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I was listening to the Rachel Maddow Show last night (after MSNBC moved Countdown up to 10pm PST and didn’t tell me, so when I tuned in at 11, Countdown as already basically over), and was struck by one of the guests that she had on last night, David Frum. (Yay for transcripts, yo.) He was complaining about the way the election was being covered, with the tone of politics becoming much less civilized, and he cited the Rachel Maddow show as a good example, with the sarcasm and snark and apparent smearing going on as part of the ugliness of tone. Maddow popped an eyebrow, I’m sure, and said “Do you think that my tone on this show is equivalent to people calling Barack Obama somebody who pals around with terrorists, people yelling from the audience at McCain-Palin rallies, ‘Bomb Obama. Kill him. Off with his head. Traitor.’ Are you accusing me of an equivalence in tone?” And Frum went merrily a-dodging away, calling that question “not important” while later coming back to the idea that the political discourse in the country needs to get more intelligent and more high-minded, all Seriuz Bizness with no room for playfulness or sarcasm. He then went on to say that Demcorats don’t see the truth of the threats to the nation (that Republicans see prefectly clearly), for which Ms. Maddow called him on a baseless accusation, and pointed out that even though she does it with some bite and cheekiness, she is talking seriously about the issues. He suggested bringing Paul Wolfowitz on if she was serious about things, and she said, “Sure. I’ll ask him.” As his parting shot, he accused her and nameless others, probably MSM types, of a “symbiotic relationship of negativity.”
In what world, Mr. Frum, is a reporter/commentator’s decision to use wit, sarcasm, and a few biting remarks to deliver the news of what has been said and done equivalent to the uncensored, unvarnished, and most importantly, unrebuked, utterings of the Republican candidate’s supporters seriously believing that the opposition’s candidate for President deserves to die or has committed a treasonous act? “Symbiotic relationship of negativity” be damned, sir, this is reality, with actual people saying actual things at the candidate’s rallies and actual candidates not taking them to task on the matter, and furthermore, have actually encouraged this kind of thinking in their campaigns so far? If there’s a “symbiotic relationship of negativity”, sir, it rests on the fact that both candidates for the Republican ticket have been encouraging this line of thinking, and the vast army of conservative dittoheads have been spreading that negativity around, no matter how untrue it is. If you want to raise the level of discourse in this and future elections so that people talk about real issues of policy and plans, then it behooves the candidates and their major supporters to steadfastly stay away from character-based attacks and to squash untrue rumors, not only about themselves, but about their opponents, before they get too far out into the wild. So long as the campaign runs on “Who is Barack Obama?”, it cannot possibly hope to get to “Let’s discuss the differences between Barack Obama’s plans for health care and foreign policy and mine.”
It was a very bizarre experience on audio, feeling Ms. Maddow try to get her conservative guest to admit that he was makeing equivalency between sarcasm in news and someone seriously calling the opposition candidate a terrorist, and watching him refuse to admit it, but accuse Ms. Maddow of lowering the level of discourse in the country because she likes a little sarcasm in her coverage. And the worst part, according to Mr. Olbermann’s Worst Persons tonight, is that Frum then lied in a blog post about what he was going on the show about, claiming he was going to talk about Afghanistan. The pre-interview not having anything about Afghanistan on it at all, however, it seems rather unlikely that he would not have been alerted to the fact there was no Afghanistan on the program.
And thus, we have the news, sarcasm and all.
The commander of troops in Iraq is accusing Iran of bribing Iraqi officials to undermine the agreement that lets US troops stay in Iraq after their UN mandate expires. This is normal. Despite the increased calm in Iraq, kidnappings are on the rise worldwide. This is also normal. Iraqi leaders are meeting with oil companies for the exploitation of their fields. This, too, is normal, and hopefully the Iraqi people get a good deal for their resources so they can get cash enough to rebuild. Former world leaders came to a conference held by Mohammed Khatami, possibly helping him consider running against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's next elections as a moderate, although Khatami angrily denies that it has anything to do with presidential elections. That... may not be normal. Gunmen fire on the United States consulate in Mexico, which is totally not normal.
Domestically, The ombudsman of the Washignton Post responds to bias accusations after running several Obama stories together by pointing out that the Post has done plenty to help conservatives as well, and is responding to reader requests for stories, too. The MSM is always biased against your point of view, regardless of where your point of view is. This is a “fact”. In the truth, sure, editors have to be aware of the unwritten messages they’re sending, but they also have an obligation to select that which is newsworthy or interesting to run. In the case of conservative candidates, that usually means covering the things they said and did, much like it is for the liberal candidates. The ombudsman is saying “Yes, we need to be more careful about how we package things, because people will accuse us of bias for it, but let me also point out that we have run and were planning to run all sorts of stories, and then this financial meltdown took over.” In other words, a bad set of coincidences make the Post look pro-Obama. Perhaps tomorrow, a bad set of coincidences will make them look pro-McCain. Or, perhaps, the LA times will run a bad coincidence of a story and an image.
Huh. In one image, the tone and beliefs of the social conservative campaign against Senator Obama. Nevermind that most of those things on the sign aren’t true, as some Ohio Christians no doubt support the Senator, he is not a Muslim, nor has he killed any babies personally, I would think. And to add more, as well as a glimpse inside the mind of some of the more wingnuttery anti-Obama crowd, The Confederate Yankee takes a Telegraph story reprinted in the National Enquirer as the truth about one of Senator Obama's mentors, describing, pseudonymously, an encounter with he and his wife having sexual encounters with a 13-year old girl, consensually. And said Confederate Yankee uses the story as proof that the media is biased for Senator Obama, because they’ve buried this knowledge, despite knowing about it for months, and that the senator now has friends that are admitted child rapists, racists, and terrorists. The best part about it is that he also attributes no additional credibility to the Enquirer, so they’re still apparently known as exaggerating stories with out-of-context remarks, if not potentially making up most of the details, but when they write something about the people associated with Senator Obama, it must be true, no matter how outlandish it is.
And really, it’s not like this person was flaunting their sexual life in front of everyone else - publishing pseudonymously generally indicates wanting privacy, or at least not wanting people to be able to trace it back to you easily. So unless the Senator comes forward with child abuse allegations (and really, if that were the case, why would the Senator continue associating with someone who abused him?), then I suspect that this is trying for guilt by association, which is a big component of the social conservative attacks on Senator Obama anyway - it’s not that he’s anything (excepting perhaps a choice supporter), but he hangs out with all these weird, perverted people, so he must be a weird pervert, too. If we’re honest with ourselves, I suspect, we’re all weird and perverted on the inside, and we hang out with some weird and perverted people. After all, if the DSM says you’re a mental case if you happen to like kinkiness in your love life, then we’re all mental cases.
If we want to fight on the battleground of associations, then having a person on your presidential transition team who lobbied for Saddam Hussein can’t be a worthwhile venture.
Governor Palin is still racking up the oddities - she believed that people trying to hear her were protesting her, and rebuked them, reminiscent of whenever she gets off her talking points, with that moose-in-the-headlights look and apparent inability to form coherent context-aware sentences. Today, she looked much more polished, being able to stick to her talking points and even expand noe of the mantras to be context-aware. There’s also questions about who built her house, considering she had the identtiies of the people constructing it blocked from public view, and while the state trooper impropriety report said she was within her rights to fire him, the way it was done, with extreme clumsiness and leaving evidence of ethics violations all over the place, tells us more about the inability of Palin's administration than anything else. Do you want someone who can be so obviously partisan... and unable to clean up after herself, and who lies flat-out that the report cleared her of ethical violations when it most certainly did not?
Since we haven’t heard much of the current administration, because the focus has been on who will be the next administration, a free PDF of the 35 articles of impeachment written by Representative Kucinich, with annotations and additions - and you can buy it in printed form, if you like.
And then in general conservative land - the son of the founder of the National Review, who was writing a back-page column for them, endorsed Senator Obama off the pages of the National Review, and then the hate mail rolled in..., to the point where he and Kathleen Parker, who called Sarah Palin an embarrassment, can trade the nuggets of vitriol they receive on a regular basis with each other. Because of that, he offered to resign his column from the publication, and now writes on his blog, still getting plenty of hate mail from people who consider themselves conservatives. The party’s ugly side really is showing, so much so that they’re shunning anyone who doesn’t toe their line perfectly.
If that’s not your style, then maybe some comicing about how to "steal back" one's vote, if one lives anywhere where there's a possibility your vote could be counted improperly.
In the “Fodder for social conservatives” department, fetuses that are detected to have trisomy 21 are aborted 90% of the time. Or, in layman’s terms, nine of ten babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are aborted. This can be “eugenic abortion” to anti-choicers, or a triumph of science in detecting harmful genetic conditions and having the choice to terminate what would be a difficult existence before it begins. Yes, there’s slippery-sloping all the way down on what will be considered genetic defects, and I’m still holding out for what the statistics will be if/when a genetic marker that implies predisposition toward homosexuality is discovered - will we see some of this “eugenic abortion”, painted as a way of saving them from the sins of homosexuality, and of letting social conservative parents sleep better at night knowing they didn’t bring teh Gay into their household? (Or sit up and worry late at night which, if both of them, was infected with teh Gay and tried to pass it on to their children?)
Elsewhere, in opinions, the WSJ says that the country has been hoodwinked into taking North Korea off the state-sponsored terror list in exchange for basically empty promises, for checking what has already been checked and being stonewalled on anything else. John R. Bolton concurs, calling it a "surrender", saying it alienated allies, and was a product of being concerned with teh flash in the media rather than actual substance. He also feels this is a signal to Iran that the United States is not really tough on nuclear and will give up if pressured enough. For its part, the DPRK will begin re-closing the known nuclear plant at Yongbyon, and has let IAEA inspectors back into the country, also promising to let them verify that it has no nuclear ambitions.
In science (SCIENCE!), the results are in - nobody passed the Turing Test yet, but the winning machine came close. In other science, billboards that customize their ads at your touch, the differences between a rock and an iPhone, a startup with cash, but not saying anything about what they're doing, geek-enabled measuring cups, and how solving anti-spam measures like CAPTCHAs is improving computer AI.
And then, at the very end, the Year in beer drinking, a picture that would have been seen without the camera as a result of too much drinking, Portal: Prelude, an independently-developed prequel mod for legitimate copies of Portal, and what may be the very most awesome private library/museum in the world. Going in there to get inspiration or wonder should be no trouble at all.
In what world, Mr. Frum, is a reporter/commentator’s decision to use wit, sarcasm, and a few biting remarks to deliver the news of what has been said and done equivalent to the uncensored, unvarnished, and most importantly, unrebuked, utterings of the Republican candidate’s supporters seriously believing that the opposition’s candidate for President deserves to die or has committed a treasonous act? “Symbiotic relationship of negativity” be damned, sir, this is reality, with actual people saying actual things at the candidate’s rallies and actual candidates not taking them to task on the matter, and furthermore, have actually encouraged this kind of thinking in their campaigns so far? If there’s a “symbiotic relationship of negativity”, sir, it rests on the fact that both candidates for the Republican ticket have been encouraging this line of thinking, and the vast army of conservative dittoheads have been spreading that negativity around, no matter how untrue it is. If you want to raise the level of discourse in this and future elections so that people talk about real issues of policy and plans, then it behooves the candidates and their major supporters to steadfastly stay away from character-based attacks and to squash untrue rumors, not only about themselves, but about their opponents, before they get too far out into the wild. So long as the campaign runs on “Who is Barack Obama?”, it cannot possibly hope to get to “Let’s discuss the differences between Barack Obama’s plans for health care and foreign policy and mine.”
It was a very bizarre experience on audio, feeling Ms. Maddow try to get her conservative guest to admit that he was makeing equivalency between sarcasm in news and someone seriously calling the opposition candidate a terrorist, and watching him refuse to admit it, but accuse Ms. Maddow of lowering the level of discourse in the country because she likes a little sarcasm in her coverage. And the worst part, according to Mr. Olbermann’s Worst Persons tonight, is that Frum then lied in a blog post about what he was going on the show about, claiming he was going to talk about Afghanistan. The pre-interview not having anything about Afghanistan on it at all, however, it seems rather unlikely that he would not have been alerted to the fact there was no Afghanistan on the program.
And thus, we have the news, sarcasm and all.
The commander of troops in Iraq is accusing Iran of bribing Iraqi officials to undermine the agreement that lets US troops stay in Iraq after their UN mandate expires. This is normal. Despite the increased calm in Iraq, kidnappings are on the rise worldwide. This is also normal. Iraqi leaders are meeting with oil companies for the exploitation of their fields. This, too, is normal, and hopefully the Iraqi people get a good deal for their resources so they can get cash enough to rebuild. Former world leaders came to a conference held by Mohammed Khatami, possibly helping him consider running against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's next elections as a moderate, although Khatami angrily denies that it has anything to do with presidential elections. That... may not be normal. Gunmen fire on the United States consulate in Mexico, which is totally not normal.
Domestically, The ombudsman of the Washignton Post responds to bias accusations after running several Obama stories together by pointing out that the Post has done plenty to help conservatives as well, and is responding to reader requests for stories, too. The MSM is always biased against your point of view, regardless of where your point of view is. This is a “fact”. In the truth, sure, editors have to be aware of the unwritten messages they’re sending, but they also have an obligation to select that which is newsworthy or interesting to run. In the case of conservative candidates, that usually means covering the things they said and did, much like it is for the liberal candidates. The ombudsman is saying “Yes, we need to be more careful about how we package things, because people will accuse us of bias for it, but let me also point out that we have run and were planning to run all sorts of stories, and then this financial meltdown took over.” In other words, a bad set of coincidences make the Post look pro-Obama. Perhaps tomorrow, a bad set of coincidences will make them look pro-McCain. Or, perhaps, the LA times will run a bad coincidence of a story and an image.
Huh. In one image, the tone and beliefs of the social conservative campaign against Senator Obama. Nevermind that most of those things on the sign aren’t true, as some Ohio Christians no doubt support the Senator, he is not a Muslim, nor has he killed any babies personally, I would think. And to add more, as well as a glimpse inside the mind of some of the more wingnuttery anti-Obama crowd, The Confederate Yankee takes a Telegraph story reprinted in the National Enquirer as the truth about one of Senator Obama's mentors, describing, pseudonymously, an encounter with he and his wife having sexual encounters with a 13-year old girl, consensually. And said Confederate Yankee uses the story as proof that the media is biased for Senator Obama, because they’ve buried this knowledge, despite knowing about it for months, and that the senator now has friends that are admitted child rapists, racists, and terrorists. The best part about it is that he also attributes no additional credibility to the Enquirer, so they’re still apparently known as exaggerating stories with out-of-context remarks, if not potentially making up most of the details, but when they write something about the people associated with Senator Obama, it must be true, no matter how outlandish it is.
And really, it’s not like this person was flaunting their sexual life in front of everyone else - publishing pseudonymously generally indicates wanting privacy, or at least not wanting people to be able to trace it back to you easily. So unless the Senator comes forward with child abuse allegations (and really, if that were the case, why would the Senator continue associating with someone who abused him?), then I suspect that this is trying for guilt by association, which is a big component of the social conservative attacks on Senator Obama anyway - it’s not that he’s anything (excepting perhaps a choice supporter), but he hangs out with all these weird, perverted people, so he must be a weird pervert, too. If we’re honest with ourselves, I suspect, we’re all weird and perverted on the inside, and we hang out with some weird and perverted people. After all, if the DSM says you’re a mental case if you happen to like kinkiness in your love life, then we’re all mental cases.
If we want to fight on the battleground of associations, then having a person on your presidential transition team who lobbied for Saddam Hussein can’t be a worthwhile venture.
Governor Palin is still racking up the oddities - she believed that people trying to hear her were protesting her, and rebuked them, reminiscent of whenever she gets off her talking points, with that moose-in-the-headlights look and apparent inability to form coherent context-aware sentences. Today, she looked much more polished, being able to stick to her talking points and even expand noe of the mantras to be context-aware. There’s also questions about who built her house, considering she had the identtiies of the people constructing it blocked from public view, and while the state trooper impropriety report said she was within her rights to fire him, the way it was done, with extreme clumsiness and leaving evidence of ethics violations all over the place, tells us more about the inability of Palin's administration than anything else. Do you want someone who can be so obviously partisan... and unable to clean up after herself, and who lies flat-out that the report cleared her of ethical violations when it most certainly did not?
Since we haven’t heard much of the current administration, because the focus has been on who will be the next administration, a free PDF of the 35 articles of impeachment written by Representative Kucinich, with annotations and additions - and you can buy it in printed form, if you like.
And then in general conservative land - the son of the founder of the National Review, who was writing a back-page column for them, endorsed Senator Obama off the pages of the National Review, and then the hate mail rolled in..., to the point where he and Kathleen Parker, who called Sarah Palin an embarrassment, can trade the nuggets of vitriol they receive on a regular basis with each other. Because of that, he offered to resign his column from the publication, and now writes on his blog, still getting plenty of hate mail from people who consider themselves conservatives. The party’s ugly side really is showing, so much so that they’re shunning anyone who doesn’t toe their line perfectly.
If that’s not your style, then maybe some comicing about how to "steal back" one's vote, if one lives anywhere where there's a possibility your vote could be counted improperly.
In the “Fodder for social conservatives” department, fetuses that are detected to have trisomy 21 are aborted 90% of the time. Or, in layman’s terms, nine of ten babies that are diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are aborted. This can be “eugenic abortion” to anti-choicers, or a triumph of science in detecting harmful genetic conditions and having the choice to terminate what would be a difficult existence before it begins. Yes, there’s slippery-sloping all the way down on what will be considered genetic defects, and I’m still holding out for what the statistics will be if/when a genetic marker that implies predisposition toward homosexuality is discovered - will we see some of this “eugenic abortion”, painted as a way of saving them from the sins of homosexuality, and of letting social conservative parents sleep better at night knowing they didn’t bring teh Gay into their household? (Or sit up and worry late at night which, if both of them, was infected with teh Gay and tried to pass it on to their children?)
Elsewhere, in opinions, the WSJ says that the country has been hoodwinked into taking North Korea off the state-sponsored terror list in exchange for basically empty promises, for checking what has already been checked and being stonewalled on anything else. John R. Bolton concurs, calling it a "surrender", saying it alienated allies, and was a product of being concerned with teh flash in the media rather than actual substance. He also feels this is a signal to Iran that the United States is not really tough on nuclear and will give up if pressured enough. For its part, the DPRK will begin re-closing the known nuclear plant at Yongbyon, and has let IAEA inspectors back into the country, also promising to let them verify that it has no nuclear ambitions.
In science (SCIENCE!), the results are in - nobody passed the Turing Test yet, but the winning machine came close. In other science, billboards that customize their ads at your touch, the differences between a rock and an iPhone, a startup with cash, but not saying anything about what they're doing, geek-enabled measuring cups, and how solving anti-spam measures like CAPTCHAs is improving computer AI.
And then, at the very end, the Year in beer drinking, a picture that would have been seen without the camera as a result of too much drinking, Portal: Prelude, an independently-developed prequel mod for legitimate copies of Portal, and what may be the very most awesome private library/museum in the world. Going in there to get inspiration or wonder should be no trouble at all.
