WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE! Why do voters believe foolish claims? Let’s review last Wednesday’s Hardball:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2011
Establishment values and logic/Why your side can’t win: Michelle Cottle is a major establishment player. Rather clearly, she has been in training for several years to be the establishment press corps’ replacement for Cokie Roberts.
She’s is training to be the New Cokie—a clucking southern woman who states the establishment view on all troubling moral affairs.
Beyond that, Cottle has become a large bottom-feeder over the past dozen years. Yesterday, at the Daily Beast, she showed how low the establishment is going to go in these brave new years.
Are Murdoch’s newspapers “bottom-feeders?” This was the Daily Beast headline: “Bachmann Rumor Grows Louder.” No, it isn’t always wrong to report on a political rumor. But as she starts, Cottle shows that rumor and “whispers” are now assumed to be a basic part of the process:
COTTLE (7/20/11): Hear that snickering? That’s the sound of the 2012 mudslinging starting in earnest.
If you aren’t yet familiar with the growing whispers about Michele Bachmann’s campaign—the uncorroborated speculation that the candidate’s profoundly antigay hubby, Marcus, is a closeted gay man—you will be. The chatter has already made its way from the blogs and Twitter (Cher tweeted that Marcus has tripped her exquisitely tuned gaydar) to the alternative press to The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld left each other in stitches this week taking shots at Marcus Bachmann’s effeminate manner and “center-square gay” voice. (Anyone out there old enough to remember Paul Lynde?) As Stewart joked, the guy is “an Izod shirt away from being the gay character on Modern Family.” Clips of the comedians’ faux “comedy repression” session promptly popped up on the websites of such stodgy outlets as The Washington Post and The Atlantic.
The wringing of hands about whether it’s fair for the respectable media to promote this sort of salacious chatter is as inevitable as the chatter itself.
To a bottom-feeder like Cottle, concern about what Stewart (and some major journalists) have done is batted aside as “the wringing of hands.” Darlings! “Salacious chatter” is now inevitable! Why not lie back and enjoy it?
Why not repeat the very best jokes? Why not help your readers recall the comically mincing Paul Lynde?
Cottle has been a nightmare-in-training for years. Her new piece helps us see how low the establishment is going to go in this new tribalized era.
Cottle shows us establishment values. For a look at establishment logic, we recommend this pitiful news report from this morning’s New York Times—a news report which will likely send thrills up pseudo-liberal legs.
We’re not familiar with Ron Nixon’s work, though much of it may be quite good. He worked his way up from the Roanoke Times, where he was conceivably held to tighter standards of logic. This morning, many lines are smudged in his opening paragraphs, as he defines a troubling problem—a troubling problem which, in all honesty, doesn’t quite seem to make sense.
In our hard-copy Times, Nixon’s report sits atop the first page of the “National” section. Fudging and smudging as he goes, Nixon seeks an “hypocrisy” hook concerning those freshman Republicans:
NIXON (7/20/11): Freshman House Republicans who rode a wave of voter discontent into office last year vowed to stop out-of-control spending, but that has not stopped several of them from quietly trying to funnel millions of federal dollars into projects back home.
They have pushed for dozens of projects in their districts, including military programs opposed by the president, replenishing beach sand lost to erosion, a $700 million bridge in Minnesota and a harbor dredging project in Charleston, S.C. Some of their projects were once earmarks, political shorthand for pet projects penciled into spending bills, which Republicans banned when they took over the House.
An examination of spending bills, news releases and communications with federal agencies obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that nearly two dozen freshmen have sought money for projects that could ultimately cost billions of dollars, while calling for less spending and banning pork projects.
Politicians have long advocated for projects on behalf of individuals and businesses back home, even without earmarks. Several lawmakers said they were merely providing a constituent service. But since many of the freshman Republicans campaigned on a pledge to cut spending and to change Washington’s time-honored ways, their support of spending projects suggests that in many cases ideology can go only so far in serving the needs of people back home.
That last sentence is really pathetic. But Nixon has to fudge many points to drive his hypocrisy hook.
“Nearly two dozen freshmen have sought money for projects that could ultimately cost billions of dollars, while calling for less spending and banning pork projects.” But alas! Unless a call for less spending is actually a call for no spending, it’s hard to see the obvious conflict in the facts Nixon reports. (Do any of the projects he cites represent “out-of-control spending?”) Meanwhile, note the way Nixon marbles the word “earmark” through his report—even though, as you can see, these troubling projects aren’t earmarks.
Liberals have lost for many years because we can’t reason more clearly than this. Your side can’t win in a world like this—though thrills up the leg can feel grand.
This morning, the New York Times makes no real attempt to report what’s in the new Gang of Six plan. Given the way this famous newspaper reasons/explains, maybe it’s just as well.
Regarding the Gang of Six plan: We’re working from our hard-copy Times, which reports that the plan “calls for both deep spending cuts and new revenues through an overhaul of the income-tax code.” The explanation stops there.
No comments:
Post a Comment