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Like Arguing With a Table
Curioser and curiouser.
Gold star mom antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan wears a t-shirt that says "2,245 Dead. How many more?" to President Bush's State of the Union address in 2006 and gets arrested. If the media pays any more attention, it's to label her a "far-left" whack job.
William Kostric, however, openly totes a gun to President Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire. And he carries a sign saying "It's time to water the tree of liberty." (A reference to Thomas Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.") He gets interviewed on Chris Matthews.
Back during the run-up to the Iraq war, more than 10 million people worldwide protested the Bush administration's incomprehensible strategy of going after Saddam Hussein while ignoring Osama bin Laden. The protests made a small corner of the front page of The New York Times. Then protests about minimal coverage forced the paper, which was beating the drums of war so loudly that you had to wonder if reporter Judith Miller was being paid by former Vice President Dick Cheney or just sleeping with him, to write one more story before turning its back for good on the antiwar movement.
Yet Sarah Palin, already a national joke, describes end-of-life counseling as "death panels" -- clearly an insane charge -- and her statement is covered so widely that it gets 2,350,000 hits on Google.
If, like me, you have been dismayed by the incessant coverage given to rage-filled lunatics protesting the possibility of getting something that most of them badly need -- health insurance -- then you have to scratch your head and wonder when, exactly, the national media went brain-dead.
To take just one example, in a recent issue of Vanity Fair Michael Wolff reported that Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, deals with the White House press corps with "cockiness and condescension... He clearly doesn't take the press very seriously."
Well, that's outrageous, isn't it? Doesn't the press represent us at White House briefings? Don't we, the people, have a right to ask questions of our leaders? What is this, a dictatorship?
At least I felt like that when I read the article. Then I read a transcript of a White House press briefing on Aug. 12, just after the president's first town hall meeting in New Hampshire. (The White House posts all press briefing transcripts at WhiteHouse.gov.)
After reasonable questions about money for Afghanistan and executive pay, the session quickly deteriorated.
ABC News' Jake Tapper asked, "It occurs to me that if the President finds himself at a town hall meeting telling the American people that he does not want to set up a panel to kill their grandparents, that perhaps there, at some point, the President has lost control of the message."
Gibbs pointed out the "tremendous amount of disinformation that's out there. We've seen it -- and look, let's be honest, you all, the media, tend to cover 'X said this, Y said this'... Look, do I think some of you were disappointed yesterday that the President didn't get yelled at? Sure. I don't think there's any doubt about that."
And the floodgates opened wide. "Was (the president) disappointed?" "Were you disappointed the President didn't get yelled at?" "It looked like the President wanted to get yelled at." "But was the President disappointed... that he was hoping to get that kind of confrontation?" The rest of the session was devoted to a discussion about "the temperature of the debate."
Gibbs is somewhat "condescending" to the press corps? In my humble opinion, they're lucky he doesn't spit on them. But that would be counter to the spirit of the First Amendment.
Clearly, something is very wrong with American journalism. How do you treat people showing up with guns to presidential meetings as OK when people were getting arrested at Bush rallies for t-shirts and bumper stickers? How do you talk about people comparing Obama to Hitler without mentioning Timothy McVeigh and the militias? How do you talk about angry people showing up at meetings without talking about the lobbyists who are stacking these meetings to make sure rational debate is impossible? How do you do "he said/she said" journalism in a country that's having a nervous breakdown?
Truth is more important than objectivity. It's also more important than a career in the mainstream media. The way you deal with hate speech is to call people on it. Counter hate speech with better speech, with honest speech, with truthful speech.
Or you could just quote Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who at a town hall meeting on Tuesday responded to a woman heckler with this: "As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Trying to have a conversation with you would be as interesting as trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it."
- Posted in
43 Comments so far
Show AllDamn......I was hoping to read something about Brett Favre
The following condenses the article into one sentence:
US media selects stories based on what meets the business needs of its owners who happen to be global corporations that make a lot of money from war, poverty, extortion (euphemistically called insurance), drugs and junk food.
"When did the press go brain dead?" askes Joyce Marcel. She goes on to say, "Doesn't the press represent us at the White House?"
Is Joyce the one who is brain dead? Doesn't she know that the press in owned and operated by the corporations? Doesn't she know they act for these corporate interests at the White House? What? She thinks we have democracy in the United States? She believes in the balance of power between our three banches of Government? She believes our wars are all about spreadiing democracy?
Wake up Joyce, and all you loyal Democrats. We are living in a fascist dictatorship. If you don's smile and wave the red, white and blue; Homeland Security will be in your face --- and they won't be smiling.
Clearly, something is very wrong with American journalism.
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Everything is going according to plan.
Operation Mockingbird v2.0 is alive and well.
Here's a refresher on "classic" Mockingbird from Carl Bernstein in 1977:
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
Talk about hypocricy. Palin became a "national joke" due to the very thing you are carping about. Further, she is right. Death panels are the very essense of the bill. Whole new bureaucracies will be created to determine how much will be spent on whom. Try to deny that. Futher you expect us to believe a government lied us into war will have our interests at heart. That must be difficult for a liberal.
William Kostric was asked on the show with Matthews to try to denigrate him. But he held his own - even dynamited the very foundation of Matthews' foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric about the history of people bringing guns to Presidential events by saying something to the effect, "new history was created - I brought a gun and nothing happened." Ooops. Liberals don't like that.
Are you being paid to say this? I don't particularly like Obama's bill; I don't like the democratic party... but, the death panels thing is a joke and you know it. There are "death panels" right now... they are the boardrooms of Aetna, bcBS, Humana, United Health, etc etc... where CEOs and investors decide who lives and who dies. Statistically another person will have died either because health care was denied, or because they can't afford insurance by the time you read this.
As for Kostric... he is a non-story. Let him bring a frickin tank to the next rally for all I care. He is a distraction from the real issue: the giant, practically unaccountable tyrannies - like the aforementioned "health care providers" - that are legally bound to put their profit margins over the health of the nation. The market can't provide health care efficiently! That has been proven time and time again over the last 40 years or so that HMOs have come to dominate the landscape of health care in America. That is the issue. People are hurting. The Kostrics and Palins and Bill Kristols of the world are just there to distract enough of the population that nothing gets done again, and the USA will remain the only industrial nation on Earth without a decent, humane health care system. The media (MSNBC particularly) want to focus on those nuts because then they don't have to confront their advertising buddies in the Health care industry and their bosses who are heavily invested in health care.
tarheel77 August 19th, 2009 12:16 pm..........Just a troll.....best to ignore.
And I don't like you very much.Pigs fly too.
Um, in case you missed it, the administration that "lied us into war" in 2003 is no longer in the White House. Condi? Gone. Dick? Gone. "W"? Gone. Powell? Gone. Rove? Gone. Rumsfeld? Gone. These people -- the architects of the war -- no longer hold elected or appointed office in national politics and, as far as I've read, aren't involved in drafting health care reform legislation. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that the current administration or congress are the second coming or anything, but let's give credit for "lying us into war" where credit is due, and not just lump everyone in together. Being able to differentiate facts and look at them discerningly is the essence of critical thinking, the dearth of which is exemplified all over these contentious town hall meetings (w/82-year-olds on Medicare screaming about govt. staying out of health care, for chrissake) and what is killing any chance this country has for any progressive movement toward real democracy.
Blah, blah, blah. I didn't even read it, nor should anyone read your dreck, Alex123, until you deliver your mea culpa at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/17
Has anyone noticed that after we thrashed ActionJackson and he disappeared, that 'blacksocialist' appeared, was deconstructed,fading into the mists of time and that Alex123 has materialized with the same faulty constructs?
Alex 123, Sic Semper Tyrannus, now go home and see if Momma can suture your segmentations up and don't bother the grown-ups here. We have real work to do.
You must be putting me on.If you really (I do mean really) believe that "Death panels are the very essence of the bill", then there's no arguing with you.Might as well argue with a dining room table.
"Gold star mom antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan wears a t-shirt that says "2,245 Dead. How many more?" to President Bush's State of the Union address in 2006 and gets arrested.
"William Kostric, however, openly totes a gun to President Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire. And he carries a sign saying "It's time to water the tree of liberty." (A reference to Thomas Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.") He gets interviewed on Chris Matthews."
I keep telling people that it's all over for the United States, that the administration of the political Judas Obama has finally sealed our fate and we are now irrevocably heading toward second world status and possibly much much worse. Even many progressives look at me like they want to smell my breath, or just give me the thousand yard stare. From now on, I will simply show them the above paragraph which I will carry around in my wallet. QED.
I know exactly how you feel. It's just beyond the pale. Completely FUBAR.
This place is looking more and more like an insane asylum. I remember the scene in Titanic when people realized there weren't enough lifeboats. It feels like we're getting there.
And Obama is looking like a wimp. But in all fairness, he is probably just looking after his real constituency and it isn't us. After all, he could have chosen anyone but he chose Geithner and Gates. I could be wrong, he could be a wimp. Either way, we lose.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
That Jefferson "quote" is spurious. See the Jefferson Encyclopedia at monticello.com
American journalism is an oxymoron. Their putative employers, particularly the broadcast networks, loath to lose a major advertiser, the Health insurance and Drug companies. So it is no surprise they are inclined to present images and viewpoints favorable to those whom advertise their wares on their shows.
is her last paragraph supporting the woman 'heckler', or Barney Frank's response? Calling her a heckler would indicate the latter...
yet, Rep. Frank didn't answer her question, he simply insulted her, implying she was not worth his trouble, doing the same to anyone with a similar question indirectly...does Marcel count that as answering?
Like arguing with a table...a brick wall would know...
dubet sez: "... yet, Rep. Frank didn't answer her question, he simply insulted her ..."
***
What was her question? The author doesn't mention one having been asked; perhaps you could enlighten us.
yes, interesting that all of the clips I can find carefully avoid the questioning woman's lead-in, in which we can only assume she raised the issue of health care reform, as that is the subject at hand...if she was irritated at Congress' lack of response to the people's call for single-payer, and wondering why Rep. Frank would endorse whatever the current name for the current reform package is, and not single-payer, she would certainly not be alone...she, and others present, appeared to compare favoring the profits of corporations to delivery of care to fascism, as she, along with others present, was carrying a picture of Obama as Hitler...if I can find a clip that contains the woman's entire statement, I will present a transcript...given my hunch, however, that this clip was carefully edited to make Rep. Frank sound tough, and the woman unbalanced, even while Rep. Frank carefully avoided answering her charge, the search may not bear fruit...
I'm quite disappointed, if Larry King is any example, that they would launch such a video without giving the questioner's entire statement air...
what I did not hear Rep. Frank do was take any stance whatsoever in his reply on the health care platform he supports...
Thanks for the clarification about the clips of the heckler being truncated, Dubet. I hadn't considered this other side of the coin being possible from the article. Maybe the lady is in a progressive thought camp for Universal Single Payer Healthcare and thinks as I do, that the corporatist Appeaser Obama is little better than a disguised Hitler.
I don't think the reform contains "Death Panels" per se and I do think as things stand now, insurance companies and the for-profit health care industry is a defacto arbiter of life and death. I suspect what people are referring to as death panels is further mandates, in versions of the bills, to confront people to make informed end of life care decisions, like do-not-resuscitate and entubation for feeding or ventilators, etc. This is already broached, and hopefully discussed, when people are checked into the hospital for almost any procedure or illness now. Most patients defer, doing nothing to indicate their desires, other than to sign the designation of medical power of attorney presented at the same time. All the materials are presented to foster a discussion with the trustee to make patient wishes known. Most don't formally indicate anything, leaving the ball in the trustee's court. Most of us are not comfortable confronting our mortality or vulnerabilities and are not prepared or informed at the moment of crucial decisions, because we have not educated ourselves about these realities. It's just like folks don't want to buy life insurance or write their wills or estate plans. It's human nature to deny what we find unpleasant. That's what is pushing some of these people's buttons. They are tantruming about being accountable for clarifying their wishes should circumstances go to a point they rather not contemplate. Like children with fingers in their ears, going "LALALALA, I can't hear you."
netminnow, they aren't mandates, they simply authorize payment to physicians if and only if patients want to make an appointment to have this discussion.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Thanks for the clarification. I find that idea even more respectful of the need to inform ourselves about these issues.
This is what transpired:
Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama has expressly supported this policy, why are you supporting it?
Barney Frank: When you ask me that question, I am gonna revert to my ethnic heritage, and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?...You want me to answer the question? As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is as I said before, it is a tribute to the 1st Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table - I have no interest in doing it.
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Anyone asking such a "question" deserves only insults. Frank shouldn't have compared her a dining room table. He should have compared her to a pile of steaming shit.
I guess Barney is lucky she didn't shoot at him.
"If, like me, you have been dismayed by the incessant coverage given to rage-filled lunatics protesting the possibility of getting something that most of them badly need -- health insurance..."
Let's not forget something they need even more: mental health insurance.
Here's the real problem with today's 'press':
Those with integrity and ethics and experience and passion and talent and skills are given a choice - work for Big Media and do what you're told, or go apply at the LA Weekly.
Many choose the latter. Hence, Big Media is forced to hire only ass-kissing, paycheck worshiping, less than professional 'reporters' and 'journalists.' And a token real journalist who is eventually fired anyway.
Meanwhile, how is the big story not Brittany on Letterman????? Is this America or not!!?
You know what I wonder? When will the moderate and leftist press get it through their fuzzy heads that the media is CORPORATE OWNED!!!
It will not and cannot present the views of the left in any substantive way without undermining their fascist goals. This is a fact.
I am tired of lazy, incompetent reporters declaring that they "wonder when the media went brain dead." The media didn't go brain dead; it was euthanized with the abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine and subsequent corporate zombification of journalists through the utterly bankrupt notion of being "fair and balanced" which essentially means become a stenographer for anyone who wears a suit and who holds power. Remember investigative journalism? Remember two or even GASP!! three sources? Remember thinking for yourself and actually doing your own research? Remember asking real questions then hounding the interviewee until they actually answer the question asked?
Journalists are like good Germans during the early fascist years, polite and full of apathy. As long as they get the coffee and doughnuts at the press conference snack table and a talking points handout so they don't have to think, they are happy. Soon, all stories will be written by corporate hacks like all bills in congress are written by corporate hacks.
Wait a minute. I think we already have reached that point.
And here is the scary part. We will never get it back. What to know why?
Because the fascists have won. YOU HAVE LOST.
Say buh-bye to freedom, even though you missed the farewell party decades ago.
Freedom of the press is free to those who own the press.
You know what I wonder? When will the moderate and leftist press get it through their fuzzy heads that the media is CORPORATE OWNED!!!
It will not and cannot present the views of the left in any substantive way without undermining their fascist goals. This is a fact.
I am tired of lazy, incompetent reporters declaring that they "wonder when the media went brain dead." The media didn't go brain dead; it was euthanized with the abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine and subsequent corporate zombification of journalists through the utterly bankrupt notion of being "fair and balanced" which essentially means become a stenographer for anyone who wears a suit and who holds power. Remember investigative journalism? Remember two or even GASP!! three sources? Remember thinking for yourself and actually doing your own research? Remember asking real questions then hounding the interviewee until they actually answer the question asked?
Journalists are like good Germans during the early fascist years, polite and full of apathy. As long as they get the coffee and doughnuts at the press conference snack table and a talking points handout so they don't have to think, they are happy. Soon, all stories will be written by corporate hacks like all bills in congress are written by corporate hacks.
Wait a minute. I think we already have reached that point.
And here is the scary part. We will never get it back. What to know why?
Because the fascists have won. YOU HAVE LOST.
Say buh-bye to freedom, even though you missed the farewell party decades ago.
Freedom of the press is free to those who own the press.
To conservatives chaos is opportunity, so they foment chaos every chance they get.
Yeah, that is the first thing that pops into people's mind when they hear "conservative." What you say seems to apply more towards the radical left in the 60's
Stop wasting your time here and start working on your mea culpa at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/17
Up your COINTELPRO
Has anyone noticed that after we thrashed ActionJackson and he disappeared, that 'blacksocialist' appeared, was deconstructed,fading into the mists of time and that Alex123 has materialized with the same faulty constructs?
Alex 123, Sic Semper Tyrannus, now go home and see if Momma can suture your segmentations up and don't bother the grown-ups here. We have real work to do.
You have a right to your gun
just not to your thoughts
Guns are the perfect fitting symbol of the right in this country and most others actually. Let them allow their wacko fringe to parade around with a steel hard on. It's all about their virility isn't it? Having lost to a Black man they're humiliated and need to show that they are still able to perform as men. The right feels castrated right now and that's made it even more dangerous then usual.
The comparison of Obama to Hitler is because both relied heavily on debt and government programs as well as government intervention to stop a recession. Hitler was more Keynesian than anyone. Has there been anyone who has pushed such a radical Keynesian economic policy since Hitler until now and Barney Frank and Obama? I'm guessing probably not. Hitler was of course really big on economic justice, regulating the market, building government programs, controlling rich people and bankers ( Jews ). These people are a little confused, and you'll find plenty of similar people at liberal protests but the basic idea they are expressing that Hitler and Obama have similar policies which led quickly to great ruin and disgrace for Germany is something to consider. If Frank, the key architect of these policies, truly doesn't understand this, he might not be worth more than a table in conversation, if he does understand it but refuses to address these warranted comparisons with nothing more than adolescent insults than he is willfully contributing to the dumbing down of political discourse.
Utter nonsense.
The rampant crackpot running around jabbering about "Obama NAZI Hitler" is because mindless people are repeating mindless propaganda about how his supposed health care plan is supposedly going to murder undesirables.
Your yammering about debt and bankers has zero to do with the NAZI jabbering.
ATLAW is a persistent obfuscator.
"The rampant crackpot running around jabbering about "Obama NAZI Hitler" is because mindless people are repeating mindless propaganda about how his supposed health care plan is supposedly going to murder undesirables."
Correct. The clown at the Barney Frank event even said so, claiming the Obama plan was a retread of the Nazi euthanasia program, which is what prompted Frank's comments.
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http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/
these wackos are followers of Lyndon La Rouche, which explains the cultish, zombie-eyed look on the woman at the Barney Frank town hall and the tone of the posting on here (something along the lines of vomiting up crap).
ATLAW you right-wing troll, you, however, are not a dining room table, you are a folding card table with two legs missing. Utterly worthless. In your exposition you actually are Supportive of the willfull dumbing-down of political discourse you rail about in your missive- to wit, 'if Frank does not dialog with the right-wing-nuts then Frank is not worth more than a table....' You are the one who is confused, even within one paragraph.
As the left-wing journal, "Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung", published in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s made abundantly clear at the time, Hitler was backed by Right-Wing Capitalist Military-Industrialists (much as the right-wing here backs the neo-con-federate Republicans), and was NOT backed by left-wing "Keynesians"- your supposed villains. The 'great ruin and disgrace' of Germany was WW2 and the GErman STAte POlice-style right-wing Fascist Capitalist takeover, complete with 'aggressive corporate growth aided by the state(fascism)' and the capitalist dream of free slave labor. It was not the rebuilding of a shattered nation by government action, which gave Hitler the time and support he needed to ram his Secret plans through, with the lies and dissembling and mendacity worthy of a Rove or a Limbaugh.
And the ruin and defeat of Germany was brought about ONLY by Keynsian policies followed by the United States under FDR, the same Keynsian policies that created post-war American prosperity and greater egalitarianism... until Ronnie Reagan, Corporate Shill, became president, and the now-rich Americans got greedier and greedier, leading up to President Shrub. Now, it's Milton/Tom Friedman not Keynes. It's Ayn Rand/Greenspan, not Tom Paine. And how do you like it, now that the government cow is being milked by the Capitalists instead of serving the people?
Capitalism and democracy are polar opposites, not co-equal, as any majority shareholder will forcefully explain to you. And China has proven they do not even necessarily co-exist.
But you seem to believe in the mythos of capitalism/money as a natural fixed real object, even after recent events have definitely proven money and values are relative, and are created. They merely echo the society and the myths it lives by, or rather, that the rulers allow it to live by. Not a single American dollar was even in existence when pyramids and cathedrals were built. And no amount of money will deflect an asteroid. And all the gold in the world will not save one from bullets, or from death. But the mammonists will always be among us, crying about the sanctity of money.
Your reply to ATLAW was spot-on, FVHorn August 20th, 2009 6:01 am, and I'd just add that the Krupps and others became much wealthier by supplying arms and support to Hitler's war machine. Corporations such as Mercedes-Benz, IG Farben, Volkswagen/Porsche, et al, all profited greatly from the Nazi regime, and got to keep their profits post-war. It's no secret that Henry Ford and Junior's granddaddy Prescott Bush, along with other corporate and Wall Street types, also made money from investing in Hitler's fascist regime. In 1942, Prescott Bush was indicted for trading with the enemy to stop him funding the Nazis, 10 months after Germany had declared war on the US.
I'm also perplexed as to ATLAW's reference to Keynesian economics -- FDR used Keynes' theories to bring America out of the Great Depression, but certainly not Hitler. Despite Hitler's organization being called the National Socialist Party, that's a misnomer that has obviously confused many on the right -- once in power, Hitler threw the true socialists, along with union members, liberals, communists and gays, in concentration camps. Let's see, which side of the aisle in American politics hates socialists, unions, liberals, communists and gay people?
Perhaps ATLAW is the victim of a Texas public school education whre they teach such historical drivel.
Why do "protesters" get tazed and arrested at GOP meetings, but we are supposed to put up with these delusional and ARMED 2nd hand propogandists?
"The balls of liberty must be moistened from time to time with the tongues of nutjobs and the GOP." - Teabag Jefferson