Like I’ve always said: Sometimes the mask slips and the truth comes out.
A 24-year-old Fox News Channel production assistant was fired this morning for something she said during the red carpet arrivals at the Time 100 Gala last night.
Insiders tell us the assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the entertainment angle of the event. When Sen. John McCain walked by, the assistant said, “I voted for you in the primary, you’re going to win.”
McCain was overheard saying to her, “You’re not supposed to reveal that.”
This confrontation between Deadspin’s Will Leitch and old school writer Buzz Bissinger is making the rounds in the sports blog world. The old media folks just don’t come off well. Calling interesting media “mean” is just such a crutch.
Associated Press Washington bureau chief Sandy Johnson is stepping down from her position, as first reported on Fishbowl DC.
But I’ve since learned that veteran political reporter Ron Fournier–who’s already taken on a new role this campaign cycle–will be acting bureau chief.
Fournier just confirmed in an e-mail that he will be taking that role while continuing to write. His provocative “On Deadline” column has been a must-read during the presidential race.
NBC’s Washington bureau chief has banned Arianna Huffington appearing on any NBC shows discussing her new book because she criticized him for his obvious stupidity. Sad.
A New York soldier thought he had done his duty battling America’s enemies overseas after losing the hearing in his left ear and injuring a knee.
But Uncle Sam isn’t finished with James Raymond, yet.
Now he’s headed to Iraq.
“I thought it was a joke,” said Raymond, who lives in suburban Rochester.
Raymond, 26, suffered permanent partial hearing loss - he says from friendly fire - while fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003. He later hurt his knee before getting an honorable discharge in September 2004.
But the Army recently sent papers to the former specialist with the rugged 10th Mountain Division saying it needed him to saddle up and report to Fort Benning, Ga., on May 18 for medical and mental evaluation.
The Washington Post links to this story with the home page headline “McCain Reconsiders Tax Policies”. The press will literally tie themselves into knots in order to carry water for McCain without pointing out the obvious: McCain has flip-flopped on practically every major issue in order to appease the hard-right base of his party. The self-appointed “maverick” of American politics is just another Bush-era Republican.
Another nail in the coffin of the liberal media myth. From CNN’s press release:
Former White House press secretary Tony Snow will join CNN as a conservative commentator beginning today, it was announced by Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S.
…
“In the White House, Tony brought a remarkably human touch to the discussion of public policy, which he will continue to do as part of the Best Political Team on Television,” Klein said. “He will contribute a unique breadth of political and journalistic expertise to what is already the most provocative and wide-ranging political analysis on the air.”
“I’m delighted to be able to join CNN during the most exciting and unpredictable political year in memory,” Snow said. “The big challenge in 2008 is to develop deep, creative and aggressive analysis of both political parties, their candidates and campaigns. I’m eager to get started, since this race is sure to shape American politics for years to come.”
With Snow on CNN and Rove on Fox, why don’t they just hire Bush to give analysis of himself? Oh, crap, there’s some idiot programming exec out there who thinks that’s seriously a good idea.
Let’s just say it doesn’t exactly make a great case for ABC, when the longest winded defense of your horrific debate tactics comes from The Politico - a “news” organization that has its entire business model based on the freak show of distraction rather than the substance of policy.
It’s like George W. Bush giving a lecture on competence with a straight face.
George Stephanopoulos has an upcoming interview with John McCain and there are questions about whether he’ll ask McCain any tough questions or if Stephanie’s going to pick up a pair of small kneepads before the date.
The ABC standard when questioning Democratic candidates is just random stuff they saw on the Internet, so I await the questions about John McCain’s role in the USS Forrestall fire, John McCain making enemy propaganda, or perhaps John McCain’s adultery and the use of his trophy wife’s money to finance his political life.
I’m not making these allegations. I’m just repeating stuff I found on the Internet. In fact the only one I know to honestly be true is the tale of him ditching his wife for Cindy McCain and her using her money to keep his campaigns afloat.
Scarborough tries to cut off Rachel Maddow, unlike so many other liberals in the media, Maddow doesn’t let him get away with it and in retaliation Scarborough walks off the set. It’s the schoolyard bully you give a good whack in the nose, folks.
It seems to me the answer is no. The coverage is almost uniformly laudatory, dazzled by the spectacle with an occasional word about the globe-spanning sexual abuse scandal. Does coverage of the church need to be “tough”? No. But the arrival of the pope shouldn’t be covered as if Jesus himself landed on that jet.
MSNBC has declared the following ad to be too controversial to air. I can’t possibly see anything remotely controversial about it. And you get the sense that if the people advertising were the drug companies and financial services firms MSNBC runs on a constant loop, it wouldn’t be so “controversial”.
You know what else is “controversial”? Dead people, killed by the weapons they obtain at gun shows without going through the proper checks.
I’m planning on attending this event with McCain and Obama tomorrow (thanks to Mediabloggers). I’m probably more interesting in observing the press than the candidates at this point. I’ll report on if there’s any actual swooning for McCain.
When I saw the Meet The Press lineup I IM’d my friend to express my disgust that Meet The Press was yet again getting elite pundits like Mike Murphy, Mary Matalin, James Carville and Bob Shrum to discuss the issues of the day rather than regular Americans and the officials we elect to represent us. I can’t think of a group of people less suited to the task. Robert Reich saw that too, though he mistakenly calls Tim Russert smart.
Tim Russert, one of the smartest guys on television, interviewed four political consultants – Carville and Matalin, Bob Schrum, and Michael Murphy. Political consultants are paid huge sums to help politicians spin words and avoid real talk. They’re part of the problem. And what do Russert and these four consultants talk about? The potential damage to Barack Obama from saying that lots of people in Pennsylvania are bitter that the economy has left them behind; about HRC’s spin on Obama’s words (he’s an “elitist,” she said); and John McCain’s similarly puerile attack.
Does Russert really believe he’s doing the nation a service for this parade of spin doctors talking about potential spins and the spin-offs from the words Obama used to state what everyone knows is true? Or is Russert merely in the business of selling TV airtime for a network that doesn’t give a hoot about its supposed commitment to the public interest but wants to up its ratings by pandering to the nation’s ongoing desire for gladiator entertainment instead of real talk about real problems.
Less than a generation ago people thought that by the sheer virtue of someone getting on tv they were smarter than those of us in the great unwashed. Thankfully we now know that ain’t the case by a long shot.
Apparently Fox, Drudge, and Politico are just tired of a slow news week and are looking for something - anything - to whip up a frenzy over, and of course the go-to people for quotes on this are the elite of elite cons like Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. I mean, when is the last time those guys had a conversation with someone making less than six figures… besides the help?
Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.
But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — to close tax loopholes, uh you know uh roll back the tax cuts for the top 1%, Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide healthcare for every American.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.
America’s tired of the distortion and game-playing by the right wing noise machine, and its pretty sad the failing Clinton campaign felt they needed to jump on this (perhaps it had something to do with the coverage of President Clinton bringing back the phony Bosnia story).
One wonders where all this media concern about elitism was when John McCain was raising millions of dollars in the home of a British Lord.
Oh, that’s right. He’s a Republican. And he’s THE John McCain.
NBC’s Chris Matthews: “The press loves McCain. We’re his base.”
UPDATE: It’s intriguing that Dems are never supposed to voice any criticism of rural America (which isn’t what Sen. Obama did) but Republicans are allowed to insult San Francisco, Massachusetts, the coasts, etc. It’s like there’s a double standard or something.
UPDATE 2: David Sirota points out that John McCain said almost the same thing. McCain:
“It’s the influx of illegals into places where they’ve never seen a Hispanic influence before,” McCain told me. “You probably see more emotion in Iowa than you do in Arizona on this issue. I was in a town in Iowa, and twenty years ago there were no Hispanics in the town. Then a meatpacking facility was opened up. Now twenty per cent of their population is Hispanic. There were senior citizens there who were–’concerned’ is not the word. They see this as an assault on their culture, what they view as an impact on what have been their traditions in Iowa, in the small towns in Iowa. So you get questions like ‘Why do I have to punch 1 for English?’ ‘Why can’t they speak English?’ It’s become larger than just the fact that we need to enforce our borders.”
Of course, there was and will be no similar outcry for the things McCain says. Drudge and Politico and Fox won’t be working in concert to tell the world about what John McCain does (this is why we have a progressive blogosphere in the first place - the media fails at its basic job). It not that they can’t. They won’t.
The reality: Oh, Bill Clinton is the first person to become an ex-president in the 21st century, you say? The funds being used are federally marked out so ex-presidents aren’t pushed to become Viagra pitchmen? The main complainer about this is a right-wing pressure group (the “National Taxpayers Union”)?
The “liberal media” scrapes the bottom of the right-wing barrel and uses major nut Debbie Schlussel as the source for an anti-Obama article. Up next: The LA Times investigates that Free Republic list of people Sen. Clinton had killed.
As some of you may know, I have nothing but disdain for Katie Couric and the brand of “journalism” she practices. CBS would have been much better of if they had kept Dan Rather.
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric is likely to part ways with CBS News well before her contract with the network expires in 2011, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, Couric could leave as early as next year, following the presidential inauguration in January.
