Case in point, the unfortunate schmuck tasked by the Secret Service to monitor a Fox News broadcast.
He tweeted about the experience, but mistakenly posted the tweet from the official Secret Service account, as opposed to his personal account.
I feel his pain.
The Times should use the term “torture” more directly, using it on first reference when the discussion is about — and there’s no other word for it — torture. The debate was never whether Bin Laden was found because of brutal interrogations: it was whether he was found because of torture. More narrowly, the word is appropriate when describing techniques traditionally considered torture, waterboarding being the obvious example. Reasonable fairness can be achieved by adding caveats that acknowledge the Bush camp’s view of its narrow legal definition.
This approach avoids the appearance of mincing words and is well grounded in Americans’ understanding of torture in the historical and moral sense.
The fact that our media still consider people who think that it’s OK to crush a child’s testicles to pressure their parent (John Yoo) to be acceptable as regular editorial contributors (to be fair, in the Philly Inky, not the Gray Lady) indicates that the idea of telling the truth has left the lexicon of so-called journalism.
Not my deep thought, actually.
The family was in a restaurant on Sunday, why eat in when you are removing food from the house for Passover, and besides, the storm had knocked out our power.
In any case, the restaurant had Fox News up on a monitor.
It was “pimp Atlas Shrugged day”, so they were interviewing the actors, the director, etc., along with examples of how capitalist “supermen” are essential.
Thankfully, the sound was off, and I had my back to it, but my son Charlie was watching the scroll beneath.
Suddenly, he looked at me confused, “Dad, Fox News says that venture capitalists invented video game systems. Can you explain that to me dad? I don’t speak lunatic.”
I guess that I am raising my kids right.
Dave Leonhardt, one of their more prominent economics reporters, as well as being one of the more prominent contributors to their Economix blog, notices that most of the deficit gets fixed if you just do nothing and let the Bush tax cuts expire:
A trick question: If Congress takes no action in coming years, what will happen to the budget deficit?
It will shrink — and shrink a lot. This simple fact may offer the best hope for deficit reduction.
As federal law currently stands, some significant tax increases are set to take effect in coming years. The most important is the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012.
Of course, both parties favor the permanent extension of most of those tax cuts — the ones applying to income below $250,000. Both parties also oppose big cuts to the military, Social Security and Medicare, at least in the short term. Unfortunately, the deficit is likely to remain frighteningly large over the next decade without either cuts to those programs or tax increases.
Say what you will about Krugman, and he is a brilliant man who has won the Nobel Prize in Economics, but he does not reflect the conventional thinking at the “Paper of Record.” He is an outsider.
Mr. Leonhardt, on the other hand, does. He’s been working as a journalist at the Times for about a dozen years, and the fact that he is mentioning this means, at the very least, that the idea that doing nothing will fix the problem is something that is discussed amongst their staff.
Notwithstanding their coverage of the foreclosure crisis, and the malfeasance of the mortgage services, which has largely focused on the hardships of the well to do (unsurprising given the nature of the New York City real estate market), the editorial board understands that there has been fraud and bad behavior all around and they understand that proposed settlements are sellouts to the big banks that service mortgages:
Americans know that banks have mistreated borrowers in many ways in foreclosure cases. Among other things, they habitually filed false court documents. There were investigations. We’ve been waiting for federal and state regulators to crack down.
Prepare for a disappointment. As early as this week, federal bank regulators and the nation’s big banks are expected to close a deal that is supposed to address and correct the scandalous abuses. If these agreements are anything like the draft agreement recently published by the American Banker — and we believe they will be — they will be a wrist slap, at best. At worst, they are an attempt to preclude other efforts to hold banks accountable. They are unlikely to ease the foreclosure crisis.
………
But the gist of the terms is that from now on, banks — without admitting or denying wrongdoing — must abide by existing laws and current contracts. To clear up past violations, they are required to hire independent consultants to check a sample of recent foreclosures for evidence of improper evictions and impermissible fees.
The consultants will be chosen and paid by the banks, which will decide how the reviews are conducted. Regulators will only approve the banks’ self-imposed practices. It is hard to imagine rigorous reviews, but if the consultants turn up problems, the banks are required to reimburse affected borrowers and investors as “appropriate.” It is apparently up to the banks to decide what is appropriate.
While it appears that the OCC, which has a history of acting on behalf of the finance industry rather than the public,has been at the core of the most egregious giveaways, it is also clear that the most of the machinery of the federal government, at least those portions directed by Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, are doing their level best to ensure that there are no real consequences to what in a sane regulatory environment would be felonies involving people being sentenced to extended stays in “Club Fed”.
Instead, it increasingly appears that the Feds will be negotiating a sweetheart deal that will include provisions to make actions by the state attorneys general, and possible private torts difficult, if not impossible.
It’s nice that the “paper of record” has finally noticed this. People like Yves Smith have been screaming about this for months.
I really wish that I had half his wit.
I guess that this bit of genius is all about the fact that they are dealing with a very real sadness: Glen Beck could make their writing a lot easier.
When Beck was on a roll, they could finish writing the script by lunch, and adjourn to a coke infused orgy with transsexual prostitutes in the afternoon.
Or maybe they just played games on their iPhones in the afternoon.
His TV show contract will not be renewed in December, and the definitive word on this comes from the Grauniad,* “Glenn Beck will be missed after he leaves Fox News – by satirists.”
I guess cratering ratings, and fleeing sponsors mean something, even to Roger Ailes’ Fox News.
*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”
This video, “Conspiracy Theory Rock, was shown once on Saturday Night Live, (link is to higher quality Youtube with embedding disabled) but it is never shown on reruns, because Lorn Michaels says that it is “Not Funny.”
You know, I guess if Robert Smigel cut a new one with my paymasters at GE & NBC, and detailed how they used their media power to produce propaganda for their parent firms, I might not find it funny either.
OK, it’s Irish Republican Terrorists who did this.
This is the first of a continuing series Fox News Headlines.
Seriously, have you ever spent 5 minutes reading their headline ticker?
I do not mean to diminish the senseless and tragic death of Ronan Kerr, nor the impact on Omaugh, which saw a horrific bombing by the so-called “Real IRA” 13 years ago, but I was waiting for service with a channel tuned to Fux Snooze today, and it got me pissed off.
Sharon* had a conference today so I took the kids to a movie. Because of the schedule, we saw Hop.
It’s not even worth a write up.
It was completely unmemorable, with a standard “Santa Claus faces an evil elf revolt” and “Two slackers come to responsibility” themes intertwined.
It was simply unmemorable and inoffensive, and you already saw most of the good bits in the coming attractions.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon has admittedly to consciously, repeatedly, and deliberately lying during the 2008 campaign:
In newly uncovered audio, a Fox News executive boasts that he lied repeatedly during the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign when he speculated on-air “about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism.”
Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon described his attempts the previous year to link Obama to “socialism” as “mischievous speculation.” Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that “privately” he had believed that the socialism allegation was “rather far-fetched.”
“Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, ‘spread the wealth around,’ ” said Sammon. “At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.”
The only thing shocking about this is the fact that the rest of the media seems to feel honor bound to defend their shoddy and fraudulent journamalism whenever someone criticizes them.
The They Who Must Not Be Named list, of course.
You see, some of the people who appear to be worthless are actually talented.
Charlie Sheen is a really funny guy, as this sketch shows, and I’m not sure if he’s crazy or not, because, unlike Bill Frist and Charles Krauthammer, I don’t do diagnoses long distance, but it seems to me that even if he is a bit nuts, he is less nuts than he appears.
In any case, this video is hysterically funny, and the butt of Charlie Sheen’s jokes is one Charlie Sheen.
So he has been removed from the list.
Right wing videographer hack James O’Keefe* has secured yet another scalp, the president of NPR has resigned.
This guy has been proven to be a serial liar, but he releases his crap, Fox News picks it up, and suddenly, people are freaking out.
This just makes it worse for NPR, because they just capitulated to a terrorist.
*Who is not to be confused with my former classmate, founder of the Massachusetts Pirate Party, former Green Party candidate for Massachusetts Treasure, and all around good guy, James “Jamie” O’Keefe.
Notwithstanding this hysterically funny condemnation of him in a Chinese newspaper, they assert that, as opposed to sharing his bed with two pr0n stars, he should put them up in a separate house,* Charlie Sheen is now on my list of They Who Must Not Be Named.
Please God, never have him run for public (or in his case pubic) office.
*Apparently, the Chinese have never heard of a menage a trois.
We had a report that right wing radio talk shows were hiring actors to juice up their phone callers:
But what exactly was the work? The question popped up during the audition and was explained, the actor said, clearly and simply: If he passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricated—which they always were.
“I was surprised that it seemed so open,” the actor told me in an interview. “There was really no pretense of covering it up.”
Curious, the actor did some snooping and learned that Premiere On Call was a service offered by Premiere Radio Networks, the largest syndication company in the United States and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the entertainment and advertising giant. Premiere syndicates some of the more sterling names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity. But a great radio show depends as much on great callers as it does on great hosts: Enter Premiere On Call.
, as the CJR notes, it’s Ensuring the authenticity of your programming… with paid, planted callers.
Well, we now have confirmation, because Rush “Drugs are bad, marriage is sacred, I did not f%$# little boys in the Dominican Republic” Limbaugh has now officially denied that he used actors as phoney call-ins.
I consider this to be confirmation because Rush lies about everything, and the story is nearly a month old, and any innocent person would have let it slip beneath the waves.
I miss Bill Maher’s late night show on ABC, Politically Incorrect.
He has this thing on HBO now, and in some ways, it’s better, because he can use George Carlin’s 7 dirty words on it, but I don’t have HBO, and don’t plan to pay for it, but he’s good at what he does.
Well, now that she is leaving, perhaps I can check out the successor show without the right wing idoocy for “balance”:
Kathleen Parker has been dropped from “Parker Spitzer,” and the show is being replaced by a new show called “In The Arena,” the network announced Friday.
In a memo to staff, CNN President Ken Jautz said that “In The Arena” would be an “ensemble” show, with “several newsmakers, guests and contributors joining Eliot Spitzer each night.” Among the regulars will be former Fox News anchor E.D. Hill and National Review writer Will Cain.
(emphasis mine)
<Facepalm>
Then again, it maybe not.
The interesting thing here is that when Kathleen Parker took a temporary leave for medical reasons, the show’s ratings doubled.
Where Spitzer has credibility is his experience in dealing with Wall Street lawbreaking, and by larding the show up with “balance”, it makes it worse TV.
I’ll probably check it out at some point, if just because I can’t stand Lawrence O’Donnell, who is opposite to their time slot.
Is there a site online where I can see CNN streaming?
Judith Regan, who literally f%$#ed Bernie Kerik at ground zero in Manhattan, settled for a few million dollars after being fired by Rupert Murdoch, and got an apology, in which News Corp formally disavowed the original accusation of anti-Semitism that was the ostensible reasoning for her firing.
Well, now we know why Newscorp caved, because Fox News chief Roger Ailes got caught on tape advising her to lie to federal investigators:
It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie two years earlier to federal investigators who were vetting Bernard B. Kerik for the job of homeland security secretary.
Ms. Regan had once been involved in an affair with Mr. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner whose mentor and supporter, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, was in the nascent stages of a presidential campaign. The News Corporation executive, whom she did not name, wanted to protect Mr. Giuliani and conceal the affair, she said.
Now, court documents filed in a lawsuit make clear whom Ms. Regan was accusing of urging her to lie: Roger E. Ailes, the powerful chairman of Fox News and a longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani. What is more, the documents say that Ms. Regan taped the telephone call from Mr. Ailes in which Mr. Ailes discussed her relationship with Mr. Kerik.
It is unclear whether the existence of the tape played a role in News Corporation’s decision to move quickly to settle a wrongful termination suit filed by Ms. Regan, paying her $10.75 million in a confidential settlement reached two months after she filed it in 2007.
Yeah, it’s “unclear”.
Would not have come up, except for the fact that Regan fired her lawyers just before the settlement, and they were accusing her of doing so to avoid paying a contingency fee, and in the lawsuit, her lawyers’ affidavits mistakenly became part of the public record:
“In fact,” the complaint said, “a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”
Mr. Redniss, in his affidavit, referred to “a recorded telephone call between Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News (a News Corp. company) and Regan, in which Mr. Ailes discussed with Regan her responses to questions regarding her personal relationship with Bernard Kerik.”
It appears that Fox in general, and Ailes in particular, found supporting Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign to be imperative, and so told her to lie in order to keep the dirt off of Rudy.
An interesting side note to all of this:
The court records examined by The New York Times this week, which have subsequently been taken out of the public case file, also reveal another interesting footnote. After Ms. Regan fired her lawyers, a seemingly unlikely figure came forward to help settle the case: Susan Estrich, a law professor and a regular Fox commentator whose book Ms. Regan had published, according to Ms. Regan’s affidavit.
Susan Estrich has been an absolutely useless horror show on the American body politic since she handed the presidency to George H.W. Bush on a silver platter as Michael Dukkakis’ campaign manager.
Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against conservative firebrand and web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. The suit stems from the notorious video Breitbart posted online last year, showing an out-of-context excerpt from a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP Freedom Fund in March 2010. The clip suggested she had used her position at the Department of Agriculture to discriminate against white farmers. The media devoured the Breitbart’s version of story so voraciously that the NAACP denounced Sherrod and the Obama administration fired her. The charge was, in fact, entirely untrue.
Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip “damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.” Breitbart, meanwhile, denounced the suit, saying he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”
Let’s be clear, as a public official at the time, Shirley Sharrod has a very high burden of proof, so I do not know her chances of prevailing, but even if she wins, it is highly unlikely that she will get anything unless she takes action in advance to ensure that the real assets of his operations are secure.
His real assets would walk out of his office tommorow, on a memory stick, we are talking about things like his subscriber database, so if I were her lawyer, I would suggest that she move to have the court appoint a special master to oversee this data, to ensure that it doesn’t walk out the door.
Then again, I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, Dammit.*
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
For $315 million dollars.
I think that this explains why they have been moving to a paid writing staff lately.
Many of the celebrities who have contributed non-remunerated articles to the Huffington Post may be less inclined to do so now that it is part of the AOL empire, if just because the whole “cool factor” is much diminished. (See the term “AOLamer”)
Ms. Huffington will stay in charge of her web site, as well as taking over supervision AOL’s media operations, things like Techcrunch and its hyper-local news operations.
I think that this will turn out better than the AOL/Times Warner merger, but that’s a very low bar.