CNN‘s Crossfire is ostensibly a debate between the left and the right. But the show’s debate (6/9/14) over Hillary Clinton’s new book show how the format can become meaningless and the discussions turn senseless.
The host from the right, S.E. Cupp, spotted something in the book to attack:
I’ve read the chapter in her book on Israel, and let me tell you, there is a doozy in there. Let me just read. She writes of her first visit to Israel, “I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians who are denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted.”
Now, I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone at this table that Chris Christie had to apologize for using similar language about Palestinian occupation. Is Hillary Clinton going to apologize to Israel for using that same language?
There is just one problem with demanding an apology over this: The West Bank is currently under Israeli occupation. This was true whenever Clinton made her first visit. So the CNN host is demanding to know whether Clinton will apologize for saying something perfectly accurate.
Too bad Crossfire‘s leftists couldn’t just say so. Tracy Sefl of the Ready for Hillary PAC responded by saying she hadn’t read the book, but that Clinton had “expanded the notion of diplomacy in the State Department to include an incredibly important set of issues which have to do with women and girls.” Cupp interrupted this bizarre non-answer to ask again whether Clinton “owe(s) Israel an apology,” which led to this exchange:
SEFL: Hillary Clinton is going to stand by the words in her book. She is not going to apologize for something she need not apologize for.
CUPP: She believes the Palestinian territories are occupied, then?
SEFL: She will be making that point as she, herself, should.
CUPP: So then you think that she believes that the Palestinian territory is occupied? She’s not going to apologize for that, and she asserted that on purpose?
SEFL: I’m sure that when we all actually read the book and listen to her give these interviews, her words will stand for themselves.
CNN‘s host from the left, Paul Begala, chimed in to say, “I am unapologetically pro-Israel, and Hillary is very, very strong on this.”
Indeed, those who have questioned whether the pundits who play the left on Crossfire are really on the left may have noticed that Begala cheered Clinton’s hawkish stance on Iran (She “is the reason we have sanctions on Iran”), said he was “wearing my knees out praying” she runs for president, and played a clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising Clinton to illustrate her commitment to Israeli security.
The guest from the right, meanwhile–Tim Miller–was the one who raised questions about Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, arguing that these will be a problem with the party’s liberal base:
I just think this is going to be a tough sell for her. I mean, Hillary Clinton is going to have the closest ties to Wall Street out of the candidate in either party. She was getting paid $200,000 per speech by the biggest Wall Street firm. So the idea she’s going to be able to tap into this Elizabeth Warren populist movement is pretty ridiculous.
So the left critique of Clinton came from the right. The CNN version of the left had this retort: “What is this, Russia? We’re not allowed to get rich anymore?”
Corrected version.
What do you call anyone defending Madame Mayhem being labeled on the “left”?
I’d call it “Hillary-ous”.
But that’s just me.
Hard to say who’s the biggest deceiver on this show.
So, the person in the Hillary Clinton camp who’s there to discuss Hillary Clinton’s book hasn’t read it YET?
Portends much for Ms. Clinton should she throw her hat into the ring.
Doug Latimer
I call it a Shillary…
Peter,
You watch Crossfire?
I wondered who the viewer was.
I tuned out of the news entirely in September, 2009, knowing that if anything truly important happened, I would hear about it by ‘osmosis’, but otherwise I could tune out of the 100%-predictable Media Circus and the affront it continuously presents to anyone of intelligence.
Oh, Hillary Clinton is running for President? I’m surprised at my own surprise about that, since I knew what a has-been she was even before 2008. And this was such an obvious script to impose upon the American People. But still, I must protest: it IS such an obvious script. People still seem surprised that Obama sold out so completely and totally to the National Security State and the Corporations as he did; but in Hillary’s case this is understood already, well in advance. Why DOES anyone take her candidacy seriously? I recall Christoper Hitchens’ book “No One Left To Lie To” about the Clintons, and obviously no-one who’s read it (any of the dozen or so of us) will ever be allowed to mention it to the public. She can’t but run as a more-polite version of Jeane Kirkpatrick and since we will never be allowed to prove that ‘9/11’ was the inside job it was, GW Bush will never be indicted for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity as he deserves, Americans will continue to uselessly and needlessly walk around in blind fear every time the Media suggests it’s time to do so again, and the bad guys (Neocons, NeoFascists, NeoNazis) will continue to control the future history of the planet. The “Right Fringe” shows how stupid they really are by rejecting Hillary, since she is tailor-made to suit their desires to arrive at Fascism In Our Time via the shortest possible historical route. And, as I said, that is so clearly obvious about her, that I think the real news of the world that FAIR seems to have missed, is that nobody is actually paying any attention to the content of ANYTHING from the Media anymore. They know the plot and are on Automatic Pilot to continue with it precisely as written for us.
We have no Future because we have no notion of the Past. I did a teaching stint recently and none of the children, from grades 4 through 11, had ever heard of Josef Stalin. They had only the vaguest notion who Adolf Hitler was. And of course they had no idea what Labor Unions or Strikes were. And these people are going to be voters in about a decade. Mention Vietnam and latter-day Americans are more likely to think of fights over the trade of Catfish than will remember that America killed 3 million Vietnamese because Richard Nixon (another unknown) decided our national honor required it.
Which illustrates why the public doesn’t even question being raped for taxes to pay for the Military Industrial Complex and never questions the official line as to why Americans always have to be somewhere in the world killing people for the sake of Democracy and Monsanto.
I recently reread “1984” and part with one of the famous quotes from it: ”If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Those ignorant of History are doomed to repeat it – but drag the rest of us along with them. Hillary Clinton is a Robot Nobody. When the election rolls around I’m either voting Socialist if one is on the ballot (!), or writing in Cindy Sheehan. The rest of you should follow my lead.
Arthur Nonymous said it all … concor completely with the post …
Anyone who cites 9/11 as an inside job loses all credibility with me. Not only because all evidence proves it wasn’t, not least the gross incompetence of the Bush regime, but it wouldn’t matter if it were. The war crimes and crimes against humanity, the torture, of the Bush regime are not crimes any longer simply because 9/11 conspiracy is such fantasy. The physicist Manuel Garcia wrote several articles on Counterpunch debunking some of the scientific claims of the 9/11 Truthers. Alexander Cockburn too wrote some cogent articles.
The reason “GW Bush will never be indicted for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity as he deserves,” is not because we will never be able to prove 9/11 as an inside job – you can’t prove a negative – but because the Obama regime didn’t hold the Bush accountable for their crimes; which should have been its first act upon taking office.
To Potshot:
Curious. Matt Taibbi lost all credibility with me by staunchly defending the “Arabs did it” assumption and knee-jerk attacking the very idea that (Gasp!) this could have been a false-flag operation. Absurd, you say? What is absurd is to claim that “all the evidence proves it wasn’t”, because all the evidence proves nothing – we have to reply on interpretation. However, the 10,000 fishy things about the whole deal remain unexplained – thus the “unanswered questions” crowd that again, the media and administration like to bash.
I think I’m on perfectly safe reasonable, rational and logical ground to state as follows:
I am justified in assuming that 9/11 was an inside job, until a thorough nonpartisan reinvestigation is completed and all evidence is brought forward and all witnesses answer without stonewalling or hesitation. To assume it was an inside job fits the facts better than the junk whitewash story we’ve been given and the alleged perpetrators had motive (PNAC) and opportunity. 2/3 of New Yorkers interviewed in the first week after the event said they thought it was an inside job, and while that’s not proof, it does indicate the public’s level of trust of the then-sitting administration, namely LESS than nil. And that was even before the chorus of administration lies that put us into Iraq.
My understanding of a curiosity in US Law is that G W Bush can still be impeached Even Now for what he did during his terms then. The monstrosity of the 9/11 hoax is the way it as in fact smeared international understanding of the flow of events in the world and cemented the Neocon propaganda that Arabs are as bloodthirsty as we portray them to be. I have full faith that 9/11 will in fact in time be revealed – the sad thing is that this will not likely happen in time to discredit the actors now, as so sorely needs to happen. Anyone who recalls “Unitary Presidency” and the calls for a “One Party America” in the run-up to the 2004 election will have no problem agreeing that this was the Neocons’ great stab at introducing American Fascism In Our Time – and THAT is the reason it remains urgent to show exactly what hand “our” people played in allowing 9/11 to occur at all and the extent to which they insured that bad things would happen even should their phony “arabs” mess up their acting roles. Perhaps those “arabs” really believed they were doing what KSM planned; but that would make this the best Mission Impossible plot in History.
I can easily predict you’ve read Nothing Whatsoever to contradict your point of view. “They” indeed have constructed a sturdy propaganda wall of wolves to attack “disbelievers” in precisely the way you have done. You cite a few “debunkers” but ignore the larger contingent of scientists and engineers who disbelieve the official story, sad for you. Clue: anyone who uses categoricals – “nobody could believe”, etc. – has tossed reason out the window. That’s the sign of a “True Believer.” And all our media want is that we should all be True Believers.
The rest of your logic sucks as well. Suppose I said “I believe in Poltergeists and also that water freezes at 0 degrees C and one atmosphere pressure.” You have gone on record that my second statement CANNOT BE BELIEVED because you didn’t agree with my first statement – and strangely enough in this example we still cannot prove that poltergeists do not exist! if you believe in the existence of God then we cannot, by your logic, trust anything else you say. Once again – Hollywood / Madison Avenue – styled forensic reasoning of the “it must be all black or all white” variety.
I’m not going to continue to debate 9/11 with you here; all I have to say is that once you sincerely read to the contrary of what you currently believe, you’ll have to admit that NO, the evidence does NOT PROVE what BushCo wanted us to believe – and that YES, a very, very long list of evidences to the contrary have been ignored, attacked, and UNANSWERED. There is right now a movement in NYC to call attention to the fact that WTC7 “collapsed” for no valid reason (other than that we have in fact been lied to about 9/11.)
I’m a student of history, which shows that publics have forever been pawns for the governments that rule them and also shows that governments and leaders lie as it suits them to in order to achieve their objectives. There certainly is every good reason to SUSPECT circumstances around 9/11 given who the Neocons were and are and what they wished to do with this country. Even the example PNAC mentioned – “short of a another Pearl Harbor” – I believe was a false-flag operation – Roosevelt knew, in fact engineered it. Read history though and you can see why I would forgive him that in retrospect. See Robert Stinnett’s “Day of Deceit”. That book has in turn been attacked, but I think his story is credible. And as I said, in that instance – not without reservations – I agree with FDR having lied about the circumstances to convince a thoroughly pacifist/isolationist public to change its mind to enter WWII. The Japanese did, after all, attack. It doesn’t matter that we invited them to and contrived to have losses so egregious that the public could not ignore them.
Read any intricate history of diplomacy between nations and you would be appalled at the extent to which nations have been playing Chess with peoples and the world up to the present day. History Happened. Once you’re aware of what DID happen in the past, being skeptical about 9/11 follows as naturally as breathing.
CNN has decided that there is no left wing. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I am making one mistake I should correct. The War Crimes / Crimes Against Humanity issue is not related to the 9/11 hoax. The intuitive leap I was making is that once we prove that 9/11 was an inside job, the public would have no problem finally holding Bush accountable for Iraq as well. But those are separate issues, and Bush should face the Hague for Iraq whether 9/11 is debunked or not.
I remember watching “Fahrenheit 911” – the scene where Bush is sitting in the classroom and Card tells him the second plane has struck – how he sat there for 11 minutes and the expression on his face. I kept staring at the screen trying to read his mind through that expression and what I came up with is “I’m really in it now. Up til now it’s been plans on paper. But now that we’ve done it, I’m going to have to lie for the rest of my life that I didn’t know we planned to attack our own country.” Sheer Guilt and Terror.
The movie “V for Vendetta” – that popularized the Guy Fawkes masks – was in fact about 9/11 as much as it was a general warning about Totalitarianism. One immediately sees in “Creedy”, in the movie the head of the secret police and who was the one to decide to attack Britain itself, the same venality which hallmarks Richard Cheney. I have no doubt that when the truth does out, Cheney will be shown to have been principal actor #1 in the 9/11 hoax. Bush was a bit player, doing exactly as he was told. The point of Impeaching Bush would be to strip him of his federal pension and (I think) his secret-service guard-for-life. To quote from “Dune”: ”A million deaths are not enough for Yueh.” If you want to break the grip of the National Propaganda State we live in, you go back and remind people of how false history has been ever since 2000 when 5 reactionaries of 9 justices in the SC appointed – imposed – Bush as President upon us. Bush’s presidency was not valid in either term, those 5 justices need to be censured and the 3 remaining sitting need to be removed; and all the Bush terms’ appointees from the SC down need to be removed as well, beginning with Roberts and Alito.
Americans are all too easily misled and abused to be brown-shirts, but that’s not the America our entire Media (Propaganda) History says we are. We’re the land of the Brave and the Free, and that means we’re not the kind of people to back America to be an International Mafia Thug Killer in favor of exporting Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Capitalism to the rest of the world from the ends of our guns. The world is a really SMALL place and Americans should remember that they are nice people who care about the health and welfare of everyone, and that America needs friends – so we should be people that others could befriend.
The recent documentary “The Dirty War” – JSOC and assassination squads in what, 107 countries now to “advance Corporate Capitalism and American Hegemony”? Is it any wonder that America is hated while we kill scores and scores of innocent people in a long list of countries we have no right to interfere with?
It is that ENTIRE MINDSET that depends on continuing to believe the 9/11 LIE and the future of the planet as a whole depends on REFUTING that mindset and getting out of power – worldwide – people willing to believe it, work with it, to refuse to oppose it.
FAIR is just a feeble reminder that we should quit being people who cash our checks and go home to watch TV, ignoring our duty as Citizens of a Great Nation to demand accountability and make sure our leaders behave themselves honestly and properly.
America’s future – our futures – depend on our Learning History to insure that the atrocities of the past are Not Repeated. The Media and the Educational system are organized to make us Forget, to make us Stupid, to make us Easily Led. No American who really understands Patriotism would follow that path. That is why I boycott all Corporate Media and try to get people to read the history of the Labor Movement in this country. Adam Smith in “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” still by 1753 said people respected titles and money – reading between the lines, that would be “falsely respected.” This was supposed to be that country that finally got rid of the belief that the rich are entitled to anything more than the rest of us have.
It’s not good enough to hear administration officials make claims about who our enemies are. We have to make them prove that what they say is true – and that is what WE are not doing, while we instead go home to watch TV (and silently cringe in fear of losing our jobs and houses.) That bumper sticker that says “KILL YOUR TELEVISION” was giving you excellent advice. The thing to do with every outlet that FAIR reports lies – directly or by omission – is to BOYCOTT them until they GO OUT OF BUSINESS. Either our Media are ACCURATE or they should not exist.
Right, then – and if you’re not fiercely pissed, then you’re not paying attention. Everything since 2000 has been a lie and I hope you agree with me: I want our real history back – I want those 14 years’ worth of lies refuted – and I want to see a silver stake driven in the heart of Corporate Fascism once and for all, in plain view of everyone on the planet.
it’s OUR media. Take it BACK.
Too early to comment.
I shall see how this goes