Enter a Parallel World at WashingtonPost.com
In this world, it’s the public that’s skeptical of an endless pursuit of victory, with a majority of respondents in recent polling saying they oppose the war.
Jim Naureckas
‘Ask Amy’ Says Ask Your Rapist If He Raped You
Amanda Hess, a blogger for Washington City Paper, wrote a sharp deconstruction (11/30/09) of Chicago Tribune advice columnist Amy “Ask Amy” Dickinson’s victim-blaming response (11/27/09) to a woman who wanted to know whether she was a victim of rape: Were you a victim? Yes. First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment. Hess […]
Not So Fast, Filibuster
The United States has made a dramatic change in its system of governance—with little debate or even attention paid in corporate media. The change is the vastly increased importance of the filibuster, a parliamentary maneuver that allows a minority of lawmakers—under current Senate rules, 41 out of 100—to indefinitely extend debate and prevent a final […]
More on Jon Meacham’s Strange Cheney Attraction
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham’s enthusiasm for Dick Cheney is not a new thing. Appearing on MSNBC back in 2004, Meacham praised the Republican National Convention speeches of Cheney and Sen. Zell Miller: If I taught at the Kennedy School, I would take these two speeches as ur-text of partisan rhetoric. I think it was a […]
WP (Re)inventing a Green Nuclear Renaissance
How many times does nuclear power get to have a “comeback”? At least one more, the Washington Post Anthony Faiola reports today (11/24/09), under the headline “Nuclear Power Regains Support,” and the subheads “Tool Against Climate Change” and “Even Green Groups See It as ‘Part of the Answer.’” The “greening of nuclear power” story is […]
Illegally Obtained Info Is a Big Scoop—or a Non-Story
The New York Times‘ reporter on the climate beat, Andrew Revkin, had a front-page story this weekend (11/20/09) detailing the contents of climate scientists’ private emails discussing global warming. Predictably, the emails are being taken out of context by climate change deniers—but more interesting to me is the fact that the focus is on the […]
For Parade Magazine, the Middle Class Starts at 100K
Claiming that “something needs to be done–and fast” to save Social Security, Parade magazine’s Gary Weiss (11/22/09) suggests a downside to the idea of raising the ceiling on taxed income, so that income above the current $106,800 would be subject to the Social Security tax: “Raising the cap is popular among Social Security reformers but […]
NYT Non-News Story Says It’s Time to Tighten Belts
The New York Times (11/23/09) has an editorial on its front page today disguised as a news story. Appearing under the headline “Federal Government Faces Balloon in Debt Payments,” Times business reporter Edmund Andrews makes an impassioned plea for the neo-Hooverist economics popular in corporate media: Claiming that “the government faces a payment shock similar […]
NYT Charts the Choices of Selfless Politicians
The remarkable ability to engage in in-depth discussion of lawmakers’ opposition to healthcare reform efforts without ever mentioning the massive contributions such lawmakers tend to receive from the healthcare industry is not confined to the Washington Post—as Dan Ward noted in his Extra! piece (11/09). Another recent example of the phenomenon was provided by the […]
Rule of Law–Who Cares?
One of the odder outbreaks of outrage from conservative pundits is the horror expressed at the idea that people accused of being connected to the September 11 attacks would actually be put on trial. Here’s Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (11/18/09) on Attorney General Eric Holder’s “destructive” decision to prosecute Khalid Mohammed and other 9/11 […]
The Election Lesson: Hoover Was Right!
The Washington Post reported (11/5/09) that some Democrats are “questioning whether they should emphasize job creation over some of the more ambitious items on the president’s agenda.” A couple paragraphs later, reporters Michael Shear and Paul Kane elaborate: Moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday’s voting, warning that the results prove that […]
USA Today Transmits a Warning to Imaginary Democrats
Under the headline “Va., N.J. Give GOP Reason to Celebrate,” USA Today‘s front-page election report (11/4/09) featured this quote from GOP strategist Frank Donatelli: The warning is that if you’re in a moderate district, or you’re in a moderate-to-conservative state, you should think twice before you rubberstamp Obama’s agenda. Well, there were two districts choosing […]
Comparing Fox and CNN Through a Funhouse Mirror
Once you’ve given up trying to defend the idea that Fox News‘ “Fair and Balanced” slogan can be understood as anything other than irony, the fallback position is generally that everyone else is just as biased. Or as the headline over John Harwood’s piece in the New York Times (11/2/09) puts it, “If Fox Is […]
You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Argue That the Afghan War Prevents Terror—But It Helps
Dick Morris was on the O’Reilly Factor the other night (10/28/09) advocating a troop escalation in Afghanistan—and his argument was characteristically peculiar: Listen, terrorist gangs like Al-Qaeda are like HIV virus. They swim in your bloodstream. They don’t make you sick. When they latch on to a cell, a nation state, and they use the […]
Meet the Press Continues the Non-Debate on Afghanistan
Mark Weisbrot had a good column in the London Guardian (10/23/09) about the highly circumscribed “debate” over the Afghanistan War (FAIR Action Alert, 8/25/09). He breaks down the lineup of a recent Meet the Press (10/11/09): Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former Army general and drug czar (under President Clinton) turned defense industry lobbyist. In a […]
Limbaugh’s Selective Outrage Over False Quotations
John K. Wilson (Obamapolitics, 10/16/09) on Rush Limbaugh and fake quotes: When it came to people repeating false quotes about Limbaugh that Limbaugh himself had never bothered to deny, Limbaugh was outraged: “we are in the process behind the scenes working to get apologies and retractions with the force of legal action against every journalist […]
Climate Change Chapter Is Not the First Fakery From Freakonomics
Fans of Freakonomics economist Steven Levitt (and his journalistic partner, Stephen Dubner) might well have been surprised to hear about Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm’s devastating debunking (10/12/09) of the climate change nonsense in the duo’s new book, Superfreakonomics. Romm points out wacky assertions in the bestselling authors’ sequel, like this passage they quote approvingly […]
How Much Would It Take to Endow Nonprofit Journalism?
In their analysis of what ails the journalism business (CJR.org, 10/19/09), Leonard Downie, Jr., and Michael Schudson seem to pooh-pooh the idea that newspapers could be turned into non-profits funded by endowments, “as though they were museums.” “It would take an endowment of billions of dollars to produce enough investment income to run a single […]
Know Your Enemy
Politico (10/14/09) published a list of top topics on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show, based on a search of Nexis transcripts since the show’s January 2009 debut. It’s instructive to look at the placement of some individuals, groups and places in the news as an indication of Beck’s sense of whom and what his audience […]
