Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Monday, July 09, 2012
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Mitt Romney, the Rudy Giuliani of 2012
Before the memory fades, let’s mentally trundle back to the early summer of 2007; Hillary Clinton had a wide lead in the polls over John Edwards and that jug-eared upstart from Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama; on the GOP side of the street, Rudy Giuliani was the clear favorite of Republicans, unless TV actor Fred Thompson decided to enter the race.
The cynical media successors to the Madmen that inhabit the glass-walled canyons of lower Manhattan, dispensing infotainment, gossip and opinion under the banner of ‘news’ -- akin to telling us rubes with a straight face that Cheez Whiz is a healthy product of nature -- and their even madder-men colleagues who toil in the shadow of Capitol Hill in Washington, had all but anointed Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani as America’s Inevitable Choices for President at this time in the election cycle of 2007. Anyone with a television, access to cable news, and a strong stomach could hear the punditry burble day and night with omniscient assurance that the media-dubbed ‘America’s Mayor’ and certified Hero of 9/11 -- mainly because he gave press conferences and didn’t cower in a bunker -- was just so gosh-darned popular that no other candidates need apply except, maybe, Reaganesque actor Fred ‘The Craggy Gravitas of a President’ Thompson.
Some of us with the aforementioned TV, cable access, and a supply of airsickness bags, also drifted over to C-SPAN to catch the various candidates’ unfiltered speeches on the trail. This presented a different picture of Giuliani; in front of a live audience, the former mayor of New York City was sweaty, nervous, lisping and, worst of all for a politician, a clunking bore devoid of charisma. The response of the gawking civilians to his boilerplate GOP solutions stitched together by his frequent references to 9/11, as if Bush’s faltering economy could be tamed by War On Terror demagoguery, was tepid at best. At the end of Rudy’s tedious tirades, the C-SPAN cameras would draw back to reveal Giuliani’s politely-applauding potential voters as mostly unenthusiastic and weary -- at least those not actually asleep on their feet. It did not take much, even for the rabble who are not on a first name basis with D.C. Insiders, to see that Rudy in the flesh, stripped of his cloak of media worship, really was the sad, awkward embodiment of Joe Biden’s later quip, “a noun, a verb and 9/11.” Our Big Media, in typical form, misdiagnosed that the election of 2008 would be all about protecting us from religion-inspired terrorists and who better to do that than a dull, peevish New Yorker who once wasted taxpayer money trying to have a painting banned because it offended his Catholic sensibilities? (Incidentally, the ‘Reaganesque’ Fred Thompson did run, wrapped like a corndog in media-conferred gravitas, and also turned into a shambling heap of sleep-inducing ho-hum, dropping out early with his numbers in the tank. Without a Hollywood script, old Fred was drowning in a sea of self-created monotony.)
Similarly, Mitt Romney is a Godsend for insomniacs. Aside from the fact that he has flip-flopped more often than a Sea World attraction, Romney on C-Span is the same unsharpened pencil he was during the 2008 primaries, with a couple of important carry-over features that even Giuliani lacked: 1.) Mitt exudes insincerity as if he had soaked in musk oil. His one-cylinder ideology could fit on the back of a cereal box with room to spare for a cartoon character and full list of polysyllabic test tube ingredients, mostly the same GOP bumper-sticker nostrums that have already brought us to the brink of disaster, but his beady-eyed lack of authenticity in delivering the goods is significant. 2.) Romney is an unabashed Mormon in a party whose primaries are greatly controlled by born-again ‘Christians’ who think Unitarians consort with the devil and Methodists are destined for hell. To some of these Christopublicans, a Mormon is as exotically evil as a Rastafarian and worthy of the same fiery fate. Since they won’t be voting for Mitt, and the Tea Partiers recoil in disgust from his Taxachussetts liberal to wingnut firebrand hypocrisy, it’s hard to see who will vote for him in the primaries.
As with Giuliani, Romney has a recognizable name, bales of money, a constituency within the Pundit Class and Power Elite, and a temporary lead in the polls, but that’s not enough to secure him the GOP nomination this year. He’s a noun, a verb and it’s time for a nap, and won’t be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
Copyright 2011 RS Janes.
http://tattlesnake.blogspot.com
The cynical media successors to the Madmen that inhabit the glass-walled canyons of lower Manhattan, dispensing infotainment, gossip and opinion under the banner of ‘news’ -- akin to telling us rubes with a straight face that Cheez Whiz is a healthy product of nature -- and their even madder-men colleagues who toil in the shadow of Capitol Hill in Washington, had all but anointed Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani as America’s Inevitable Choices for President at this time in the election cycle of 2007. Anyone with a television, access to cable news, and a strong stomach could hear the punditry burble day and night with omniscient assurance that the media-dubbed ‘America’s Mayor’ and certified Hero of 9/11 -- mainly because he gave press conferences and didn’t cower in a bunker -- was just so gosh-darned popular that no other candidates need apply except, maybe, Reaganesque actor Fred ‘The Craggy Gravitas of a President’ Thompson.
Some of us with the aforementioned TV, cable access, and a supply of airsickness bags, also drifted over to C-SPAN to catch the various candidates’ unfiltered speeches on the trail. This presented a different picture of Giuliani; in front of a live audience, the former mayor of New York City was sweaty, nervous, lisping and, worst of all for a politician, a clunking bore devoid of charisma. The response of the gawking civilians to his boilerplate GOP solutions stitched together by his frequent references to 9/11, as if Bush’s faltering economy could be tamed by War On Terror demagoguery, was tepid at best. At the end of Rudy’s tedious tirades, the C-SPAN cameras would draw back to reveal Giuliani’s politely-applauding potential voters as mostly unenthusiastic and weary -- at least those not actually asleep on their feet. It did not take much, even for the rabble who are not on a first name basis with D.C. Insiders, to see that Rudy in the flesh, stripped of his cloak of media worship, really was the sad, awkward embodiment of Joe Biden’s later quip, “a noun, a verb and 9/11.” Our Big Media, in typical form, misdiagnosed that the election of 2008 would be all about protecting us from religion-inspired terrorists and who better to do that than a dull, peevish New Yorker who once wasted taxpayer money trying to have a painting banned because it offended his Catholic sensibilities? (Incidentally, the ‘Reaganesque’ Fred Thompson did run, wrapped like a corndog in media-conferred gravitas, and also turned into a shambling heap of sleep-inducing ho-hum, dropping out early with his numbers in the tank. Without a Hollywood script, old Fred was drowning in a sea of self-created monotony.)
Similarly, Mitt Romney is a Godsend for insomniacs. Aside from the fact that he has flip-flopped more often than a Sea World attraction, Romney on C-Span is the same unsharpened pencil he was during the 2008 primaries, with a couple of important carry-over features that even Giuliani lacked: 1.) Mitt exudes insincerity as if he had soaked in musk oil. His one-cylinder ideology could fit on the back of a cereal box with room to spare for a cartoon character and full list of polysyllabic test tube ingredients, mostly the same GOP bumper-sticker nostrums that have already brought us to the brink of disaster, but his beady-eyed lack of authenticity in delivering the goods is significant. 2.) Romney is an unabashed Mormon in a party whose primaries are greatly controlled by born-again ‘Christians’ who think Unitarians consort with the devil and Methodists are destined for hell. To some of these Christopublicans, a Mormon is as exotically evil as a Rastafarian and worthy of the same fiery fate. Since they won’t be voting for Mitt, and the Tea Partiers recoil in disgust from his Taxachussetts liberal to wingnut firebrand hypocrisy, it’s hard to see who will vote for him in the primaries.
As with Giuliani, Romney has a recognizable name, bales of money, a constituency within the Pundit Class and Power Elite, and a temporary lead in the polls, but that’s not enough to secure him the GOP nomination this year. He’s a noun, a verb and it’s time for a nap, and won’t be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
Copyright 2011 RS Janes.
http://tattlesnake.blogspot.com
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Facts of the Leisure Class
"All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to the judicious use of sabotage."
-- Thorstein Veblen, author of "The Theory of the Leisure Class."
Left click on image to enlarge.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Iowa at Year's End: Media Sleepwalking in the Field of Bad Dreams
"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome."
-- George Orwell
The sister-state-with-a-good-personality that advertises as a tourist trap the actual Field of Dreams from the eponymously-titled 1989 film primps its porky self every four years and welcomes in the gentlemen callers and call girls of the Official National News Media, the camp followers of the dingy foam of beady-eyed political pros and effervescent caucus volunteers that cling like barnacles to the campaigns of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, their carnival-colored buses, turgid classic rock anthems, and overbearing optimism blaring with certainty that Something Wicked This Way Comes. "Open wide, Iowa, while I shove my meglomaniacal happy-face ersatz altruism down your throat," is the tacit campaign slogan of every candidate, no matter in what slot of the political roulette wheel the ideological ball has fallen.
While the Field of Dreams Movie Site, 200 miles west of Chicago in Dyersville, Iowa, is closed from November through April, the frenetic campaigns fueled by dreams of power are open for business, even as snow piles up on the state highways and cars veer crazily in uncontrolled ice skids; proof that indomitable ego is stronger than poor weather or plain sense. It's not a fit night for man nor beast out there, so in what category should we place these relentlessly upbeat glad-handers lusting to be your next president?
It's a moot point how many of the candidates actually visit the movie's cornfield-edged baseball diamond as the whole state becomes a living nightmare of bull-horn marketing and meals interrupted by the forced handshakes of grinning creatures dedicated to 'public service,' still trying to tie up that Senior Class Presidency that eluded them ages ago, hoping to convince the next suspicious yokel or milk-fed maiden, high on the fumes from deep-fried corn dogs or congealing pork grease, that only they can master the Free World by dint of eerily whitened teeth and EZ-Read soundbite solutions. Meanwhile, parts of the state have been gutted into ghost towns by the sacred corporate Free Trade Economy touted by most of the Serious Candidates as the Ultimate Cure, along with ethanol subsidies, for low-wage work, outsourcing jobs overseas, the disillusioned unemployed, higher prices, and the recently emerging housing catastrophe. Said ghost towns and vacant factories are rarely on the itinerary of the candidates unless it's to make a point about their ineffectual opponents: Too many uncomfortable angry questions; too much blatant misery for an upbeat flag-festooned backdrop amiable to the national camera eye. "This is America? Boarded-up windows, 'For Sale Cheap' signs, empty plants and desolate streets?" the discomfited viewer might ponder. Just add some Wal-Mart boxes with 'Made in China' crossed out and you've hit a home run of the utter despair that's hollowed out pockets of the Midwest and Plains states, all but ignored in the roar of cars and buses hastening to the next campaign stop.
Instead of risking a damaging collision with brutal reality, the potential presidents tend to hew to the wood-trimmed Affluenza of chummy restaurants and whole-bean coffee shops where the home-grown clientele is more likely to be employed and willing to ask pre-digested questions provided by the candidate's advance team. That the Solons of Big Mediocracy often edge out the local bumpkins in the front rows at these events is only as it should be -- the candidate needs video of him or herself issuing proclamations from Mount Sinai of optimistic change, hard-won experience, lower taxes, and fun for everyone but terrorists, and must impress the media Conveyors of Conventional Wisdom to cite an attribute of probity or wit for the next day's column, stand-up report, or TV chatterbox visit. That the Sages of the Print Page or Plasma Screen often instead meander into lengthy disquisitions on the price of the candidate's haircut, where they attended elementary school, or whether they prefer pearls or diamonds, gossipy effluvia that would have made Walter Winchell cringe, never dispels this hope. Of course, should the candidate shout with joy too close to the microphone or claim to have seen something inexplicable in the sky, the Bought and Bored Press Corps, and their Masters back at Corporate News Central, will verbally straight-jacket the candidate and reprimand them to a media rubber room as 'unelectable' with the not-so-subtle subtext: 'They're too crazy to be president.' That's all right, goes their thinking -- they were, coincidentally, just a little too uncomfortably populist for corporate branding anyway.
While the Big Media can't bring themselves to call the sitting president a liar as he laughingly flaunts his prevarications repeatedly to their faces and carefully self-censors any mention of that protuberant personality flaw, they eagerly tag themselves junior psychologists as they ferret out the 'true character' of the various deprived-of-sufficient-childhood-affection Senators, Governors and Congressional inhabitants running for the office from such trivia as the price of haircuts and the depth of necklines.
And just who is this regiment of over-paid Invaders from the East who desert their McMansions and Significant Others to traipse into the cold barrens of the Midwest, delivering news of the future Electoral-College-chosen King or Queen to the Boobs couched in front of the Tubes, Internet, broadcast or cable? They are bright eye-winking ornaments on the acceptable vanilla frosting of the Big Media cake; dependably and willingly servile to the interests of the Corporate Class, and therefore incapable of making waves if they were drowning. The worst excrescence of the Broadcast News school of journalism, exceptional as to facial features or modulated voice or hair texture, but neutered in pursuit of any story other than those pre-approved by the glass-walled fortresses of malarkey in New York, or the flourescent-lit shrines of anonymously-sourced information in Washington. They remember Dan Rather and the Bush AWOL documents; they won't be going there.
While some may be aware that the tripe they promulgate would disgust any self-respecting fish caught wrapped in it, the forgettable and often erroneous vapors they exude satisfies the dictates of Conventional Wisdom -- that sour stew cooked up by their editors, publishers, program directors, or executive producers of what is safe to say and what opinions match the ongoing effort to keep the parent corporation profitable and the public subdued. Their careers, mortgages and children's college funds all depend upon them ignoring the sacking of Rome to provide reports on how the Visigoths were dressed or a detailed analysis of the sharpness of the weapons used.
It's illustrative that the newly-minted Despot of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, reportedly prefers being interviewed by Western journalists, specifically those from the World's Only Superpower. As Tariq Ali writes in "Daughter of the West": "...the general [Musharraf] often contrasted the deference with which he was treated by the US networks ... with the 'unruly' questioning inflicted on him by local journalists: it 'misled the people'."
The current crop of candidates crisscrossing Iowa need have no real nightsweats; we have the best-trained, most deferential journalists in the world -- no truly 'unruly' questions will drop from their lips to 'mislead' the people, only trivia tricks and shallow 'gotchas' to numb their minds into ignoring the sources of their thin wallets and vanishing Constitution.
As in every election year for the past two decades, it is incumbent upon any American who cares about the country, and the dimensions of the southbound handbasket into which it's being deposited by our corporate and governmental elite, to find out about the candidates using the Big Media only for a point of reference or comic relief. Aside from the backbone of the Internet, C-Span is offering the speeches and public events of the various Party Chosen, a much better way to gauge their character than the strained pap presented by our biased American media, assiduously working on behalf of their corporate parents and Washington overseers.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). ... You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."©1955, 1966 by the University of Chicago.
-- Milton Mayer on the rise of fascism in Hitler's Germany, from "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45," published by the University of Chicago Press.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Headlines at a Glance Edition
Who Knows -- They Might Even Be Real Someday
Bush Seeks 'Decision Czar' to Run Executive Branch
"I'm the decider," says president, "and I decided we needed somebody to make the decisions around here."
Rice Asks for 'New Strategy' in Middle East
"But no one should imply that the old one isn't working fine, of course," the Secretary of State tells reporters
New GOP Bill Says Illegal Immigrants Should Be Sold to Highest Bidder
"This is the traditional American way we dealt with unskilled workers who came over here for jobs," says bill co-sponsor Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, "I think it's time we tried it again."
Cheney: Iran Bought Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger
"We have the proof," claims vice president, "We just received the intelligence documents from Italy."
Phil Leotardo Named New US Ambassador to Iraq
"So he's not real and he's dead," says White House press aide, "He'll fit right in over there."
Bill O'Reilly Wins Nobel Prize in Fiction
"It took them long enough," jokes political pundit as Stockholm committee names "Culture Warrior" for top award
Paris Hilton to Run for L.A. County Sheriff
Celebrity heiress: "This is my first move to show everybody I'm not really dumb."
TV Actor Arrested in Motel Room with Rental Car Navigation System
"This is unnatural, disgusting," says police spokesperson, "Pants down, drooling -- I can't even describe what he was trying to do to it -- he was mumbling something about 'awesome Chinese' when we caught him."
US Senior Found Who Exists Without Prescription Medication
"Not even an aspirin," says Hugo Wayback, 81, "and I'm healthy as a horse."
Hasselhoff Slated for Hip Operation
"Everybody thinks I'm passé, out of it," says actor, "I'll show them."
Super TB Man Hired to Prosecute JFK Plotters
Andrew Speaker claims if there's a case here, he'll find it
Bush Seeks 'Decision Czar' to Run Executive Branch
"I'm the decider," says president, "and I decided we needed somebody to make the decisions around here."
Rice Asks for 'New Strategy' in Middle East
"But no one should imply that the old one isn't working fine, of course," the Secretary of State tells reporters
New GOP Bill Says Illegal Immigrants Should Be Sold to Highest Bidder
"This is the traditional American way we dealt with unskilled workers who came over here for jobs," says bill co-sponsor Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, "I think it's time we tried it again."
Cheney: Iran Bought Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger
"We have the proof," claims vice president, "We just received the intelligence documents from Italy."
Phil Leotardo Named New US Ambassador to Iraq
"So he's not real and he's dead," says White House press aide, "He'll fit right in over there."
Bill O'Reilly Wins Nobel Prize in Fiction
"It took them long enough," jokes political pundit as Stockholm committee names "Culture Warrior" for top award
Paris Hilton to Run for L.A. County Sheriff
Celebrity heiress: "This is my first move to show everybody I'm not really dumb."
TV Actor Arrested in Motel Room with Rental Car Navigation System
"This is unnatural, disgusting," says police spokesperson, "Pants down, drooling -- I can't even describe what he was trying to do to it -- he was mumbling something about 'awesome Chinese' when we caught him."
US Senior Found Who Exists Without Prescription Medication
"Not even an aspirin," says Hugo Wayback, 81, "and I'm healthy as a horse."
Hasselhoff Slated for Hip Operation
"Everybody thinks I'm passé, out of it," says actor, "I'll show them."
Super TB Man Hired to Prosecute JFK Plotters
Andrew Speaker claims if there's a case here, he'll find it
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Virginia Tech Killer: Who Does It Sound Like? Edition
"It would be a gross deception to admit power intoxication only for the individual psyche. The mass also is guided by this goal and the effect of this is the more devastating as in the mass psyche the feeling of personal responsibility is essentially reduced."
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
"The close relationship between politics and power has always been recognized. In the world of politics, Lassalles' expression still has currency: 'Constitutional struggles are struggles for power.' ..... Masaryk's expression, 'There will be no peace in the world as long as individual ethics do not also apply to the state,' is as much a criticism of the present as a challenge for the future."
-- Alexander Mueller, "The Principles of Individual Psychology."
April 19, 2007 -- On MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, the subject, as it has been on most of the cable news shows recently, was once again the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui.
Keith's been better at plowing this gutted field for new information than most of the news media, but what caught my attention were the words and phrases uttered by his guest experts.
Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary described Cho Seung-Hui as full of "paranoid delusions," addicted to his own "grandiosity,"and someone who wanted to gain "power through violence."
Later in the show Keith welcomed Dr. Susan Lipkins, a psychologist, who gave her professional perspective on the crazed murderer, depicting him as "operating outside of reality" and exhibiting "extreme behavior" as a result. She added that, typically, psychotic killers "think that they are god" at which time they should be "removed from society" when they are "found to be incompetent."
This morning Melissa Segrest had an article up at MSN, "Getting Inside the Mind of a Killer." She also consulted experts who rendered their opinions on the Virginia Tech maniac.
Dr. James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Boston's Northeastern University who has spent 25 years studying mass murderers, said, "Typically you have someone who has a long history of frustration and failure..." and "They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment." He added, "they are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
Dr. Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist who works with violent criminals and heads International Trauma Associates, told Segrest, "A lot of times these people are somewhat aloof from people. They're very sensitive to slights," and summed up, "They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Dr. Stanton Samenow, a clinical psychologist who has been has been studying killers since 1970 and wrote the book "Inside the Criminal Mind," added, "These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Samenow also said, "These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught .... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance. At the time they commit the crime, they are calm -- having shut off all fear."
Dr. Butterworth put in, "We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
And Dr. Fox concluded, "We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island." Later, he said, "The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
Read through these quotes and what picture emerges -- who does it sound like?
"[P]aranoid delusions," "grandiosity" gaining "power through violence."
"operating outside of reality" "extreme behavior" "think that they are god."
Just look at the history of the Bush Administration; paranoid delusions about the power of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; obvious grandiosity and god-like thinking in Bush believing he was installed as president by the Creator of the Universe; gaining power through violence is in progress in the Middle East, if not in this country; some might consider invading another country on false pretenses and killing innocent civilians was extreme behavior; and operating outside of reality is the modus operandi of the Bushies and their neocon supporters.
"[They have] a long history of frustration and failure...They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment. [T]hey are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
The Bush neocon 'experiment' has been one long trail of frustration and failure, and the Bush neocons pathologically evade responsibility and blame others for their failures. The media neocons -- O'Reilly, Hannity, Boortz, et al -- are hair-triggers seething with anger, blame and resentment and appeal to an audience similarly ill-disposed.
"These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes ... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Both the neocons and the Bushies are prime examples of this: political disagreements are always personal, and they can't deal with adversity maturely. Every slight or failure is a challenge to their manhood. Thinking in extremes and angry at the world? Read Ann Coulter, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweilers, Little Green Footballs, Charles Krauthammer or listen to Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz or Rush Limbaugh.
"These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught.... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance."
Isn't this a pretty good description of the Bush Administration? From using false intelligence to invade Iraq, to leaking Valerie Plame's name, to Alberto Gonzales' blatant lies, to the current fiasco over Rove's emails, ad nauseum, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but were deliberate and purposeful in their planning to accomplish their treacherous and illegal goals.
"They're very sensitive to slights,...They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Check out who advertises on neocon websites, and the fascination with guns, general unfriendliness, problems with females and social ineptitude should be clear. Sensitivity to slights -- have you ever known anyone as thin-skinned as a neocon?
"We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
Read the neocon blogs -- it doesn't get more angry, narcissistic and prone to attack than that.
"We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island. ... The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
The entire greedy, demented consumer culture, the one advertised and promoted every day by the six big US media conglomerates and global corporations, and wallowed in by the Bush neocons, has no tolerance or pity for losers. "The good calls are for winners." Losers -- usually defined as minorities, Democrats, women and liberals -- are mercilessly derided by right-wing sites, who, steeped in their fervid delusions and contrary to harsh reality, think they are winners with all the answers. They don't realize the only winners are the corporations and their political and media shills making a buck off them and conning them for votes. At some point, they will have a rude awakening as they are 'voted off the island' by those they idolized when they lose their job, their pension or their house. (It's happening every day.) Then, they might be enlightened by reality but, more likely, they'll just crawl further back in the cave, alternately bellowing and whimpering. And, yes, they do seem to derive great satisfaction from the deaths of those they've deemed the enemy -- Iraqi insurgents, Afghanis, Muslims in general, Spanish-speaking immigrants, poor blacks and, of course, the Devil's minions who are the fount of all the world's problems, liberals and Democrats.
They should be "removed from society [when they are] "found to be incompetent."
I don't think this government's monumental incompetence is even an issue for reasonable debate any longer. In the case of the Bushies, impeachment is the obvious answer to remove them from doing further harm. In the case of the neocons, they have, and should have, freedom of speech, so they can say or write whatever they want, but I'd keep them away from the Glock 9mm's just in case.
Most of them are only courageous when hiding behind a screen name or a microphone -- hence the paltry number of neocon frothers who've signed up to fight in Bush's Global War on Terror -- but you never know when one of them might take some Viagra and go off half-cocked.
"To prevail through violence appears to many as an obvious thought. And we admit: the simplest way to attain everything that is good and promises happiness, or even only what is in the line of a continuous evolution seems to be by means of power. But where in the life of men or in the history of mankind has such an attempt ever succeeded? As far as we can see, even the use of mild violence awakens opposition everywhere, even where the welfare of the subjugated is obviously intended."
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
"The close relationship between politics and power has always been recognized. In the world of politics, Lassalles' expression still has currency: 'Constitutional struggles are struggles for power.' ..... Masaryk's expression, 'There will be no peace in the world as long as individual ethics do not also apply to the state,' is as much a criticism of the present as a challenge for the future."
-- Alexander Mueller, "The Principles of Individual Psychology."
April 19, 2007 -- On MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, the subject, as it has been on most of the cable news shows recently, was once again the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui.
Keith's been better at plowing this gutted field for new information than most of the news media, but what caught my attention were the words and phrases uttered by his guest experts.
Former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary described Cho Seung-Hui as full of "paranoid delusions," addicted to his own "grandiosity,"and someone who wanted to gain "power through violence."
Later in the show Keith welcomed Dr. Susan Lipkins, a psychologist, who gave her professional perspective on the crazed murderer, depicting him as "operating outside of reality" and exhibiting "extreme behavior" as a result. She added that, typically, psychotic killers "think that they are god" at which time they should be "removed from society" when they are "found to be incompetent."
This morning Melissa Segrest had an article up at MSN, "Getting Inside the Mind of a Killer." She also consulted experts who rendered their opinions on the Virginia Tech maniac.
Dr. James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Boston's Northeastern University who has spent 25 years studying mass murderers, said, "Typically you have someone who has a long history of frustration and failure..." and "They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment." He added, "they are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
Dr. Robert R. Butterworth, a Los Angeles psychologist who works with violent criminals and heads International Trauma Associates, told Segrest, "A lot of times these people are somewhat aloof from people. They're very sensitive to slights," and summed up, "They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Dr. Stanton Samenow, a clinical psychologist who has been has been studying killers since 1970 and wrote the book "Inside the Criminal Mind," added, "These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Samenow also said, "These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught .... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance. At the time they commit the crime, they are calm -- having shut off all fear."
Dr. Butterworth put in, "We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
And Dr. Fox concluded, "We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island." Later, he said, "The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
Read through these quotes and what picture emerges -- who does it sound like?
"[P]aranoid delusions," "grandiosity" gaining "power through violence."
"operating outside of reality" "extreme behavior" "think that they are god."
Just look at the history of the Bush Administration; paranoid delusions about the power of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; obvious grandiosity and god-like thinking in Bush believing he was installed as president by the Creator of the Universe; gaining power through violence is in progress in the Middle East, if not in this country; some might consider invading another country on false pretenses and killing innocent civilians was extreme behavior; and operating outside of reality is the modus operandi of the Bushies and their neocon supporters.
"[They have] a long history of frustration and failure...They have a diminished capacity to cope with disappointment. [T]hey are people who blame others for those failures, they externalize blame, they never see themselves as responsible, ... and they're angry, they're full of blame and resentment."
The Bush neocon 'experiment' has been one long trail of frustration and failure, and the Bush neocons pathologically evade responsibility and blame others for their failures. The media neocons -- O'Reilly, Hannity, Boortz, et al -- are hair-triggers seething with anger, blame and resentment and appeal to an audience similarly ill-disposed.
"These men interpret any affront or adversity very personally. It threatens their very sense of who they are. They think in extremes ... They are constantly angry at a world that, from their perspective, does not give them what they are due."
Both the neocons and the Bushies are prime examples of this: political disagreements are always personal, and they can't deal with adversity maturely. Every slight or failure is a challenge to their manhood. Thinking in extremes and angry at the world? Read Ann Coulter, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweilers, Little Green Footballs, Charles Krauthammer or listen to Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz or Rush Limbaugh.
"These are people who know right from wrong. They also know the potential consequences to themselves if they are caught.... When they commit the crime, they are certain about their course of action. They are deliberate and purposeful. They may have planned the crime well in advance."
Isn't this a pretty good description of the Bush Administration? From using false intelligence to invade Iraq, to leaking Valerie Plame's name, to Alberto Gonzales' blatant lies, to the current fiasco over Rove's emails, ad nauseum, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but were deliberate and purposeful in their planning to accomplish their treacherous and illegal goals.
"They're very sensitive to slights,...They're not friendly, they're usually socially inept, they have problems a lot of times with females and sometimes they have a fascination with guns."
Check out who advertises on neocon websites, and the fascination with guns, general unfriendliness, problems with females and social ineptitude should be clear. Sensitivity to slights -- have you ever known anyone as thin-skinned as a neocon?
"We're developing a narcissistic, angry culture that, when crossed, are prone to attack."
Read the neocon blogs -- it doesn't get more angry, narcissistic and prone to attack than that.
"We've become much more of a competitive society. We admire the winners and we pity the losers. We have no tolerance for them. We ridicule them and vote them off the island. ... The more people they kill, the greater the level of satisfaction they feel and derive from the crime."
The entire greedy, demented consumer culture, the one advertised and promoted every day by the six big US media conglomerates and global corporations, and wallowed in by the Bush neocons, has no tolerance or pity for losers. "The good calls are for winners." Losers -- usually defined as minorities, Democrats, women and liberals -- are mercilessly derided by right-wing sites, who, steeped in their fervid delusions and contrary to harsh reality, think they are winners with all the answers. They don't realize the only winners are the corporations and their political and media shills making a buck off them and conning them for votes. At some point, they will have a rude awakening as they are 'voted off the island' by those they idolized when they lose their job, their pension or their house. (It's happening every day.) Then, they might be enlightened by reality but, more likely, they'll just crawl further back in the cave, alternately bellowing and whimpering. And, yes, they do seem to derive great satisfaction from the deaths of those they've deemed the enemy -- Iraqi insurgents, Afghanis, Muslims in general, Spanish-speaking immigrants, poor blacks and, of course, the Devil's minions who are the fount of all the world's problems, liberals and Democrats.
They should be "removed from society [when they are] "found to be incompetent."
I don't think this government's monumental incompetence is even an issue for reasonable debate any longer. In the case of the Bushies, impeachment is the obvious answer to remove them from doing further harm. In the case of the neocons, they have, and should have, freedom of speech, so they can say or write whatever they want, but I'd keep them away from the Glock 9mm's just in case.
Most of them are only courageous when hiding behind a screen name or a microphone -- hence the paltry number of neocon frothers who've signed up to fight in Bush's Global War on Terror -- but you never know when one of them might take some Viagra and go off half-cocked.
"To prevail through violence appears to many as an obvious thought. And we admit: the simplest way to attain everything that is good and promises happiness, or even only what is in the line of a continuous evolution seems to be by means of power. But where in the life of men or in the history of mankind has such an attempt ever succeeded? As far as we can see, even the use of mild violence awakens opposition everywhere, even where the welfare of the subjugated is obviously intended."
-- Alfred Adler, "The Psychology of Power," 1928.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The America We Used to Know
Great work by John Sherffius. Presented without further comment.
The America We Used to Know
The America that was a model of justice in the world, not tyranny.
The America that championed human rights, not violated them.
The America that opposed torture, not the one that practices it.
The America that didn't engage in preemptive warfare.
The America that didn't spy on its own citizens.
The America that respected the Geneva Conventions.
The America that respected its own Constitution.
The America whose leaders didn't prey on fear.
It has been 5 years since September 11th -- has anyone seen that America?
We miss you so much.
-- From a cartoon by John Sherffius of the Boulder Daily Camera. Posted by Colleen, April 16, 2007 at Common Dreams.org.
Friday, April 13, 2007
CBS Firing Imus Signals the End of the Neocon Shock Radio Era
"CBS fires Don Imus from radio show"
-- AP headline, April 12, 2007.
"You ain't no racist, Mister Imus, nah suh. No, thank you, I don't want no watermelon!"
-- Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus' producer, using an 'Amos 'n' Andy' voice to a laughing Imus on his radio show, as quoted by Newsweek.
"An entertainer like Imus can trace his lineage to Bruce, with one crucial distinction: Lenny made fun of the powerful and their orthodoxies. You won't find Imus mocking WASPs on a regular basis. Instead, this rude dude focuses on groups whose status is still contested, such as blacks, immigrants, and gays."
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
"There are 100 people in this country right now that can solve hate television. They are the CEO of Procter & Gamble, the CEO of General Motors. These people control all the advertising dollars and they spoke... These CEOs can spend the money in places that don't promote hate."
-- Donnie Deutsch, the host of CNBC's "The Big Idea," quoted by Mike Celizic at TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
Things Change
April 13, 2007 -- Rush Limbaugh senses it coming, telling his listeners yesterday that he's next, and the other Rush wannabe radio bile spillers of the right may be dimly aware of it, but Don Imus' firing by CBS Radio, removing him from the air nationwide, augurs the end of their run of nasty spittle-flecked bigotry disguised as 'humor'; a vicious humor designed to appeal to their core audience of Angry White Men who blame minorities and women because they're losers, ignorant boys cowering in adult bodies, whispering racists, snickering water-cooler-wit a-holes, and mutant teenagers who thought the Garbage Pail Kids were brilliant comedy.
It won't happen overnight, as major societal changes rarely do, but gradually advertisers will begin pulling ads from Limbaugh and his clones, realizing that the country has shifted away from the mean-spirited neocon tripe they've successfully peddled for over two decades and is heading in a new direction.
Most media analysts will credit Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with bringing Imus down; they'll focus on the "nappy-headed ho's" remark as the centerpiece of his downfall; all of it was certainly a factor but, if Imus were as popular as he was even a decade ago, his critics would have been ridiculed into silence or ignored. What I see happening now was expressed by Newsweek's Howard Fineman on the Imus show April 9th. He told the 'I-man': "[T]hings have changed. And the kind of -- some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore. And that's just the way it is."
Here's 'the way it is' these days: The country is becoming aware that "nappy-headed ho's" are not the problem; the problem is the smooth-haired caucasian variety who infest the halls of power in Washington and the broadcast booths in New York.
While Imus may claim he's not a racist, a long trail of reprehensible remarks argues that he wears a white sheet in private. He or his 'crew' -- especially his execrable producer Bernard McGuirk -- have habitually referred to black people as "bugaloos," "brilloheads," "dark meat," "dingos," and "mandingos." He's called Sammy Davis Jr. a "a one-eyed lawn jockey," and regularly referred to Aretha Franklin and other black women as "ho's." Terms for other minorities like "raghead," "camel jockey," "gook," "zipperhead," "banana picker," and "our urine-colored brothers" have been uttered with sneering gusto on the Imus airwaves, as well as his bashing of gays with such tried-and-true nuggets as "homo," "fag," "faggot," "fag-queen," "queer," and "load-swallower." All in good fun, of course, Imus assures us -- as long as you're not black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Arab, gay or female.
Several years ago, Imus even promised columnist Clarence Page, who is black, that he would stop using racial slurs. Obviously, he didn't.
Notoriously he said in 1995 of black New York Times correspondent Gwen Ifill, "Isn't The Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He even admitted to 60 Minutes back in 2000 that he uses the 'N-word' in private, but never in public. (Uh, the ghost of Dr. King thanks you, Don.) On that same show, he said, "I don't apologize for offending people ... I know it's not politically correct, and I don't care."
Well, times have changed -- Imus was forced to care, and apologize, but it was much too little, too late. Imus is not by any means the worst of the bigoted shock jocks, however, just the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
The ludicrous age of victimized White Man Ranting is breathing its last as the promise that the Republicans would 'fix everything' has turned into a bitter joke under Bush. More and more Americans every day realize that it isn't blacks or women or some minority that's keeping them down, that is ruining our economy and our standing in the world; it's soft, rich, pampered ofay jerks like Limbaugh and his ilk that are pulling the strings putting them out of work and getting them killed in wrong-headed wars.
Ironically -- since the neocons so worship 'free markets' -- as the worm turns and the 'invisible hand' of economic reality asserts itself, advertisers will flee from the right side of the dial, anxious not to offend minorities or the many whites who are becoming cognizant of the fact that the neocon Republicans have been steadily destroying this country for the past six years, methodically dismantling a government designed to respond to the wishes and needs of the people and replacing it with an over-easy plutocracy that serves the privileged few at the expense of the majority.
The results of the last election and every poll since has shown that the majority of Americans are heading in a new direction, a direction that doesn't include the vitriol and spite of vain 'funnymen' like Imus and Rush.
Ratings for right-wing radio and TV shows have been steadily falling for three years running; even Bill O'Reilly has lost over a million viewers since 2004, and they won't be coming back. Most purchasers of the neocon ideology promoted by Bill and Rush and Fox News have realized it's a modern-day Edsel, one with four flat tires and an engine that doesn't run.
Rush, do you hear that growling at the door?
It's for you.
"What all you folks need, who still treat fellow human beings as 'black', 'white', 'yellow', or 'red', is to watch a Documentary entitled 'The Angry Eye' by Jane Elliott which is described as follows: Documentary which features Jane Elliott's blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise in discrimination involving college students forced to experience racist treatment minorities have received for years. Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Iowa in the 1960s when she developed her exercise on the effects of racism in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr."
-- Comment by JPBreeze at Common Dreams, April 10, 2007.
Sources for this piece include:
-- Mike Celizic, "Is Imus firing a turning point?" TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
-- Isaiah J. Poole, "Imus and Beyond," Tom Paine, April 11, 2007.
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
-- Philip Nobile, "A Catalogue of Slurs," Tom Paine.com, May 16, 2000.
-- Marcus Mabry, "The Ugly Truth About Imus, Power and the Press," Newsweek, April 11, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Cancellation: Statement from Media Matters," April 11, 2007.
-- Gwen Ifill, "Trash Talk Radio," The New York Times, April 10, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Has Long Record of Incendiary Remarks," April 9, 2007.
-- Adam Howard, "No More Imus," The Nation, April 9, 2007.
-- AP headline, April 12, 2007.
"You ain't no racist, Mister Imus, nah suh. No, thank you, I don't want no watermelon!"
-- Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus' producer, using an 'Amos 'n' Andy' voice to a laughing Imus on his radio show, as quoted by Newsweek.
"An entertainer like Imus can trace his lineage to Bruce, with one crucial distinction: Lenny made fun of the powerful and their orthodoxies. You won't find Imus mocking WASPs on a regular basis. Instead, this rude dude focuses on groups whose status is still contested, such as blacks, immigrants, and gays."
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
"There are 100 people in this country right now that can solve hate television. They are the CEO of Procter & Gamble, the CEO of General Motors. These people control all the advertising dollars and they spoke... These CEOs can spend the money in places that don't promote hate."
-- Donnie Deutsch, the host of CNBC's "The Big Idea," quoted by Mike Celizic at TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
Things Change
April 13, 2007 -- Rush Limbaugh senses it coming, telling his listeners yesterday that he's next, and the other Rush wannabe radio bile spillers of the right may be dimly aware of it, but Don Imus' firing by CBS Radio, removing him from the air nationwide, augurs the end of their run of nasty spittle-flecked bigotry disguised as 'humor'; a vicious humor designed to appeal to their core audience of Angry White Men who blame minorities and women because they're losers, ignorant boys cowering in adult bodies, whispering racists, snickering water-cooler-wit a-holes, and mutant teenagers who thought the Garbage Pail Kids were brilliant comedy.
It won't happen overnight, as major societal changes rarely do, but gradually advertisers will begin pulling ads from Limbaugh and his clones, realizing that the country has shifted away from the mean-spirited neocon tripe they've successfully peddled for over two decades and is heading in a new direction.
Most media analysts will credit Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with bringing Imus down; they'll focus on the "nappy-headed ho's" remark as the centerpiece of his downfall; all of it was certainly a factor but, if Imus were as popular as he was even a decade ago, his critics would have been ridiculed into silence or ignored. What I see happening now was expressed by Newsweek's Howard Fineman on the Imus show April 9th. He told the 'I-man': "[T]hings have changed. And the kind of -- some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore. And that's just the way it is."
Here's 'the way it is' these days: The country is becoming aware that "nappy-headed ho's" are not the problem; the problem is the smooth-haired caucasian variety who infest the halls of power in Washington and the broadcast booths in New York.
While Imus may claim he's not a racist, a long trail of reprehensible remarks argues that he wears a white sheet in private. He or his 'crew' -- especially his execrable producer Bernard McGuirk -- have habitually referred to black people as "bugaloos," "brilloheads," "dark meat," "dingos," and "mandingos." He's called Sammy Davis Jr. a "a one-eyed lawn jockey," and regularly referred to Aretha Franklin and other black women as "ho's." Terms for other minorities like "raghead," "camel jockey," "gook," "zipperhead," "banana picker," and "our urine-colored brothers" have been uttered with sneering gusto on the Imus airwaves, as well as his bashing of gays with such tried-and-true nuggets as "homo," "fag," "faggot," "fag-queen," "queer," and "load-swallower." All in good fun, of course, Imus assures us -- as long as you're not black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Arab, gay or female.
Several years ago, Imus even promised columnist Clarence Page, who is black, that he would stop using racial slurs. Obviously, he didn't.
Notoriously he said in 1995 of black New York Times correspondent Gwen Ifill, "Isn't The Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He even admitted to 60 Minutes back in 2000 that he uses the 'N-word' in private, but never in public. (Uh, the ghost of Dr. King thanks you, Don.) On that same show, he said, "I don't apologize for offending people ... I know it's not politically correct, and I don't care."
Well, times have changed -- Imus was forced to care, and apologize, but it was much too little, too late. Imus is not by any means the worst of the bigoted shock jocks, however, just the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
The ludicrous age of victimized White Man Ranting is breathing its last as the promise that the Republicans would 'fix everything' has turned into a bitter joke under Bush. More and more Americans every day realize that it isn't blacks or women or some minority that's keeping them down, that is ruining our economy and our standing in the world; it's soft, rich, pampered ofay jerks like Limbaugh and his ilk that are pulling the strings putting them out of work and getting them killed in wrong-headed wars.
Ironically -- since the neocons so worship 'free markets' -- as the worm turns and the 'invisible hand' of economic reality asserts itself, advertisers will flee from the right side of the dial, anxious not to offend minorities or the many whites who are becoming cognizant of the fact that the neocon Republicans have been steadily destroying this country for the past six years, methodically dismantling a government designed to respond to the wishes and needs of the people and replacing it with an over-easy plutocracy that serves the privileged few at the expense of the majority.
The results of the last election and every poll since has shown that the majority of Americans are heading in a new direction, a direction that doesn't include the vitriol and spite of vain 'funnymen' like Imus and Rush.
Ratings for right-wing radio and TV shows have been steadily falling for three years running; even Bill O'Reilly has lost over a million viewers since 2004, and they won't be coming back. Most purchasers of the neocon ideology promoted by Bill and Rush and Fox News have realized it's a modern-day Edsel, one with four flat tires and an engine that doesn't run.
Rush, do you hear that growling at the door?
It's for you.
"What all you folks need, who still treat fellow human beings as 'black', 'white', 'yellow', or 'red', is to watch a Documentary entitled 'The Angry Eye' by Jane Elliott which is described as follows: Documentary which features Jane Elliott's blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise in discrimination involving college students forced to experience racist treatment minorities have received for years. Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Iowa in the 1960s when she developed her exercise on the effects of racism in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr."
-- Comment by JPBreeze at Common Dreams, April 10, 2007.
Sources for this piece include:
-- Mike Celizic, "Is Imus firing a turning point?" TODAYshow.com, April 12, 2007.
-- Isaiah J. Poole, "Imus and Beyond," Tom Paine, April 11, 2007.
-- Richard Goldstein, "Celebrity Bigots," The Village Voice, July 18, 2000.
-- Philip Nobile, "A Catalogue of Slurs," Tom Paine.com, May 16, 2000.
-- Marcus Mabry, "The Ugly Truth About Imus, Power and the Press," Newsweek, April 11, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Cancellation: Statement from Media Matters," April 11, 2007.
-- Gwen Ifill, "Trash Talk Radio," The New York Times, April 10, 2007.
-- Media Matters, "Imus Has Long Record of Incendiary Remarks," April 9, 2007.
-- Adam Howard, "No More Imus," The Nation, April 9, 2007.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Headlines of the Future: Don Imus Edition
April 11, 2007: Imus Fired From MSNBC
April 13, 2007: NBC President Claims He Never Heard of Imus Before Firing Him, Anywhere, Ever
April 16, 2007: CBS Cancels 'I-Man' After He Calls News Anchor Couric a "Snappy-Haired Snore"
April 17, 2007: Rutgers Team Meets with Imus; Recommends Castration, Lethal Injection for Beleaguered TV-Radio Host
April 18, 2007: Stetson Nixes Imus Spots After "Crappy-Hatted Bores" Slap at Texans
April 20, 2007: Imus Loses Every Sponsor Except Denny's Restaurants
April 27, 2007: Imus Off Air In US Radio, TV Markets
May 3, 2007: Former Radio Giant Don Imus Hired as Graveyard Jock at 5K WHUP-AM in Stumblefluck, Alabama
May 30, 2007: Imus Dropped From WHUP-AM Line Up; "Don Just Didn't Notch the Ratings We Expected," Says Station's Program Director
June 4, 2007: Former Imus Guest Bo Dietl Hospitalized for 'Continuous Cognitive Dissonance' and 'Gross Public Imbecility'; "Case is Incurable," Claims Doctor
July 6, 2007: Imus Starts College Lecture Tour at Bob Jones University
August 12, 2007: Don Imus Publishes Memoirs; "I Loves De Ho's" in Bookstores Friday
September 21, 2007: Imus Inks Endorsement Contract with Ho-Ho's
September 22, 2007: Imus Ho-Ho's Contract Dead After Interstate Bakeries Corp. President Reads Ex-Shock Jock's Memoirs; "I Thought He Was Writing About Snack Cakes," Explains Ho-Ho's Chief
November 7, 2007: TV's Celebrity Boxing Features Don Imus vs. Armstrong Williams Match
December 22, 2007: Controversial Media Figure Don Imus Retires from Show Business at Age 65
June 2, 2009: Where Are They Now? Imus Still Feisty in Retirement
October 12, 2012: Former Radio Star Don Imus Killed in Bar Fight with African-American Prostitute
April 13, 2007: NBC President Claims He Never Heard of Imus Before Firing Him, Anywhere, Ever
April 16, 2007: CBS Cancels 'I-Man' After He Calls News Anchor Couric a "Snappy-Haired Snore"
April 17, 2007: Rutgers Team Meets with Imus; Recommends Castration, Lethal Injection for Beleaguered TV-Radio Host
April 18, 2007: Stetson Nixes Imus Spots After "Crappy-Hatted Bores" Slap at Texans
April 20, 2007: Imus Loses Every Sponsor Except Denny's Restaurants
April 27, 2007: Imus Off Air In US Radio, TV Markets
May 3, 2007: Former Radio Giant Don Imus Hired as Graveyard Jock at 5K WHUP-AM in Stumblefluck, Alabama
May 30, 2007: Imus Dropped From WHUP-AM Line Up; "Don Just Didn't Notch the Ratings We Expected," Says Station's Program Director
June 4, 2007: Former Imus Guest Bo Dietl Hospitalized for 'Continuous Cognitive Dissonance' and 'Gross Public Imbecility'; "Case is Incurable," Claims Doctor
July 6, 2007: Imus Starts College Lecture Tour at Bob Jones University
August 12, 2007: Don Imus Publishes Memoirs; "I Loves De Ho's" in Bookstores Friday
September 21, 2007: Imus Inks Endorsement Contract with Ho-Ho's
September 22, 2007: Imus Ho-Ho's Contract Dead After Interstate Bakeries Corp. President Reads Ex-Shock Jock's Memoirs; "I Thought He Was Writing About Snack Cakes," Explains Ho-Ho's Chief
November 7, 2007: TV's Celebrity Boxing Features Don Imus vs. Armstrong Williams Match
December 22, 2007: Controversial Media Figure Don Imus Retires from Show Business at Age 65
June 2, 2009: Where Are They Now? Imus Still Feisty in Retirement
October 12, 2012: Former Radio Star Don Imus Killed in Bar Fight with African-American Prostitute
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Baghdad Johnny Defines 'Safe' Edition
McCain's Terminal Foot-in-Mouth Disease
"There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today. The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq."
-- Sen. John McCain on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show, supporting Bush's 'surge,' March 26, 2007.
"To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city [Baghdad] where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll."
-- Michael Ware, CNN correspondent in Baghdad, to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"Honestly, Wolf, you'll barely last twenty minutes out there. I dont know what part of 'Neverland' Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad."
-- Michael Ware, as quoted by Crooks and Liars.
"That's where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee."
-- John McCain to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"And to think that Gen. David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed humvee? I mean, in the hour since Sen. McCain's said this, I've spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There's multiple humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection. So, no, Sen. McCain is way off base on this one."
-- Michael Ware, ibid.
"I checked with General Petraeus's people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee."
-- John Roberts to John McCain, CNN, March 28, 2007.
"UPDATE: Now McCain is denying he ever said any of this, even though he said it on camera only yesterday AND in his denial today he repeats the claim that there are several 'safe neighborhoods' in Baghdad, though he qualifies his statement by saying that they are very dangerous safe neighborhoods (I'm not kidding)."
-- John Aravosis, "Demand that John McCain name that 'safe' neighborhood in Baghdad," AmericaBlog, March 28, 2007.
"After a heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain insisted Sunday that a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital was working and said Americans lacked a 'full picture' of the progress being made."
-- Kim Gamel. "McCain visits Baghdad market, proclaims U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown is working," AP, April 1, 2007.
April 3, 2007 -- Declining GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain [R-Dupe], accompanied by Gen. David Petraeus, toured a 'safe' market in Iraq on, appropriately, April Fool's Day for the benefit of US media cameras. CNN news floozie Kyra Phillips, embedded for the ride, reported that he was surrounded by inner, outer and perimeter rings of security, including snipers on roof tops; over 100 soldiers in all. Oh, and he was wearing fashionable body armor too, as well as the rest of the Republican Congressional delegation. The trip to the market was considered so safe that McCain and Co. were ferried from the Green Zone to the market place by Blackhawk helicopters guarded by Apache gunships. Little wonder with that kind of firepower that many of the Iraqi merchants were trying to give their wares away to McCain's party.
Gee, if we could only get the taxpayers to cough up the (borrowed) money to provide every Iraqi with this level of heavily-armed protection and assault helicopters, then these neighborhoods really would be safe.
Just think -- if Bush's 'surge' weren't working so well, Big Mac might have needed five or six rings of security to keep him safe from harm.
Of course, that market's safety was short-lived as insurgents returned to the neighborhood 24 hours after McCain's departure, something Big John doesn't want to dwell on in his embrace of dewy-eyed optimism that the escalation is working. Well, facts are stupid things, as Reagan once famously said, and I'm sure the senator agrees -- if only he could get the media to stop reporting what's going on over there, we could win -- in the November 2008 US presidential election, I mean, not in Iraq. Iraq, as everyone with a functioning brain knows, is a hopeless case.
Incidentally, the AP article noted that over 600 Iraqis have been killed in 'sectarian violence' since McCain burbled his March 26th idiocy.
McCain apparently has a different definition of safety for Iraqis compared to safety in his home state of Arizona, where the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 445 deaths statewide due to murder or non-negligent manslaughter for the year 2005.
600 Iraqis in a week versus 445 Arizonans in a year? Something, or someone, is a little unbalanced here.
"There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today. The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq."
-- Sen. John McCain on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show, supporting Bush's 'surge,' March 26, 2007.
"To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city [Baghdad] where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll."
-- Michael Ware, CNN correspondent in Baghdad, to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"Honestly, Wolf, you'll barely last twenty minutes out there. I dont know what part of 'Neverland' Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad."
-- Michael Ware, as quoted by Crooks and Liars.
"That's where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee."
-- John McCain to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, March 27, 2007.
"And to think that Gen. David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed humvee? I mean, in the hour since Sen. McCain's said this, I've spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There's multiple humvees around it, heavily armed. There's attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection. So, no, Sen. McCain is way off base on this one."
-- Michael Ware, ibid.
"I checked with General Petraeus's people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee."
-- John Roberts to John McCain, CNN, March 28, 2007.
"UPDATE: Now McCain is denying he ever said any of this, even though he said it on camera only yesterday AND in his denial today he repeats the claim that there are several 'safe neighborhoods' in Baghdad, though he qualifies his statement by saying that they are very dangerous safe neighborhoods (I'm not kidding)."
-- John Aravosis, "Demand that John McCain name that 'safe' neighborhood in Baghdad," AmericaBlog, March 28, 2007.
"After a heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain insisted Sunday that a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital was working and said Americans lacked a 'full picture' of the progress being made."
-- Kim Gamel. "McCain visits Baghdad market, proclaims U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown is working," AP, April 1, 2007.
April 3, 2007 -- Declining GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain [R-Dupe], accompanied by Gen. David Petraeus, toured a 'safe' market in Iraq on, appropriately, April Fool's Day for the benefit of US media cameras. CNN news floozie Kyra Phillips, embedded for the ride, reported that he was surrounded by inner, outer and perimeter rings of security, including snipers on roof tops; over 100 soldiers in all. Oh, and he was wearing fashionable body armor too, as well as the rest of the Republican Congressional delegation. The trip to the market was considered so safe that McCain and Co. were ferried from the Green Zone to the market place by Blackhawk helicopters guarded by Apache gunships. Little wonder with that kind of firepower that many of the Iraqi merchants were trying to give their wares away to McCain's party.
Gee, if we could only get the taxpayers to cough up the (borrowed) money to provide every Iraqi with this level of heavily-armed protection and assault helicopters, then these neighborhoods really would be safe.
Just think -- if Bush's 'surge' weren't working so well, Big Mac might have needed five or six rings of security to keep him safe from harm.
Of course, that market's safety was short-lived as insurgents returned to the neighborhood 24 hours after McCain's departure, something Big John doesn't want to dwell on in his embrace of dewy-eyed optimism that the escalation is working. Well, facts are stupid things, as Reagan once famously said, and I'm sure the senator agrees -- if only he could get the media to stop reporting what's going on over there, we could win -- in the November 2008 US presidential election, I mean, not in Iraq. Iraq, as everyone with a functioning brain knows, is a hopeless case.
Incidentally, the AP article noted that over 600 Iraqis have been killed in 'sectarian violence' since McCain burbled his March 26th idiocy.
McCain apparently has a different definition of safety for Iraqis compared to safety in his home state of Arizona, where the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 445 deaths statewide due to murder or non-negligent manslaughter for the year 2005.
600 Iraqis in a week versus 445 Arizonans in a year? Something, or someone, is a little unbalanced here.
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