I bet you won't fall on your face, your belly will hold you in place. -- Iron Maiden Be Quick or Be Dead<./I>
Since we're talking about the importance of accountability for a bunch of dipshit teenagers, let's also mention how much more important that ideal is for the cadre of adult professionals who monger opinions and convene panel circle jerks and such like. Obviously the Covington Catholic controversy sets right in their collective wheelhouse. They can spend the next week going over video swatches like the fucking Zapruder film, frame-by-frame analysis that ultimately confirms whatever a given observer has already chosen to believe beforehand.
I guess it beats reporting on whether the school is tax-exempt, as many religious schools are, and if so, how that status squares with the school bussing children wearing political endorsement swag to a political protest to advocate a highly specific -- and contentious -- point of view. But then again, let's face it -- the 501(c)(3) status that churches and religious organizations enjoy is one of the most ridiculous and least enforced legal fig leaves in existence. It barely falls under the scope of pro forma.
So because the 'murkin viewing audience apparently lost some sort of collective wager with all that is good and decent in life, this sort of both-sider bafflegab is what passes for political discourse anymore. This is facilitated by a smooth corporate media ecosystem that has come to understand that their product is not news, or even entertainment, but conflict -- cheap, empty opinions foisted on a ludicrous, polarized citizenry.
In so many ways, Trump really is a waddling, farting avatar of what this nation really is, and what it's become -- bloated, sclerotic, sweaty, ridiculously made-up, dumber than a box of rocks, a mere bacon cheeseburger away from a massive coronary or stroke, always spoiling for a fight it doesn't need and can't win anyway. Like a bad cliché out of a movie about addiction to heroin or sex, we -- and he -- resort to increasingly desperate, self-destructive behavior in order to feel something, in order to avoid having to confront the ugly truths that await, patiently, permanently, just a few feet away at all times.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen just in the past week some variation of the phrase Rudy Giuliani says, in an interview with... . And it's not Fixed Noise, mind you, though he slithers on there as well. It's CNN, it's New York magazine, it's putatively liberal bastions of serious journamalism. If it isn't Ghouliani, it's that mendacious dunce Kellyanne Conway.
Enough of us have to get tired of hearing their hypocritical plaints that we boycott them, and let them know why. If your Serious News Organization contains within its definition of what constitutes "real" journalism gives air time to proven liars to keep lying and propagandizing and gaslighting the public, then your organization is worse than useless. You're actively causing harm to the country, period. It doesn't matter whose office Conway and Giuliani work at the behest of, they are liars, and as such should have been banned from your airwaves long ago. I don't give a fuck how "skeptical" Chris Cuomo and Jake Tapper pretend to be, or how righteously indignant they come off in their sterile questioning of these dirtbags, they fail just by letting them on in the first place.
THEY ARE LIARS, AND ALL THEY ARE GOING TO DO IS LIE SOME MORE. STOP GIVING THEM A PLATFORM TO LIE MORE.
I mean, seriously. All Giuliani has done since the year began is change his story, over and fucking over again. The journos think they've cleverly caught him in another "alleged falsehood," or whatever their chickenshit euphemism is for LYING. But what happens in this diseased ecosystem is that other outlets need the "scoop" (of shit), so they talk about the LIES, thus helping perpetuate them further.
Some of us are old enough to recall when these clowns took themselves seriously enough to haughtily state that, as guardians of the republic, they would never, ever besmirch the TRUTH by allowing a "source" to burn them with a lie. But they don't have sources anymore, because they don't report new informational items (i.e., "news"). It's mostly just interchangeable gangs of paid dupes bickering over inane talking points.
For every useful point brought forth by an honest, knowledgeable observer, there are ten of these useless, jabbering douchebags, who in a rational world would have been forced to ply an honest trade long ago. Hell, one of them managed to get promoted to "Acting" Attorney General when that worthless turd Sessions got shitcanned.
As despicable as Conway and Giuliani are, we know why they want to get on the air and push their bullshit. It's an awful logic, but there is a logic to it. It makes sense. They shovel the elephant shit at the circus, and this is their version of show bidness. This is their job, as sleazy and evil and ridiculous as it is and they are.
What doesn't make sense is why supposedly Serious News outlets continue to have them on. We don't need Charlie Manson's side of the story, over and over again. Bokay? We get it.
These fucking people....I swear to Christ, when and if this criminal shitshow, this turd-gulping human centipede of an administration finally comes down, if this scab of a nation survives the fallout in any meaningful state, we don't just need to raze and (maybe) rebuild the Republicon party, the same needs to happen to the corporate media machine. Because with very few exceptions, they suck.
I don't see ever watching CNN again, on cable or the internet. Again, they're not just useless, they're harmful. They're an ongoing part of the fucking problem. If they have to be told why they shouldn't have Giuliani or Conway on ever again, much less every week or so, then they've already abdicated whatever role they had.
We've driven ourselves nuts with this shit, really. We used to be able to get by without hourly updates on every little thing. We used to just be able to identify toxic assholes as such, and move on, and not get drawn into meaningless Twitter arguments with fake bait-bots and genuine scumbags.
[Update 1/23/19 4:56 PM PST: It's like these useless fucks live to outdo the most cynical possible assumptions about them. Bad enough that Today show dunce Savannah Guthrie granted Smirkface Junior a softball interview. CNN turd-smoker Jake Tapper says hold my beer to that, and logrolls coverage of these smug little fuckers to a PR weasel who also happens to be a frequent CNN common tater.
I'm telling you, CNN is part of the problem, a big part. This happens on several levels. On the day-to-day operational level, obviously it's all just about harvesting eyes for whatever dipshit panel show is on any given hour. But with Tapper's show, it's somehow both worse and not as bad.
The thing about Tapper logrolling Jennings is not that it's evidence of some dark conspiracy. It's that it's prima facie evidence of how mediocre the whole operation is over there. It should be something of a story that these poor kids are so unfortunate, that within hours of getting into a public altercation, their parents have rounded up a fucking PR firm to get out "their side" of the story. It should also be appoint of interest to any honest journalist that the Covington kids and their parents are exactly the sort of douchebags that rushed to call the Parkland kids "crisis actors" hours after those kids watched their friends get murdered in front of them in school.
Instead, Tapper's go-to move is in the utterly mundane spirit of collegiality, this cheap and unnecessary professional courtesy. It's not that it's nefarious and evil, but that the defining characteristic of that episode is how shabby it is. You can be sure Tapper doesn't see the problem; he's just a friend helping out a buddy. They'll go buy each other overpriced drinks at the downstairs bar after the show.
If Tapper was an honest journalist, he'd be ashamed of himself, apologize profusely, and never have Jennings on his show again. But again, he doesn't see a problem with any of this, which makes you wonder just how frequently content is created for or steered to CNN by PR firms in the first place. Why not just run back-to-back commercials and have done with it?]
Since we're talking about the importance of accountability for a bunch of dipshit teenagers, let's also mention how much more important that ideal is for the cadre of adult professionals who monger opinions and convene panel circle jerks and such like. Obviously the Covington Catholic controversy sets right in their collective wheelhouse. They can spend the next week going over video swatches like the fucking Zapruder film, frame-by-frame analysis that ultimately confirms whatever a given observer has already chosen to believe beforehand.
I guess it beats reporting on whether the school is tax-exempt, as many religious schools are, and if so, how that status squares with the school bussing children wearing political endorsement swag to a political protest to advocate a highly specific -- and contentious -- point of view. But then again, let's face it -- the 501(c)(3) status that churches and religious organizations enjoy is one of the most ridiculous and least enforced legal fig leaves in existence. It barely falls under the scope of pro forma.
So because the 'murkin viewing audience apparently lost some sort of collective wager with all that is good and decent in life, this sort of both-sider bafflegab is what passes for political discourse anymore. This is facilitated by a smooth corporate media ecosystem that has come to understand that their product is not news, or even entertainment, but conflict -- cheap, empty opinions foisted on a ludicrous, polarized citizenry.
In so many ways, Trump really is a waddling, farting avatar of what this nation really is, and what it's become -- bloated, sclerotic, sweaty, ridiculously made-up, dumber than a box of rocks, a mere bacon cheeseburger away from a massive coronary or stroke, always spoiling for a fight it doesn't need and can't win anyway. Like a bad cliché out of a movie about addiction to heroin or sex, we -- and he -- resort to increasingly desperate, self-destructive behavior in order to feel something, in order to avoid having to confront the ugly truths that await, patiently, permanently, just a few feet away at all times.I've lost count of how many times I've seen just in the past week some variation of the phrase Rudy Giuliani says, in an interview with... . And it's not Fixed Noise, mind you, though he slithers on there as well. It's CNN, it's New York magazine, it's putatively liberal bastions of serious journamalism. If it isn't Ghouliani, it's that mendacious dunce Kellyanne Conway.
Enough of us have to get tired of hearing their hypocritical plaints that we boycott them, and let them know why. If your Serious News Organization contains within its definition of what constitutes "real" journalism gives air time to proven liars to keep lying and propagandizing and gaslighting the public, then your organization is worse than useless. You're actively causing harm to the country, period. It doesn't matter whose office Conway and Giuliani work at the behest of, they are liars, and as such should have been banned from your airwaves long ago. I don't give a fuck how "skeptical" Chris Cuomo and Jake Tapper pretend to be, or how righteously indignant they come off in their sterile questioning of these dirtbags, they fail just by letting them on in the first place.
THEY ARE LIARS, AND ALL THEY ARE GOING TO DO IS LIE SOME MORE. STOP GIVING THEM A PLATFORM TO LIE MORE.
I mean, seriously. All Giuliani has done since the year began is change his story, over and fucking over again. The journos think they've cleverly caught him in another "alleged falsehood," or whatever their chickenshit euphemism is for LYING. But what happens in this diseased ecosystem is that other outlets need the "scoop" (of shit), so they talk about the LIES, thus helping perpetuate them further.
Some of us are old enough to recall when these clowns took themselves seriously enough to haughtily state that, as guardians of the republic, they would never, ever besmirch the TRUTH by allowing a "source" to burn them with a lie. But they don't have sources anymore, because they don't report new informational items (i.e., "news"). It's mostly just interchangeable gangs of paid dupes bickering over inane talking points.
For every useful point brought forth by an honest, knowledgeable observer, there are ten of these useless, jabbering douchebags, who in a rational world would have been forced to ply an honest trade long ago. Hell, one of them managed to get promoted to "Acting" Attorney General when that worthless turd Sessions got shitcanned.
As despicable as Conway and Giuliani are, we know why they want to get on the air and push their bullshit. It's an awful logic, but there is a logic to it. It makes sense. They shovel the elephant shit at the circus, and this is their version of show bidness. This is their job, as sleazy and evil and ridiculous as it is and they are.
What doesn't make sense is why supposedly Serious News outlets continue to have them on. We don't need Charlie Manson's side of the story, over and over again. Bokay? We get it.
These fucking people....I swear to Christ, when and if this criminal shitshow, this turd-gulping human centipede of an administration finally comes down, if this scab of a nation survives the fallout in any meaningful state, we don't just need to raze and (maybe) rebuild the Republicon party, the same needs to happen to the corporate media machine. Because with very few exceptions, they suck.
I don't see ever watching CNN again, on cable or the internet. Again, they're not just useless, they're harmful. They're an ongoing part of the fucking problem. If they have to be told why they shouldn't have Giuliani or Conway on ever again, much less every week or so, then they've already abdicated whatever role they had.
We've driven ourselves nuts with this shit, really. We used to be able to get by without hourly updates on every little thing. We used to just be able to identify toxic assholes as such, and move on, and not get drawn into meaningless Twitter arguments with fake bait-bots and genuine scumbags.
[Update 1/23/19 4:56 PM PST: It's like these useless fucks live to outdo the most cynical possible assumptions about them. Bad enough that Today show dunce Savannah Guthrie granted Smirkface Junior a softball interview. CNN turd-smoker Jake Tapper says hold my beer to that, and logrolls coverage of these smug little fuckers to a PR weasel who also happens to be a frequent CNN common tater.
I'm telling you, CNN is part of the problem, a big part. This happens on several levels. On the day-to-day operational level, obviously it's all just about harvesting eyes for whatever dipshit panel show is on any given hour. But with Tapper's show, it's somehow both worse and not as bad.
The thing about Tapper logrolling Jennings is not that it's evidence of some dark conspiracy. It's that it's prima facie evidence of how mediocre the whole operation is over there. It should be something of a story that these poor kids are so unfortunate, that within hours of getting into a public altercation, their parents have rounded up a fucking PR firm to get out "their side" of the story. It should also be appoint of interest to any honest journalist that the Covington kids and their parents are exactly the sort of douchebags that rushed to call the Parkland kids "crisis actors" hours after those kids watched their friends get murdered in front of them in school.
Instead, Tapper's go-to move is in the utterly mundane spirit of collegiality, this cheap and unnecessary professional courtesy. It's not that it's nefarious and evil, but that the defining characteristic of that episode is how shabby it is. You can be sure Tapper doesn't see the problem; he's just a friend helping out a buddy. They'll go buy each other overpriced drinks at the downstairs bar after the show.
If Tapper was an honest journalist, he'd be ashamed of himself, apologize profusely, and never have Jennings on his show again. But again, he doesn't see a problem with any of this, which makes you wonder just how frequently content is created for or steered to CNN by PR firms in the first place. Why not just run back-to-back commercials and have done with it?]
It's as though the meeja is so far removed from reality that its organs don't care that they're putting on lying sacks of shit -- the only thing that matters is the entertainment value. Hype the controversy! Opinionating uber alles...
ReplyDeleteIt seems designed to keep Americans at each others' throats. Hating brings ratings. But setting factions against each other tends to make things blow up. One of the reasons I'll never move back to to the U.S. is because I see too many parallels with Yugoslavia. There, it was Milosevic and the Serbian faction that tried to stay in power by pitting Croats, Muslims and other groups in the country against each other, so they would not unite against the venal apparatchiks at the top. I can see the rich bastards in the U.S. doing the same divide-to-keep-ruling strategy, egged on by the mass media -- especially broadcast -- with no thought about how shit's gonna wind up burning.
On the rare occasions when I visit the U.S., I'll flip on the TV in my hotel room and scan the cable news channels with a "meta" eye to what's being slopped out to the public. WHAT events are being featured, (and which things are ignored), HOW are they portrayed, WHO gets to talk about them? All this with my eye toward understanding the things that TPTB want Amerikans to get excited about, whether those Merkins are on the right or left. It's the argy-bargy that's important to the TV puppet-masters, not so much what's happening in the world, or even in the U.S. Massive fires, weather extremities, high casualty count shootings -- those the TV spews can't ignore, but otherwise it's mostly bloviating about he-said, she-said re: the repetitive tropes. GUNZ! ABORTION! SO-AND-SO ISN'T AMERICAN ENOUGH! A weasel like Trump, who sucks all the oxygen out of any room, is PERFECT for that dynamic.
(FWIW, Preznit Hamberder also dominates many current events discussions Down Undahere, even ones that don't include me, the token Yank at places where I work/socialise. There needs to be a new equivalent to Poe's LAW that states "In any Internet discussion, within 15 comments, it will devolve into a debate about how horrible/wonderful Donald Trump is."
If it's any consolation, Heywood, TV news continues to dig its own grave. Who watches that crap except for old people? What percentage of the population tunes in ANY real-time TV that they're not streaming? The tube is becoming irrelevant, especially the "news." It's one of many institutions that is becoming "delegitimised" as Charles Hugh Smith from the "Of Two Minds" econoblog (one of your fellow Northern Californians) puts it. When something loses legitimacy in the eyes of enough people, it no longer has power.
There IS legitimate broadcast material out there. Do you ever watch the Real News Network with Paul Jay? Kinda like Amy Goodman, coming at the news from a perspective that's so far Left that it sometimes echoes the Right (as in bashing the Dems, but for being feckless fake liberals, not the delusional "Omigawd Obama is a commie" that the reich wing does.) There are tonnes of worthy podcasts and video segments, from Jimmy Dore to The Intercept. Print on screen still seems the best to me, especially Naked Capitalism. Any time someone has NC on their blogroll as you do, I extend respect.
The truth is out there. It's not even hard to find (although we all have our own view of what's true.) Problem is, too many people are too fcuking lazy to look for it, and just absorb what's being sprayed into their eyeballs. But they're dying off, and people who are stupid have less clout than those who think. To update the 1960s song about "suppose they gave a war and nobody came..." let's dream that they showed a newscast and nobody watched.
Naked Capitalism is a bit infested by "Left Wing Trumpalos" Bukko. Especially in the comments section. Too much "deep state hates Trump" derp for me sometimes.
ReplyDeleteBut otherwise....excellent source of information, and Yves knows her stuff.
"Naked Capitalism is a bit infested by "Left Wing Trumpalos"
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's a weird dynamic that I've seen amongst other political commentators who I respect. There's much to despise about the lickspittle, pretend progressive nature of the Corporate Democratic Party. Ditto for the murderous spying thugs of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other arms of the SSurveillance SState. So the LWTs you mention expend a lot of mental energy slagging them. To the extent that they don't bother to go after the Hamberder-in-Chief and his Kabinet of Kleptocrats. Mummified Wilbur Ross in $600 red velvet slippers, hellooooo!!! It's as though the kleptos' venality is so obvious that it's not worth mentioning, so the LWTs save their spleen for the semi-decent side that's not doing enough to thwart the thieves. "I HATE YOU, MOM, BECAUSE YOU WON'T STOP DAD FROM BEATING ME!"
James Kunstler, author of the inimitable "Long Emergency" book about Peak Oil, has gone full-LWT for months, along with a heapin' helpin' of hate for uppity wimmen perfessers and other aggravated minority groups, because he got dissed at a university luncheon he attended a while back. Raul "Ilargi" Meijer, who was great at The Automatic Earth econoblog when he had Nicole "Stoneleigh" Foss as a writing partner, has done the same. I still squizz (Aussie slang word for "look at") both sites for the occasional pearls of insight they purvey. Overall, though, it's as though they've gone so far to the left that they popped out on the right.