Pope Francis might be going out at night to minister to the poor. And he might be spouting “pure Marxism”. Both of these reports might be true, but since the latter comes out of Rush Limbaugh’s piehole, I think we’re 1 and 1 here.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
They Call It Cyber Monday, But Tuesday is Just as Bad
Racism ended yesterday, and Amazon will drone in your purchases soon. I don’t know how things could get much better. I got nothing, except for Kathleen Geier’s round up of 10 vicious negative reviews. Open thread.
They Call It Cyber Monday, But Tuesday is Just as BadPost + Comments (53)
Open Thread
Lots of stuff going on. Big Metro North derailment. Healthcare.gov is fixed. Pick your poison in this open thread.
Segment Your Market
Kathleen Geier on a post by Michelle Goldberg asking whether conservatives are abandoning populism:
Goldberg takes as her main piece of evidence a new book by antifeminist activist Charlotte Hays called When Did White Trash Become the New Normal? A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question. In the book, Hays mocks working class people for allegedly being fat, lazy, and poorly dressed. Oh, and she also apparently thinks poor folks who have diabetes are hee-larious. Classy!
Hay’s book has been well-reviewed by her fellow conservatives — and her book is hardly the only evidence of right-wing anti-populism out there. Charles Murray, so often a pioneering figure in making vile politics respectable, got there first with his book on “the state of white America” from a few years back. There’s also the popularity Fox News effete-snob-in-residence Stuart Varney. It’s notable, too, that to-the-manner-born Mitt Romney didn’t even try to orchestrate any of the fake populist media stunts — think George H.W. Bush with the pork rinds — that previous G.O.P. presidential candidates were sure to pull.
It’s been clear for a long time that the guys in charge of the conservative movement consider populism a necessary evil, and that effete snobs and “White Trash”, to use Hays’ term, have been able to live in conservative harmony for long periods. Consider the long-time co-existence of William F Buckley and the John Birch Society. Buckley hated the Birchers and they ultimately lost influence, but both the toffs and the trash were solidly behind Goldwater in ’64.
I can’t claim to understand this phenomenon completely, but at least part of the reason is that the would-be elite realize they need votes to keep their taxes low, so they never do anything that will separate their wing of the party from the proles they need to win elections. Another part of it is that conservatives have built a media machine almost completely focused on directing white rage away from targets inside the tent, and it works pretty well.
As for Romney in particular: His campaign was full of awkward, staged faux populism. The issue that “White Trash” conservatives had with him was that he had been a liberal, pro-abortion, pro-Obamacare governor, and all the corndogs in the world can’t change that.
By Request
Someone in the last thread wanted more Snowden, so here’s the latest:
Top secret documents retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden show that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government allowed the largest American spy agency to conduct widespread surveillance in Canada during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits.
The documents are being reported exclusively by CBC News.
The briefing notes, stamped “Top Secret,” show the U.S. turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the National Security Agency while U.S. President Barack Obama and 25 other foreign heads of government were on Canadian soil in June of 2010.
The covert U.S. operation was no secret to Canadian authorities.
The reason this is a big deal is that the Canadian version of the NSA, the CSEC, is prohibited by law from spying on Canadians without a warrant, and also prohibited from tasking the NSA to do it. So it looks like some laws may have been broken Here’s the Globe and Mail’s piece on the CSEC.
The leaks came from Greenwald. I’ll save the haters some typing by linking to this:
“Greenwald is a Brazilian-based former porn industry executive, now assisting Edward Snowden leak national security information.”
Before turning his attention to writing books targeting the U.S. George Bush administration and Republican politicians, Greenwald owned sites such as Hairy Jocks and Hairy Studs. Greenwald is now the sole journalist with full access to Snowden’s document trove.
That’s from Canada’s answer to the NY Post, the Toronto Sun. The Sun is making hay over the fact that the CBC paid Greenwald $1,500 as a freelancer for access to Snowden’s story.
Another Day in the City
Buses weren’t running on Wednesday, so the coach at Edison Tech, a city high school, arranged for a school bus to pick up his boys at a central meeting spot on Main Street in Rochester to take them to a scrimmage with another school. While the boys were standing around waiting, this is what the cops said they did:
The police report says the students were obstructing “pedestrian traffic while standing on a public sidewalk…preventing free passage of citizens walking by and attempting to enter and exit a store…Your complainant gave several lawful clear and concise orders for the group to disperse and leave the area without compliance.”
Three of the boys were arrested, the coach was threatened with arrest, and the coach was told by one of the police officers that the cop wished he had a big enough vehicle to arrest the whole team. The parents of the boys who were arrested had to post $200 bail to get them out in time for Thanksgiving.
The interview with the coach is worth watching because he’s clearly pained by the whole thing.
Getting Nothing But Static
Reader BG sends in this little piece of sadness about the effect of the lack of political ads on TV stations’ bottom lines:
According to data compiled by Pew Research, some big companies have suffered major revenue losses this year due to the lack of political advertising. The Washington Post Co., which owns six local television stations, saw an 18 percent revenue decline this year, with a $16 million loss in political ad money. Scripps, which owns 19 local television stations, amassed just $1 million in political ad revenue in the third quarter of this year, compared with nearly $33 million during the same period in 2012. Seven major companies in total showed significant declines in revenue this year compared with last year.
I’ve had a DVR for years and I don’t watch a lot of sports, so I miss most political commercials. I doubt that I’m the only one. Still, it’s an easy way for deep-pocket PACs to spend lots of money, so they’ll be back next year.