Official 2012 Democrat Gloating/Republican Tears Thread

I don't disagree with you about what the facts were at the time. I'm just saying that no matter how far ahead your candidate appears to be it's counterproductive to talk endlessly about how this one's in the bag, because it ain't over til it's over and it seems like a bad idea to me to convince people who might volunteer, donate, and/or vote on behalf of your candidate that maybe it's cool if they don't bother because trust us there's like no way we could possibly lose no matter what happens. And that's definitely the vibe I got when I was subjected to a straight week of it while on vacation (which, full disclosure, actually started a week later than I thought, so Obama's lead was even larger). I don't know though, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill; there are definitely more than enough irritating things about MSNBC as it is, and it's possible that I mentally exaggerated this aspect out of frustration at how bad all the rest of it was anyway.

There are numerous behaviors that they probably exhibited: herd behavior, Abilene paradox, bandwagons, false consensus, confirmation bias, etc. Add all these in with the desire to please the guy signing one's paycheck and you get your answer.

If you're going to compare MSNBC and Fox you really ought to make their actual news reporting your starting point, rather than their editorials. Yes MSNBC's editorial programming is about 50% liberal leaning. Is there any evidence that this influences their news reporting?

Oh man.

What was that about reality-based politics again?

Hahahahahahaha

Goodbye Dick

I never thought I would see the day Fox News kicked Rove off the air for being wrong.

Equally as quotable bit from the article Equis linked:

Congrats Morris, when it comes to politics, you're so dumb you make everyone else feel smarter by comparison.

I still think Megyn Kelly is my new favorite news anchor, even though I am basing that entirely on her election night performances. I think her Republican math line is going to be in whatever the textbooks of the future look like as a shot heard round the world, in the narrow American sense of the world. And I will attack with furious anger anyone or anything who seeks to recast that moment in some inside baseball boolsheet about Roger Ailes' feuds. Great vengeance, too. Probably.

http://videosift.com/video/Jon-Stewart-Nails-Megyn-Kelly

She's terribly guilty of turning into a raging liberal or even sane when it directly impacts her. Before it impacts her, it's a horrible government overreach. More realistically, she's playing a role on air, and actually has far more reasonable personal views. But I have trouble with all those people who are secretly reasonable and just putting on performance art that actively harms political discourse in this country.

I appreciate how trolly PPP is at times. Their twitter feed was snarky as fuck a while back as well.

There's also that part, and I resent having to fix to a quirky spelling of Megan, to be sure. But I don't much care about the circus aspect of it anymore; like the tobacco industry, there was a time when consumers were uninformed but now it's just free market suicide.

Hilariously they've been very good for election result accuracy.

Oh..how I want to nail Megyn Kelly soooooo bad. She reminds me of a really stupid girl I knew and grew up with. Smokin' hot but dumb as a wall, Cindy Brady with a lisp and curly hair....soooo bad.

You're an idiot.

On so many levels.

Next time maybe keep the creepy stuff to yourself, okay? Ugh.

That reminds me of a Qt3 post from 2004 that stuck in my head. Courtesy of Woolen Horde:

I don't think there's much in common between an embarrassing, potentially just "too much information" reveal about personal tastes that really says a lot more about the friends being jerk-offs if they make a big deal about it, and being a crass, sexist idiot with either a complete lack of self-awareness or just a sense of entitlement about how valid his shitty ideas are. YMMV.

Point taken. I stretched a bit for that and did not intend to provide tacit approval.

1) I echo the sentiments of all others here who think you're a creepy idiot.

2) Megyn Kelly actually is NOT dumb - she just pretends to be so that she can keep her job. There was a brilliant Daily Show piece about this a couple of years ago. I wish I could find and link it.

EDIT: Wait - I may be getting Megyn Kelly mixed up with another anchor on Fox, also blonde.

EDIT AGAIN: Yep - Gretchen Carlson from Fox & Friends. So Megyn Kelly might actually BE stupid.

Drew is still a creepy idiot.

I don't think there's strong evidence one way or another as to Kelly's intelligence. She doesn't have enough creative control over the content most of the time.

I just choose to believe that "math you do as Republican" is ad-libbing, and that it indicates a moment where the role slips and she's just frustrated as a professional at having to deal with the cosmic level of stupid that Rove was exhibiting that evening. Because Rove isn't stupid, so it might well have been a part of his Long Con via SuperPacs that wasn't well-executed, and it makes me happy to see him called out on his skill as a con man when it falters.

But then again, maybe she's just lucky there's no one there to call her out when she's bad at thinking in public. I have just enough self-awareness to know that a lot of times when I'm comfortable fixating on certain things it's a product of ingrained sexism, and I think that's especially true with the way people judge women relative to their male counterparts in this field. But I don't know at what point (call it the Palin horizon) avoiding historically discriminatory language becomes a plain denial of facts.

Smarts or no smarts I wouldn't feel too great having two X chromosomes and working for Fox News.

Fox's Kilmeade On How Fox Hires Female Hosts: "We Go Into The Victoria's Secret Catalogue And We Said, 'Can Any Of These People Talk?'"

I still wouldn't blame the recipient of sexism for institutional sexism. Brian Kilmeade is definitely an idiot and that comment is just as likely to reflect his own prejudices as Fox's. It's certainly true that Fox hires men irrespective of intelligence, but I wish that "appearance and charisma that appeals to their target demographics" wasn't so goddamn repellent all of the time.

Some of those specific comments by Kilmeade are pretty dickish, but come on:

Please name the network executives in charge of hiring on-air personalities who do not consider this factor. And by the way, Media Matters, thanks for making me defend Fox News. Jerks.

Isn't she a Scientologist?

Edit: Nevermind, I'm thinking of Greta van Susteren.

Edit edit: That said, I have a hard time getting over Megyn Kelley's bizarre post-VP debate antics where she went on and on about how if you're a 60+ guy trying to get back into the dating scene, don't act like Joe Biden because he just straight up turned her right off! Fox had most of their female cast out there saying stuff like this, but Megyn kept making barfy faces as she said it. Maybe it's the script she hates?

I've seen allusions on blogs and forum posts and whatnot sort of implying that there's some kind of Burlusconi-lite "let's get a bunch of really attractive women newsanchors" thing with Fox but I don't get the channel so it's hard to judge. It's not like anchordom in general doesn't tend to be a beauty contest.

As overtly scummy as it sounds when you come right out and say it, that's kind of how the world works.

As Mitch Hedberg said, "If you have to release bad news to the public, it would help if you're not ugly."

Yes and no. As I said I don't think it'd be an easy thing to prove but there is the extreme of Burlusconi-ism and the sort of thing ones sees on Spike TV (or, for that matter, gamer culture) and it's possible to take the first steps toward that just with, say, casting emphases and makeup. But that's less obvious to point to than, say, male-viewer-oriented wardrobe choices, which one sees with female weather anchors in many parts of the world.)

The distinction I'm trying to draw here is that it's one thing to say "in general there's a policy of hiring women on their looks, not uncommon in the TV business" and quite another to think that tells you something specific about Kelly.

I'm more shocked at saying she has a lisp. Say what? When?

You're confusing differently grotesque aspects of his post. That's from the description of the woman he grew up with that reminds him of Kelly according to his libido.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/12/fox-news-puts-karl-rove-on-the-bench.html

It's more of a "very narrow range of looks" type of thing than a "only hot women" thing. The Daily Show made fun of it

As a blonde white woman, I am having a really hard time distinguishing some of those women from each other.

Yeah, that's a little odd - #3 and #5 could be the same person, just with two different hairstyles.

I was having an especially hard time with 8 & 9.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlondeRepublicanSexKitten

I'm sure that's been linked on this discussion before. :P

That said, I'm pretty sure at least half of them aren't true believers, as much as cynically playing to the crowd. The whole thing is theatre supported by a few crazies who buy into it. Then there's the whole crazy person feedback scam aspect like playing up gold and being involved in gold buying, or playing up doomsday scenarios then selling people bomb shelters and survival gear.

It's the crazy person Home Shopping Network.

Noooo kidding. This is almost creepy.