Tom Ricks makes Fox anchor sad/uncomfortable

Discussion in 'The Sanctum Santorum' started by Bahimiron, Nov 28, 2012.

  1. Bahimiron Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    In an unsurprisingly short interview Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tom Ricks refers to the Benghazi situation as overhyped and lays the blame at the feet of Fox News who he describes as acting as an arm of the GOP.



    Since then he's been invited to further interviews, but doesn't appear to be that interested in playing political games.

    Fox, on the other hand, has graciously accepted Ricks' apologies for his behavior on the show.

    None of this should really surprise anyone who has seen Ricks appear on other shows. For instance, he and Keith Olbermann are probably not drinking buddies after this 2006 appearance.

  2. Talorc Worked The System

    Location:
    Perth
    Mr Ricks seems like a man who regularly gives no fucks. not even a single one.
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  3. Raife Magister Mundi Elyscape

    That's funny and includes a number of sick burns. I don't like a lot of the things Thomas Ricks does, but he certainly knew what would hurt there even if it didn't actually make much sense.
  4. Johan Osterman Hard Cider Gal

    On Fox News Senator McCain compares the attack on Benghazi to the raid on the bin Laden compound.

  5. Lum Fatbird

    Yes, I can't understand why Fox would have been blindsided by his views, given that his book on the Iraq war was entitled "Fiasco".
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  6. shift6 Magister Mundi Elyscape

    Who reads those? This is Fox news, man! The unvarnished truth! Fair and balanced!
  7. Dan Lawrence Sangry Grognard

    Location:
    Hall of Grudges
    Besides, that book title sounds European.
  8. EruditeDragon Armchair Designer

    Location:
    Central Wisconsin
    Yeah! Besides, only socialist LIEberal commies read BOOKS! Book learnin' just isn't the American way!

    ...as an avid book reader, that actually kinda hurt to type, even in jest... especially since that way of thinking actually seems to be gaining some traction.
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  9. Jerid BERSERKER

    I thought the only thing books were good for were book burning rallys?


    (You're right that kind of thing does kind of hurt to type out ):
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  10. peterb Armchair Designer

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  11. Lizard_King Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    I strongly disagree with Ricks, and while I'm unlikely to buy the book just to grief myself, I did write a bit about what the interview put on display. I just don't get how the "you see they stopped FIRING the generals" line got further than the jump to conclusions mat on the production line except that, as always, I'm happy to blame the marketability of Thomas Friedman-caliber insights.

    You want to fight better wars, you start with providing better incentives to politicians who start and manage them and the interest groups that coddle those leaders. Generals vary in competence but you don't want to listen to the "we should draft people so that they are terrible at fighting and the bloodbath discourages further involvement" guy on this one.
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  12. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    Interesting writeup, also hadn't read the Baffler article linked through.
  13. Lizard_King Already Beat BF's New Expansion

  14. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    I am actually going to have to go back to it because some kind of suicide-prevention mechanism prevented me from reading on after I got sidetracked into wiki'ing "thought leaders."
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  15. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    Lost it at "mental morlocks."

    It is indeed worth a read. I wouldn't have bothered with a rhetorical accusation of CIA-front-dom or bothered with a breezy gloss on Korean war defection (not, obviously, that it's apt to be as off-base as the 1950s understanding of those defections, but I don't care for breeziness when introducing historical puzzles which probably have tricky evidence-based stories to tell.) But, main point's on the money. And not just for the Atlantic, either.
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  16. Lizard_King Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    I came across their kind a while back when BoA hired them in anticipation of the Wikileaks release that never materialized. I guess they thought-led to victory there. And yeah, it overreaches.
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  17. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    Well, perhaps just thought-led to victory in the sense that they got mad paper and it turned out there wasn't dirt on BoA forthcoming?

    It honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least if some friends of friends of the CIA were dumping money on the Atlantic or its staff, but it's plainly not necessary given the abundance of fellow-morlocks flourishing without (literal) subsidies.
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  18. Lizard_King Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    The BoA thing seemed to be more about finding and discouraging the leaker before through with the full release, and then Assange got...distracted. That's the part that I think worked.

    Yeah I don't know, that OSS video I posted a while back made me a bit paranoid.
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  19. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    I didn't get around to finishing it. Academic bighshotdom filled with ex-OSS cadres, front activity galore in academic/student life/US public discourse intellectual sphere? Up to the point where I quit I was kind of feeling like "this was my assumption and I don't particularly need to learn the names involved?" Laziness maybe.
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  20. lesslucid This Is SEWIOUS

    I thought "Fiasco" was a good book. As a crazy foreign socialist I'd always assumed that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a bad one and the management of the war and occupation was handled badly, and therefore mostly tuned out the details that came though on the news. The book did a good job of laying out detail on just how badly managed the whole thing was and just how incompetently ideological the Bush administration was.

    I guess I'm less interested in this book, just because the subject matter doesn't really grab me. Also, I'm a bit disappointed to hear him trot out the "MSNBC is just a left-wing Fox" line. Rachel Maddow, for example, has an obvious political lean but she lives in reality. There might be as many as one commentator on Fox about whom you could say the same thing.
  21. Lizard_King Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    I think he's a good journalist but a lousy historian. It's a related but different skill set when your argument spans decades and relies extensively on secondary sources.
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  22. sinnick Elitist Negative Nancy

    Location:
    Ontario
    That was deeply misanthropic, but also very satisfying. I too loathe self-described "thought leaders".
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  23. Lum Fatbird

    I'm a thought follower






    aka I read things
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  24. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    This is more or less what I initially almost wrote when you were talking about the Generals, even if that was a worse book because of (mostly) that reason, plus whatever other reasons. History by non-historians is less likely to be "tight and rigorous and professional-mistake-free" than stuff inside the discipline, which is obviously still hit and miss.
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  25. First up against the wall
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