Guess What They've Been Spreading

Juan Williams is an asshole. You knew that already, but listen to this shit, where he explains that Obama is wrong to complain about the absurd and disgusting trashing of the national discourse into "gotcha" garbage.

What kills me about this line of defense, the one we get from Williams, and then from George, is how quick these media geniuses are to absolve themselves of any responsibility whatsoever for how the nation perceives politics. George:

Stephanopoulos explained that since the candidates are not far apart policy-wise, the "core of the nomination fight" has been about these issues. They’ve been fighting it out on this turf," he said, adding that these are things that “came up between this debate and the last one"

Wow. It's as if ABC has no power at all, at all to decide what it shows, how it shows it, or how it runs debates. ABC News apparently has no say in deciding what the "core" of a "nomination fight" might in fact be -- and has also no control over how this "fight" might be represented to their viewers. Shit happens. THEY didn't poop it.

That they say this nonsense is an outrage. That they seem to sincerely believe it is a reason to sample different brands of bleach to see what's tastiest.

The established pundit class is worse than useless. They have a vested interest in turning politics into a parlor game where vacuous horserace "analysis" substitutes for bothering to understand policy. They are not biased Left or Right, they are biased towards preserving their monopoly over the power to determine the content and form of "legitimate" political expression, the criteria for which they have reduced to the most hideously inane levels imaginable.

I mean, fuck.

UPDATE: I think Red State should just let me post there. It would save time. Oy...

UPDATE 2: Perhaps the last update was too gnomic. Here's what I had in mind:

Comments

[mrs. ibrahim al-Jafaari]

1. Your Kremlinology analogy is cute, but off point. In fact, one way to think of the last eight years is as a seminar in frat boy body language: Bush’s strut and the codpiece spring immediately mind. Perhaps if we’d given those little indications due attention sooner, we wouldn’t be in such trouble today.
The_gesture022. The New York Hello is a well known, though mild, taboo. Generally, people in this country are careful to avoid it for that very reason—and certainly in public speaking!
2. Back in the day, way back in the day, when I was a debater, I was videotaped for feedback, made exactly that gesture — albeit accidentally — and was called out on it. Now, before you go all “Yours was an accident, why not his,” I was a high schooler, very nervous, and had spoken in public rarely. Obama trained as a lawyer, has campaigned for public office at all levels of government, and is famed for his oratorical skills. Everything he’s been taught and, indeed, achieved, mitigates against the possibility of violating this taboo being accidental.
3. Closer to our own day, I was taught the technique of mindfucking an opponent in a meeting by pushing up my glasses with my middle finger.
4. The “One Fingered Salute” comes in the midst of a host of other dismissive gestures.
5. The crowd reacts at this point; they know what’s going on (“in her element” is hardly an applause line)
6. I don’t see what stereotyping has to do with looking at the audience reacting. They’re certainly reacting to something, and since the reactions come after the gesture, it’s hard to see what else there might be.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Keeping it "classy"

[merl]

Do the chickenhawks let multiple times commenters sign their petition?

[LA Confidential Pantload]

Well, I can't see the Republicans wanting to debate the issues. If Poopdeck Pappy is forced to cough up some policy hairballs, he's gonna say (1) we'll be in Iraq forever, (2) we'll attack Iran, and (3) he doesn't know squat about economics, but didn't that William McKinley do a heckuva job? I doubt he could ride that pony to the White House.

[Pat Johnson]

Obama just handed the Southern male white vote to McCain by the absence of the flag pin. They were merely looking for an excuse. He probably has lost a lot of the over 50 female vote because he felt he didn't need them. Too bad. These constituencies are a large part of the voting block he will need in November and he has failed to appease many of them. If he is at the top of the ticket we may very well be looking at a McCain presidency.

[Thers]

Mrs I, what I was reacting to was the Red State hypocrisy, as if anyone wants to find a picture of Bush flipping the bird, it's not hard to find.

[yo]

bush isnn't running for president.

is that beyond your grasp?

[Bas-O-Matic]

Jesus Fucking H. Christ. I cannot believe that anyone, anyone who has paid any attention at all to how mind bendingly stupid the fucking blogosphere and how horse shittingly empty all of these stupid gotcha blogosphere stories are actually believes that Oboama, in a public event, purposefully scratched his face in such a way that some moron with a laptop and too much time on their hands might think he was flipping somebody the bird.

The crowd reacts because he was saying that Hillary was in her element at the debate. That is, wallowing in the mud and feces that the debate moderators were flinging. That would be the same mud and feces that anybody propogating this ass reamingly dumbass story is right now at the very moment wallowing in you moronic fucking dupes.

He scratched himself. Get a hold of yourselves.

Sorry, but this story is like the stupidest fucking thing ever. It makes Jamil Hussien look like pulitzer material.

A shouldn't post this, but whatever.....

[Thers]

bush isnn't running for president.

is that beyond your grasp?

The point, idiot, is that someone who's spent 8 years talking about how wonderful Bush is looks like a dope when they criticize someone for maybe doing something their hero has definitely done.

[Robert M.]

Interestingly, clicking through the NPR link leads to a story titled "Update on the Presidential Race"--but the audio is a story on rising food costs in Egypt.

I generally like NPR, but listening to Mara Liasson, Juan Williams, or Cokie Roberts usually leads to me screaming in frustration and jabbing violently at the "Off" button.

[Fledermaus]

I think Red State should just let me post there.

This from people who spent an entire decade calling HRC everything from a murderess to a bitch?

[Thers]

Robert M, dammit, NPR rotates their content apparently.

And I have no strength to go looking for a Juan Williams segment...

[Kevin Hayden]

Balloon Juice has a pic from the definitive angle. Which I covered here.

[Davis]

I have a simpler explanation about the media. They're lazy and not very bright.

Chrissie Matthews criticized Obama for not taking the opportunity to attack Hillary about that stupid Bosnia story after it was handed to him "on a silver platter".

[Josh R.]

Obama just handed the Southern male white vote to McCain by the absence of the flag pin.

I can't tell which this is a joke or not. The Southern White Vote is in the pocket of the Republican Party just like they were in the pocket of the Democratic Party pre-1964 or so. Obama could have resurrected John Calhoun as his running mate and not made a dent in this voting bloc.

[Davis]

"Obama could have resurrected John Calhoun as his running mate and not made a dent in this voting bloc."

So true; I would have said Jefferson Davis, but John Calhoun is funnier.

Way would they need an excuse to not vote for Obama anyway? They're Southern males!

[craig]

Wow. It's pure distilled crazy over there on RedState.

[wmr]

While I sympathize with your outrage, I must differ on one point: they are biased to the Right. It's the way the guys who run the corporations that own the media want things to be.

This ain't about ad revenues; it's about controlling the agenda.

[Midwest Meg]

Like WMR, I agree with everything else Thers said---the pundit class is stupid, lazy, worse than useless----but they're also right-wing tools. Because I promise you, they'll bash Obama from now until election day with only a few quibbles about McCain. And those quibbles will be framed like this: "The Dirty Fucking Hippy Democrats say you're gonna keep us in Iraq for a long time. How do you stay calm and strong when the Democrats accuse you of such outrageous things?"

[Duckman GR]

Gibson's, or Stephanopoulos, as if it matters, comment about determining their electability to justify their questions makes me wish harm to those people.

They need to be taught that we have elections to make that determination, how dare they presume to replace voters with their judgement, how dare they.

[Dan]

Hi Thers. We might be able to make them stop the horserace obsession if we framed the issues we care about in a different way.

[Potato Head]

Of course, if the two candidates were wide apart on the issues, George and Co. would say, "Everyone knows they are completely different on the issues so there's no real point in pinning them down. Everyone's made up their minds. What matters instead is how they'd govern." And we'd get mind reading trivia again. Watch what happens in the general election matchup.

[julia]

This must be really hard for Juan Williams. His "my big brothers in punditry have no hate for les gens noirs, they're just rightly disappointed that we're not bourgier in their outlook" schtick has to really take a beating when he has to join the scary black guy pile on of the former president of the Harvard freaking Law Review.

[spero]

. . . looks like, waddles like, quacks like, predictably, reproducibly, election cycle after election cycle . . .

. . .it's a corporatist gd f-ing ugly Right Wing Duck Tool. Punto.