Not As Much Harm, Not As Much Foul

I definitely agree with Digby on the point of the optics of President Obama seeming to concede the point about Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment look bad, and the media pounced yesterday. However, I think the media needs to be faulted for seeing what they wanted to see. Here's the whole context:

Obama: I'm sure she would have restated it, but if you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through that will make her a good judge.

That's about 1/5 hedging and 4/5 putting it in context, which is what pretty much every other Dem talking head has done. I think it goes too far to say, as David Shuster did yesterday, that this represents a concession and the White House "caving the point". Cable news lives to play things up like this, but even for them this is kind of ridiculous.

In my LA Times today, this "concession" was buried inside a larger process story about moderate GOP folks telling the hard right to STFU about the "racism" and "Latino KKK" claims. And by the way, they're not. So I think it's a blip, not a major thing. Sotomayor was always going to restate that particular statement in confirmation hearings, but I don't get the sense that she'll grovel about it.

If this is a prelude to the President conceding points for no good reason, I'd agree that it's a problem. But I don't see much of a concession here.

The Danger Of Jon Stewart

David Shuster took double entendre to a whole other level the other night:



I just happened to see a Daily Show segment where Jon Stewart is snickering about the "Taepodong missile" that North Korea launched, only to be browbeaten by Wyatt Cenac about his constant third-grade giggling in a nice inversion of the "it isn't a fucking game" CNBC/Jim Cramer smackdown. But see, the media watches Jon Stewart. They clearly want to be Jon Stewart. And that leads to segments like the one above. Which I admit is entertaining as well as somewhat informative about the right-wing corporate underwriting of the teabaggery. But do we really want our media to devolve into snorts and junior high dick jokes?

I'll make an exception in the tea party case because the lack of awareness on the part of the teabaggers is astonishing.

Actually, I'm fairly juvenile, so I'll just make a perpetual exception.

Issa Schooled For HSR Lies

Darrell Issa has had an interesting position in the 111th Congress as one of the chief yarn-spinners on the Republican side. I guess it's because he's immune to any charge of hypocrisy. First he demanded White House compliance with necessary Presidential Records Act laws regarding email, after playing down the Bush Administration's major failings in this regard. Yesterday, he appeared on MSNBC with David Shuster to parrot the latest RNC talking point, that the stimulus earmarked construction of an LA-to-Las Vegas high speed rail train. Now, I'm not sure what's so horrible about this - LA to Vegas is a busy corridor, especially on the weekends, and the route essentially goes through desert so construction will be disruptive to almost no communities. But the fact is that it's completely untrue - LA to Vegas is not on the current DOT high speed rail lists and no money expressly goes toward construction of that corridor. A fact that David Shuster inconveniently pointed out. I particularly enjoy the smile after he knows he's been caught.



This zombie lie isn't going away, but at least some reporters aren't taking the bait.

Stop Talking About Pizza And Orange Juice

I actually saw this on Hardball yesterday and decided not to post on it because I wanted to erase it from my memory. But Media Matters brought it back to my brain.

MATTHEWS: Did you see him there?

SHUSTER: -- but that's --

MATTHEWS: He's not that good at that -- handshaking in a diner.

SHUSTER: No --

MATTHEWS: Barack doesn't seem to know how to do that right.

SHUSTER: -- he doesn't do that well. But then you see him in front of 15,000 people in some of these college towns, and that's why, Chris, we've seen Chelsea Clinton and Bill Clinton in Bloomington and South Bend and Terre Haute. I mean --

MATTHEWS: What's so hard about doing a diner? I don't get it. Why doesn't he go in there and say, "Did you see the papers today? What do you think about that team? How did we do last night?" Just some regular connection?

SHUSTER: Well, here's the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, "I'll have orange juice."

MATTHEWS: No.

SHUSTER: He did.

And it's just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, "Here, have some coffee," you say, "Yes, thank you," and, "Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?" You don't just say, "No, I'll take orange juice," and then turn away and start shaking hands. That's what happens [unintelligible] --

MATTHEWS: You don't ask for a substitute on the menu.

SHUSTER: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: David, what a regular guy. You could do this. Anyway, thank you, David Shuster. I mean, go to the diners.

After that, Matthews went to a stunned Bob Casey and asked him about why Obama just can't connect in diners. I thought he was going to turn off-camera and say "Did he just ask me that question?"

Now, this isn't limited to Democrats, actually, here's a recent report about how McCain couldn't fold his pizza in half like a real New Yorker. The difference is that those quick hits on Republicans don't usually make that metaphorical leap to turn some random event about bowling or orange juice into a symbolic manifestation of the candidate and Democrats in general. I mean, if this did hit Hardball, someone would say that everyone knows McCain's a real man and he just isn't used to New York's way of chowing down on pizza but he made a game attempt and isn't it great that he tried? What a guy!

Which really doesn't matter to me, they shouldn't be spending 5 seconds commentating on campaign trail events like they're in the skybox watching the Patriots and the Giants. But when it comes to a Democrat in a similar situation, they plug whatever "gaffe" they've decided on into the overall narrative. That's because the conservative noise machine has been browbeating the media for years and years and basically setting up the themes. Democrats are weak, they're effete, they don't "play in Peoria," they can't connect with reg'lar folks. So this puts the media types on the lookout for this garbage, and then eager to take the slightest of opportunities to play them up into some reflection of character. It's a typical game, and it's easier than using your brain. It's also a lot cheaper. Sending out a tracker to film Obama on the road beats doing a hard analysis of policy positions. One requires researchers and a need to probably locate and film experts, and come up with graphics and fact-check - but a tracker just points and shoots, and you don't even need a microphone because the tea-leaf readers are just going to show the visuals and talk over them anyway. It's both vapid and cost-effective, and that's why it's so ubiquitous.

When The Right Is Wrong... Again

So, earlier in the week, David Shuster hammered wingnut Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, by explaining to her that she has more knowledge of an ad n a newspaper than the dead soldiers in her own district. The point was that wingnuts like Blackburn were focusing on trivialities rather than the real costs of the war.

The insaneosphere repsonded by... focusing on trivialities, claiming that the soldier who Shuster said was the last one to die from Blackburn's district didn't actually live there. They mau-maued MSNBC and browbeat head of the network Dan Abrams into forcing Shuster to make an on-air apology.

Except he didn't have to. Because the guy was from Blackburn's district.

Shuster's apology [re: Marsha Blackburn] may have been premature. The tiny hamlet of Bon Aqua, Tenn., is where Bohannon lived in the months immediately prior to entering the Army. The Census Bureau places his home in Blackburn's 7th Congressional District.

He lived in Bon Aqua for "close to a year" immediately prior to entering the Army, said Tonya Taylor, 35, who permitted him to stay at her house while Bohannon was dating her daughter.

Bohannon grew up, was home-schooled and was buried in McEwan, which is clearly in the 8th Congressional District of U.S. Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn. But his last legal address was in Blackburn's district.

Silly wingnuts, wrong again. But the whole discussion of geography misses the point entirely. The point is that this war has a human face, has a specific and tragic cost, and people like Marsha Blackburn would rather talk about ads in the newspaper.

No word yet on whether Bohannon used the wrong typeface, or whether he was actually named Jamil Hussein.

UPDATE: One wonders if anyone can name the 70 dead Iraqis killed on Wednesday alone.

Stop Playing Defense!

I'm angry that it takes David Shuster to say what Democrats could have been saying all along about this ridiculous MoveOn ad controversy. Marsha Blackburn had all the stats at the ready about MoveOn (except the one where the organization has raised $1.6 million dollars in a week because of the mau-mauing from the establishment), but she couldn't name the last soldier from her district to die in Iraq, couldn't understand why that would be kind of an important thing to know, and indeed said "I don't know why I don't know that" in defense of herself. It was a shameful performance.

It goes without saying that Blackburn is supporting the Freddie Thompson campaign, who has turned not knowing things into an art form.

But the point I want to make is that this was a lay-up. We know that Republicans manufacture outrage but are impervious to compassion or empathy. We also know that they have an ideological blind spot when it comes to the attacks perpretrated by their side. Why, indeed, then, can Democratic leaders not take a look at what was sung out loud during the "Values Voters" debate, attended by 7 Presidential candidates, and make a little noise about it?

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray

Why should God bless America?
Shes’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

That's really the most direct statement of hatred against America that you can ever possibly hear. And yet the DC establishment fears a backlash, somehow, if they deigned to bring up these radical, disgusting views, for fear of offending some mythical voter in the "heartland." Do they REALLY believe that most every American wouldn't reflexively recoil at this bile? Every Republican officeholder in the country should be asked if they support a view that God has abandoned as sinful America, and if they would be willing to condemn those who sang it. I mean, every Democratic officeholder was asked about a pun.

Some say that we shouldn't "play dirty" and fake outrage like this. Actually, I am a little outraged by the song. Furthermore, if you're going to unilaterally disarm in the face of relentless Republican attacks, why not just hand over the country?

Right On David Friggin' Shuster

Today on MSNBC's "Super Tuesday" David Shuster single-handedly restored credibility to the University of Michigan during an interview with Sam Brownback. Brownback tried to refer to the Moustache of Understanding, Tom Friedman, in talking about Iraq, and Shuster delivered the first broadside at Friedman I've ever seen on national television:

Brownback: So what I'd like to see us do is to capture that military progress that's taking place into a political surge. This is Thomas Friedman's line, but send Jim Baker over to negotiate a deal on a three-state structure within Iraq...

Shuster: But Senator, with all due respect...

(crosstalk)

Shuster: Senator, with all due respect, Tom Friedman, who you cite there, has been saying "Well, the next 6 months are crucial," he's been saying that for the last year and a half...

Somewhere in the Times Building, somebody just threw a coffee cup into a window...

Hail To The Victors

You really need to watch David Shuster, subbing for Tweety on Hardball, just annihilate neoconservative fraud Fouad Ajami, who had the gall to liken Scooter Libby to a fallen soldier serving in Iraq who needed to be rescued. Shuster actually reported on the Plame case, he was actually in the courthouse, and unlike these idiot made-for-TV pundits and hosts he actually has a command of the facts of the case. So he absolutely wasn't going to let Ajami get away with nonsense like "Libby didn't leak anything to anybody" for a second. It's a hell of a moment, seeing a host dispense with the "he said/she said" game that characterizes our modern media, and actually enter the fray and referee on the side of truth and honesty.

And he's a Michigan man, too. Mike Wallace also came from the U-M. And Carole Simpson. Yeah, and Jon Chait too, but we don't get EVERYTHING right. (Actually, I don't mind Chait, except for his mindless establishment "hate the hippies" vibe and the fact that he accepts a paycheck from Marty Peretz every two weeks. Actually, I'd like to see Shuster take on Peretz, who also doesn't know a goddamn thing about the Plame case, and has decided that Republican prosecutors and Republican federal judges are somehow rabidly partisan Bush haters.)

Go Blue.