Alessandra Stanley at the Times (via):
You can agree with everything that Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz say on MSNBC and still oppose their right to say it.
I wonder how far your head has to be stuck up your own ass to write that. And if you’ve ever wondered whether the editors at Times are worth a damn, here’s your answer. That’s the fucking lede of her story – it’s not like they had to dig to find that level of stupidity.
Linda Featheringill
Isn’t that backwards? Isn’t the saying that I disagree with everything you say but defend your right to say it?
Xecky Gilchrist
Wow, it’s the Anti-ACLU! People get annoyed with them for defending the neo-Nazis’ right to spread their hate, whatever they think of the content.
KG
@Linda Featheringill: that was my first thought too… First Amendment, how does it work?
MeDrewNotYou
I’ll bet you $10,000 that a Village outlet that said that about Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh would be bankrupt and scavenged for scraps by the likes of Bain within a week.
Some Loser
I was trying to read this shit, but parts of my brain fell from my ears.
trollhattan
What the fracking frack?!? I have no idea who this person is but she should return to her safe haven beneath the large boulder and forever surrender her keyboard. I oppose her right to a share of the atmosphere.
bootsy
NEWSFLASH: Providing reporting the way Rachel does, which cleanly and calmly punches holes in the moronic-pull-out-your-ass arguments of the talk-radio guys and GOP operatives at Fox, is clearly a moral failing.
The classy way for the left to win is to let the right win and then sigh disapprovingly.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
That is right up there with “…I don’t want to get wonky on you but we haven’t run the numbers on that specific plan…”
I thought this was the most remarkable line of the entire campaign so far. A wonk runs the numbers, that’s what they do. A con-artist, on the other hand…
Butch
@Linda Featheringill: My thought also, and coming from someone who should be defending the First Amendment?
Ash Can
Huh?? What???
That makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Unless the person writing it is actually Vladimir Putin or a Beijing bureaucrat.
texpope
Fox’s “evil twin”?
In almost all readings of the English language, that would imply that Fox is on the side of the angels.
This woman needs some remedial comp lit classes before she’s allowed near a word processor again.
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
This. That was my first thought too. WTF? Am I missing something here??
Violet
Good lord, that article has it all. Principled Centrist whining, Chuck Todd fluffing, a little flirting with CNN, some Both Sides Do It, shuddering at talk of Lady Business, plus that First Amendment “Who Needs It” cherry on top lede.
In other words, a gigantic Villager sundae.
ruemara
That’s like stupid went on holiday and allowed drunk moron a go at the keyboards. Let me make a note of the name so I know who not to ever read again.
pragmatism
Another example of satire that no one can tell is satire? Is it prove Poe’s Law day? fucking hell i’m confused.
Culture of Truth
I refuse to click on the link, so my only reaction is “wait, what?”
Culture of Truth
Oh I get it…. it’s raw, unrefined, pure contrarianism, like Mexican Coca-Cola or plutonium.
jimmiraybob
@Linda Featheringill:
Exactly my first thought. I read it twice at BJ and then had to click through to read it twice again. Bleed through from some bizarre opposite universe I guess. Kinda like “lies are truth” or “selfishness is generosity.”
Joseph P.
I love this line from Staney’s article: “Those anchors who do make dutiful appearances, like David Gregory and Tom Brokaw, are badly needed but don’t stay long or join the fray—like piano players in a brothel, they don’t go upstairs.”
The piano player is an employee of the brothel. He is there only to provide entertainment. The real action is what is happening upstairs.
I think this line is especially (but unintentionally) apt for people like Gregory and Brokaw.
RSA
Cool, she’s the (apocryphal) anti-Voltaire.
Maybe next column she’ll be the anti-Descartes: “I do not think, therefore I am not.”
eric
I look forward to the Times Sunday Magazine and the cover story: “Journalism, the new performance art.”
mamayaga
Wanker, Idiot, or yet another Failed Satirist (won’t get trolled again)?
jl
The premise is BS. MSNBC is NOT foxes evil twin. Schultz irritates me, I think he is blow hard. But he does take care to back up his claims with references and arguments, he takes the time to reason through arguments on both sides. You usually know before hand which side he will come out on, but at least you get an honest serious argument and evidence most of the time.
And what is with the hating on Maddow? Maddow is not like anything on Fox. Except maybe Shep Smith, sometimes. But Maddow skips Smith’s bigshot anchor schtick, and unfair interview practices that Smith engages in. So, no comparison. Ridiculous comparison.
Culture of Truth
Why not just hire a player piano to do “both sides do it”? Save a fortune.
matt
I oppose Alessandra Stanley’s so-called ‘right’ to say this crap. The dimwitted woman is whining because she imagines that the kind of coverage she doesn’t like is crowding out the ideal coverage she would like. But of course that’s just the moronic conceit of an over-entitled, bubble dwelling imbecile.
SiubhanDuinne
Isn’t Alessandra Stanley the one who made something like seven or eight factual errors in her obit of Cronkite a couple of years ago? And was widely criticized? And just doubled down and kept making more errors in more stories? Why is she still even employed by the NYT??
JustRuss
@Culture of Truth: I admire your restraint, I usually try to do the same. But I agave in. I figured the column couldn’t get worse than that opening sentence. My mistake. Last paragraph sums it up. It’s OK for Gov McDonnell to require women to be vaginally probed, but mocking him for that is bad form. Jeez what a tool.
Ash Can
@Joseph P.:
Sounds like someone’s been hanging around David Brooks and/or Peggy Noonan too much.
Shinobi
Shorter Moron: IOKIYAR
Deb T
@RSA: @RSA:
RSA Says:
Cool, she’s the (apocryphal) anti-Voltaire.
Maybe next column she’ll be the anti-Descartes: “I do not think, therefore I am not.”
Good one. Clever and makes me feel more learned than I really am.
Violet
@matt: I don’t oppose her right to say it. I oppose the New York Times paying her to say it.
Joseph P.
I love this line from Stanley’s article: “Those anchors who do make dutiful appearances, like David Gregory and Tom Brokaw, are badly needed but don’t stay long or join the fray—-like piano players in a brothel, they don’t go upstairs.”
The piano player is an employee of the brothel. He is there only to provide entertainment. The real action is what is happening upstairs.
I think this line is especially (but unintentionally) apt for people like Gregory and Brokaw.
Culture of Truth
Could one not say thing same thing about A Stanley?
MattF
@Joseph P.: Well. The ‘piano player in a brothel’ is the guy who, when the brothel is raided, claims he doesn’t know what goes on upstairs. I.e., “I just play the piano.” So, Stanley is simply ignorant and/or confused.
Cassidy
@Violet:
Gonna be honest, the dirtire parts of my mind thought you were about to go into a compeltely different direction.
jimmiraybob
@mamayaga:
True story. When I first read that, I thought it read Failed Stalinist.
James Hare
Not only is the statement moronic, it’s pretty badly informed. The network that was formerly referred to as MSNBC is now known as NBC News. That was announced in July.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48180815/ns/business-us_business/t/msnbccom-becomes-nbcnewscom/#.UEZJXNaPWSo
MoeLarryAndJesus
Staley’s column before this one was a deep, probing rimjob for Ann Romney:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/us/politics/a-revved-up-ann-romney-at-republican-convention-tv-watch.html?ref=alessandrastanley
Just absurd. I guess she’s looking for a job on “Fox & Friends.”
Violet
@Cassidy: I purposely left it vague. It works no matter how you’re thinking of it. They’re all whores.
Culture of Truth
@JustRuss:
WaPo:
scav
failed civics, logic and journalism so far. have we tested her on a busy street with no lights and crosswalks or would that be cruel?
feebog
Yes, because when jounalists like Rachel Maddow start pointing out the more obvious Republican lies, it takes all the fun out of the “both sides do it” meme.
Dennis SGMM
@RSA:
She is trying to avoid what I call the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Moment. Goethe wrote, “Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.”
mamayaga
@jimmiraybob:
That works too.
Midnight Marauder
This is the headline.
Nope. No need to even start the first word of the article.
Fucking wow.
Auguste
@RSA: “I do not think, therefore I am an American.”
Cassidy
@Culture of Truth: I think Jay Z, the current king of hip hop, would disagree.
@Violet: That’s fine. Just the build up and then “Sundae?…huh?”. Thought it was funny.
Joel
From teh Wikipedia:
S-Curve
1) Dimwit can’t see the difference between “oppose their saying it” and “oppose their right to say it.” Again with the tenuous grasp of what “rights” are.
2) Paul Ryan did not “finesse the facts.” He lied. If you can’t call a lie a lie because comity!, then you want nothing less than to sell out the republic.
3) First sentence: “says,” goddamnit.
Omnes Omnibus
Ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located the elusive anti-Voltaire.
Downpuppy
@SiubhanDuinne: Why yes.
And ABC is not exactly a fan of her work either.
Yes, she has a long & glorious record or ineptitude.
pseudonymous in nc
As a political commentator, Alessandra Stanley is a mediocre TV critic.
GxB
It’s the conservative version of a Yogi Berra. Why not, the fuckers have alternates to all other aspects of reality.
Calouste
@jimmiraybob:
I think the quotes you are looking for are:
“War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength”.
jibeaux
The entire point of that piece seems to be that shrill people don’t have a right to talk. Until you can find a way to say Both Sides Do It, and say it CIVILLY, Missy, you can just shut up.
Someone has possibly not adapted too well to the rise of new media.
Mino
Gotta be a sock puppet for Andrea Mitchel.
cckids
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
I don’t know, is she blonde enough?
Downpuppy
@James Hare: Nah, MSNBC is still the cable network. They’re just rearranging the digital side to separate MSNBC & NBC News as Microsoft gets out & Comcast takes over.
They may split the TeeVee part more in the future.
Culture of Truth
Oh the howls of outrage if a liberal paper called for Rush Limbaugh to banned.
cdmarine
Silly bloggers. Don’t you know that truth just doesn’t matter anymore?
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
So, this lass’s snark detector (snarkdar?) is finely tuned enough, but her factdar is on the fritz because it’s thoroughly jammed up her tuckus? I’d say that’s my takewawy.
Marc
Her fawning coverage of Ann Romney tells you what you need to know about her. No boring discussion of facts, or even a technical analysis of whether her speech “worked” or not. It came across as something that would fit seamlessly in Tiger Beat or a fan blog.
Like Frank Bruni, she should stick to being a critic (TV in her case, food in his.) They differ only in the way that they embarrass the Times in their current roles.
Bill E Pilgrim
So, doesn’t MSNBC still have three hours every day hosted by a right-wing Republican former member of Congress?
Unless things have changed since I last watched it, three hours of conservative punditry is as much as they have of the more liberal-leaning shows later in the day, isn’t it?
That means that MSNBC is actually balanced equally between left and right, something no one except pundits on Fox itself would ever pretend that Fox is.
Correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t get MSNBC and just see clips now and then, these days.
Kilks
My favorite part is the quote by Melissa Harris-Perry. Its supposed to be an example of how terrible MSNBC is, but its in fact hilarious and spot on.
There’s more truth in that one quote than in 3 hours of CNN centrist crap.
Publius39
She went full retard with that statement.
Keith G
@bootsy: Sometimes Rachel does reporting. Sometime she goes off on a show-starting Rachel rant (or a monologue, if you wish) that provides no new information and actually can be embarrassingly off the mark.
Last night her point was that Obama sold labor down the river with the Charlotte decision. In her world labor in insulted and there may well be consequences.
In interviews I have seen though out the weekend where labor officials were actually present, it was clear her premise is wrong…wrong… wrong. To shore up her view she interviewed…… another MSNBC face. She could not find a rep from labor? In Charlotte this weekend? Just a few questions and she might have encountered the truth.
WTF?
Stanley’s piece is idiotic, but that does mean that on occasion Maddow doesn’t have her head up her ass
PurpleGirl
@Auguste: Better:
I’m a Republican American, therefore I do not think.
Publius39
The First Amendment: you’re doing it wrong.
Tom Q
@Keith G: There are lots of ways in which I don’t care for Maddow, but I think it’s pretty obvious that for Stanley (and I base this on her pieces over the years, not just this), the issue is that Maddow and Schultz are just too ickily Democratic/liberal. You can be over-the-top Republican or (best) full-on “both sides” and be widely revered in the Village. But be a forthright Democrat, and you have cooties.
Ann Rynd
Alessandra, Modo, Frank Bruni, Michiko Kakutani, the mean girl cabal at the times. Rachel is not interested in hanging with them. They are tight with Gregory. Don’t like that the zeitgiest is twisting her way and will cost Gregory his job.
Dont ask me how I know this.
(Pulls veil over face) Say no more.
Publius39
@Kilks:
You have got to be fuckin kidding me. Telling the truth about the hazards of being poor in America is now supposed to be equivalent to the trickle-down propaganda on Faux? You have got to be kidding me! Are their any logic professors here, because this goes beyond a mere false-equivalence fallacy! I need something stronger than a facepalm to express my reaction to this hack’s bullshit.
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Publius39
@Kilks:
You have got to be fuckin kidding me. Telling the truth about the hazards of being poor in America is now supposed to be equivalent to the trickle-down propaganda on Faux? You have got to be kidding me! Are their any logic professors here, because this goes beyond a mere false-equivalence fallacy! I need something stronger than a facepalm to express my reaction to this hack’s bullshit.
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gogol's wife
@Joel:
I don’t have time to read this thread, but I was sure someone would point to her fabulous Cronkite article. She should have been fired ages ago. I don’t know whose relative she is. Her name isn’t Sulzberger, but there must be some connection keeping her employed.
Balconesfault
@Joseph P.: Bravo!
Ruckus
@MattF:
So, Stanley is simply ignorant and/or confused.
Not simply ignorant, massively fucking ignorant.
Confused? No, confused is when you mix up a couple of names of people you haven’t seen for 10 years. Dazed and confused is what happens when you are stoned. She is so far beyond confused that the word is just not appropriate. The correct description is fucking evil.
To FXIT:
So, Stanley is massively fucking ignorant and evil.
NancyDarling
This first line from paragraph #7 has me confused. I thought Fox News was network news. She goes on to say because they don’t have said division, they are free to be as partisan as they want to be. What am I missing?
Gloryb
In my neighborhood, we call the fact that this person has so high paying and influential a job as “rich white kid affirmative action.”
See, also, “Willie Geist”
Anna in PDX
@RSA: I was waiting for someone to say, yes, it’s reverse of Voltaire. Sooooooo weird! From a journalist yet. Don’t they have to read ANYTHING in college? do they only read newspaper articles from 1970s Pravda?
Catsy
…or you can acknowledge that we have a First Amendment and believe in the principles behind it. But they are mutually exclusive propositions.
Stanley has clearly made her choice.
Amir Khalid
To oppose a person’s right to express their opinion is to oppose freedom of speech itself: an absurd position for a journalist, because that freedom is what makes her own work possible in the first place. Nothing you say further to that can make sense. Denying another person’s right to say things you happen to agree with, merely because you don’t like their tone, sounds particularly absurd.
And I see scare quotes around Republican “lies” in the second para. These lies have been widely and repeatedly exposed, even on Fox News. Is Stanley not aware of that?
marina
Re: “Her name isn’t Sulzberger, but there must be some connection keeping her employed,” I don’t remember where I read this, but Stanley is BFF with Times head honcho Jill Abramson (you remember, the one who wrote in her book “The Puppy Diaries” about feeding her ailing dog ‘rosemary-dusted’ chicken, and who stated that the Times needed to be ‘more intuned-ness” with Fox viewers). Stanley is also close buds with MoDo. I stopped reading Stanley after she wrote in the Times in 2000 that the Swift Boat movie on John Kerry should be “required viewing” for the entire country. I did read a piece she wrote for the travel section sometime in recent memory, in which she spent most of the article complaining about not having access to alcoholic beverages…
P.S. I’m all for feeding pets whatever it takes to get them to eat. It was the rosemary dusting that somehow just got to me…
Suffern ACE
@NancyDarling: Fox news is a News Network. Fox, TV channel that runs the Simpsons, has local news affiliates. It’s network of local broadcast affiliates are not required to send Fox News over the airwaves as part of their contract with Fox. I see the distinction she is trying to make between cable and broadcast, but it doesn’t make any sense in the argument she is trying to make.
If there is an argument she is trying to make. Unless it’s that the fairness document needs to be applied to MSNBC because NBC broadcasts other news over the airwaves someplace else and there isn’t a distinction between MSNBC and the NBC Nightly News teams.
Ed Drone
@Ruckus:
If so, I don’t want to smoke, chug, inject, or come into contact with whatever she’s having.
Just say, “No!”
Ed
gogol's wife
@marina:
Ah yes, I forgot about the Abramson connection. And yes, the vacation article was disgusting. She was completely obsessed with cocktails. My fave was her article analyzing Russian television in depth. I wrote to the editor asking what her Russian-language credentials are, because there was no co-reporter listed. Somebody had to have fed her summaries of the programming, unless her Russian is a lot better than she’s ever given any hint of. I received no answer, but her series on TV around the globe doesn’t seem to have had any more installments.
Patricia Kayden
Read the entire article. My eyes practically rolled out of their sockets and left the house.
Silly article. Just shows that MSNBC is getting under the skins of the spineless and useless “journalists”.
piratedan
@Joel: my politically incorrect and possibly callous psuedo-Republican take on that wiki sampling….. “She’s got a nice rack AND she puts out and that’s why we keep her around, occasionally we even let her write something”.
Forsetti
So the Times doesn’t have the cajones to ask probing questions, do research, call an outright fabrication for what it is…but MSNBC is the problem. Rachel is doing what good journalists should, the Times is upset because it makes them look second rate hacks so instead of stepping up their game, they feel the need to criticize those playing in The Show.
catclub
@Amir Khalid: It was stupid article, but most of the posters here have been purposely misinterpreting the opening sentence, just because they can.
It put badly the idea that MSNBC is getting too political and opinionated, to which the author objects. No mention of disliking FOX for being too political and opinionated.
Presumably she never watches FOX (hence no objections), but previously had enjoyed getting fluff from MSNBC.
The Populist
@Ash Can: No, it has to be Sarah Palin using a nom de plume.
humbert dinglepencker
Further proof that the much-vaunted NYT isn’t worthy to line the bottom of a bird cage.
tofubo
Alessandra Stanley has the right to say whatever she wants and i will defend my right to sit quietly by whilst others ridicule her to shreds for saying one of the stupidest things ever put to print (until the next NRO update…)
Alan
Just some of the most horrid writing I’ve seen in a newspaper recently. Really, there are people who don’t think Maddow and Schultz have the “right” to say those things? I think what she meant is that you can agree with their opinions and still think that a news anchor, at least one who is anchoring convention coverage, should play it straight. I don’t find that a persuasive opinion, anyway, but why would she pick the word “right?” Wasn’t there an editor who asked, is this really what you mean, that they have no right to say those things? Also,what the heck is “informed commentary without a twist of bias?”
Alan
@catclub: I think her shoddy word choice opens her up to that interpretation. There’s really no excuse in an A section story in the New York Times to write something as sloppy as that.
Xantar
@gogol’s wife:
To be fair, she was once the co-chief of the New York Times Moscow bureau. On the other hand, I don’t know how you go from being a foreign correspondent to a TV critic.
She’s also the daughter of some defense expert who is apparently famous in that community, so I wonder if that might also explain her continued employment at the Times.
Redleg
The writer doesn’t even manage to get around to reporting whether the statements by MSNBC pundits are based on truth or not or whether Romney, Ryan, and the rest of the Rethuglican brood having been lying out of their foul asses. Nice reporting there, toots.