This is pretty much the best blog post ever written, courtesy of David Rees.
Rees is the guy who did Get Your War On, the comic strip that shed a tiny light in the darkness for dazed New Yorkers in the weeks following 9/11.
If you want more background, here’s the NY Times Mag essay by Michael Ignatieff that David Rees is skewering. This link is to a site that lets you see the essay without paying for it.
Have at it!!
Filed under: politics
this is from "Tapped, the Group Blog of the American Prospect." i saw it cited by Eric Alterman in his own blog, Altercations. so i stole it too!
FLORIDA REPUBLICAN: I'M NOT GAY, I'M RACIST! In what's rapidly turning into the grand unified Republican scandal of 2007, GOP State Rep. Bob Allen today explained his recent arrest for paying $20 to preform oral sex on an undercover cop by explaining that the guy was big, and black and he thought he "was about to be a statistic." Really. "This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," said Allen. This has been reported in a lot of places, but I haven't seen anyone make the point that this is pretty revealing about Republican principles. Allen, who has vowed to run for reelection, thinks that the cost of appearing to be ridiculously racist is worth it if he is not seen as soliciting a man in a park. Sadly, he's probably right. It also manages to wrap up almost every kind of Republican scandal of the last few months: corruption (he asked the police if it would help that he was a state legislator), sex, racism, and the collapse of McCain's campaign (Allen was co-Chair for him in Florida). --Sam Boyd
above: oldest cape cod windmill, Eastham MA. Next to the Superette where fresh corn, chard, ice cream, Off!, and the NY Times are sold. Also where whatsleft and EF are apt to lose their way. Eventually they find the cottage and their friends.
Now that Jimmy Breslin-so-not Mike Barnicle is back in his shell, msnbc Hardball host and Jimmy Breslin-in-his-dreams Chris Matthews is back in the saddle.
Here Media Matters observes Matthews as he expounds on gender, history, and politics. Let’s listen in!
As Media Matters has noted, Matthews — who on his June 24, 2007, program said that he “love[s] gender politics” — has frequently focused on gender issues when discussing Clinton. He has said that “some men” say Clinton’s voice sounds like “fingernails on a blackboard“; wondered if Clinton is “a convincing mom“; claimed that “men don’t knock Hillary” and that they are “are afraid” to criticize her. He once also claimed that her criticism of the Bush administration’s homeland security spending priorities made her look “witchy” and has wondered if there is a “gigantic monster,” a “big, green, horny-headed … monster of anti-Hillaryism that hasn’t shown itself.”
Matthews’ discussion of Edwards’ height and Clinton’s voice came about three hours after a conversation on Hardball about gay marriage, during which he turned to Karen Finney, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, and said, “[Y]ou don’t love your wife, do you? I’m just kidding.” Moments later, Matthews said: “Let’s get back to the debating point here before we get too frivolous.”
[END]
And now for a snippet from the guy who isn’t a Jimmy Breslin wannabe:
[From Democracy Now, it’s Jimmy Breslin talking with Amy Goodman about media coverage of the 2004 Democratic Convention. link here http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/29/1442255%5D
AMY GOODMAN: Some say that because it’s so scripted, there’s nothing to talk about.
JIMMY BRESLIN: I don’t care. That’s none of your business what it is. Your business is to write it. If it’s lousy, then you’re running a lousy convention. If it’s good, you run a good convention. But you are running a convention of the Democratic Party, which is producing a candidate to run for president and you don’t want to cover it? You don’t have it on your air? Then you shouldn’t have the station. Awful. That’s a tremendous thing that happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that this goes hand in hand with the way the media covers the lead up to the invasion?
JIMMY BRESLIN: Exactly — they don’t care. They got good jobs. These people are too well off. Ever look at them? There is no curiosity. Their curiosity is where they are going out tonight or what party they go to. There’s no curiosity here. None whatsoever. And also, they can’t write too good. 37 words in a lead sentence, and they expect the public to follow and read. Norman Mailer would do 16 or John Steinbeck 14, they do 47 to show that they went to Tufts and they did 10 papers before this.
AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize journalist Jimmy Breslin. He writes for “Newsday.”
According to R.C. at Media Matters:
“During a segment on the August 6 broadcast of NBC’s Today, NBC senior
foreign correspondent Andrea Mitchell uncritically aired Republican
presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s claim
during an August 5 debate aired on ABC’s This Week that Sen. Barack Obama
“went from going to sit down to tea with our enemies, but then he’s going to
bomb our allies. I mean, he’s gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week.”
[end quote]
So, Gov. Mitt Romney tagged Sen. Obama with the “Strangelove” label,
one most associated in popular culture with
gleeful, pre-emptive nuclear attack. He did this
despite the fact that last week Obama also said he wouldn’t
use nukes “in any circumstance.”
Say what you will about Obama’s recent foreign policy forays, but
calling him”Dr. Strangelove” is like something out of Dr. Strangelove.
But Governor Romney is not the first in recent days to
refer to Obama as “Dr. Strangelove.”
That weird distinction goes to reporter Mike Barnicle.
On Friday, August 3rd, Barnicle was substituting for
host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball. At one point during the
show Barnicle was joined by a panel consisting of Jay Carney from
Time Magazine, Craig Crawford from Congressional Quarterly,
and Julie Mason of The Houston Chronicle.
I’ve posted a partial transcript. you can skip to the
end of the chitchat to see Barnicle drop the bomb just
in time for a commercial break.
Harball link:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20146238/
BARNICLE: Jay, let me ask you something; you know, I
go into a couple different states and have a cup of
coffee and bump into people—you‘re out there in
Chicago. You‘re out there in the middle of the
country. Whenever Barack Obama‘s name comes up,
there is a gleam in a lot of people‘s eyes, because I think a
lot of people, my instinct is, want something new, something
different this time out.
And yet national security, being what it is, people‘s
fear of another terrorists attack, the balance between
the two, experience and something new; how do you
think that‘s playing out for Barack Obama?
CARNEY: Well, you know, in some ways very well. He has
done well raising money. He has shown a lot of
grass roots support. But I think experience is an
issue. It‘s one that Senator Clinton clearly wants to
exploit, and other candidates like Chris Dodd and Bill
Richardson want to exploit, because there is no
question, at least on national security matters, that
Barack Obama has less experience than some of his
opponents.
One thing that is refreshing about this, you
know—while it‘s a feud and a name-calling episode
between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, it‘s
substantive. I think what we saw here revealed a lot
about both candidates and where they stand on the
issues and their relative level of experience.
And while—on the Senator Obama issue, while it‘s
certainly true that no president of either party would
truly look at the idea of using nuclear weapons to
bomb Osama bin Laden in Waziristan, it‘s also true
that it‘s very rare that a president would take that
off the table ever, because it is simply not done in
foreign policy, where you remove options from the
table when you are trying to exert leverage. I think
Senator Obama expressed a truth, but he also, I think,
showed his inexperience.
(CROSS TALK)
CRAWFORD: Any loose talk about nukes by a
presidential candidate is trouble, particularly a new
comer already trying to fend of the naive —
MASON: Rookie mistake.
BARNICLE: Doctor Strangelove. We are going to be
right back with the panel. You are watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
When I was a kid and teenager I watched Dick Cavett, David Susskind and and Wm F Buckley’s Firing Line. I loved how guests like Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer and Gore Vidal would get into big literary and political fights about things like Tolstoy, Vietnam, and sex. It was fun, and the guests could speak without censorship, it seemed.
Now Charlie Rose asks his fawning, interminable non-questions and I nod off. And who else is there? Oprah?
This Slate piece reminded me of the good old days.
Filed under: politics
From the NY Times:
California’s top election official on Friday decertified three voting systems widely used in the state…
(snip)
(snip)
So. “Industry Executives” agree the machines themselves can be hacked. Precautions are focused on, um, LOGIN sheets. Plus a camera to limit access in “most counties”. (Where does the camera go? Who buys the camera?)
The precautions “could prevent” (keep hope alive!) the hacker from thinking of a way to get a moment alone with the hackable touch-screen. Possibly.
Sounds airtight!
Then again, I like my chances better with this little number:
Glenn Greenwald spots the war propaganda like a hawk.
Click link above and scroll down to: “A new low of mindlessness for our media.”
Here’s some Greenwald fury. The man is good.
“It is difficult to remember a media spectacle to match yesterday’s grand pageant where Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon were paraded across virtually every network and cable news show and radio program and heralded as “war opponents” and “Bush critics” who nonetheless returned from Iraq and were forced by The Truth to admit that we are Winning. For sheer deceit and propaganda, it is difficult to remember something quite this audacious and transparently false.
As was demonstrated yesterday, O’Hanlon and Pollack were among the most voracious cheerleaders for Bush’s invasion and, as the war began to collapse, among its most deceitful defenders. But it goes so far beyond that.
Even through this year, they have remained loyal Bush supporters. They were not only advocates of the war, but cheerleaders for the Surge. They were, and continue to be, on the fringe of pro-war sentiment in this country. And yet all day yesterday, this country’s media loudly hailed them as being exactly the opposite of what they really are.”
Of course, these fringe pro-warriors take their cue from the Master.
My 99 Cents 