Fish Fear Me

From The Department Of "Thank You, Sir, May We Have Another?"

NY Times reporter Josh Barro emulates fellow lefty Matthew Yglesias:

 

Anti-LGBT attitudes are terrible for people in all sorts of communities. They linger and oppress, and we need to stamp them out, ruthlessly.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) July 24, 2014

 

One can argue that Barro is talking about attitudes and not people, but there's that troublesome word he ends with, "ruthlessly." Because when the people with the wrong attitudes stubbornly persist in their beliefs, what acts do you suppose the ruthless will feel entitled to commit in the name of their righteousness?

It's still an article of faith among much of the political left that such nasty righteousness was purely a right-wing thing, especially among religious conservatives. The truth is it has always been deeply ingrained in so-called "progressive" thinking, and it remains so today even as it fades from most mainstream religions in the United States and Europe. 

Politico's Roger Simon: National Guard Will "Shoot Small Children"

Here's what Politico's Roger Simon thinks is Gov. Rick Perry's reason for mobilizing 1,000 members of the Texas National Guard:

Rick Perry sending 1,000 National Guard troops to border to shoot small children. Could make good headlines -- in Russia.

— Roger Simon (@politicoroger) July 22, 2014

What a vile thing to write.

Meet the face of award-winning journalism in America circa 2014. 

Great Moments In "And They Wonder Why We Won't Let Them Take Our Guns" (continued)

@michaelbd No, pretty easy for me. I take an old-school Jacobin-style line that religion should be stamped out.

— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 29, 2013

Alec Baldwin: Goodbye Cruel World

Okay, Alec Baldwin isn't quite as dramatic and self-absorbed in "Good-bye, Public Life" as my title implies, but its not that far off. After an airing of grievances that would do Frank Costanza proud at Festivus, Baldwin writes:

"I probably have to move out of New York. I just can’t live in New York anymore. Everything I hated about L.A. I’m beginning to crave. L.A. is a place where you live behind a gate, you get in a car, your interaction with the public is minimal. I used to hate that. But New York has changed. Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be. I have to accept that. I want my newest child to have as normal and decent a life as I can provide. New York doesn’t seem the place for that anymore.

"It’s good-bye to public life in the way that you try to communicate with an audience playfully like we’re friends, beyond the work you are actually paid for. Letterman. Saturday Night Live. That kind of thing. I want to go make a movie and be very present for that and give it everything I have, and after we’re done, then the rest of the time is mine."

Oh no, my life is empty now.

End snark.

I've admired his acting abilities at times, but based on too many publicly boorish incidents to count I don't much like Alec Baldwin the man. Strangely enough though, there were moments when I actually sympathized with him as I read his missive. Stuff like this(if true):

"The same guy who followed my wife on a bicycle, and when she slipped and fell trying to dodge him and hurt her leg, he laughed at her and said, “See what I made you do?” At my wife. How would that make you feel?"

And when he writes this:

"I want the same thing everybody else wants. I want a happy home, and for the first time in my adult life, I have one. I love my wife more than anything in the world and I love my child more than anything else in the world and I don’t want that to change in any way."

But there are several things things that hold me back from getting too sympathetic toward Baldwin.

With some celebrities there's this little game they play with the paparazzi that goes something like "Look at me! Look at me! Oh those awful paparazzi! Look at me! Look at me!" Baldwin's version of that, consciously or not, was in becoming the celebrity in New York City to try to provoke and get a picture or video of his reaction. Even Baldwin admits he should have handled himself better in that regard.

Second, I don't find his defense regarding the gay slurs as credible. How can anyone believe this:

"At the time, I didn’t view “toxic little queen” as a homophobic statement. I didn’t realize how those words could give offense, and I’m sorry for that."

I hate that term homophobic, but who in the world thinks that calling some guy a "toxic little queen" isn't offensive? Ridiculous.

I also don't believe Baldwin regarding the episode from last fall when he appears to have called another photographer a(sorry, I don't know how to get around it) "c*cksucking faggot." At the time he claimed that the second word was "fathead," and the video is inconclusive to me. Now he says "You don’t know, and I don’t know..." Uh huh. And who uses that first word and then follows it with "fathead"? We all know the natural usage of that word is mostly followed by, if anything, "faggot." Maybe SOB. Maybe A**hole. But fathead? That just seems lame. It's not nice, it's not intended to be nice, but there it is. 

Most important of all as to why I don't sympathize with Baldwin is that, among other things, this is a clear case of what goes around, comes around. I could just as well have titled this post "Noted Shrieking Harpy Harps About Shrieking Harpies Harping On Him." He correctly notes that "In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day." But that's exactly what he and many of his former friends on the left do every day to their political opponents. It's a way of life for them. Assume ill will. Assume the basest of motives. Take one mistake or flub and turn it into a Scarlett Letter.

And then there's this:

"Even the U.S., which is so preposterously judgmental now. The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred."

Actually, the fuel of American political life right now is lies, but yes, there's plenty of hate too. And with his own hateful and judgmental over-the-top rhetoric against conservatives and Republicans he's contributed more than his own fair share the last 20 years. He blames Fox and Breitbart and even tosses in MSNBC at the last second, but charity begins at home. Not that Baldwin will ever see his hypocrisy, the narcissism is too strong.

At first it's kind of amusing to watch so-called progressives eat one of their own, but it gets tedious quickly and ultimately it's just as nasty and brutish a process as when they do it to those to their right politically. Had Baldwin refrained from being so nasty and brutish himself all those years and picked better friends he probably wouldn't be so bitter right now.

The Moral Bankruptcy Of The Left

On this 50 year anniversary of what has to be one of the greatest speeches in American history, so-called progressive columnist Charles P. Pierce debases it by shitting on one of its most profound and beautiful lines:

As the president mounts the podium at the Lincoln Memorial today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's speech, we are reminded (ceaselessly) about one thing that Dr. King said in his address:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.    

There it is. That's the great loophole. It is an otherwise unremarkable sentiment given the context of the entire address, but, for the people who almost certainly would have lined up on the other side of the movement in 1963, it subsequently has been used as an opening through which all manner of historically backsliding mischief has come a'wandering in, from "reverse discrimination" to Allan Bakke, to what is going on today with the franchise in too many places, to the reaction to the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman.

And so a dream that his children will be treated with basic human dignity, simple but astoundingly and eloquently presented, and today overwhelmingly embraced by all but a very small fringe of Americans, is turned into another craven racial narrative in the service of Democratic politicians.

Goddamn me for believing in King's vision and taking it to heart, I guess. Somehow I doubt that Pierce and his thoroughly corrupt views on race are going to lead us to the Promised Land.

Call me a cynic, if you will. 

Because Apparently There Wasn't Enough Poison In Our Politics Already(update)

Some woman in Texas thought she would be clever on Sunday and showed up at a protest against the George Zimmerman verdict with the following sign:

Note the caption and how the NY Daily News ran with it as a straight news item. The UK's Daily Mail online played it as a straight news photo of a George Zimmerman supporter also.

It turns out that she was actually with the Trayvon Martin side at the protest and she was just being "sarcastic."

 

It may have been sarcasm as far as she's concerned, but two major news organizations put it on the record as testimony to the racism of Zimmerman supporters.

I'd like to know how that happened, because according to the story at the video link, at one point she was clearly on the side of the street with the Trayvon Martin supporters. Is that where James Nielson of AP took the picture? Did he know that wasn't really a Zimmerman supporter and did he provide that context when he submitted the photo to his editor? 

Who was the editor and was that image altered in any substantial way? Was important context cut before it was sent out over the AP wire to other news organizations?

I wonder how many thousands or even millions of people have seen or will see that picture as a Zimmerman supporter standing unmolested amongst other Zimmerman supporters and therefore see that as a true representation of the racism of all Zimmerman supporters. How many people have been or will be misled into anger and hatred and have their hearts hardened by that photo?

I wonder if Renee Vaughan, the name of the woman with the sign apparently, is proud of that.

I wonder if James Nielsen is proud of that.

I wonder if AP President Gary Pruitt and his staff of managers and editors are proud of that. 

I wonder if Philip Caulfield and the publishers and editors at the NY Daily News and the Mail Online are proud of that.

I wonder if any of them actually give a shit.

Update: As of 12:45 CDT the New York Daily News has memory-holed the photo without a correction notice, but left the following copy in the story:

One woman in the Zimmerman group held a sign that said, "We're racist & proud."

Austin resident Renee Vaughan echoed the sign’s ugly sentiments by yelling, "We're racist. We're proud. We're better because we're white," at the Martin group as they passed, according to the Chronicle.

At this point it is hard to escape the conclusion that Philip Caulfield and all his editors are a bunch of giant assholes who are out to deliberately deceive their readers.

Hack "Journalist" Of the Day: Felix Salmon

Remember last week when I wrote that Republicans and conservatives need to fully absorb that the legacy media are their political opponents? Reuters blogger Felix Salmon gives us an excellent example of that today along with an equally stellar sample of the sort of douchebag tactics we can expect to see. 

Earlier today, GQ published online an interview with Sen. Marco Rubio and one of the questions he took was "How old do you think the Earth is?" Here's Rubio's actual response:

I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Here's Rubio's response when a hack journalist like Felix Salmon gets done with it:

I have my own issues with Rubio's response and I'll detail those in the next post. Unlike Salmon though, I won't be turning myself into a douchebag liar in the process. And make no mistake, that tweet with it's phony quote is a flat-out lie. Judging from the thread at that last link though, Salmon doesn't give a shit about that.

The point of this post is not to try to get Salmon to show any kind of professionalism in dealing with people with whom he disagrees, that would almost certainly be an exercise in futility. The point is simply to let people know that Felix Salmon is a hack "journalist" who is perfectly fine with serving you, the reader, with phony quotes. Trust him accordingly.

Oh, and one more thing. There's all sorts of talk about needing more civility in our political discourse, but a greater incivility than any name-calling is to deliberately distort and lie about your opponent's position. There are many ways that Salmon could have chosen to legitimately criticize Rubio's response, he chose the lie. I won't listen to one word about civility from him.

Civility!

Is this some more of that civility that President Obama has talked about?

"I saw pictures of Boehner and Cantor on our screens (at the convention). Don't ever let me see again, in life, those Republicans in our hall, on our screens, talking about anything. These are demons," she told the crowd. "They are bringing down this country, destroying this country, because they’d rather do whatever they can do destroy this president rather than for the good of this country.”

I'm not seeing much civility there, but that's probably the racist in me.

Some anti-Civility Bullshit

Via Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy, a very interesting video of Stephen Carter, an author and Yale Law School professor, talking about what civility really means in politics and how it goes far beyond simply avoiding the name calling.

Is Civility Important? from Yale Law School on Vimeo.

Hands down the best 26 minutes and 21 seconds that I spent on the internet today.

That talk fits right in with some of what I've been thinking about civility lately. One can be polite to a political opponent in all sorts of ways and still be quite uncivil. Reducing one's opponent to a caricature of evil or stupid instead of doing the hard work of actually listening to the people one disagrees with is just one way that happens today. 

Your mileage may vary, but I think it's well worth your time.

Bullshit Nation-Big Media Edition

Here's a good example of journalistic malpractice poisoning the political sphere:

All right, so we think we understand what Mitt Romney meant when he told some hecklers at the Iowa State Fair Thursday that "corporations are people, my friend."

Anybody these days fortunate to have a 401(k) retirement plan, or even a job with a corporation, understands that when a company makes a profit, there's a benefit to that firm's "stakeholders," as executive-types like to say.

Still, he gave his Democratic opponents an early Christmas gift by uttering those words. He just made their goal of pushing the narrative that he is a tool of corporate America much easier by providing them with that handy piece of video.

I have no doubt that the author, Frank James of NPR, fully understands what Romney meant. Rather than admit that completely, he gives cover to Democrats distorting what Romney said. I guess we can call him Frank "I know what he meant but I'm going to take him out of context anyway because I'm just another fucking asshole" James.

Civility in politics is not just about abstaining from name calling, it also means listening to your political opponents honestly and in good faith. Too much of our politics right now revolves around just this type of distortion and gotcha, and rather than call that the nonsense that it is, Frank James gets a little bit of a kick out of it. I would like to think he is an exception, but I know he is the rule when it comes to journalism and politics these days. 

Thanks, Big Media(and that means you too, Frank), for helping make our political discourse the bullshit that it is today.