John on September 5, 2010
Many have pointed out the ways in which Michael Gross’ piece on Palin seems both unfair and under sourced. I won’t rehash all of that. I’ll just comment on the one section that stood out to me: The term “prayer warrior” describes a person who offers a specific kind of supplication: asking God to direct an unseen battle between forces of light and darkness—literal angels and demons—that some Christians believe [...]
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John on September 2, 2010
It wasn’t that long ago that Joe Klein wrote a post titled Too Dumb to Thrive which concluded: It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos. Today, Klein has reversed course. He is now recommending something called “deliberative democracy” in which ordinary citizens are selected at random to make tough policy decisions. His post today even includes this line: “The public [...]
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John on August 31, 2010
I see, thanks to Warner Todd Huston at Big Journalism, that Dana Milbank is moving from his usual space at the Post to the Op Ed page. It’s not a coincidence that he’s leaving his old spot, where he’s been for six years, just one month prior to the publication of his new Glenn Beck bashing book. Here’s what’s likely going on. The Post, having looked at the book, decided [...]
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John on August 26, 2010
Notice the picture the NY Times is painting of this week’s primary results? Republican insurgents from the far right did well in Tuesday’s primaries. What their campaigns lack in logic, compassion and sensible policy seems to be counterbalanced by a fiercely committed voter base… This is an attack on voters thinly disguised as a critique of candidates: Much of the G.O.P’s fervid populist energy has been churned up by playing [...]
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John on August 24, 2010
Apparently, shutting down the listserv wasn’t enough to kill it. I spotted it lumbering through the dense undergrowth of the MSM just today. Over at Newsweek, former journolister Ben Adler recycles the talking points of former journolister Greg Sargent’s of the Washington Post. To appreciate what’s going on here, a bit of background is necessary… Last week, Greg Sargent was thrilled over Obama’s pro-Cordoba House speech, saying it would go [...]
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John on August 23, 2010
All I can say is wow…would not have expected this from Time: Amid a flurry of Democratic Party news releases and press conferences warning voters that Republicans are targeting Social Security for destruction, the President devoted his radio and Internet address last week to commemorating the 75th anniversary of the signing of the law that created the program. He cautioned that “some Republican leaders in Congress don’t seem to have [...]
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John on August 22, 2010
Here’s his thesis from yesterday’s column: So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right…that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York? This line of thought isn’t remotely original. Compare it to this line [...]
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John on August 18, 2010
Romesh Ratnesar, writing at Time magazine, says our concerns about Islamic extremism are overstated. In an effort to make that point, he seems to have forgotten about Major Hasan and the shootings at Ft. Hood: nine years after 9/11, the fight over the mosque near Ground Zero shows how obsessed we remain with an enemy that may no longer exist…The story of the past decade in the Muslim world is [...]
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John on August 11, 2010
Robert Bluey at Big Journalism finds this example of MSM neutrality. Watch this clip: The reporter in the above clip was actually suspended for exhibiting right-wing bias. Why? Because he dared to mention that President Obama was BP’s #1 cash recipient…which is a fact. Apparently, mentioning facts in news reports is now grounds for suspension at ABC if those facts might embarass THE ONE. Read the whole story at Big [...]
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John on August 11, 2010
Watch this clip, not just for the general confirmation that NBC tilts far to the left, but for the specific revelation that NBC’s owner, General Electric, stepped in when it worried the network was being too critical of Barack Obama: Does this surprise anyone?
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John on August 8, 2010
It seems to me that the truth ought to be a defense against any charge of racism or slander. You shouldn’t be able to generate outrage over the fact that person A calls person B a communist, for instance, if person B is on record identifying them-self as a communist. And yet that’s partly what Rachel Maddow does in her extremely lame attempt to prove that Fox News in general [...]
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John on August 8, 2010
In his last column, Krugman leveled a particularly nasty shot at Paul Ryan, calling him a flimflam artist. The response has not been very good, even from usually friendly quarters: I don’t think Ryan is a charlatan or a flim-flam artist. More to the point, I think he’s playing an important role, and one I’m happy to try and help him play: The worlds of liberals and conservatives are increasingly [...]
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John on August 6, 2010
The left’s favorite dictator has a diabolical new means of controlling the media and his plan is working: Shortages of basic foodstuffs have been mounting in Venezuela over the last three years, with specific products disappearing from store shelves in succession. At times, chicken is impossible to find; weeks later, it may be milk that’s hard to get. Against this backdrop, in late May, El Nacional, a Caracas daily, began [...]
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John on August 5, 2010
Having received no response to my e-mails to Dana Milbank, I sent the following letter to the Post’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander. I’ve decided to make it an open letter so it’s clear how I’m approaching this: Mr. Alexander, I am not a knee-jerk defender of Glenn Beck, but I was upset by some recent shots at him by Dana Milbank. There is a serious error of fact in Mr. Milbank’s [...]
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John on August 5, 2010
The conclusion to a somewhat disjointed post from last week: It’s fashionable to draw a parallel between MSNBC and Fox News. But MSNBC’s liberal commentary occupies just a couple hours of its evening lineup. It is intended as a supplement to the news, not a substitute for it. The premise of Fox News, Limbaugh etc. is that the mainstream media is totally corrupt and should be completely ignored in favor [...]
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John on August 4, 2010
It’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show. This tiny journalistic fig leaf appears midway through Dana Milbank’s latest article for the Washington Post. The remainder of Milbank’s 750 word piece is devoted to blaming Glenn Beck for violence committed by those who watch his show. Or, more specifically, the violence of two specific men who had watched Beck’s show. The first is [...]
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John on August 4, 2010
I used to be a fan of Newsweek, back in the late 80s I read it pretty often. In the 90s I was a season ticket holder at the Shakespeare Theater on 7th street in DC. I saw more than half of Shakespeare’s plays produced there, including an excellent production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. What do these two things have in common? Well, the #1 patron of the Shakespeare Theater, [...]
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John on August 3, 2010
You could put this down to competitive rivalry between two cable news giants. Then again, this sentiment just happens to echo what the far left media is saying: He backs it off quite a bit, but I think it’s safe to say he’s no fan. Does he have anything comprable to say about evening hosts on MSNBC? Don’t hold your breath.
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John on August 2, 2010
Time’s blogger Amy Sullivan, who last caught many conservatives attention for a post titled Why does Glenn Beck hate Jesus? is back with another dishonest attack on the right. She’s upset that some conservatives have a problem with the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. She wrote a post last Thursday titled “Are Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin Secretly French?” which may mark the first time a liberal blogger has complained that conservatives [...]
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John on July 30, 2010
In a widely read and discussed piece at the Daily Beast, Reihan Salan asks: Has a shadowy gang of left-wing journalists and intellectuals been plotting to manipulate the news cycle… His answer is, yes, perhaps so, but they’d be doing it with or without Journolist. Salan is more right than he probably knows. The list of those identified as former members of the group is now up to about 146 [...]
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