The clip’s not available yet, but Bobo was on Charlie Rose last night (that fucker is on that joke of a show all the time), and apparently he used some angry language. Reader J describes:
Charlie Rose naturally had a Republican, David Brooks, on to explain the Democratic president’s news conference and Brooks was beside himself, twice using vulgarities (“pissed off”), because the deficit is so high and potty-mouth prattled on about it being a moral issue.
I’m starting to like the GOP idea/ideal of eliminating funding of PBS.
The Charlie Rose show is the work of the devil. Is there any place that is more relentless in its pimping of right-center, Village conventional wisdom? But many people who call themselves liberals, especially older academics and other pseudo-intellectuals, can’t get enough of it.
Here’s a much less serious person with no knowledge of economics describing the real problems with the proposed budgets (via). Luckily, no one listens to such lunatics.
Nothing has changed since Iraq. The media dynamic is exactly the same. In fact, it might be worse. We have met the enemy and it isn’t the dreaded teabaggers, it’s our fine, Horace-quoting friends on PBS and in prestigious magazines.
I know this won’t sit well with everyone, but I fear that Obama too often takes his cues from such serious people.
Maude
I’d say nothing’s changed since Vietnam.
After Watergate, the journos seemed to sit back and think, well, we did out bit.
They are mentally lazy. Not the real reporters, but the celebrities that grace us with their presence.
They would be perfect for the carnival booth where if you hit one with a ball, he or she goes into the tub of water.
piratedan
out here in the land of Cactus Barbie we can see federal money allocated to keep the Rest Areas open but not for life saving organ transplants, so its more important to our govenor for people to be able to take a crap than it is to save a life.
In other news out here, the state is in process to set itself up to “register” federal regulators by decreeing that any federal agency performing any federal auditing function must register with the local county sheriff prior to investigating and said organization has to pay a fee in order to do so.
http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2011/02/14/crandell-to-feds-sign-up-and-pay-up-or-stay-out/
We have a nice variety of stupid from which to choose from out in the hinterlands so it makes what is happening in the Village look so incredibly plausible, tweed elbow patches not withstanding.
Napoleon
That is clearly the case.
superluminar
@DougJ
I think you’re right about the media, but politically this seems very different from Iraq. Look at the deficeit reductions both sides(!!!See, they’re just the same!!!) have proposed: it’s a joke. I expect a bit more of the debt-trollery and then if there’s decent economic growth everyone will forget about it.
Napoleon
Have you ever noticed how cars owned by the Feds have their own license plates that they make for themselves which they then place on their cars and proceed to drive anywhere they damn well please in your state? Ever wonder why?
Mnemosyne
@piratedan:
And if the county’s sheriff is the one being investigated by the feds?
They should just call it the “Joe Arpaio Protection Act of 2011” and have it over with.
Zifnab
Cutting PBS funding will not destroy PBS. The show, and it’s cousin NPR, already get something like 90% of their revenue from viewers and listeners. If Republicans thought this was going to be the master killing stroke to end the networks, they’re idiots. This is really only going to deliver an unpleasant budget problem.
:-p PBS doesn’t vote in crazy abortion crusaders and anti-tax zealots. If all the Tea Baggers got hooked on real serious people like Brooks and Rose, the world would be a better place. At least Brooks isn’t claiming a secret coalition between Wikileaks, the Muslim Brootherhood, and Google’s CEO. You can actually beat that guy in an argument, if you can pin him down long enough. Tea Baggers are logically immune.
Redshirt
Here’s one of the Rethugs main tactics: Insist that something be done on a particular issue (here, tax cuts for Zillionaires); then, when the consequences of that action turn out badly, blame it all on the Liebruls.
Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
Kryptik
@Mnemosyne:
And to show how fucked up our country TRULY is, Arpaio seems to be the odds on favorite to pick up the Senate seat there. Won’t that be fucking fun. Senator Joe Arpaio, representing the great state of Arizona by pushing nationwide Workcamps for Illegals. Since deportation is such a waste of good slave la-I mean chatte-I mean a cheap and necessarily workforce.
long ago
to extend the iraq/debt parallel:
one of the major sleights of hand in the run-up to iraq was the deliberate lumping together of chem/bio weapons (which saddam had once had, but which are pretty trivial) with nukes (which saddam was never anywhere near, but which are far from trivial). so you scare the people with “mushroom clouds!” and then confuse that with other “weapons of mass destruction”.
here in the current drum-beats for destroying the safety net in the name of debt reduction, we should be aware of hte same move:
lump social security together with medicare/medicaid.
not at all the same things.
but they’re going to try to destroy soc sec, when it’s not even a problem.
by confusing it with other two.
long ago
to extend the iraq/debt parallel:
one of the major sleights of hand in the run-up to iraq was the deliberate lumping together of chem/bio weapons (which saddam had once had, but which are pretty trivial) with nukes (which saddam was never anywhere near, but which are far from trivial). so you scare the people with “mushroom clouds!” and then confuse that with other “weapons of mass destruction”.
here in the current drum-beats for destroying the safety net in the name of debt reduction, we should be aware of hte same move:
lump social security together with medicare/medicaid.
not at all the same things.
but they’re going to try to destroy soc sec, when it’s not even a problem.
by confusing it with other two.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
That’s a great video. Jeffrey Sachs really cuts through the bullshit. I keep hoping 2012 becomes a election about exactly what he is talking about – do we collectively decide that the U.S. has no future and give up or do we raise taxes and start investing? The trend seems to be that the elites have given up.
RosiesDad
Sachs was on Scarborough this morning and he and Joe went round and round on tax policy with Sachs taking the position, as he did in this clip, that any discussion of addressing the debt and the deficit needs to begin by fairly taxing millionaires and billionaires and dealing with the cost of healthcare as a means or reducing the burden of Medicare and Medicaid on the federal budget. Sachs came with facts and Joe countered with dogma.
You’re right; it’s a good thing no one listens to lunatics like Jeffrey Sachs.
(We are sooooo fucked.)
Scott
Just watched the Sachs video for the first time. Already passing it along to some friends. It’s incredibly good, and it’s depressing that we don’t hear more media commentary like that outside of Bloomberg and YouTube…
SBJules
I thought I was the only one who thought Charlie Rose was stupid.
Guster
Thanks for the link, DougJ. I’m gobsmacked, hearing someone talk sense like that. Gobsmacked and a little weepy.
Xenos
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: The elites, for some reason, have concluded that the masses are unworthy of investment. Maybe because the same masses have concluded that investment is for pointy-heads, fags, and commies. I don’t care much for the billionaire boys’ club, but at a certain point I can appreciate why they must consider the bulk of Americans to be straight out of ‘Idiocracy’.
geg6
I watched that video last night and just want to say that I hope the FSM lovingly wraps it’s noodly appendages around Jeffrey Sachs. That interview is a national treasure. And the anchors are hilarious. One of them is ready to go march in the streets with Sachs and the other one simply cannot fathom what the hell this guy is talking about with all that crazy talk about raising taxes and Keynesian solutions to an economic turndown.
DougJ®
Unfortunately, they disabled embedding on that link.
El Cid
In my experience, a lot of people are happier watching the same sorts of pundits and views and dialogues and spin on PBS and NPR than they are seeing the same on other networks and media.
This isn’t to suggest that much of the programming isn’t different from the average major media offerings.
There’s a nice calming sound to most PBS and NPR programs. People talk more softly, more like actual people, rather than brusque and blustering pundits or anchorpersons with the typical cadence and tone. They use smarter vocabulary, or at least are more willing to do so.
There’s a lot of quiet space in between bits. There’s also nice, relaxing, quirky, interesting segue music, such that people buy CD’s of NPR intro and outro music. It’s often selected to fit the subject matter of the piece it follows. If it’s a sad story, it’s very likely to be followed by a musical bit that isn’t upbeat.
There are very, very few commercials. Most are serious and supportive notices from sponsors, or ads read by the host, or ads by the advertisers with a much more calming tone than the types you see and hear on mainstream corporate media.
Listening to, say, Megan MdAddled on GE’s Marketplace seems more pleasant and reflective than it would be hearing the same screeching, snobbish idiocy on Morning Joe.
You can know what NPR’s Morning Edition is going to cover and the way in which it covers it by reading the New York Times the prior day and that morning.
It will be more likely that you will hear from and see scholarly analysts, but mostly those will be from the typical think-tanks who drive views anyway.
In-depth and investigative pieces can be very different. Not always — frequently it’s about capturing the sounds of the places they’re covering.
So if you can present pretty much the same thing in a much more acceptable style to PBS and NPR viewers and listeners as you would in more mainstream media, i.e., right-wing shows ridiculously outnumbering actually liberal shows, or the views of the same exact conservative pundits who circle around all the regular commercial media, then public radio and TV spreads a lot of the same nonsense.
PIGL
@Xenos: “Those who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them for their blindness.”
Whereas I myself think that they all should only DIAF.
Comrade Javamanphil
I would pay an ungodly sum to have some anchor person ask Sachs: But won’t the high earners just “Go Galt” if you raise their taxes?
Suck It Up!
@DougJ: Obama is his own man. How many times does he have to show that he thinks for himself?
I don’t know what the right wing does, but it seems on this side if you don’t agree with the left then it must be that you are brainwashed. Its arrogant . stop it.
kdaug
It’s too early in the morning to have my rage articulated via BJ & YouTube.
Kindly hold these posts until after lunch.
Disraeli
That Sachs fellow is clearly a madman.
Why doesn’t he (take your pick)
a) think of the children
b) support the troops
c) love America and/or Jesus
d) worship mammon
beltane
@SBJules: Everyone used to think they were the only ones who thought Charlie Rose was stupid. Balloon Juice changed that for me. Now I realize we are legion.
kdaug
Oh, and for the record:
This.
Dennis SGMM
@long ago:
You nailed it: conflate something possibly dangerous and possibly factual with something actually dire then hammer on. The word “Medicare” is now inevitably followed by the words “Social Security.” The one is an addressable problem, the other isn’t a problem at all yet both are mentioned as a part of the deficit. The media, AKA The Coalition of the Willing, rarely bothers to make the distinction between a self-funded program still in surplus and an entitlement.
In other words, we’re fucked by both political parties.
Joe Beese
Poor Obama… his noble instincts betrayed by perfidious advisers.
If only he had some way of escaping their influence.
The Moar You Know
They can pull all the government funding (from what I gather, there’s not much) from NPR. It won’t put them out of business, sadly. They started cheerleading America’s Wacky Iraq Adventure® before we even went in there, and have continued to relentlessly pimp for the right ever since then.
Ash Can
@piratedan:
(From the article.)
What could possibly go wrong??
negative 1
Because it’s all too depressing to think about, I will say this – it’s fun as all h*ll to watch Jeffrey Sachs obliterate the stuffed shirt apologist from the Bloomberg channel. You can tell the interviewer is trying to get him to say “we need fiscal responsibility!” but realizes his talking points are no match for an actual education and career in research in Economics. He tries the bluster, but you can tell he’s afraid of getting embarrassed. No doubt the next time Bloomberg invites on an actual economist, they’ll make sure they have a professional shouter on to “balance the opinions” (what, was Paul Ryan sick that day?) but at least that interview was fun to watch.
Davis X. Machina
Ne aestumetur omnes qui canere carmina Horati possunt factionem optimatum sequi. Nonnulli populares sunt qui de fonte Bandusiae bibunt.
Suffern ACE
@piratedan: If this were a different type of country, I’d advise Obama to arrange for an accident involving a stealth bomber and the AZ statehouse and conveniently not registering the investigators due to budgetary constraints.
eemom
um, DougJ? You did say you were a LAPSED Catholic, right….?
Justcheckinzall.
rickstersherpa
This is Brooks being a concerned troll regarding Obama. He wants the Obama and the Democrats to defenestrate Social Security, and thereby their raison d’etre, and enable the Republicans to escape all censure from their elderly white base. As Digby and a other netroots blog have noted, it was the Republicans claiming that Health Care reform was going to be enacted at the expense of Medicare that caused the major shift of the elderly vote to them in the last election and had all those old folks storming the townhall meetings. It has been especially noteworthy watching the new paragons of Fiscal rectitude, the Tea Party Republicans elected in the last election, shying away from any discussion of cutting Medicare and Social Security when they appear on the talk shows.
President Obama has wisely decided not fall into that trap and appears to be baiting the Republicans to show their true colors. However, President Obama, Columbia 1982, Harvard Law 1990, and adjunct professor of University of Chicago Law School, does not have to take his cues as he is a member of the neoliberal tribe. Which is why it hard to trust him on this issue since the elites have been anti-social security for the last 25 years.
FlipYrWhig
I’m not sure Obama cares all that much about the PBS/NPR/NYT nexus. But I’m quite sure that caring about that was what did in both Gore and Kerry, and there’s a cohort of insider Democrats who will _never_ stop caring about it, and we hear their views rather often.
Suffern ACE
@Kryptik: Joe is in his 80s. The only thing he is running for is the bank where he’s hidden the public funds he’s stolen over the years. The missing funds we read about probably barely scratch the surface.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Actually the enemy is both. We are fighting a two-headed media hydra, the Corrupt and the Crazy. Every time we get busy trying to give one head an extreme haircut, the other head grows back stronger than before.
liberal
@geg6:
Screw that. That stupid bastard’s advice cost Eastern Europe dearly.
Michael
Y’know, if it weren’t for PBS, there’d be a dearth of cultural or historical programming available on TV.
Think about the fine commercial offerings we now get from the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel:
Ax Men, Ice Road Truckers, Alien History, Pawn Stars, Cash Cab, Dirty Jobs, Medical Freaks, Toddlers and Tiaras, Cupcake Wars, Kate the C***, The Duggar Carnivaletc.
None of the previous good programming is even rerun any more. Its cheaper to have some cameras following attention whores around than to pay royalties to documentary producers, for fuck’s sake. The Travel Channel is about the last bastion of programming that isn’t so reality or competition oriented, and even it is slipping.
If it weren’t for PBS, there’d be nothing – our corporate masters could then offer a solid diet of “The Running Man” and “Rollerball”, and we could just wallow in it.
Mike E
@Michael: Don’t forget that Ted Nugent gun fabricator guy too, also.
I lurve Cash Cab. Almost as much as Manswers.
I’m done with NPR/PBS news-bringers. Y’day heard on Mourning Edition how everybody nose Social Sec needs to be cut… fuckers. Their centrist/objective illusion ‘sploded like the Hindenburg.
Fuck U II: The Duckening
Michael: When did the History Channel ever produce “good” documentaries? At one point they were “better” than the shit they put up now, but they were never all that good.
Gus
To use a favorite expression of one of my coworkers, Charlie Rose makes me want to shake babies. The faux thoughtfulness, the middle brow analysis masquerading as depth, the obvious self regard. Christ he’s an asshole.
Fuck U III: The Duck Fucks Back
And liberal is correct in that Sachs has much to atone for.
El Cid
I like a lot of NPR and PBS programs. Of subjects or arts and styles you don’t find on other channels, particularly without commercials.
Especially now with digital TV broadcasts when they can have 3 TV channels over the air, and one mostly showing documentaries and such while major programs appear on the regular channel.
Unfortunately I don’t have any HD Radio tuners yet, so I can’t get the extra channel(s) of the local NPR affiliate which has news and talk programs on when the analog broadcast airs classical music during the day.
I’m just not interested in their major news and political and economic programming.
If I have no internet connection and no other sources are available, especially if I want some news to hear in the background while getting ready or driving in the car without podcasts, if I don’t feel like music or sportstalk or momentarily listening to the rightwing AM freakshow, I’ll listen to NPR.
Some of the other news & politics programs like the Diane Rehm show or Talk of the Nation I can tune into. But to get those, I’m on the internet anyway, so I can choose from any options.
Mostly it’s the BBC. A lot of NPR and PBS broadcasters air BBC News programs. I’ll watch those.
Hob
In slight defense of Charlie Rose, when he has a guest who’s just written a book, Rose often seems to have read the book, or at least skimmed it.
However, that means he’s so excited about having knowledge in his head that he interrupts the guest even more than usual.
I’m waiting for the day when Rose starts using hand puppets so he can interrupt himself, and cut the guest out entirely.
Bulworth
It’s almost as if Brooks and Sullivan and other conservatives thought that because high unemployment is helping create large budget deficits, that the president’s budget should automatically propose eliminating Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and they’re distraught that the president hasn’t recommended doing that. It’s weird.
RalfW
About the time I started reading Balloon Juice (via Andrew Sullivan’s Blog Love links) I had an awakening that Charlie Rose was bringing the same damn Villagers on his show over and over, saying the same crapola.
I will give a shout out to NPR, though. Their interview with David Stockman over the weekend, and with Alan Simpson today, are not echoing the standard villager bullshit.
Simpson called directly and forcefully for defense cuts and called trimming things like winter heat aid a load of crap (paraphrasing).
fraught
Nit-pick warning. I don’t like the term “pseudo-intellectual.” It’s become a cliche and always sounds to me, well, phony-intellectual. Degraded by over use and misuse by those of intellectual achievement both high and low, it tags the user as lacking in imagination. Even the dumbest street dweller knows what a “pseudo” is. Could we use something less pseudo-intellectual sounding as a pejorative?
Perhaps ‘would-be-intellectual” or “fake POS” would do.”
RalfW
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
The elites have figured out how to vacuum up all the freefloating cash in the economy, park it in Bern, and own a ski chalet in Vail, a penthouse in Manhattan, a bunker in Idaho, and a beach place in the Caymans (with more bank accounts there). All served via NetJets fractional ownership.
They haven’t given up, they’ve got the goose laying the golden egg.
JITC
Making it a “moral” issue proves that Republicans/conservatives are indeed trying to tell us what to think and believe (despite Boehner’s protestations about his job description) and that they have no logical, economic argument in favor of tackling deficits before we tackle unemployment.
But I’m glad they are making it a moral issue. Progressives should agree to this debate. What’s more immoral? Deficits fueled by war and killing? Cutting off funding to impoverished women, infants and children to pay for those wars? Cutting needed programs to close a deficit while ignoring the millions still out of work?
DougJ®
@fraught:
I rarely use the expression but I think it’s the right one here.
NJSteven
I saw it last night. My “favorite” part: When Rose recalls the President’s vacation book choices and remembers how he “wished he had David on at that time to get his thoughts on what the President should be reading.”
Here’s the thing: he was dead serious. Bobo recommending the President’s reading list. We. Are. Doomed.
techno
Jeffrey Sachs a good guy? We ARE in serious trouble. This is a guy who is so guilty in the corruption of the Yeltsin years in Russia that I am sure that if he ever returned, he would be beaten to death by a mob or at least tossed into a jail cell with Khordokovsky. As it was, his criminality got him fired from Harvard–which is a remarkable accomplishment when you think about it.
Sachs a good guy? You must jest!
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
I found Bobo’s profanity laced appearance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRNOUz7uefA
someofparts
If only there were some way to get that Sachs video to go viral. I’d love to send it to my friends, but I don’t know anyone IRL who is paying one bit of attention to the economy. Everyone I know has been hurt by it, but I none of them have even the slightest interest in understanding why their setbacks have occurred. I don’t get that. Never have.
someofparts
Well, Wisconsin is up in arms and I hope they are about to have plenty of company. I thought I had seen it all by now, but take a look at this appalling development –
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/02/obama-creates-worlds-first-superstate-with-us-canada-merger/
someofparts
Sorry for multiple posts. I’m at work and don’t always have time to read all comments before posting. I know who Sachs is, and share the negative sentiments about him voiced by others here.
I’m still glad to hear he was on morning televison arguing with that nauseating pinhead Joe Scarborough. Even though Sachs is the source, I’m glad someone is finally arguing forcefully for taxing the rich.
JR
Okay, fine, I’ll be the one to say it:
I like Charlie. His booker sucks, but he’s a damn sight better at interviewing than 99% of those cable news hacks who couldn’t find an original thought with both hands and a flashlight.
Mark Kolmar
I was a late-night viewer at the start, who later went for years without watching Charlie Rose. I have seen or listened, if only in the background, possibly a bare majority total of what the program has offered in all this time.
He has been able to extract statements that are a true measure of his guests. This is valuable information not available elsewhere, not necessarily an endorsement of a particular ideology.
I wouldn’t measure “Charlie Rose Show” opinion-statement on the basis of what David Brooks has to say one night. Fine, it does tell you a lot about what a soft-middle, metropolitan, east coast US observer has to say.
For example, last night’s show draws out the point-of-view of wonderful people who say that they are magical hubs of information aggregation filters. I have been well-informed without her talents, thanks. Now I know more about the selection bias at the new AOL-Huff.