“Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama’s visit than the US media did.”- Tish Durkin

(via James Fallows)

John and I were just discussing Chuck Todd’s unbelievably idiotic tweet defending McCain’s latest primary-induced flip-flop. Todd’s an idiot, but not as dumb as Howie Kurtz—was John’s take on it. Mine is that neither Todd nor Kurtz is dumb in the usual sense. To stay in the good graces of elite media is simple—just keep saying everything is good news for conservatives, that we are a center-right nation, that John McCain is a principled maverick and so on. Criticize the Iraq war and you get shit-canned—ask Ashleigh Banfield or Phil Donahue. Any reporter interested in having a cushy, high-paying gig for the rest of his or her life would be foolish not to keep repeating the Village-approved talking points.

It really is that simple.

I realize that, per Forrest Gump, one could argue that stupid is as stupid does. And obviously, saying things that aren’t true, making incorrect predictions, etc. is in some sense stupid. So I see that point.

Here’s how I look at it: once a barnacle finds a good rock to attach itself to, the barnacle eats its brain, because it doesn’t need the brain anymore. The barnacle would be stupid not to eat its own brain. The same applies to Chuck Todd, Ben Smith, Mike Allen, Howie Kurtz, etc.

This came across my feed thirty seconds ago:

Hrmm. I wonder if anyone else has had this unique insight? I wonder what Google News says…

I seriously need to remove some people from my twitter feed.

I realize that full-throttle wankery is not to everyone’s tastes. But if you like the stuff, do yourself a favor and read Lee Siegel’s “Obama’s Dangerous Obsession” piece. The idea is that Obama’s remarks at Fort Hood betray a dangerous infatuation with Lincoln and that, although everyone loves Lincoln, the guy presided over a bloody civil war, so we might also expect presidents who like Lincoln to want to preside over bloody wars. It’s more complicated than that and, honestly, I’m not sure that it makes any kind of logical sense. But he really explores the studio space. It’s a little hard to believe that it’s not parody.

I’m hoping this turns out well, because I lost interest in V and Flash Forward in record time.

So, while I was out eating nachos and watching the football game, Ann Althouse has figured out Sarah Palin is a moron (what are the odds on “libertarian” Glenn Reynolds linking that Althouse post?) and the AP has figured out she is a liar:

I’m tempted to go back out for another drink to give the rest of the media the opportunity to figure out the Republicans are nuts, but I don’t want to push my luck, so I’ll roll with this gambit tomorrow night.

Up next, Matt Welch discovers he’s pimping an unworkable political ideology.

I read this earlier, but forgot about it, so thanks to D-Chance for reminding me about this abomination:

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims.

The charge stems from a Franken-sponsored amendment that would prohibit the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve workplace complaints — including complaints of sexual assault — through private arbitration rather than the courts.

Thirty Senate Republicans voted against the amendment, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, liberal commentators and state Democratic Party chairs have been merciless.

***

But the campaign could also be detrimental for Franken, complicating his efforts to redefine himself as a low-profile pol who wants to work with Republicans to solve the nation’s problems.

“Franken’s amendment may make sense for national Democrats in laying down lines of attack heading into the 2010 campaign — but this is not what Franken needs to build a base in Minnesota,” said Larry Jacobs, an expert in state politics at the University of Minnesota. “Being a poster boy of a hard-hitting campaign against the Republican Party is the opposite of what he needs in Minnesota.”

Thirty Republicans are exposed and vulnerable with an objectively pro-rape voting record, and it is bad news for… the Democrats. We haven’t seen wankery like this since Mark Halperin claimed that McCain not knowing how many houses he owned during an economic meltdown was bad news for Obama.

You just can’t make this shit up. I’m adding the Politico to the blogs we monitor and mock category on the blogroll.

Let’s have a big round of applause for Joe Klein:

Now that’s a panel discussion! A heated debate between Time magazine’s Joe Klein and the New Republic’s Jamie Kirchick spilled off the dais Tuesday into a hallway confrontation where Klein called the younger pundit a “dishonest [expletive]” and a “[expletiving] propagandist.”

Klein told us today he’s not sure he uttered the “propagandist” bit—heard by a few witnesses—but stands by the “dishonest [expletive]” part.

“Absolutely. He’s a [expletive],” Klein, 62, told us. “He’s 25 years old, and he’s one of those people who has opinions but no facts or experience.”

In other words, Kirchick is perfect in his role as Marty Peretz’s jockstrap.

I’m sure the Weekly Standard and Commentary magazine will spend the next week explaining how this makes Joe Klein a self-hating jew. Joe may not be perfect, but he is on the side of angels when it comes to these assholes.

And as a fellow heater, I understand Joe and appreciate it, even when I disagree with him.

John +5

*** Update ***

Wolcott:

Klein may have his flaws and vanities, a plethora of less than charming polemical traits, but Kirchick—Kirchick is the Eddie Haskell of neoconservatives, a calculating little suck-up whose obsequious pieties drip like melted plastic. (To wit: “Reached for comment, Kirchick said ‘McCain spent five years in a North Vietnamese torture camp. He doesn’t need lessons in the horrors of war from the likes of Joe Klein.’”) If Commentary made a lunch box, Kirchick is what you find packed inside, between a banana and a hand grenade.

Brilliant.

Loud Dobbs just quit CNN. I’m sure his xenophobia and paranoia will fit right in over at Fox, as will the constant sucking of his dentures when he talks (something that drove me insane- it sounded like he was going to spray on the camera every time he talked). Will he talk that crazy woman who fills in for him into going with him?

I’m wondering who they will find to replace him. Maybe someone slightly less hateful, like, say, Michael Savage.

I just started watching Hardball, and Matthews told me to make sure I didn’t miss a segment from the the Daily Show clip in which Jon Stewart nails Fox news using old footage to pretend that last week’s Dachaupalooza on the Capitol steps had hundreds of thousands of attendees.

That’s great, and everything, but why the hell is it up to Comedy Central to expose all the lies of the GOP and their paid mouthpieces? Shouldn’t a political show, say, one named HARDBALL, be breaking this sort of news, and not the network that shows South Park and Secret Girlfriend?

What exactly are our news reporters doing that the heavy lifting these days has been left to a Rolling Stones reporter and a comedy network?

Does anyone else think it’s strange the most important figure in American media is an eccentric right-wing Australian billionaire? And that one of the other most important (probably the second most important within wingnut media) figures is a Korean cult leader?

This is weird, right? It’s not just me being a Pat Buchanan nationalist, is it?

Tuesday is trash day around here, so I was gathering up all the trash to take it outside for the garbagemen. Afterwards, I went in and replaced the garbage bag in the kitchen, and as I grabbed the box of trash bags, I saw the Hefty logo and immediately said HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY as I remembered an ad campaign they had years ago:

HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY! For those of you too young to remember, there was a whole string of these commercials.

What other commercials stand out years later for you? I also remember the Bud Light “YES I AM” series, and obviously the Wendy’s “Where’s the beef” group, but what others are there?

I love stuff like this, from TalkingPointsMemo:

Today in fun word choice, from Politico: “Few political observers or elected officials doubt that an energized GOP has a headwind at its back.”

Silver Spring, Md.: I wonder if you could state the evidence for your premise of a “Republican resurgence”. I see a Virginia that did what it’s done since 1977 (vote against the party in the White House) in the presence of an epically bad Democratic candidate… a governor in New Jersey who was wildly unpopular since even before the “2008 debacle” (your baseline)... and – oh yes – a district in NY that went Democratic for the first time since the White House has featured a bath tub. With two unsurprising (from the vantage point of a year ago) gubernatorial results and one historical flip toward the Dems in NY, isn’t it as valid to call last Tuesday a further shift leftward?

Dan Balz: I don’t think I used the word “resurgence” in the piece that ran on Sunday.

The chat itself had been titled “The Republican Resurgence.”

Update. Because I’m a nice person, I emailed the Politico reporter who made the headwind/tailwind mistake to tell him to fix it. But I got this reply: “I will be out of the office on Tuesday, November 10.” So this should be up there most of the day.

The fact that this is a major media story says a lot:

The Washington Times has announced major changes at the paper this morning, with three top executives gone in the process.

[....]

There’s also been speculation that changes at the Times could be associated with last month’s handover of power in the Unification Church, the paper’s owner. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who turns 90 in January, handed over power to his three sons.

Yes, the Moonie Times has lower circulation numbers than the Syracuse Post-Standard, but you wouldn’t know that to see how often its “reporters” turn up on the liberal cable news networks.

In my earlier incarnation as a local and state blogger, I used to email Ben Smith when he was at the Daily Politics (which is now run by the excellent Liz Benjamin). He struck me as an excellent political journalist, hard-working, sharp as a tack, and a nice guy. And, for what it’s worth, I think he did a great job with on-the-ground reader emails during the run-up to last November’s election.

It’s no secret that the Politico’s business model is to get lots of links from Drudge. It’s why they push the stories that they do—Edwardian hair cuts, ACORN, global warming denialism, and so on. Try reading the comments there on any story and you’ll see teh tell-tale misspelled, ALL-CAPS rants; there’s not much doubt that most of the commenters migrated over from the Drudge Report. I don’t think that anyone from the Politico would dispute anything that I just said.

I know that for journalists today, it’s cold out there, and rough. There aren’t a lot of ways for an outlet to make money, and, in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably more honorable to whore yourself out for Drudge links than to work for Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies.

So I don’t blame the people at the Politico for doing what they do, anymore than I blame the kids on “The Wire” for getting involved with the drug trade. People need to get paid. But when you read the Drudgite comments on Smith’s piece about Elie Wiesel, it’s a lot like watching Michael Lee shoot someone or Duquan shoot up.