Anne Applebaum turns in the ultimate “you stupid peasants can’t understand anything without us” column on Wikileaks:
I didn’t think it was possible, but Julian Assange has now done it: By releasing 92,000 documents full of Afghanistan intelligence onto the laptops of an unsuspecting public, the founder of Wikileaks has finally made an ironclad case for the mainstream media. […]
Applebaum goes on to explain how the military jargon in the documents made her head hurt, even though the Wikileaks page has a pretty thorough explanation of what it all means. Maybe Anne couldn’t find that page because the New York Times’ decided not to link to it:
[Editor Bill] Keller explained his decision not to link to the Wikileaks archive as “a gesture to show we were not endorsing or encouraging the release of information that could cause harm.”
Of course, publishing hundreds of paragraphs about Wikileaks data does nothing to encourage or endorse leaks. I won’t link to the New York Times’ Wikileaks roundup because it might encourage or endorse Bill Keller’s tendency to be an ungrateful, hair-splitting twat.
It’s not just Wikileaks. Here’s Pat Buchanan commiserating with the Morning Joe team about Obama’s appearance on The View:
“I think it diminishes the president a little bit to bring him into that kind of setting,” said Buchanan, who has advised Presidents Nixon and Reagan. “Why doesn’t he go onstage with Lady Gaga and get the youth vote?”
If Obama appeared on Morning Joe, Buchanan would experience his first unmedicated woody in decades, but because Obama chose another morning show, it’s like he’s taking a dump on the Presidential seal.
To say that our mainstream media behaves like a bunch of emo teenage girls when even a hint of competition comes their way is an insult to adolescents everywhere.
Chad S
I hope Obama does go on Morning Joe, turns to Buchanan and says: “Pat, I guess I’m your nightmare: a minority in a position of power who’s much smarter than you….”
Keith
I’ve heard some pundit even say that it diminishes the president to engage with John Boehner in a tit-for-tat. It’s the same crap that started his presidency, where the common refrain was “The president shouldn’t be doing X, because the economy|war|Gulf is in trouble, so he *should* be spending all his time on the economy|war|Guif, and only the economy|war|Gulf.”
Pasquinade
President Bush Gets Cozy with Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil McGraw, accompanied by his wife Robin, sat down with President and Laura Bush in the living room of the first couple’s Crawford, Texas, ranch for Wednesday’s installment of the Dr. Phil daytime TV show.
The hour, which emitted a warm-and-fuzzy feeling, dealt with such family matters as whether children should be spanked – now-22-year-old twin daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush were not – while it consciously sidestepped such harsh campaign issues as Iraq and the economy.
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,703228,00.html
Bruuuuce
Not just another morning show, but a morning show run by (*gasp*!) women. Fortunately for Pat’s fee-fees, at least two of the hosts (Hasselbeck and Shepherd) are more or less on his side of the aisle.
Then again, we get the special return of Baba Wawa for the event, so it’s all good :-)
Allison W.
I can’t believe how many people are hating on The View. I don’t watch it anymore because Elizabeth is just too shrill and makes me want to hurl things at the TV, but its still a good show. They discuss serious things, get into much more honest debate than you would see on cable news and has an audience that Obama needs to reach occasionally.
Frank
We are not a monarchy. We don’t have a king. Perhaps Buchanan would like us to be more like England, but we are not. Our President represents all of us. Of course a show like “The View” is an appropriate setting for our President.
dmsilev
No, Pat, you diminish the Presidency by being involved in break-ins at the Watergate and deals involving Iranians and Contras.
dms
Frank L
Based on his writings, I think that Buchanan would prefer that the US be more like Germany in say, 1936
arguingwithsignposts
@Frank:
Fixed that for ya.
eta: Frank L beat me by that much.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Allison W.: This:
is directly correlated to this:
Pat B, Morning Joe, etc… just hate that a bunch of ladies without any men(!) are better at their job then them.
Bill E Pilgrim
She’s got a point though, if they can’t turn the information into pablum, how will they spoon feed it to the readers?
Chad S
Watching Morning Joe now, they’ve put Pat on the same side of the table with Cramer…and Pat looks like he’s been huffing modeling glue for the better part of July.
beltane
Applebaum’s “unsuspecting public” line is just about the most insulting thing I have read in a long time. Not all of the public is as stupid as she thinks, and many of the people who are as stupid as she thinks are only that way because they have been continually subjected to the idiotic blathering of our seventh-grade mean-girl media.
Sorry, Anne, but the only ironclad case that has been made here is that the 21st century American media is an epic fail.
matoko_chan
ambers rawks
best of #wookieleaks
greennotGreen
“To say that our mainstream media behaves like a bunch of emo teenage *girls* when even a hint of competition comes their way is an insult to adolescents everywhere.”
Why is the word “girl” so often added to increase the intensity of an insult? You don’t think emo boys act silly enough? Crying like a little *girl*. You know, little boys cry, too. Everyone, please try to think what you’re saying when you specify a gender in an insult that really should apply to all genders. When in doubt, substitute race for gender and see how offensive it really is.
But yes, MSM is filled with spoiled children with an embarrassing lack of critical thinking skills – unfortunately, much like many of the electorate.
wobbly
Thank God I am unemployed. I will absolutely watch our president banter with those harpies on The View. And thoroughly enjoy it.
Off topic, but I watched the PBS evening news with Jim Lehrer, and he had this lady scientist on talking about the microbes in the Gulf of Mexico who eat oil. They are apparently gobbling up the current oil spill at great rates.
What do they eat between oil spills?
How did they evolve?
Oh, and I haven’t heard bacteria described as “microbes” since I read a Reader’s Digest condensed biography of Louis Pasteur in the fourth grade.
But, whatever, the microbes got our back.
I hope.
El Cid
Speaking of being on stage, PBS last night (in HD, no less) aired the concert Paul McCartney gave at the White House. So, so fucking incredible — it wasn’t just him, there were a pile of other artists doing his and Beatles’ music. A great speech by Obama awarding McCartney the Gershwin prize for contributions to popular music. And even the entire Obama family joining everyone on stage singing the last choruses to “Hey Jude”.
It insulted me furiously. How dare a President sink to associating with those Liverpool moptops instead of appearing with real patriots like Ted Nugent?
Violet
I love the title of this post. Is this going to be a regular morning feature?
Zandar
*whispers conspiratorially* The Fee-fees…the fee-fees….
Violet
@matoko_chan:
Love the #wookieleaks meme. The kind of remarkable thing is how offhand everyone is about the US being the equivalent of the evil Empire. It’s like that’s a given. I can’t decide if that’s scary (that everyone’s so casual about it), good (that people see the similarities, maybe something could change), funny (maybe I’ve over thinking and it’s just humor) or what.
mistermix
@greennotGreen: Perhaps a session in your room with a box of Kleenex and your original Smiths vinyl will help you get over my misattribution of an excess of emotion to teenage girls.
General Stuck
@mistermix: LOL – you bad liberal:
JenJen
Hilarious!! Just as I was reading this post, Savannah Guthrie began a segment on MSNBC where the subject appears to be “is the President diminishing the Office by going on The View?”
Admiral_Komack
@Chad S:
You want that old man to have a stroke, don’t you?
gbear
Boys don’t cry. Just ask The Cure. They’ve got emo cred.
jayjaybear
Didn’t Richard Nixon (Pat Buchanan’s former boss) appear on Laugh-In, an even less reputable television venue than The View (it was a skit comedy show!)?
And, oh, how the NYT has fallen! From being one of the principals in the Supreme Court case allowing them to publish the Pentagon Papers to holding their dancing fans over the military’s delicate portions so they won’t be exposed to the public. For shame, Gray Lady!
JenJen
Update: Just after the “Obama should be on serious media programs like ours” segment on Savannah Guthrie’s show, they moved to a piece about how the “Morning Joe” kidz (including Ms. Guthrie) were all on “Top Chef DC” last night.
My teevee is making me laugh this morning. Weeeee!
@jayjaybear: If memory serves, George W. Bush recorded a segment for “Deal Or No Deal” and that seemed just fine with the EmmEssEmm at the time.
sherparick
Reference the Bushs’ appearance on Dr. Phil, another example of IOKIYR.
Pat Buchannan – walking cognitive dissoance (Dick Nixon engaging in a massive criminal conspiracy against the Constitution and his own oath of office (‘…to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”)
RobNYNY1957
It’s a good thing that Obama didn’t appear in a movie with a chimpanzee, because that would have been really disgraceful, especially if the chimp got the title role. Or give a series of self-incriminating interviews with a British talk show host. Or let his wife appear on a sit com.
THE
@wobbly:
What do they eat between oil spills?
Oil seeps constantly from the ocean floor in many major undersea oilfields.
Wanderer
Wait a minute–wasn’t Buchanan around when Nixon appeared on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in? How is the View less respectable than “sock itto me”?
JR
Yep, it totally diminishes the presidency. Next thing you know, he might use a pot-smoking, steroid-abusing, foreign-born Hollywood elitist movie star to indoctrinate our children into believing that they need to become more physically fit.
joe from Lowell
Did you just make up “first umedicated woody in decades” just now?
That is an awesome line.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
First of all, why are you insulting emo teenage girls? Most of them have more class and more savvy than Buchanan and Scarborough.
The latter two are the biggest fucking wankers on television, and why anyone watches them is completely unfathomable. Their entire schtick is grounded in the idea that the most important thing about any story is for us to know what they think about it. Fuck.Them.With.Prejudice.
eemom
shit, if Anne fucking Applebaum is agin the Wikileaks leak I may just have to be for it. Can’t stand the twat.
eemom
and I am TOTALLY for ANYTHING Obama does to piss off the emmessemm, so I’m TOTALLY for his going on the View. Also too.
Logan
It’s odd that Pat is SO angry that a President would go on a popular show… after all…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFEhmF-cSi8
Sadly, we never had a chance to really “Sock it to him”
SteveB
If anyone knows what it takes to diminish the presidency, it would be Pat Buchanan.
maus
Why yes, the MSM *is* like an abusive partner, now that you mention it.
Guess what? You’ve changed, you’re not the media I thought you were, and I *can* go at this without you. Maybe if you purge the sickness within, we can get back together. But ultimately, while you’ve got some goodness, you’re still unhealthy for all involved.
Comrade Kevin
@El Cid: And, in their infinite wisdom, PBS edited out McCartney’s comment: “After the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.”
Nazgul35
@jayjaybear:
Just the point I was going to make…he stuck his ugly old mug out and said, “Sock it to me.”
Ted666
Wasn’t Pat’s buddy Nixon on Laugh In.