Media
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Quote of the Day: Jessica Yellin
About her time at ABC News in 2002/3: JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a
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Quotes of the Day: Digby, Berube (Updated: & Marshall)
The important thing to realize is that these themes have been completely internalized by the villagers. They really don’t even question it anymore, it’s completely natural to them. When you see George Stephanopoulos essentially explain that Democratic voters are choosing between an flaccid, unpatriotic "metrosexual" and a lying, delusional succubus, and it’s simply his job
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Back to Unreality
McCain used to be a relatively sane conservative capable of discriminating between reality and unreality, but to the degree that he has sought the GOP nomination, to that degree has he lost his grip on reality. He’s living off a reputation based on what he was, not on what he has become. It’s hard to
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Hillary Hatred
Sullivan reprints this email to him, which calls him out on his irrationality toward Clinton. I don't want her nominated, but I simply do not get the Clinton hatred displayed by the Andrew Sullivans and Chris Matthew types in the media establishment. To Sullivan's credit, he hears the criticism and promises to amend his ways.
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Kristol Goes to the Times (expanded)
In response to Abe Rosenthal's defense of the NY Times's providing neocon propagandist Bill Kristol a column on "free-speech" grounds, Mark Crispin Miller responds: Showcasing Kristol's "views" might be acceptable if they had not beencatastrophically discredited by (what one might dare call) reality. Hislousy record as a pundit should be quite sufficient to disqualify him
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The Move-On Ad and the Senate
Talk about misallocated disgust. In the same week as failing to restore habeas corpus. In the same week as failing to bring real relief to the soldiers and their families, they pass this with 72 votes?! The whole business of the Senate has moved into Monty Python territory. Black, surreal humor seems the only sane
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News Not What It Used to Be?
Russell Baker has an interesting piece at The New York Review of Books about the future of newspapers. He rehearses many of the obvious things about the negative impact of corporate chains–how it destroyed the Los Angeles Times, threatened to destroy the New York Times, and now threatens to destroy the Wall Street Journal. But
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The Blog/MSM Divide
You should be sure to read Digby’s piece here parsing the Beltway mind as represented in an epochal piece written by Sally Quinn, who was so appalled that Bill Clinton should behave the way he did in her town. It’s part of a larger theme developed by Greenwald and Somerby to which I’ve referred in
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How the Press is Eroding Democratic Habits (Updated)
I was close to canceling my subscription to Salon, and then they made Glenn Greenwald one of their regular columnist/bloggers. I haven’t read a thing by him yet that is not in my opinion pitch perfect. While the scope of his writing embraces a broader spectrum of topics than Bob Somerby’s Daily Howler does, Greenwald
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Credibility and Credulity
"I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody that has 9 percent approval ratings." Thank you, Harry Reid, for finally stating the obvious. The attitude of the entire country now should be to afford no credibility to anything these liars say. Every time I listen to the news and hear some new