvoir. Please rest assured that I very much enjoyed your reply.

      I'm always happy to observe you people dropping your silly mask (but what about the children?!!) and revealing your true nature: intense hatred and depraved bestiality.

      Keep up the good job, dear.

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  4. Today Joe Biden has recruited Stephanie Carter, wife of Ash Carter, to defend him from charges of inappropriate touching. She herself admits Biden is a long time friend and now she comes to his defense by portraying his touch as welcome and supportive. She says she was uncharacteristically "rattled" during her husband's swearing in and that Biden put his hands on her shoulder to give her support.

    But why was a swearing in ceremony, supposedly a positive occasion, so traumatic that she required support? How does putting ones hands on a woman's shoulders, nuzzling her hair and whispering in her ear provide any kind of "support" during a public occasion like that? She says Biden was highly sensitive and intuited her feelings, aiding her without being asked. Whatta guy!

    Are women such frail beings that they cannot stand by at a swearing in ceremony without needing emotional support from the Vice President, to the point that he placed hands on her shoulders and stood behind her (holding her up?) while smelling her hair (what's with that?).

    This portrayal of women as so fragile they cannot endure such a ceremony unaided, so unable to endure a positive public event without help, so needy of emotional support, is ridiculous and suggests that, if true, Biden has an additional problem with how he views women -- frail flowers of womanhood who cannot appear in public without fainting and who need to be "supported" to the point of holding them down by the shoulders (or they might float off the planet?) and need to be whispered encouragement. And if this isn't what Biden thinks of women, including his close friends and their wives, why is he doing this stuff? And how did he intuit that a young teenage girl might benefit from his support in similar ways? That famous sensitivity again?

    I'm glad he has loyal friends who will try to recast his obvious groping in positive ways, as welcome touching, but it just isn't appropriate and women who care about this (and there are many of us) are not going to vote for him, especially when he tries to justify it as harmless, innocuous "support" for the frailer, gentler sex. Yuck!

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    1. This is all ridiculous bullshit. You sound disingenuous. Biden's hugging and kissing in hugely public places , in front of everyone, is a tired attack already. Let's get it out now. "Ew, he undressed me with his eyes!" is coming next. Go crash on the fainting couch over there. Biden is not a sexual harasser or pussy-groping rapist like Trump, so shut the fuck up. This is nonsense.

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    2. Creepy Joe sniffs female hair.

      And then he and his son Hunter go and rape a country of 40 million people.

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  5. Today's post reminds me of Trump's tweet rants. What set Somerby off today? Maddow has a new podcast. And besides that, she makes money at her job! The horror!

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  6. It's silly and childish and fun!

    Relax, Bob. You want to see something silly and childish and fun!

    Check out Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and his idea of debate!

    In case you haven't noticed, our country has been overrun by the Visigoths. Ain't jack shit gonna ever be done by our federal government about it.

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    1. What was wrong with the Visigoths?

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    2. Some of them are nice people, I'm sure. But maybe they weren't sending their best.

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    3. Is it a coincidence that conservatives are talking about the need for more babies just at the point that more women have been elected to Congress? If those women really cared about climate change, they wouldn't be bothering the men in politics but would be home having all those babies needed for the apocalypse, but he doesn't want to just come right out and say that.

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    4. The Western Tradition
      Episode 13 The Decline of Rome
      Eugen Weber
      LINK

      [QUOTE]
      But around the year 214 before Christ, when the Chinese began to build a great wall to preserve their civilized world against barbarians, a federation of aggressive Mongol tribes had turned west. These were the people we call the Huns. As they traveled westward over the course of several centuries, the Huns pushed before them other warlike tribes, the Goths and the Vandals, who were desperate to get away from them, which tells you just how awful the Huns must have been.

      In the late fourth century, some of these fleeing peoples, notably the Goths, got into the Balkans, which were among the richest provinces of the empire, and from there into Italy. Then, around the year 406, many more Vandals crossed the frozen Rhine and ravaged Gaul. As one contemporary observer remarked, "Gaul smoked to Heaven in one continuous pyre," and after Gaul was devastated, they crossed into Spain and North Africa.

      In due course, the Huns followed, carrying even worse destruction wherever they went. After that, the West was a chaos of frightened Roman survivors and brawling tribes.

      It's difficult to exaggerate the horror and suffering all this involved for generations. It wasn't war as we understand it, but robbery and mayhem on a vast scale, exercised on an almost defenseless population, rather like an endless raid by motorcycle gangs. It mean the sack of cities, the massacre and enslavement of populations, and the devastation of open country. Attila the Hun, who led his people for twenty years in the mid-fifth century, was known as the Scourge of God.

      In 448, in the Balkans, Roman envoys to Attila found the once-populous city of Nisyros empty except for corpses. In Africa, a few years earlier, if a city refused to surrender, the Vandals would march their captives up to the wall and butcher them en masse, so that the stench of their corpses should make defense untenable.

      As St. Jerome wrote in 396, "The mind shudders when dwelling on the ruin of our day. On every side sorrow, lamentation, everywhere the image of death." By Pope Gregory's time in the sixth century, chaos and mayhem had become a part of normal life, so the question becomes how did it happen? Why was Rome unable to defend itself?
      [END QUOTE]

      Answer: In large part because the oligarchs were unwilling to pay their taxes and the impoverished proles and slaves of the empire were unwilling to defend it.

      Delete
  7. "Indeed, she said she thought that Maddow seemed to be "on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

    Nervous breakdown isn't a psychiatric diagnostic term. It is a phrase used to refer to someone who is unable to cope with the stress in their lives. It doesn't refer to someone who is being pixie-like or obsessive or playing mystery sounds.

    Somerby routinely uses pseudo-psychiatric language to disparage people he doesn't like (or in Trump's case, to excuse him). This kind of thing is part of the stigmatization of mental illness and it is wrong to do.

    Maddow has stated she has bipolar disorder. If Somerby has a beef with the content or truth of her show, he should focus on that, not on Maddow's affect.

    There is a lawsuit attempting to get a foreign corporation to comply with Mueller's subpoena that has been going through the courts. Maddow isn't wrong about that. Because of redaction, details about that suit are not available, so it is somewhat of a mystery. Maddow isn't wrong about that either. That suit has not ended despite submission of Mueller's report. So it is current news. What exactly is Somerby's beef with Maddow's reporting of this situation?

    Maddow's ratings have increased dramatically over the course of the Mueller investigation. That suggests that people are interested in what she is talking about. Are those people True Believers in the way Hannity's viewers are? It depends on whether Maddow is presenting true information or not. Somerby wants to imply that she is making shit up, but he has no evidence of that (beyond Barr). He wants to tell her to stop hounding Trump, but that might sound like something a conservative would say. So instead, he talks about her nervous breakdown.

    I don't know any liberal who behaves that way.

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    1. Maddow hasn't been "wrong" about anything. No one has seen the Mueller Report yet, and Trump is absolutely visibly filthy with Russian contacts and collusions, he and his whole sordid family. There are multiple indictments. Bob Somerby ignores this because he;s senile and has a real hatred of Rachel Maddow that may or not be misogynistic. Some of his criticisms of her are well-founded. Others are unbelievable garbage, Somerby treats Fox News as legitimate, along with his elderly cohort of gullible old people falling prey to a scam.

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  8. Is a TV critic the best person to evaluate a political commentary show? She seems to have focused on entertainment shows previously. Why is she branching out into cable politics now? Sudden interest at such a time seems kind of suspicious.

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    1. Very suspicious. She may be a Russian spy. Someone should investigate this suspicious matter.

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    2. Yes, you might want to refer it to “Coverup-General Barr”. Bwahahaha!!

      Delete
  9. Rep Ocasio-Cortez has had this to say:

    "no question" that US President Donald Trump is a racist.

    "words that he[Trump] uses, which are historic dog whistles of white supremacy"

    Of GOP strategist Ed Rollins, she said:

    "this dude is a walking argument to tax misogyny at 100 percent"

    And of Trump again:

    "I'm gonna be very frank: I think that this president has set a racist tone," Ocasio-Cortez told Vanity Fair. "I think he has set a tone of such strong misogyny, racism, conspiracy theory-ism."

    Somerby spends a lot of time attacking Democrats/liberals/progressives for using words like "racism", "misogyny", "white supremacy."

    Perhaps he thinks Ocasio-Cortez’s focus on the Green New Deal absolves her from his criticism in this area, but it’s clear she is not coming from the same place as Somerby on this.

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    1. Exactly. Cortez-psycho-bot is exactly the same as Maddow-psycho-bot.

      Except that Maddow-psycho-dembot runs on gasoline, while Cortez-psycho-dembot on windmill.

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  10. Here is a montage of Biden interacting with young girls. I don't see anything wrong with him telling them "No dating men until you are 30," because he intends it as a joke, even though it sexualizes them (treats children as sexual objects) and thus is questionable. I have a big issue with him touching these kids the way he does. I am a parent and I would not want any man to touch my daughter (at any age) the way he does here. He has no right, no standing to do so. And I do agree that some of the touching is questionable. He sniffs the hair, strokes them, and he puts his hands where they do not belong.

    This goes beyond friendly. And it definitely creepy. If he doesn't come clean about this stuff and show some awareness that it is wrong to do this, he will lose women's votes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ-YjGmpO4Q

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    1. Chauncey Gardiner: I like to watch

      Joe Biden: I like to sniff

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  11. "As a matter of journalistic theory, Paskin probably shouldn't be making assessments which sound psychiatric."

    Does anyone really need reminding how often Somerby has described Donald Trump as "mentally ill", and has criticized journalists for *not* discussing this possibility?

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    1. Anything goes with Donald J Trump, who is Evil Incarnate.

      Maddow, on the other hand, despite her temporary failings, is Bob's fellow tribes-woman. With her, one shouldn't be making assessments which sound psychiatric.

      Delete
  12. From Yastreblansky, The Rectification of Names:

    "I went to a lot of political meetings in my youth, which is as I've noted somewhere one reason I can never truly get behind Bernie (every meeting had one, barking a bit, a few years older than the rest of us and deeply convinced of his rightness, never entertaining an idea he hadn't already had, dismissive of the hippies and shouting down the women)"

    Exactly.


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  13. This is what Paskin calls Maddow’s "conspiratorial" thinking:

    ‘Mueller had chosen not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment in his report.
    "Well," Maddow wondered, "why did Mueller make that determination and was it, in fact, a choice?"’

    You might call that "conspiratorial" thinking. Or you might call it a reasonable question to ask, given the Trump administration’s past behavior, and also given Barr’s past behavior.

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    1. Right. I hear Mueller is being blackmailed by The Dark Lord Putin, who has videos of him taking golden showers.

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    2. "taking golden showers"

      Not the way someone who was a native speaker would say this.

      Delete
  14. In a list of recent hard-hitting stories about such important topics as “Broad City”, “Beverly Hills 90210”, “Lindsay Lohan’s Beach House” and “The Bachelor”, Paskin has not demonstrated any interest or insight into politics or political coverage.

    Nor has she done a critique of Hannity. And yet, she feels qualified enough to judge the complex issues surrounding the Mueller probe and to equate Maddow with Hannity.

    Somerby hasn’t devoted huge swaths of his blog to a critique of Hannity either; as a matter of fact, one is hard pressed to find a single critique of Hannity in the recent annals of TDH, versus the immense volume of Maddow criticism. He claims that she is equal to Hannity, but his readers have no way of judging that from his blog. Somerby has told us Maddow is a clown, primarily motivated by greed (“stuffing money down her pants”) or possibly vengeance (“she loves to put The Others in jail”), and other such assumptions of motive, but he has never analyzed Hannity to show that he and Maddow are truly equal.

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    1. Anonymous @2:09,

      Just in case your comment wasn’t an April Fools joke, I’ll spell it out. Again.

      TDH is a blog that criticizes so-called “liberal” media. Feel free to tell us that you know what the author “really” thinks and what his true motives are. Let us in your best judgment about the author’s allegiance to Trump and the far right. It doesn’t matter: Hannity isn’t part of what TDH talks about.

      You’re like the guy who shouts “Bingo!” during a chess game.

      Delete
    2. Mr. Somerby spent years highlighting the clowning on the right. He only switched over to liberal media when he saw equal clowning coming from that side. And he's right, maddow is a hack, and has been since her days at air America radio...

      Delete
  15. Chris Hayes is mature enough not to feel slighted by the fact that, despite his show featuring AOC and a discussion of the Green New Deal,
    apparently Somerby feels Maddow is more important than Hayes, since Somerby makes his discussion about Maddow and how she *didn't* cover it.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Whoa, the Cortez woman appears to be suffering from some sort of mental illness or something:
    https://nypost.com/2019/04/01/ocasio-cortez-falsely-says-gop-changed-constitution-to-block-fdr-from-re-election/

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    1. Cortez should just say, "Republicans are pieces of shit", and be done with it. No one can argue that truth. Not even dead-enders, like Mao and David, who will call her a "zombie" and relate some fantasy about once being an actuary, in hopes you won't notice there's no argument against what she said.

      Delete
  17. *Whoa, the Cortez woman appears to be suffering from some sort of mental illness or something:*

    How would you know?

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  18. I haven’t been able to stand to listen to Rachel Maddow since her cringe-worthy reporting on Chris Christie’s Bridgegate and the legal troubles of the Virginia McDonnells. So I appreciate TDH posting the link to the transcript of Maddow’s dumb-as-a-ball-peen-hammer show.

    First the ACA. Yeah, the feral Trumpers are refusing to defend the Act in court. Did Darlin’ Rachel tell you why? This is routine when the Solicitor General determines that a law is unconstitutional. How could that be? you ask. Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that it was? Well, so they did, but things have changed since then, and the judge who struck down the law may be a right-wing lunatic, but his reasoning isn’t crazy. Maddow’s not wrong when she whinges about the effects — people losing insurance, higher rates, higher drug costs, the return of pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps. But this is an argument from consequences and the results are to be expected. After all, causing pain is the first plank in the Republican platform. Wouldn’t you like to hear why this is happening? Don’t listen to Maddow, then.

    Next the mystery subpoena for the mystery company from the mystery country. That’s it because that’s all that we know. Except for the failed legal argument that the company made. But you won’t hear about that from Maddow. Just her surprise that it was Mueller who requested the secrecy, a move the reason for which should be blindingly obvious to any thinking person. If that’s not you, don’t expect help from TRMS.

    Finally there’s Barr deciding the obstruction of justice issue. Rachel is shocked, shocked I tell you that the AG is doing this. But it was always going to be the AG’s decision, based on policy that predates Barr.

    Cutesy and incompetent, what a combination.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Finally there’s Barr deciding the obstruction of justice issue. Rachel is shocked, shocked I tell you that the AG is doing this. But it was always going to be the AG’s decision, based on policy that predates Barr.

      Well, to be clear, it wasn't going to be Barr's decision until Donald J Chickenshit, Acting President, fired Sessions, and installed his partisan hack lackey who prima fascia should have recused himself based on his previous public pronouncements on the investigation.

      Of course, you are right, no one should be surprised, since Barr literally testified at his confirmation hearing that he would not recuse himself and he would make the call. And he we are.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for prima fascia. Made me chuckle.

      Delete
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