Political Journalism Fart Sound

Joe Lieberman’s sad send-off

Awww, poor Joe. Give me a minute, I'll try to figure out where I put my tiniest violin. Damned thing is always vanishing on me...

You can emulate mine if you want. It's a raised middle finger.

Fuck you Day by D.. wait, WAPOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I know, right?

Yes, that's one way to put it. The man was a weathervane for bad ideas, and Milbank's piece is a grotesque whitewash.

Yeah, he was already on the list of "why the fuck do we still talk to this asshole" years before campaigning for McCain and making a play to be the Republican VP pick. I guess the place names and dates are correct in that article, so the entire thing isn't a work of fiction.

From this article.

I'm feeling for that single mom that only makes $250k a year. :(

I love how sad they all look.

Working as intended.

Christ, it must be so difficult trying to live on $250k a year. Tell you what, how about you take my difficulties and I'll take yours, and we can see which situation we like better? No takebacks, though.

Good god, how rich did you have to be in your working years to retire on $180,000 of income? Median household is only $45k.

I'm not sure why the retirees are so glum. Their shit didn't change.

Maybe they're sad for the married couple living on half a mil a year.

They got theirs. Why you so glum?

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Seriously. You know what I would do if my taxes went up by less than 2% of my net income? I would pay them.

Man, I wish I had some investment income :(

Also single mom pays more in taxes than Mr. Alligator even makes. Boo fucking hoo.

That cartoon/infographic is likely designed to do more than resonate with its tiny, tiny target demographic or the infinitely larger group of people that self-identify as potentially rich in defiance of any actual wealth. It's also designed to troll the shit out of everyone else and get some good copy of people venting their spleen about the stereotypical HOW WILL WE MANAGE TO FULLY STOCK OUR STABLES CHAUNCEY rich person.

It's why going after facet's of Mitt's wealth directly (as opposed to side attacks like his possible tax avoidance) was not a winning angle, strategically, for his opponents. Ultimately "they hate the successful"is going to get a lot more things moving than horse angst.

Yo, where's that single girl or even the single lady with kids?
I'm kicking the wife out and hooking up with them!
I'll be Mr. mom and take care of the two kids while she goes out and works.

Oh boy, I hope drew tells us in graphic detail what he wants to do to these fictional representations.

Socialists like you are what is wrong with America! You probably drink the Queen Mother's favorite tea too, don't you? So ashamed.

Because they're old.

I argue that this is ineffective, because rather than allowing us to create our own strawmen, the artist made some for us. And ultimately, this is an attack at how tone-deaf the graphic is (rather than how we hate success), that one ounce of critical thinking is all that is needed to reveal the bias.

Two months ago Maureen Dowd didn't think Susan Rice should be SecState: exhibit A exhibit B

Today Maureen Dowd is upset that the President hasn't nominated more women for his cabinet.

I remember thinking, like twelve years ago or more when I first became politically aware, that Maureen Dowd was an especially venal and stupid political pundit. It's nice to see that jeffd circa age 21 was right about at least one thing!

What's actually galling here isn't Dowd's self-contradiction; that's arguably defensible. It's more that what Dowd does is just relentlessly parrots the current mainstream centrist thinking is on the topic du jour, throwing in a bunch of obnoxious diminutives in the process. I have no fucking idea how she's had a column in the NYT for as long as she has. Which is 18 fucking years and counting!

Maureen Dowd could make Bush look good. And did. And still does, from time to time.

I'm not sure we're on the same page here.

I have a hard time decided if Dowd or Friedman is a worse influence.

Worse influence? Friedman, hands down. Dowd's a far, far worse writer, but it seems most people are aware of just how awful she is.

Most people where? In the corridor of power that is the progressive webforum-o-sphere? I imagine among her target audience she's regarded as a gossipy specialist in profile fluff, but that isn't the same as being written off. Especially by the sort of Very Serious People she fluffs.

I suspect the serial skewering of Friedman among wonks over the last few years has probably percolated out to the point where wonks' bosses are now dimly aware that he's a bit of a laughingstock among the cool kids. Dowd not so much, even if she's probably ill-thought of by a lot of the same political nerds who scoff at Friedman (and of course have zero respect for Douhat). She hasn't made herself into a sort of hilarious meme the way Friedman did.

And, really... no offence to Krisfof, Bruni, Blow or Cohen, but really Gail Collins and Paul Krugman are the only two columnists they have who I'd actually go read for the sake of the authors. It's not a deep bench in proportion to the NYTimes' overall journalistic excellence. But then, the paper also has better things to do than field the best group of columnists (aka bloggers) when there's a vast glut of opinion online now.

Friedman spends a lot of time sucking up to venture capitalists and whore mongers, but it's not like they need his help. Dowd, by contrast, sneaks her horrible opinions in and you hear people repeat them who should know better.

So the Atlantic posted an "Advertorial" from the Church of Scientology and was allowing the Church to censor the comments section.

They have since taken it down.

Here is the Gawker link to an article about the article.

Who are the marketing geniuses behind this move?

They can't see, their new money hats are too big.

Geniuses with the buffest thetans, and very nice pension plans.

Jesus, Atlantic.

Cached



and....

Jesus, Atlantic.

Here's an idea about how to redeem yourself, Atlantic: run a story on how Miscavige's mother-in-law killed herself by shooting herself in the chest three times and then once in the head. With a long rifle.

Or that his wife hasn't been seen in public since 2007?

It's just the thetans that made her do that, man.

The Washington Post's writeup of Obama's press conference yesterday by Dana Milbanks is pretty bad.

It contains a lot of stupid concern trolling about how Obama's being needlessly antagonistic, but this line here really annoyed the shit out of me.

OH MY GOODNESS! HOW INSENSITIVE OF HIM!

Ah yes, the "we can't call people taking hostages hostage-takers" stuff again!

It's like we can just change the dates on all our old news articles and editorials!

Sorry, but if you're threatening to shoot the country if you don't get your list of demands, we can call your ass out on that all we want. Don't want to be called a bad guy with evidence? STOP BEING THE FUCKING BAD GUY.