It’s impossible to escape the breathless (and brainless) reporting of the sad, sad, spectacle that is the Republican Presidential primary, but what’s most painful, not to mention infuriating, is watching the media treat it as a serious exercise, when it’s anything but. Last week the New York Times bothered to run a two-page foldout on [...]
Whenever I’m working out of town, it’s always a treat to listen to a different lefty talk station; when I was in Napa over Thanksgiving I tuned in daily to Green 960, a San Francisco-based Clear Channel station which, though lacking any local programming, has a good mix of national shows I don’t generally hear [...]
They’re everywhere – these little men. No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.” But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, [...]
Delighted as I am by the relentlessly cascading developments surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s beleaguered empire, I don’t share the optimism of worthies such as Eliot Spitzer who think Foxworld ought to now be investigated by the DOJ under FCPA, the pretty straightforward Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that News Corp has evidently repeatedly violated. For a lot [...]
I’ve been loath to post over the past few days, partly because I’m in Napa, and partly because the stupidity of the news of late leaves me depressed, tongue-tied, and even thirstier than usual. All such conditions lead inevitably to writer’s block, although the comic possibilities of Weinergate were admittedly tempting. I was finally roused [...]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy UPDATED BELOW: (UPDATE V: SUNDAY) Well, it seems that yet another mysterious “lone wolf,” acting completely spontaneously of course, has shot recently reelected Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a Tucson parking lot. In the head. Coincidentally, Sarah Palin has suddenly removed her infamous, [...]
Ted Koppel, one of the last eminences of the old broadcast news era, weighed in some days ago on the never-ending debate about how things just aren’t as august as they used to be (whenever that was) when it comes to informing the American people (instead of just yelling at them). Koppel targeted Fox News [...]
In this astonishing video, multimillionaire radio and TV Huckster Glenn Beck speaks, solemnly and with laughably faked empathy, to a bunch of rubes about how “we” are going to have to make deep sacrifices to pay off the Republican debt that faces the country. ”We” might lose our pensions. ”We” might lose our jobs. ”We” [...]
“At the Islamophobia command center, Murdoch’s News Corporation, the hypocrisy is, if anything, thicker. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial darkly cited unspecified ‘reports’ that Park51 has ‘money coming from Saudi charities or Gulf princes that also fund Wahabi madrassas.’ As Jon Stewart observed, this brand of innuendo could also be applied to News Corp., [...]
Last night on The Ed Show on MSNBC, guest Heidi Harris, a Las Vegas-based hate radio star, explained it all for me. You see, people like Dr. Laura can run around shouting “nigger” eleven times on the air, an act of which Heidi primly disapproves, because they’re syndicated, national, and make “millions of dollars.” It [...]