On several levels. I don’t have time to adequately critique it right now, because I’m about to be on another conference panel, but briefly, ignoring the foolish hysteria (we were in the same position from early 2003 to late 2005), one would never know from this article that the decision to end the Shuttle program was made over six years ago. We had a different president then. His name wasn’t “Obama.”
Category Archives: Media Criticism
An Interview With The Deputy Administrator
I have some questions for Lori Garver, and answers, over at Popular Mechanics.
[Saturday morning update]
I should clarify the nature and history of this.
Some people have accused me of throwing her softballs.
Guilty as charged, mostly (though be aware that PM edited some of my questions, though not, of course, her answers). I am unapologetic. And I am pleased to have nauseated Mark Whittington (if I really did, given as he is to hyperbolic exaggeration). That, to me, is always a sign that I’ve done something good.
I make no pretense to be a “journalist,” at least in the hypocritical journalism school sense, nor do I make any pretense of objectivity, at least on this subject. I do, however, unlike many of the hysterical critics of the new policy, adhere to reality. I support this policy, and have never tried to hide that. While it’s not perfect, I think that it’s far better than anything that has come before, going all the way back to the beginning of the space age. While Lori and I have often had our (friendly) differences, I think that she has been unfairly beaten up and slandered for the past few weeks (if not longer) and my purpose was to elicit her views, on the record, and put them into a widely-read popular venue. Not to mention get a little money.
As for the issue as to whether I “let her get away with” things, it should be understood that this wasn’t a back and forth, with follow up. I wanted to do that, but PAO said to submit a list of questions, and she would answer them. I could have followed up on this result, but that would likely have delayed publication for more weeks (it was about a month between when I submitted, and when I received these answers). I thought that it was more important to get this out there now, when I had it, prior to the upcoming event on Thursday, than to delay it further.
[Late evening update]
I just realized (I missed it when I first saw the piece on line) that I get a little overedited. In the phrase, “Can you talk about how much curvature in the wake we’ve seen over the past ten years to provide some context for where we are now relative to the “golden years”…it was submitted as “Goldin years” (i.e., a reference to the administrator when she was an AA). The PM editors probably missed the reference, and thought that I’d just misspelled it. I’m trying to get it fixed.
Rewriting History
Apparently, Hollywood (and Abu Dhabi) are up to their old tricks again, demonizing and lying about the Bush administration, in a new fictional movie about the Plame affair. This is a consequence of the fact that so much Hollywood money comes from overseas, to make movies planned in advance to appeal to anti-American sensibilities. That’s one of the reasons there were so many troop-bashing and America-bashing movies about Iraq in the past few years, that bombed at the American box office.
It would be amusing to raise some money in America to do the real story, and see which does better with the audience.
The Media Violence Center
Its head, Iowahawk, has the latest report on the threat to our nation from these dangerous and violent MSM extremists.
Some ObamaCare Questions
…for the next Supreme Court Justice. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the press to ask them, though.
The Poisonous Politics
…of self esteem. Some estimable thoughts from Robert Samuelson.
Sigh…
I just heard Jane Skinner on Fox News reporting on the Shuttle launch, noting that there were very few left, and promising more on “NASA’s big budget cuts.” Never mind that the agency is actually getting an increase.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, she interviewed Corey Powell, editor of Discover magazine. Who dutifully informed us that Constellation was the “replacement” for the shuttle. I’ll have a Pop Mechanics piece about this kind of misreporting, probably this week.
And on a different topic, but still Fox News, could someone tell Trace Gallagher that the San Andreas Fault does not run through downtown LA?
One Man’s Regime
…is another man’s regime:
Perhaps Matthews missed all of those references. If he did, he still might have heard the phrase the many times it was uttered on his own network, MSNBC. For example, on January 8 of this year, Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak said that, “In George Bush’s regime, only one million jobs had been created…” On August 21, 2009, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz referred to something that happened in 2006, when “the Bush regime was still in power.” On October 8, 2007, Democratic strategist Steve McMahon said that “the middle class has not fared quite as well under Bush regime as…” On August 10, 2007, MSNBC played a clip of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan referring to “the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that have been tragically harmed by the Bush regime.” On September 21, 2006, a guest referred to liberals “expressing their dissatisfaction with the Bush regime.” On July 7, 2004, Ralph Nader — appearing with Matthews on “Hardball” — discussed how he would “take apart the Bush regime.” On May 26, 2003, Joe Scarborough noted a left-wing website that “has published a deck of Bush regime playing cards.” A September 26, 2002 program featured a viewer email that said, “The Bush regime rhetoric gets goofier and more desperate every day.”
Finally — you knew this was coming — on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror. “Let’s go to the Reverend Al Sharpton,” Matthews said. “Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?”
But, but…that was Bush! It’s only a sign of the degeneracy of our politics when Rush Limbaugh does it! Against The One!
I can never figure out if Chris Matthews is really stupid, or he just thinks that we are. And you’d think that these idiot journalists would have figured out by now that the Internet makes it impossible for them to put things down the memory hole.
[Monday morning update]
Heh. Moe Lane says that this proves that even Chris Matthews doesn’t listen to Chris Matthews. I wonder if Olbermann ever listens to Olbermann? I sure wouldn’t, if I were him. And it would explain MSNBC’s ratings. Or lack thereof.
A Superstorm
…in climate “science.” An extensive and even-handed report at Der Spiegel.
McIntyre’s findings did not make him very popular. In the hacked Climategate emails, he is referred to as a “bozo,” a “moron” and a “playground bully.” But with their self-aggrandizement, the climatologists made him into a legend on the Internet. A million people a month visit his blog, climateaudit.org. They include climate skeptics and the usual conspiracy theorists, but also, more recently, many academics who are able to do the math themselves.
McIntyre asserts that he does believe in climate change. “I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” he says, “but when I find mistakes, I want them to be corrected.”
He repeatedly bombarded Jones with emails in which he drew his attention to freedom of information laws. This tenacity would prove to be disastrous for Jones.
McIntyre doggedly asked for access to the raw data. Jones was just as dogged in denying his requests, constantly coming up with new, specious reasons for his rejections. Unfortunately for Jones, however, McIntyre’s supporters eventually included people who know how to secretly hack into computers and steal data.
Their target was well selected. Jones was like a spider in its web. Almost every internal debate among the climate popes passed through his computer, leaving behind a digital trail.
But the US media continues to ignore the fraud and loss of credibility.
The Kristallnacht
…that isn’t happening:
The Daily Beast’s John Avlon insists that Vanderboegh’s rallying cry, combined with some threats and broken windows, make “the parallels, intentional or not, to the Nazis’ heinous 1938 Kristallnacht . . . hard to ignore.”
Actually, it’s really, really easy to ignore the parallels. During Kristallnacht, Nazi goons destroyed not just 7,000 store windows but hundreds of synagogues and thousands of homes. Tens of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazis, who had been in total power for half a decade.
This combination of state power and murderous, genocidal intent is nowhere on display in America today, not in the Obama administration (contrary to what some overheated right-wingers claim) and certainly not among out-of-power conservatives and “tea partiers.” It’s amazing anyone needs to point this out, but a few fringe libertarians’ throwing bricks to beat back an expansion of government is not the same thing as the tightening fist of the National Socialist Third Reich. Indeed, it’s an anti-American slander to suggest anything like it is going on here, and it cheapens the moral horror of the Holocaust.
Don’t tell that to the Democrats and their media transmission belt, who largely turned a blind eye to partisan vandalism and extremist rhetoric against Republicans for eight years but now express horror at what they claim to hear from the right.
Their libelous audacity and hypocrisy is breathtaking.