The Opinion Mill

They’re attacking Barack Obama over his basketball game. I repeat — his basketball game.

Is there a 12-step program for conservatives who are ready to wean themselves off whatever bug juice they’ve been swigging for the past decade?

Robert Novak, who has been known not to lie on occasion, delivers a revelation about Hillary Clinton so amazing it could only be printed in parentheses:

(In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama’s emphasis on Iraq — her Senate vote for it, his against it — defeated her.)

Leapin’ lizards! guess that’s why they call him a news columnist, eh?

Barbara Ehrenreich (author of the classic Nickel and Dimed) has a new book out, This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation, a collection of essays, articles and columns — gathered from The Progressive, The Nation and the NYT, among others — chronicling the social and economic wreckage that will be the Bush administration’s legacy in America. In the clip above, Ehrenreich talks about her book with Minnesota talk-show host Jack Rice. Ehrenreich will be online for questions next weekend at the Firedoglake book salon.

* * * * *

David Sirota, author of The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, goes on Fox Noise to demolish the GOP’s let-them-eat-cake attitude as typified by Phil Gramm and his notion that people caught in the economic downturn are a bunch of whiners. (Actually, it’s more a let’s-give-their-cake-to-our-rich-campaign-contributors attitude.) Going up against a Republican wingertron who can do nothing but recite discredited nonsense, Sirota acquits himself admirably.

* * * * *

Given the rock-bottom ratings of the Fox Business channel, Naomi Klein’s appearance on its surrealistically vapid “Happy Hour” probably did more to boost the channel’s fortunes than it did to boost sales of the new paperback edition of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Nevertheless, Klein took her message right into the faces of the Fox news twinkies, who were reduced to hollow-sounding laughter as Klein explained how the Bush administration’s attempt to expand offshore drilling by manipulating worries about the oil crunch is classic “disaster capitalism” — using calamities and fears to ram through measures and changes that would never have passed muster with the voters.

One of SCTV’s later seasons included a spoof of local TV children’s programming, which back in the days when there really were local TV channels meant getting some over-the-hill actor to dress up as a ringmaster or a ship captain and introduce ancient Three Stooges films and cartoons nobody else would touch. The SCTV spoof show was called “Happy Hour,” featuring a well-oiled host named Happy Marsden. I’m not sure Fox Business wants to cultivate that kind of association with its own “Happy Hour” show, but from what I’ve seen the SCTV version isn’t that much goofier than what Fox is trying to do.

* * * * *

When Bruce Bartlett walks down the street, do people roll their eyes and use their fingers to make little twirly motions next to their heads? Even by the sub-sub-basement standards of the Wall Street Journal, Bartlett’s column arguing that the GOP is the true party of civil rights, the theme of his new book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past. The childlike inanity of Bartlett’s attempt to pretend that the GOP is still the party of Lincoln, not the party of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott, brings out the best in some bloggers. Matt Yglesias points out that while the Republican Party had a great record on race in the 19th century, there’s been some water under the bridge since then. John Hobo decides that Bartlett is asking African-Americans to vote for long-dead candidates and takes it from there.

* * * * *

Pioneering hip hop artist Grandmaster Flash has a book out: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats. Listen to him talk about it with Bat Segundo.

That New Yorker cover showing Obama and his wife dressed as terrorists and bumping fists in the Oval Office is lame and stupid. It doesn’t work as satire because its ostensible target — dumb rumors about Obama being a Muslim terrorist in disguise — isn’t even grazed, much less hit. It doesn’t work as humor because when professional dickwads like Sean Hannity and the wingnut aviary are either implying that Obama is a closet terrorist or saying it outright, depicting him as such isn’t a joke.

If the cover had shown as this image a nightmare plaguing Joe Lieberman’s sleep, it would have had a shot at being fun. As presented, it’s simply the furthering of a vile lie that’s already had too much time in the air. And it’s about as funny as a case of kidney stones.

I like The New Yorker, but let’s bear in mind that before Seymour Hersh came aboard, it was yet another platform for Iraq warwhores.

If you’ve been scratching your head over that vapid profile of Rush Limbaugh that cluttered up the pages of the Sunday NYT magazine, consider yourself a member of a very large club. While there’s no denying that El Rushbo still has a large radio following, it’s also undeniable that the Republican Party is in for a shellacking in November, the entire menu of conservative nostrums has been stained and discredited by the Bush administration, and the GOP presidential nomination is going to a candidate Limbaugh despises while his beloved Mitt Romney went down in flames.   

All these signs of decline, along with El Rushbo’s usual array of unhinged attacks, would indicate that Tak Radio Gasbag No. 1 is on the downhill side of his long, odious career. So why did one finish the article with the feeling that the writer, Zev Chafets, went home from the interview with Limbaugh’s scrotum-prints on his chin?

Perhaps, as Eric Boehlert notes, because Chafets is a dittohead in good standing with the conservative gallery of scat-flinging howler monkeys, and there was never any doubt that the finished article would be about a hard hitting as a wet Twinkie:

That’s why there was no mention in the very long profile about the fact that Limbaugh has called Sen. John Kerry a “gigolo,” mocked Democratic Party chief Howard Dean as “a very sick man,” agreed that liberal philanthropist George Soros is a “self-hating Jew,” denounced then-Sen. Tom Daschle as an Al Qaeda sympathizer, mocked anti-war crusader Cindy Sheehan, whose son was slain in Iraq, by teasing, ” ‘Oh, she lost her son’ — well, yes. Yes. Yes. But you know, this is [sigh] — aaah. We all lose things.”

Or that Limbaugh has claimed Democrats “hate this country” (i.e. “What’s good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today”); denigrated members of the U.S. Armed Forces, calling military men and women who criticized the war in Iraq and advocated withdrawal “phony soldiers”; toasted photos of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib as “good old American pornography”; suggested actor Michael J. Fox faked symptoms of his life-threatening illness while taping a pro-stem-cell-research commercial; called Sen. Barack Obama a “Halfrican American”; and announced Obama and Osama bin Laden are “on the same page.”

There was not even a whiff of those odious attacks in The New York Times. Who knows? Maybe Chafets, given his clear political leanings, didn’t include those nuggets because he didn’t think the smears were particularly controversial. Maybe Chafets agreed with all of Limbaugh’s pronouncements.

It’s certainly possible. Reading some of Chafets’ previous work (he used to be a columnist for the New York Daily News), I often got the feeling that he was applying to be a Limbaugh ghost writer, the way he dumped all over Democrats and cheered lustfully for a war with Iraq.

We no longer expect much from the NYT op-ed pages, known chiefly as the place where Bill Kristol showcases NewsMax-level accuracy and insight. But shouldn’t the magazine observe a higher standard? I’m not demanding that NYT profiles be written by people who are ideologically antagonistic to their subjects. What I am demanding is that the authors of those profiles observe basic standards of accuracy, and show themselves willing to challenge their subjects. The only challenge detectable in Chafets’ profile is how low he’s willing to go in fawning over Limbaugh, and by running this knob-polishing epic apparently uncut and unedited, the Times has once again given supporters of quality journalism cause for despair.

Another reason to send those checks to WBAI.

Every now and then, the New Jersey legislature goes through a spasm of debate about the best candidate for the official state song of the Garden State. (There’s an unofficial state song, and anyone who likes it is welcome to it.) Inevitably, someone suggests “Born to Run,” and just as inevitably somebody points out that the song is about getting out as fast as possible, and the some conservative blowhard inevitably crows that that makes the song perfect because high taxes and liberal policies are chasing people out of the state, and then inevitably the howler monkeys at WingOWingPointJive start flinging scats and inevitably the whole thing gets very, very tedious.

Having just returned from a beautiful weekend on New Jersey’s beautiful shoreline, I have realized that the state song of New Jersey need be only one line long: “Have you got your beach tag?”

You don’t need a Bruce Springsteen to sing it, either. Just summon up your best impression of Grandpa Simpson, or Charles Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons, and croak it with self-righteous satisfaction. It’s most effective peformed a capella, but for those who insist on musical accompaniment, I suggest something along the lines of Devo’s version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” or the clattering Flying Lizards cover of “Money.” I picture a video with platoons of wizened Beach Nazis scrambling across dunes and trampling sandcastles in their determination to make certain that every sunburned back is counterpointed by a wristband or a tag attached to the swimming trunks. If anyone tries to launch an invasion of the United States from the sea, he’d better not try it along the Jersey Shore, or the invading armada will be stopped at the surf line by some turkey in wrap-around GeezerGuard sunglasses, demanding to see beach tags.

This recent story makes it clear how much hocus pocus and fiscal legerdemain lies behind the claims of shore communities that they have to charge for beach use in order to maintain the beaches. Under these circumstances, the idea of a statewide or regional beach pass sounds fine to me. And if the sandwingers of Monmouth, Ocean and Cape May counties whine because it takes away some of th gravy they wring from New Jerseyans who have already paid for beach replenishment and other servies through their taxes, so much the better. 

So if there muts be beach passes, the idea of instituting a statewide beach pass program

It’s true. I don’t know how much actual research will be involved. Krauthammer probably just needs someone to feed and wash the little man who lives inside his head and hisses “Bomb them!” whenever he hears something he doesn’t like.

Sounds like a cushy gig. As Matt Yglesias points out, it’s not as though Krauthammer (or his employer, FreaxNoise) puts such a high premium on fact-checking or accuracy.   

If you are a New Jerseyan of A Certain Age, chances are you never got over the habit of referring to The Record as “The Bergen Record.” As long as the paper was still based in Hackensack, the mistake didn’t matter. But in the very near future, the Record is going to leave Bergen altogether for smaller lodgings in Passaic County:

The Record of Hackensack, N.J. is planning to vacate its main headquarters and move staff to the site of its sister daily, The Herald News of West Paterson, according to a staff memo from Publisher Stephen A. Borg. The memo declared: “We must re-invent ourselves.”The memo stated that the move could save about $2.4 million per year. Borg confirmed the memo and said that most of the news staff would actually become mobile journalists, working from the field, while others would also relocate to one of the paper’s eight weekly newspaper sites.

“The number one objective is more mobile journalism,” Borg, who said the paper has about 30 such “mojos,” who report from laptops and cell phones, told E&P. “And to take advantage of our other offices.”

Borg said the move has not been scheduled, but added, “I wouldn’t want it to occur any later than January ‘09. Advertising has already moved. In the last six weeks.”

 

 

“Mobile journalism,” in case you hadn’t already figured it out, is the latest management fad to afflict a once-great newspaper already bled white by dozens of them. “Mojo” (sounds better than “Hobo,” I suppose) is the latest Dilbert-level quackery in the tradition of “continuous improvement,” known by the catchy name “CI,” a motivational program that was used to waste the time of already overburdened Record reporters. Like Shelley Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross, making calls from a phone booth while pretending to be in his office, Record journalists will work “from the field” unless they’re lucky enough to share a desk with somebody on another shift.

New Jersey newspapers have shown a remarkable willingness to treat their reporters with the dignity and respect usually reserved for burger flippers at drive-through windows, but even by this low standard The Record has been scandalous. The company cafeteria was recently closed and replaced with some vending machines. There are four elevators, but two have been shut down for about nine months. The other broke down a week ago but management isn’t having it fixed because — why bother? It’s not like there’s going to be a newspaper there anymore.  

The story of the newspaper industry is the story of soldiers winning battles while their generals lose the wars. Last year, Record reporters were kicking asses and taking names on the EnCap scam that is the McGreevey administration’s true legacy. Meanwhile, their bosses were cooking up rationales for nickel-and-diming them while wasting time and money on Internet boondoggles.  

In the old Roman empire, a general who screwed things up this badly would have the decency to fall on his sword. In modern journalism, the general gives his legions a memo saying “We must re-invent ourselves” and books a flight to the Caribbean. Assuming, of course, the legions haven’t already been laid off.     

Have you been lying awake at night all excited at the thought of having one of the presidential debates in Dubai? Neither have I, but WaPo’s David Ignatius thinks it would be just the keenest thing:

Yes, I know: This is America’s presidential campaign, not a traveling roadshow to be shared with foreigners. And if the candidates can’t even agree on a schedule of town meetings out in the American heartland, why should they travel to a sheikdom that’s 7,000 miles from Washington — and a short boat ride from Iran?

But the idea of a Dubai debate is appealing, not least because it would link the epochal 2008 campaign with a world that cares passionately about where America is heading. The United States is unpopular abroad these days in part because of a perception that we’re arrogant — that we don’t care what the world thinks. An overseas debate would help change that perception.

The idea is appealing to Ignatius because he’s a rich, out-of-touch media drone who would be perfectly happy to live under a religious dictatorship as long as the shopping was good and the air conditioning never cut out.

As for the sheiks, they can afford the fuel to fly out to America. Not many of us are in the position to return the favore these days.