A preview of Fox’s other foray into “comedy” (adding: don’t miss the link to a second clip at the bottom of the post). The thing that really strikes me, apart from the utter lack of anything remotely resembling humor, is that the notion of a news channel producing a fake news show seemed like a good idea to anyone — especially a news channel which is already widely criticized for producing fake news. I mean, Comedy Central can do this because it is a comedy network. Fox is ostensibly a news network (albeit one which features “news” anchor John Gibson, who also hosts a partisan radio talk show, and a former “reporter” like Tony Snow, who was able to seamlessly segue into his role as White House press secretary). Point is, it makes sense for a comedy network to produce a fake news show. For Fox to do so serves only to underscore what a joke the rest of their supposed “news” operation is.
Apart from that, the flaw in the entire premise is the idea that the liberal bias of the Daily Show must be countered. I mean, I have no doubt that Jon Stewart is a liberal, in a pleasant, middle of the road, sensible kind of way, but a hardcore partisan he is not. If and when we ever see a Democratic administration again, the Daily Show will skewer them just as relentlessly as they do the Bushies. And I’m going to go way out on a limb here and predict that it’ll be much funnier than anything the Fox Fake News and Pretend Comedy Channel can come up with.
LOWELL BERGMAN: There’s definitely a group of people felt you were becoming a martyr [by going to jail rather than reveal her conversations with Scooter Libby], that you were doing this to make up for the problems with the WMD coverage.
JUDITH MILLER: …I didn’t feel I had anything to apologize for with my WMD coverage.
The Julie Amero story has finally broken in the New York Times and the Associated Press.
TMW readers will recall that Amero is a substitute teacher from Connecticut who faces up to 40 years in jail because a malware-infested PC in her classroom spewed pornographic popups at her 7th grade language arts class.
Defense experts who analyzed the hard drive found that the computer had been automatically redirected to porn because someone inadvertently downloaded malicious software from a page disguised as an innocent hairdressing site. Because of a variety of procedural missteps the jury never heard the evidence that exculpated Amero. She was convicted last month on four felony charges.
The school computer itself was completely unprotected from obscene material because IT staffers let the content filter lapse. Yet it was Amero who was criminally charged, even though she did her best to shield the kids from the monitor.
Bloggers and computer security experts ralliedbehindAmero. A legal defense fund has been established to help defray the costs of Amero’s upcoming appeal.
After weeks of pressure and hard work by ordinary citizens, the story has finally percolated up to the elite media.
I’m happy to say that both Alison Leigh Cowan of the New York Times and John Christoffersen of the Associated Press wrote fair and informative articles about the Amero case.
One hopes that this egregious miscarriage of justice will be reversed on appeal. A decent society will not scapegoat for lax cybersecurity and anti-porn paranoia.
In the wake of the John Edwards blogger “scandal,” many have wondered whether regular bloggers will ever be able to work for political campaigns. (Well, Democratic political campaigns. Anything whatsoever remains OKIYAR.)
Fortunately, Dennis Perrin is riding to the rescue with an easy solution—blame him:
Look — there’s no way in hell that a serious Democratic campaign is going to hire the likes of me. Not only is my contempt for this corrupt, archaic political system open for all to see, my public opinions have bordered on slander and oftentimes read like a lunatic’s screams. When it comes to mainstream political discussion, I’m toxic, damaged goods. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer the same marginalization. So instead of quitting a campaign under pressure, why not Blame Me! for your previous outbursts!
For an affordable, privately-negotiated fee, I’ll allow you to insert my name in your blog archives, making me the source of any or all hostile opinions you may have typed in the heat of the moment. When your political enemies are searching for something that can embarrass your candidate, instead of finding this:
The crypto-fascist Christers are trying to shove their blood-stained crucifix up our collective ass.
They’ll see this:
‘The crypto-fascist Christers are trying to shove their blood-stained crucifix up our collective ass,’ said Dennis Perrin, discussing the GOP’s 2008 campaign strategy.
Don’t miss this Tomdispatch piece by former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris about the career of Donald Rumsfeld. I know you already think Rumsfeld was bad, but you likely have no idea.
And this is only Part I. Part II is coming Thursday.
House minority leader John Boehner, who recently said of Democrats “I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.”, got all weepy today over the “solemn” debate on the President’s politically-motivated Iraq war escalation. Later, as part of his contribution to the debate, Boehner noted that “al Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers around the world are trying to divide us here at home”. Of course, Rep. Boehner would never try to be divisive now, would he?
Ken Silverstein of Harper’s is running a three-part series of discussions with experts on the likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iran. The first part is up here.
The intersection of Blogging and Politics is a work in progress, about which I intend to write more, but it’ll have to wait for a day when deadlines loom somewhat less menacingly.
Anyway, sympathies to Amanda, who has a nifty little suggestion for those of you with a few spare minutes, here.
Arthur Silber has written another installment in his “Dominion Over the World” series. And he’s rightfully pissed off at the failings of many nice liberal writers:
I will frankly admit that one of my ongoing and often severe disappointments with regard to some of even the most intelligent of liberal-progressive writers and bloggers is their seeming inability to appreciate the continuity and uniformity of American foreign policy over the last century, and particularly since World War II. It appears that their determination to turn virtually every episode in our national life, no matter how disastrous, into an opportunity for partisan advantage and electoral victory overcomes analytic abilities which can often be very insightful on more limited questions…
To put it another way, and this is the issue that mere Democratic partisans adamantly refuse to acknowledge: Bush would not have been possible but for the Democrats who had preceded him…As the inconceivable dangers of wider war, including possible nuclear exchanges, loom over us all, petty partisanship and party loyalty as the primary concern are morally distasteful at a minimum, and occasionally abhorrent in their worst manifestations, intellectually irresponsible, and immensely dangerous. Such an approach does nothing to decrease the continuing calamities that confront us, but only worsens them.
It should also be noted that, while many liberal-progressive writers and bloggers appear to imagine they are challenging “conventional wisdom,” this mode of analysis only strengthens that “wisdom” and ensures that the governing class will never be seriously challenge…In this manner, many liberal-progressive bloggers and writers have been entirely coopted by the establishment elites, certainly insofar as foreign policy is concerned. The elites know it; many liberals and progressives haven’t figured it out yet. I would say the joke’s on them, but for the fact that the stakes involved may literally be the future of the world itself.
What’s weird about the blogosphere is that there are no material reasons for people to be partisan in this sense. (Unlike professional pundits, for whom there are real economic pressures to line up with one team or the other.) And yet both bloggers and blog readers usually do it anyway. We love our tribes, even when it’s killing us.
Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article.
John Hannah replaced Scooter Libby as Cheney’s national security adviser when Libby resigned. He also was a primary author of the case on Iraq that Cheney’s staff wanted Colin Powell to use at the UN, but Powell threw out as crap. And given what Powell did use, that must have been some pretty crappy crap.
