Ed Gillespie only wants to help. Karl Rove's successor in the White House has embarked on a new career as media critic, judging NBC guilty of "deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline" and create an "utterly misleading and irresponsible" impression of a Presidential interview about his speech to the Israeli Knesset.
In times like these, Americans need all the media criticism they can get, particularly corrective analysis coming from such an informed source as a lifelong lobbyist whose clients have included Enron and, perhaps more pertinent in this case, Viacom, owner of CBS.
In 2003, the watchdog group Public Citizen called Gillespie an "embedded lobbyist" to further the interests of his "corporate benefactors" as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In his new incarnation, the Counselor to the President is urging NBC news honcho Steve Capus to reassure Americans that "blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division."
Capus reassured him that the Presidential interview "has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day, on our website. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview...NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions."
But why can't they see that Gillespie just wants to help?
Showing posts with label Chris Matthews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Matthews. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Saturday, November 17, 2007
New Kind of Presidential Debate
Would you rather see the candidates grilled by Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer or a snowman and a gun nut cradling his "baby," a semi-automatic weapon?
Close call, but isn't there an alternative? The question is prompted by Paul Krugman's column after this week's Democratic debate, claiming Barack Obama was "a sucker" for signing on to fears that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that will go bankrupt before Baby Boomers can collect what's due them.
Most voters, it's fair to say, would like to know who's blowing smoke here--politicians or dueling economists--but we're not likely to find out from sound-bite answers to ignorant questions.
In our treasured but messy democracy, there is room for college girls to ask Hillary Clinton about diamonds and pearls but so far not for informed political scientists, historians and economists to ask knowledgeable questions that could show us who really understands the issues.
At the end of this month, CNN will give us Republican hopefuls being discomfited by cutesy YouTubers, a spectacle that will undoubtedly produce entertaining insights into how well the candidates handle social embarrassment.
But if we want to know what they know about issues that will affect our lives when one of them takes the oath, couldn't there be at least one debate in which they face those talking heads the networks trot out only on election night to give us perspective on what's been going on or at other times we only hear on PBS?
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but total ignorance, as we know only too well from recent experience, can be disastrous. Along with the snowman and Chris Matthews, can't we have at least one debate with questions from Krugman and his academic peers of various political persuasions?
We should be willing to take the risk of being bored to death to try to avoid being governed by morons.
Close call, but isn't there an alternative? The question is prompted by Paul Krugman's column after this week's Democratic debate, claiming Barack Obama was "a sucker" for signing on to fears that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that will go bankrupt before Baby Boomers can collect what's due them.
Most voters, it's fair to say, would like to know who's blowing smoke here--politicians or dueling economists--but we're not likely to find out from sound-bite answers to ignorant questions.
In our treasured but messy democracy, there is room for college girls to ask Hillary Clinton about diamonds and pearls but so far not for informed political scientists, historians and economists to ask knowledgeable questions that could show us who really understands the issues.
At the end of this month, CNN will give us Republican hopefuls being discomfited by cutesy YouTubers, a spectacle that will undoubtedly produce entertaining insights into how well the candidates handle social embarrassment.
But if we want to know what they know about issues that will affect our lives when one of them takes the oath, couldn't there be at least one debate in which they face those talking heads the networks trot out only on election night to give us perspective on what's been going on or at other times we only hear on PBS?
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but total ignorance, as we know only too well from recent experience, can be disastrous. Along with the snowman and Chris Matthews, can't we have at least one debate with questions from Krugman and his academic peers of various political persuasions?
We should be willing to take the risk of being bored to death to try to avoid being governed by morons.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Styles of Stealing: Bush and Maliki
The news today is about contrasts in corruption. In Baghdad, they do it the old-fashioned way, with Prime Minister Maliki’s friends and family taking $18 billion and then muscling or murdering those who try to expose them.
In Washington, the Bush Administration has been taking away our national morality to the point that headlines are all about crimes of character. Torturing and lying about torture is only the latest in a long list leading conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan to call his President a “war criminal” and David Brooks to accuse him of destroying the “social cohesion” that true conservatism values.
Testifying before a House panel yesterday, a former Iraqi investigator described scenes right out of our Roaring Twenties.
"They are so corrupt that they will attack their accusers and their families with guns and meat hooks, as well as countercharges of corruption," Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi testified. He recounted how one of his staff was gunned down with his seven-month-pregnant wife, his security chief's father found dead on a meat hook and another investigator’s father riddled with holes from a power drill.
Bush and Cheney have been more subtle. Senate Committees are still trying to get hold of documents that apparently condone torture while the White House was, and still is, insisting that it doesn’t.
Democrats on Capitol Hill were demanding classified memos, disclosed by the New York Times, giving the C.I.A. approval in 2005 for “harsh interrogation techniques.”
Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the 2005 opinions had “reinstated a secret regime by, in essence, reinterpreting the law in secret” and his panel had been asking for those opinions on interrogation for two years without success.
Chris Matthews summed it all up succinctly yesterday: "They've finally been caught in their criminality.” But the MSNBC anchor, who will co-host a Republican candidates debate next week, may be too optimistic. Unlike the new Baghdad government, Bush and Cheney have an almost seven-year backlog of illegality waiting to be uncovered.
In Washington, the Bush Administration has been taking away our national morality to the point that headlines are all about crimes of character. Torturing and lying about torture is only the latest in a long list leading conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan to call his President a “war criminal” and David Brooks to accuse him of destroying the “social cohesion” that true conservatism values.
Testifying before a House panel yesterday, a former Iraqi investigator described scenes right out of our Roaring Twenties.
"They are so corrupt that they will attack their accusers and their families with guns and meat hooks, as well as countercharges of corruption," Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi testified. He recounted how one of his staff was gunned down with his seven-month-pregnant wife, his security chief's father found dead on a meat hook and another investigator’s father riddled with holes from a power drill.
Bush and Cheney have been more subtle. Senate Committees are still trying to get hold of documents that apparently condone torture while the White House was, and still is, insisting that it doesn’t.
Democrats on Capitol Hill were demanding classified memos, disclosed by the New York Times, giving the C.I.A. approval in 2005 for “harsh interrogation techniques.”
Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the 2005 opinions had “reinstated a secret regime by, in essence, reinterpreting the law in secret” and his panel had been asking for those opinions on interrogation for two years without success.
Chris Matthews summed it all up succinctly yesterday: "They've finally been caught in their criminality.” But the MSNBC anchor, who will co-host a Republican candidates debate next week, may be too optimistic. Unlike the new Baghdad government, Bush and Cheney have an almost seven-year backlog of illegality waiting to be uncovered.
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