Despite the fact that just one week ago John McCain declared that he understands the impact of blogs on American politics, he told Conan O’Brien Friday night that Americans are tired of them:
Another pearl of wisdom from the the guy who last week also said…
“I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself.”
John McCain…Building a bridge to the 19th century.
 So Sue Me! |
The great minds at the Republican National Committee are once again demonstrating their transcendent grasp of marketing, finance, and public relations. In an action so preposterously witless as to scramble the common cranium, the GOP has sent a “cease and desist” letter to CafePress citing trademark infringement on the part of sellers using the term “GOP” or the elephant logo. Attorney Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen is representing CafePress and wrote this on the CLP Blog:
“[W]e might ask why the RNC has chosen an election year to try to suppress speech about the Republican Party, especially since many of the images are highly favorable to their cause. Many of the CafePress users appear to be Republican grassroots activists. Is this the right year for RNC staff members to start going after their own supporters?”
Asking the RNC why they are trying to suppress speech is like asking why tobacco companies add nicotine to cigarettes – the only way you can get people to consume either one is to artificially manipulate their behavior. Tobacco companies do it with addictive chemicals. Republicans do it with message control and censorship.
Ironically, this harebrained scheme can only work to the disadvantage of Republican allies. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech, along with “fair use” and the legal protection for parody, insure that any critical use of the trademarked properties is permitted. Only those who are using the properties favorably would be subject to litigation because it would be more likely to result in confusion with the RNC’s own favorable use. So the GOP’s action punishes their friends while having no impact whatsoever on opponents.
This is the same pack of idiots that got us mired in a war in Iraq; that ran our economy into the ground; and that want to persuade us that John McCain ought to be our next president.
Another year has passed
And now News Corpse is 4
But never doubt
The shout goes out
To fight for 4 years more.
Happy Birthday To Me!
The Terrorist Watch List maintained by the Transportation Security Administration has become a bloated and useless compendium of waste. The ACLU recently reported that the list contains a million names. The TSA disputes this saying that, due to duplicates and aliases, the number is actually closer to 400,000. Well, that’s comforting, but it doesn’t change the fact that…
“Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape.”
New amongst the listees is CNN reporter Drew Griffin. Last March Griffin broadcast a story on the TSA that exposed some of its weaknesses. Within two months he found that he was unable to travel without significant inconvenience and later learned of his inclusion in the database intended to identify dangerous individuals suspected of having ties to terrorism.
In questioning before Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff gave the wholly incredulous explanation that Griffin may be a victim of a name “mismatch.” As if there is another Drew Griffin that is the real terrorist. And it is apparently nothing more than a coincidence that Griffin’s placement on the list shortly followed the broadcast of his critical investigation.
The obvious exploitation of these government resources to punish unfriendly journalists is hardly out of character for the Bush regime. It is another illustration of their incompetence, waste, and abuse of power. And in this case they are contributing to making the country less safe by diluting the effectiveness of security operations. While it is repugnant that any government agency would employ these chilling schemes, it is particularly disturbing that they would target the press. The only purpose for doing so would be to frighten other conscientious journalists into silence.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) is requesting an investigation. But if the past is any indication, the administration will stonewall, lie, and otherwise seek to obstruct the lawful implementation of oversight. The only hope for an open and honest examination of this is if it is conducted by a new administration. Hopefully that isn’t too far off.
We are learning much about Sen. John McCain as he continues to reveal more of his “straight-talking” personality in the course of his presidential campaign. For instance, how many of us knew what a transcendent[al] wit he possessed? The following is just a brief selection of his classics:
That’s right. McCain, who describes himself as being older than dirt with more scars than Frankenstein, has not even shied away from jokes about age, for which he now condemns others.
That last one was directed at his own presidential aspirations way back in 2000. So he is not only humorous, but prescient. With talent like this it is surprising that he is wasting his time in politics. He could be a contestant on The Last Comic Wheezing.
The New York Times spoke with the newly named president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, about the prospects for rising star, Rachel Maddow:
“At some point, I don’t know when, she should have a show. She’s on the short list. It’s a very short list. She’s at the top.”
There were reports last year that Maddow had made a pilot with Bill Wolffe. And there was much speculation surrounding the inevitable departure of the network’s biggest loser, Tucker Carlson.
As it turns out, David Gregory got Carlson’s spot. It seemed to me at the time that Gregory’s program, Race for the White House, had a built in expiration date. There wouldn’t be much appeal in such a show after the election. I surmised that:
“Gregory, as Senior White House Correspondent, knows there will be little happening on that beat for the remainder of the year. So he’s settling in to cover the campaign and he can return to the White House with the new president. Then maybe Maddow or David Shuster will get another shot at a show.”
Since then, Shuster has become a featured daytime anchor and Maddow a frequent guest on several network programs. Maddow could be a breakout personality for MSNBC. Especially if they let her express herself with the insight and humor that she has in abundance. MSNBC has an opportunity to produce a compelling and innovative program. Let’s hope they don’t blow it.
Actually, Brit Hume is stepping down from his fox news program, Special Report. I just thought it would be nice if the headline of this article served as a tribute to Hume’s journalistic record:
From Howie Kurtz at the Washington Post:
“Sources familiar with the situation say that Hume, 65, will give up his job as Washington managing editor and anchor of “Special Report.” They say he is near a deal to continue with Fox in a senior statesman role, not unlike that of Tom Brokaw at NBC, for roughly 100 days a year.”
Kurtz notes in his column that Hume’s chummy relationship with the Bush White House helped him snag some exclusives. For instance, Hume got the only interview given by Dick Cheney after he shot a hunting companion in the face. What Kurtz didn’t say was that Hume and Fox News censored the interview to hide the fact that Cheney had been drinking that day.
No replacement has been named yet for Hume. One possible candidate is Jim Angle, presently the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News and a regular guest host on Special Report. Angle’s reporting is at least as slanted as Hume, so he would be able to slide right into the new role. But who know, maybe they’ll go with Sean Hannity or Karl Rove. At Fox News, journalistic credentials are not a prerequisite.
Cliff Kincaid is an editor at the rabidly conservative Accuracy in Media and the president of America’s Survival, an anti-United Nations group. He is also the author of one of the most dementedly hilarious articles I’ve read all year.
The article in question is a complaint that Matt Drudge and the Washington Times have refused to publish his advertisements. [Note to Vast Right-wing Conspirators: When Drudge and the WashTimes reject you, it’s time for in-patient care] The ads themselves are complaints that the Rightist Media is ignoring his allegations that Barack Obama was indoctrinated as a Communist while growing up in Hawaii (a fiction that Kincaid has been peddling for five months). But that’s not even the funny part. This is:
“…our $5000.00 ad buy was rejected by Drudge himself. This appears to be part of a leftward drift on the part of Drudge, who has a rather idiosyncratic background and links to the homosexual community and Hollywood.”
“At the same time, we have to draw attention to the continuing leftward drift of Fox News. Fox News sent a camera crew to our May 22 news briefing in Washington, D.C., where we released our two reports. But not one word has appeared on the channel about what we uncovered.”
Perhaps the reason that even neanderthal news nets like Fox won’t touch this stuff is because it doesn’t even rise to their sunken standards for journalism. Nah, that can’t be it. It must be because they’re all Islamo-fascists rooting for Obama.
The wheels are coming off the bus. When uber-conservatives like Kincaid start attacking the cornerstones of their own Rightist Media, you know that a severe psycho-mechanical failure is imminent. Next thing you know they’ll be denouncing Ann Coulter as a radical, pinko, feminist for telling Sean Hannity that she would support Hillary Clinton over John McCain. I hope they have their seat belts fastened.
After generating much scorn for publishing an over-the-top satire of Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the cover of the magazine, I thought I would help the New Yorker out by offering them this artwork with John McCain for the cover of next month’s issue:
I’m sure they will be more than pleased and will take no offense. After all, editor David Remnick responded to the Obama controversy by saying…
“It’s clearly a joke, a parody of these crazy fears and rumours and scare tactics about Obama’s past and ideology. And if you can’t tell it’s a joke by the flag burning in the Oval Office, I don’t know what more to say.”
This McCain cover is also a parody and a joke. Well, it’s a parody – McCain is the joke.
Tony Snow, former Fox News anchor, radio talk show host, and press secretary to George W. Bush, has succumbed to the cancer that he has been battling for many years. He was 53 years old.
I have written about Snow extensively over the years, with little positive to say. But this is not the time to dwell on that. Snow leaves behind a wife and three small children, and this is surely a tremendous loss for them, as it is for his many friends, colleagues, and fellow travelers on the Right.
But it is also a loss for our nation and for the pursuit of truth. Snow was the consummate insider. He was there as a speech writer for George Bush Sr. He was there at the birth of Fox News. He has had unique exposure to the twin powers of government and media – an interdisciplinary complex that I believe is far more dangerous than the military-industrial one that Eisenhower warned us about.
When it comes time to wax autobiographical, press secretaries and journalists are often the source of astonishing revelations about the inner workings of their fields. If Scott McClellan’s recent book purports to tell us “What Happened,” just imagine what Snow might have revealed if he had the opportunity to express himself without the constraints of his professional service. Whether he ever would have done so completely and candidly, we will never know. But he has been rather blunt on occasion in the past. ThinkProgress had compiled some commentary by Snow prior to his appointment at the White House that refers to the president as “an embarrassment,” “impotent,” and more.
In his career, Snow has exhibited a reliably rightist tone to his pronouncements in both the public and private sectors. As press secretary, he stubbornly affirmed the lies and misrepresentations of the White House. But he has also ventured off the plantation to deliver unexpected truths about the people and places he’s observed. We need much more of the latter. That’s the sort of forthright expression that can be truly beneficial politically, historically, and culturally.
With Snow’s untimely passing we can only wonder what might have happened; what might have been.