Now for something completely different. I am going to defend Jake Tapper, and do so quite forcefully. Despite what I perceive to be his flaws, Jake has been the only national reporter other than Rachel Maddow and the Benenbot v. 2014 (honestly, is there a more consistently prolific blogger who churns out more quality content than Steve?) to cover the chemical and subsequent other spill in WV, and has done so on an almost daily basis, so he has scored major points from this hillbilly.
He’s also had great local reporters on like Ken Ward, Jr. on (follow Ken and Dave Bouchert on twitter if you care about this at @Kenwardjr @Dave_Boucher1, respectively) and other than local reporters, it’s been Rachel and Jake on the national scene and that is it, lately.
And we appreciate it.
Hunter Gathers
I like Benen better before he went to MSNBC. Only because the layout is so fucking awful.
Violet
Good for him and glad someone is reporting on it. I don’t watch cable news hardly at all so no idea when he’s on. He’s on CNN, right?
John Cole
@Violet: YEs.
jl
I am also glad to hear Tapper is doing some good reporting on the WV poison parade.
Since I am not sure why AL is making of fun of Tapper, hence not sure what Cole is defending Tapper from. I will merely thank AL and Cole for the info in the posts and stay out of this episode of Balloon Juice front poster angst.
Bill E Pilgrim
@jl: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Yatsuno
@Bill E Pilgrim: I have no strong feelings one way or the other.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Yatsuno: I see.
MikeJ
@Bill E Pilgrim: If I don’t make it back, tell my wife, “hello.”
Mandalay
Nope, he is head and shoulders above the rest. Rachel Maddow knew exactly what she was doing when she signed him up.
jl
@Bill E Pilgrim: I am not neutral about being accosted for being neutral on BJ front poster spats, you vile loathsome idiotic puerile toadish troll you. You gnat, you flaccid bull’s pizzle, you bloated anodyne washed up excuse for a dipsomaniac, raving incoherent commenter.
Just because the pixilated AL posts cryptic insider BS posts that half the readers cannot figure out, which gives the crude lout (edit, and oaf and ludicrous hick) and crazed hillbilly, probably certifiably insane, Cole another excuse to stomp on her posts, that does not give me an excuse to be uncivil towards them, or take sides just to cause trouble. So. There.
Lil Lebowski
I’m glad to hear it, but he still acts like he’s going to feint in a pearl clutching fit in that video. Also, I know it’s not him, but the chyron while Maher is talking is really unintentionally hilarious.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: That may be the best gag they ever did. BTW I came across a real treasure, videos of the voice actors being interviewed about how they came up with voices. The best one for me was hearing that “Kif” was a combination of Jon Lovitz and Truman Capote. The voice people they hired were the best in the business, and it shows.
jl
@Lil Lebowski: Yeah, well, Trapper acts all self important, and even peaceable easygoing little me wants just want to slap his snobby face. But, what is new about that? How else do any of these big media divas act?
jl
@Bill E Pilgrim: I never watched enough Futurama.
Lil Lebowski
@jl:
I honesty just laughed, so much lack of self awareness by Tapper.
A comedienne!? Meddling in politics!? Does Bill Maher the “pot smoking atheist” want to change the way the country is governed!? Inconceivable!
Because, you know, no one in the entertainment industry has ever done this before.
Hill Dweller
Maddow and Benen are in another league.
I’m glad to hear Tapper is covering the West Virginia chemical spill, but that doesn’t absolve him of his previous hackery.
jl
@Lil Lebowski: Its hard for me to tell whether Tapper is really being pompous about the ‘new and wild’ idea of a satirist messing with political campaigns, or whether Tapper just puts himself in on the joke in such an pompous and schmaltz-serious way, it might be better if he were utterly oblivious to the joke. (Edited since I messed up the meaning with garble typing)
Edit: It might have been better if Tapper just said, satirists and comedians have been getting involved in politics for over a hundred years in this country, and Bill Maher has a new twist on it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@jl: My brother is my pusher/proselytizer. He used to load me up with DVDs when I’d visit the US and I’d think “What… a cartoon??” then be laughing for the next year straight.
Jane2
@Hill Dweller: Maybe it’s about the story, and not the personality.
Lil Lebowski
@jl: I didn’t think of that, maybe it was all parody a la Coulter.
No way to tell, though sincere props to him for covering the chemical spills. And props for making me lol, intentionally or not.
Lil Lebowski
Speaking of corporate malfeasance, anyone see this?
Deadly fire is about on par with screwing up someone’s delivery order, apparently.
Jibeaux
In the last open thread, the trolling involved willfully misconstruing comments and then reprinting them at length…from October of last year. Surely they don’t go to bed at 1 am, I wonder what goodies await.
jl
@Lil Lebowski: I just saw Tapper being so pompous it was goofy, but he is that way every time I see him, so, I was puzzled what the deal was.
I see there are two or three theories on what species of infraction Tapper committed in AL’s thread.
One of these pundit/reporter TV stars that just said stuff matter of factly would be such a novelty it might be a big hit. Instead we have people like Tapper, and Gregory and especially the lunatic Pelley, who make the pompous airheads we see in cartoon satires look tame.
Edit: and one of the gripes in the previous thread was that Tapper casually assumed that Maher represented the left. Which I noted. But Tapper also referred to Maher as being Libertarian, which seems kind of incoherent on Tapper’s part. Why didn’t Tapper just ask Maher how he viewed himself? No, that would be too normal a thing to do, I guess.
allium
@Bill E Pilgrim: It’s a fairly well known trope in voice actor* circles that one of the best ways to create a new character voice is to start with a bad impression of a celebrity.
Also, if you want more interviews with famous voices than you can shake a cartoon rabbit at, listen to the Talkin’ Toons podcast by Rob Paulsen (Yakko, Pinky, and Dr. Scratchansniff in Animaniacs, Raphael in the 80s iteration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Donatello in the current one, and more).
* I am one myself, but I’m at the “eastern European iOS game and corporate training module” stage of my career.
divF
@jl:
Now that’s abuse, whereas the rest of us come here for at most an argument.
John Cole
I had nothing productive or useful to say in this, would have just said mean things to another person who I like but who pissed me off at the moment, so I am deleting this.
This becoming a better person is a bunch of fucking bullshit and really hard.
Yatsuno
@Lil Lebowski:
I am fairly certain Bill Maher is cis-gendered as a male. I’ve been wrong before though.
Ian
@divF:
Beautifully crafted verbal smackdowns are almost as awesome as well crafted arguments. However in this situation the original commenter was quoting Futurama, not actually trying to troll.
Anne Laurie
Well, Cole, I’m just glad somebody watched the blasted clip!
It’s a mitzvah that Tapper is covering the corporate resource piracy in your area, but you have to admit: If you want the perfect representation of a credulous idiot to gape slack-jawed at your trolling, Jake Tapper is the man upon whom you can depend.
Cassidy
But does Tapper have a Polk award? Has he blamed Obama enough to be sufficiently pure? These are the real questions for journalistic integrity.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Anne Laurie: This is what makes Tapper so infuriating. It is pretty clear, as Cole notes, that the man is capable of good work. But he loves to punch down rather than up and this causes the sloppy, smarmy to shine right through.
Paul in KY
Have mentioned this before, but back in my Salon days (and when Mr. Tapper wrote for them), he was one of the only writers who would respond to an email & he was always polite & seemed as if he valued your point of view.
monkeyfister
Tapper has been doing some really good things– Helper Dogs for Veterans, Shelter programs for homeless Veterans, he’s getting behind some REALLY good things. He’s a very engaging fellow on Twitter, and he actually LISTENS to us. I had a great conversation with him the other day about Policy regarding Syria. Tapper is one of the better ones in a field of hacks and charlatans.
DougJ
Jake’s a pretty good journalist. He’s in a crappy line of work, being on the tv, but given that, he does about as well as anyone could do without getting fired.
A lot standard, I know, but that’s the world.