Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

The public tribunes of the press, however, see no reason to question their own general flawlessness:

"It's a stunning and unsupportable statement," pronounced Mark Knoller, CBS Radio correspondent. "Transcripts of McClellan's press briefings provide more than ample evidence of the intense scrutiny imposed on the White House and its policies by members of the press. Most days, McClellan left the briefing room lectern positively spent by the pounding he faced from reporters."

ABC's Ann Compton was perplexed: "Is Scott suggesting the White House press corps can stop, or start wars?"

David Gregory, NBC News' chief White House correspondent, opined: "I think he's wrong." He added: "I think we pushed, I think we prodded. ...The right questions were asked."

Our friends at Progs for Obama have posted an article by George Lakoff. Lakoff's impressions move beyond the tiresome atropine and organophosphate dichotomies that have plagued the compartmentalized dialectics of the post structural recrudescence. He presents an argument in favor of cultivating an evolving, omnichronal, flexible exegesis of President-to-be Obama's apparent tactical pandiculations, and 21st century politics in general, while striving to maintain the perseverance that has brought progressives to the cusp of the progressive actualization of recommitting to incrementally express a sense that... Anyway, he does so with a restrained, thoughtful use of capital letters; indicative of an appreciation for the sensibilities of both strict and nuturant mindsets. Extrapolating from this, as I do in my book, Dining Our Way Out of the Doldrums: Progressive Recipes for Success, one feels comfortable asserting that a breaded pork chop may benefit from a dollop of apple sauce, that macaroni and cheese may blossom under a shake or two of paprika and that no one need fear the onion when making an artisanal meatloaf.

As a philosopher and a gourmand, I came away from reading the proffered Text with the conviction that the progressive will to progressivism is, like butter, undergoing a clarifying process. The progressives themselves, however, appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of their ultimate conjuration -- a real tragedy of méconnaissance.

[T]his country's "radical" activist contingents [are] making a big mistake by not openly, actively attacking corporate media personnel and equipment at major protest-attracting events such as [the Republicrat conventions].

I agree.

We rads need to change targets -- stop attacking the hams up front on the podiums and start attacking the actual culprits, the giant media congloms that provide us with all our degenerate political theatre; these elite mass media production companies, these studios of news-fic. Let's knock over their remote teams, trash their reporters while on camera live, bust up their megadollar griffs, festoon their broadcast towers with sacks of cowshit, storm their studios, get the Kiev boys to lance their web site's software: proclaim nonviolent but total war. Threaten to "virtually" bring down the beast, the giant red white and blue corporate news hydra, and by using only the miracles of voodoo agitprop, sizzle the beast's zillion heads right off at the stump, one by one.

I'm almost embarrassed for John Cassidy, but the loathsome spectacle he's joined puts him well past any such concern.

The big banks remain able to open their doors only because Geithner and Bernanke keep them on life support. They are not healthy. They are not solvent. They are utterly dependent on the heroic book fiddling of the Fed's and Treasury's yuppie Stakhanovites. What's more, they're still playing the same games that got them into code orange panic. Only the most severely delusional pretend otherwise. Even the banksters aren't kidding themselves, and that really says something. Cassidy's adulation—oh the sordidness of it all!— Tim Geithner... It might be possible to find someone more loathsome, but I honestly have no idea where to begin looking.

An energetic hack goes off message and gets canned for it. In other news, water often runs downhill. Frum's firing from AEI isn't a sign of impending discursive doom, there is no harm to the body politic (poor suffering thing that is) nor are there any far-reaching implications. Frum was hired with a certain understanding in place. At his level in the perception management racket the understanding doesn't need to be spelled out. He went off message. It cost him his job. End of story.

I think I can be forgiven for giggling at the thought of his sacking being indicative of "conservative intellectual bankruptcy". We still have Wendell Berry, Daniel Larison and the estimable Old Right anti-imperialists at Antiwar.com. Surely they count for something. Moreover, even a slight familiarity with their writing would suggest that Frum is not a conservative. Although he might "self-identify" as one. But how much is that worth?

The upset over his insignificant, if ignominious, dismissal looks based on the principle that a harm to one hack is a harm to all. That's a good thing, if it comes to pass, not a cause for mourning. I fully favor heightened message discipline and severe penalties for transgressions. Maybe they'll all go on strike in response.

That's complete nonsense, I know, but it's the best way to introduce Michiko Kakutani. There's a good explanation for that from Monsieur IOZ, where I snagged this snippet from Christopher's comment:

intemperate blog entries and Howard Beale-like outbursts are cheered as expressions of a collective distemper.

I have no idea what that means, but I can spot the rage of a philistine easily. The incoherence of it is grounded in senior middle management entitlement. The offending parties must read her mind, as she can read theirs, in order to know what they've done to provoke.

Cutting loose like that is a generic corporate behavior. A little bit of power brings out the worst in poorly socialized people. And I think it explains the overwhelming managerial class support for a state that's policed from the creche to the grave. They want to abuse people and they want to feel safe doing it. The end result is a country that's impoverished to provide bodyguards for shit-flinging senior book reviewers, among others.

Hyperbole? Try walking into any corporate tower in any major US city.

But I assure you that I, Jason Ditz, am not now nor have I ever been an agent provocateur for any government, let alone the Iranian one. The fact that such a proclamation has to be made is perhaps a lesson in the absurd state of affairs for a radio station that has gone from Cold War propagandist to CIA proxy to forgotten (but still funded) ward of the government.

Antiwar Blog

I laughed for a moment. What they [Radio Free Europe] did was so majestically stupid and incompetent, so gratuitously fatuous, that even the most beaten down time-serving hack would cringe with shame at being party to it. But it's not really funny. Websites lift content all the time. Link farms do it to rake in the click pennies by the basketful. Everyone with a web presence knows that. With the exception of complete newbies, there is no one in a position to claim ignorance.

Yet, Radio Free Europe tried to imply an association between an Antiwar writer and the Iranian government. Are they trying to get him hurt? Loose cannon jingoes are always a problem and in the midst of a grinding economic catastrophe their grievances burgeon.

The latest churn in the news cycle is placing blame for possible travel delays on the victims of Obama's prurient security enhancements. People who object to virtual strip searches and perform the consumer equivalent of job actions are actually selfish. The delays will be their fault, not the fault of the thuggishly stupid policy makers.

This is typical of bootlickers. They lack the gall and the physical nerve to brutalize people themselves, but they feel comfortable dictating and delegitimizing the response to brutality. It's safe and it pays a salary. One would hope the self-loathing from that would be crushing, but they have their cognitive escape hatches. They're only "reporting" what they've been told.

Via zunguzungu.

Should the NY Times engage in journalism? Seriously. The ombudsdude wants to know.

I think this falls into the category of questions that can only be answered physically.