Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Stupidest Headline Of The Week

12 Comments

So far, anyway.

“‘Citizens’ Group Carries Obama’s Water in Space.”

First, note the scare quotes around the word “Citizens’.” Because, you know, we all know that it’s some Evil-Soros-Funded-Special-Interest-In-Thrall-To-The-One, not a real group of “citizens” actually concerned about government waste.

A taxpayer watchdog group with a history of opposing space projects blasted an Alabama senator for trying to keep the Constellation program alive.

Shocking, isn’t it? Imagine a group that claims to be against government waste opposing a space project. Because, as we all know, there’s never been a wasteful space project.

Just for grins, and in the interest of journalistic responsibility, let’s wander over to CAGW’s web site, shall we? Let us peruse a few of the other headlines there than Dick Shelby’s well-deserved award.

Here’s a good one: “CAGW Urges Obama to Waive Jones Act to Aid Spill Effort.”

Or this: “CAGW Slams Obama’s Plan for More Stimulus Spending.”

Hmmmm…did someone over there miss the Soros fax about the watercarrying?

Maybe they were just anomalies.

But then we find this: “CCAGW Urges “Yes” Vote on McCain Amendment to Rein In Fannie and Freddie.”

Now I’m really confused. So they’re hauling H2O for both Obama and his election opponent? Whatever will ACORN think, after they worked so hard, and drummed up all those Disney-character votes against him?

And perhaps, delirious from the stress of all the water carrying, they missed the memo that they were supposed to be supporting ObamaCare, not coming up with stories like “CCAGW to House: Vote “No” on The Healthcare Bill!” and “ObamaCare is Not an April Fool’s Joke.”

You know, if they’re carrying water for Obama, they seem to be doing it with a shotgunned sieve. I doubt if they could make it halfway across the room with it.

Actually, after looking at that web site, you know what I think that CAGW is “carrying water” for? Call me crazy, but I think that it’s carrying water for opposition to government waste.

And of course, our intrepid reporter lets this bit of ignorance (or stupidity, or…mendacity — take your pick, or choose them all!) from Bill Posey stand unchallenged:

Florida officials, led by U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, have lobbied for Constellation to continue while they cast doubt on the White House’s vision for future space exploration.

“The real waste is canceling a program that’s near completion after investing $9 billion into it,” Posey said.

“If Constellation is killed, the president plans to outsource American space jobs to Russia to the tune of more than a billion dollars – that’s taxpayer money spent there, in Russia, and not here,” the congressman said.

First of all, that program that is “near” completion is at least seven years and another thirty to fifty billion (depending on which estimate — NASA’s or GAO’s — you want to use) from “completion.” That is, it’s about sixty to one hundred SpaceXs away from completion, dollar wise. Second, the plan to “outsource American space jobs to Russia” was George Bush’s. You know, the president who shared a political party with Rep. Posey? This president’s plan is to “outsource” those space jobs to commercial launch providers, creating new industry with new jobs, and allowing NASA to finally focus its meager resources on the much more challenging task of getting beyond LEO, four decades late. A competent reporter would have pointed this out, instead of simply being a stenographer for another porkmeister.

All in all, a thoroughly useless bit of “journalism,” and one of the reasons that a lot of “journalists” are being laid off these days (including many who don’t deserve it). Why does this hack still have his job?

[Update a few minutes later]

I just realized that I might have been a little hard on the reporter. The story is bad, but the reporter doesn’t say anything about “carrying water for Obama.” That was presumably the copy editor, who normally comes up with heds. Of course, if it was the reporter’s suggestion, then shame on him, too.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII

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…is back, and he’s starting to lose his faith in The One:

I had not seen Kloonkie this distraught since our days as chalet mates at a Swiss finishing school, when his mother, the late Countess Astrid Von Wallensheim-Ascencão, infamously renounced her peerage to remarry an itinerant Portuguese tennis professional.

“Coddsie, it’s not just the boat,” he sniffed. “It’s the whole damned world. Have you been to the continent lately? The economy is moribund, the Euro is falling apart, and the underclasses are too lazy to do anything but riot for longer holidays. I wrote half the EU regulations on immigration and pensions, and how do they thank me? If I moor at St. Tropez, my yacht will be confiscated by the French tax officials. If I stop at the old family island I’ll be attacked by rampaging Greek postal carriers. If stay out of harbor, I risk getting mistaken for an Israeli navy ship and blown up by some Palestinian peace flotilla. And this — this president of yours doesn’t seem to have a single idea what to do about it.”

I and my guests were momentarily stunned, this being the first time any of us had heard an ill word spoken about Mr. Obama by a European of impeccable intellect with the Hermes ascot to match. This was followed, understandably, by muffled sobs. It was left to me to gamely break the lachrymose silence. “Perhaps Kloonkie is right,” I said. “Perhaps the President has not quite turned out to be the Reagan reincarnation we all expected, and in some ways I am beginning to believe this Obama fellow is unequal to the task. As the intellectual conscience of the conservative movement, and whatever our previous enthusiasm for the chap, we ought have the courage to point out those rare instances where his performance has been found wanting. Such as foreign and domestic policy. The important thing is that we not end up implicated in his shortcomings.”

“Take the President’s economic program,” I added. “We could begin noting how little it has done to revive the fortunes of East Hampton’s polo outfitters. My own Argentine malletier Jorge, for exampIe, has returned to the pampas, leaving me to make do with last year’s model. And if the polo equipment sector is struggling I am forced to assume that other parts of the American economy may be as well. And, although we all voiced support for Mr. Obama’s plan, we should emphasize that support was merely based on what it was supposed to do. Not what it did.”

This explanation seemed to brighten the spirits of my fellow columnists, as it slowly dawned on them that they too could now venture the occasional measured criticism of the previously inviolate Mr. Obama without risk of losing their intellectual credentials or place in the social register. The effect was like the lifting of a great burden, and we began to discuss a nagging question — how exactly to account for the curious disconnect between Mr. Obama’s intentions and his results?

“Clearly, this isn’t the Barack Obama any of us swooned for during the election,” offered Peggy Noonan. “As a candidate he was fresh, intellectual, and serious. Instead, as president, he has proven to be naive, detached and aloof. Nostradamus himself could not have predicted such an astonishing 180 degree transformation.”

“Indeed, how could anyone?” added Brooks. “The fellow was a success at everything he had ever attempted — being ethnically interesting, going to Harvard, getting elected, or writing autobiographies about being ethnically interesting and going to Harvard. It was simply inconceivable that there was a task he could actually fail at. I am forced to conclude his Harvard credentials may be a sham.”

Who can blame them? No one who attended Harvard could have seen it coming.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Best Point I’ve Heard Yet

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…about the McChrystal fooforaw:

…surely officers in Afghanistan should know that the purpose of Rolling Stone magazine is not to emphasize either their competency or their insight. And as a general rule, anytime a liberal journalist wishes to empathize with a frustrated officer, it is usually to exaggerate the officer’s unhappiness and use it for his own political purposes, which rarely if ever are those of the military.

If an officer cannot figure out Rolling Stone, how can he understand the Taliban?

Somebody needs to lose their job over this. I’d sure like to see Holbrooke and Eikenberry go, but we probably won’t be so lucky.

Afghanistan seems to be becoming Obama’s Vietnam.

[Update a while later]

Don’t blame McChrystal — blame Obama:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal should not lose his job because of the article about him in Rolling Stone magazine. If anyone deserves blame for the latest airing of the administration’s internal feuds over Afghanistan, it is President Obama.

For months Obama has tolerated deep divisions between his military and civilian aides over how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy he announced last December. The divide has made it practically impossible to fashion a coherent politico-military plan, led to frequent disputes over tactics and contributed to a sharp deterioration in the administration’s relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The virtue of the Rolling Stone article is that Obama may finally have to confront the trouble. But the dismissal of McChrystal would be the wrong outcome. It could spell disaster for the military campaign he is now overseeing in southern Afghanistan, and it would reward those in the administration who have been trying to undermine him, including through media leaks of their own.

It’s the wrong thing to do, so it’s the likeliest outcome.

[Update a couple minutes later]

McChrystal’s real offense:

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any f–king sense?” Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

Well, those rules of engagement are what the administration wants.

[Late morning update]

Why Obama can’t fire the general.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Rolling Stone article isn’t about a general’s insubordination — it’s about the administration’s mistakes. Well, this is what the country voted for.

[Update early afternoon]

John McCain: “Fire Eikenberry”

[Update a while later]

McChrystal has reportedly submitted his resignation. The best result might be for the president to not accept it. An even better result would be for him not accept it, but to fire Eikenberry and Holbrooke instead. But that won’t happen, unfortunately.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Zero Tolerance Insanity

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Thoughts on the rampant hoplophobia in today’s society.

The way he talks about how “the event” “exposed” how “a policy” can present “an image counter to the work” of the schools, you certainly wouldn’t think he decided on his own to ban the hat. But regardless of whether he can unilaterally change school policy, let’s suppose he accomplishes the revision he seeks so that students may depict “tools of a profession or service such as the military or police.”

Doesn’t that amount to indoctrinating children to believe that guns are only OK (and should only be allowed) when they are in the hands of the police and the military? Is that not contrary to the purpose of the Second Amendment and the founding of this country? If, as Di Pietro says, it is “the work of our schools to promote patriotism and democracy,” such a bias would do just the opposite.

These people are ignorant fools, and they’re responsible for educating our children.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Rabbi Speaks

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…about Helen Thomas:

I merely asked a question with a video camera to a columnist. She answered me with an opinion that was unacceptable not just to me but to former and current press secretaries, politicians, the president, her agent and a great many other people. Her freedom of speech was not stifled; on the contrary, it was respected.

She didn’t say that the blockade was unjust, or that aid was not getting to Gaza, or that there was a massacre on the high seas, or that East Jerusalem is occupied, or that the settlements are immoral . . . and get out and go back to West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat. No. This was not the two-state solution. This was get the hell out and go back to the places of the final solution, Poland and Germany. The Jew has no connection with the land of Israel.

And why? Because, as Thomas went on to explain to me, “I’m from Arab descent.” That’s it? That’s all you got? Do we all travel with only our parents’ stereotypes to guide us, never going beyond them to get to a peaceful destination?

In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I’ve listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it’s now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It’s about an ingrown, organic hate. It’s a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, “Go home to Palestine.” But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to “go home to Poland and Germany.” Yeah, I said “oooh.”

I think that it’s theoretically possible to express the kind of hatred of Israel that many do and not be anti-semitic. But I don’t think it happens much in real life.

The other day Jim Davis asked me in comments why I (and the Tea Partiers) object to being called “racist” because we oppose President Obama’s policies (or “liberal” or “progressive” policies in general), when I’m willing to call people anti-semitic for their views about Israel.

Here’s the difference. I would be (and have been) criticizing those policies regardless of who was advocating them, or what color their skin is. I’m pretty sure that’s true of most of the Tea Partiers as well. The fact that a black man has ascended to the presidency doesn’t somehow magically and suddenly make such criticism racist.

Israel’s attackers, on the other hand, have a double standard. They attack it for things (e.g., abusing Arabs) that they completely ignore when other countries (notably Arab countries) do them on a much grander scale. They accuse it of war crimes when it takes greater pains, and greater risks to its own troops, than any nation in history, with the possible exception of the US, to minimize collateral civilian casualties. But these same hypocrites ignore or defend the real war crimes of the “Palestinians” — hiding weapons in hospitals and churches and mosques, sneaking through borders in ambulances, deliberately targeting children, fighting out of uniform, using their own women and children as human shields — while castigating Israel.

So yeah, sorry, I think there’s something else going on there. And Helen Thomas just made a massive Kinsleyan gaffe, and revealed what she (and many others) really think. Oooh, indeed.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I’ve observed this before, but leftists seem (unaccountably to me) to get their panties much more in a twist about human rights abuses when they’re cross race. Israel making Arabs second-class citizens? The horror! Saddam murdering thousands of his own people? Hey, it’s his business. Mao wiping out tens of millions of Chinese? No biggie, they’re his people. Gotta break some eggs to make the omelette, you know.

Another example was apartheid in South Africa. Not to defend it, but was it really that much worse than what Idi Amin or Mengistu were up to? Really?

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, Israel is going to partially lift the Gaza blockade. That won’t satisfy the critics, though. They won’t be happy until the weapons are flowing freely in. And probably not even then.

[Late evening update]

But there’s no anti-semitism involved:

Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland.

And when someone compares the Israelis to Nazis, it can only be either anti-semitism or profound stupidity and ignorance, even when (or especially when) it’s a Nobel Prize winner. It’s been said before, but the Nobel Prize (in fields other than science) ain’t what it used to be. If it ever was…

[Tuesday morning update]

More useful thoughts from (Christian) Mike Potemra:

…the support for Israel that is offered by me and like-minded people is based not on headline-devouring apocalypticism but on something perduring and eternal: a sense that the fate of the Jews implicates humanity, that a world that refuses to find a place for the Jews is engaged in a rejection of even more fundamental truths. This State of Israel is, yes, a state like all other states; that should go without saying. But how strange that, of all the 200 or so states-just-like-other-states in the world today, this one alone is treated increasingly as a pariah that’s on a deserved path to being wiped out.

I am not ashamed to say that some of my own support for Israel is based in religious motives, even if these motives are not those presented in caricature form by the cultured despisers. And I resent the caricature less than I otherwise would, because I view it as rooted in a deeper obtuseness, the one these despisers show in regard even to their own self-interest and to their own intellectual consistency. The only country in the region with liberal values — that lets, e.g., its religious minorities vote; that has, e.g., gay-pride parades — is the one they view as an embarrassment. This, again, is a level of obtuseness that cannot be explained on a purely rational basis.

It’s the oldest hatred in the world. Of course it’s not rational.

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Our Incompetent Government

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Some thoughts:

One of the reasons Big Government is so helpless in the face of an actual crisis is that it never learns anything, because it evades blame and consequence for its failures. The politicians who brought you the subprime crisis are richer and more powerful than ever before. The Gulf oil crisis may well end the same way, if the Democrats use a lame-duck session of Congress, plus resources from their new minions at BP, to shove cap-and-trade legislation down America’s throat. Like ObamaCare, such a bill can inflict serious wounds to American liberty during the two years it will take to replace a President determined to veto repeal attempts.

Indulging the urge of politicians to increase their power and wealth produces a government that spends all its time feeding, instead of doing the things it’s supposed to be doing. It is blinded by hunger, and uninterested in duties that yield no direct political reward. The lavishly funded agency in charge of regulating offshore drilling scarcely bothered to inspect the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. It’s painfully obvious that the Administration didn’t notice the Gulf crisis until it became a political problem. Our vast government apparatus was completely unaware of a large supply of containment boom until Jake Tapper, an ABC reporter, told them about it.

This is what comes from a government that tries to do too many things that aren’t its business, and neglecting the ones that are.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Now He Tells Us

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Mort Zuckerman has figured out that he was one of the rubes:

Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well. But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion, such that there is no person or country that you cannot, by means of logical and moral argument, bring around to your side. He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader. He urges that things “must be done” and “should be done” and that “it is time” to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is “the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy.” Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an “NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches.” In other words, he talks the talk but doesn’t know how to walk the walk. The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty.

Well, I suppose he wishes to “do good,” by his definition of “good.” Of course, that’s kind of meaningless. So did Adolf Hitler, after all. And we know what the paving stones of the road to Hell are. Of course, I’ve never thought his speeches were particularly wonderful, either, unless by “wonderful” one means gaseous if not vacuous.

[Late afternoon update]

Bill Quick isn’t very impressed by Peggy Noonan’s and Zuckerman’s uptake speed:

Listen up, you punked, chumped boobs: We looked at Obama not through your rose colored hallucinations, but through the cold, clear spectacles of reality. None of what he’s done since has surprised us one bit. In fact, many of us, myself included, predicted it even before his coronation by people like you. Yes, it’s nice that after a year and a half of horrible examples, the truth about him is finally beginning to penetrate your skulls. But why, for the love of god, couldn’t you see it at the beginning, when it was no less obvious, but your understanding of it might have done some good?

Though, as he points out, useful idiots like them did prevent a McCain presidency, which would have been a disaster for small-government libertarianism. I wish that I were as optimistic as Bill, though, that Obama has wrecked the socialist project for decades.