Add the word "hypocrite" to the verboten list. DeSantis and others screech about the freedom to decide whether to mask, and then attack anyone who CHOOSES to wear a mask, and harangue them with debunked nonsense about masks being ineffective. Looks like the media has deemed access to this clown more important than holding him to any standard of decency.
That was my thought, too, when I saw the videos. When will the media start making it clear that Republicans believe in freedom for them to force the rest of us to bend to their will? That is why they worship Putin.
I agree with the "theater theory". It was the same obvious manipulation of the public discussion as that time the vice poodle Pence and his gang of clowns went to an NFL game so they could be filmed walking out when players took a knee during the national anthem. And of course, the press genuflected.
By the way...Note how the CCCP has totally buried the story about Trump taking all those classified documents to Mar-A-Lardo. Nope, the CCCP don't want you to wonder about how many of those documents wound up in Putin's hands...
They sure dropped the story of the CIA having to extract our top Russian mole in 2017, a man who was so close to Putin he was able to send us pictures of documents on Putin’s desk:
“…the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.”
Seems to me that story is relevant to what is happening now. Having that week-placed source of information still feeding us information during this crisis would have been a great help to the West.
Note that the Trump administration tried to also blame the media for supposedly speculating about the existence of a top Kremlin mole but CNN found not evidence that that ever happened.
"Now we're in a situation where we need to make sure the parent's rights are protected" - Ron DeSantis, at a press conference in July2021, where he announced that there will be no mask mandates in the state of Florida, in opposition to CDC guidelines and the wishes of many local school boards, who were elected, of course, to represent and make decisions for ALL the parents and students. My first thought, when I saw him unload on those kids was: it's a sorry state of affairs when the Governor of your state is the least mature person on a stage full of high school students. What a jackass and a bully.
It is likely the students who removed their masks at DeSantis' rude dictate will spend the remainders of their lives wishing they had instead just punched the governor in the nose.
Face it, the political press wants President DeSantis if they cannot have Trump back. He will bring nearly as much daily drama as his role model. Sadly for the country, he's smart enough to succeed where Trump failed, and we will be left in a kleptocratic oligarchy run by people who will make Trump and his thugs look like pussycats.
I suspect that many of in the media are frightened by the idea of another Trump presidency and think that guys like Chris Christie and DeSantis are “normal” Republicans so they want to give them a boost. That shows just how successful Republicans have been in shifting the Overton Window for acceptable behavior. Too many in the media have no solid standards for judging acceptable behavior from politicians and federal judges, not even the basic behaviors required for upholding our democracy.
I recently listened to a podcast discussion about Putin’s thinking. One Russia expert said that Putin was almost certainly using the Bush/Cheney Iraq invasion as a model and a justification for his own actions. For example Putin would see the Bush administration’s false claims about Saddam being involved in 9/11, seeking yellow cake uranium from Niger and possessing WMD as no different than Putin’s “false flag” justifications for invading Ukraine. That thought had crossed my mind but I have not seen anyone else point that out — big surprise.
First of all, Chris Christie will never be president. Like Trump, he can't even win his home state. That said, I don't think the political press fears a Trump presidency and that, frankly is the problem. If they truly feared the impact of Trump, or the clones like DeSantis, Abbott, Noem, etc. they would report their actions as the radical, hate filled, Christo-fascist actions that they are. Rather than whining about Biden, they would be calling out Republican obstruction. Republican bullying. Republican radical misogyny. Republican racism. Using words like lies, radical, extreme, un-american, etc. rather than the weasel words that have become so pervasive in their vernacular.
I agree that there chances of Christie becoming president are slim to none but that doesn’t mean the media doesn’t want to give him a platform. They like him because he schmoozes them. Just ask Mika about that.
It’s just so frustrating and infuriating that a thug like DeSantis continues to be normalized by our free press. DeSantis is no less an insurrectionist than the other thugs who attacked the Capitol. He and his administration are modeling the new American authoritarianism. Just like Trump, he operates and governs as if he, alone, rules, and only his wishes matter.
It can’t be the case that the press doesn’t see this. What else but abject cowardice can explain what keeps the press from covering this man and his administration as the proving ground of autocracy he/it is.
And he is only one of many Republican state executives and legislative bodies that the press cowardly refrains from covering as the laboratories of autocracy that they have become.
How ironic that the press covers the war in Ukraine on one hand and on the other, they step toe around would be dictators like Trump and DeStantis right here at home.
The CCCP isn't playing dumb. The Corporate Controlled Conservative Press LOVES DeSADIST. If they can't have their beloved Trump back in the Oval Office they will do anything to put DeSADIST there.
And DeSatanist knows it. He's touting himself as Trump II in the event the Orange Plague chooses not to run, or even if he does. Ron is younger, smarter, more adept at manipulation of the press, who worshipped him as the man who beat covid in Florida even as the people there were dropping like flies. He can out-bullshit the press better than Trump, and because he's smarter, he doesn't sound so much like an illiterate jackass. He's a major threat in the south, where a guy in a nice suit who can lie with a straight face already got himself a governorship and is now reaching for the stars.
I take a completely different tack. The media were easy on Deathsantis because he voiced what so many of them think. They, like the GQP/GOP, are "tired" of Covid and for them, it's over (though for the GQP, it's never existed in the first place). Anyone still wearing a mask or social distancing are doing "liberal fear performance theater."
Journalists give lip service to the elderly, the immunocompromised, and the youngest children who are vulnerable to Covid—hey, sorry, we all gotta go sometime, amirite?—and as for long Covid, nearly ignore it, even though we are learning more about just how awful it is. They want to go to parties, socialize, and have their kids in school full time, regardless of high numbers of cases (suck it teachers' union).
This is what happens when the American mainstream media establishment is corporatized either through ownership by mega-corporations or when its owners decide that the financial bottomline is more important than journalistic integrity.
Journalists in print, radio & TV/cable have decided that serving their corporate overlords & shareholders is more important than serving the public good.
Despite the shoddy & crappy work being done, some of them are being paid well that they've become numb & distant to the viewers &/or subscribers who trust them with the news.
What would happen if these well-paid newscasters & journalists lose their five or six figure salaries?
I disagree. I think journalists are giving voice to their own selfish desires, not those of ownership. With this last round of Omicron, many either got Covid or had family members and friends who did. They think they're immune now, even though having some immunity from one strain doesn't mean you can't become infected with a different strain. Now that their worst fears have come to pass and they faced down the "danger"—for many, Covid was "mild"—the attitude is "it's no big deal, we've all been sick so let's move on."
It's less about the money they make—though between that and the good health care their companies provide they are out of touch with so many Americans who do struggle and for whom even a "mild" illness can be devastating.
Honestly, I believe the selfish desires of journalists can sometimes overlap with their bosses in their media outlet & corporate ownership.
It's probably true if the mega-corp the media outlet belongs too has interests in the hospitality, travel, entertainment & leisure industries.
I agree with your point that their financial status & company-provided healthcare plans isolates them from the harsh realities of their fellow Americans who aren't financially stable & lack a good healthcare plan.
They definitely can. But I honestly don't think that is what drives journalists. They aren't pushing for people to take off masks so another division—like travel company—can drum up more business. They cover stories that are shaped by their own biases and attitudes as well as their immediate editor's. Depending on how big the story is, it can go higher, of course.
I know that most times the journalist writing the story is not the person writing the headline. The headline writer / page editor is begins the spin, and the corporate bosses influence is asserted.
Bullies like DeSantis always punch down, and the cowards and bootlickers cheer them on, lest they be punched themselves. The smug mug next to DeSantis looks like he’s ready to enforce the punch-down, too.
In this case the press might be both afraid of being punched and also doing a little punching-down themselves.
I saw several articles kicking DeSantis in the ass, and one (Politico) that seemed to actually justify him being such an asshole. I just don't think people care. It's a nothingburger story in the middle of a war.
All I could think of when I saw this was that these young people will never ever vote for this assh@le. Let’s not also forget that DeSantis’s own children go to private schools where masks and all other safety protocols have been in effect since day one.
The agony of the media in its attempts to honor a misbegotten credo of "bothsidesism" is showing again. Today we see this cowardice in covering the assholery of a likely presidential candidate (and he's running in November to keep his throne in Florida as well), but even worse is the wimpy coverage of the great economic news we received this morning - Biden could make it rain gold coins, and we'd hear about how cloudy it is today. I imagine the reportage on the Ukraine war is just as lazy. Please also read Dan Froomkin's latest on how the press just cannot get it right when reporting economic news. I'm just so damn fed up.
The "senile" thing is a throwaway comment just as it was for Trump, who isn't senile but is just plain Psycho.
The whole world is happy to have Biden as our president because his moves against Putin have been pitch perfect. Imagine Trump being in office. He would be helping Putin for no reason if not to try to impress his idol.
The WaPo just posted this article by Greg Sargent describing how Tucker and Just Dumb Vance are justifying doing a 180 on Ukraine. The best is Tucker’s excuse. The reason he didn’t take the threat of Putin starting a war seriously was “If the Russian threat were all that dire, President Biden wouldn’t have sent Harris abroad to handle diplomacy!”
What an ass. She went with Blinken. Sending them both was the clearest signal possible that Biden wasn't playing. Carlson will say the most misogynistic and racist crap possible because he's a dirtbag who has no justification for his own stupidity.
Tucker "One of America's Most Punchable Faces" Carlson challenged Biden's SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown-Jackson to reveal her LSAT scores.
Obviously, LSAT scores are only important for entering law school and doesn't always apply to a law student's career path after finishing school & passing the bar.
It's obviously a racist attack by Tuckums & Faux because they can't stand the idea of a Black American woman in the Supreme Court.
Great video. Jack Antonoff knows how to create an enthusiastic anthem. It took me away from all the bad news. Except I cannot help but think the press is bullied by this regime. They do not want to displease their daddies. Now I'll go back to thinking about music and fun.
Add the word "hypocrite" to the verboten list. DeSantis and others screech about the freedom to decide whether to mask, and then attack anyone who CHOOSES to wear a mask, and harangue them with debunked nonsense about masks being ineffective. Looks like the media has deemed access to this clown more important than holding him to any standard of decency.
Exactly
Do we "owe him an apology" for this too?
That was my thought, too, when I saw the videos. When will the media start making it clear that Republicans believe in freedom for them to force the rest of us to bend to their will? That is why they worship Putin.
Answer...NEVER.
Just check out sorryantivaxxer.com and see all those marks DeSadist has killed in Florida!
I agree with the "theater theory". It was the same obvious manipulation of the public discussion as that time the vice poodle Pence and his gang of clowns went to an NFL game so they could be filmed walking out when players took a knee during the national anthem. And of course, the press genuflected.
I was def recalling the Pence NFL act while writing abt DeSantis
By the way...Note how the CCCP has totally buried the story about Trump taking all those classified documents to Mar-A-Lardo. Nope, the CCCP don't want you to wonder about how many of those documents wound up in Putin's hands...
Oh, it's no big deal. They were in such a rush to get out, and besides it's just Trump being Trump.
Infuriating.
They sure dropped the story of the CIA having to extract our top Russian mole in 2017, a man who was so close to Putin he was able to send us pictures of documents on Putin’s desk:
“…the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics/russia-us-spy-extracted/index.html
Seems to me that story is relevant to what is happening now. Having that week-placed source of information still feeding us information during this crisis would have been a great help to the West.
Note that the Trump administration tried to also blame the media for supposedly speculating about the existence of a top Kremlin mole but CNN found not evidence that that ever happened.
I believe there was also an Israeli spy Trump spilled the beans to those grinning Russian "diplomats" about soon after he took office.
Oh Dean the Dork isn't interested in that at all.
BUT
When it comes to Hunter's laptop...
"Now we're in a situation where we need to make sure the parent's rights are protected" - Ron DeSantis, at a press conference in July2021, where he announced that there will be no mask mandates in the state of Florida, in opposition to CDC guidelines and the wishes of many local school boards, who were elected, of course, to represent and make decisions for ALL the parents and students. My first thought, when I saw him unload on those kids was: it's a sorry state of affairs when the Governor of your state is the least mature person on a stage full of high school students. What a jackass and a bully.
It is likely the students who removed their masks at DeSantis' rude dictate will spend the remainders of their lives wishing they had instead just punched the governor in the nose.
ha certainly possible!
Face it, the political press wants President DeSantis if they cannot have Trump back. He will bring nearly as much daily drama as his role model. Sadly for the country, he's smart enough to succeed where Trump failed, and we will be left in a kleptocratic oligarchy run by people who will make Trump and his thugs look like pussycats.
press loves GOP bullies
So much easier to write about than actually doing journalism...
They love drama. It's an easy byline. In reading about the war between Russia and Ukraine, it's obvious that some journalists are in over their heads.
I suspect that many of in the media are frightened by the idea of another Trump presidency and think that guys like Chris Christie and DeSantis are “normal” Republicans so they want to give them a boost. That shows just how successful Republicans have been in shifting the Overton Window for acceptable behavior. Too many in the media have no solid standards for judging acceptable behavior from politicians and federal judges, not even the basic behaviors required for upholding our democracy.
I recently listened to a podcast discussion about Putin’s thinking. One Russia expert said that Putin was almost certainly using the Bush/Cheney Iraq invasion as a model and a justification for his own actions. For example Putin would see the Bush administration’s false claims about Saddam being involved in 9/11, seeking yellow cake uranium from Niger and possessing WMD as no different than Putin’s “false flag” justifications for invading Ukraine. That thought had crossed my mind but I have not seen anyone else point that out — big surprise.
First of all, Chris Christie will never be president. Like Trump, he can't even win his home state. That said, I don't think the political press fears a Trump presidency and that, frankly is the problem. If they truly feared the impact of Trump, or the clones like DeSantis, Abbott, Noem, etc. they would report their actions as the radical, hate filled, Christo-fascist actions that they are. Rather than whining about Biden, they would be calling out Republican obstruction. Republican bullying. Republican radical misogyny. Republican racism. Using words like lies, radical, extreme, un-american, etc. rather than the weasel words that have become so pervasive in their vernacular.
You had me at "Chris Christie will never be president."
I agree that there chances of Christie becoming president are slim to none but that doesn’t mean the media doesn’t want to give him a platform. They like him because he schmoozes them. Just ask Mika about that.
That Mika has horrible taste in men.
LOL
He’s supposedly Rupert’s’selection’…
Amazing that his cheerleaders can’t see any connection between autocrat DeSantis and autocrat Putin. They’re along the same continuum. 🙄
It’s just so frustrating and infuriating that a thug like DeSantis continues to be normalized by our free press. DeSantis is no less an insurrectionist than the other thugs who attacked the Capitol. He and his administration are modeling the new American authoritarianism. Just like Trump, he operates and governs as if he, alone, rules, and only his wishes matter.
It can’t be the case that the press doesn’t see this. What else but abject cowardice can explain what keeps the press from covering this man and his administration as the proving ground of autocracy he/it is.
And he is only one of many Republican state executives and legislative bodies that the press cowardly refrains from covering as the laboratories of autocracy that they have become.
It’s shameful.
How ironic that the press covers the war in Ukraine on one hand and on the other, they step toe around would be dictators like Trump and DeStantis right here at home.
The CCCP isn't playing dumb. The Corporate Controlled Conservative Press LOVES DeSADIST. If they can't have their beloved Trump back in the Oval Office they will do anything to put DeSADIST there.
And DeSatanist knows it. He's touting himself as Trump II in the event the Orange Plague chooses not to run, or even if he does. Ron is younger, smarter, more adept at manipulation of the press, who worshipped him as the man who beat covid in Florida even as the people there were dropping like flies. He can out-bullshit the press better than Trump, and because he's smarter, he doesn't sound so much like an illiterate jackass. He's a major threat in the south, where a guy in a nice suit who can lie with a straight face already got himself a governorship and is now reaching for the stars.
And the Presstitutes won't stop kissing his ass
They'll stick with him as long as he looks like a winner, even though there are so many ways to expose this sociopathic phony instead. Ask his wife.
I take a completely different tack. The media were easy on Deathsantis because he voiced what so many of them think. They, like the GQP/GOP, are "tired" of Covid and for them, it's over (though for the GQP, it's never existed in the first place). Anyone still wearing a mask or social distancing are doing "liberal fear performance theater."
Journalists give lip service to the elderly, the immunocompromised, and the youngest children who are vulnerable to Covid—hey, sorry, we all gotta go sometime, amirite?—and as for long Covid, nearly ignore it, even though we are learning more about just how awful it is. They want to go to parties, socialize, and have their kids in school full time, regardless of high numbers of cases (suck it teachers' union).
This is what happens when the American mainstream media establishment is corporatized either through ownership by mega-corporations or when its owners decide that the financial bottomline is more important than journalistic integrity.
Journalists in print, radio & TV/cable have decided that serving their corporate overlords & shareholders is more important than serving the public good.
Despite the shoddy & crappy work being done, some of them are being paid well that they've become numb & distant to the viewers &/or subscribers who trust them with the news.
What would happen if these well-paid newscasters & journalists lose their five or six figure salaries?
I disagree. I think journalists are giving voice to their own selfish desires, not those of ownership. With this last round of Omicron, many either got Covid or had family members and friends who did. They think they're immune now, even though having some immunity from one strain doesn't mean you can't become infected with a different strain. Now that their worst fears have come to pass and they faced down the "danger"—for many, Covid was "mild"—the attitude is "it's no big deal, we've all been sick so let's move on."
It's less about the money they make—though between that and the good health care their companies provide they are out of touch with so many Americans who do struggle and for whom even a "mild" illness can be devastating.
Honestly, I believe the selfish desires of journalists can sometimes overlap with their bosses in their media outlet & corporate ownership.
It's probably true if the mega-corp the media outlet belongs too has interests in the hospitality, travel, entertainment & leisure industries.
I agree with your point that their financial status & company-provided healthcare plans isolates them from the harsh realities of their fellow Americans who aren't financially stable & lack a good healthcare plan.
They definitely can. But I honestly don't think that is what drives journalists. They aren't pushing for people to take off masks so another division—like travel company—can drum up more business. They cover stories that are shaped by their own biases and attitudes as well as their immediate editor's. Depending on how big the story is, it can go higher, of course.
And they are lemmings rushing to cover the same story, and blind to the distortion of the media/political bubble they live within.
I know that most times the journalist writing the story is not the person writing the headline. The headline writer / page editor is begins the spin, and the corporate bosses influence is asserted.
Bullies like DeSantis always punch down, and the cowards and bootlickers cheer them on, lest they be punched themselves. The smug mug next to DeSantis looks like he’s ready to enforce the punch-down, too.
In this case the press might be both afraid of being punched and also doing a little punching-down themselves.
I saw several articles kicking DeSantis in the ass, and one (Politico) that seemed to actually justify him being such an asshole. I just don't think people care. It's a nothingburger story in the middle of a war.
All I could think of when I saw this was that these young people will never ever vote for this assh@le. Let’s not also forget that DeSantis’s own children go to private schools where masks and all other safety protocols have been in effect since day one.
The agony of the media in its attempts to honor a misbegotten credo of "bothsidesism" is showing again. Today we see this cowardice in covering the assholery of a likely presidential candidate (and he's running in November to keep his throne in Florida as well), but even worse is the wimpy coverage of the great economic news we received this morning - Biden could make it rain gold coins, and we'd hear about how cloudy it is today. I imagine the reportage on the Ukraine war is just as lazy. Please also read Dan Froomkin's latest on how the press just cannot get it right when reporting economic news. I'm just so damn fed up.
And what’s the latest update on the ‘senile’ thread for Joe B…? He pretty much destroyed the whole narrative Tuesday night… and just 🦗🦗🦗? Really?
The "senile" thing is a throwaway comment just as it was for Trump, who isn't senile but is just plain Psycho.
The whole world is happy to have Biden as our president because his moves against Putin have been pitch perfect. Imagine Trump being in office. He would be helping Putin for no reason if not to try to impress his idol.
It’s the major storyline on him by 🦊. Viewers are completely saturated.
The WaPo just posted this article by Greg Sargent describing how Tucker and Just Dumb Vance are justifying doing a 180 on Ukraine. The best is Tucker’s excuse. The reason he didn’t take the threat of Putin starting a war seriously was “If the Russian threat were all that dire, President Biden wouldn’t have sent Harris abroad to handle diplomacy!”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/04/tucker-carlson-jd-vance-self-doubt-putin-ukraine/
It’s Biden’s and Harris’s fault that Tuckum got duped!
What an ass. She went with Blinken. Sending them both was the clearest signal possible that Biden wasn't playing. Carlson will say the most misogynistic and racist crap possible because he's a dirtbag who has no justification for his own stupidity.
And he’ll keep saying it til his ratings start to dwindle in that area.
Tucker "One of America's Most Punchable Faces" Carlson challenged Biden's SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown-Jackson to reveal her LSAT scores.
Obviously, LSAT scores are only important for entering law school and doesn't always apply to a law student's career path after finishing school & passing the bar.
It's obviously a racist attack by Tuckums & Faux because they can't stand the idea of a Black American woman in the Supreme Court.
I was shocked at how ACB got a massive pass on paper thin credentials, but then, I’m picky abt lifetime appointees I guess …
Just remember what the Republicans did to Debo Adegbile. And watch the Republican assholes on the Judiciary Committee trash Judge Jackson.
Great video. Jack Antonoff knows how to create an enthusiastic anthem. It took me away from all the bad news. Except I cannot help but think the press is bullied by this regime. They do not want to displease their daddies. Now I'll go back to thinking about music and fun.