More NPR.

Because of all the noise that Fox News makes and the subsequent attention it receives, it is useful to now and again remember that, in the grand scheme of things, it is merely the loudest voice in a very small corner of the communications world. Here's a bit of perspective of that network's reach vs. the evil NPR which has become its latest straw man villain...

Keep in mind, O'Reilly may pull just over 3 million viewers a show, but Prairie Home Companion bests that by a million. Even Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me has as many listeners as Bill has viewers. Recently, O'Reilly's audience surged to over 4 million following the hissy fit on "The View." That's a regular week for Car Talk, listened to and loved by 4.4 million. Even gratingly twee This American Life (1.7 million) pulls just about the same numbers as Fox News superstar Glenn Beck.

Weeping for Juan.

I got a chuckle out of this note by writer Peter Grier in a Christian Science Monitor blog post this morning about the much overblown and eminently stupid firing of Juan Williams by NPR...

The bulk of [NPR funding] comes from affiliate stations, corporate sponsors, and donations from individuals made to feel very guilty after they tune in to hear "Morning Edition" and find out it is fundraising week.

True 'dat.

The firing was about as bungled an effort as you'll ever see, but the idea that seems to be taking hold that it will have big political implications seems nearly as silly as the act it self. Yes, it will surely fire up the base base (not a typo, consider the first an adjective), but does anybody really think there is any significant number of people out there who give a damn and will change their votes because of this? Does anybody think more than a small portion of the base base (see, it's easy once you get the hang of it) even knows what NPR is? The funniest stuff to come out of all this are letters and calls to stations around the country by true believers saying they will never "watch" NPR again. That'll teach 'em.

Honestly, Williams should have been fired long ago, not just because his role on Fox is in obvious conflict with the stated NPR standards but mostly because his analysis was the sort of mealy-mouthed pap that NPR already has more than enough of.

I am curious, I must admit, as to whether that $2 million contract with Fox that was signed the next day had been in the works for a while or was an in-your-face move. And, either way, how does somebody who thinks Juan Williams is worth a multi-million contract keep his job?

"Meaningless," we will be told. "Liberal witch-hunting." Or, if that doesn't work, "They all do it." (Yes, that makes no sense, but we ran right past making sense many months ago). Also, Unions.

This little tidbit will be quickly dismissed or ignored as our Liberal Media Elite devotes its limited attention span to the "sexier" story which offers evidence that Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice for life, is probably only the second craziest person in his household, behind his wife, the Tea Party activist. Then again, since the Silent Justice is one of the people who decided that corporations were "people" and the massive influx of identified money into our elections is just fine and dandy, I think he has her beat no matter how many weird phone calls she makes.

News you won't be hearing much about.

Because, you know, the GOP certainly doesn't want voters to know this, the Tea Party doesn't believe a word of it and the political press hates stuff that messes with the storyline they've already concocted. The Democrats? They're probably scared spitless to say or do anything (their default mode of late) and the White House will find some way to make all very boring and easy to dismiss.

Ignorance. Bliss. The wingnut version of the American dream.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

That's the concluding paragraph of this MUST READ online opinion column.

Lies and more lies, accompanied by "blithe acceptance." This is what we have become.

From a British commenter in this thread at Swampland, remarking on the fact that 18% of Americans apparently believe an absurdity...

[H]alf the country don't know that Obama is not a Muslim. Yes, that's shocking. But even more shocking - to me as a Brit - is the blithe acceptance of the amount of people who positively think he is a Muslim. 

This seems to be the conventional wisdom amongst commentators, right or left, that "30% or thereabouts can be counted on to believe any old perverse right-wing fantasy." That's just under 100 million people in allegedly the most sophisticated, prosperous and free country in the world. It is shocking to me that that is simply accepted. 

Overall, this just demonstrates that - by and large - the public is uneducated, ill-informed and lazy; and that they don't want to change. 

Honestly, you guys don't deserve Obama.

A follow-up commenter points out that the "Liberal Media Elite," among others, validates such nonsense because it's good for selling newspapers and, even more importantly, they dare not take a stand in favor of reality lest it affront their readers and/or damage their journalist purity by suggesting one side of the argument is full of shit.

He Said/She Said rules over all.

Somewhere Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and their compatriots weep.

I am old enough, bitter enough, and convinced at last that my children and grandchildren are smart enough to get out while the getting is good enough, to almost welcome the absolute horror show that appears to be scheduled to write the final chapter of U.S. history.

Except that I fear that the jackass element which is poised to take over the wreckage will blow the whole f___ing planet to hell.

Seriously, if for no other reason, I want America to survive so that history can damn the whole batch of you to hell.

When "broke" isn't broke...or broken (the big Social Security lie).

This long excerpt from yesterday's edition of Bob Somerby's always interesting, sometimes infuriating Daily Howler dismisses the Big Lie simply and effectively and deserves wider attention, and so I've posted it here. I also wanted to have a copy accessible to forward or print out and hand to anybody who throws this old canard at me going forward...

Special report: The thirty-year itch! PART 2—ALAN SIMPSON’S CON (permalink): Will Social Security “still be there” when Mike Hatchell, age 52, retires? Plainly yes, barring national melt-down. (Unless enough people start thinking it won’t be, in which case radical “reform” to the program becomes much easier to sell.)

On last Thursday evening’s Countdown, Hatchell said he had to spend his existing retirement funds during 59 weeks of unemployment. (His wife has also been out of work. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/16/10.) He volunteered an intriguing thought when asked about his retirement prospects:

HATCHELL (8/12/10): Obviously, I mean, with the unemployment—after 59 weeks without a job, you know, I mean, the IRA accounts, you know, that got drained. We basically have no retirement other than, hopefully, the government will have Social Security. We all know how vague that might be in the future.

Hatchell seemed like a very bright person. As we watched him, we kept thinking that he would make an excellent national spokesman for a range of political/issue groups. But, like millions of other people, he has heard all kinds of stories about what a fraud Social Security is. As early as 1994, a large number of younger voters had been conned into believing that they would never get Social Security benefits (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/16/10). Like millions of other Americans, Hatchell seems to retain this fear.

People have heard a welter of claims about Social Security, as we noted in yesterday’s post. But for the most part, people who fear the demise of the program have been misled by two basic cons.

Ironically, the two major cons are semi-contradictory. The first con says that the program’s trust fund doesn’t exist. The second con explains what will happen after the trust fund is gone:

First con—the trust fund: On the one hand, people have heard that the Social Security trust fund is just “an accounting fiction”—“a pile of worthless IOUs,” “the left hand borrowing from the right hand.” (The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it!) Since Social Security is supposed to start drawing on the trust fund in the next few years—since the trust fund is supposed to allow the system to maintain promised benefits through the year 2037—this suggests that Social Security might be on the verge of a near-term collapse.

Second con—after the trust fund is gone: On the other hand, people have heard that Social Security will “go broke” or “go bankrupt” once the trust fund expires in 2037 (according to current projections). For most people, these terms suggest some sort of cataclysmic collapse, after which the Social Security system would have to be shuttered. Presumably, this explains why so many people, for so many years, have seemed to assume that they will never draw any benefits.

Those are the two basic cons. People like Hatchell have heard these cons for at least the past thirty years.

It’s easy to address the second con—to explain what happens after 2037. Alan Simpson is the Republican co-chairman of Obama’s deficit commission. Back in June, he said Social Security “will go broke in the year 2037” in an interview with Alex Lawson. But as soon as Lawson challenged that language, Simpson described the actual facts—the facts these scare merchants have known all along. John Berry did the reporting, for the Fiscal Times:

BERRY (6/20/10): Lawson asked if the [deficit] commission was working on Social Security, and Simpson replied, "We’re really working on solvency… the key is solvency."

"What about adequacy? Are you focusing on adequacy as well?" asked Lawson.

Replied Simpson: "Sure. We have to take care of the lesser in society. I don't know where you get all the crap you come up with. ... We’re trying to take care of the lesser people in society, like we always have in this country, and do that in a way without getting into all the flash words that you love to dig up, like cutting Social Security, which is bullshit. We’re not cutting anything. We're not cutting anything, we’re trying to make it solvent. It will go broke in the year 2037."

[…]

Lawson continued the interview by asking, "What do you mean by ‘broke’? Do you mean the surplus [the trust fund] will go out and then it will only be able to pay 75 percent of its benefits?"

"Just listen, will you listen to me instead of babbling?" Simpson said. "In the year 2037, instead of getting 100 percent of your check, you are going to get about 75 percent of your check. That’s if we touch nothing. So if you'd like that, fine.”

Duh. After making the frightening claim that Social Security “will go broke in the year 2037,” Simpson explained what would actually happen. Since payroll taxes would keep rolling in, the system would never “go bankrupt” or “broke,” unless you’re reinventing the language. Instead, payroll taxes would keep rolling in, and benefits would keep going out, although the system would be able to pay only 75 percent of scheduled benefits. Those scheduled benefits are higher than the benefits which are currently being paid (even when adjusted for inflation), but this would not be a desirable circumstance. That said, Mike Hatchell would still be receiving benefits, even after the trust fund expires—though his benefits would have to be cut at that point, barring some new source of revenue.

This would not be a desirable outcome—but Social Security would still “be there.” It would not go belly-up. If we’re still speaking traditional English, it wouldn’t be bankrupt or broke.

When people like Simpson use words like “bankrupt” and “broke,” they deceive people like Hatchell. Unfortunately, they’ve been at this game for a very long time, over at least three decades. As a result, many people are very confused about the program’s long-term prospects. They’ve heard that the system is “going broke.” They think they will never get benefits.

That’s the bad news, but here’s the good news again: This long-term situation is extremely easy to explain. You can see how easily Simpson explained it—but only after he was challenged about his claim that the system “will go broke.” Can we talk? Barring some sort of national meltdown, Social Security will never go broke in the way Hatchell seems to fear. Barring some sort of national meltdown, Social Security will always be there—though we may need to find new revenue, if we want to keep future benefits at their promised levels.

The long-term situation is easy to explain. This raises an obvious question: Why has no one ever explained it to Hatchell? Quite plainly, Hatchell is a very bright person; watching him, we kept thinking how good a spokesman he would be for various groups. But he seems to think that Social Security may not be there when he retires. (“We all know” such things, he said.) Thirty years of “liberal” ineptitude, indifference and fecklessness explain this situation.

The long-term situation is easy to explain; you can see how easily Simpson explained it. But so what? Over the course of the past thirty years, your “liberal” “intellectual leaders” have been too stupid and lazy to do so. As early as 1994, people like Hatchell had been conned. In the sixteen years since then, your “liberal” “intellectual leaders” have continued to nap, snore and fail.

Things to think about for those who bother to think at all.

Here's an interesting tidbit from this morning's Mike Allen's Politico Playbook, the mover-and-shaker email for the Washington press corps and the TV talking heads (yes, thee are the words of a partisan source but truth is where you find it):

A TOP DEM. STRATEGIST phoned while reading the Sunday papers to say that “Week in Review” was really “Bush in Review,” between David E. Sanger's cover piece about years of “seriously flawed” Afghanistan strategy; http://nyti.ms/9IR0Hr David Stockman's Op-Ed blaming the modern Republican Party for “serial financial bubbles”; http://nyti.ms/bNn416 and the lead editorial, about the “alarming” deficit: http://nyti.ms/cX9XSK “It was really about the legacy we're all dealing with right now.” 

Plus also, as we say on the internets, there's this a bit further down in that same email:

--Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, “Raise My Taxes, Mr. President!”: “The Bush tax cuts remain the single largest cause of America's structural deficit-that is, the deficit not caused by the collapse in tax revenues when the economy goes into recession. … The simple fact is this: all the Bush tax cuts were unaffordable. They were an irresponsible act of hubris enacted during an economic boom. … We have in front of us a simple, easy way to bring America's fiscal house in order, reduce our dependence on foreign borrowing, restore U.S. credibility and power, and give us a stable revenue base from which to make key investments for future growth. All we need is for Congress to do what it does so well-nothing.” http://bit.ly/cOu4IR

Of course, we all know that the nation's problems rest solely on the fact that the current resident of the Oval Office is an imposter who is not even a citizen and may well not even be human at all and a secret plot by a handful of evil liberals to turn us into a fascist dictatorship (Yeah, I know; don't try to make sense of it), but still, maybe some of the Liberal Media Elite might want to pay some attention. If they do, of course, it will be in he said/she said mode so little light will be shed, but at least that beats around-the-clock coverage of the latest Palin bleat tweet or right-wing fantasy.

Congratulations to Fox News, by the way, for gaining the empty front row seat at White House briefings. The White House Press Association has thereby certified them as an actual news organization rather than a political propaganda machine and that must make them very proud...not to mention laugh hysterically.

You probably should read this.

Every word of it.

Really.

Three for three.

Frank Rich joins in the (successful, I'd say) effort to make the Times' Op-Ed Page a "must read" today. In this column about the firing of General McChrystal, he mentions something I wanted to write about earlier this week and never got to...

Politico theorized that Hastings had pulled off his impertinent coup because he was a freelance journalist rather than a beat reporter, and so could risk “burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.” 

That sentence was edited out of the article — in a routine updating, said Politico — after the blogger Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as a devastating indictment of a Washington media elite too cozy with and protective of its sources to report the unvarnished news. In any event, Politico had the big picture right. It’s the Hastings-esque outsiders with no fear of burning bridges who have often uncovered the epochal stories missed by those with high-level access. Woodward and Bernstein were young local reporters, nowhere near the White House beat, when they cracked Watergate. Seymour Hersh was a freelancer when he broke My Lai. It was uncelebrated reporters in Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau, not journalistic stars courted by Scooter and Wolfowitz, who mined low-level agency hands to challenge the “slam-dunk” W.M.D. intelligence in the run-up to Iraq.

The fatuousness of the Washington Press corps becomes more evident and magnified every day. Did anybody see the White House press conference during which media superstar David Gregory was baffled--baffled, I say--by the concept of the White House wanting to have safeguard to insure that BP was going to do what it promised to do? "But, but...," he sputtered, "you're partners."

Which, of course (and tragically), is how the press sees itself vis-a-vis our political class. We're all pals here, no need to call anybody to account...

God forbid.

"We learn nothing. Ever."

The inimitable Charles Pierce, in his weekly Friday email to Eric Alterman's Altercation website, sums up the character and brainpower of the Worst. President. Ever. and the state of American politics and morality in one astounding paragraph:

I don't know if anyone else missed it, but the previous president of the United States admitted to complicity in a war crime the other day In fact, he bragged about his complicity in a war crime the other day. (He also announced that his greatest disappointment was that he didn't get to wreck Social Security the way he helped wreck the rest of the economy and the constitutional order. The man remains an almost limitless vista of ignorance. He's also a sadistic pig.) This, of course, is in no way a scandal on the order of The Sestak Affair or anything. This, of course, is what you get when all you want to do is Look Forward, Not Back. (And also what you get when you -- shh! -- pretty clearly want to keep your own options open.) I was thinking just the other day what towering lies we tell ourselves everytime a major, genuine scandal comes to a conclusion about the lessons we all have learned from the events in question. Bullshit. We learn nothing. Ever. Watergate is almost 40 years ago now, and a guy named Andrew Breitbart hires a smarmy little arachnid and turns Donald Segretti's ratfucking into a career. He even draws an overly laudatory profile in Time magazine. Do we even have to count the number of ways Iran-Contra taught us next to nothing? Hell, the only people who learned anything were the criminals themselves, and all they learned was how not to get caught the next time, which can fairly be defined as The Bush Administration. We didn't even really learn anything from the useless pursuit of Bill Clinton's libido. We still fall for the same kind of grifters and poltroons who were the grist for The Arkansas Project. (Watch what happens if the Republicans regain the majority in the House.) We are progressively less mature as a self-governing political commonwealth almost by the hour. And now, a guy we elected twice can get paid big money to brag about his complicity in crimes for which we hung Japanese generals, and nobody bats an eye, let alone calls a cop. Donald Segretti, alas, died too soon.

Your Liberal Media Elite will save America with its wisdom (part two).

The Economist thinks that Maureen Dowd is a dipshit.The sad part is that this will come as a shock to many.

If you ever wondered how the media got to be the disreputable, disrespected, disinterested shadow of its former self that it is, and you haven't read this, you ought to. Right now. Anna Marie Cox is a Dowd clone, only more virtual.

Don't you dare confuse me with facts.

Ted Koppel, interviewed on the BBC:

"I think we're living through the — I hope — the final stages of what I like to call the age of entitlement...We now feel entitled not to have the news that we need but the news that we want. We want to listen to news that comes from those who already sympathize with our particular point of view. We don't want the facts any more."

I think a lot more of the blame ought to cast on the messenger as well--this deplorable state did not develop solely as a result of the public's dragging the the media kicking and screaming to new depths, but it is a pretty accurate summation of the what the public seems to demand today.

Whatever became of journalism?

Former NYTimes Ex Ed Howell Raines (in, of all places, the Washington Post) on the nature of Fox News and the failure of "real" news sources to challenge the lies and phony narrative:

[Fox] has sold a falsified image of the professional standards that developed in American newsrooms and university journalism departments in the last half of the 20th century.

Whatever its shortcomings, journalism under those standards aspired to produce an honest account of social, economic and political events. It bore witness to a world of dynamic change, as opposed to the world of Foxian reality, whose actors are brought on camera to illustrate a preconceived universe as rigid as that of medieval morality. Now, it is precisely our long-held norms that cripple our ability to confront Fox's journalism of perpetual assault. I'm confident that many old-schoolers are too principled to appear on the network, choosing silence over being used; when Fox does trot out a house liberal as a punching bag, the result is a parody of reasoned news formats.

My great fear, however, is that some journalists of my generation who once prided themselves on blowing whistles and afflicting the comfortable have also been intimidated by Fox's financial power and expanding audience, as well as [Roger] Ailes's proven willingness to dismantle the reputation of anyone who crosses him.

I write "of all places" re: the WaPo not just because it was the Times' biggest rival during Raines' tenure but because it is one of the primary failed entities he is citing, it's opinion pages more and more a neocon fantasy land and its political coverage either pure he said/she said or silly simpering over the latest distraction.

Passing thought.

Once the awful J. D. Hayworth bounces the almost-as-awful John McCain (hey, give the old man credit, he's trying, but the standard of awfulness is awesome) from his Senate seat this fall, whatever will Meet the Press do?

Even though nobody on either of the political aisle gives a flying fig what McCain says or thinks, he shows up on the leading Sunday morning gasbag show so often that you've almost think he was a legacy hire like Luke Russert.

McCain was back again this morning, spending most of the time fending off softball questions about how he's changed his tune on so many issues. Like Pat Buchanan, he's an ancient, creepy ghost who haunts NBC, an honorary charter member of former GE chairman Jack Welsh's band of Irish-Catholic good old boys.

50 Most Loathsome Americans, 2009.

This is quite a list.

Your Liberal Media Elite will save America with its wisdom.

Karen Tumulty, over at Swampland, the Time magazine blog, has put up two post in the last 24 hours about how Michelle Obama and Joe Biden were both "classy" in not criticizing Sarah Palin in interviews with ancient and often confused Larry King on CNN recently.

These two comments which followed the Biden story have a more astute take on why "classy" is smart politics as well given the media's predilection to buy into every right wing meme out there:

       Like Joe, Michelle or Barrack actually have a choice when it comes to criticizing anyone on the right. They have to be extremely careful because the talking heads would accused them of attacking real Americans. Being partisan and petty. However, there is no media uproar when they criticize their own base, the angry left, for wanting promises kept. The talking heads see that as having courage.
gysgt213

*****

      Yep. And it's not just people. The right gets away with trashing large portions of the country, too.

      Massachusetts is practically used as a swear word (even by former governor Romney). NYC is sneered at (when it's not being used for their own ends) and the term "Chicago politics" is thrown around like it's still the heyday of the first Daley. "East Coast" might as well be a synonym for "communist." Palin talked about "real America" like the rest of us were Canadians. And the punditocracy sneered at Obama vacationing in his home state of Hawaii as if it were wildly exotic. (Nothing said, of course, now that the RNC met there.)

      But, oh, God forbid anyone ever say anything about my native South, the part of the country that's so American it secede from the country and went to war with it.
Kevin

And speaking of "ancient and confused," David Broder, the astonishingly out-of-touch dean of the Washington press corps, writes a mind-boggling love note to Gov. Quitter in today's Washington Post, started with the headline (which, okay, he didn't write but which his column inspired):

Sarah Palin displays her pitch-perfect populism

Let us pause a moment and reflect on that pitchey perfecty thing while pondering how Broder might have reacted had a Democrat of any sort given such a mean, content-less and pandering speech to a small group of true believers...

Okay, stop. That will only make your head hurt.

Here are the opening paragraphs of Broder's column, which flies in the face of reality to a degree that is almost admirable in its cluelessness:

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself, even with notes on her palm.

This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me. I gave her high marks for her vice presidential acceptance speech in St. Paul. But then, and always throughout that campaign, she was laboring to do more than establish her own place. She was selling a ticket headed by John McCain against formidable Democratic opposition and burdened by the legacy of the Bush administration.

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.