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

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You always have to fact-check Maddow. Unless you just like thrills up your leg, you shouldn’t believe what she says.

(It's pretty much as we've always said: We could have a terrific election here—if it weren't for the voters!)

The cowardly Rosenthal does it again!

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

Exactly as we told you: There are a couple of questions we typically get.

“Are you always right?” people will ask. “If so, how does that feel?”

Normally, we change the subject. This morning, though, we’ve been proven right about Andrew Rosenthal, editor of the New York Times editorial page.

Rosenthal loves to drop his R- and B-bombs—as long as his targets aren’t powerful. But he’s very, very reluctant to challenge big players like Limbaugh and Trump.

This morning, the editorial board has finally spoken about Rush Limbaugh’s recent conduct. Incredibly, this is what the board has courageously said:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (3/6/12): Apologizing for atrocious behavior is better than not trying to apologize. Rush Limbaugh’s nonapology to Sandra Fluke for calling her a prostitute was a good example.

Incredibly, that’s the entire comment on Limbaugh! And no, it doesn’t even make sense. Is Limbaugh being complimented or chastised? Like you, we can’t quite tell.

The board goes on to complain about an obscure federal official in Idaho who sent a racially insulting e-mail about President Obama. Limbaugh's three-day tirade was dismissed in two murky sentences.

The obscure federal judge in Idaho got an R-bomb dropped on his head. Limbaugh got a semi-compliment.

Last year, you thought we were wrong when we started telling you this about the cowardly Rosenthal. Rosenthal loves to call people racists—as long as his targets are obscure.

He’s afraid to challenge people like Limbaugh. Who knows? This may be a business decision concerning the potential loss of readership at the Times.

For the past decade, we have begged our major news orgs to call out Limbaugh and Hannity by name—to explain the way they work, to explain the disinformation they spread all through the land.

Our big news orgs refuse to do so. Has the conduct of these consummate cowards even been any more clear?

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: Parade of the frauds!

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

Part 2—We’re all the Fox News Channel now: “Where’s the outrage?” William Bennett once asked. He wanted to know why regular folk weren’t more upset about Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct.

Last night, he wouldn’t have needed to ask. Last night, the outrage was all over MSNBC as a stream of hypocrites, frauds and pseudo-progressives paraded across our TV machine, complaining about Rush Limbaugh’s latest transgression.

For our money, Karen Finney was the worst offender, followed closely by Connie Schultz. But the biggest fraud of them all, Chris Matthews, was posing as Woman’s Best Friend once again. And the rest of the scripted were there to support him, including Walsh, Corn and Wolff.

How gross was this parade of the frauds? Over the first dozen years of its life, MSNBC was, without any question, Misogyny Central in the world of cable “news.” The various frauds who paraded last evening managed to spend that decade averting their gaze from this fact.

Last night, though, they were very upset because the offender was Limbaugh! Last week, it was Limbaugh who behaved in the way they accepted in those earlier years. And so, they staged their parade—letting us see that MSNBC has finally caught up to Fox.

Fox has been a clown show for years, following formats which were largely invented by Limbaugh himself. Last night, it was hard to deny it:

We’re all the Fox News Channel now!

What was so grotesque about last evening’s parade? For starters, let’s turn to this post by Digby, who seconded our emotion from yesterday’s HOWLER. “Listening to Chris Matthews criticize Limbaugh for his sexist commentary is rich. Really rich,” Digby wrote. She linked to this report by David Brock from January 2008.

Remember early 2008? At that time, by some unexplained miracle, the “liberal” world finally managed to notice Matthews’ raging misogyny, a trait he had put on vivid display over the previous decade. Go ahead! Read Brock’s full report! As he started, he focused on the ways Matthews typically spoke about Hillary Clinton.

“Take a look at this sampling,” Brock wrote in 2008. His lengthy sampling included these examples of ChrisMatthewsSpeak:

Remarks by Matthews concerning Hillary Clinton:
"I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for."
"She Devil"
"Nurse Ratched"
"Madame Defarge"
"Witchy"
"Look at those eyes. Look at the cold eyes that she's giving him. Look at that cold look."
"[She’s] like a strip-teaser saying she's flattered by the all the attention"
"Is she a convincing mom?"
On Sen. Clinton’s endorsers: "Castratos in the eunuch chorus"
On Sen. Clinton’s laugh: "What do you make of the cackle?"
"She was giving a campaign barn-burner speech, which is harder to give for a woman. It can grate on some men when they listen to it. Fingernails on a blackboard, perhaps."
"Is she hemmed in by the fact that she's a woman and can't admit a mistake, or else the Republicans will say, ‘Oh, that's a woman's prerogative to change her mind,’ or ‘another fickle woman’? Is her gender a problem in her ability to change her mind?"
"She may have gotten The Des Moines Register's endorsement the other day, thanks to her husband's lobbying with its female editors and publisher."

Brock went on from there, listing some of Matthews’ remarks about other women. But no one could capture the sweep of Matthews’ decade of misogyny in just one report.

For us, this topic dates to Matthews’ rude treatment of Elizabeth Holtzman in early 1999. But he had many other targets in the bad old days of his wars against the Clintons and Gore. Example: To review the savage trashing Matthews dished to Naomi Wolf during the press corps’ war against Gore, please read Chapter 5 at our companion site, How He Got There.

The “progressive” world kept its traps shut as Wolf absorbed a long gender-trashing from the pundit world. We know of two major pundits who complained about this gender-trashing: William Kristol and William Safire.

The “liberal” world simply accepted all this. To cite one prominent example, Joan Walsh kept licking Matthews’ keister as his decade of misogyny unfolded. Last night, Joan was on The One True Channel, helping us see the sweep of her outrage now that it was Limbaugh who was behaving this way.

Then too, there was Keith Olbermann. In some ways, this part of the story is worse. Let’s quote a second post by Digby:

DIGBY (3/5/12): A lot of men hate women in a serious, fundamental way. (And they aren't all old guys.) Rush Limbaugh is clearly one of them. He's demonstrated it over and over again for more than two decades, and has been feted as a hugely powerful media and political celebrity that entire time. I think the problem is that this is still such an accepted part of male culture that even decent enlightened men (and women) often don't recognize the milder version when they see it for what it actually is.

We agree with those highlighted statements—but Olbermann “is clearly one of them” too. But how strange! When Olbermann acted out this hatred, last night’s parade of outraged “liberals” averted their gaze!

Here at THE HOWLER, we were puzzled for several years. Was it possible that we were the only ones offended by Olbermann’s conduct? Was it possible that no other liberals and progressives owned a TV set? Olbermann reached the zenith of his misogyny with his endless, profane attacks on Carrie Prejean, the 21-year-old woman who dared to voice the same view about marriage equality that President Obama held. (And Hillary Clinton. And Bill Clinton. And Al Gore and John Kerry!)

Prejean had to be slimed for this—and Olbermann slimed her, night after night, in the most repulsive ways. Often, he threw directly to Maddow, who acted like she hadn’t noticed. (Maddow was one of the grand marshals in last night’s parade.)

Below, you get a taste of the fare this slime-ball served to us liberals during those years. Like most men of his very low type, Olbermann loved discussing Prejean’s breasts. As usual, his guest on this particular evening was the repulsive misogynist, Michael Musto.

Prejean was a boob, a Barbie doll, dumb, a ding-dong—and of course, she was "a girl." But note the greatness of Musto’s statement at the end of this chunk:

OLBERMANN (4/30/09): There it is here, Miss California is opposed to same-sex marriage, which is at least marriage between two human beings, but she has fully endorsed now marriage between a man and a woman who is partially made out of plastic.

MUSTO: Well, she’s dumb and twisted. She’s sort of like a human Klaus Barbie Doll. I mean, you tell Perez Hilton you’re against gay marriage? That’s like telling Simon Cowell you’re against screeching a show tune. This is the kind of girl who sits on the TV and watches the sofa. You know, she thinks innuendo is an Italian suppository.

Can I keep going? On the pageants now, they really should have easier questions, like what’s your middle name or what show was Seinfeld on. I mean, this girl’s a ding-dong. I didn’t even like her earrings.

OLBERMANN: The cruelest cut of all. The outcomes here, too. Perez Hilton looks like an intellectual titan and some sort of civil rights leader. And the new poster girl against same-sex marriage is not just a boob, but a fake boob. This is a real win for this cause, is it not?

MUSTO: Well, Perez is the new me, let’s leave him alone. And using the C word is something I wouldn’t do. But yes, Carrie Prejean, however you say it, she’s getting something off her chest. But what she really needs to get off is the price tag there.

Did we mention the fact that Prejean’s position on same-sex marriage was the same as President Obama’s? Did we mention the fact that Prejean didn’t raise the issue? That she only discussed same-sex marriage when she was forced to do so as part of the Miss USA competition? That said:

Musto said he wouldn’t call Prejean a cunt! This was now the reigning standard of American liberalism on matters of gender!

Olbermann behaved this way for years. As far as we know, all the frauds who paraded last night pretended they didn’t see this. Finally, we learned that many “progressives” actually had. Here's how:

We learned this when the Daily Caller did its otherwise foolish report about the Journolist group. In that instance, it was the Daily Caller's turn to to gin up the phony outrage. But as part of the Daily Caller’s report, Jonathan Strong reported the following statements by major progressives after one of Olbermann’s rants about Prejean. As far as we know, no one has ever said that these comments were misquoted or taken out of context:

STRONG (7/23/10): Following the segment, the subject on Journolist was “I hate Keith Olbermann again,” and the members of the list let it rip.

The Nation’s Katha Pollitt began the group’s rant. “He and Michael Musto did this whole long riff about beauty contestant Carrie ‘opposite marriage’ Prejean’s breast implants, stupidity, breast implants, tacky clothes, earrings, breast implants. They went on and on about how she was ‘part plastic’ and pathetic. You’d think they were celibate vegans who spent their lives zen meditating. It was just a whole TV humiliation of her, and it made me feel sorry for her, which wasn’t easy,” Pollitt said.

Michael O’Hare, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the segment was “about as funny as a rubber crutch. Odd when a reasonable person’s internal alarm doesn’t go off in a situation like that...‘I’m going to ridicule a girl who’s obviously at her personal limits just trying to look conventionally pretty on national TV? What does that make me’?”

O’Hare even suggested friends stage an intervention for Olbermann. “If anyone on the list is a friend of Olbermann, friendship demands that you give him a head-up about this lapse,” he said.

Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor and CNN contributor, said Olbermann’s root problem is his misogyny. “I can’t take him anytime. I think to write off his misogyny as limited to Musto is just not accurate. That very much defined much of how he talked about Clinton as well as others.”

Zelizer was referring to a series of instances during the primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when critics from both sides of the aisle criticized Olbermann for allegedly sexist treatment towards Hillary. Olbermann was forced to apologize.

[...]

Salon’s Rebecca Traister agreed Olbermann regularly displayed his contempt for women. “Olbermann has a terrible record of going out of his way to talk about young, attractive women he believes to be stupid in grotesquely dismissive and oversexualized terms.”

Traister had written the same thing in her columns for Salon, for instance calling Olbermann out when he “felt free to call [Paris] Hilton a slut on air and speculate about whether anyone had ever ejaculated in her face.”

Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein said maybe the time was now to take down Olbermann. “When we liberals were fighting for political survival after 9/11, it was important to be disciplined and to pick our internal battles very carefully. Now that the Democrats are in charge and progressivism is ascendant, we can afford to demand more from our leaders.

“We can certainly afford to smack down Keith Olbermann when he spouts misogynist garbage,” she said.

Finally, we had our answer! These ranking “progressives” were quite aware of Olbermann’s misogyny. Indeed, they were happy to identify it as such—as long as they believed they were speaking in private!

Beyerstein suggested the time had come to challenge Olbermann in public. As far as we know, that never happened. And don’t be fooled by what Strong wrote. Though Traister had fleetingly mentioned the fact that Olbermann “felt free to call Paris Hilton a slut on air and speculate about whether anyone had ever ejaculated in her face,” she had hardly “called him out” for this conduct. For our fuller report, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/28/11.

Last night, a collection of phonies, fakes and frauds staged a five-hour “liberal” parade, expressing their outrage at Limbaugh’s conduct. These same people had averted their gaze from a decade of similar conduct by Matthews and Olbermann, with very small bouts of supporting misconduct by David Shuster and Ed Schultz.

People like Walsh lick Matthews’ hind-quarters, giving him cover on these issues. (So did Maddow in 2008 when liberals began to complain.) Walsh was editor of Salon during some of these very bad years. She never assigned a writer to report on Matthews’ decade of gruesome misconduct.

For our money, Karen Finney was the worst of the frauds last night. Disgracefully, she posed herself on the bridge to Selma as she feigned outrage about Limbaugh’s misogyny. But where was she all those previous years? And is there nothing these people respect as they stage their parades of hypocrisy?

For our money, Connie Schultz was close behind Finney, for reasons we will explore as our report continues. But all the fakes and phonies and frauds were marching in last night’s parade.

In our view, there’s a great deal more to say about this most recent Limbaugh episode. Tomorrow, we’ll move on to other aspects of last week’s events. But the rancid hypocrisy of last night’s marchers truly set a new “liberal” standard.

Fox has always treated its viewers with this degree of contempt; they built on a culture which had been pioneered by Limbaugh itself. After last night, is there any reason to say that our tribe is different or better?

Really? Is there any way to make that claim at this point?

Read about KO and Musto: Olbermann kept bringing the slimy Musto back to entertain us “progressives” with his rank misogyny.

To read our reports from 2009, click here, then enter “Musto.” To see Keith tease Musto's appearance all through the hour, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/12/09.

Musto was going to massacre Prejean again! Olbermann promised us this entertainment all through that evening’s program. All the fakes who paraded last night thought this conduct was fine.

Truly, we’re all the Fox News Channel now. Go ahead! Just explain how we’re different!

New York Times confession: “It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus!”

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

At long last, the Times comes clean: Sometimes, you just have to chuckle when you read the New York Times.

This morning, we get a trend story on the front page. Julie Bosman has a hot scoop: We the people can no longer focus!

BOSMAN (3/5/12): Can you concentrate on Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy while Twitter beckons?

People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.

E-mail lurks tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away.

That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled e-books on apps from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble have come away with a conclusion: It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus on reading.

It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus! As readers of the New York Times, we’ll have to admit that we’ve noticed!

Bosman offers little real evidence in support of her thesis. Because we read the Times every day, we can’t help wondering if this front-page report isn’t really a confession—a confession by this sorry newspaper’s extremely flighty staff.

At the New York Times, reporters can’t focus! They also can’t seem to construct a graphic, a basic point we noticed again last week.

Uh-oh! Last Monday, Jackie Calmes authored a long front-page report about Obama’s treatment of debt and deficits. Inside the paper, her report was accompanied by a large graphic. The graphic purported to show the relative size of four well-known deficit-reduction plans.

If you look at the headlined numbers on the graphic, you get the clear impression that the Bowles-Simpson plan proposed slightly less deficit reduction than President Obama’s plan. Accordingto the headlined numbers, Bowles-Simpson proposed $4 trillion in deficit reduction; Obama's plan proposed $4.3 trillion.

Key point, although you’ll just have to trust us: The visual effect of those headlined numbers was much more striking in the hard-copy Times than in the on-line version of the graphic.

If you go by the headlined numbers, it looks like Obama proposed slightly more deficit reduction than Bowles-Simpson. But good lord! This is what you’re told if you read the tiny small print down below:

NEW YORK TIMES SMALL TINY PRINT (2/27/12): The savings claimed for each plan are not directly comparable since they do not all use the same budget baseline, but make different assumptions about the future of some current policies. Using the same baseline, Bowles-Simpson would save $6.5 trillion to Mr. Obama’s $4.3 trillion.

Good lord. Sometimes you just have to throw up your hands at this newspaper’s sweeping incompetence.

Julie Bosman has finally confessed. These people can no longer focus!

Let’s restate that key point: The headlined numbers were very dominant in the graphic which appeared in the hard-copy Times. They clearly suggested that Obama’s plan proposed more deficit reduction than Bowles-Simpson.

If you bothered to read the small tiny print, you saw that was massively wrong.

Why would anyone construct a graphic that way? Until we read Bosman’s courageous confession, we had no real idea.

Exactly three years later, a health care discussion breaks out!

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

That isn’t Ezra Klein’s fault: On the one hand, Ezra Klein wrote a very informative piece in Sunday’s Washington Post.

To read Klein’s important report, just click here. In recent months, the Post has been a much more serious newspaper than the New York Times.

Klein was reporting on a very important question: Why does health care cost so much in this country? Why does it cost so much more than in other developed nations? On the one hand, Klein’s report is very informative.

On the other hand, it arrives three years too late!

All through the year 2009, our major news orgs pretended to conduct a discussion of health care. In fact, they struggled and clawed to avoid a key question: Why does health care cost so much more in this country? As opposed to everywhere else in the developed world?

They avoided that question like the plague. Yesterday, Klein addressed it. His report was built around a new study. But early on, we noted Klein saying this:

KLEIN (3/4/12): There are many possible explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that we’re sicker. Or that we go to the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories. As Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt, Peter Hussey and Varduhi Petrosyan put it in the title of their influential 2003 study on international health-care costs, “it’s the prices, stupid.”

Say what? An influential study had appeared in 2003? An influential study which explained why we get looted on health care? We fired up Nexis and took a look, knowing what we would find.

Sure enough! According to Nexis, that influential study was never mentioned in any newspaper in 2009! (We searched on its title.) According to Nexis, it was mentioned once in a news magazine—in the August 1, 2009 issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Needless to say, it wasn’t mentioned on cable. In our nation's year-long Potemkin discussion, this "influential study" got sent down the memory hole.

All year long in 2009, we noted the way the major news orgs were refusing to examine that basic topic. Klein’s report is very instructive, although we think he underplays a basic question: Where does all that extra money go?
Who's getting rich on our health care?

Klein’s report is very instructive. It’s also three years late, although that isn't his fault.

One final word to the wise: Don't expect to see the Times report on this topic at all. The Times has sillier things to discuss. Silly is plainly their beat.

HERE’S THE OUTRAGE: The Washington Post is outraged by Rush!

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

Part 1—At the Washington Post, a new morning: Rush Limbaugh has been in a world of hurt—except at the New York Times, a newspaper which is very brave when dealing with less potent figures.

Right through this morning’s edition, the Times hasn’t written an editorial about Limbaugh’s latest breakdown. Have we mentioned the fact that the Times is quite brave about name-calling obscure state legislators in Alabama, but tends to hide beneath its desk when it comes to the conduct of major figures like Limbaugh and Donald Trump?

As of this posting on Monday morning, Andrew Rosenthal hasn’t even discussed Limbaugh’s recent conduct at his own blog, though he did offer this courageous post about “The Bigoted Birther”—Joe Arpaio. With his customary vigor, Rosenthal dropped B-, X- and R-bombs on Sheriff Joe’s head. But when Trump spent weeks purveying this garbage, the hometown Times averted its gaze (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/10/11.) And as of our posting on Monday morning, Rosenthal still hasn’t voiced the very name “Rush” on his own personal blog. (This may change, of course—with us taking the credit!)

The Times hasn’t chosen to speak about Rush. By way of contrast, the Washington Post offered this editorial about Limbaugh’s latest breakdown in Saturday morning’s paper. The editorial was headlined “Bum Rush.” The Post called attention to the piece with a large photo of Limbaugh.

Major newspapers have given Limbaugh extremely wide berth over the past twenty years. In that sense, this editorial was a welcome change in a long-standing practice.

And yet...

The Times still seems afraid of Rush; the Post was correct to speak up. And yet, we found ourselves puzzled—even annoyed—by some of the editors’ constructions.

This is the way their piece began. Why did the editors say that?

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (3/3/12): In a democracy, standards of civil discourse are as important as they are indefinable. Yet wherever one draws the line, Rush Limbaugh’s vile rants against Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke crossed it. Mr. Limbaugh is angry at President Obama’s efforts to require the provision of contraception under employer-paid health insurance and the White House’s attempts to make some political hay out of the policy. His way of showing this anger was to smear Ms. Fluke, who approached Congress to support the plan, as a “slut” seeking a government subsidy for her promiscuity.

Like other “shock jocks,” Mr. Limbaugh has committed verbal excesses in the past. But in its wanton vulgarity and cruelty, this episode stands out. Mr. Limbaugh’s audience, and those in politics who seek his favor as a means of reaching that audience, need to take special note.

The editorial continues from there; we strongly recommend it. The Post should have been doing this long ago.

And yet...

Question: Does last week’s episode really “stand out” in the sweep of Limbaugh’s career? His conduct last week was stupid, of course. But was this episode more egregious than his work in the past? One example: We’re so old that we can remember the day, eighteen years ago, when we heard Rush excitedly tell the world that Hillary Clinton, then the nation’s “first lady,” may have been involved in the murder of Vince Foster.

We were driving to Huntington, West Virginia. Limbaugh’s comments broke open a whole new chapter in the wanton, vulgar, debased public discourse concerning Clinton and Clinton, the well-known serial killers. His evidence that day was non-existent. His influence was vast.

Were Limbaugh’s “verbal excesses” last week really more egregious than that? Did last week’s episode really “stand out” in the context of Limbaugh’s career?

As the editors continued, they further explained what Limbaugh had done in this most recent case. We agree with every highlighted word. And yet...

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL: What we are saying is that Mr. Limbaugh has abused his unique position within the conservative media to smear and vilify a citizen engaged in the exercise of her First Amendment rights, and in the process he debased a national political discourse that needs no further debasing. This is not the way a decent citizen behaves, much less a citizen who wields significant de facto power in a major political party. While Republican leaders owe no apology for Mr. Limbaugh’s comments, they do have a responsibility to repudiate them—and him.

We agree. But Limbaugh has been “debasing the national political discourse” for a very long time, in a great many ways. We have said, again and again, that major news orgs and major pundits need to identify Limbaugh (and others) by name when they discuss the failure of our broken, inane public discourse.

The editors were right to criticize Limbaugh in the spirited way they did. But why are the editors doing it now? What made them feel that this episode stands out?

Why has this event stood out? Why has there been so much outrage about this event, when Limbaugh has misbehaved so many times in the past? It may be that a new day is dawning—that the society is finally pushing back against decades of gross misconduct.

That said, do you mind if we offer a few more reactions about this past week’s outrage?

First reaction:

In our view, we’ve really gone down a rabbit hole when we see Chris Matthews fuming on Hardball about Limbaugh’s outrageous conduct. For roughly a decade, Hardball served as Misogyny Central on the cable news channel dial. Much of this conduct was aimed at Hillary Clinton. But liberal women were frequent targets of Matthews' insults and ire.

When the liberal world finally noticed this problem in the spring of 2008, Rachel Maddow ran to the Associated Press to speak up for Matthews’ greatness. And what a coincidence! The very next week, she signed her first MSNBC contract!

Second reaction:

When it comes to rabbit holes, it’s hard to top the experience of seeing Maureen Dowd express her outrage at Limbaugh’s behavior. (Headline: “Have You No Shame, Rush?”) We’ll match the start of Sunday’s column with one of her most famous hits:

DOWD (3/4/12): As a woman who has been viciously slashed by Rush Limbaugh, I can tell you, it’s no fun.

At first you think, if he objects to the substance of what you’re saying, why can’t he just object to the substance of what you’re saying? Why go after you in the most personal and humiliating way?

DOWD (6/16/99): Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating.

Might we make an obvious point? When Dowd hiss-spat that famous jibe, she wasn’t just “going after” Candidate Gore “in the most personal and humiliating way.” (On the day of his formal campaign announcement.) She was also expressing her own long-standing hatred of women. She was suggesting there’s something very comical about the kinds of people who might end up lactating!

Ick! Imagine that!

Finally, in 2008, Times public editor Clark Hoyt devoted a column to the way this throwback gender nut had savaged Democratic women down through the many long years. Darlings! Dr. Judith Dean had such dowdy clothes! Do you remember the way this horrible person first expressed this critique?

DOWD (1/15/04): In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side—the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.

Classic Dowd! She could imagine Limbaugh beating on Dr. Dean—even as she did so herself! These people have toyed with you in these ways down through the many long years.

The “liberal” world has accepted Dowd’s misogyny down through the years—and it continues to do so now. So why all the outrage at Limbaugh’s behavior? And why all the outrage now?

One more observation—although for today, we’ll skip the Olbermann question:

If anything, the Washington Post went easy on Rush in its editorial, understating the sweep of last week’s “verbal excesses.” The editors mentioned the fact that he called Sandra Fluke a “slut.” They omitted other parts of his presentation, including his use of the verbally excessive term, “prostitute.”

If readers learned about this episode from the Post editorial, they encountered a bowdlerized version of Rush’s misconduct.

At any rate, many people have been very upset by Rush’s unpleasant conduct. At the same time, entertainment and culture pages are full of reviews of the new ABC series, GCB. Just so you’ll know:

The B stands for “bitch”—and the C stands for “Christian! IOKWTTAUBUAT! It’s OK when these terms are used by us against them!

It’s true. Last week, Rush Limbaugh really did “debase a national political discourse that needs no further debasing.” The Post’s second judgment is also true: “This is not the way a decent citizen behaves.” Having said that, we’ll also say this: We saw a shitload of highly selective outrage expressed last week.

“Where’s the outrage?” William Bennett once asked. Suddenly, the outrage is here! But Rush has been like this for a very long time.

Why did this episode churn so much rage? We think that question could be instructive. We’ll ponder that topic all week.

Press corps fly-weights shift the blame!

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

Parker plays an old song: Mainstream scribes possess one great skill.

They’re highly skilled at blame-shifting. In this morning’s New York Times, Ashley Parker—she’s just 29—shows her mastery of the old practice:

PARKER (3/3/12): Mitt Romney is best known as a private equity specialist, but he is trying to transform himself into a primary care physician for an ailing nation.

“If I were a doctor and I saw somebody who was obviously suffering from some condition, I would want to do something to help,” Mr. Romney said, at a town hall-style meeting in Bexley, Ohio, this week. “Well, my experience is not in medicine. My experience is in business.”

His goal, he told the crowd, is “to use what I’ve learned to try and help.”

Convincing voters that he means it, however, may be Mr. Romney’s greatest challenge. He has been struggling with how to handle his immense wealth ever since he announced his candidacy in June. Even his most casual remarks—about the Cadillacs his wife owns, or how his six-figure speaking fees did not add up to much—are pounced on by Democrats and Republicans alike, and used to portray him as a millionaire titan who is out of touch with the concerns of average Americans.

Wonderful clownistry! Even Romney’s most casual remarks “are pounced on by Democrats and Republicans alike?” That’s true, of course. But before that pouncing occurs, Romney’s remarks are pounced upon by fly-weights like Parker herself!

A bit later on, Parker even cites Romney’s aides as they make this obvious observation:

PARKER: Mr. Romney’s aides reject the notion that his inadvertent comments underscoring his wealth are gaffes, and instead argue that the news media takes a few words and blows them out of proportion. But Mr. Romney acknowledged in a news conference on Tuesday that his tone-deaf remarks have stalled his campaign.

Really? “The news media” has been doing these things? What makes these aides think that?

It has ever been thus. During Campaign 2000, mainstream scribes would routinely attribute their own behavior to “late-night comedians.” Late-night jesters were constantly blamed for the press corps’ behavior toward Candidate Gore, although the blame was often shifted to “Gore’s Republican opponents.”

The fact that the press corps was staging a war against Gore never seemed to get mentioned!

“Even his most casual remarks are pounced on by Democrats and Republicans alike!” Parker trained under Maureen Dowd. This is how such life-forms act.

Policy postscript: What about Romney’s most ridiculous policy proposals? Darlings, please! At the New York Times, reporters don’t bother with that!

Mormon joke watch: Are we perhaps a small tiny bit like the folk we revile?

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

Selecting a sauce for the imperfect gander: Here at THE HOWLER, we don’t know Charles Blow or Joan Walsh.

We're sure they're both perfectly decent people. Most people are.

Is either one of these people a bigot? We would be hugely surprised if that were the case—and we think all meaning has been drained from that term by its promiscuous use. But even as the New York Times was throwing its B-bombs around this past week, Blow and Walsh were apologizing for their own imperfect statements.

Everyone says something dumb at some point. Even folk in our own tribe!

Uh-oh! As Blow live-tweeted the last GOP debate, he threw down a fiery remark about one of the candidates’ “magic underwear.” It was a semi-nasty Mormon jibe! A jibe aimed at Romney’s religion!

Two days later, Blow apologized, congratulating himself for his forthrightness. For a review of the facts from New York magazine, click here. For a conservative reaction—and for a few more of Blow’s fiery tweets—check this Newsbusters post.

Walsh’s subsequent Mormon joke came on primary night. For her apology, click here; you can note the several ways she couched her own apology. It’s always great when you can hide behind Elie Wiesel and the late Daniel Pearl!

(Question: In 2004, did we like it when the other side tried to make Candidate Kerry answer for his own church’s behavior and views? If memory serves, we did not—although your lizard brain will be able to churn a long list of major distinctions.)

Romney is a horrible candidate with truly gruesome proposals. But that doesn't seem to be enough. Even worse, he’s a Mormon! With funny clothes and beliefs! Completely unlike us Catholics! Maureen Dowd has now played this card in at least three columns (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/17/12)—but Dowd is the unchallenged worst in show. Now, in fairly rapid succession, two leading liberals have gone there too.

No, it isn’t the end of the world. But we do think it’s kind of amazing—and perhaps a bit instructive.

Walsh likes to recall the terrible ways we Catholics were treated by those people back in the 1850s. Given these heartfelt sentiments, we don’t know why she’d be inclined to play the Mormon card against Romney. Unless our side might even have some of the same unfortunate impulses/instincts we’re eager to savage in others! Unless we’re human too!

Good news! Your lizard brain will be able to explain away events like these with ease. Your lizard brain will help you see that we are not a bit like them, not in the slightest way. But remember: Last week, the New York Times unleashed its B-bombs again, complaining that “right-wingers” in the New Hampshire legislature have a bigoted view on marriage equality. The Times forgot to mention the fact that the bigots’ view is the same as President Obama’s. (Although his view is evolving!)

In the case of Blow’s live Tweet, the newspaper gave its own guy a pass. We don’t necessarily disagree with that response, although his tweets were unattractive. (Why must they tweet?) But why are those other people so vile while their guy is so meritorious?

Lizard brains function like that! As a general matter, we aren’t real high on Blow or Walsh, which is part of the reason we note these remarks. But no, these imperfect people aren’t “bigots”—and everyone on every side is imperfect in various ways.

Among other shortcomings, we think Blow and Walsh tend to be unhelpfully tribal. No, their jibes aren’t the end of the world. But this may help you see what we mean.

PITIFUL HELPESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: Who gives a fig about Fidler!

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

Epilogue—Why we’re so pitifully clueless: At the start of the last GOP debate, Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona asked a perfectly sensible question.

The honor was granted by CNN’s John King, who plays a journalist on TV. Here’s what occurred at the start of that final debate, which King pretended to moderate:

KING (2/22/12): Gentlemen, it's good to see you again. Let's get right started on the important issues with a question from our audience. Sir, please tell us who you are and state your question.

FIDLER: My name is Gilbert Fidler from Gilbert, Arizona. And I'd like to ask this question to all the candidates if I could:

Since the first time in 65 years our national debt exceeds our gross national product, what are you going to do to bring down the debt?

That was a perfectly sensible question. The good sense ended right there.

According to several major studies, the three major candidates have all proposed budget plans which would massively swell our annual deficits and with them our national debt. Despite these proposals, they carp and complain about that rising debt.

But how strange! In the four prior GOP debates, no questions were asked about this remarkable state of affairs! No questions, as in none!

Now, Gilbert Fidler asked a good question—and John King hid under the bed.

In the lengthy segment which ensued, the candidates pretended to stage a discussion of Fidler’s perfectly sensible question. In fact, they did nothing of the kind—and King didn’t make the slightest attempt to bring them back to that question.

Did Fidler understand the way he and his question were toyed with that evening? We have no idea. But this is completely standard behavior as the press corps pretends to conduct a national discourse.

More reprehensible is the reaction from some of our “liberal” preserves.

We’ll take a guess: Fidler isn’t a budget expert. (We aren’t budget experts either.) He isn’t an economics professor. Neither are we over here.

Fidler isn’t a budget expert. On the other hand, he has heard a lot of talk about our ballooning national debt. We’ll guess that he is sincerely concerned, as well he might be.

Another guess: He probably doesn’t know that people like King and Santorum and Romney are not sincere or concerned.

Just a guess: He may not know that his sensible question was used to stage a Potemkin discussion. More reprehensible was the reaction from some of our “liberal” preserves.

We’ll guess that Fidler is a perfectly decent person with a sincere concern—a sincere concern he may have formed from following pseudo-conservative sources. But you may not know that such people exist if you read our “liberal” blogs. Four days after Fidler posed his question, a self-assured liberal rube at a leading blog presented this view of the world:

ATKINS (2/26/12): Most of time I think of conservative leaders as evil geniuses more than abject fools. Their voting base are generally oppressed rubes, delusional ideologues, racists or vicious sociopaths, but the leadership is generally very smart and cagey.

We know, we know! He used the word “generally!” And in a moment of excessive kindness, young Atkins might be willing to classify Fidler as one of the “oppressed rubes.”

Adding to the general hilarity, Atkins’ patron offered this post on the very same day—a post in which she helped us learn to admire those of us in our own tribe.

“Educated liberals are different [from educated conservatives] and tend to be open to new information and more flexible of mind,” she wrote, basing her statement on the planet’s most limited data. “The simple rule is this,” she self-admiringly continued. “If you want to persuade liberals of something, bring out the charts and spreadsheets. If you want to persuade conservatives of something, make them identify emotionally with what you want them to believe.”

In fairness, we’ll agree with that one key word: “simple.”

For decades, a certain process has defined our pseudo-national discourse. Pseudo-conservative corporate shills have flooded the nation with disinformation. To the extent that we liberals have managed to notice, we have mainly tended to name-call the folk who believe this unrefuted garbage.

We haven’t done a very good job refuting these mountains of disinformation; for the most part, we haven’t tried. It never even enters our heads to establish forums in which we attempt to speak to people like Fidler.

Darlings! Speak with those people? It just isn’t done!

John King played the corporate fool in last Wednesday’s final debate. And sure enough! Out in the wider world, an irate and bumptious young fellow name-called people like Fidler!

Question: Have you seen a single liberal comment on King’s performance at that final debate? Have you seen a single liberal comment on a remarkable fact—the fact that no one asked these damn-fool candidates a single question about their budget proposals in the previous four debates?

In fact, your career liberal leaders will never name-call the millionaire "journalist" King. Darlings! In the world of journalistic careers, it simply isn’t done! And uh-oh! The rest of us liberals tend to play ditto-head to our “leaders” just the way Rush’s crowd does!

The people than whom we’re much smarter!

Fidler seemed to be the one sane person at that final GOP debate. David Atkins quickly rose to put such folk in their place. Meanwhile, Digby helped us see how much smarter we liberals are. Go ahead! Laugh out loud!

The process has worked this way for decades. Are you happy with how things turned out?

Instant classic Rosenthal!

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

This is your New York Times: Good grief.

Andrew Rosenthal is the editorial page editor of the New York Times. This is his attempt to analyze “Santorum’s Woman Problem:”

ROSENTHAL (3/2/12): Santorum’s Woman Problem

Rick Santorum, the improbable presidential aspirant, opposes abortion, thinks birth control promotes immorality, objects to women serving in combat positions, and has criticized “radical feminists” for encouraging women to join the workforce. He doesn’t have much respect for modern women, and modern women don’t have much respect for him—a feeling they’re expressing by voting for his rival. Polling in Arizona showed that Mitt Romney carried female voters by 17 percentage points. It was closer in the Michigan primary, 5 percentage points, but everything was closer in Michigan.

There’s more, but that highlighted chunk captures the essence of the modern Times.

“Polling in Arizona showed that Mitt Romney carried female voters by 17 percentage points?” That’s true, but Rosenthal omits the corresponding fact: Romney carried men in Arizona by a much larger 26 points!

There was a gender gap in the state. But Santorum did substantially better among these "modern women" than among these modern men.

We're not saying Arizona Republicans should have voted that way. But Rosenthal's dogma to the side, that's the way they did vote. (To review the New York Times exit poll data, click here.)

On a journalistic basis, it’s hard to get more pathetic than that. But this really is the modern Times. The newspaper functions like that.

Cable guests say the darnedest things on a regular basis!

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

What the heck has Obama proposed: Yesterday, the far-reaching Blunt amendment went down to a narrow defeat. It would have let every employer pick and choose what to include in his health insurance plan.

Question: Does anyone know what President Obama has actually proposed in this area? Does anybody know at this point? How about Democratic senators?

On last evening’s Hardball, Chris spoke with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand about this ongoing battle. He played a Republican radio ad from Missouri, then asked the senator to respond. To watch the full segment, click here.

We were puzzled by Gillibrand’s account of Obama’s proposal:

MATTHEWS (3/1/12): What would you say? What would you say in response to that [ad] in Missouri?

GILLIBRAND: Listen, the ad is outrageous and it’s a bald-faced lie. So you’re saying that we’re telling the Catholic Church what to do? No, we are not. In fact, President Obama made such a reasonable and very respectful compromise. He excluded churches and synagogues and institutions that are primarily for religious purposes, where the people who work there are the same religion.

What is not excluded are large employers, universities, hospitals, who can’t pick and choose what laws they’re actually going to follow. You can’t choose which labor law you think is worthwhile and which one isn’t. We've decided that long, long ago. And in fact, the Supreme Court Justices, the most conservative of them, Justice Scalia, made that point, said you are not allowed to pick and choose what laws you want to follow based on some religious objection.

And so this is long-settled law. And in at least 28 states, Chris, this has been the law of the land for about a decade, where states have made the determination that these larger institutions that serve the public at large in commercial ventures actually have to play by the same rules as everybody else.

MATTHEWS: Right.

GILLIBRAND: And so the ad is a lie.

Say what? Gillibrand took those “28 states” and raised them a few, referring to “at least 28 states.” But her account of Obama’s position didn’t seem to encompass the actual compromise he has made to his original proposal. “What is not excluded are large employers, universities, hospitals, who can’t pick and choose what laws they’re actually going to follow?” In fact, universities and hospitals were among the specific targets of the ballyhooed compromise he announced on February 10.

Will Catholic hospitals and universities “actually have to play by the same rules as everybody else?” We were puzzled by Gillibrand’s account. But Chris immediately said she was right. Soon, he doubled down:

MATTHEWS: And not only did they—I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think you missed a point important to me. And that is, not only did he compromise by excepting churches and synagogues, he went further later on and made it clear that the insurance companies would have to pay for this coverage and not require the churches or synagogues to sign onto something they can’t within their own religious beliefs do so. I think he really went the extra yard here.

You’re great to come on the show tonight. I didn’t know you’d be coming on in the face of Rush Limbaugh, but I think you did a good job on that character, the new spiritual grand poobah of the Republican Party. Anyway, thank you so much, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of the Empire State, New York.

Like Gillibrand, Chris made it sound like Obama’s compromise, which “went the extra yard,” affects churches and synagogues only.

Chris never knows what he’s talking about, but we were puzzled by Gillibrand's statements. That said, cable guests say the darnedest things on a quite regular basis! Last night, on the O’Reilly Factor, Mr. O was complaining about the fact that Obama wants to raise his income tax rate.

Mr. O’s statement was factually accurate. We've never seen him misstate this point. But look what Democratic fund-raiser Robert Zimmerman instantly said in reply:

O’REILLY (3/1/12): Now for the top story tonight, reaction with us: Tamara Draut, vice president at Demos, a progressive organization, and Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic fundraiser.

All right. How can President Obama ask me to pay more taxes when every single day I am reporting things like this? Fannie Mae wants another $5 billion. Abound Solar going out of business after, you know, an enormous investment by the federal government.

How can he ask me for more money? He's mismanaging what I have already given him? Robert.

ZIMMERMAN: Well first of all, he's asking all of us for more money.

O'REILLY: He's asking—I'm personalizing.

ZIMMERMAN: OK.

O'REILLY: He's asking me for more money. He's mismanaging what I have already given him.

ZIMMERMAN: I've got to tell you. I don't agree with you on that premise.

“He's asking all of us for more money?” Presumably, Zimmerman meant that he is asking all of us high earners for more money. (Zim has a whole lot of swag.) But just like that, he seemed to voice a treasured bit of disinformation—Obama wants to raise everyone’s taxes!

The GOP works hard to make people think such things. Zimmerman quickly helped them out. And no, his misleading statement never got straightened out.

Cable guests say the darnedest things! Question: With guests like these on the left, why book guests from the right?

Why is Gail Collins still employed!

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

Queen of the fragrant begonias: The sheer stupidity of the upper-end press corps is often a thing to behold.

Why are we the people so hopelessly uninformed about major budget topics? Consider the latest grinding nonsense from the pen of Gail Collins.

Yesterday was one of those days when Collins pretends to explore an actual policy topic. Yes, she offered endless references to Williams Henry Harrison’s cold; she burned up roughly half her column with this time-killing bullshit. But as she did, she managed to marble in a few thoughts about the Social Security program—more specifically, about the best way to address its projected revenue shortfall.

She clowned, cavorted and carried on. Eventually, though, she offered us this. This may be the dumbest political assessment currently found on the planet:

COLLINS (3/1/12): The basic answer to fixing the long-term Social Security imbalance is just to eliminate the payroll tax cap, which currently exempts all income over $110,100 a year. Do that, and you have solved the problem. Politically speaking, you would probably have to agree to mix a limited tax increase with one of the fixes desired by fiscal conservatives, like reducing benefits for the wealthy, or changing the cost-of-living adjustment or, yeah, raising the retirement age a little. But the main answer is that cap, and anybody who refuses to even discuss the payroll tax cap is not serious about fixing Social Security.

Romney has already ruled out the payroll tax cap. Also, he once drove to Canada with his dog tied to the roof of the car. End of story.

Are you kidding? Does Collins really believe that, as a political matter, “you” could eliminate the payroll tax cap if you added a couple of sops to the right, “like reducing benefits for the wealthy?”

Does she think that a president—Barack Obama, let's say—could sanely propose such a deal?

Obviously, that is sheer lunacy. It may be the dumbest political assessment currently found on the planet. But so what! In the very next paragraph, we readers got pleasured by the good solid fun of a dog on the roof of a car!

Incredibly, Collins sits at the very top of your “press corps.” (You might say she’s strapped to its roof.) But why is this person even employed? Why is she part of the press corps at all? And why do we “liberals” tolerate this, even for a suburban minute?

Why are we the people so dumb? Some of us read Gail Collins.

PITIFUL HELPLESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: Why is John King still employed!

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

Part 4—King of the potted plants: In this morning’s New York Times, Floyd Norris devotes his Business Day column to Rick Santorum’s budget proposals.

What Norris finds isn’t pretty. According to Norris, Santorum has offered “the most amazing [budget] proposal” of all the Republican candidates:

NORRIS (3/2/12): The most amazing proposal came from Rick Santorum...

He would reduce almost everyone’s taxes. He would slash tax rates for all, his campaign Web site promises, while preserving “deductions for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, health care, retirement savings and children.”

He would cut capital gains and dividend tax rates to 12 percent, from 15 percent, and triple the personal deduction for each child. He would repeal the alternative minimum tax. He would cut the corporate tax rate in half, increase the research and development tax credit and set the rate at zero for manufacturers. He would eliminate the estate tax, or the “death tax” in his lexicon. He would eliminate “marriage tax penalties throughout the federal tax code.”

The Tax Policy Center in Washington estimated that in one year, 2015, that set of proposals would reduce federal tax revenue by 40 percent, or $1.3 trillion, from what it would be under current law, which assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

There is nothing new about this; it just doesn't get discussed much. On January 30, the Washington Post used that study by the Tax Policy Center as the basis for a slashing editorial about the budget plans of the GOP candidates (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/29/12). They too stressed the lunacy of Santorum’s budget proposals. The editors stressed the fact that Santorum’s plan—like the plans of Romney and Gingrich—“would add trillions more” to the national debt. According to the Tax Policy Center, Santorum’s proposals would add $900 billion to the deficit in 2015 alone, even after you allow for extending all the Bush tax cuts! So the editors wrote, in amazement.

It was against this backdrop that Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona rose to ask the opening question at last week’s Republican debate.

CNN’s John King could have asked the opening question, since he seemed to be serving as moderator for the debate. But due to King's vast love for the average Joe, he deferred to Citizen Fidler, who is concerned about the national debt.

“What are you going to do to bring down the debt?” Fidler asked the various candidates. King asked Santorum to answer first. This was the start of his statement:

SANTORUM (2/22/12): Thank you, Gilbert.

I put together a specific plan that cuts $5 trillion over five years, that spends less money each year for the next four years that I'll be president of the United States. So it's not inflation-adjusted, it's not baseline-budgeting. We're actually going to shrink the actual size of the federal budget, and we're going to do so by dealing with the real problem.

Santorum went on and on from there, spooning a porridge of fine-sounding claims which no one on earth understood. But as he started, Santorum seemed to say that he was going to cut $5 trillion from the debt over the next five years—or perhaps from national spending, or perhaps from projected deficits.

Whatever!

As Santorum spoke to Fidler, it had been more than three weeks since that Washington Post editorial—an editorial based upon a major study of Santorum’s plan. Fidler was worried about the debt—and the study said that Santorum's proposals would massively add to the debt! This was, therefore, the perfect place for King to perform a journalistic act—to question Santorum’s fine-sounding claims, letting people like Fidler know that there may be a small problem here.

Santorum’s full answer to Fidler had burned some 400 words. But right there as he began, he seemed to say that we would massively reduce federal debt (or federal spending; or something). Because he isn’t the world’s dumbest person, John King knows that this claim is pure shit. So what did Khe say when Santorum was through?

This is what John King said:

KING: Governor Romney, I'm wondering if that answer satisfied you. Just in recent days you said this, quote, "If you want a fiscal conservative, you can't vote for Rick Santorum because he's not." Did he answer your questions there?

King threw to Romney. He proceeded to emit a long string of malarkey himself.

At this point, we offer a question: Why is John King still employed? In this moment, he made it clear that he had no intention of serving as an actual moderator at this final debate. All around the country, people like Fidler may have believed that they were seeing an actual journalist trying to illuminate the campaign's basic issues. If anything, many conservatives probably assumed that King was ideologically opposed to these candidates—that he would do whatever he could to embarrass these hopefuls.

Voters who thought that were wrong. Beyond that, King wasn’t trying to illuminate squat, squash or squadoodle this evening. A long discussion of deficits and debt followed Fidler’s opening question. During the course of this wandering pseudo-discussion, John King, king of the potted plants, restricted himself to the following “questions.” Not a word was ever said about the study by the Tax Policy Center—the study which took us right to the heart of Citizen Fidler's concern:

John King's "questions" during the debt discussion:
KING: Governor Romney, I'm wondering if that answer satisfied you? Just in recent days you said this, quote, “If you want a fiscal conservative, you can't vote for Rick Santorum because he's not.” Did he answer your questions there?

KING: Senator, the governor singled you out. Take a few seconds.

KING: Governor, please quickly I want to bring the congressman and the speaker into the conversation, but respond.

KING: Mr. Speaker, join the conversation. Address Gilbert's question and if you so choose, address some criticism you've received on this issue from this state's senior senator [John McCain] campaigning for Governor Romney. He questioned your credentials on fiscal conservatism. He said when you were the speaker, earmarking became an art.

KING: Congressman Paul, you've questioned the conservative—fiscal conservative credentials of all these gentlemen but particularly this week Senator Santorum. You have a new television ad that labels him a fake. Why?

KING: Senator Santorum, respond quickly.

KING: Congressman, quickly.

KING: As you can see, this is a—it's an important issue to the people in the audience. I think it's one of the reasons this race has been so volatile. Voters are looking and they say which of these candidates can I trust? And each of you are trying to make your case to them. As you try to do so, Governor Romney, you said recently that as governor you're a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts. What did you mean by that?

KING: Mr. Speaker, as you know, often when deficit reduction—when deficit reduction and economic growth are priorities at the same time, some people see a collision. Some people see a conflict. You've outlined your views on taxes. Governor Romney today outlined a tax plan that would cut the, put the top rate at 28 percent, eliminate capital gain taxes for incomes below $200,000, cut the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. Is that the right approach? And is it consistent—and it's a tough one sometimes—with spurring economic growth at a time this state and other states are looking for jobs? But as you have Gilbert's question, also looking to make sure the next president works on the deficit?

KING: The Speaker raises an important point about looking forward, and I hope we spend most of the night doing that. But as you know, there's a lot of anger in the base of the party about some of the things that have happened in the past, and the Tea Party, especially. Now, earmarks, the pork barrel spending, it's a tiny slice of the budget. I think we all know that. But if you talk to a Tea Party activist, they think it’s an example, a gateway to corruption. Senator, you have said there are good earmarks and bad earmarks. And you have talked about your earmarks in the past. Any that you specifically regret? And why have you criticized—why do you think the money that went to Governor Romney for security at the Olympics, why was that a bad earmark?

KING: Governor?

KING: Quickly.

KING: Mr. Speaker, you were referenced by the governor, you first, then Congressman Paul. Don't worry. We'll get to you, Congressman. I promise.

KING: Congressman Paul, answer Senator Santorum, please, sir.

Basically, King played traffic cop, letting the candidates stage a worthless kabuki discussion. To the extent that he offered any guidance, he turned the discussion toward the trivial question of earmarks—even as he noted that they constitute “a tiny slice of the budget.”

At one point, King did an amazing thing—he actually cited the new tax cuts Romney had proposed that day! But as he did, he hemmed and hawed, barely daring to suggest the possibility that it is hard to offer so many tax cuts while professing to worry about deficits and debt.

At two points, King referred back to Fidler’s question. But everything King did in this segment demonstrated his abject contempt for Gilbert Fidler—and for the many citizens, all over the country, who watched this debate because they’re worried about their nation’s problems. King pretended to run a discussion, but he was careful to keep things safe. Presumably, CNN doesn’t want to offend its conservative viewers.

Or to bore us with hard stuff!

For decades, information surveys have shown that we the people are pitifully clueless about major budget issues. We believe all sorts of crazy things; during those decades, people like King have refused to stand up and tell us when we’re being deceived. Meanwhile, we in the liberal world are too goddamned stupid—on the leadership level, too store-bought—to bring a serious, sustained complaint against King and the others like him.

Gail Collins prances, minces and plays. But no one is willing to tell the public about what people like King keep doing. Darlings, it just isn’t done! Careers hang in the balance! And party invitations!

Meanwhile, we in the liberal world love to take out our hate on the Fidlers. All too often, we high-minded liberals are empty, stupid, venal, mean. We very much tend to be ditto-heads, not unlike Rush Limbaugh’s followers. We kiss the asses of our “intellectual leaders” even as they lie in our faces.

We kiss the asses of our “leaders” because they tell us the stories we like. What a shame! That the nation’s average Joes—and Gilberts—are stuck with “liberals” like us.

Tomorrow—epilogue: The New York Times’ latest chart

Bailout watch: Robert Reich spreads the wet blanket!

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

Where the cheering ends: If you’ve watched MSNBC the past two nights, you’ve seen a lot of cheerleading about President Obama’s triumphant speech to the UAW on Tuesday. Last night, Chris and Joan were gushing pretty hard:

WALSH (2/29/12): I would say the winner yesterday was whoever scheduled that speech for President Obama on the day of the Michigan primary.

MATTHEWS: It was a good speech.

WALSH: And it was a beautiful speech. It was a wonderful speech. His heart was in it.

MATTHEWS: Well, let’s—

WALSH: He talked about caring about people.

We were sobbing before they were done! But on MSNBC these days, the cheerleading is general. Obama’s speech was lustily praised, despite itsoccasional misstatements. The auto bailout has also been praised over the past week or so.

Regarding the auto bailout, we think a point deserves to be remembered. This is Robert Reich, spreading the wet blanket on last week’s Last Word. He discussed the possibility of bringing manufacturing jobs back to this country:

REICH (2/20/12): There has been a little bit of a boomlet in manufacturing back in the United States. But we’re still way down. I mean, we’re five million jobs short, manufacturing jobs short of where we were in—ten years ago, in the year 2000.

And the nostalgia, I think, Lawrence, comes from the fact that these—manufacturing used to be the place where we had really good, high-wage jobs for Americans who did not have a four-year college degree. And that’s still the case, to the extent that there are manufacturing jobs out there. The problem is that there’s a misconception. And the reason that those good manufacturing jobs existed was not because of manufacturing per se, it was because we had strong unions in manufacturing and in the manufacturing sector.

And those strong unions were able to negotiate from a position of power and get very good wages for workers in manufacturing. Those days, unfortunately, have waned. I mean, look at GM. And GM has huge profits, but the UAW, the United Auto Workers, you know, managed to negotiate a new agreement that provides new workers with only $14 an hour, starting salary. That’s half of what all new workers were getting.

O’DONNELL: Robert Reich, thank you very much for joining me tonight. Everybody should read your piece, "Manufacturing Illusions." Thank you very much.

GM is doing great! Those new workers, not so much.

On MSNBC, the cheerleading is general, pretty much as it is on Fox. On MSNBC, that includes a lot of cheerleading for the auto bailout.

We liberals are cheering because Romney was so wrong in his prediction about the effects of the bailout. For our money, that highlighted statement by Reich is also worth recalling, big picture-wise.

Romney keeps saying the unions made out like bandits. Unfortunately, it seems he's wrong there too.

Candidate Kennedy wouldn’t yell bigot!

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

And look where he ended up: Yesterday, we discussed Andrew Rosenthal’s use of the pleasing term “bigot.” See THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/29/12.

Later, we were reading the Q-and-A from Candidate Kennedy’s famous speech about church and state in September 1960. Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. The gathering included a number of ministers who didn’t seem especially friendly to the idea that a Catholic president would avoid serving the Pope.

Some of the questioning didn’t seem real friendly; to read the transcript or watch the tape, just click here. We were struck by this statement by Kennedy as the session was ending:

KENNEDY (9/12/60): Let me just—I guess our time is coming to an end, but I believe in it. Let me say, finally, that I am delighted to come here today. I don't want anyone to think because they interrogate me on this very important question, that I regard that as unfair questions or unreasonable or somebody who is concerned about the matter is prejudiced or bigoted. I think this fight for religious freedom is basic in the establishment of the American system, and therefore any candidate for the office, I think, should submit himself to the questions of any reasonable man.

My only objection would be—my only limit to that would be that if somebody said regardless of Senator Kennedy's position, regardless of how much evidence he's given that what he says he means, I still wouldn't vote for him because he is a member of that church, I would consider that unreasonable. What I consider to be reasonable, and an exercise of free will and free choice, is to ask the candidate to state his views as broadly as possible, investigate his record to see what whether he states he believes and then to make an independent rational judgment, as to whether he could be entrusted with this highly important position. So I want you to know that I'm grateful to you for inviting me tonight. I'm sure that I have made no converts to my church. But I do hope—I do hope that at least my view, which I believe to be the view of my fellow Catholics, who hold office, I hope that it may be of some value in at least assisting you to make a careful judgment. Thank you.

Were some of these ministers “bigots?” It’s always possible. But that is a very important term in modern American history. (You might even call it a “sacred” term.) Candidate Kennedy made it a point—he wouldn’t throw B-bombs around.

Many state legislators in New Hampshire oppose marriage equality. Does that make them bigots? Yesterday, Rosenthal sprayed the term around in the promiscuous way he favors. He forgot to say that President Obama opposes equality too.

We’re old enough to recall the time when that term referred to the kinds for people who chased children through the streets with dogs, then went off and murdered their parents. Today, it’s a casual throw-away term, directed at those we dislike.

PITIFUL HELPLESS KNOW-NOTHINGS: What did Candidate Romney propose!

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

Part 3—The Times doesn’t care: Why are we pitiful helpless know-nothings when it comes to budget issues?

Good question! Tomorrow, we’ll review what John King did—and didn’t do—when Gilbert Fidler of Gilbert, Arizona asked the various Republican candidates to discuss the topic of debt reduction at the last GOP debate. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/29/12.)

For today, let’s discuss the way the New York Times reacted to Romney’s proposals.

Last Wednesday, Candidate Romney released the outlines of his new tax cut proposals. Two days later, he gave a “major economic address” in Detroit, in which he fleshed out these proposals.

The Washington Post reacted to these events as an actual newspaper might. Last Thursday, the paper discussed Romney’s new proposals in its featured, front-page news report. This report also discussed President Obama’s “long-awaited plan to overhaul the nation’s corporate tax base,” a plan which was also released on Wednesday.

Last Thursday, the competing proposals by Obama and Romney led the Post’s front page. But that wasn’t all! On page A2, the Post presented a sprawling analysis of Romney’s proposal, written by Ezra Klein. On the op-ed page, Greg Sargent offered an additional reaction to the Romney proposal. (Click here, then click once again.)

On Friday, the Post presented this news report by Lori Montgomery. It described a new study concerning the ways the proposals of the Republican candidates would cause we federal deficits to balloon. (The new study on which Montgomery reported predated Romney’s new proposals.)

On Sunday, the Post presented an editorial about Obama’s new proposals. On Monday, the paper’s featured editorial dealt with Romney’s new proposals. The editors helped Post readers consider the effects of Romney’s new plan:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (2/27/12): At a time of record debts and deficits, the two leading Republican presidential candidates are proposing a path on taxes and spending likely to add trillions more. That's the sobering conclusion of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), whose board includes six Republican former lawmakers with expertise in budget issues, three Republican former heads of the Congressional Budget Office, and two former Office of Management and Budget directors under Republican presidents.

Last month, we examined former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's reckless tax plan, which, according to calculations by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, would drain another $180 billion from the treasury in 2015 alone. The CRFB estimated the 10-year cost of the original Romney tax plan at $1.3 trillion. By the end of the 10-year window, the debt would be a dangerous 86 percent of the gross domestic product.

But last week Mr. Romney upped the tax-cutting ante, promising, in addition to the previous grab bag of tax goodies, a 20 percent across-the-board cut in marginal rates and repeal of the alternative minimum tax. The Tax Policy Center estimated that the 20 percent rate cut would cost about $150 billion in 2015 alone. The Romney campaign said that the rate change wouldn't add to the deficit because it would generate unspecified economic growth and be accompanied by spending cuts and elimination or cutbacks of deductions. Okay, which ones? On that question, the campaign was decidedly unspecific - understandably so, because its math doesn't add up. Until he is more specific about what sacred cows he would tackle - employer-sponsored health care? - Mr. Romney's plan cannot be taken as a fiscally responsible proposal.

Then again, he looks reasonable by comparison with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum...

In our view, the Post should have taken one additional step (see below). But the paper reacted to Romney’s new proposals as an actual newspaper might.

Why are we pitiful helpless know-nothings when it comes to budget issues? For one part of the answer, consider the way the New York Times reacted to Romney’s proposals.

Last Thursday, the Washington Post reviewed Romney’s proposals in its featured, top-of-the-front-page report. By way of contrast, the New York Times relegated the topic to page 6 of its Business Day section—and the news report, by John Harwood, didn’t even appear at the top of that godforsaken page! (For a version of that report, click this.)

Harwood’s report on Romney’s proposals appeared midway down page B6! Meanwhile, for people who think they get major election coverage in the Times’ sprawling first section, the following passage, from Thursday’s paper, represents the only discussion of Romney’s proposals these people have seen to date. This passage is taken from Jeff Zeleny’s report on Wednesday evening’s GOP debate. We hope you read all the way to the end! This passage started in paragraph 17 of this report:

ZELENY (2/23/12): Mr. Romney, hoping to increase his appeal to conservatives who have been reluctant to rally around his candidacy, introduced the outlines of a new economic policy before the debate on Wednesday. He proposed cutting the top income tax for individuals to 28 percent while holding out the prospect of limiting tax deductions.

Mr. Romney’s earlier economic plan called only for preserving the current top tax rate of 35 percent, while holding out the promise of lower rates later in an overhaul of the tax code. But facing a major challenge from Mr. Santorum, he chose to announce his revised plan, which he will highlight in a major economic speech on Friday in Detroit.

“I'm going to lower rates across the board for all Americans,” Mr. Romney told supporters at a rally in Chandler, Ariz.

On Thursday morning, that was it! Unless you fumbled ahead to page B6 in the newspaper’s Business Day section.

For the record: That passage comes from Zeleny’s report in our own hard-copy Times, upon which we're gazing as we type. But this material doesn’t appear in the on-line version of Zeleny’s report, nor does it appear in Thursday’s Times as memorialized in the Nexis archives. Question: Did this meager account of Romney’s proposals appear in the Washington Edition of the Times, the one which lands on our own doorstep, but not in the paper’s National Edition? We have no idea. The Times publishes at least three different “editions” each day; on its own web site and on Nexis, the paper provides a bewildering array of accounts of what it has actually published. According to the Times web site and according to the Nexis archives, there was no discussion of Romney’s proposals in Thursday’s front section. The only discussion appeared in Business Day, midway down page B6!

Just a guess: It wouldn’t occur to most New York Times subscribers that they have to go to page B6 to learn about major budget proposals by the Republican front-runner. Another guess: Most Times subscribers assume that they're getting the major election news in the paper’s sprawling first section, where all manner of campaign reporting appears each and every day. Sorry! In this instance, a reader of the paper’s front section learned very little, perhaps nothing at all, about Romney’s important proposals.

And then, on Saturday, things got worse! In the front section of the Times, a silly clown reported on the “major policy speech” where Romney fleshed out his new proposals. This newspaper’s “atrophied Dowdism” was on full display as a silly boy explained why readers would be getting no real information:

BARBARO (2/25/12): Mitt Romney set out on Friday to deliver a sweeping and sober vision for how to revive the American economy in a major policy speech here. In the end, he delivered something else as well: an unintended lesson about how poor visuals and errant words can derail a candidate's message in this modern political news culture.

In an unusual choice, Mr. Romney gave his speech inside Ford Field, a cavernous indoor football stadium with 65,000 seats.

To the television audience, it appeared perfectly normal. Mr. Romney could be seen standing at a lectern in front of a backdrop that had the logo of the Detroit Economic Club, the event's host. And when the stadium audience of about 1,200 people clapped, they filled the screen as cameras panned across them.

But in the age of Twitter and the Internet, that is not all that matters.

Before Mr. Romney had uttered a word, reporters began posting pictures online showing the stadium from every available angle—almost empty, except for the chairs set up on the field itself, near the 20-yard line.

Row after row of barren blue seats across the giant stadium made the crowd seem minuscule. Through the rapid-fire, reality-reshaping powers of the Web, a storyline for the day began to take hold that undercut and detracted from Mr. Romney's words: big speech, tiny crowd.

Ordinarily, such imagery might be overwhelmed by the news of the day: a highly anticipated, substantive address packed with previously unknown details. Mr. Romney called for a 20 percent cut in income taxes; handing control of federal welfare programs to the states; and creating private sector competition for Medicare services.

But the Romney campaign had leaked most of the speech's contents several days ago, leaving members of the news media with little to focus on—except, of course, the scene itself.

The distractions did not end there...

There! You finally had your account of Candidate Romney's proposals! Careful—it went by very fast! Were you even able to spot it?

As this silly child went on to explain, “reporters” like him had been “distracted” from Romney's address in various ways. But go ahead—enjoy a good laugh! “Ordinarily,” this reporter explained, the actual news from a “major policy speech” might overcome such pointless distractions! But in this case, “the Romney campaign had leaked most of the speech's contents several days ago, leaving members of the news media with little to focus on!”

The campaign had leaked most of the contents on Wednesday! That was true, of course—but the Times had made little attempt to report those contents to its readers. But so what? On Saturday, this silly child used this excuse to explain his vapid “reporting.”

The Washington Post made a serious attempt to report and analyze Romney’s proposals. It did so through a front-page news report, a sprawling analysis piece, and a featured editorial. We would offer one criticism; the Post should have done a follow-up news report about the effects of Romney’s proposals, as best they can be explained at this time. A reader shouldn’t be forced to turn to an editorial to get the kind of analysis the editors offered on Monday.

That said, the Washington Post made a serious attempt to discuss Romney’s proposals. But in its political reporting, the New York Times is a gang of clowns, a receptacle for the scribbling of those who have been hired to further its atrophied Dowdism. To this day, the paper has made little attempt to explain or analyze Romney’s proposals. Instead, it traffics in the endless “distractions” it sells as political news.

Go ahead! Just review all the bullshit today!

The New York Times has played the fool in the wake of Candidate Romney’s proposals. This brings us back to the millionaire King, pretending to question the GOP hopefuls at their final debate Wednesday night.

Tomorrow—part 4: King of the pitiful know-nothings