One Ex-Nixon Staffer Installed, Two To Go

Diane Sawyer's getting tabbed for the ABC World News Tonight slot, replacing Charlie Gibson. I read nothing into Gibson's reported anger at Sawyer's choice as anything more than the usual professional infighting. But let's be clear why Gibson should be mad.

While this was decades ago, Diane Sawyer staffed for Richard Nixon and never really lost that mentality. Her performance grilling the Dixie Chicks will go down as one of the all-time low points in the history of journalism, with Sawyer acting as chief counsel for a Republican President, subjecting entertainers to a cross-examination for the crime of stating their opinion:

When Sawyer prompted the three of them to ask for forgiveness, in a gruesome moment of utterly fake primetime piety, the trio paused. You could see them struggling with their pride, their conviction, and their desire to get along; I was half-hoping they'd suggest Sawyer kiss their three asses (and I'd be surprised if the notion didn't run through their minds). Instead, Maines kept her cool and her dignity. "Accept us," she said. "Accept an apology that was made ... but to forgive us, don't forgive us for who we are." And she went on to point out, as if it needed to be said, that the practice of dissent is fundamental to democracy.

That wasn't good enough for Sawyer. She spent an hour trying to bend the Chicks with a combination of false sympathy and crass sensationalism. Time and again, she cut back to a typeset insert of Maines' original remark, as if Maines had called for the pillage of Crawford. "Ashamed?" Sawyer said, incredulously. "Ashamed?" In the tradition of a Stalinist show trial, the women were forced to affirm their patriotism and their support for the troops. At every point they—who are, after all, entertainers with no particular training in political science—were thoughtful, modest, and firm. At every point Sawyer tried to force them into a crude, Manichaen choices. "Do you feel awful about using that word about the president of the United States?" she asked at the start of the interview—in a prime example of the sort of leading question no self-respecting first year AP stringer would ask. "Well," replied Maines, carefully, " 'awful' is a really strong word." Later, when Maines was trying to apologize and clarify, Sawyer said, "I hear something not quite, what, wholehearted. …"

Well, I heard something not quite—what—honorable in Sawyer's presentation of the affair: an attempt to take a trivial matter that had blown up into an absurd controversy, and blow it up even more under the guise of simply covering the story. Essentially, she asked the women to choose between abasing themselves on national television or stirring up more hatred against themselves. It was a depressing moment in an ugly time.

For what it's worth, I have profoundly mixed feelings about the war, and if I were to sit down with Natalie Maines, I'm sure we'd have much to disagree about. But, just so you know, I'm proud that the Dixie Chicks are from Texas. What's more, I'm embarrassed that Diane Sawyer is a member of my profession.

Actually, I can think off the top of my head of a worse moment: Sawyer interviewed Al Gore about his book "The Assault On Reason," wherein Gore savaged the news media for focusing on trivialities and horse-race nonsense. And Sawyer decided to follow this up with a question about - whether Gore was running in 2008.



And so the "conversation of democracy" gets debased yet more.

Stupid CIA Tricks

Marcy Wheeler has done the heavy lifting on this story that has cable news in a tizzy about how Nancy Pelosi, according to the narrative, knew about torture techniques in 2002 but said nothing, implicating her in the nefarious scheme. I just want to make a few possibly redundant point.

• CIA agents are a group of professional liars. I don't even think that's slanderous, it's pretty much their job description. They exist to collect intelligence but the means they have used, and the missions on which they have embarked, have strayed far from this purpose and into the areas of disinformation and false flags and just out and out lying. We've already seen their psy-ops training put to work in the traditional media recently, when they got ABC to falsely report that Abu Zubaydah was only waterboarded once, and that it succeeded famously. I am thoroughly unsurprised that the CIA went to the very same network to get favorable treatment on their latest story implicating Pelosi. Within a matter of hours, eagle-eyed journalists spotted the flaw - a letter accompanying the documents, none of which prove conclusively that the CIA told Pelosi about waterboarding, states that the information about the briefings may not be accurate or reliable. It says, and I quote, "In the end, you and the Committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened." Sounds definitive to me! Nancy's a liar!!!1!

• Let's say for the sake of argument that Pelosi was briefed about techniques that constitute torture. First, based on the clear timeline, she was briefed after the torture was committed. Second, I find it curious that the wingers appear to be shocked that Pelosi didn't leak classified information by revealing the contents of the briefings. There is a reasonable debate that can be had over whether the speech and debate clause of the Constitution pre-empts the classification process, and whether Pelosi could have taken to the House floor to raise an objection. I'm wondering whether she would have been praised for her consistency by the right, at that point. Or whether she would have been rhetorically hung as a traitor who damaged national security. In fact, there were few options for anyone to register a complaint. If anything, this entire exercise proves that the briefing process for classified information, and the Select Committees on Intelligence themselves, are terribly broken. Marcy's post on the briefing process should leave no doubts about that.

• Furthermore, pointing to dishonest and discredited CIA documents and taunting "See, your leaders are just as responsible" may be, if it were true, a useful piece of information when determining why many Democrats aren't exactly gung-ho for prosecution or accountability, but from a civil liberties standpoint it means absolutely nothing. War crimes are not mollified by their bipartisan nature, or by a caveat that others were briefed about the war crimes after the fact. Those of us who expect accountability when people in government break the law really aren't concerned with the letter next to their name designating their political party. In fact, this only further cements the need for an independent prosecutor who can bring his own judgments untainted by party to this whole affair. And if Republicans think that threatening to look into crimes from the Clinton Administration will send a chill among those who desire accountability, they're wrong. It would relieve us that we're finally putting down childish things and moving away from the make-believe land of American exceptionalism in all things and into a recognition that people are fallible and they deserve to take responsibility for their actions.

Why National Review Loves Jake Tapper

The right-wing National Review posted a long mash note to ABC White House Correspondent Jake Tapper this week, claiming that he "isn’t afraid to go against the grain of the liberal consensus in pursuit of a story." Which stands to reason, since Tapper is the provenance of every lame right-wing hit on Obama throughout the Presidential election right on up to today. John Cole reminisces about a bunch of them (I forgot the one where he thought he smelled smoke on Obama's breath and got the vapors). It continues today.

Check out ABC News’ latest headline on Obama’s Europe trip:

President Obama to Europe: "Sorry About the Bush Years"

The only thing is that I can’t find any evidence that Obama said “sorry about the Bush years.”

My understanding is that it’s a no-no to put something that someone didn’t say between quotation marks, even if it’s a paraphrase.

Within a couple hours, Tapper killed the quotes and wrote: “This headline was mistakenly put in quotations; obviously the president never said that, it was meant to express the sentiment of his remarks. Apologies for any misunderstanding.”

Obviously.

Of course, it's out there now, so the conservative noise machine can continue its claim that anti-American Obama stirred up a hate nest in Europe. All thanks to, you guessed it, Jake Tapper.

Why Can't We Have A Better Media?

I'm a bit late to this party, but this brain-dead ABC News report, wherein they show no ability to understand the concept of marginal tax rates, is truly unbelievable.

According to ABC, one attorney "plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law." According to the attorney: "We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00." ABC also quotes a dentist who is trying to figure out how to reduce her income.

This is stunningly wrong.

The ABC article is based on the premise that an individual's entire income is taxed at the same rate. If that were the case, it would be possible for a family earning $249,999 to have a higher after-tax income than a family earning $255,000, because the family earning $249,999 would pay a lower tax rate.

But that isn't actually how income tax works.

In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate. So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income.

The people ABC quoted don't seem to understand that. Worse, ABC doesn't seem to understand it, either.

ABC has now corrected the article, after it ran for a full day, saying this:

Editor's Note: Yesterday ABC News published a version of this story which some readers felt did not provide a comprehensive enough analysis of Obama's tax code for those families making $250k or more. ABCNews.com has heard those concerns and after review has decided to post an updated version of the story below.

It didn't provide ANY analysis the first time. In fact, it did nothing but mislead.

But this is the media landscape we live in. Any objections from the rich are covered with serious deference toward their views. And any objections from the poor aren't covered. This tips the balance of what is expressed, particularly on taxes, to the point that even Democrats start to worry about the effect of limiting deductions for the rich on charitable donations, even though the facts are that the proposal would at most reduce charitable contributions by 1% (to help pay for universal health coverage, which would lessen the, you know, NEED FOR CHARITABLE GIVING), and in the short-term it would increase charitable giving because tax policy really only makes a difference in the very near-term, motivating people to give to charity now while their deductions aren't capped, which would provide AN ADDITIONAL ECONOMIC STIMULUS. I don't expect the subset of John Galt wannabes to understand Economics 101, and I know it's too much to ask for the traditional media to understand it, but it shouldn't be.

...Let's also note that Obama's proposal is to let expire the Bush tax cuts, which would raise the top marginal rate to 39.6% from 35%, which is historically very low. But of course, it will ring in a Marxist-Leninist Valhalla.

ABC Steps In It?

The initial reports were that Sarah Palin actually started talking about 2012 yesterday in an interview with ABC News, including the line "I'm not doing any of this for naught." After massive amounts of damage control and probably plenty of angry phone calls, ABC revised their own reporting, claiming instead that Palin was talking about this election. An AP story reflects the change.

Asked about 2012, whether she was discouraged by daily campaign attacks and whether she would return home to Alaska, the Republican vice presidential nominee said she was focused on defeating Democrat Barack Obama next week.

"I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken ... I'm not doing this for naught," Palin told ABC News in a taped interview airing on Thursday.

A campaign spokesperson said Palin was talking about being focused on winning the White House this year and is not going to quit despite her critics.

In its initial report on the interview, ABC said Palin was looking ahead to the 2012 election cycle, regardless of the outcome of the November 4 vote.

ABC issued a revised release after the McCain campaign clarified Palin's comment.

This is kind of weird. Are news organizations in the habit of changing their stories completely after campaign aides "clarify" comments? Shouldn't comments speak for themselves?

Anthrax Case Twists And Turns

There is a very coordinated push to leak details about the late Bruce Ivins to certify that he is the "lone nut" anthrax killer which don't entirely hold up upon scrutiny. There's definitely a desire on the part of the government to make this an open and shut case seven years after the fact, but it doesn't completely hold together. The LA Times is claiming that Ivins stood to make money off of an anthrax panic, because he invented some bioterror vaccines, but inside the article it's made clear that we're talking about $10,000 rather than $1 million. We're hearing that a social worker who worked as a therapist with Ivins was scared to death of him and claimed that he tried to poison people in the past, but the social worker, Jean Duley, has her own checkered past, with a long rap sheet, and apparently knew about the grand jury investigation, as it's in her restraining order against Ivins:

client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions toward theripist. Dr. David Irwin his psychiatrist called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions will testify with other details FBI involved, currently under investigation & will be charged with 5 capital murders. I have been subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury August 1, 2008 in Washington, D.C.

How would she know that before testifying? Why does she have intimate knowledge of the case? Why is she the recipient of FBI information?

The FBI is leaking to the LA Times that DNA evidence proves Ivins' guilt, after a fresh look at the genetic evidence, and that after these tests it was clear that only Ivins could have been the killer. But the New York Times Scott Shane calls the evidence circumstantial and that the grand jury was planning to continue to meet for weeks.

While genetic analysis had linked the anthrax letters to a supply of the deadly bacterium in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., at least 10 people had access to the flask containing that anthrax, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation also have no evidence proving that Dr. Ivins visited New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when investigators believe the letters were sent from a Princeton mailbox, the source said.

The source acknowledged that there might be some elements of the evidence of which he was unaware. And while he characterized what he did know about as “damning,” he said that instead of irrefutable proof, investigators had an array of indirect evidence that they argue strongly implicates Dr. Ivins in the attacks, which killed 5 people and sickened 17 others.

And Ivins had security clearance as recently as last month and was only barred from the Ft. Detrick site after counselors warned of his "deteriorating mental condition."

This could be a guilty man knowing the walls are closing in, or a marked man who was harassed into suicide because many in government wanted to close the case. The point is that there are a lot of questions, and until the evidence is revealed there's no reason to accept the official story. It is called "unlikely" that Ivins even knew how to produce weaponized, dry anthrax and didn't have access to it. (The site Anthrax Vaccine is going to be indispensable going forward; Dr. Meryl Nass, the author, and Glenn Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now this morning.)

Meanwhile, regarding the false ABC report linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq (which was not the first, by the way, there was a lot of misinformation or disinformation out there at the time), Glenn Greenwald writes:

Relating to ABC, a reader exchanged emails with Brian Ross this weekend, and Ross wrote this (the email was sent from Ross' ABC address; yesterday, I emailed both him and ABC's Jeffrey Schneider to request confirmation of its authenticity, and they didn't reply):

As we reported more than six years ago our information came from current and former government scientists. The report was discointed [sic] and denied by the White House which we reported. I believe now the scientists got it wrong although they insisted they were correct long after.

Actually, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Ross has ever acknowledged that his sources for the bentonite story were "current and former government scientists." Given that he previously described his sources as being "well-placed," that means, presumably, that they were scientists with extremely close proximity to Fort Detrick (where the anthrax tests were being conducted) if not Fort Detrick scientists themselves. That would mean, if the FBI's accusation against Ivins is true, that the same Government lab where the attacks originated was the source for falsely telling Ross that tests revealed evidence linking the attacks to Iraq. In light of that, how can Ross possibly continue to conceal which Government scientists disseminated this false story?

It is also worth noting that Ross, who was a key witness in the Steven Hatfill litigation (since he had published numerous incriminating leaks from the DOJ) badgered at least one of his government sources, FBI spokesman Edwin Cogswell, to provide Ross with a release authorizing Ross to disclose the source's identity (allowing Ross to avoid being held in contempt by the court). Has Ross sought a similar release from his bentonite sources? Clearly, at least in some instances, Ross is able to convince his sources to allow him to disclose their identity when he is properly motivated to do so. For the reasons Professors Rosen and Gillmor point out, no release should be necessary, since these sources fed him deliberate falsehoods, but one wonders if Ross has even tried to persuade them to give permission for Ross to disclose who they are.

There are far more questions than answers at this point. ABC and any other journalist who got tips about this case need to burn their sources if they believe that the sources have lied. Tom Daschle, who received one of the anthrax-laced letters, wants full disclosure on the botched investigation as well.

There's clearly going to be a sustained effort to close this case, finger Ivins as the killer, and turn away from any of the lingering questions. That would be a huge mistake.

We Have The Worst Conspiracy Theorists

So imagine that you have two incidents. Both are considered terrorism, both are connected by the policymakers to an Iraq war they desire, and both are used as a casus belli to gin up support for that war.

One is a dynamic attack with documentary evidence of planes crashing into large buildings, 3,000 people dead, a terror group which takes responsibility for it, evidence of the hijackers boarding the planes and taking control of them, audio of the cockpits during the hijacking, etc., etc.

The other is this strange series of biochemical agents delivered through the mail, most of them are sent to media and leading Democrats in Congress, nobody takes responsibility, the mystery of who sent them is not solved for years, the notes enclosed in the envelopes crudely say things like "We have this anthrax, take penacillin now, Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great," and nobody can completely figure out the motive or who would have the means to pull this off, although the speculation is typically focused on government research labs.

You mean to tell me the cottage industry of conspiracy theories is over the FIRST one?

And before labeling me as making a false equivalence between 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, in their own way they were just as scary. I remember weeks of palpable fear, especially with their timing right after the WTC attack. Everyone in the country gets mail; not everyone gets on an airplane or works in a national landmark. The random death of the old lady in Connecticut, taking it outside the realm of postal workers and media/political figures, was particularly frightening. And there's no doubt that the recipients of the letters looked extremely calculated, designed to provoke a response of fear in the corridors of power, an upset of the social order.

Now we have thrown into this mix the strange suicide of Bruce Ivins, who reportedly was about to be charged with the anthrax mailings (he was informed of the investigation and subsequent talks with his lawyer acknowledged that charging was imminent).

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator's office in Washington.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI.

This is after the government had to pay almost 6 million dollars to Stephen Hatfill, another government scientist originally tabbed as a "person of interest" in the case. That had to happen before they could charge Ivins, apparently. Ivins worked at AMRIID, the Army's institute for infectious diseases. His brother spoke to his mentality.

The eldest of his two brothers, Thomas Ivins, said he was not surprised by the events that have unfolded.

"He buckled under the pressure from the federal government," Thomas Ivins said, adding that FBI agents came to Ohio last year to question him about his brother.

"I was questioned by the feds, and I sung like a canary" about Bruce Ivins' personality and tendencies, Thomas Ivins said.

"He had in his mind that he was omnipotent."

There is a trail of strange and almost wingnutty letters to his local paper. But Ivins was one of those stereotypical quiet scientists, not the profile of a bioterrorist, and subsequent reporting shows that he was found unconscious in his home months ago, was admitted to a psychiatric facility recently after threatening co-workers, and seemed to have a mental breakdown from the strain of the investigation.

Despite the allegations -- and even after Ivins's apparent plunge into mental illness -- longtime friends and colleagues say it is inconceivable that Ivins could have been a bioterrorist. Many contend that he was driven to depression and suicide because of months of hounding by federal investigators.

"He just looked worried, depressed, anxious, way turned into himself," recalled W. Russell Byrne, an infectious-disease specialist who last saw Ivins on a recent Sunday at St. John the Evangelist, the Roman Catholic church in Frederick to which they both belonged. "It would be overstating it to say he looked like a guy who was being led to his execution, but it's not far off."

The "official story" continues today with an implication that he stood to make money off of his inventions of bioterror vaccines, but the story gets the timelines all wrong (the vaccines were sought even before 9/11 and well before the anthrax attacks) and even inside the story there's an admission that Ivins' take would have been in the tens of thousands.

There's a possibility that Ivins wanted more resources to go to bioterror and so he sent these mailings without expecting anyone would die, but that doesn't answer all the questions raised. In a seminal post, Glenn Greenwald asks about ABC News' breathless assertion at the time that Iraq was surely involved in the dispensing of anthrax based on this new information.

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

That's where Ivins worked.

Like I said, we have terrible conspiracy theorists. Because it's not much of a leap, when you consider that the very lab from which the attacks are now alleged to have originated is the same one that leaked false intel to ABC News linking the attacks to Iraq; when the attacks were designed to scare media and political elites into believing that Muslims could reach them through the postal system; when one of the signature pieces of evidence shown by Colin Powell at the UN for war with Iraq was a small vial of anthrax; when you read this incredible admission from elite pundit Richard Cohen:

Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid.

The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.

For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same. Already, my impulse had been to strike back, an overwhelming urge that had, in fact, taken me by surprise on Sept. 11 itself when the first of the Twin Towers had collapsed. . . .

...when you recognize that politicians like John McCain set to linking anthrax to Iraq almost immediately; when you learn that, despite Ivins repeatedly being linked to leaked anthrax spores and residue, the government sought to blame it on Stephen Hatfill, a separate fall guy...

I mean there's a rich amount of material here for any "Truther" to make use of. And in this case, the questions are very real and very vital. There must be a full investigation.

We Came, We Saw, We Handed Out Flag Pins

OK, so I should mention the results of our protest yesterday at the ABC/Disney headquarters. It went really well. Consider that I had this idea sitting on my couch at 12:00pm Thursday, and by 4:00pm Friday we had 60 or 70 people out there in Burbank. Considering that in the current age there's almost an allergy to protest, that's not bad (especially in gridlocked L.A.), and we were able to get the word out without making one phone call.

I'll give you the AP's impression:

About 50 people rallied at Disney Studios Friday to protest the questions that ABC News journalists asked the Democratic presidential candidates during a debate earlier this week.

Protestors waved signs that read "Restore the Fourth Estate" and "ABC is TMZ," referring to the online celebrity site.

Organizer Rick Jacobs criticized ABC for focusing on the past gaffes of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, instead of issues like the war in Iraq and the American economy.

Jacobs said he was offended that Obama was asked why he hasn't worn an American flag pin on his lapel.

"Patriotism isn't defined by a flag pin made in China," he said.

They didn't note the most important part of the protest: our distribution of flag pins to employees as they left the ABC gates. Letting them know that they were getting "free patriotism on a stick" and telling them that "Charlie Gibson won't approve of you unless you wear one," we handed out about 300 pins. Most took them graciously and approvingly.

I'll direct you to where there are a bunch of pictures and then highlight a few.



That's me.



My personal favorite sign.



There goes a flag pin.



Breaking news.



Panama Jack Rick Jacobs.



Yes, the pins were made in China.

Thanks to everyone who came out...

UPDATE: Here's video coverage from KTLA News:

We're marching on ABC/Disney in Burbank today - armed with flag pins!

OK, so everyone's frustrated with the content-free, brainless ABC News debate the other night. Chuck Todd actually gets it wrong - it's not about rabid Obama partisans rising up to hammer ABC, it's about thinking people rising up and deciding not to accept the thin gruel the media tries to feed us anymore.

The moderators are unrepentant and congenitally wired to not get it. So we're going to have to take to the streets - the mean streets of Burbank, California. We want to know if ABC/Disney executives can pass the Gibson/Stephanopoulos flag pin litmus test - it's obviously the most important issue facing the nation, so are they sufficiently patriotic? If not, we're willing to help them out.

I called up my friends at the Courage Campaign and told them we were uniquely positioned not just to throw things at our TV screen but to do something about this. The ABC/Disney headquarters is right there in Burbank, and prior to the Path to 9/11 airing, we actually protested out in front of there.



They obviously didn't get the message, and I figured out the reason why - our flag pin deficit! Nobody takes you seriously unless you bring 350 symbols of patriotism along with you.

Well, we got 'em. And now we need your help.

Today at 4:00, we're going to meet at ABC/Disney's headquarters in Burbank to protest and pass out flag pins to employees leaving their Disney corporate office.

Your mission: Ask ABC/Disney employees whether they can pass their own flag-pin litmus test: "Are you patriotic enough to wear a flag-pin?" Obviously they don't want to be considered as a bunch of America-hating terrorists by their own network news anchors, so of course they require the pin, the shield of immunity from all questions of patriotism. And maybe we'll give them a couple extras to give to George and Charlie.

If you're in the area and available, at 4 p.m. please join me and the Courage Campaign and your fellow activists at ABC's Disney Studios in Burbank in front of the West Alameda Gate, between S. Buena Vista and Keystone Streets (CLICK HERE FOR A MAP). We're going to be there until about 7 p.m.

I'll just leave you with this because it's fun.



(ultimately these things don't change a lot of minds; I don't expect ABC to issue an on-air apology or anything. But they provide an outlet for frustrations, and create a moment of accountability. If you or someone you know is in the press, please send them by, too.)

Bottom-Up Change Comes To California

Over the last three days, organized labor has been working in solidarity with one another in a project called Hollywood to the Docks, a three-day march and protest involving both Change to Win unions and AFL-CIO members, from the Teamsters to SAG, from the ILWU to the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports. They've literally walked from the heart of Hollywood to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for the last three days, concluding with a concert on the docks tonight and appearances by Speaker-Elect Karen Bass and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Next Monday, April 21, will be a day of action across the state put together by a coalition called Students for California's Future, representing 3.2 million students, with major rallies planned in Los Angeles and at the state capital. They are rallying against cuts to education and the university system, and this will be just the beginning of a year-long effort to call attention to education funding.

And tomorrow, at 4:00 at the ABC/Disney headquarters in Burbank, in protest of the historically awful, content-free Democratic debate aired on ABC last night, the Courage Campaign and local LA activists are going to offer lapel pins to Disney employees. Otherwise, their network news anchors George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson will think they hate America, which they obviously wouldn't want. (We'll have a lot more on this later)

Angered by eight years of conservative failure and inspired by a fiercely contested Democratic primary, a rejeuvenated grassroots is building all over the country and in California. Find an organization that speaks to you. Participate. Organize. And inch by inch, we're going to take this state and this country back.

The Great Awakening

From the brain-dead journalist's perspective, whatever candidate is on the defensive clearly is the one losing. But I think Obama made lemonade from lemons last night and at least pushed back on the moderator's ridiculous questions. And he continued that approach today.



Note that 15 second standing ovation after he mentioned it was 45 minutes before any question of substance arose. I know that it was a partisan event, but that's notable. People get this.

The Gibson Effect

I agree that last night was an historic moment, where the national press truly jumped the shark and crossed over from a series of newsgathering organizations to the reincarnation of Rona Barrett. Because they are so contemptuous of Americans (they always justify their substance-free remarks by saying "This is what people are talking about") they seek not to inform but demonize, not to set out the major issues but to tear down the major candidates.

And lest one think that the first half of the debate featured the tabloid questions and the second half the "substance," uh, no.

It is certainly true that a case could be made that the moderators explicitly set out to frame even the supposedly "substantive" questions according to GOP designs. The implicit presumption of success in Iraq when, nearly an hour into the debate, the moderators finally deigned to mention the defining current event of this campaign. Gibson, as moderator, lied outright about the supposed effects of capital gains tax cuts, and dogged the candidates over it to a greater extent than any other economic issue: does he really believe that of all the economic challenges facing this nation, the most pressing of them is supplication towards a decade-long Republican bugaboo? Gun control? Affirmative action? These are the issues that are most compellingly on the minds of Democratic primary voters, in 2008? Or were the questions taken from a 1992 time capsule, insightful probes gathering dust for a decade and a half until they could find network moderators desperate enough to dig them up again?

It wasn't just embarrassing in part, but in the whole; a total capitulation of all responsibility as the fourth estate and a salient example of why we may need to actually strike out the "freedom of the press" part of the First Amendment.*

The thing is that, outside of Bobo Brooks, who's just as contemptuous of the American people as Gibson and Stephanopoulos are, most people noticed. They noticed because this is not an isolated event. In fact this campaign season has witnessed a gradually decreasing pattern leading to the irrelevance you saw on display last night. As issues and challenges faded away, the entire campaign - all of it - is predicated on gaffes and misstatements and Russert-like gotcha questions. Not as portion of it, not the last five minutes of the broadcast but all of it. The third paragraph of Tom Shales' jeremiad is technically correct but besides the point.

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.

CNN and MSNBC are no better; the ABC debate was a prime-time version of their substance-free midday programming, replete with everything but a live shot of a burning house somewhere.

The real question is whether this will spark a backlash, the way the media's sexist treatment of Sen. Clinton provoked a backlash in the New Hampshire primary.

Will the Keystone State's Democratic voters -- remember, these are Democrats, not general-election voters -- rebel against the negativity, the "gotcha"-ism, the endless drumbeat of cynical word-twisting and opportunistic gaffe-pouncing, that has become the central operating principle of the Clinton campaign, and vote instead for the man whose message of "hope" and "change" and a "new kind of politics" so inspired voters in the early stages of this nomination contest? If there's ever a moment for that message to gain new traction, it would be now [...]

One of the night's most popular answers, according to WPVI's undecided voter reaction tracker thingy, was this response by Obama to a question about his relationship to former Weather Underground bomber William Ayers:

George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about.

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George. ...

[T]his kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow -- somehow their ideas could be attributed to me -- I think the American people are smarter than that. They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn't.

Hillary's response? "Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position." The undecided-voter meter plummeted.

Perhaps I'm being a pollyanna-ish member of the Cult of Obama here, but I think there is a real chance the voters of Pennsylvania will rise up and, once and for all, reject the endless, party-destroying "gotcha" tactics of Hillary Clinton, and choose the candidate of "change." It would be the backlash to end all backlashes. I'm not predicting it. But I think it could happen.

I think it's vital that it does happen, to discredit these tactics. If the blinders would come off of Clinton supporters and Obama supporters, Democrats would agree that this debate represents a failure of democracy. Corporate media will only get the message if their stock plummets, so I urge everyone to sell Disney stock and send it crashing. But they also made a lot of money last night off their ignorance and sensationalism. The way to send a message is really to reject that. The "b-but the Republicans will come after us in November" canard is ridiculous. That doesn't mean it has to be legitimized. Republican-style attack politics was actually rejected by voters in 2006. Now it's time to reject the media.

* - That's not what I advocate, of course, but let's recognize that national broadcasters use public airwaves and make a commitment to use them in the public interest, which clearly they have failed in doing, so there's a compelling argument to be made to the FCC for a breach in licensing agreements.

The Worst Kind of Louts

So I've been running around all day, and haven't had much time to check in, but apparently tonight's debate was a train wreck (I wouldn't know because it's tape delayed for the West Coast), as Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent the first hour asking about important issues like flag pins and William Ayers (a question which was fed to him by Sean Hannity and lesser lights of the right-wing noise machine) instead of minor things like the torture of human beings planned inside the White House or an endless war in Iraq.

Outside of being infuriating, isn't this just stupid of ABC? Barack Obama is more likely than not of becoming the next President, is it really worth it to relentlessly insult him? I mean, I can't imagine Obama ever going on that network again.

Here's a list of things that didn't get discussed.

Let's tote up the colossal, the major, and also the very, very big issues that ABC's Gibson and Stephanopoulos have not deigned to bring up: Health care; the recession; Afghanistan; the mortgage crisis; deregulation; veterans' care; torture; restoring America's image abroad; the surveillance state; the environment.

When their FCC license is finally taken away for intentionally acting outside the public interest, will anyone care?

You can ask them yourself at 212-456-7777. Ask for News, then press 2 then 199 and you can leave a message for "Other News".

I actively hate this media. Star Magazine would have pulled off a better debate.

...There are almost 5,000 comments on ABC's website right now, almost all of them lambasting this horrific debate.

...Howard Wolfson is somehow DEFENDING this atrocity. All class, Wolfson. Because the most egregious shots were all taken at Obama, Clinton's team has no problem with what amounts to a Hannity-style attack job. And enough with this "it's a fair question because the Republicans would bring it up." It's easier for them to do so when the Democratic opponent brings it up first. And by the way, Republicans LIE. They'll bring up anything and everything without any kind of respect for the truth. So you might as well ask how many Americans each of these candidates have raped, because some nutjob winger is bound to bring that up in the fall, too.

I think I'm going to throw my television out the window.

Fair Use

The whole fucking debate ought to be fair use, and this tactic of calling for soundbites to be intellectual property is absurd. If God forbid cable stations might actually play the candidates in their own words instead of some loopy talking head telling me what they said, please don't restrict that.

And thanks for embargoing the debate for the West Coast and treating it like it's a TV show instead of a news event. That's special.

Oh, and ask about torture, ABC. If you have any decency.