Wouldn't it be great if politics was more about truth and less about spin? Not going to happen, I know.

By Richard K. Barry

A few days ago, I drew on a post by Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly to make a point about how disinterested many in the media can be about challenging demonstrably incorrect "facts" when offered up by a politician. As I wrote, it's almost as if the interviewers simply consider any statement of fact, no matter how erroneous, to be a matter of opinion with one opinion as good as any other. Apparently anyone really is entitled to their own facts.

Worse yet, it seems that real and important facts, not the "Michele Bachmann on Fox News type facts," but facts supported by research and good faith attempts to get at the truth, are too often ignored.

More recently, Benen wrote that Douglas Elmendorf, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), explored in detail the effects of a deficit reduction package. Elmendorf made the case that while, in the medium and long term, small deficits could improve economic output, in the short term a different strategy would be prudent.

From the report:

In the short term, while the economy is relatively weak and economic growth is restrained primarily by a shortfall in demand for goods and services, the policy (i.e., small deficits) would decrease the demand for goods and services even further and thus reduce economic output and income.

As Benen wrote, the CBO director's comments were made in the same afternoon that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reminded Congress that in the midst of our fragile recovery "sharp and excessive cuts in the very short term would be potentially damaging to the recovery."

I understand that economics has for long been called the dismal science for a reason and that it can be hard to grasp the arguments being made, but what is clear is that Republicans are demanding steep cuts that would take effect immediately while the Federal Reserve and the CBO are arguing that the GOP plan would throw sand into the gears of an economy already struggling.

Benen's point is that it is incomprehensible that such an important perspectives, from two very significant sources, is virtually ignored by the media.

Maybe it's true that neither of these guys would make scintillating television, but perhaps we should be given the option of paying attention to what they have to say, just in case it is essential information that could help us save the economy.

Just a thought.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Republicans who make things up and the media who let them do it

By Richard K. Barry

I know there is almost nothing that should surprise us about the extent to which Republicans will lie about President Obama, but the boldness of it still amazes me. What amazes me more, though, is that there appear to be no consequences to making shit up. They just do it, nobody says a word, and it becomes a part of the public record.

It's one thing when it happens on Fox News, because Fox's mandate is to present an alternate universe in which lies and truth are fully interchangeable. We get that. But so many other media outlets simply accepts demonstrably untrue statements as just another point of view.

Well, no!!! Some statements can be supported or refuted by evidence. When a statement can be refuted by evidence apparent to any reasonable person, that's what logicians like to call "bullshit."

And, yes, on the other hand, some statements are not of the kind that can be proven true or false, but that's what first year university logic courses are supposed to teach us - or failing that, common sense. It's a pretty simply distinction.

Here's an example of Michele Bachmann making things up on a recent appearance on Fox News as described by Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly:

Here's the issue. The president doesn't want to have to be confronted with priorities in spending because he has a lot of chutzpah. He spent a trillion dollars on the stimulus. It failed. He spent a trillion-and-a-half every year on deficits. They're his. And, also, Obamacare -- trillions of dollars. This is his spending. He's got to own it and deal with it.

We wouldn't be in this crisis right now if he wouldn't have spent that trillion on stimulus and a trillion-and-a-half more than he should have on the budget and now trillions more on Obamacare. But for those trillions in spending, Greta, we wouldn't be in this mess we're in. We'd still be in a bad spot, but nowhere near the hole. That's why -- take the shovel out of the president's hand so we don't dig any deeper. That's what will happen if we raise the debt ceiling and why I am adamant against raising the debt ceiling.

As Benen notes, "every claim Bachmann made is demonstrably false":

She was wrong about the size of the stimulus. She was wrong about the size of the deficit. She was wrong about the cost of the Affordable Care Act (it actually reduces the deficit, by a lot). She was wrong about the efficacy of the Recovery Act.

And perhaps most importantly, even if the Recovery Act and the ACA never existed, we'd still need to raise the debt ceiling. If President Bachmann were in the Oval Office right now, the need for a higher limit would be unchanged. Blaming Obama may make strange right-wing activists and their misguided leaders happy, but it doesn't make it true.

The only way we wouldn't have to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 is if George W. Bush and his Republican allies hadn't added $5 trillion to the debt and left Obama with a $1.3 trillion deficit to clean up. But it's obviously too late for that.

I guess my point is that, in this case, the facts are about numbers, the kinds of numbers for which pretty good records are kept. It doesn't matter though, because Bachmann just says shit and the shit becomes a part of the narrative.

And I really don't care about Fox, because they never have been a news organization, but I would like the news outlets that still might have some pride in their craft to stop the next Republican in his or her tracks who says something about the president's policies that is demonstrably, refutably untrue and maybe asked them to source their statement.

I know it's a radical thought, but could you do that for me? I'd consider it a personal favor.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Will Fox News pay a price for Murdoch's fall?

By Richard K. Barry

Perhaps not surprisingly, Media Matters is paying close attention to how much or, we should say, how little coverage Fox News is giving to the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal in England.

Media Matters has for some time been doing a splendid job of monitoring the pathetically biased news coverage over at Fox, so they must have been salivating at the opportunity to track how obvious Fox would be in low-keying the scandal enveloping its parent company, News Corp., and owner, Rupert Murdoch.

According to Media Matters:

Over a nine-day period from July 4 through July 13, Fox produced 30 segments on the crisis, as opposed to 71 for MSNBC and 109 for CNN.

Okay, that's sort of interesting, but clear evidence that Fox News under-reports facts that are inconsistent with its wacky hyper-right wing world view is hardly earth-shattering. Just more of the same.

Hate to say it, but Americans, especially the right-wing variety, are just not going to pay all that much attention to what goes on on the other side of the pond. If the matter remained in England, that might have been the end of it, as least regarding Murdoch's fortunes here.

But, as they say, this story might have legs. According to CNN:

The FBI has launched an investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. after a report that employees or associates may have attempted to hack into phone conversations and voice mail of September 11 survivors, victims and their families, a federal law enforcement source told CNN Thursday.

Just to be clear, it appears that the investigation of possible hacking of 9/11 victims' and their families' phones is an extension of the Murdoch owned British newspaper scandal having to do with accusations that its reporters illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages of murder and terrorist victims, politicians and celebrities.

The accusations would appear not to involve Murdoch owned entities in the U.S.

Nonetheless, that does beg a very interesting question. What would the repercussions be, if any, for News Corp. properties like Fox News and The Wall Street Journal if it is found out that 9/11 victims had their phones tapped by employees of the Rupert Murdoch media empire?

Clearly, News of the World, which bore the brunt of the scandal in England, decided to shut down rather than die a slow death at the hands of mortified advertisers who decided that the newspaper was just too toxic.

9/11 has for so long been such an important part of the way that Fox News in particular has draped itself in the American flag, that evidence that the parent company was violating the privacy of the victims and their families in such a dramatic way might just be too difficult a fact to spin away, or ignore away (see above).

Might people start to tune out or, better yet, advertisers start to walk away?

We can only hope, but it will be interesting to see.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

The staggering implications

By Carl 

I want to speculate a little here, and in so doing put a little perspective on why this story seems to have legs: 

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron offered details for the first time on Wednesday of a broad inquiry into the relationships between the police, politicians and the press in the broadening scandal confronting Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain.

Speaking to Parliament, Mr. Cameron said the inquiry would be led by a senior judge, Lord Justice Leveson, and would have the power to summon witnesses to testify under oath. The announcement came as Mr. Cameron fought to recover the initiative in a scandal that has turned into potentially the most damaging crisis of his time in office.

Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party took power in May 2010, supported by some of the newspapers in Mr. Murdoch’s British stable, and his critics said that he, like some of his predecessors in 10 Downing Street, sought to maintain that support even as the phone hacking scandal erupted last week. 

Keep in mind that Cameron hired a former editor at News Of The World, Andy Coulson, as his (now former) director of communications. Keep in mind too that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has alleged that he was a subject of inappropriate investigation by another Murdoch paper, The Sunday Times by "known criminals," as he put it. It's not a stretch to suggest that Brown himself may have had his phones and voicemails hacked.

Let that sink in a moment: the Conservative Cameron won election to the Prime Minister post in a bare plurality, falling 20 seats short of a clear majority, and needing to meld a coalition government with the Liberal Democratic Party of Nick Clegg. The Labor Party lost a staggering 91 seats in that 2010 election.

It's not inconceivable, although I'd be skeptical of drawing this conclusion without better evidence than Brown's say-so, that Murdoch basically overthrew democracy and installed a puppet in Cameron. His organization could have hacked any number of phones (they've shown a particularly morbid curiousity with the technology,) and uncovered any number of campaign strategies.

There are allegations by London's Metropolitan Police from as early as 2006 that the Royal Family's voicemails had been eavesdropped on, and continuing allegations have been made by various people that they too were targeted.

And that's just voicemails. Cell phones have been notoriously easy to eavesdrop on, using various hard-, soft- and fleshware (bystanders overhearing conversations.) E-mail interceptions are not out of the question either, if you presume that Murdoch's empire was basically an organized crime syndicate.

And going with that theme, it's easy to see that the same things might have happened here, assuming they happened at all.

Keep in mind that this entire story came out only because 13 year old Milly Dowler was found dead, despite the fact that her voicemail box never was full and her family and friends called constantly and left messages in the hopes she was alive and would call as soon as she could. The hackers, private investigators, clumsily deleted voicemail messages to the missing girl, unintentionally giving false hope to the family and destroying potential evidence for the police.

This was in 2002. Is it a stretch to think that, for at least ten years, Murdoch has committed similar crimes and obstructions of justice world-wide?

Perhaps even in a national election like, say, Bush-Kerry in 2004?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Is Mark Halperin a dick?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard, Mark Halperin, of Time and MSNBC fame, a bona fide Beltway insider (for better but usually for worse), said this about President Obama on Thursday (on Morning Joe):

I thought he was a dick yesterday.

Okay. Whatever. Big deal.

He apparently didn't think his words would hit the airwaves (given the seven-second delay).

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and this was hardly an egregious overstep. Everyone can be a "dick" now and then. Including the president. (Though I watched Obama's news conference and found him to be anything but.)

Halperin apologized, as he ought to have done -- as he had to: "Joking aside, this is an absolute apology. I shouldn't have said it. I apologize to the president and the viewers who heard me say that."

And yet was suspended by MSNBC. Perhaps understandably so.

The thing is, it's not what he said that's the problem, it's who he is, or, rather, what he represents, what sort of a "journalist" he is.

The Daily Caller's Michelle Goldberg hit the nail squarely on the head:

Here’s why Mark Halperin is a disgrace. It’s not because he used a mild obscenity to describe our president on Morning Joe, disrespectful as that was. Rather, it was the circumstances of the slur. Right now, the Republican Party is threatening to blow up the world economy unless Democrats agree to savage cuts in spending while refusing any of the revenue increases that all serious economists say are necessary to actually address the national debt. Obama, whose greatest fault in office has been a misplaced faith in the GOP’s capacity for reasonableness, went on television and chided the party for this stance. Apparently, this struck Halperin as unreasonable. His response embodies all that’s rotten and shallow about D.C.’s pundit class, which fetishizes bipartisanship even as it only demands it of one political party.

*****

Halperin should be forgiven for insulting the president. He shouldn’t be forgiven, though, for his role in perpetuating the idiotic assumptions of the establishment clique that lefty bloggers sometimes call The Village.

*****

He’s part of a political class that has become so cowed by conservative attacks that it makes anti-liberalism its lodestar, constantly imputing strength to the right and weakness to the left.

*****

Because Halperin is so determined to bend over backward for the right, he can’t come to grips with the central fact of modern politics—the death of Republican moderation. Today’s GOP is a congeries of Birchers, fundamentalists, nativists, and gold bugs that considers longtime conservatives like Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch unacceptably left-wing. Right now, it is playing a game of chicken with all of our financial futures, counting on the widespread fear that it really is crazy enough to unleash financial Armageddon, and the knowledge that the Democrats are not. The president tried, in a very mild way, to address his opponents’ dangerous intransigence. What kind of political journalist regards that as wildly inappropriate? Halperin has given us the answer.

I could not agree more. Shame on Mark Halperin. Shame on all those like him. Which is almost the entirety of the Beltway media establishment.

America suffers as a result of its distorted priorities, its willingness to play along with Republican bullshit, its inability to do its job properly.

Halperin is just part of the problem, one among many. But with his "dick" remark he encapsulated all that is wrong with this oh-so-influential corner of the media.

Going gaga for Bachmann: How media hype made an unelectable GOP candidate a top-tier contender

By Nicholas Wilbur

(Ed. note: This post focuses heavily on the GOP presidential debate that took place two weeks ago today, along with the post-debate media coverage. Nicholas wrote about it here and now turns his attention specifically to Michele Bachmann, who may very well have "won" the debate and who, since then, has been catapulted into big-time contender status. -- MJWS)

When standing with a full field of political goons and professional gaffers, and with the press corps salivating like rabid wolves on the sidelines, not looking like a dunce is akin to victory, and momentary sanity equates to electability.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) at the CNN GOP debate

And for that great feat, Michele Bachmann "stole the show," "grabbed the GOP nomination spotlight" and generally "dominated" the first legitimate debate between candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency.

It wasn't just the "objective" mainstream editors who wrote such eulogistic headlines; the left-leaning news media couldn't help showering the Minnesota congresswoman with praise for her performance, either:

-- The liberal Mother Jones magazine deemed her one of two "big winners," second only to the clear frontrunner Mitt Romney. The government-suckling platoon of anti-Republican rhetoricians over at NPR described her as "savvy," "disciplined," and both "polished and confident." The New York Times said she was "competent" and "knowledgeable."

-- Time magazine's senior political analyst, Mark Halperin, called Bachmann's debate performance "impressive" and "smooth" – and said that she appeared "polished, serene and in command." Halperin predicted that with her "energized ground game" she could have a "real shot" at the nomination, under the right circumstances, as she's surrounded herself with "a top-shelf team of veteran advisers" and has proven herself as a "formidable fundraiser" who likely will be able to afford the TV airtime necessary to compete on the national level.

-- The Washington Post described the debate as "a coming-out party" for Bachmann – "a 120-minute declaration that she is someone to be reckoned with in the race," and left-leaning WaPo columnist Ezra Klein said "[Bachmann's] candidacy has mostly been greeted as a longshot bid, but on the stage last night, she came across as one of the primary's clear heavyweights.

-- Jonathan Chait, The New Republic's "liberal hawk" senior editor, wrote prior to the debate that "the prospect of a more conservative candidate winning the nomination is very real, and the field for such a candidate is wide open." The two top-tier candidates, Romney and Huntsman, are "ideologically and religiously unacceptable to large segments of the party base," he said. "The candidate best positioned to win this constituency is Michelle Bachmann." 

-- And after the debate, Chait added: "The skepticism about Bachmann's prospects reflects an antiquated assumption that there's a natural ceiling within the GOP on the support base of a hard-core religious conservative. Yet both the movement and the party have changed in ways that make that less and less true." 

The list goes on, but the point has been made, so let us stop here and ask: What? Really? Who? How?

Support insanity at MicheleBachmann.com 

There are only two ways to interpret this phenomenon: either the mainstream and left-wing media outlets are collaborating in some sort of covert shadow campaign meant to hand Bachmann the GOP nomination by elevating her status and promulgating her less extreme characteristics to the masses as a best-case scenario, and, at the very least, to cause mass devastation for the moderate conservatives, such as Romney, Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty, who might actually have a chance of beating Obama in 2012; or the politics junkies who watched the debate were so dumb-founded by Bachmann's ability to finish sentences, articulate policy positions, and speak to a national audience without debauching details of our shared history, our Constitution, or basic economic principles, that they fell in love with the partisan windbag simply because she surpassed their expectations.

Not being much for conspiracies, I'm going with the latter.

Michael J.W. Stickings, the founder of this blog, may have put it best when he wrote that Bachmann "won" (his word and his emphasis) "mainly by showing that she can actually speak publicly without her head spinning 'round and vomit spewing from her mouth."

In other words, she was the quote-unquote "clear winner" (Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone) because she didn't answer the softball questions from CNN moderator John King with long-form conspiracy theories about Sharia law, the Chinese yen replacing the dollar, and abortion bunkers hidden underneath the White House; because she "kept her insanity bottled up" (ibid.); and because her head didn't explode when everyone expected it would. 

Now, the average reader may not see how not looking like a fool is synonymous with victory, and in the real world it is not. But in such a highly invasive and scrutinizing media culture, where politicians are trained to avoid the unmastered art of ad lib, to stick to the script and stay on point for fear their gaffe goes viral and their careers dance the southern spiral, there is rarely a political move that isn't endlessly brainstormed, vetted, analyzed, and filtered through the party leadership (or, in this case, the campaign staff) before it is presented to the public. Reporters and columnists are well aware of this fact, which is why live events such as the GOP debate have the potential to be so entertaining. Politicians may spend hours practicing the party's regurgitated talking points, but before a live audience and without a teleprompter there are no video edits, no delete buttons, no news release revisions.

And that is why Bachmann "won" the debate and has emerged as a serious contender. Whereas most politicians rarely stray from the comfort zones of their rehearsed soundbites and bland policy platforms, Bachmann is lucky to look human in front of a camera. Whereas most candidates were expected to stick to the issues between unrelenting assaults against all things Obama, Bachmann took a left turn from her regular radical route to work and appeared just as sane as the rest of the field. 

She stayed on script, as those brave individuals who suffered through the two hours of regurgitated conservative platitudes can attest, but most importantly she stuck to a safe, popular, and party-approved script that was not at all what the mainstream media expected to hear.

Granted, she said nothing new, exciting, or even memorable during the debate – other than perhaps her non-answer about whether she preferred Johnny Cash or Elvis. ("Both, both," she said). All of her responses were made up of the same pro-life, anti-taxes, anti-EPA, anti-regulation, anti-everything-Obama-has-enacted attack-dog rhetoric that every other candidate is spewing.

RealClearPolitics.com

Her statement that "Obama is a one-term president" may have spurred resounding applause from the Republican audience in attendance, but it wasn't any more realistic than when Dick Cheney said it, or when Mitch McConnell said it, or when Reince Priebus said it. Her promise to repeal "Obamacare" may have titillated the taste buds of anti-socialist Kool-Aid drinkers, but it wasn't any less idealistic than when John Boehner promised it, when Eric Cantor promised it, or when any of the other six candidates on stage for the GOP debate promised it that very night.

Bachmann defied expectations not by proposing detailed economic policies or common sense debt reduction plans, but by not looking like the nuthouse escapee she usually presents to the world.

It wasn't intriguing or exciting or inspiring, but it was portrayed that way simply because the media was expecting a right-wing demagogue to come on stage and start speaking in tongues, and instead they saw a confident and seemingly normal human being expressing herself in complete sentences.

The reaction from the media would be no different if Charlie Sheen entered the race and kept his nostrils free of the Devil's dandruff long enough to make it to a commercial break. His ability to transition from his usual persona into a coherent talking head would so mangle the neurological connections of the mainstream media elite that they probably would consider him "a heavyweight" too.

And for that achievement Bachmann deserves an Emmy Award for best actress.

It doesn't mean she ought to president, however.

I'm not one to dish out advice to the right, but it would behoove Republicans, particularly those of the Tea Party persuasion, to keep in mind the obvious fact that primary races are not the same as general elections. One guarantees a victory and requires only partisan fearmongering and divisive threats about the future of our free republic if it continues to be ruled by a socialmarxommunist. The other guarantees only unfettered scrutiny, requires something that at least resembles a legislative record, and hinges on the ability to demonstrate widespread appeal to religiously apathetic voters, politically moderate middle class Americans, and socially phlegmatic independents, not just to the fringe base.

The conventional wisdom from the left, at least before the debate, was that Bachmann was a national joke, a socially extreme but politically powerless right-wing demagogue – a Bible-thumping anti-Darwinist whose base of supporters comprise the outnumbered but outspoken Tea Party populists, constitutional revolutionaries, birthers, truthers, and anti-government conspiracy theorists whose media time far outweighs their electoral influence – and that, because of the social, political, and cultural polarization she and her ilk represent, she would be an ideal GOP nominee, in the eyes of the left, to challenge President Obama in the 2012 election... because she would lose.

I don't believe the conventional wisdom has changed. But for the moment, the media's handling of Bachmann definitely has. Whereas before she was knocked around with heavyweight gloves (or brass knuckles, depending on the authenticity of the source's claims of objectivity), the post-election Bachmann so shocked the world with her split-personality theatrics that the mass media did what the mass media do best: they transformed their speechlessness into rapturous news reports full of complimentary prose and hyperbolized potential.

The fact that the majority of these reports were written without irony says something about the survival of "objectivity" in the industry. The fact that all of the reports either eloquently exculpated or outright ignored her disqualifying characteristics says something about the power of a "shock and awe" campaign.

The Tea Party voice was going to be heard this primary season even without Bachmann in the race. Now it will be felt, as the media have slipped on the kid gloves in their flattering reflections of her allegedly stellar debate performance.

Everyone knows that a thriving democracy depends on an informed electorate. Those who are tasked with educating the American people ought to remember the power of their words. And for their part, the American people ought to remember that just as sanity is not synonymous with victory, neither is hype synonymous with legitimacy. Like primaries and general elections, there is a stark difference between the two.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Leave the Weiners alone

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Weinergate just won't stop:

Rep. Anthony Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, returned to Washington early Wednesday from a trip abroad, setting off a new round of speculation that the New York Democrat's resignation could come soon.

Friends of Weiner have said he would not make a decision on whether to quit until he had a chance to talk to Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who returned to the United States from a trip to Africa with Clinton that began early last week.

Weiner and Abedin are expected to meet on Wednesday, and she was spotted driving into the garage alone at their northwest D.C. apartment building in the early morning hours. She has not yet been seen leaving the building.

Anthony Weiner is a public figure, behaved idiotically, and deserves the public scrutiny that comes with the job. But I refuse to excuse the media, salivating profusely, for its lascivious and sensationalistic coverage of what is essentially a sad, if not tragic, story.

Will he resign or won't he? Okay, it's fine to speculate. It's also fine to talk about what he did. But staking out his apartment, pulling his wife into it (as if she doesn't have enough to deal with), and trying to publicize what is, and what must be, inherently private? Disgusting, even if it's what the media always do.

No, invasive reports like this aren't as bad as the moralistic bullshit spewed by the likes of Andrea Peyser and other right-wing smearmongers, but they're nonetheless deeply irresponsible.

Leave the Weiners alone. Let them deal with their relationship in private. We'll know soon enough what the Congressman plans to do.

Confessions of a political junkie: The Palin Appeal

By Nicholas Wilbur

In the absence of a Republican presidential candidate who provokes any emotion other than lethargy in the eyes of the voting public, the media has taken to filtering pretty much every politically relevant (and irrelevant) news story through the lens of the upcoming presidential election. Whether economic forecasts, the Libya conflict, the debt ceiling charades, or the recent housing market reports, all are taken as some sort of political Rorschach test foretelling the outcome of the 2012 election.

On a slow news day, don't be surprised to see headlines about the ominous planetary cycles of Jupiter and Venus in President Obama's Vedic horoscope. 

None of this is any more reliable than a five-year-old's claim that a kangaroo just hopped the fence in the backyard of your pacific Northwest home. But these hallow stories nonetheless are still required reading for politics junkies in need of a fix during a still-sputtering launch into the 2012 campaign season.

News agencies don't capture and maintain the attention of the masses by correcting rumors, debunking myths, and settling trumped up controversies. Political palm readers and fortune tellers attract viewers by clogging the air and ether waves with exclusive reports speculating the hypothetical forecasts of potentially conclusive odds and coincidental concurrences about what and how the ever-unpredictable political winds will blow throughout the remainder of 2011.

• "How will Libya affect 2012?" (The Washington Post)

• "Will unemployment sink Obama’s 2012 campaign?" (The Daily Beast)

• "Debt ceiling fight could decide 2012 election" (RealClearPolitics)

• "Parties see Obama’s Israel policy as wedge in 2012" (The New York Times)

• "Seniors may swing 2012 vote on Medicare revolt" (Reuters)

"Join us tomorrow for a special segment on one man's homemade time-travel device – made from his wife's collection of purple and pink rubber dildos, held together with earwax and fueled by root beer – and what effect it might have in re-electing President Obama."

There are only moments of hope – the political reporter's desperate attempt to meet his quota with a "historic perspective" on presidential odds during times of high unemployment. "No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent," The New York Times reported on June 1. But then, on June 2, some smartass bubble-bursting rationalist drowns the "historic perspective" in context: "The 7.2% threshold is largely irrelevant... The more relevant metric is directional – are things better or getting worse by the time voters head to the polls, and if worse, who gets the blame." Ronald Reagan won in '84 because the American public thought the economy was improving. George H.W. Bush lost because the public didn't think so.

In other words, you can't predict the second coming of Christ with a protractor, a deck of Tarot cards, and a map of ancient Mesopotamia. There are 17 months of economic forecasts before the election, any action on the debt ceiling is still months away, Libya won't ever become a splinter issue, abortion will continue to be one through 2016, the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be just as influential in 2012 as it will be in 3012, gay rights will take a back seat to immigration by the end of 2011, and Medicare will remain as is even as Republicans continue the suicidal quest to legitimize the Paul Ryan privatization plan.

In the meantime, as we wait for someone to enter the race who has more than the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of competing with Obama, we're left with the similarly speculative news reports about Weinergate, the long-in-coming and completely unsurprising news of John Edwards' indictment, and the 24/7 media circus surrounding former half-term governor Sarah Palin's donor-funded-but-allegedly-non-campaign-related mystery bus tour along the East Coast.

As a political junkie with a blog, you're forced to take the bait and add your own unoriginal observations to the three million other unoriginal observations already circulating the web. When Google says a reality show pop star is trending, a reality show pop star is what you write about. After two hours sulking in a lawn chair on the porch, a half-rack of empty beer cans scattered at your feet, and a handful of Somas fully dissolved and faithfully pumping through your bloodstream, you might be ready to take the plunge into TV-celebrity tabloid territory. It shouldn't be that difficult. You've done it before (more times than you care to recall), but descending into the gossip genre is the writer's equivalent of taking one for the team. It's made only slightly more bearable by the fact that much greater men, employed, syndicated, nationally-known, and respected journalists, have swallowed their pride as you must yours and given in to the public's yearning for useless tidbits about useless dimwits.

The irony is nauseating: You shower a publicity whore with the very attention you criticize her for seeking. And then, begrudgingly, you join the drudges of bottom-feeder news critics, drown out the delusions of one day contributing something more valuable to the world than snarky regurgitations of already clichéd talking points, forget about the months you've spent struggling to maintain any sort of presence in the already saturated blogosphere, and you write the fucking thing – a 1,000 word column that not all that many people will read. It will the your most popular post of the month...

The acolytes of Palin's brigade who troll the web for critics of their revolutionary hero inevitably will strike back. It's in the cards. As guaranteed as the sunrise on May 22nd. And you're ready for it. She deserves it, you say. She's clinging to her star power despite any rational expectation that she will break her record of contributing anything more than partisan vitriol and populist paranoia to the public discourse. She's touring the east in a bus funded by fans who will donate even more to her political action committee, only to realize they were duped when she announces that she won't run. It's no different than Newt Gingrich's "Entrepreneur of the Year Award" scheme or Glenn Beck's gold bullion marketing scam. 

People magazine

But the Palin army has grown wiser over the years, and when they accuse you of beating a dead horse, the guilt piles on. She's a failed vice presidential candidate, a failed governor, and a failed mother who totes her disabled son around the country as a prop and chops the double-chin off her chubby daughter in a plastic surgery procedure the family defended as a medically necessary "corrective surgery." She has a web page outlining (in bullet points) her stance on nearly 400 political issues, and yet the only domestic or foreign policy she could ever take credit for is "Drill, baby, drill." She stays in the limelight by baiting the media with constant hints of a presidential run despite having done nothing over the past three years to increase her credibility, beef up her policy positions, or even read up on history. If she thinks she deserves the publicity, she deserves the scrutiny, too. Right? Right? Either way, we're still talking about her – or mercilessly flogging what at this point is the rotting carcass of a barren hinny.

But fuck 'em. A Palinite can't wander into a discussion about Palin's potential 2012 candidacy and get pissed that we're talking about Palin's potential 2012 candidacy rather than talking about "issues" and "the future of our union" and "the principles of what really matter" and "the legacy we are leaving our younger generations," as if the discussion of PALIN'S POTENTIAL 2012 CANDIDACY isn't what EVERYBODY is talking about this week, and as if it's the only topic anyone has ever discussed on the web. That's like berating a friend for posting on Facebook that she's "impressed by a Texas rest area with granite counters and free internet" rather than talking about "issues" and "the future of our union" and "the principles of what really matter" and "the legacy we are leaving our younger generations."

The "issues" never get resolved. The pendulum swings every two years, politicians come in and out of power, voters think they've really got a good one who will push for this or that environmental or social issue, they don't, and we go back to the polls to elect a new batch of do-nothing leaders. The worse part is, it'll be another few weeks before we even get to pretend like the issues matter. Palin is in the news. Before her, it was Donald Trump. Next week, who knows? Maybe Michele Bachmann. And oh what a travesty it will be as the news media turn the American public's attention away from "the issues" as it chases another week's worth of sensational news reports about what impact Bachmann will have on the presidential race. The political junkies of the blogosphere will act like it's an abomination against their integrity to dedicate a few minutes of their precious time writing some snarky bullshit critique of her already well-known, impossible-to-overcome odds of winning the presidency.

And it will be their most popular post of the month.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Glenn Beck's Fox departure now has a date

By Richard K. Barry

I just couldn't help but mark the news that Glenn Beck's departure from Fox News now has a date attached to it. According to Mediate, it has been confirmed by the network that his last day is to be June 30th.

There was a time when I would get home from work and actually tune in to the crazy little man mostly because I could not believe that anyone was seriously buying his act for anything other than comic relief. I slowly had to come to the realization that there are those out there who believe that he talks sense. I am told that many people have even been scared senseless by his warnings of the imminent demise of the America we all know.

I have been amazed by the chalkboards and lines drawn from one "radical" to the next proving beyond a doubt, or so he tell us, that a grand conspiracy is afoot and that we must be ever vigilant to protect ourselves against threats foreign and domestic.

But I will tell you what really amazes me. It is the thought that there are so many people in the world so easily fooled by this snake oil salesman, that so many are this hungry for such a simplified explanation of a frighteningly complex world that they will turn to this idiot for answers.

Those of us who follow politics closely like to believe that most people are reachable with rational arguments, that even if we can't convince others of the correctness of our own opinions, everyone has a desire to be swayed by the force of the better argument.

And then we come upon people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, who believe no such thing. They are people stuck in a looped sound track full of nothing but meaningless platitudes. They don't want to be convinced of anything because they already know everything.

That people like that exist and that they have a significant following scares the crap out of me.

I go back and forth between believing that people like Beck and Palin are just charlatans in it for the buck or that they may actually believe the things they say. Maybe both are true.

If they didn't have such an impact on the quality of our discourse, it would be best to ignore them. In Beck's case that may now be somewhat easier. I look forward to the day when it will also be easier to fully ignore the half-term governor from Alaska. Please God let it be soon.

(Cross-Posted at Lippmann's Ghost)

This day in history - June 1, 1980: Cable News Network begins broadcasting

By Richard K. Barry 

 I don't typically trust any news organization that makes too much out of its lack of journalistic bias. I could go on at length about how foolish CNN has looked in the past attempting to appear balanced by entertaining "both" sides of any given issue when one of those sides was clearly just plain kooky.

But let's give credit where credit is due. CNN was the first to provide 24-hour television news coverage and the first all-news television station in the United States. It was an exciting time for the political and news junkies among us.

It's interesting to remember that the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a moment in time for CNN, which did more than any other event to establish their brand due to the fact that CNN was able to communicate from inside Iraq during the first hours of the Coalition bombing with live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett. It was spectacular.

Mostly I remember that it was during the Persian Gulf War that I first heard the name Wolf Blitzer, though I was sure it was a send up, clearly something made up by the writing team at Saturday Night Live. (I imagined that Dana Carvey would be cast to play the character). Alas, Blitzer was a real person and he has been annoying me ever since.

(Cross-posted Lippmann's Ghost.)