WHAT’S WRONG WITH MSNBC: This!

THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 2013

Part 4—Hayes, Walsh and Maddow speak out: Yesterday, Obama announced that Susan Rice will become his national security adviser.

A few hours later, the children began to offer their “takes” on Obama’s selection.

What’s wrong with MSNBC? At 8 PM, Chris Hayes discussed the long-running, savage attacks against Rice. He spoke with Salon’s Joan Walsh.

What’s wrong with MSNBC? If not for what was said in the very next hour, the exchange between Hayes and Walsh could have gone to the Guinness folk as the “dumbest discussion ever.”

To watch their full segment, just click this. This is the amazing way the pair of analysts started:

HAYES (6/5/13): Joining me now is Joan Walsh, MSNBC political analyst, editor at large for Salon and author of the book, “What’s the Matter with White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America.”

OK. I just have to say, just to hammer this home— Susan Rice was so screwed on this whole Benghazi thing. I just, just to make— I mean, she had nothing to do with it.

Why was she the target? I still don’t get it. Why did Lindsey Graham and John McCain— Like, what do they have against Susan Rice?

WALSH: I still don’t get it either.

Walsh still doesn’t get it either! And yes, that is what they said.

Below, we’ll see this amazing discussion continue. But good lord! Nine months into the assault against Rice, Hayes was quick to announce that he “still doesn’t get it”—still doesn’t get why McCain and Graham would have made her their target.

You’d think that puts Hayes in a class by himself among big cable stars. But his guest announced her cluelessness too. “I still don’t get it either,” the Chris Matthews acolyte said.

Hayes and Walsh still don’t get it! Hayes, of course, had thoroughly purchased the McCain-Graham line back on October 13, on his weekend program. Eight days later, he retracted his remarks in another largely clueless discussion.

Last night, as the conversation continued, Hayes histrionically emphasized the size of his anger about the was Rice was treated (see transcript below). And good lord! In a move straight out of Sherlock Holmes, Walsh began to piece together the reasons for the attack.

Why did Rice come under attack? Walsh “can’t help but think” it has something to do with her ties to Obama!

WALSH (continuing directly): I mean, you’re right, John McCain, with his passive aggressive—calling it passive aggressive [sic]. Rand Paul was aggressive aggressive, accused her again, lied about her again and said she was responsible for misleading the American people about Benghazi. When we got those, you know, the talking points memos and we saw, even in the weird ABC version and in the White House official version, the one thing those versions agreed on was that Susan Rice had nothing to do with it.

HAYES: Nothing!

WALSH: Her staff was not anywhere there.

HAYES: No one!

WALSH: People said that she deserved an apology and Lindsey Graham shot back, “She deserves a subpoena.” So they keep it up.

I can’t help but think it has something to do with her closeness to the president...

Good God. What did the liberal world ever do to deserve “leadership” of this type?

According to Walsh, she “can’t help but think” that the endless attack on Rice “has something to do with her closeness to the president!” The analysts groaned and tore at their hair.

Walsh continued to speak:

WALSH (continuing directly): I can’t help but think it has something to do with her closeness to the president, her being a woman— All of the garbage about her being not very smart, according to Senator McCain, and incompetent, according to Lindsey Graham, has creepy gender and race overtones—

HAYES: OK. Can I just say? I just want to say this also, and I want to talk about her new position, because it’s quite a powerful one.

WALSH: Yes, it is.

Hayes broke in as Walsh started down her favorite road, the boulevard lined with overtones about Rice’s race and gender. What did Hayes “want to say” about this puzzle, which he and Walsh still “don’t get?”

This was Hayes’ attempt to explain the conduct of McCain and Graham. What have American liberals done to deserve treatment like this?

HAYES (continuing directly): But also, it’s not the craziest thing to me that they were just like trying to look out for their bro, John Kerry, who they have known for a long time, who was in the Senate with them, who served on committees with them. Like that to me, at the end of the day, when John Kerry got this— I’m not saying this to take anything away from John Kerry himself, but that also looked like what was going on.

WALSH: That’s what a secretary of state is supposed to look like and that’s what they are used to...

Good God. According to Hayes, it isn’t crazy to think that McCain and Graham “were just trying to look out for their bro, John Kerry.” According to Walsh, “that’s what a secretary of state is supposed to look like and that’s what they are used to.”

Actually, it is sort of crazy to think that this episode occurred for the reason Hayes offered. And just for the record: Under the last Republican president, the secretary of state looked like Condoleezza Rice.

But Walsh knows only one way to think. And Hayes, a silly puppy this night, seemed happy to run along with her.

Nine months later, Hayes and Walsh “still don’t get” what the attack on Rice was about! Across this giant nation last night, liberals were asked to stare at their TV screens and swallow this low-IQ guff.

This might have gone into the record books as the dumbest cable discussion ever. Except for what Rachel Maddow said during the very next hour.

In her opening segment, Maddow rambled the countryside, as she often does at the start of her program. Finally, nine minutes in, we finally learned that her actual topic was the selection of Rice.

Astoundingly, Maddow gave the account which follows. To watch the full segment, click this:

MADDOW (6/5/13): Senator Kerry was not the person everybody initially expected President Obama to nominate for the secretary of state job. Everybody expected that the secretary of state nominee was instead going to be this person, the U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Susan Rice, by all accounts, was going to be the president’s nominee for secretary of state, until Republicans in Congress decided that they were going to go after her for Benghazi, which she had nothing to do with. But they decided they would go after her for the talking points that were drafted by the CIA after the Benghazi attacks.

Susan Rice used those talking points in September 2012 on the Sunday shows. Nobody in Congress made all that big a deal out of her appearance on those Sunday shows at the time until months later when it seemed like she was going to be nominated to be the next secretary of state. And then, suddenly, Susan Rice having used those CIA talking points on TV made it impossible, unfathomable, for Senate Republicans that she could ever hold the secretary of state job because she used the talking points the CIA gave her. And it was around that time that Senate Republicans just started calling her names.

From anyone else, that would be astounding. From Maddow, it’s par for the course.

Good God! According to Maddow, “nobody in Congress made all that big of a deal out of [Rice’s] appearance” on those Sunday shows “until months later.” After making this ridiculous claim, Maddow played tape of McCain and Graham “calling her names” on November 14 and November 11, respectively.

According to Maddow, that’s when Republicans “suddenly” knew that Rice couldn’t be secretary of state. Surely, Maddow has to know that this account is just bunk.

Rice appeared on the Sunday shows on Sunday, September 16. Instantly, McCain led the way as her statements were misparaphrased and ridiculed. Instantly, cherry-picked video clips drove a mistaken impression of what Rice had actually said.

(This started on Fox, but quickly spread to all other networks.)

“Nobody in Congress made all that big of a deal out of her appearance on those Sunday shows at the time until months later?”

On Wednesday, September 26, four Republican senators “released a blistering letter to” Ambassador Rice, “accusing her of making ‘several troubling statements that are inconsistent with the facts and require explanation.’ ” McCain and Graham were two of those solons. We're quoting the September 27 New York Times.

On Friday, September 28, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, formally called on Rice to resign. Maddow still hasn’t heard about this. But others in the NBC family knew about this in real time.

On Friday, September 28, NBC Nightly News opened with a report on Benghazi, including King’s call for Rice to resign. The next morning, Chris Hayes opened his weekend program like this:

HAYES (9/29/12): Good morning from New York. I’m Chris Hayes. With critics calling for U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to resign over allegations the administration lied about who was behind the deadly attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, Senator John Kerry last night called for Rice to stay on.

It’s very, very hard to believe that Maddow believed what she said last night. Anyone knowing the history here could guess at the reason why she might have taken deliberate liberties.

We rarely use the L-word here. It’s possible Maddow is so deluded that she really believes the crazy account she broadcast last night. After all, she works for a network where two of her colleagues still “don’t get it”—just can’t understand why McCain and Graham launched those attacks against Rice.

Maddow’s report took place against an unflattering personal backdrop. After Rice appeared on those Sunday shows, the assault on her statements and her character started instantly. Her statements were grievously misparaphrased, in ways Maddow is too dumb and self-involved to know how to untangle. Tape of a single, cherry-picked statement was constantly aired, helping advance the misunderstanding of what Rice actually said.

Within twelve days, King had called on Rice to resign. As the weeks turned into months, the onslaught grew and prospered.

As this destructive gong-show unfolded, Maddow and Hayes and the rest of the gang ran off and hid in the woods. Quite literally, Rice’s name was never mentioned on Maddow’s program until the middle of November. At that time, Obama finally challenged the attacks on Rice, making it safe for this darling child to open her self-serving mouth.

Maddow abjectly failed at her job, as she so frequently does. Last night, she was rewriting history. She pretended there had been no attacks against Rice until mid-November, the time when she finally spoke.

What did liberals ever do to deserve this kind of treatment? Hayes and Walsh still don’t get it.

Maddow seems to get it too well.

Tomorrow: Why did these giants keep quiet?

Speaking of test scores, Josh Rogin can’t read!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2013

Still able to work as a journalist: The explosion of media have exposed two situations which had largely been hidden.

We’re able to see how crazy, true-believing and gullible many of us the people are. Comment threads help us see this.

Also, it has become much easier to see how dumb our journalists are.

To cite one example, Josh Rogin can’t read. We say that because he writes this passage in today’s Daily Beast:

ROGIN (6/5/13): Other GOP senators told The Daily Beast that they wanted to know exactly what [Victoria Nuland’s] involvement was in the crafting of the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used on September 16, 2012, on the Sunday news shows to argue that the attack was a spontaneous reaction to events in Cairo caused by an anti-Islam video.

Sorry. Susan Rice didn't “argue that the attack was a spontaneous reaction to events in Cairo caused by an anti-Islam video.” If you have the transcripts and you know how to read, you can quite easily see that.

Josh Rogin doesn’t know how to read! On the even gloomier side, this is no longer a bar to employment in our upper-end press corps.

For Rogin's full bio, click this.

Our test scores are better. Our journalists aren’t!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2013

Our press corps' so dumb that it hurts: As we mentioned yesterday, it’s hard to fathom how dumb we are as a people.

Again, consider the Q-and-A at yesterday’s Washington Post Live discussion concerning the public schools.

The Washington Post’s Mary Jordan was conducting a discussion with three governors. She asked a question which seemed to imply that American students are performing more poorly than they did in the past:

JORDAN (6/4/13): Can I ask you something? And then—just briefly. How did America get so mediocre? I mean these statistics across the board, every single one of your states, you know?

The question implies that America was better than “mediocre” in some past golden age. In fact, our most reliable educational data show large improvements in reading and math over the past forty years.

Jordan showed no sign of knowing that fact—but then, she works for the Post, a genuine demon on the subject of “educational reform.” Sadly, the governors didn't seem to know either. Each of the governors tried to explain what made things go wrong.

We haven’t seen a single journalist explain the problem with Jordan’s question. (To review yesterday's post, click here.) At the Washington Post itself, education specialist Valerie Strauss didn’t seem to see the problem at all. Later, this is the way Katie McDonough described the exchange at Salon:

MCDONOUGH (6/4/13): In response to a question about why America has fallen behind in global educational outcomes (the United States placed 17th among a ranking of 50 countries in 2012), Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that the problem began when “mom got in the work place.”

Bryant quickly noted that his remark about working mothers was “controversial” and would get him “a lot of emails,” and attempted to clarify that he meant working parents in general: “In today’s society parents are so challenged. They’re working overtime.”

McDonough understood the question to mean that “America has fallen behind in global educational outcomes.” Her 17-out-of-50 ranking comes from the complex study described in this report.

That said, has America “fallen behind” on those measures? We know of no evidence that the U.S. ever ranked higher on those measures than it does at present. Meanwhile, American students have been scoring better on the major international tests in the past decade or so.

McDonough’s reaction to that exchange was typical and unfortunate. (She is “an assistant editor for Salon, focusing on lifestyle.”) Like Strauss, McDonough didn’t seem to know that Jordan’s question involved a bogus factual premise. Instead, she was eager to take offense at Bryant’s answer, which simply wasn’t very offensive when quoted in its entirety.

What was the main problem with his response? He was trying to explain a decline which in fact hasn’t occurred.

McDonough’s reaction typifies the way the liberal world now approaches such issues. We don’t care enough about public schools to understand even the most basic facts. Instead, we use the schools as one more platform for taking offense at imperfect statements involving race and gender.

Last night, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow each took offense at Bryant’s rather inoffensive set of remarks. Neither one of the multimillionaire ciphers knew enough about public schools to understand that Bryant was trying to explain a decline which doesn’t exist.

Rachel snarked and Chris swelled up. But neither of these TV stars understands the basic facts concerning American public schools and American teachers and children.

Simply put, these are uncaring people. Sometimes, very big money makes people end up that way.

This just in from Erin Burnett: How bad were Matthews and Maddow last night? On CNN, Erin Burnett took the same approach. She complained about Bryant’s answer without noting the obvious problem with the question’s premise.

Burnett discussed the situation with two pundit guests. Reihan Salam is supposed to be one of our smartest young conservatives. He showed no sign of knowing that test scores are substantially better over the past forty years.

When Burnett turned to liberal pundit L. Z. Granderson, things got that much worse:

GRANDERSON (6/4/13): You know, I've been covering education for a long time. I went to graduate school to pursue education. And I have to tell you that for me the reason there's been a decline in education has nothing to do with working moms or stay-at-home dads. It has everything to do with the culture's focus on the importance of education.

By his own admission, Granderson has been “covering education for a long time.” Despite that, he was eager to explain the “decline in education”—the decline which doesn’t exist.

Adding insult to injury, Burnett followed the line taken by McDonough, noting that Finland has terrific test scores even though most Finnish women work outside the home. Simply put, there are no words for the dumbness of our press corps.

In a slightly rational world, liberals and progressives would boast about the improvement in test scores. No one knows about that improvement because corporate power wants you to think that our ratty teachers, with their infernal unions, have ginormously failed.

The Washington Post routinely distorts the facts about this matter. This is done in deference to their personal savior, Michelle Rhee.

Among others, Maddow, Matthews, Burnett and McDonough have all purchased this plutocrat con.

Why doesn’t Maddow know that test scores are up in this country? After all, she's Our Own Rhodes Scholar!

Simple! We liberals quit on low-income kids a very long time ago. People like Matthews and Maddow simply don’t care about the fact that black kids are scoring much higher in reading and math than their counterparts did twenty years ago.

Our nation’s journalists are so dumb that it ought to hurt. To dull the pain, we bellow about the terrible thing Governor Bryant has said.

Go ahead—watch his full statement. It just isn't all that bad. But when you don’t care about anyone else, outrage is all that you have.

Already, those conventions are a thing of the past!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2013

Kevin Drum, the IRS and Super Safety Dog: Did the IRS blow a lot of bucks on an Anaheim conference?

Kevin Drum says the price of the gathering wasn’t all that bad. We have our own two cents to throw in. But first:

The caterwauling has been general about this very bad conduct. In this morning’s New York Times, Jonathan Weisman notes an intriguing fact—these deeply disturbing events are already a thing of the past:

WEISMAN (6/5/13): The Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a single conference in Southern California in 2010, paying top dollar for hotel rooms, $27,500 for a keynote speaker and tens of thousands of dollars for gifts to the 2,600 people who attended, according to a newly released Treasury Department audit.

But the audit also shows that such expenditures fell sharply when the Obama White House clamped down on travel and conferences as budgets tightened and a scandal erupted over how much the General Services Administration had spent on conferences. I.R.S. spending on such meetings fell to $4.8 million in the 2012 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, from $37.5 million in fiscal 2010.

As of last year, these events were already a thing of the past. Just see how often that fact gets mentioned on Fox as the public gets disinformed.

Back to Drum, who says that the price of that Anaheim conference wasn’t really that bad. He speaks as someone who has planned such outings, which are quite common in the corporate world.

Having performed at many such conferences, we’ve had a somewhat similar reaction to the recent caterwauling.

As Drum notes, corporate groups have staff get-togethers all the time. They pay for speakers and entertainers. They buy large blocks of rooms in good hotels.

In terms of staff productivity, this may or may not be a useful idea. But it’s done all the time.

We’ve been especially struck by the caterwauling about those infernal videotapes. Here’s why:

For years, we worked four or five days a year for a large public utility, making humorous tapes about safety concerns. For a few years, we were the voice of Super Safety Dog, a cocker spaniel with a cape who served as the visual star of these videotapes, which were played at company gatherings.

At some point, the utility switched the format. After that, we would conduct humorous interviews with company employees of various kinds, talking about the various ways you can break your leg on the job.

This always seemed kind of silly to us. Beyond that, we were struck by the expense. We were paid a per diem fee, which wasn’t large but wasn’t small. Several employees from the utility’s video department would be along for the day, which would be followed by a day of editing.

One time, we flew to New Orleans to make a tape. Can't remember why!

Our attitude changed over time. We came to be impressed by the amount of effort this company spent trying to make sure that its employees didn’t get hurt. This was partly a matter of liability, of course. But a lot of people put a lot of time and effort into the project.

We also performed at several conferences for this utility. One was held at a fancy hotel! Another involved Cal Ripken. We'll guess a fee was involved.

CNN has been clowning around, playing those IRS videos. We always cringed a bit at the safety videos we made, but by all accounts, employees liked seeing themselves being interviewed. They were regular people who went out each day to do demanding jobs. They liked seeing good-natured, humorous tapes in which they were the stars, with their quips put on display.

“No people are uninteresting,” Yevtushenko said. He hadn’t seen the clowning clowns clowning on CNN.

The start of that poem: Here’s the start of that poem by Yevtushenko:

People

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them in not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute
These are private...

There’s more. We recommend it.

It’s time for Glenn Kessler to fact-check O’Reilly!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2013

O’Reilly keeps pouring it on: Last night, Bill O’Reilly just kept pouring it on. With the apparent help of Jon Stewart!

On a typical evening, roughly 5 million people watch one of O’Reilly’s three broadcasts on Fox. (His program airs at 8 PM, 11 PM and 4 AM Eastern.)

Last night, in O’Reilly’s opening monologue, those five million people saw Jon Stewart used to advance a bogus claim about the IRS. O’Reilly just kept pouring it on, helped along by edited tape of Stewart!

Here’s how this gong-show came down:

On Monday evening’s Daily Show, Stewart opened with a segment about the IRS. In the course of the segment, he played some tape of O’Reilly from last Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor.

During the excerpt which Stewart aired, O’Reilly made a bogus factual claim two separate times. Stewart let the misstatement go, although he mocked O’Reilly on another basis.

Last night, O’Reilly played a tightly edited version of the tape from Stewart’s program. Here’s what O’Reilly’s viewers saw at the start of last night’s show:

O’REILLY (6/4/13): Many honest liberal people, liberal people clearly see the danger of having a powerful government agency treating Americans unfairly based upon political beliefs. That's what fascist and communist governments do.

My pal Jon Stewart said this last night:

(Begin videotape from Monday’s Daily Show)
STEWART: Oh no. Poor babies, the IRS, facing scrutiny! People getting all up in their business!

O'REILLY (earlier videotape): There is disturbing information. This man, former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the White House, ready? 157 times! What the heck was Mr. Shulman doing at the White House with that kind of frequency?

STEWART: Whoa, whoa, clear the ladies from the room. IRS, your tomfoolery almost made Bill O'Reilly say “H-E-double toothpick.”

O'REILLY (earlier videotape): You must explain under oath what you were doing at the White House on 157 separate occasions.

STEWART: Yes that is a lot, Shulman. Especially since having the president tell you to use the power of the IRS to destroy his political enemies on the right should really only take about one meeting, two tops.
(End videotape from the Daily Show)

O'REILLY: You know, as a satire guy, Stewart can say that. As a fact guy, I can't.

What I can say is that the White House still has not told the nation what the hell—there you go, Stewart—Douglas Shulman was doing in the White House all those times.

In that way, O’Reilly got to restate the claim that Shulman visited the White House 157 times, with Stewart seeming to lend support to this factual statement. In the process, O’Reilly even got to described himself as “a fact guy!”

Did Shulman visit the White House 157 times? Did he visit the White House with anything like that frequency?

Almost surely, he did not, as became clear last Friday morning. But O’Reilly has persisted with this unfounded claim, disinforming millions of voters in the process.

This creates an obvious question: When is the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler going to fact-check O’Reilly? Second question: When will Politifact tackle this prime assignment?

Based on past history, never! In January, we noted that these famous fact-checking sites have almost never fact-checked Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. In an especially clownish manifestation, this was Hannity’s record at Politifact, dating back more than three years:

Record of Hannity’s statements at Politifact
January 25, 2013: False
November 30, 2011: Half true
September 15, 2011: True
November 11, 2009: True
November 11, 2009: True
September 25, 2009: Half true
September 23, 2009: Mostly true

George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. At Politifact, Hannity had been issuing a steady stream of true statements!

Simple story: Our major fact-checkers give free rein to big, high-profile conservative talkers. Will Glenn Kessler fact-check O’Reilly?

Tonight, Rachel Maddow should get up on her hind legs. Addressing Brother Kessler by name, she should request a response.

For the record, it wasn’t just that tape: O’Reilly also mentioned the 157 visits in two separate interviews last night.

O'Reilly just keeps pouring it on. When will our fact-checkers fact-check?

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MSNBC: Pareene speaks!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2013

Part 3—Would liberals respond to a fight: MSNBC’s ratings are down from last year. At Fox, ratings are up.

Ratings are not a measure of quality, as Fox proves night after night. But people have started to wonder why MSNBC is losing viewers.

Last week, Alex Pareene examined the question under this headline: “What’s Wrong with MSNBC?” Pareene is one of the last sane observers left at Salon.

We were struck by some of the things the sardonic gentleman said.

In our view, some of Pareene’s observations aren’t entirely on point, which doesn't mean that they're wrong. In this passage, he posits a “post-election indifference to politics:”

PAREENE (5/27/13): As MSNBC suffers from post-election indifference to politics, Fox is fine because it is one part tabloid news (Arias!) and one part right-wing anger-stoking machine. The right-wing anger-stoking machine never shuts down. Talk radio turned it into a perpetual motion machine a generation ago. There’s no boom and bust, just steady, money-making rage. (Though, you know, as angry old people die the model may start to show some cracks.)

MSNBC may well be suffering from some such indifference. But Fox has paid little attention to Arias in its prime-time programming. And the fact that Fox stokes right-wing anger calls attention to the very thing MSNBC fails to do at a time like this, when no election is on.

In the six months since last year's election, Fox has gone out and created a fight. By way of contrast, the children on The One True Channel have spent large amounts of time pretending that they haven’t noticed.

For us, their inexcusable flight from fight involves the way they all ran off and hid in the woods when Fox began to crucify Susan Rice last fall. Their predecessors once abandoned Naomi Wolf, then Candidate Gore. In much the same way, the children ran off and hid in the woods as Rice was savaged.

We’d kick every one of them down the stairs. As Michael Vick once remarked, “These puppies just don’t have much fight.”

As he closed his piece, Pareene, who is bright and brimming with fight, made a statement we don’t understand. We wouldn’t say the statement is wrong. He just didn't try to explain it:

PAREENE: MSNBC is actually making some good decisions, lately, from the point of view of someone who’d like (talking head) cable news to be better. And anyone who says the network’s failing because of liberalism should probably have to account for the fact that the channel’s highest-rated show remains Rachel Maddow’s. (Followed by O’Donnell, who really is the insufferable smug self-satisfied liberal caricature everyone thinks all of MSNBC is.)

But do you know who watches cable news all day? And at prime time? When there’s not an election on, or a war, or some terrorism? Older conservative people. If MSNBC wants better ratings, it’ll either have to train a generation to want to pay attention to political years all the time, or it’ll have to produce a scripted show about zombies.

What are the good decisions MSNBC has been making? We’re not saying they don’t exist, but Pareene didn’t say what they are.

Pareene may be referring to Chris Hayes’ new program; he seems to semi-praise Hayes earlier in his piece. Without any question, Hayes sometimes creates good, smart cable discussions.

On the other hand, Hayes’ discussions last Wednesday night were so horrifically “twee” that the analysts flung themselves facedown in the yard and began grinding dirt in their hair. Fox was pounding away very hard with its Pseudo Scandal Machine. The entire line-up at MSNBC seemed to be busy establishing homesteads in Farthest La-La Land.

If MSNBC hopes to “train a generation” to “pay attention to [politics] all the time,” that just can’t be the way to do it. This brings us to the part of Pareene’s piece which we thought jumped off the page.

In our view, every part of this passage is well worth considering. We were especially drawn to the highlighted speculation:

PAREENE: It’s simplistic to say that viewers aren’t watching because the president’s having a bad news cycle. Bad news is often good for ratings. Liberals like to watch Republicans portrayed as big scary meanies when they’re not watching them be presented as inept nutso clowns. There was no such thing as liberal cable news during the Clinton impeachment, but if there had been I guarantee it would’ve been a hit. Maybe—maybe!—some viewers are tuning out because they’re not hearing enough of an unqualified defense of the president and his administration from some of MSNBC’s more left-leaning voices. But I’d guess that’s still not enough people to make a huge ratings difference.

Perhaps there just isn’t a huge, permanent, year-round liberal audience for political news and discussion. Which is effectively all MSNBC does, because political discussion is cheap as hell, and gets good ratings when certain periods and certain personalities align.

We agree with Pareene’s first point. In theory, bad political news can be good for ratings. It's often said that political talkers do better when the other side wins.

That said, would the current version of MSNBC have had big ratings during Clinton’s impeachment? Not if its hosts approached impeachment in the way they’ve approached the Scandal Wars which started on Fox last September. They have run and hid from those Wars in precisely the way the liberal world ran and hid from the various “Whitewater” pseudo-scandals which preceded and paved the way for the year of impeachment. In the way liberals ran and hid from the War Against Gore which came next.

This brings us to Pareene’s double-edged portrait of MSNBC and its liberal viewers.

What are we liberals actually like? Pareene is less than flattering. Liberals “like to watch Republicans portrayed as big scary meanies when they’re not watching them be presented as inept nutso clowns,” the gentleman says, making us sound like the low-IQ fools MSNBC often seems to assume we are.

Do liberals enjoy watching Republicans portrayed as nutso clowns? That seemed to be the theory last Wednesday when the millionaire hosts on The One True Channel treated us to simpering reruns of Michele Bachmann’s greatest flubs, even as Fox News was exploding with the new generation of powerful pseudo-scandals.

We liberals got to watch the children assure us that Bachmann really was nutso. As we wasted our time in this way, Sean and Bill were hammering much larger audiences with the kinds of bogus claims the children have been avoiding since last September.

“Maybe—maybe!—some viewers are tuning out because they’re not hearing enough of an unqualified defense of the president and his administration from some of MSNBC’s more left-leaning voices,” Pareene speculated in his piece, not being entirely clear as to what he meant.

He didn’t pretend to know if that’s true. We can’t tell you either. But as we watch our team's corporate-picked cable hosts, we’ve never seen a bunch of people who had so little desire to fight—except perhaps for their salaries, their Q-ratings and their careers.

Would MSNBC have more viewers if its hosts got off their asses and tried to fight a real fight? Like Pareene, we can’t answer that question, but we can tell you this:

Last night, shortly after 9, the congratulatory phone calls began rolling in all over our sprawling campus. People thought they saw Rachel Maddow fighting back, in precisely the way we had scripted in yesterday morning’s post.

That isn’t what we thought we saw. To watch the segment in question, click here.

What did we think we saw last night? We thought we saw the limited effort of a millionaire star who doesn’t know how to fight.

Tomorrow: When Bill and Rachel fight

Continuing: There are no facts anywhere in the land!

TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013

Especially concerning the schools, Washington Post edition: The truth about our public discourse is very hard to fathom.

Consider this post by Valerie Strauss. We found it at her Answer Sheet blog for the Washington Post.

Strauss is employed by the Post as an education writer. At the start of her post, she describes a Q-and-A about public schools at a live discussion this morning:

STRAUSS (6/4/13): Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America’s educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.

Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became “so mediocre” in regard to educational outcomes, he said:

“I think both parents started working. The mom got in the work place.”

Needless to say, we’re all supposed to have nervous breakdowns in response to Bryant’s answer. For ourselves, we’re more concerned about the question, which came from another Post journalist, as Strauss describes:

STRAUSS: During a conversation about what states are doing to increase reading proficiency, the moderator of the panel, award-winning Washington Post journalist Mary Jordan, asked the three governors how America got “so mediocre” in regard to reading proficiency rates and educational outcomes. Bryant answered first.

Jordan didn’t win just any award. In 2003, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

(That’s when you pretty much know that you’re in major trouble.)

To hear Jordan ask her question, click here. Rather clearly, her question implies that educational outcomes are in decline in this country. But uh-oh! On domestic and international measures, the opposite is true.

How does Jordan not know that? More to the point, how does Strauss not know? Strauss is employed by the Washington Post as an expert on education. But she shows no sign of seeing the problem with Jordan’s question, or with the fact that all three governors tried to explain our ongoing decline.

According to the best data we have, we are not in a time of decline. Test scores have been rising for decades on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the uniformly-praised “gold standard” of American educational testing. American students are also doing better on the major international tests.

Jordan doesn’t seem to know that. Incredibly, neither does Strauss. Three governors don’t seem to know either. Maybe they’ve spent too much time reading the Washington Post!

Tomorrow, we’ll see this same depressing problem in this horrifying report by Salon’s David Sirota. There are no facts anywhere in this land, certainly not concerning the schools. Beyond that, it’s very, very hard to grasp our giant cluelessness as a people.

How did we ever get this far if this is what we’re like?

There are no facts anywhere in this land!

TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013

Bill O’Reilly just keeps pimping those trips to the White House: Did former IRS head Douglas Shulman visit the White House 157 times?

That’s what the Daily Caller reported last Thursday. The site’s latest fraudulent report appeared beneath this summary:

“Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.”

Early in his hapless report, the Caller’s hapless Vince Coglianese asserted that “the scope of Shulman’s White House visits...strongly suggests coordination by White House officials in the campaign against the president’s political opponents.”

As you continue reading, it soon becomes clear that Coglianese doesn’t know how many times Shulman went to the White House. But so what? Last Thursday night, Fox News went wild with his thrilling new claim. At 8 PM, the channel’s prime-time program block began with this presentation:

O’REILLY (5/30/13): The former IRS Chief under President Bush says he did his job without White House interference.

But listen to this—the IRS Commissioner under President Obama visited the White House an astounding 157 times. Is this the smoking gun in the IRS scandal? We will have a special report.

All night long, O’Reilly, Hannity and Van Susteren pounded away at this deeply troubling report. Commissioner Shulman visited the White House 157 times! It must have been about the way the IRS slimed the Tea Party!

The next day, the Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta largely debunked this thrilling report. Her piece appeared beneath these headlines:

"The Fake Story About the IRS Commissioner and the White House/White House records show Douglas Shulman signed in for 11 visits, not 157, between 2009 and 2012."

What made the Daily Caller story “fake?” Franke-Ruta detailed two groaning problems with the exciting new story.

For one thing, the vast majority of the meetings in question did not take place at the White House—at “the president’s home,” to quote the Caller. At least 115 of the meetings in question took place at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which isn’t part of the White House and isn’t “the president’s home.”

That said, Franke-Ruta described a much larger second problem. The Daily Caller presented no evidence that Shulman attended the meetings in question. In fact, the Caller had gone through lists of people who were cleared to attend certain meetings, not those who had actually appeared.

For many regular task force meetings, pro-forma lists of names are automatically cleared, whether the people in question plan to attend or not. After reviewing sign-in records, Franke-Ruta could only prove that Shulman had attended eleven of the meetings in question.

Franke-Ruta explains:

FRANKE-RUTA (5/31/13): [J]ust because a meeting was scheduled and Shulman was cleared to attend it does not mean that he actually went. Routine events like the biweekly health-care deputies meeting would have had a standing list of people cleared to attend, people whose White House appointments would have been logged and forwarded to the check-in gate. But there is no time of arrival information in the records to confirm that Shulman actually signed in and went to these standing meetings.

Indeed, of the 157 events Shulman was cleared to attend, White House records only provide time of arrival information—confirming that he actually went to them—for 11 events over the 2009-2012 period...That does not mean that he did not go to other meetings, only that the White House records do not show he went to the 157 meetings he was granted Secret Service clearance to attend.

Franke-Ruta doesn’t know how many meetings Shulman attended, though it could have been as few at eleven. But that’s the point—the Daily Caller and Bill O’Reilly don’t know either! Beyond that, the vast majority of the meetings in question weren’t held at the White House, which is “the president’s home.”

Last Thursday night, O’Reilly, Hannity and Van Susteren pimped this bullshit all night. The very next day, Franke-Ruta blew their story apart.

But in this country, there are no facts. Beyond that, there are no ranking fact-checkers willing to stand up to Fox. Here’s the way Bill O’Reilly opened his program last night:

O’REILLY (6/3/13): Is the IRS scandal like Watergate? That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo.

First off, a clarification—Talking Points is not linking the IRS scandal to the White House. We are not implying, insinuating, hinting or doing anything else other than reporting the facts.

And so far we have been dead on. Last week we told you that former IRS Chief Douglas Shulman visited the White House 157 times, far more than any other department head. And it wasn't even close. Logically, we asked the White House to explain those meetings with whom did Mr. Shulman chat and what was the subject on all 157 occasions?

Any honest reporter would ask that question and the White House should provide the answer immediately. Incredibly before my analysis last Thursday there were no mentions last week of Mr. Shulman's abundant visits to the White House on CNN, on ABC, on CBS, or on NBC. None, nada, zip.

That is what's called a news blackout. Because everybody knows the IRS is under scrutiny for admitting it targeted conservative groups and individuals. So if the IRS boss visits the White House 157 times, that's a big story.

O’Reilly went on to say, “We could be repeating history.” He then reviewed the basic history of the Watergate break-in.

After that, O'Reilly brought out brought out the clueless, uncaring Bob Woodward. The sleuth embarrassed himself once again, this time saying this:

WOODWARD (6/3/13): Clearly in the pipeline lots of people knew some of this or should know it and I agree, this needs to be investigated. But you know who should lead the investigation? President Obama. And the White House put out his version of all of these things. I have found in recent weeks they still respond to questions. You say they aren't answering this question about the 157 visits by the IRS commissioner. They should. They should get on top of this story.

Woodward didn’t seem to be familiar with Franke-Ruta’s report.

There are no facts in this country. Nor are there any major press organs devoted to defending the need for facts. The happy children at MSNBC have completely ignored this story—refusing to fight, as is their wont. Nor did the major Sunday programs attempt to clarify this matter.

On Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz offered a very murky, very fuzzy account of this problem. For unknown reasons, the Washington Post's Greg Sargent praised Kurtz and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank for their work on this matter, which was extremely bad. (We saw no sign that either fellow had read Franke-Ruta's report.)

There are no facts in this country! And by the way, Glenn Kessler will never discuss this latest con at his Washington Post Fact-Checker site. If things run true to form, neither will the likeable children at The One True Liberal Channel.

They are too busy letting us know about the legalization of marijuana—pot, grass. For unknown reasons, they don't seem to have a whole lot of fight.

On Fox, millions of voters were getting conned again last night. There are no facts, and no ranking defenders of fact, anywhere in this sad land.

Extra credit for children who finish early: Today's word problem:

How long will it be before Bob Woodward goes to work for Tucker Carlson? Use the metric system. Discuss.

Naming Candy Crowley by name, O’Donnell breaks code of silence!

TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013

“I can’t take it any more,” guild member finally says: This Sunday, CNN’s Candy Crowley asked a ridiculous question.

She was interviewing Darrell Issa on CNN’s State of the Union, one of the big five Sunday programs.

Because he’s chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Issa is a very important figure at present. Among other things, he has been trying to whip up a very large scandal about the IRS.

Midway through the interview, Crowley asked a ridiculous question. We’ll include Issa’s response:

CROWLEY (6/2/13): What does your gut tell you? What does your gut tell you now this far into the investigation?

ISSA: My gut tells me that too many people knew that this wrongdoing was going on before the election. And at least by some sort of convenient benign neglect, allowed it to go on through the election, allowed these groups, these conservative groups, these, if you will, not friends of the president, to be disenfranchised through an election.

Now, I'm not making any allegations as to motive, that they set out to do it. But certainly people knew it was happening that could have done something and would have done something, I'm sure, if these had been progressive groups or groups that supported the president. That's what I think we know.

We're really more interested in fixing the IRS. This, we cannot quit our investigation until we're sure this couldn't happen again. And, Candy, the I.G. himself said he doesn't know that this is the only time something like this happens because he said that he doesn't believe the controls are in place for the IRS to tell us that this doesn't happen in other places.

CROWLEY: And I got to quickly turn you to one more subject, and that's Eric Holder...

What does Issa’s gut tell him? Shouldn’t Crowley have been asking Issa about the facts?

That was a ridiculous question. Issa took advantage with a rambling, speculative answer, after which Crowley simply moved on. But the problem here began with Crowley—with a question which invited Issa to talk right out of his ascot.

Why did Crowley ask that question? We think we can probably tell you.

You see, at the start of the interview, Crowley actually challenged Issa’s unfounded speculations. In considerable detail, she challenged the short, selective quotations he has released from interviews with IRS employees.

“I want to talk about how problematic it is to get excerpts,” Crowley said, “because we know that you interviewed these people probably for hours and you get little excerpts which it's hard for us to kind of judge what's going on.”

Those little short excerpts were “totally not definitive,” Crowley correctly noted. “You know that your critics say that Republicans, and you in particular, sort of cherry-pick information that goes to your foregone conclusion, so it worries us to put this kind of stuff out.”

Crowley’s complaints were right on point; she should have pushed them harder. But by normal standards, that was very tough stuff from a mainstream journalist in the face of a right-wing scandal storm.

As has been clear since 1993, that simply isn’t the way it’s done. We’ll guess that explains why Crowley went on to ask that ridiculous question.

In effect, it was a “make-up call.” Crowley lobbed a big fat softball at Issa. Her ridiculous question let him say whatever dumb shit he preferred.

We’ll guess that’s why Crowley ended up asking that question. We’ll also guess this explains why Crowley didn’t challenge Issa when he referred to White House spokesman Jay Carney as a “paid liar.”

That was a very unusual statement. Crowley simply let it go, without comment or request for justification.

Whatever! Crowley asked a ridiculous question. In response, Lawrence O’Donnell did something extremely unusual at the start of last evening’s Last Word.

Good lord! Right at the start of his program, O’Donnell directly criticized Crowley for asking that question. “That was the most ridiculous questions asked on television this weekend,” O’Donnell said, naming Crowley by name over and over again.

He said her question typifies the way “the Washington press corps” functions. Plainly, he wasn’t discussing Fox News. He wasn't discussing Sean or Rush.

He was plainly discussing the mainstream press corps. “I can’t take it any more,” O’Donnell finally said, having ridiculed “the way they talk to each other:”

O’DONNELL (6/3/13): They pride themselves on their guts. They believe that their guts are of value, real informational value. That is why the groupthink of the Washington press corps delivered that question to Darrell Issa through one of its most distinguished members.

(To watch this whole segment, click here.)

As with O’Donnell’s program last Thursday, so too here: We have never seen a major career liberal talk this way on TV. We have never seen a major “made man” like O’Donnell directly challenge the mainstream press corps in the way he did.

For the record, a great deal that O’Donnell said last night was actually quite dumb. As a general matter, he has an approach to the IRS matter which is fact-based but very dumb.

Still, we have never seen a major mainstream liberal criticize a major press figure in the way he did last night. And we think you know where all that group silence has taken us down through the years.

For decades, conservatives have pounded away at mainstream figures like Crowley. The “liberal” team has refused to fight. Let's say that nother way:

They’ve refused to tell you the truth.

So congratulations to Lawrence O’Donnell for his belated breakdown! For ourselves, we decided we couldn’t take it any more in the fall of 1997. That’s when we started trying to design this web site.

Sixteen years later, O’Donnell has cracked. Again, we’ll state an amazing fact: We have never seen a major made man talk that way on TV. If you watch that entire segment, we think you'll have to admit it too:

You've never seen a major insider talking that way either!

Last night, O’Donnell broke the code of silence. Among other things, that code sent George W. Bush to the White House. To this day, these horrible people won’t even cop to that.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MSNBC: The New York Times asks!

TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 2013

Part 2—And largely fails to answer: Is it fair to criticize MSNBC because Fox clobbers it in the ratings?

Basically, no—it isn’t. For one thing, Fox has been at its mission much longer, ever since it went on the air in 1996. By way of contrast, MSNBC has only become a liberal channel in the past few years.

(Rachel Maddow got her own show in September 2008. That meant that MSNBC now had two hours of liberal programming each night.)

Beyond that, quality can’t be measured by ratings. A very good political channel might well lose the ratings war to a political clown show. You can’t measure the quality of MSNBC’s work by its ratings.

That said, MSNBC’s ratings have been slipping, and people have begun to ask why. Last week, Salon’s Alex Pareene examined the ratings slide under this headline: “What’s Wrong with MSNBC?”

Yesterday, in the New York Times, TV writer Bill Carter pretended to ask the same question. We say “pretended” because of the strangeness of much of Carter’s analysis.

Carter started with some of the basic facts and some basic points of fairness.

“At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent,” Carter wrote. As he did, he recorded the channel’s explanation for the ratings decline:

CARTER (6/3/13): At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the network’s own analysis, comes down to this: breaking news is not really what MSNBC does.

“We’re not the place for that,” said Phil Griffin, the channel’s president, in reference to covering breaking events as CNN does. “Our brand is not that.”

The brand, one MSNBC has cultivated with success, is defined by its tagline, “The Place for Politics,” and a skew toward left-wing, progressive political talk, the opposite of the conservative-based approach that has worked well for Fox News.

In one respect, Griffin’s explanation is surely correct. MSNBC isn’t mainly about “breaking news,” and “breaking news” has ben a big deal in the past few months, as Carter explains early on.

Of course, Fox isn’t mainly about “breaking news” either. And Fox has been gaining viewers in recent months. In prime time, Fox is 17 percent higher as compared to this same time last year.

Carter spends a lot of time explaining why CNN has done well in recent months, and the answer seems to be obvious. CNN now spends all its time ostentatiously comforting victims of various tragedies, including bombings and bad weather. If your house gets blown down by a storm, CNN will be there for weeks to emote, pretending that it’s covering news in the process.

As Carter notes, this may explain why CNN has edged past MSNBC in the past few months. But why is Fox kicking MSNBC’s keister in the egregious ways you can survey at links like this?

Before we suggest one possibility, let’s see how Carter explains the drop in MSNBC’s numbers as compared to this time last year.

How bad is New York Times journalism? When Carter tries to explain the ratings sag, he frames his discussion like this:

CARTER: Mr. Griffin pointed out that CNN has surged ahead of MSNBC (and occasionally even Fox News) when enormous news was breaking, like the tsunami in Japan in 2011—but fell back once the news cooled. And on three nights last week, MSNBC edged back ahead of CNN in the prime-time hours, though CNN maintained a lead over the full day.

But there is speculation that something different may be happening this time, that a combination of a more aggressive approach from CNN, dimming interest in political news in general, and a sense that MSNBC has less to offer in hard news coverage, may be eroding the advantage that the channel has enjoyed.

There is speculation! Speculations have been advanced! Carter never quite identifies the source of these speculations. Later, he starts quoting anonymous TV producers. They seem to be the source.

According to Carter, “there is speculation” that MSNBC is losing audience because of “dimming interest in political news in general.” Again, that alleged dimming interest doesn’t seem to be bothering Fox, which has been gaining audience and is hammering MSNBC at every hour, including all prime-time slots.

Does “dimming interest in political news” explain the ratings decline? At this point, Carter quotes Griffin, the MENBC network exec, as he offers his view of this matter.

CARTER: “People are just sick of politics,” said one former senior network news producer, who asked not to be identified because of current dealings with another news organization. Mr. Griffin agreed that “dysfunction in Washington” has been a factor in MSNBC’s recent struggles.

MSNBC’s viewers may have especially grown tired of politics because the news has been mostly negative recently toward President Obama, whom MSNBC’s hosts have championed. As another senior producer for news programs at multiple networks put it, “People will watch MSG when the Knicks are hot, and not watch when they aren’t.”

Even Ms. Maddow’s ratings tumbled sharply in May, at least partly because the network’s new host at 8 p.m., Chris Hayes, has lost more than 30 percent of the audience in the hour before Ms. Maddow’s show. (Mr. Griffin, who defended the decision to bring in Mr. Hayes, said the show had been hurt by the discord in Washington, and vowed to stick with it after “some tweaking.”)

In fairness, we have no transcript of Griffin’s remarks. We can’t examine or assess his complete statement. But why exactly would “dysfunction in Washington” (or even the paraphrased “discord in Washington”) damage a channel which is designed to examine what happens in Washington? And why wouldn’t that “dysfunction in Washington” be harming the ratings at Fox?

One obvious possible answer is found in that passage. As Carter correctly notes, the political news from Washington “has been mostly negative recently toward President Obama.” Almost surely, this helps explain the ratings decline at the channel which exists to support Obama except when support of that type might damage its hosts’ career interests.

What has been happening on cable TV as that negative news continues? This:

Each night, conservative viewers flock to Fox to hear this negative news invented and embellished by very aggressive conservative hosts. But uh-oh! When liberal viewers tune to MSNBC, they see a bunch of liberal hosts sticking their heads in the sand.

Last Wednesday night provided the ultimate god-awful example. On Fox, the hosts were cranking the scandal machine all night. They embellished freely about a trio of alleged scandals, including the Benghazi scandal which they have been inventing, without opposition from Griffin's gang, since September of last year.

On Fox, the hosts were embellishing freely. But over on MSNBC, their counterparts showed no sign of knowing about the burgeoning Scandal Framework. Instead of addressing the negative news to which Carter referred, they fed their viewers comfort food about how dumb Michele Bachmann is. In one instance, they even managed to bungle that easy assignment!

Griffin might as well have furloughed his hosts for the evening. He might as well have aired reruns from the fall of 2011.

Traditionally, people like to watch a good fight. Last Wednesday night, the stars were fighting very hard and rather unfairly at Fox. But over at The One True Channel, the hosts weren’t fighting at all.

Does this explain why MSNBC has been losing viewers this year? We have no way to answer that question. We can’t say what the ratings would be if the channel had taken a different approach to the ongoing Scandal Wars, starting (let’s say) last September.

But as the week proceeds, we will continue to ask two questions: Why are this channel’s overpaid hosts so goddamned unwilling to fight? And could this abject refusal to fight help explain their ongoing loss of viewers?

Tomorrow: Pareene’s view of the problem

At long last, Dowd writes about welfare reform!

MONDAY, JUNE 3, 2013

Will MSNBC follow suit: Way back in 1999, the values of the modern press corps were captured in a classic anecdote in a classic profile.

The anecdote appeared in the Brill’s Content portrait of Maureen Dowd. Reporter Gay Jervey quoted Joe Klein telling a press corps-defining tale:

JERVEY (6/99): “Maureen is very talented,” observes Joe Klein of The New Yorker. “But she is ground zero of what the press has come to be about in the nineties...I remember having a discussion with her in which I said, 'Maureen, why don't you go out and report about something significant, go out and see poor people, do something real?' And she said, ‘You mean I should write about welfare reform?’”

Maureen Dowd rolled her eyes at the very idea of writing about welfare reform. Yesterday, though, she finally did it, in this once in a lifetime column in the Sunday Review.

Dowd’s piece was a profile of Patty Stonesifer, the head of a Washington, D.C. social welfare organization. What on earth could Dowd have been thinking? In this passage, she thumb-nailed her subject:

DOWD (6/2/13): After serving as the highest-ranking woman at Microsoft, Stonesifer helped Bill and Melinda Gates start their philanthropy in an office above a Seattle-area pizza parlor in 1997. With Bill Gates Sr. at her side, she was its first chief executive, for 11 years, as it tried to eradicate polio; treat and prevent malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; and reduce the United States high school dropout rate. They built the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into the world’s largest philanthropy, with more than 500 employees and a $39 billion endowment—a sum “higher than the gross domestic products of 70 percent of the world’s nations,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

Now, as Bill and Melinda Gates offer a $100,000 reward to anyone who can design a better condom that will promote “regular use,” Stonesifer is taking on a fresh challenge of her own as head of Martha’s Table, a Washington community organization (named after the kitchen-bound biblical Martha) that supplies food, clothes, day care and educational programs for those in need.

“Having Stonesifer come run a small local charity is like General Electric business titan Jack Welch showing up to manage the corner appliance store,” The Washington Post noted.

We’re glad Stonesifer is running Martha’s Table. But if you read the entire profile, along with the earlier profile it quotes, you’ll see the checklist which must be met before Dowd will stoop this low:

Stonesifer is the wife of Michael Kinsley, a long-time friend of Dowd’s.

Stonesifer is worth tens of millions of dollars, due to her years with Gates.

Stonesifer (nee Quigley) grew up Irish Catholic.

Stonesifer is the wealthy, well-connected Irish Catholic wife of a very good friend. She even makes people think of Jack Welch! With these points checked, Dowd will stoop to discuss a topic like this, perhaps every fourteen years.

On the front page of yesterday’s Times, a more significant milestone occurred. At long last, the paper finally began to tackle one of the foundational questions in American society and government:

Who is looting American citizens through the crazy over-spending which defines our health care system? Yesterday, we offered some initial thoughts about the first report in this promised series, which is quite a few years overdue.

Dowd will not be discussing this topic, which lies at the very heart of our budget problems and our growing economic inequality. Here’s our question:

Will the fiery stars on The One True Channel tackle this topic in the next year? Progressives should start pushing hard, right now, concerning the future direction this high-profile series will take.

Dowd won’t be doing that. Will anyone tackle this topic at MSNBC, where we liberals go to spend time with our imaginary friends?

Way back when, Maureen Dowd rolled her eyes at the very thought of covering welfare reform. Will the One True Channel lobby the Times about the gigantic new topic it has undertaken?

The gang that can’t even mock Bachmann straight!

MONDAY, JUNE 3, 2013

John Wayne, not John Wayne Gacy: During her six-plus years in Congress, Michele Bachmann has made a bunch of foolish flubs. She has also made a lot of significant and sulfurous political statements.

If you want to mock her pointless flubs, there are plenty to choose from. But last Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow made a dumb mistake, even as she tried to tell us about Bachmann's dumb mistakes.

Rachel was letting us have some fun at the other tribe’s expense. As she did, she managed to offer this oft-corrected howler:

MADDOW (5/29/13): On the left here, that is Oscar-winning, beloved American film icon John Wayne. On the right there, that is serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of killing more than 30 people throughout the 1970s in Chicago.

John Wayne Gacy, the one on the right, he’s the serial killer. And he’s the one from Waterloo, Iowa:

BACHMANN (videotape): What I want them to know, just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that’s the kind of spirit I have, too.

MADDOW: There’s a very important difference between John Wayne Gacy and John Wayne. But still, you’d think it might matter more to Waterloo than anybody else.

As a courtesy, we’ll ascribe Maddow’s error to bad staff work.

That videotaped statement by Bachmann dates from June 2011. As became clear rather quickly, there’s no reason to think that Bachmann confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy.

In fact, John Wayne’s parents lived in Waterloo, Iowa—Bachmann’s home town—during the early years of their marriage. They moved to Winterset, Iowa before their famous son was born.

Bachmann was wrong about Wayne’s birthplace. But there was never any sign that she was actually thinking of John Wayne Gacy.

None of this was worth talking about, not even in real time. It was especially sad to see Our Own Rhodes Scholar wasting our time with this bullshit last week—and getting the oft-corrected story wrong, even as she rolled her eyes about how dumb Bachmann is.

This recalls the inexcusable blunder the Washington Post made in 1999 on the day Dan Quayle announced he was running for president. For our fullest review of that truly horrible groaner, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/13/05.

Serious liberals should be appalled to see Maddow clowning around in this way, even as Fox continued to drive our prevailing scandal framework. On the brighter side, Maddow is paid a very large salary for entertaining us liberals this ways.

We can all feel glad about that fact—glad for the imaginary friend who hustles our keisters each night.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MSNBC: Good God!

MONDAY, JUNE 3, 2013

Part 1—An horrifically bad Wednesday night: Friend, are you a liberal?

If so, Wednesday evening, May 29, was a horrible night for you.

Over on Fox, the hounds of scandal were braying. As always, it started at 5 PM, with the scripted inanities of The Five. But let’s move straight to the hounds of hell which were unleashed in prime time.

At 8 PM, Bill O’Reilly’s first two segments dealt with the trio of so-called scandals which have come to define the American news agenda. First, O’Reilly interviewed Paul Ryan about the trio of outrageous events. He then devoted a second segment to an interview with Bob Beckel, a deeply dejected “Fox Democrat.”

After Beckel rolled over and died—“It's very much like Ronald Reagan during Iran-contra,” he said—O’Reilly teased his third segment:

O'REILLY (5/29/13): All right! Bob Beckel, everybody! There he is.

Directly ahead, Megyn Kelly on a very important question: Did Attorney General Holder legally, legally commit perjury? Miss Megyn is next.

In his fourth segment, O’Reilly spoke with the sainted James Rosen. That segment started like this:

O'REILLY: The Washington Beat segment tonight: Lots going on as the scandals continue to envelope the nation's capital. Joining us now from D.C., the very famous James Rosen and Fox News chief political correspondent, Carl Cameron.

So people are taking bets on whether Eric Holder is going to have to resign, Cameron. And there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. What are you hearing?

In his fifth segment, O’Reilly spoke with the sulfurous Dennis Miller, as he does every week. Critiquing Obama’s trip to Atlantic City, Miller said, “Obama throws like a girlie-man.” He also continued his years-long comparison of Holder to alleged Oprah boy-toy Stedman Graham.

At 9 PM, O’Reilly handed the reins to Sean Hannity. The beat went on.

In Hannity’s first segment, a ritual slaughter occurred as Juan Williams tried to debate the purported scandals with Michelle Malkin (or perhaps as he pretended). In his second segment, Hannity spoke with two congressmen, both Republicans, about Holder’s depredations.

In his third segment, Hannity discussed the bouquet of scandals with conservative talker Dennis Prager and with Fox Democrat Kirsten Powers. Frequently, Powers doesn’t roll over and die. But on this evening, this was part of her opening statement:

POWERS (5/29/13): But in all seriousness, what the White House did was completely despicable and I think now, people are starting to see. You know, we got the tapes of it early on. That's all started pretty quickly after he was in office. It was just about, not even quite a year into office that they launched this war on Fox News. And the thing that I love about that clip that you showed of [Obama] at the beginning is that he says, “There is this one news—you know, I have one news station that attacks me all day long.”

Now, setting aside whether it is true that he is being attacked all day long, it's one. You know, and he is complaining that, out of all of the media, there is one place that allows people to say things about him that he doesn't like. You know, let's get a little perspective. I think any president would be happy if that was their situation.

During this particular segment, Powers represented the liberal perspective! In his next segment, Hannity spoke with Karl Rove about “the IRS enemies list.” And segment 5 started like this:

HANNITY (5/29/13): One of the president's most vocal supporters during the 2012 campaign has now landed himself in a lot of hot water. Singer-songwriter, co-host of the hit show The Voice, Adam Levine declared that he hates America on live television last night.

One of Obama’s biggest supporters had declared that he hates America! Sadly, Hannity wasn’t even making his basic claim up.

When Greta started at 10 PM, the pounding continued. “Tonight: How high does it go?” she instantly asked—and she wasn’t asking about the water in some rain-swollen river.

Last Wednesday, it was all-scandal all night long on the nation’s highest-rated news channel. (Fox is highest rated by far.) But friend, on your own liberal news channel, a group of children were enjoying an evening of play.

At 8 PM, Chris Hayes kicked off your tribe’s prime-time programming block. He chose to discuss a minor figure who had pretty much lost her prominence more than a year ago.

It was time to go over some tired old flubs! Here’s what Hayes said as he introduced his evening’s featured segment:

HAYES (5/29/13): But we begin tonight with—well, another of whom there is only one, the one and only Michele Bachmann.

Five years ago, if I said that name to you on this program, you would have had no idea who the heck I was talking about. Michele Bachmann happened at that point to be a freshman member of Congress in Minnesota and there are even still lots of members of Congress whose names you probably don’t know.

[...]

Today, we know that Michele Bachmann will not be seeking reelection next year, a decision she announced, fittingly, because it’s the medium she works within, in a web video—a long, long, aggressively boring and over-musically scored web video. There were moments, however, in the eight-plus minutes of her straight to camera monologue of pure trademark Michele Bachmann amazingness, starting with the not reasons she’s leaving Congress.

BACHMANN (videotape): Be assured, my decision was not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being reelected to Congress. And rest assured, this decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff.

HAYES: As convincing as Rob Ford’s crack-cocaine denial.

Hayes was focusing on a figure so inconsequential that she had just announced her plan to retire from Congress. As he discussed her videotaped announcement, he complained about its musical score—and he drew a comparison to the “crack cocaine denial” of Rob Ford, a person the average voter has never heard of and never will.

(Ford isn’t from this country. To waste your time, click here.)

Friend, what does it mean to be part of a backwater cultural cult? Hayes turned to two guests to discuss the retirement of the inconsequential Bachmann. These remarks were soon offered:

HAYES: Joining me at the table, Joan Walsh, editor at large for Salon and author of What’s the Matter with White People—that includes Michele Bachmann. And Dan Savage, syndicated columnist, host of Savage Lovecast, and author of the brand new book you should check out, American Savage.

All right, Michele Bachmann! I guess I was actually sort of surprised she did this, but once we sat in the editorial meeting, what would you do if you were Michele Bachmann? It makes perfect sense, right?

WALSH: Yes, it does. I mean, she’s also facing—I love the whole “pay no attention to FBI investigation behind the curtain” part of her word-salad generated video.

SAVAGE: And she led with that.

HAYES: That was the beginning. The beginning was this whole long thing about all the reasons she’s not quitting, and it’s not because of the FBI and it’s not she’s going to get her butt kicked in—

WALSH: No, none of those things.

SAVAGE: And I’m glad it was at the beginning, because I got through about four minutes before I had to go back to watching porn. Only so many minutes in a row I can take Michele Bachmann before I need a palate cleanser.

Set aside the pointlessness of mocking Bachmann’s greatest flubs for perhaps the ten millionth time. Just look at the way your cult members elected to do so this evening!

One of Hayes’ guests has written a book which is weirdly titled, “What’s the Matter with White People?” That group would include Bachmann, Hayes himself weirdly said.

The author of that weirdly named book was soon complaining about the “word salad” found in Bachmann’s video announcement. (It may have been even worse than the musical score!) The other guest said he quickly returned to watching porn after trying to watch the video.

He needed a palate cleanser!

Can we talk? If Karl Rove was allowed to program MSNBC, he couldn’t make it more irrelevant, even more destructive to liberal interests.

What a performance! But all night long, from 5 PM on, this channel’s hosts and well-scripted “contributors” pounded away at Bachmann’s past flubs, sometimes going out of their way to showcase their own distance from mainstream American culture.

The first half of Hardball was “all about Bachmann.” But then, every program started with Bachmann this evening except the Rachel Maddow Show. For unknown reasons, Maddow started with a weirdly undercooked bit of “breaking news,” then turned to the mocking of Bachmann for her second segment.

When Maddow mocked Bachmann, she made a groaning factual error (see next post). But watching the children chuckle and play, a cable viewer would have no idea about the actual claims and themes which were roiling political Washington.

Briefly, let’s consider the other topics Hayes discussed this night.

After wasting everyone’s time with Bachmann’s greatest flubs, where did Hayes go next? Good God—to marijuana! His second segment began as shown below, with tape of Ronald Reagan.

No, we aren’t making this up! After laughing at Bachmann, we liberals got to laugh at Reagan himself! And we got to talk about marijuana—pot, grass, Mary Jane.

Hayes’ segment started like this:

REAGAN (videotape): Leading medical researchers are coming to the conclusion that marijuana, pot, grass, whatever you want to call it, is probably the most dangerous drug in the United States.

HAYES: That was a little over 30 years ago, and, well, we have come a long way. If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like to live in a world where marijuana was legal and regulated, in Colorado that day has arrived.

Yesterday, Governor John Hickenlooper made history by signing four bills to make his state the first state in the country to fully regulate the recreational use, sale, and consumption of marijuana for adults.

Was this a news topic? Barely! But Maddow also explored this topic, offering one of the emptiest interviews in cable history with a legalization advocate:

MADDOW (5/29/13): Major Franklin, thank you very much for being here. It’s nice to have you with us.

FRANKLIN: Hey, Rachel. It’s great to be back.

MADDOW: So, this has been a hypothetical for so long, states treating marijuana basically more like alcohol than like a Schedule One drug. How do you think Colorado has done drafting these regulations?

FRANKLIN: I think they’ve done a wonderful job. The people of Colorado have done a wonderful job. The team that was in place to craft these regulations have done a wonderful job, and now, the governor has done a wonderful job moving this policy forward. It’s a great day.

Was Major Franklin on pot, grass himself? Everything was wonderful, in its own way, as this segment crawled forward.

Friend, your liberal channel seemed to be broadcasting from an alternate universe last Wednesday night. There was little sign that a dangerous set of scandal claims was taking control of American politics as the children filled the evening with their enjoyable chatter. (Don’t even ask about the two segments with which Hayes concluded his hour.)

Who knows? Perhaps each of these hosts is a lover, not a fighter! But in last Wednesday’s performances, the children continued the practice they started last fall, when they refused to fight back against the claims being made about Benghazi—crackpot claims which retain their power today, even as the kids on our channel continue to look away.

In terms of substance, this was a horrible evening for MSNBC. That said, the channel’s ratings were horrific too.

Those ratings suggest a possibility: To our credit, we the dogs aren’t eating this particular dog food! Because alas! As Fox kept driving the political framework which now controls American politics, its ratings dwarfed those of The Liberal Channel on this horrible night.

“What’s wrong with MSNBC?” Alex Pareene asked that question at Salon two days before this horrific night.

In the main, Pareene referred to the channel’s flagging ratings. We think he was asking a very good question.

We’ll ponder his question all week.

Tomorrow: In this morning’s New York Times, Bill Carter explores Pareene’s question

At long last, the New York Times bends to our will!

SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013

Initiates series of front-page reports about our health care looting: For years, we’ve been making a non-negotiable demand in the form of a question:

When would the New York Time do the obvious? When would it publish a series of front-page reports about the way the American public gets looted in the costs of health care?

We’ll guess we started asking this question in 2009, the year when the press corps pretended to stage a year-long debate about health care. This morning, to its credit, the New York Times has finally submitted to our will.

In the early going, the Times has already screwed up one part of the deal. It has failed to post Elisabeth Rosenthal’s lengthy front-page report in the Nexis archive. Unless this error is corrected, the piece will be lost to one band of future researchers.

That said, Rosenthal’s piece appears above the fold on the front page of this morning’s Times. It appears there beneath these headlines, as you can verify here:

The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill
Colonoscopies Explain Why U.S. Leads the World in Health Expenditures

In fact, colonoscopies only help explain that unfortunate matter, as Rosenthal correctly writes in her actual text. In that report, Rosenthal details the way Americans get looted on this procedure, as compared to people elsewhere in the developed world.

Under a dateline of Merrick, New York, this is the way starts:

ROSENTHAL (6/2/13): Deirdre Yapalater’s recent colonoscopy at a surgical center near her home here on Long Island went smoothly: she was whisked from pre-op to an operating room where a gastroenterologist, assisted by an anesthesiologist and a nurse, performed the routine cancer screening procedure in less than an hour. The test, which found nothing worrisome, racked up what is likely her most expensive medical bill of the year: $6,385.

That is fairly typical: in Keene, N.H., Matt Meyer’s colonoscopy was billed at $7,563.56. Maggie Christ of Chappaqua, N.Y., received $9,142.84 in bills for the procedure. In Durham, N.C., the charges for Curtiss Devereux came to $19,438, which included a polyp removal. While their insurers negotiated down the price, the final tab for each test was more than $3,500.

“Could that be right?” said Ms. Yapalater, stunned by charges on the statement on her dining room table. Although her insurer covered the procedure and she paid nothing, her health care costs still bite: Her premium payments jumped 10 percent last year, and rising co-payments and deductibles are straining the finances of her middle-class family, with its mission-style house in the suburbs and two S.U.V.’s parked outside. “You keep thinking it’s free,” she said. “We call it free, but of course it’s not.”

In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000.That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.

In other developed countries, this common procedure costs “well under $1,000.” Citizens here are getting looted, to the very substantial degree Rosenthal described in that passage.

Rosenthal’s report is lengthy and detailed—and she says there are more reports to come! In response to the non-negotiable demands we have advanced for several years, Rosenthal makes this pledge:

“In coming months, The New York Times will look at common procedures, drugs and medical encounters to examine how the economic incentives underlying the fragmented health care market in the United States have driven up costs, putting deep economic strains on consumers and the country.”

Unfortunately, you see the downside to Rosenthal’s work to date in that polite formulation, in which she attributes the obvious looting of American citizens to “the economic incentives underlying the fragmented health care market in the United States,” incentives which have “driven up costs, putting deep economic strains on consumers and the country.”

That formulation isn’t wrong; it’s just extremely polite. A cynic would say it represents a form of, “Hey, look quick! Look over there!” In the end, such excessive politeness may tend to keep readers from grasping the depth of the looting which is being described here.

Indeed, it may keep readers from understanding the fact that looting is being described here at all. Rosenthal never uses that unpleasant term, which may seem like a sensible journalistic decision.

Should Rosenthal use a term like “looting?” Before you cheer her self-restraint, you might want to note that she does use terms like this, early in her report:

ROSENTHAL: While the United States medical system is famous for drugs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and heroic care at the end of life, it turns out that a more significant factor in the nation’s $2.7 trillion annual health care bill may not be the use of extraordinary services, but the high price tag of ordinary ones. “The U.S. just pays providers of health care much more for everything,” said Tom Sackville, chief executive of the health plans federation and a former British health minister.

We’re allowed to hear about “heroic care at the end of life.” But that flowery language isn’t balanced by an evocative term like “looting.”

In fairness, the Times has bent to our will; it says more reports will follow. So will the inevitable Pulitzer Prize, a point we have made in the past when we’ve marveled at the failure of major newspapers to undertake this blindingly obvious journalistic assignment.

But will these future reports go where the rubber meets the road? Will they help readers understand the depth of the scam Rosenthal is reporting?

Rosenthal is describing an astounding situation. Within the next week, we will issue new demands concerning the future reports she and the Times have promised.

The wages of the refusal to fight is a drop in one recent poll!

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2013

Hillary Clinton’s numbers take a dive: Personally, we’ve never been sold on the idea of Hillary Clinton as a candidate in 2016.

(Not that there’s anyone else.)

We know, we know—our statement is shocking. On the One True Liberal Channel, the children have been telling us that Clinton would be a sure thing if she decided to run.

Serving comfort food to us rubes, MSNBC pushed this line quite hard around the time Clinton left State. If we might adapt the words of The Band, “We ourselves were among the ones who thought it was just a childish thing to do.”

Is it obvious Clinton will choose to run? It doesn’t seem so to us. Beyond that, it seems
to us that obvious problems loom if she decides to do so.

Clinton would be 69 in 2016. We don’t think that would be helpful. Beyond that, there is a pre-existing boatload of negative scripts about Clinton waiting to be re-activated.

The children don’t seem to understand that! But then, what else is new?

There are a million negative scripts about Clinton in the naked city. Most of these scripts were concocted out of whole cloth many years ago.

That said, these scripts are real, and everyone has heard them. They do exist, and they could easily be reloaded.

Unless you get your wisdom from MSNBC, this has been one of the obvious reasons for the endless attacks on Susan Rice over the past nine months. A cover-up was staged! It was designed to obscure the deaths of four brave Americans!

This bit of pathology comes straight from the pre-existing novel about Hillary Clinton, the dragon lady who will say and do anything to win. You just can’t believe what she says!

This brings us to Jake Tapper’s report on CNN last night. Tapper spoke with a trio of certified insider pundits. This explains the tapioca they offered:

TAPPER (5/31/13): I want to move to the next topic which is: In the next—most recent Quinnipiac poll, Hillary Clinton's favorability ratings have taken a hit. It was 61 percent which is huge, very, very strong. Now, it's 52 percent. The big question I guess is, why? Kevin, is this—

MADDEN: The wonderful confines of having an apolitical job in a very political city. And now once you step outside of those safe confines and you're then again put into the scrutiny of the political machine, whether it's on the media, opponents, and just the nature of politics itself, it takes a hit. And it's inevitable.

TAPPER: Do polls matter this early? We don't even know if she is going to run for president. But do they matter this early?

CUTTER: No, they don't. They don't really reflect ultimately how people are going to vote in primaries or, you know, general elections. It is an eternity between now and 2016.

BROWNSTEIN: Having said that, I mean, that is obviously true. But what this does show you is the natural kind of resting point in American politics right now is pretty close to 50/50.

TAPPER: Right.

BROWNSTEIN: You know, we are very closely divided. Slight demographic advantage for Democrats in the presidential race but 61 percent, reality and gravity are setting in.

According to Brownstein, the new poll shows that “the natural kind of resting point in American politics right now is pretty close to 50/50.” Let’s put the airbrush away: It also shows how easy it is to reactive negative portraits of Clinton.

This is only one poll. It may turn out to be an outlier. But this poll should serve as a wake-up call for the dreamers at MSNBC. We’ll try to type very slowly now, helping them follow our point:

For twenty years, the right has been given free rein to create unflattering narratives about major Democrats. Clinton, Clinton and Gore were the early victims of this change in the culture.

It will be very easy to reboot the negative themes about Hillary Clinton. (To cite just one giant offender, Chris Matthews worked like a dog to create and advance those themes right through 2008. For now, he has been repurposed.)

These narratives won’t suddenly go away because the children want that. If Clinton runs, those familiar, highly unflattering narratives will be back with a vengeance.

Mainstream pundits will play along. Will the children be willing to fight them?

That Quinnipiac poll may be an outlier. But anyone with an ounce of sense would have understood all along that Susan Rice was being trashed to produce this drop in Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.

For more than eight months, the children have run off and hid in the woods as Rice was trashed in ridiculous ways about what happened in Benghazi. But then, career liberal pundits have functioned this way for at least the last 21 years.

On the brighter side, they’re being paid very big money to make us feel good, to pleasure us with silly claims about the way Clinton can’t lose.

If Gore had run in 2008: A similar situation obtained in early 2006, after Al Gore had become the toast of the liberal world. For a real-time review, just click here.

In April 2006, Ezra Klein wrote a front-page piece in The American Prospect, asking if Gore would run again in 2008. To us, that prospect seemed highly unlikely. Because he isn’t the world’s dumbest person, Gore of course understood the way it would work:

The very day he announced a new run, a string of old claims would be back with a vengeance. Al Gore said he invented the Internet! Al Gore doesn’t know who he is! Al Gore has a problem with the truth! Why does Gore exaggerate when the truth would be just as good?

Back in 2006, Ezra showed no sign of knowing that this is the way the game would be played. Seven years later, the children on The One True Channel seem to be equally clueless.