Allison Bricker

In what may be seen as a move to stave of the exodus of viewers, old-media cable news outlet MSNBC attempted to further enrage passions surrounding the debate over government health care. In a clip that quickly found its way to YouTube, an MSNBC intro piece showed a man attending a protest outside of President Obama’s health care rally in Phoenix, Arizona armed with an AR-15 rifle. The heavily edited and purposely cropped video then gave way to host Contessa Brewer who transparently opined:

“There are questions whether this [health care town hall protests] have racial overtones. Here you have a man of color in the Presidency with white people showing up with guns.”

Contessa Brewer
August 19th, 2009

Unfortunately for Ms. Brewer, her attempt at further entrenching divisions amongst Americans is revealed to be nothing more than a poorly constructed attempt at race-baiting; the original unedited video clearly shows the man to whom Ms. Brewer’s comments reference is African-American.

Attempts to contact both the MSNBC newsroom and Ms. Brewer for comment have thus far gone unanswered. Moreover, with the old-media’s first attempts at promulgating that the town hall protests were “staged” it is growing ever clearer that the old-media’s faux “journalists” are now seeking to go down a much more unethical and shameful road of inflaming racial tensions.

Source(s): “Obama back in Phoenix 8-17-09 Yes a man had an AR 15… get over it.” YouTube User: WeAreChangeAZ • MSNBC “Morning Meeting” originally aired Tueday, August 18th, 2009

Allison Bricker

NEW YORK , NEW YORK – On his show “Countdown” last night Keith Olberman attempts to drag Ron Paul’s name through the mud by associating him with the White Supremacist von Brunn with the biggest stretch yet attempted by old-media hacks. Mr. Olbermann’s stretched analysis was:

“A man who shares a phone number with a woman who’s listed as a Michigan coordinator for former Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.”

Keith Olbermann, host
Countdown
MSNBC

June 11th, 2009

Or in other words…..”Luke, I am your father’s father’s grandson’s, second-counsin…..wtf?

Jeff Lewis

Last Wednesday night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann threw down the gauntlet at Fox News’ Sean Hannity and declared that he would pay $1,000 per second and donate it to charity for every second Sean Hannity lasted while being water boarded.  The challenge was the result of an interview Hannity had with Charles Grodin on Hannity’s Tuesday night broadcast on Fox network.  Hannity was making the statement to Grodin that water boarding didn’t really constitute torture because it wasn’t severe enough to be labeled as such.

Grodin paused and asked Hannity if he would be willing to be water boarded?  Hannity paused for a second and half-heartedly said, “Yea, if it was for charity for the troop’s families.”  Grodin immediately asked, “Will you do it this Sunday?”  Hannity grinned and quickly changed the subject.

The next evening on “Countdown”, Olbermann re-aired the Hannity/Grodin segment and at the conclusion said that he would personally pay $1,000 a second for as long as Hannity lasted.  As of this post, Hannity had not responded.

2002 DOJ Torture Memo Right click to Save

My guess is Hannity won’t accept Olbermann’s call of his bluff to be subjected to being water boarded for the simple reason that Hannity, like all the others who claim that water boarding is not torture are cowards, or downright “Chicken-shits!” behind their false bravado.  Many extreme right wingers love to regale in tough talk and bluster about how “tough” they’d be on terrorists, unlike the candy-ass liberals they relish in bashing over their supposed timidity in dealing with the terrorists of Al Qaeda and such.

Recently, Rush Limbaugh has taken to audibly slapping himself on his face to illustrate how that interrogation technique doesn’t constitute torture, during his daily radio broadcasts.  You sure are a “tough guy”, Rush.  We all remember how Rush mocked Michael J. Fox’s physical impairments of Parkinson’s disease that were manifest in the actor’s TV endorsements of two Democratic candidates(McKaskill of Missouri and Webb of Virginia) for the U.S. Senate back in the ‘06 congressional campaign.  Rush acted out a series of gyrations on camera during his program, while claiming that Fox was using these supposed physical afflictions as a ploy to draw sympathy for his candidates.  Some years ago I happened to hear Limbaugh making fun of homeless people on his radio show, as I was scanning the radio dial for a local traffic/weather update.  Limbaugh is an utterly shameless, despicable, and pitiful character.  I am constantly amazed at the number of people who will surrender their decency and intelligence to listen to his rants, let alone fear his wrath.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday night, retired U.S. Army Colonel, Lawrence Richardson, and former right hand man for General Colin Powell, commented on the mind set of fear that grips so many members of the extreme political right wing.  He speculated that former Vice-President Dick Cheney lives in mortal fear at all times.  He referred to Cheney’s five medical deferments he received to keep himself out of military service during the Vietnam War.  But, Cheney like all of the other neo-cons that were the driving forces in the Bush administration in urging America’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq for fear of what Sadam might do to us if he could. None of them ever served in any branch of the U.S. military and had no real understanding of what it was like to wear the nation’s uniform in combat, real or imagined.  However, they had little reticence in sending thousands of others in harms way to fight and risk death or maiming.  No one articulated these “chicken hawks” better than President Bush, in his defiant bluster, “Bring ‘em on!”  Our country is 4,000+ deaths, and 40,000+ permanent injuries of brave American military soldiers, and billions and billions of dollars later because of the neo-con, tough guy fears.  The devastation on the country of Iraq has been incalculable.  The Middle East is as unstable as at any time since the 67′ war.  But, Sadam Hussein is dead.

That our country would orchestrate a campaign of torture on captured prisoners adds a new chapter of national disgrace.  I have been stunned to learn that according to two recent national polls, almost half of the American public condones extreme interrogation techniques in some circumstances involving national security.  Expert after expert, in the interrogation field, claim unequivocally that torture produces less reliable intelligence than other measures.  No less than Senator John McCain, a victim of torture as a prisoner in Vietnam, has made his opposition to such measures abundantly clear and claims they are an ineffective means to gather information from an enemy.  In its simplest terms, the torture policy is reactionary stupidity. Water boarding has been illegal in this country since 1898 and illegal by declaration in international treaties of which the U.S. is a signator.  Japanese officers were executed by the U.S. following WWII for water boarding prisoners.  Two Sheriff’s deputies in Texas were sentenced to four years in prison each, and their Sheriff for ten years for water boarding prisoners, during George W. Bush’s gubernatorial days.

This great nation of ours has suspended rational judgment before many times under the guise of national security.  Some of the “highlights”: During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.  In WWI, President Wilson imprisoned Eugene V, Debs, among other dissenters, for opposing America’s involvement in the war, and President Roosevelt OK’d the California Attorney General’s plan to inter all Japanese citizens in labor camps in other Western states during the war; that Attorney General was none other than Earl. B. Warren, later to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and one of the greatest civil libertarians in U.S. judicial history.

Momentum is gathering in both houses of Congress for additional information on the perpetrators and development of the interrogation plans in the Bush administration.  It is worth pointing out that 52 people from Nixon’s administration went to jail after the dust settled in the Watergate upheaval  This controversy is far from over and has developed legs of its own, much to the chagrin of Obama’s planners and members of the far right.  This past week marked the one hundredth anniversary of the passing of the great American, Mark Twain, who was noted for saying, among countless insights and observations, that, “In a Republic, the function of the Government is to obey orders. Not originate them.”

Jeff Lewis

This week the A.C. Nielsen Company announced the latest audience ratings¹ for cable television. The clear leader in the clubhouse among the news outlets was Fox News by a substantial margin. According to Nielsen, Fox’s average weekly prime time audience is more than double its two nearest competitors; CNN and MSNBC. Average weekly ratings in millions of viewers in the time period were–Fox 2.73, MSNBC 1.16, and CNN 1.14. This ratings cycle was the first time CNN trailed MSNBC in that time slot.

One would surmise that folks at Fox and their decidedly conservative audience would be pleased with such news. However, they are not. Conservatives and most Republicans continue to rail against the “liberal bias” in “the Media”.

To understand the roots of this antipathy of Republican/Conservative disdain for “the Media,” one has to go back in time to the legendary news conference of Richard Nixon in November of 1962 following his stunning defeat for Governor of California by Pat Brown, whose victory margin exceeded a quarter of a million votes. Nixon lost the Presidency to John Kennedy by about half that margin two years earlier. In his post election news conference Nixon uttered the immortal words directed to members of the assembled media, “Well, you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore” and proceeded to claim that it was his last news conference.

Fast forward to 1968 when Nixon emerged, totally repackaged with the well thought out slogan,”Nixon’s the One.”  One of the masterminds of the repositioning of Nixon was a young ad whiz named Roger Ailes.  Following  the squeaker of Nixon’s election over Vice President Hubert Humphry, Joe McGinnis wrote the best -seller, “The Selling of the President” in 1969.  In the book  McGinnis featured Aisles as he chronicled the steps the Nixon campaign strategists used to accomplish what is generally recognized as the greatest political transformation in U.S history.  Roger Ailes, for those people who are not contemporary media insiders, is the founder of Fox News.

News reporting underwent a radical change during the Civil Rights movement and Viet Nam War in the 60’s and 70’s culminating with the tumult of the Watergate Hearings which brought Nixon to his knees, causing him to resign the Presidency in August of 1974. Modern media coverage no longer turned a blind eye to political dealings previously deemed not in the public interest that characterized many behind the scenes events in the administrations of FDR, HST, DDE, and JFK.

Conservative/Republican frustrations with traditional news reporting continued to grow throughout the 70’s and into he 80’s. When President Reagan came under fire for developments surrounding the Iran/Contra controversy, conservatives rallied around their champion and blamed the media and Congressional Democrats for blowing things out of proportion. Reagan took to the airwaves and announced in solemn words, “This was no arms for hostages deal.” However, Congressional hearings featuring the testimony of U.S. Marine colonel, Ollie North, indicated otherwise.

As FM became the dominate radio band in the U.S. over AM stations during the 70’s and 80’s, conservative radio programs began to surface on AM call letters and developed niche audiences among targeted listeners that felt conventional news outlets, prime time TV network news programs, primarily, were slanting their reports with a liberal bias. Out of this milieu rose a sharp-tongued voice from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, named Rush Limbaugh. Today, AM radio has become dominated by a host of talk personalities from the political right. They spew out their political invective against the perceived liberal media daily or 24/7 in popular vernacular.

With this crescendo of prominence in American news reporting from Conservatives/Republicans, one might feel that the days of slanted news reporting was being balanced in our culture. But, as the late John Belushi of Saturday Night Live was famous for saying, “But, NOOOOO!”

For the point of illustration, let’s review some well publicized recent positions of Republicans/Conservatives: In a major speech before Alaskan Republicans on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, Former Vice Presidential nominee and current Governor, Sarah Palin, stated unequivocally, that she was the victim of media reporting abuse during the recent presidential campaign. She exhorted her fellow Republicans saying,” We have to stick closer together more than ever before.” This past week, in the U.S. House chambers, Congresswoman Bachmann(R-MN) claimed that a revolution was necessary to prevent the further dissolution of the America as we know it, citing none other than Thomas Jefferson to buttress her position. On Thursday, House Republican leaders Representatives John Boehner(R-OH) and Mike Pence (R-IN) announced a counter budget proposal to President Obama. The only numbers published in their proposal called for a tax cut for the wealthiest from 34% to 25%. Everyone remembers McCain’s utterance in September of ‘08, “The fundamentals of the economy are sound.” In addition, this past week, Republican National Chairman Steele announced that the reported flap between him and Rush Limbaugh was a part of his overall plan. Gag me.

In the 1992 Presidential election, James Carville of the Clinton campaign succinctly summed up the main issue as, “It’s the Economy, stupid!” For all their political histrionics over recent elections as they decry their political news coverage, it is time for Conservatives/Republicans to heed the words, “It’s the Message, stupid!” However, the current political philosophy of Republicans/Conservatives is very profitable if you are on AM radio or Fox Television news and begs the question, “Why Change?” I believe their political fortunes will improve only when they offer substantive policy initiatives for American voters to consider. Just because you despise something is not enough reason anymore for a voter to support you, particularly now that everyone can choose to listen to you, watch you, or ignore you if you bore him or her. Nevertheless, these Right Wingers and Conservative Republicans have demonstrated an extreme distaste for any criticism from almost any quarter at any time. It always turns out that their problems are not their fault, but somebody else’s creation.

For Republicans/Conservatives, it is time to get off their dead horses, heed the words that “Newtie” uttered at the recent CPAC gathering that, the “Reagan era is over”, find their way out of the wilderness and catch up to 21st century dynamics.

Source(s): ¹Associated Press “CNN in third place in prime time for first time” Published March 27th, 2009 • ² “Sounds of Change: A History of FM Broadcasting in America” by Christopher H. Sterling, University of North Carolina Press (July 15, 2008)

Joseph Marohl

I watched the inauguration yesterday on MSNBC. Thankfully, it was a snow day (so is today), my classes were canceled, and I didn’t have to justify the broadcast as integral to my British literature course (I couldn’t, wouldn’t, and would have then missed the broadcast, as my students would have, as well).

One thing stood out in MSNBC’s coverage of the formalities—the less than solemn reactions of the crowd, predominantly black, chanting “O-Ba-Ma” for the new President, and booing the departing President, breaking into the chorus of Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” at both his appearance on the stands and his exit. Something about MSNBC’s location made it easy for the masses’ vocalizations to all but drown out the network’s appointed color commentators. It didn’t seem that the dignitaries on the stand, including Obama and Bush, could even hear these rude outbursts, which sounded like the mindless self-expression of Super Bowl fans.

I’d say that 30% of me felt disapproval for the heckling, a bit less for the chanting in unison (matching, no doubt intentionally, the usual grunting braggadocio of “U-S-A U-S-A” at all kinds of events, from pro wrestling to Independence Day parades). It struck me—or less than a third of me—as unseemly, inappropriate to the cultural and political gravitas of the moment, which I felt was more elegantly served by the day’s scheduled program—Aretha Franklin’s stirring rendition of “America the Beautiful” (and the ornate black woman’s “church” hat she sported) and Joseph Lowery’s by turns transcendent and saucy closing prayer.

But 70% of me—the part that was thrilled to see Muntadhar al-Zeidi pitch his shoe at George W. Bush in Iraq, regretting only his bad aim—was right with the rowdiness—more liberated and democratic in spirit than the babble of MSNBC commentators who tried to cast the proceedings in the light of Washington tradition and fetishistic awe for what they described as America’s one concession to “royal” pomp and ceremony.

To my mind, Bush deserved to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of DC on a rail. In this light, a little jeering, probably not even audible to the arrogant asshole, is comparably civil and gracious. Further, I hope the fact that Bush gave no last-minute pardons for persons chargeable with war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan (including himself and Dick Cheney, I assume) means that trials may indeed occur during the Obama Presidency (I have my doubts, though).

Rowdiness is a particular affect of American democracy, from the wild and wooly West to rock’n’roll to student sit-ins in the 1960s. (Unfortunately, other examples include the lynchings, fraternity hazings, and gang banging.) I hope the Obama election is the first of many, hopefully stronger waves of renewed democracy in American life and politics—and I hope no less that it will be joined with a respect for rational argument and variety of opinion that Obama himself likes to talk about.

We’ll see.

That said, the other thing that stood out in MSNBC’s coverage was the calculated (it seemed obvious to me) posing of individuals and small groups within the historic mass of witnesses to the occasion. The cameras focused on beaming faces—some with toothy, unaffected smiles, others modeling themselves on Old Masters’ paintings of beatific saints at the moment of epiphany—and, with irritating frequency, weeping faces. Now I have to admit that I wept practically nonstop through the whole hour-long program, moved in part by the historic moment of acquiring a young black President, in part out of relief for seeing the Bush gang’s butts heading for the door, but, irrationally perhaps, I resented the network’s insistent use of cutaway shots of crowd reaction, which were the visual equivalent of a laugh track or melodramatic strings designed to telegraph “appropriate” emotional responses to the event. For that reason, in retrospect, I wish I had watched the inauguration on C-SPAN, with minimal pathos (or so I imagine).

I have not watched any of the subsequent replaying of and commentary on the inauguration … by design. Having watched the event once through is enough. The tendency of news media (particularly television) to replay such occasions ad nauseum tends to dull feeling and discourage thinking. (Admittedly, blogging about the event is subject to the same charge, though I’d hasten to point out crucial distinctions—such as the difficulty of filtering the barrage of television noise compared to the act of will involved in choosing whether or not to read this blog.)

Weeping, cheering Obama, and booing Bush aside, the nation now has serious issues to face and problems to solve—as Obama’s speech tried to emphasize. Issues and problems require disciplined thinking more than heartfelt emoting. They also require resolve, not just the heat of a moment. But without feeling, even a feeling of outrage at Bush’s epic betrayals, without a sense of bonding with fellow Americans and with the whole world of humanity, all we’d have of liberty and democracy would be bloodless documents and marble monuments.

I don’t think Thomas Jefferson himself would mind if twenty-first-century American democracy included a bit more of the spirit of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” and a little less unblinking, unthinking “Hail to the Chief.”