WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 2026
...began making phone calls to C-Span: Under current circumstances, are "we the people" up to the challenge of creating "a more perfect union?"
Do we want President Lincoln's "mystical chords" to bind us together as friends? Or are we now engaged in a great civil war with our tribal enemies, Red America battling with Blue?
You're asking excellent questions! For the record, the current circumstances to which we refer include the disappearance of the gatekeepers—of the Walter Cronkites and the David Brinkleys—in the wake of the "democratization of media" over the past forty years.
That "democratization" was the fruit of a technological explosion which has replaced the Cronkites and the Brinkleys with such "opinion leaders" as Greg Gutfeld and Tyrus—and with the shaky judgment of our current crop of comedians and podcasters, a few of whom are referenced here:
The Man Show
The Man Show [was] an American sketch comedy television show on Comedy Central that aired from 1999 to 2004. It was created by its two original co-hosts, Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, and their executive producer Daniel Kellison. The pilot was originally paid for and pitched to ABC, which declined to pick up the show.
The Man Show simultaneously celebrated and lampooned the stereotypical loutish male perspective in a sexually charged, humorous light. The show consisted of a variety of recorded comedy sketches and live in-studio events, usually requiring audience participation. The Man Show was a career breakthrough for Kimmel.
The Man Show is particularly well known for its buxom female models, the Juggy Dance Squad, who would dance in themed, revealing costumes at the opening of every show, in the aisles of the audience just before The Man Show went to commercial break, and during the end segment "Girls on Trampolines".
[...]
In 2003, Kimmel and Carolla left The Man Show, with the hosting jobs passed down to comedians Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope. The new pair hosted the show for two more seasons before it ceased production in 2004.
All in all, there it is. It was Kimmel and Rogan and the Juggy Dance Squad oh my!
Speaking from a Blue perspective, extremely poor judgment was on vivid display with this show. Today, Rogen is one of our failing nation's most prominent Cronkite Replacement Figures.
Kimmel is the latest in a long line of Tinseltown strivers who keep supplying the RNC, and today the Fox News Channel, with endless distractions and talking points.
For the record, Cronkite and Brinkley were serious, deeply experienced people. They were part of the generation of Americans to whom President Kennedy referred in his famous inaugural address:
PRESIDENT KENNEDY (1/20/61): Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed...
Cronkite and Brinkley had indeed been "tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace." They didn't arrive on the scene in the kinds of clown cars so common on this current American scene.
Back then, they were numbered among the nation's gatekeepers. Today, a sprawling network of former "wrestlers" and undisguised cable news nut-balls have taken their place as guardians of our flailing nation's increasingly clown-like imitation of public discourse, an imitation of life.
Today, the gatekeeper/guardians are largely gone, replaced by the class of people commonly known as influencers. Two of our current influencers got their start on The Man Show, where they displayed their lack of perfect judgment as they ogled the girls on trampolines—as they thrilled to the exploits of The Juggy Dancers.
(As they pretended, exactly as Greg Gutfeld currently does, that their unfortunate conduct was really a form of lampoon, of "satire.")
What's an abandoned people to do in the wake of this cultural breakdown? What's an abandoned people to do in the face of 24-hour, nut=ball messaging from overtly partisan corporate "news ogs?" But also from an array of overtly disordered podcaster / influencer types?
What are we the people to do as our mystical union descends into the current tribal war? Alas! We the people forced to fall back on our own imperfect powers, as people around the globe have always been forced to do.
This country is full of good, decent people—but we're also a nation of people people. We humans have never been a race of mental giants. That helps explain why viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend were weirdly told this, very early, at 6:09 a.m., this past Sunday morning, about what had happened, the night before, at the Correspondents Dinner:
CAMPOS-DUFFY (4/26/26): As everyone now knows, we saw a shooter outside of the venue, outside of the ballroom doors. He was trying to get through the magnetometers, and he was shot and killed as he was trying to rush into the ballroom, where the president, vice president, members of the cabinet were—about a thousand, over a thousand people, were at that dinner. Very dramatic events indeed.
Say what? The shooter was shot and killed as he tried to rush into the ballroom? Why in the world had Campos-Duffy said that?
Strange! It had become quite clear, on Saturday night, that the attempted assailant had not been shot and killed as he rushed toward the ballroom of the Washington Hilton that night. Indeed, here's what co-host Charlie Hurt had already said, eight minutes earlier, right at the start of that same Fox & Friends Weekend program:
HURT: The suspect was apprehended before he could get to the ballroom and hurt anyone else, and the takedown was caught on camera. He's now been identified as 31-year-old Cole Allen of Torrance, California, who's believed to have been a guest at the hotel. He's believed to have acted alone and reportedly told law enforcement that he wanted to shoot Trump administration officials.
That's what the other friend had accurately said. Reading from prompter, Campos-Duffy proceeded to say that he was "set to be arraigned tomorrow.
It was clear, by 6:02, that Allen had been taken into custody. That said, Campos-Duffy still seemed to have it in her head that he had been shot and killed.
Everybody makes mistakes—and what happened at the Hilton had been very upsetting to many people. It may have been so for Campos-Duffy, who had been present at the event with her husband, a cabinet member, and with her two co-hosts.
At any rate, Campos-Duffy mistakenly "let the word go forth [on Fox & Friends Weekend] to friend and foe alike." The shooter had been shot and killed, she now strangely said.
Everybody makes mistakes—and in this instance, cable news etiquette prevailed. Neither of her two co-hosts corrected her groaning misstatement. At 6:22, Campos-Duffy finally corrected herself, as you can see right here.
Everybody makes mistakes and shows imperfect judgment! Today, our cable news stars and our other gatekeepers are frequently highly fallible, to the extent that they're trying to be truthful at all.
We the people are left on our own. The results can be quite spotty:
At 7 o'clock that very morning, C-Span's Washington Journal began to take phone calls from us the people. Those phone calls were cause for substantial concern. The basic fact of the matter is this:
When we the people are left on our own—when reliable gatekeepers have been replaced—the ideas we the people generate can be cause for substantial concern.
We often get it very wrong. Under current arrangements—given the nature of the new technologies—our weird ideas quickly spread.
Tomorrow: What the callers said
I have seen it reported that Campos-Duffy was told by a security person that the shooter had been killed. She didn't make it up herself. That means it isn't HER mistake, as Somerby keeps saying.
ReplyDeleteWe all understand that the first reports of a breaking news event will be corrected by subsequent reports. In light of that understanding, Somerby is making way too big a deal over the correction of this particular first report.
Bullshit.
DeleteCNN made the same mistake
Delete"When we the people are left on our own—when reliable gatekeepers have been replaced—the ideas we the people generate can be cause for substantial concern."
ReplyDeleteEven Gutfeld doesn't consider himself any kind of "gatekeeper" much less a reliable one. He tells partisan jokes about Democrats. That makes him not a journalist or reporter at all. Why does Somerby offer him as a modern gatekeeper? Obviously, to put his thumb on the scales of his argument that there has been no one reliable since Brinkley and Cronkite. And why was Chet Huntley omitted as a reliable gatekeeper?
I do not understand why Somerby routinely omits the new gatekeepers in independent media from his carping. It isn't as if we voters were being abandoned by all media. As a case in point, this shooter was not ignorant about politics but was upset a Schumer and others in leadership positions because they were not dealing effectively with Trump. In other words, he is a highly informed voter, not like the ignorant assholes Somerbys seems to be planning to describe from C-SPAN call-in lines. Further, someone who knows about C-SPAN is already more informed than most voters, so I don't believe they are going to prove Somerby's point that we are not qualified to vote any more because we don't have a Cronkite telling us what to think.
Campos-Duffy reported the shooter had been killed during a Fox and Friends segment. She corrected that misinformation 22 minutes later. That isn't exactly malpractice, as Somerby claims.
ReplyDeleteRight, it's Idiocracy
DeleteI first learned the shooter had been killed from Kaitlin Collins and Brian Stelter on CNN. No mention of them here.
ReplyDelete"learned"
DeleteSomerby is an influencer but Kimmel is not. People are influenced by everything that happens to them, from gas prices to lack of day care to movies and sports. We don't call all of those influences "influencers" because their intent is not to change the political views of voters.
ReplyDeleteKimmel's intent is to be an entertainer. Somerby's is to modify the views of his readers. One could argue that Somerby's impact is negligible, but that doesn't change his motive here.
Somerby says: "We often get it very wrong."
ReplyDeleteThat statement implies that he thinks there is a right way to think that such callers are not exhibiting. But those callers would "get it very right" if they had the proper influences in the form of guys like Cronkite, Somerby croaks. Those past guys tried hard to be unbiased and to strictly report the news. There are people still doing that, but there are others who are trying to shift views, not report facts. One such in the old days was Paul Harvey, another was Joe Pine, a forerunner to Rush Limbaugh. In the old days we could tell who was doing what. We still can, but Somerby seems to think we've all gone blind to the difference between opinion and straight reporting. I don't think that's any more true today than it was in the 1950s. (Note that nostalgia for past, largely imaginary, golden times is a conservative trait.)
Before the current attacks on education, it was expected that our schools would teach students how to think critically to evaluate what they were asked to read. We also expected schools to teach history and civics. Some high schools even had political science classes, economics classes, and debate squads. Conservatives have worked very hard to remove such content from our schools, on the grounds that students were being indoctrinated, not taught how to think independently. Meanwhile, certain conservative schools do indoctrinate their students> This is perhaps what Somerby should be complaining about, not the bias found in explicitly right wing programming. The latter falls under First Amendment protections, whether Somerby considers it right or wrong thinking.
ReplyDeleteMost of us who are actually liberal or Democratic or progressive, believe in free speech more than we believe people everywhere should all be forced to think in a specified correct manner.
@10:42 wrongly accuses Conservatives of working very hard to remove debate content from our schools. In fact, Charlie Kirk was murdered because he actually did add respectful debate to school.
DeleteGo take a flying fuck, dickhead, you fucking fascist freak
DeleteKirk was political, not an educator. Debate teams analyze, research, assert and rebut assigned positions, not their own ideas the way Kirk did. Talking is not debate, neither is propagandizing. Formal debate teaches critical thinking and speaking skills. Kirk did not do that.
DeleteWhat Kirk did was a lot more like real debate than marching around chanting "No kings! No kings!"
DeleteNo one said protest marches were a form of debate. You said Kirk debated, but he didn't do that. He used a pseudo-debate format to present his own ideas and propagandize youth.
Delete@11:46 - Turning Point America conducts events that have many characteristics of real debate. Liberal opponents are welcome to expound on their POV and try to explain why they're right.
DeleteI don't see anything like that on the other side. Can you point to liberal events that look at all like real debate? Where conservatives and MAGA opponents are treated respectfully and given every chance to expound on their POVs?
"Charlie Kirk was murdered because he actually did add respectful debate to school."
DeleteRobinson murdered Kirk because of Kirk's stances on issues, not his facilitating debate. Idiot.
TPA is a sewer, dickhead
DeleteDavid, are you saying the presidential debate was not a real debate?
Delete@12:26 - I am says that Dems do not organize events where conservatives and MAGA are politely invited to explain and argue in favor of their POVs. The presidential debate is a real debate, but it's a bi-partisan event. It's not an event organized by Dems.
DeleteBTW the late Rush Limbaugh did something similar. He moved callers who disagreed with him to the top of the list, so they had a better chance to present their views. Once a year Maureen Dowd allows her conservative brother to write her column, thus providing some balance.
DeleteHorseshit, dickhead.
DeleteDems regularly invite Republicans to debate them, Republicans refuse.
DeleteSam Seder is a notorious case, nobody is willing to debate him.
Kirk did not engage in debate, if you actually watch his content, the second someone makes a good counterargument to Kirk's nonsense, Kirk immediately talks over the other person, shuts them down, and then starts with his typical and largely incoherent Gish Gallop.
Republicans are pissed that nobody cared that Kirk died; most people were generally happy that Kirk died, including, notably, his wife.
I would listen occasionally to Rush. It was a steady stream of ditto-heads- megadittoing. Rush was notorious for screening calls, dickhead
DeleteWhy should Democrats do Republican campaigning for their opponents? The League of Women Voters used to hold bipartisan campaign forums allowing all parties and candidates to speak. I believe that still happens in community forums.
DeleteWhat does this distraction have to do with the Epstein Files?
ReplyDeleteTrump just can not put that toothpaste back in the tube.
Deletewomp womp
We can't know if Cole Allen is dead until we've consulted clinical psychologist Mary Trump.
ReplyDeleteWe can't know for sure yet, but it appears Cole Allen never fired a shot.
DeleteAn agent was hit by friendly fire.
Wolf Blitzer either lied or was badly mistaken.
Racism in redistricting is no longer legal.
ReplyDeleteThe Supreme Court has ruled that drawing Congressional districts based on race under the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, 6-3
This is a huge win, and could have massive ramifications for the 2026 midterms.
Democrats for years have sued over and over again to force states like Louisiana to create black majority districts
Louisiana's map has now been thrown out.
If SCOTUS ends up gutting the act, a dozen Democrat districts could flip red overnight.
Drawing Districts based on race probably helped to add a few Republican seats in the net. Compressing a big majority of Dems into some districts left more Reps to win majorities of other districts.
DeleteOff topic.
DeleteSo, drawing districts for partisan advantage is AOK, according to the Supreme Court.
DeleteBut drawing them to benefit minority voters is unconstitutional.
Huh.
Somerby has indicated in the past that he agrees with this ruling.
DeleteRacists are rejoicing!
Roberts has achieved his life ambition
DeleteI resent Somerby's paternalistic assumption that "we" are so stupid we cannot figure things out ourselves.
ReplyDeleteMost news sources have been reporting that the shooter shot a secret service agent. I suspect we will find out later that he didn't shoot anyone at all -- that the secret service was shooting at the attacker, who hit the ground to avoid those shots, and that the officer who was hit was hit by friendly fire.
Are all of those news sources defective too? Will Somerby name the people who got it wrong again? In fairness, he should. But I think he should apologize for expecting the press to be omniscient about details it often takes some time to sort out.
How long would she have a job, if Campos Duffy had said "There has been a shooting. We don't know who the target was, who did it, or any of the details of what happened. More in the ripeness of time, and now here's Greg Gutfeld with another joke." Somerby is, of course, critical of Campos Duffy because she is female and holds a job he once coveted. It makes him feel warm inside when he can show us all how incompetent she is, and claim that she shouldn't be on screen because she isn't Cronkite.
The Man Show was never a news show. I think it was majorly sexist, something Somerby doesn't mention even while describing the women who appeared on it. It was more like Howard Stern in a slightly different format. I don't know any women who watched it. Rogan still appeals to a male audience. Not coincidentally, the Republicans heavily courted men, especially younger men, and their insistence on toxic masculinity in the military, the ICE posturing and Kash Patel's lifestyle all reflect male sexism and a rejection of women's rights and DEI. This is explicit on the right and part of Gutfeld's material as well.
Somerby's inability to see why this is happening, how right wing it is, and his pretense that it is media-wide and not targeted politically by Republicans who tan their balls and think women should be tradwives, suggest that this is part of Somerby's ongoing effort to promote right wing talking points and attitudes.
Why does Somerby never mention the Meidas Touch, which has more subscribers and viewers than Joe Rogan? Why does he not mention David Pakman? Why does he not mention that Rachel Maddow still has a blog and podcast? Why is there no mention of anything on Substack? It is as if Somerby is unwiilling to promote anything left wing, much less anything more balanced and informative, factual, such as Heather Cox Robinson, Robert Reich, Thom Hartmann, Joyce Vance, podcasts like Legal AF, Medhi Hassan, Al Franken? There is a thriving media with much more reliable info than Fox, because they recognize that if they are as biased as the right wing, the left will not listen to them. Just as no one except extreme right wingers listens to Fox any more. Fox recognizes this, as its hosts have been turning away from Trump and showing more of his mistakes and gaffes. That's because the Republican base has been noticing those things, and if Fox doesn't report them they will be abandoned by their viewers.
The right is still paying to saturate social media with its swill, but it is losing its own biased cable media and podcasts. In a sense, it is public reaction that is changing a biased press, not vice versa any more. And how is this happening, how is it possible if the right won't report accurately? Obvious viewers are consuming more than just Fox.
Somerby needs to replace the aluminum foil on his TV's rabbit ears.
DeleteWomen need to be taken completely out of politics. That includes the right to vote.
DeleteYou go first.
DeleteHere are some facts that are not being reported by the mainstream media, only by substacks on the left:
ReplyDelete"ICE FINALLY STUCK IT to one of their detainees. Except this person is no criminal, no murderer, no monster. She is a torture victim from Colombia, one who—as we wrote last year—was repeatedly beaten and raped by the police buddies of her ex-boyfriend.
Adriana Quiroz Zapata finally escaped Colombia with her life, only to find more mistreatment at the hands of U.S. federal agents.
Because the Convention Against Torture prevented her from being deported to Colombia, ICE instead packed her onto a bus and tried to abandon her in Mexico, a country where she has no ties. But Mexican immigration authorities declined to take her after hearing details of her harrowing journey.
I wrote that story last April. On April 16 of this year, Zapata was finally removed from the United States. Along with fourteen others, she was shipped off to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—once again, a country where she has no ties."
No one on Gutfeld or Fox and Friends talks about what is happening to those in detention, including asylum seekers (who are legal immigrants). There are issues concerning the costs of shipping people around the world at will, of storing people in warehouse, and there are stories about the failure to provide health care to those being held. No one reports on this on the right.
Why is Somerby so very concerned about a temporary error by Campos Duffy while never mentioning the wrongs Trump and his staff commit daily?
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ice-deports-colombian-torture-victim-to-africa-drc
The Bulwark is on the left now? How do you figure?
DeleteBulwark has a variety of writers under their umbrella. The guy who wrote this focuses on immigration and ICE issues. That has become a left issue, unfortunately despite several Republican presidents who have advanced them in the past (Nixon, Reagan).
DeleteThat's quite a victory of propaganda for the Bulwark, a Republican rag made up of some of the most despicable Republicans this country has ever seen, to get people to think of them as "on the left".
DeleteAnd also quite an embarrassing display of political illiteracy on the part of the commenter.
The UN today does more harm than good to the US.
ReplyDeleteIran selected for a vice presidency post at UN’s nuclear non-proliferation confab
US envoy tells conference that Tehran’s selection is an ‘affront’ to the NPT, given that the Islamic Republic has ‘long demonstrated its contempt for non-proliferation commitments’
Off topic
DeleteGo take a flying fuck, dickhead, you fascist freak
DeleteWell they weren't going to pick an Israeli since Israel has nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the treaty.
DeleteIn order to be as angry as the man who tried to shoot Trump officials, you have to be aware of the full range of atrocities commited by Trump's administration and also understand the lack of action by our Congress and those who are supposed to be a check against Trump's imbalanced acts. The internet activity by this young man showed that he was well aware of both and was trying to inspire action by those in a position to stop Trump's abuses.
ReplyDeleteThat makes Somerby's whining today about press coverage especially irrelevant. This shooting couldn't have been prevented by anything but suppression of info about the wrongs of both Trump and Congress. It was knowledge, accurate reporting, that inspired his symbolic attack, not ignorance. He was trying to hold the press and our representatives accountable, just as those who vote in the midterms will be doing.
Somerby loves to talk about sacred Homer and the Greeks. The Roman emperors who abused their power in ways similar to Trump (Commodus, Caligula) were assassinated, because that is what the people do with their power when institutions and leaders fail.
I do not believe Somerby "gets it right" today.
Somerby might have mentioned the way the press has been protecting Trump from the awareness of the public over his inability to read and speak in public. Tiedrich illustrates his inability to welcome King Charles in public ceremonies, by providing an accurate transcript of what he actually said (and how he said it):
ReplyDelete“in a few hours, His Majesty will stand in the heart— of the United States Capitol as the very first British king ever to adrist— a— joint session— of— the— United States Congress, so he’s gonna be addressing— Congress, and I’m gonna be watching. I was thinking of going but they said I don’t know. that might be a step too far. I would love to go— it’s not supposed to be protocol but I would love to be with you.”
yeah, he actually said ‘adrist.’
Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants’ rapidly-increasing deterioration is impossible to ignore. he can no longer read. he’s completely flummoxed by the one-syllable words his handlers have written for him. dragging Donny out in public and forcing him to speechify is really at this point a form of elder abuse.
do you think Donny has any idea what the words he’s struggling to pronounce mean? he seems completely mystified by what he’s saying. he also seems completely mystified by punctuation, as he mechanically gasps out each word.
“majestic inheritance their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right good and true.”
majestic inheritance whaaaaat?"
Yesterday Digby presented the portions of Trump's 60 Minute interview that were in the transcript but deleted from the telecast interview. Parts like this:
"There was a time when Trump actually sued CBS for editing out an innocuous piece of a Kamala Harris interview.
Look what they edited out of Trump’s on Sunday. (This is from the transcript which they released to the public but the video is behind their paywall. Cute. )
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did security tell you about what may have been his motives?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, see, they– the part– the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings. I’m not a king. What I am– if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you. No, I’m not a king. I– I get– I– I don’t laugh. I don’t– I– I see these No Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Law was– funded– you saw all that? Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups. And then they go out and they say, “Oh, we’ve gotta stop the KKK.” And yet they give, you know, hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.
NORAH O’DONNELL: They were –
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s a total scam run by the Democrats. It shows you that– like Charlottesville. Charlottesville was all funded by the Southern Law. That was a Southern Law deal too. And it was done to make me look bad, and it turned out to be a total fake. It basically was– a rigged election.
This was a part of the rigging of the election. And that’s what you really should be doing. I mean, I hope one of your 60 Minute episodes, which really hasn’t changed very much for the last few years. I’m surprised. "
But Somerby is concerned about Campos-Duffy?
https://digbysblog.net/2026/04/28/60-minutes-censorship/
Deletehttps://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/world-leaders-stop-legitimizing-preznit
The press is engaged in a major cover up of Trump's condition. Crickets from Somerby about that.
From Jeffery St. Clair:
DeleteWhat is the arch-salesman of hate-mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center doing now? He’s saying that the election of a black president proves his point. Hate is on the rise! Send money!
Without skipping a beat, the mailshot moguls, who year after year make money selling the notion there’s been a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions of haters, have used the election of a black president to say that, yes, hate is on the rise and America ready to burst apart at the seams, with millions of extremists primed to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other, available for sneak photographs from minions of Chip Berlet, another salesman of the Christian menace, ripely endowed with millions to battle the legions of the cross.
As of October 2008 the net assets of the SPLC were $170,240,129, The merchant of hate himself, Mr. Dees, was paid an annual $273,132 as chief trial counsel, and the SPLC’s president and CEO, Richard Cohen, $290,193. Total revenue in 2007 was $44,727,257 and program expenses $20,804,536. In other words, the Southern Poverty Law Center was raising twice as much as it was spending on its proclaimed mission. Fund-raising and administrative expenses accounted for $9 million, leaving $14 million to be put in the center’s vast asset portfolio.
But where are the haters? That hardy old stand-by, the KKK, despite the SPLC’s predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted troupe, at least 10 per cent of them on the government payroll as informants for the FBI. As Noel Ignatiev once remarked in his book Race Traitor, there isn’t a public school in any county in the USA that doesn’t represent a menace to blacks a thousand times more potent than that offered by the KKK, just as there aren’t many such schools that probably haven’t been propositioned by Dees to buy one of the SPLC’s “tolerance” programs. What school is going to go on record rejecting Dees-sponsored tolerance?
You fight theatrically, the Dees way, or you fight substantively, like Stephen Bright, who makes only $11,000 as president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights. The center’s director makes less than $50,000. It has net assets of a bit over $4.5 million and allocates about $1.6 million a year for expenses, 77 percent of its annual revenue. Bright’s outfit is basically dedicated to two things: prison litigation and the death penalty. He fights the system, case by case. Not the phony targets mostly tilted at by Dees but the effective, bipartisan, functional system of oppression, far more deadly and determined than the SPLC’s tin-pot hate groups. Tear up your check to Dees and send it to Bright,( https://www.schr.org/) or to the Institute for Southern Studies (https://www.southernstudies.org.html) run by Chris Kromm, which has been doing brilliant spadework on the economy, on poverty and on exploitation in the south for four decades.
Is this guy seriously arguing that racial hate didn't increase, both directed at Obama and against black people in general when he was elected? There are national stats from the FBI on that, not just SPLC figures. This whole Trump election and MAGA have been theorized as a backlash against Obama, DEI and racial progress. How does St. Clair go against such sociological and political analysis to justify attacking SPLC and boosting the Southern Center for Human Rights, a small organization working on death penalty cases? Why is there not room for both approaches? These are two organizations with different purposes being pitted against each other by St. Clair -- why do that? Systemic change does not occur on a case-by-case basis. This strikes me as a hit piece on SPLC, perhaps coordinated with the other attacks on them arising from the right and Trump.
DeleteIt may be a hit piece coordinated with the right and Trump. Then again, it may not - given it was written 18 years ago.
DeleteThe Seashell Indictment
ReplyDeleteHow do we know the Trump DOJ wastes "a lot of work?" Because they tell us.
Q: Did you always feel like this was a strong prosecution or did something change recently?"
Blanche: "This investigation didn't just come now. It's the result of a lot of work by law enforcement over the past year."
Not a dime spent in this investigation will help a person of color.
Delete"I'll allow it."
Every Republican voter
Keep in mind. When the fucking media says the Trump DOJ, they mean Trump’s fucking hack lawyers
DeleteI agree with you Hector. This tit-for-tat indictment is disgusting. In his interview, Blanche did a poor job of defending his position.
DeleteGo away you dumb prick.
DeleteYou agree with Hector and will crawl naked thru a Paris sewer to kiss orange chickenshit’s ass.
DeleteFuck off, dickhead
Will Southern Republicans switch parties again, now that the Supreme Court gutted the Votings Rights Act of 1965?
ReplyDeleteNot a chance, they’re lost for ever
Delete"Do we want President Lincoln's "mystical chords" to bind us together as friends? Or are we now engaged in a great civil war with our tribal enemies, Red America battling with Blue?"
ReplyDeleteThe Civil War was a declared shooting war in which people died. Our current situation is that we have two major political parties who work out their disagreements in a system designed for that purpose, as detailed in our Constitution. Of course, we greatly prefer the peaceful approach. Somerby's question is inane.
Somerby never raises the actual problem most of us see now. We have a president who has no respect for law or our Constitution who is using his position to loot our country and persecute enemies. That president needs to be stopped but those with the ability to stop him do not have the resolve. That will likely change after the midterms.
Note that the desire to constrain Trump's misbehavior is now bipartisan. This is no longer a divide between Red and Blue America, but a situation where Trump's supporters are opposed by those wish to limit Trump. There is no major breakdown of our democracy or our political system, but there are threats to both which are being resisted. This situation is not like the Civil War.
Somerby might well ask whether those opposing Trump will be willing to forgive his supporters after Trump is defeated. That hasn't happened yet, so the question is premature. Once our adherence to law and our Constitution is restored, I suspect some of Trump's accomplices will be tried. I also hope the Epstein criminals are also tried, which may become possible after Trump is removed from office.
No one is suggesting violence or extra-legal means for removing Trump. Somerby's view that Red and Blue are fighting each other is especially untrue in the sense that no violence is being advocated by Blue America.
There are many more accurate historical parallels Somerby might have used, such as the authoritarian regimes of Hitler or Stalin.
I have friends who are very conservative. I don't need mystical chords to be friends with them. I simply don't talk politics with them.
DeletePolitics involve the election of leaders to represent us in governing bodies that make decisions about how to make laws, ensure the people's well-being and allocate resources, engage in international relations and regulate trade. None of my friends do that stuff themselves. I think the people who do it need to be competent and qualified, not cronies.
So, Somerby's framing of politics in terms of mystical friendship is very weird.
As I have noted here before, our elections are not solely for Red and Blue America, but also for the independents (who outnumber Reds and Blues) and the non-voters (who outnumber all voters combined). Our nation is much larger and more diverse than the war between Red and Blue that Somerby keeps trying to whip up.
Republicans have gone all out for blood, politically speaking, for decades. Now they are getting some of their own back. That's why Somerby speaks up and wants everyone to cool down. Just when Democrats start winning again.
DeleteUSSC gutted voting rights for the browns. And so it goes in fascist America.
Delete@12:35 nails it. Republicans have gone all out for blood, politically speaking. Dems have literally gone out for blood. E.g. a Dem mob attacked this conservative young woman. See 2 suspects indicted in assault of TPUSA reporter Savanah Hernandez during Minneapolis ICE protest:
Deletehttps://www.foxnews.com/us/2-suspects-indicted-assault-tpusa-reporter-savanah-hernandez-during-minneapolis-ice-protest-sources
Fuck off, dickhead
Delete“A dem mob” … just precious, DiC. Also nonsense.
DeleteWas it like that time when a GOP mob attacked the Capitol on Jan 6?
DeleteYes, @1:19. What the MAGA mob did on Jan 6 was terrible. Trump, his supporters and other conservatives are flawed and do some bad things.
DeleteBut you are willing to overlook the “bad things”, dickhead. Racism is a powerful drug
DeleteRepublicans laughing and joking about those MN legislators being killed by a Republican loon, kind of ruins your argument.
DeleteAn attempted insurrection is not just a "bad thing". Kind of an understatement.
DeleteThese ridiculous false equivalences don't help the Republican case.
Delete@1:25 - I do not need to pretend that Reps are perfect or that Dems are evil in order to support Trump. I am willing to balance bad and good things. Both sides do both good and bad. IMO on balance the conservative policies are better for the people than the liberal policies.
DeleteIt is not a question of being perfect, you fucking fascist imbecile. Nothing policy-wise could possibly make up for the horrendous embarrassment that fucking felon you support is. A fucking insurrection and then he pardons the mob who attacked police. Go blow smoke up your fellow nazis asses, jackass.
Delete""I may disagree with what Trump does, but I will defend to the death his right to do it to those people over there."
DeleteDavid in Cal
David in Cal,
DeleteHow's your crusade to get Fox News to put "Trump is the best President ever for black people" on their chyron crawl?
What seems to be the hold-up?
Jobs, the markets, GDP, and unemployment have historically, for greater than half a century, done far better under democratic presidents, but DiC is willing to ignore that to support a bigoted felon who is in the process bankrupting this country as if it is one of his Jersey Shore casinos.
DeleteAs a fan of the Man Show, it made Gutfeld look like Mary Poppins.
ReplyDeleteWithout the bullshit politics.
DeleteKing Charles III gave an epic understated burn of Trump yesterday in front of Congress. A true roasting.
ReplyDeleteSo yummy!
I saw King Charles give our King an incredible bell from a WWll (world war eleven) submarine called Trump, unprecedented and graciously received.
DeleteCronkite and the like were gatekeepers but they were not "serious people", they were in fact shills for neoliberal elites.
ReplyDeleteBob's supposed ignorance is what drives how poor his analyses are.
People who call in to C-SPAN are such a narrow and odd segment of the populace that I wouldn't generalize them to "we the people". They are not characteristic of anyone.
ReplyDeleteSomerby has never acknowledged that the right wingers call in on the Independent and even Democratic call in lines to state Republican viewpoints. That is dishonest but underlines the fact that these are shills and not necessarily honest voters expressing individual opinions.
I don't know why he keeps using these people to make points except that he used to practice his standup on public TV shows.