Thanks for the moving music, brings tears st times like these, and as for press coverage of these briefings, I personally cannot be the only person who finds them so offensive , the sounds of that man reading so much as the phone book so repugnant, I quite literally run for the remote, and then go doing something life affirming like taking out the trash or scrubbing toilets.....
The networks also refused to show Obama’s immigration reform speech live because it was deemed “too political”. No double standard here.
Off topic but I just finished reading David Ignatius’s article about Trump’s new Space Force. Call me crazy but it sure seems that Ignatius is acting like a cheerleader not a journalist. He describes how the Air Force chief of staff “...said that a key moment on his “journey” to embracing the new force came when he visited Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and talked with a group of young officers training for space operations. He asked how many favored a separate service, and every hand went up but three.” What a shock! People who volunteered for the new Space Force say it should be a separate force? That settles it, then.
Ignatius also describes how the new chief assured him our new military branch will be lean and agile, clearly not wasteful and expensive the way the other branches are. Then he goes to tell us that the space business is really hot right now and that:
“ One creative idea is allowing lateral transfers from the space business — recruiting a vice president at a fast-growing technology company, say, to become a part-time colonel, sharing his expertise.”
What could possibly go wrong if we let corporate executives become temporary officers? They won’t have any incentive to advocate for their own company’s goods and services so that they will get rewarded after they return to that company, right? And we all know that if the Space Force starts out small it will stay that way.
Ignatius describes the threats we face in space from Russian and China. He tells us that in March the Space Force deployed its first offensive weapon, a jamming system. That seems a bit odd since the Space Force is launching this week. Are we supposed to believe that this weapon was developed overnight? Or that before this we had no defensive or offensive capability in space? Clearly the Air Force Space Command, which has existed since 1981, was the entity that developed and deployed this weapon. The Space Command has been doing this kind of thing for years.
Ignatius offers no proof that our existing Space Command is too expensive, inefficient, inept, etc. and therefore needs to be replaced. Instead he gives readers the clear impression that because Trump has gotten his Space Force we will finally be protected.
Maybe the press really is the "enemy of the people"!
Or at very least the smart folks have been overrun by the clodhoppers.
I don't know how long a nation can retain its sanity when subjected to such a relentless barrage of banal propaganda. A quick look at the right wing "base" gives a clue to how that process pans out.
Then there's 1930's Germany (I know . . .Godwin . . yada, yada, but this is serious!)
Sadly a lot of the worst media people are hardly clodhoppers. A whole lot of them are part of powerful insiders’ clique. This inane article by Sally Quinn from a few years back describes how they operate. Apparently the Obama administration just didn’t bow down low enough to satisfy these vapid, egotistical fools.
Here is her most infamous column in which she describes “The Dean of Washington Journalism” David Broder saying about Clinton “He came in here and he trashed the place and it's not his place." clearly they think they own the place.
A lot of top media people are or were part of this crowd - Mika and Joe, Chris Matthews, Mark Halperin, Andrea Mitchell, Tim Russert, Maureen Dowd, and many more. I read that David Ignatius said that he and his wife had been thrilled the first time they got invited to one of Sally Quinn and hubby Ben Bradlee’s parties because they were DC’s Bogie and Bacall. Ugh.
I had hoped that Quinn was no longer the center of DC society but I recently about Sally giving a reporter the inside scoop about Kellyanne Conway’s marriage at a party of the DC elite. She was at a party of elites, hanging out with Andrea Mitchell and Maureen Dowd.
If you are interested in understanding more about the mainstream media get a copy of Eric’s book “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled over for Bush. Also Jack Germond’s book “Fat Man Fed Up” is very enlightening. Just be sure to take your blood pressure medicine.
CNN and all MSN are allowing Trump to run the most visible Crime Spree in American History. Trump has conquered America’s best bet on telling the Truth. Browbeaten American Publishers and Editors are so afraid to standup to Trump, almost like Republicans in the Administration
Another Suggestion: If major networks choose to keep Trump's newsconferences on air, simply grant the opposition equal time. When he goes off topic, which topic should be the federal response to COVID19, and utters anything of a political nature; put a clock on him and provide that cumulative time to a spokesperson from the opposition candidate(s) (or, in some cases, to qualified physician/researchers/fact-checkers not on Trump's oftimes intimidated "team").
If all networks airing these "briefings" are held to that standard, they will either be forced to offer opposition candidates equal time, edit out tangential political statements to air the residue topical information later, or stop broadcasting these altogether. As far as I know the "equal opportunity provision remains an enforceable congressional statute." https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/949/equal-time-rule
OK, I'll go there. Does ANYBODY remember Nixon and Agnew slandering the press? They did it because they knew it would be popular with the public, but also to try to force the press to be biased in their favor.
The alleged people--I tend to prefer Woody Allen's definition of someone as "undefined protoplasm"--who run these networks are afraid of the far right. They are not afraid of others.
So, here's the deal. I guarantee you that if we all organized a boycott of these networks, and informed them and their advertisers that we would neither watch them nor, far more importantly, buy the products of their advertisers, and there were enough of us and we made a dent, the networks would end up looking like the video version of The Nation or a Communist Party meeting. Remember: Fux Noise got rid of Bill O'Reilly not because he was a sexual harasser and a bigot, but because he lost advertisers when he went too far.
Nixon let Agnew be his attack dog. Agnew’s attacks on the media were very similar to what Trump does now. I believe Pat Buchanan came up with a lot of the lines for him. For years Pat was a media darling despite how he had Trashed him. Rachel Maddow recently did a podcast about Agnew called Bag Man, based on new documents and tapes about his corruption. It is well worth listening to. It makes it clear just how corrupt the Republican Party has been for decades. There is an interesting story about GHW Bush trying to help Nixon shut down the investigation into Agnew.
Thanks for sharing that podcast--I appreciate it. Buchanan was one of Agnew's writers, at least for the truly nasty stuff. Safire came up with "nattering nabobs of negativism"--he was equally dishonest but less mean-spirited. There's a terrific Eric Sevareid commentary, widely reprinted, where he just aired out Agnew.
As I read your piece I kept thinking of how the press covered his every clownish utterance prior to the election. He was a side show, a buffoon, someone to generate ratings while the press snickered and laughed. But they gave him valuable air time which helped elect him.
Thanks for the moving music, brings tears st times like these, and as for press coverage of these briefings, I personally cannot be the only person who finds them so offensive , the sounds of that man reading so much as the phone book so repugnant, I quite literally run for the remote, and then go doing something life affirming like taking out the trash or scrubbing toilets.....
oh yr welcome...and I agree. Don’t know how people watch them for hours
The networks also refused to show Obama’s immigration reform speech live because it was deemed “too political”. No double standard here.
Off topic but I just finished reading David Ignatius’s article about Trump’s new Space Force. Call me crazy but it sure seems that Ignatius is acting like a cheerleader not a journalist. He describes how the Air Force chief of staff “...said that a key moment on his “journey” to embracing the new force came when he visited Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and talked with a group of young officers training for space operations. He asked how many favored a separate service, and every hand went up but three.” What a shock! People who volunteered for the new Space Force say it should be a separate force? That settles it, then.
Ignatius also describes how the new chief assured him our new military branch will be lean and agile, clearly not wasteful and expensive the way the other branches are. Then he goes to tell us that the space business is really hot right now and that:
“ One creative idea is allowing lateral transfers from the space business — recruiting a vice president at a fast-growing technology company, say, to become a part-time colonel, sharing his expertise.”
What could possibly go wrong if we let corporate executives become temporary officers? They won’t have any incentive to advocate for their own company’s goods and services so that they will get rewarded after they return to that company, right? And we all know that if the Space Force starts out small it will stay that way.
Ignatius describes the threats we face in space from Russian and China. He tells us that in March the Space Force deployed its first offensive weapon, a jamming system. That seems a bit odd since the Space Force is launching this week. Are we supposed to believe that this weapon was developed overnight? Or that before this we had no defensive or offensive capability in space? Clearly the Air Force Space Command, which has existed since 1981, was the entity that developed and deployed this weapon. The Space Command has been doing this kind of thing for years.
Ignatius offers no proof that our existing Space Command is too expensive, inefficient, inept, etc. and therefore needs to be replaced. Instead he gives readers the clear impression that because Trump has gotten his Space Force we will finally be protected.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/with-its-first-graduates-the-space-force-is-ready-to-launch/2020/04/16/df07d7b6-801e-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html#comments-wrapper
ugh the Space Force coverage has been largely awful
Well, it has to be said:
Maybe the press really is the "enemy of the people"!
Or at very least the smart folks have been overrun by the clodhoppers.
I don't know how long a nation can retain its sanity when subjected to such a relentless barrage of banal propaganda. A quick look at the right wing "base" gives a clue to how that process pans out.
Then there's 1930's Germany (I know . . .Godwin . . yada, yada, but this is serious!)
Sadly a lot of the worst media people are hardly clodhoppers. A whole lot of them are part of powerful insiders’ clique. This inane article by Sally Quinn from a few years back describes how they operate. Apparently the Obama administration just didn’t bow down low enough to satisfy these vapid, egotistical fools.
https://www.mediamatters.org/jim-quinn/sally-quinns-washington
Here is her most infamous column in which she describes “The Dean of Washington Journalism” David Broder saying about Clinton “He came in here and he trashed the place and it's not his place." clearly they think they own the place.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/quinn110298.htm
A lot of top media people are or were part of this crowd - Mika and Joe, Chris Matthews, Mark Halperin, Andrea Mitchell, Tim Russert, Maureen Dowd, and many more. I read that David Ignatius said that he and his wife had been thrilled the first time they got invited to one of Sally Quinn and hubby Ben Bradlee’s parties because they were DC’s Bogie and Bacall. Ugh.
I had hoped that Quinn was no longer the center of DC society but I recently about Sally giving a reporter the inside scoop about Kellyanne Conway’s marriage at a party of the DC elite. She was at a party of elites, hanging out with Andrea Mitchell and Maureen Dowd.
https://www.mediamatters.org/jim-quinn/sally-quinns-washington
Hmmmm. Informative. Thanks!
If you are interested in understanding more about the mainstream media get a copy of Eric’s book “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled over for Bush. Also Jack Germond’s book “Fat Man Fed Up” is very enlightening. Just be sure to take your blood pressure medicine.
CNN and all MSN are allowing Trump to run the most visible Crime Spree in American History. Trump has conquered America’s best bet on telling the Truth. Browbeaten American Publishers and Editors are so afraid to standup to Trump, almost like Republicans in the Administration
Another Suggestion: If major networks choose to keep Trump's newsconferences on air, simply grant the opposition equal time. When he goes off topic, which topic should be the federal response to COVID19, and utters anything of a political nature; put a clock on him and provide that cumulative time to a spokesperson from the opposition candidate(s) (or, in some cases, to qualified physician/researchers/fact-checkers not on Trump's oftimes intimidated "team").
If all networks airing these "briefings" are held to that standard, they will either be forced to offer opposition candidates equal time, edit out tangential political statements to air the residue topical information later, or stop broadcasting these altogether. As far as I know the "equal opportunity provision remains an enforceable congressional statute." https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/949/equal-time-rule
excellent points abt granting Dems equal time, especially now since a growing percentage of the briefings have nothing to do w/ pandemic
OK, I'll go there. Does ANYBODY remember Nixon and Agnew slandering the press? They did it because they knew it would be popular with the public, but also to try to force the press to be biased in their favor.
The alleged people--I tend to prefer Woody Allen's definition of someone as "undefined protoplasm"--who run these networks are afraid of the far right. They are not afraid of others.
So, here's the deal. I guarantee you that if we all organized a boycott of these networks, and informed them and their advertisers that we would neither watch them nor, far more importantly, buy the products of their advertisers, and there were enough of us and we made a dent, the networks would end up looking like the video version of The Nation or a Communist Party meeting. Remember: Fux Noise got rid of Bill O'Reilly not because he was a sexual harasser and a bigot, but because he lost advertisers when he went too far.
Nixon let Agnew be his attack dog. Agnew’s attacks on the media were very similar to what Trump does now. I believe Pat Buchanan came up with a lot of the lines for him. For years Pat was a media darling despite how he had Trashed him. Rachel Maddow recently did a podcast about Agnew called Bag Man, based on new documents and tapes about his corruption. It is well worth listening to. It makes it clear just how corrupt the Republican Party has been for decades. There is an interesting story about GHW Bush trying to help Nixon shut down the investigation into Agnew.
https://www.msnbc.com/bagman
Thanks for sharing that podcast--I appreciate it. Buchanan was one of Agnew's writers, at least for the truly nasty stuff. Safire came up with "nattering nabobs of negativism"--he was equally dishonest but less mean-spirited. There's a terrific Eric Sevareid commentary, widely reprinted, where he just aired out Agnew.
As I read your piece I kept thinking of how the press covered his every clownish utterance prior to the election. He was a side show, a buffoon, someone to generate ratings while the press snickered and laughed. But they gave him valuable air time which helped elect him.
agreed. This is 2016 all over again