Harry Reid: “Mitt Romney has sullied Mormonism.”
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Jill Stein
People aren’t talking enough about her. It’s pretty obvious why.
Critical Legal Studies
…and Barack Obama’s hatred of the U.S. Constitution.
This shouldn’t be news, but most people remain unaware of it. I hope the Romney campaign decides to change that.
Likability
I think that there’s some Bradley effect going on. People say that they like him, so they’re not thought to be racist. There’s a lot of pressure from the media for us to think that he’s likable, and that there’s something wrong with us if we don’t like him.
The last time I recall finding him admirable or likable in any way was at the 2004 convention speech. Since then, he’s always come off as an (unjustifiably) arrogant prick to me. He’s a proud man, with much to be humble about.
Straight People
Do they pick up all the hints at the Drudge Report about the president being gay?
I actually don’t read the Drudge Report on a regular basis, but it does look like that’s what he’s doing.
The Dumbest Anchormen
Do we have media full of Ron Burgundies, or just partisan hacks?
When MSNBC got an advance copy of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s convention speech, the network landed another scoop. “For four years,” McConnell planned to say, “Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems. He hasn’t been working to earn reelection. He has been working to earn a spot on the PGA Tour.” A fool might think this a not-exactly-veiled reference to the fact that Barack Obama plays a lot of golf, more than 100 rounds since he was elected. But MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is no fool.
Asked what he made of the line, O’Donnell confidently replied, “Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there. He’s trying to align . . . the lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama.”
Martin Bashir asked O’Donnell whether he really believed that. Couldn’t McConnell just mean what he said?
O’Donnell went into full eye-roll mode. “Martin, there are many, many, many rhetorical choices you can make at any point in any speech to make whatever point you want to make.” According to O’Donnell, McConnell’s speechwriters chose the golf reference because “these people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches.”
Bashir, who for a moment gave the impression of neural activity, was convinced. “Wow,” he exclaimed. “Things are getting lower and lower by the day.”
I vote for both.
“A Bump In The Road”
That’s what I’m so relieved to hear from the president our tortured and murdered Libyan ambassador, the first such in almost a third of a century, is. I hope it didn’t hurt the Obama bus suspension when it went over that bump. Actually, as far as this administration is concerned, I think we need a reinforced-concrete roadblock. Maybe we’ll get one in a few weeks, just like we got the restraining order two years ago.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Note that one of the reasons Treacher is so hot about this is that he was literally a “bump in the road” for this State Department.
Electric Cars
…are a waste of money, according to the CBO. Well, at least government subsidized ones. But who would expect a physicist to know anything about business or economics?
New Obama Campaign Slogans
Some suggestions:
What do we want?
The Eschaton!
How do we want it?
Immanentized!
Unfortunately, as noted, most wouldn’t even get it. It would certainly have Obama-slobbering press scratching their heads.
Media Criticism
Man, The Onion is just brutal:
“What exactly is the news hook here?” asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a ‘day in the life’ of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama’s unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?”
“Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now,” Kaplan continued. “I don’t know. There are a million different angles on this one.”
So far, the president’s double-homicide has not been covered by any major news outlets. The only two mentions of the heinous tragedy have been a 100-word blurb on the Associated Press wire and an obituary on page E7 of this week’s edition of the Lake County Examiner.
While Obama has expressed no remorse for the grisly murders—point-blank shootings with an unregistered .38-caliber revolver—many journalists said it would be irresponsible for the press to sensationalize the story.
“There’s been some debate around the office about whether we should report on this at all,” Washington Post senior reporter Bill Tracy said while on assignment at a local dog show. “It’s enough of a tragedy without the press jumping in and pointing fingers or, worse, exploiting the violence. Plus, we need to be sensitive to the victims’ families at this time. Their loved ones were brutally, brutally murdered, after all.”
This is the kind of length you have to go to in order to satirize these people now.