Monday, November 28, 2005
Who's Revising History Now, Asshole?
There are a disturbing number of conservative political pundits out there, and I’m not even talking about FOX News. Many so-called “mainstream” types unhesitatingly echo GOP talking points when they’re too lazy to do their own research and ascertain if their heart-felt beliefs are actually true.
Check Media Matters for checks on these buffoons. It takes some gall to be a journalist and to sit down in front of a camera that beams its program into ten million homes and lie your ass off. Most of the time, though, their lies are small because they assume their credibility will be gone if they simply make things up.
I feel differently. I think that when Ted Koppel goes on Sean Hannity’s radio show and tells Hannity and all of his listeners that he is a great broadcaster Koppel has blown his credibility as surely as if he had been caught in bed with a dead underage male prostitute. Calling one of the most profligate liars of our day a great broadcaster is as disgusting as calling Richard Nixon a great president. Why not say that you think Mike Savage is a great radio host and Ann Coulter is an honest historian, huh, Ted?
Fuck you, Koppel.
I hope to be one of many who gives you a kick in the ass on your way out the door. Fifty years of broadcasting hasn’t taught you a damned thing. It’s cowardly journalists like you who have helped seal the doom of this country and allowed politicians (mostly Republicans) to run rampant in the halls of government. Where was the independent press when Reagan told one of his many anecdotes that he completely made up? Where was the independent press when Reagan’s CIA dismantled Central America? Where were the great American investigative reporters when George W. Bush told any of his countless lies about polling, Enron, environmental bills, tax plans, medicare plans, or the ridiculous evidence regarding Iraq?
They were asleep at the wheel. The great American journalists like Koppel were more like fellow members of some demented country club, dining at the same restaurant and playing the same golf course and suppressing or disregarding all the evidence they saw right in front of them of politicians running wild. They hobnobbed with these people and interviewed them and looked at the government reports and scientific studies and made phone calls to some of them who were sources and they saw, firsthand, the duplicity of these fools. Washington, apparently, is a place where gentlemen don’t share each other’s secrets.
Woodward was chief among these spineless sycophants. He went to all the cocktail parties and was on a first name basis with all of the principal villains. His best reporting efforts were watered down horseshit that consisted of all the stories the villains were willing to share with him over a martini. This was the best of investigative journalism, according to Washington.
Our media needs to be made of sterner stuff. Especially when propaganda outlets passing themselves off as news media dominate radio and lead other stations on cable news. On FOX, Chris Wallace denied once again that Bush had ever linked Al-Queda and Saddam, using one of the most pathetically transparent straw-man arguments that anyone has ever had the courage to say out loud, in public, in front of other people.
To either whore yourself out to a job like that for a big paycheck or to be deranged enough to actually think that your bullshit is some kind of fucking Straussian “noble lie” is a disgusting enough thing to do in front of a few friends, much less on TV. The FCC should suspend FOX’s broadcasting license for vulgarity. I wouldn’t want my kids to see a man debase himself like that.
But this is the media we have. The media who ironically let Cheney rewrite history by accusing his critics of trying to rewrite history by saying that Congress had access to the same intelligence the President did, which has never been true under any administration. Those who don’t know this already need a refresher course on American Government. There are these cool pictures that show that the CIA and DIA and the NSA are all part of the Executive Branch, who report to the President, the head of the Executive Branch. The only oversight Congress gets is through the Intelligence Oversight Committees, who only receive the information the President releases to them. Congress has very little power to even monitor these agencies. It’s called the Separation of Powers.
Sadly enough, most people probably do need a refresher course to spot bald-faced lies. Or a media that has the stones to point them out.
Check Media Matters for checks on these buffoons. It takes some gall to be a journalist and to sit down in front of a camera that beams its program into ten million homes and lie your ass off. Most of the time, though, their lies are small because they assume their credibility will be gone if they simply make things up.
I feel differently. I think that when Ted Koppel goes on Sean Hannity’s radio show and tells Hannity and all of his listeners that he is a great broadcaster Koppel has blown his credibility as surely as if he had been caught in bed with a dead underage male prostitute. Calling one of the most profligate liars of our day a great broadcaster is as disgusting as calling Richard Nixon a great president. Why not say that you think Mike Savage is a great radio host and Ann Coulter is an honest historian, huh, Ted?
Fuck you, Koppel.
I hope to be one of many who gives you a kick in the ass on your way out the door. Fifty years of broadcasting hasn’t taught you a damned thing. It’s cowardly journalists like you who have helped seal the doom of this country and allowed politicians (mostly Republicans) to run rampant in the halls of government. Where was the independent press when Reagan told one of his many anecdotes that he completely made up? Where was the independent press when Reagan’s CIA dismantled Central America? Where were the great American investigative reporters when George W. Bush told any of his countless lies about polling, Enron, environmental bills, tax plans, medicare plans, or the ridiculous evidence regarding Iraq?
They were asleep at the wheel. The great American journalists like Koppel were more like fellow members of some demented country club, dining at the same restaurant and playing the same golf course and suppressing or disregarding all the evidence they saw right in front of them of politicians running wild. They hobnobbed with these people and interviewed them and looked at the government reports and scientific studies and made phone calls to some of them who were sources and they saw, firsthand, the duplicity of these fools. Washington, apparently, is a place where gentlemen don’t share each other’s secrets.
Woodward was chief among these spineless sycophants. He went to all the cocktail parties and was on a first name basis with all of the principal villains. His best reporting efforts were watered down horseshit that consisted of all the stories the villains were willing to share with him over a martini. This was the best of investigative journalism, according to Washington.
Our media needs to be made of sterner stuff. Especially when propaganda outlets passing themselves off as news media dominate radio and lead other stations on cable news. On FOX, Chris Wallace denied once again that Bush had ever linked Al-Queda and Saddam, using one of the most pathetically transparent straw-man arguments that anyone has ever had the courage to say out loud, in public, in front of other people.
To either whore yourself out to a job like that for a big paycheck or to be deranged enough to actually think that your bullshit is some kind of fucking Straussian “noble lie” is a disgusting enough thing to do in front of a few friends, much less on TV. The FCC should suspend FOX’s broadcasting license for vulgarity. I wouldn’t want my kids to see a man debase himself like that.
But this is the media we have. The media who ironically let Cheney rewrite history by accusing his critics of trying to rewrite history by saying that Congress had access to the same intelligence the President did, which has never been true under any administration. Those who don’t know this already need a refresher course on American Government. There are these cool pictures that show that the CIA and DIA and the NSA are all part of the Executive Branch, who report to the President, the head of the Executive Branch. The only oversight Congress gets is through the Intelligence Oversight Committees, who only receive the information the President releases to them. Congress has very little power to even monitor these agencies. It’s called the Separation of Powers.
Sadly enough, most people probably do need a refresher course to spot bald-faced lies. Or a media that has the stones to point them out.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:01 PM 
